Category: On Writing
Writing Menopause
Writing Menopause: An Anthology of Fiction, Poetry and Creative Nonfiction is a diverse and robust collection about menopause: a highly charged and often undervalued transformation. It includes over fifty works of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, interviews and cross-genre pieces from contributors across Canada and the United States that break new ground in portraying menopause. The […]
Patient H69: The Story of my Second Sight
I am methodically gathering visual information from those around me – building a mental picture of what I look like. I’m told my pupils are hugely and disturbingly dilated, the blue irises overtaken by black, unseeing orbs. I imagine that I resemble an owl, or with my increasingly unkempt hair, a zombie from a bad […]
The Memoir I Did Not Plan to Write
The best memoirs read like novels with their shaped plots and fully developed characters, yet the experience of reading a memoir can have a compelling power that fiction does not always match. The knowledge that the story we are reading is true and the immediacy of the author’s voice bring us into direct relation to […]
Invisible Women In The History Of Literature
As a child, I loved to write secrets in invisible ink. When I wrote words with orange juice, they could be read only in the heat of a candle flame. And that is how it felt when looking for women writers to balance the record during my research for A Biography of Story, A Brief […]
Interview with Smadar Herzfeld and Translator Aloma Halter
Smadar’s Herzfeld’s novel Trail of Miracles, translated by Aloma Halter, follows Gittel, a Ukrainian, Hasidic, Jewish woman as she makes a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage and discovers the unique gifts she brings to the world. The lyric beauty of Gittel’s voice will mesmerize readers into following her on her Trail of Miracles. Smadar, I am curious about […]
What College Math Taught Me About Writing
I remember the first time I cried in the shower. It wasn’t over a boy. And it didn’t involve a falling out with a friend. It was about numbers—and one big, fat letter. I had just finished my first semester at college and received my grades in the mail. This was, as you’ve already imagined, […]
All The Best People: Interview with Sonja Yoerg
New York Times bestselling author, Chris Bohjalian, writes that Sonja Yoerg’s All the Best People contains “Not just the best people, but real people: authentic, quirky and troubled. I cared for them all.” I couldn’t have said it better. Yoerg immerses us in family in crisis; instead of looking away, we become invested in their […]
Here I Am
Here I am. Writing for you. It may come as a surprise, but not to me. I’ve been writing for you for twenty-plus years. You just never knew until this very moment. Let me explain. After work and supper and dishes and ball practice and bath and bedtime stories, I wrote. Turning my attention from […]
The Real (and Not Real) Arboria Park
Arboria Park was inspired by the place I grew up and lived in until I was twelve: Rodney Village, near Dover, Delaware. That’s my house on the cover of the book. The photo was taken in 1958, soon after we moved in (when I was two months old). The real house was gray, and my […]
If I’m Neuro-Typical, Can I Write About the Neuro-Diverse?
In 2003, Mark Haddon made a well-deserved splash with his first novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. It’s a coming-of-age tale posing as a mystery, narrated by Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old with Asperger’s Syndrome. It was a break-through book, one that introduced people on the autism spectrum, especially the autistic savant, to […]
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