I’ve been thinking a lot about measurement and proving, and just spent a few days receiving a great deal of data. I am working with an incredible, capable team to develop ways to measure the benefits of our creative writing workshops, but I also feel really, really, really certain that breaking it apart and looking…
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Things I’m obsessed with: This Life by Vampire Weekend (I’ve listened to it probably 150 times), 44+ (give or take) people I met at the Bush Institute last week, and Joy Harjo being the Poet Laureate the United States of America needs. Boston Boston Boston! Brandon Melendez, Amelia Bane, and I are coming to read…
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I’m working on (aka second-guessing and rewriting) a new non-fiction manuscript and I’m also facing some big changes/challenges in non-writing parts of my work (more info very soon). Both have me returning repeatedly to the question of knowing, of certainty. Each day I seem to cycle through optimism, worthlessness, self-doubt, absolute confidence, complete devastation, giddiness, and…
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Saturday before last, a wonder-friend sent me this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. So many times, as we navigated the crowds and listened to the children speak and watched little kids holding signs that said, “I don’t want to be next,”at the March For Our Lives, I felt overwhelmed by the magnitude and sorrow and…
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I have a friend on instagram who posts these lovely, sacred looking photos of her notebook ready to receive writing every morning. I look at them while I’m avoiding my own writing. Yesterday morning I was sitting on my bed with my laptop and stacks and journal and pen and the hood of my sweatshirt…
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I had the most amazing writing group this afternoon, with 12 of the bravest, coolest, most loving and honest people. They were so scared, because the work they are doing is scary, but they went on anyway, lifting one another up, wondering aloud. Every time I think I can’t stand one more ounce of bureaucratic…
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I came home from a weekend in Atlanta, a working weekend with some kickass people I’m so glad to be on a professional journey with, and instead of feeling my usual get-it-all-done rush, when I saw my little gentlemen waiting to pick me up at the metro station, everything else seemed like it could wait.…
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The very first Combat Paper/Warrior Writers post-workshop performance and exhibit of 2017 (in the DC Metro Area anyway) is coming up! Friday April 7th at 7 pm at Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, Virginia. 9801 Ox Rd, Building W-16. I hope I see you there. (Especially you, Deeanna–we’d all love to see you!!!) In the second…
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I had the perfect Sunday. I mean perfect perfect perfect. An insanely hard yoga class (the kind that makes me wonder if the teacher is trying to kill me), a long lone grocery store wandering (where I ran into a lovely old friend) from which I returned with 10 beautiful tomatoes per the instructions of my…
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Oh dear dear dear ones. I missed posting last week entirely. It was a busy time. There was that incredible performance and the aftermath, and there was an important sad-anniversary for me. Now I am sitting at the airport, about to get on a plane and fly across the world. Away from my children, and…
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