On Mornings
My daily tea I am not a morning person. I often don’t sleep well or enough, and frequently wake up feeling exhausted, unwell, or in pain. Yet I’ve settled into a daily a.m. routine that not only reconciles me to waking up but reminds me pointedly o ...
Anxiety of influence be damned; or, musings from my residency (part 1)
my reading chair at Hedgebrook Three weeks ago I returned from a four-week stay at Hedgebrook, a retreat for women writers on gorgeous Whidbey Island in Puget Sound. This morning I started a blog post to reflect on my experiences there, but it grew so ...
Ready or not: residency!
Tomorrow I leave home to attend a writers residency. I'm lucky to have this opportunity -- four weeks in a beautiful place where I'm put up and fed and allowed to work. I'm grateful for the solitude and the time I'll have there as well as for the support ...
What’s With All the Fiction Titles That Begin With “What”?
My lovely and gifted friend Cora Stryker recently asked me to read the novel she just completed. It's a compelling post-apocalypse story set in San Francisco, and I hope you all get to read it soon. It's called Raven's Manzanita, which is a hopelessly end ...
20 Under 40 Angst
Last week The New Yorker announced its “20 under 40” list of the most promising American fiction writers under the age of 40, and the only people who seem to be happy are the 20 people who made it onto the list and their agents. The unhappiest folks are p ...
My First Blog Post
I approach this, my very first blog post ever, with some trepidation. I've tended to look down on this medium as self-indulgent and contributing to the general mediocritization of everything. I haven't really changed my mind about that. Most blogs are sel ...