AS I RUN THROUGH THE WOODS in Hell, Michigan, I am conscious of only three things: The horizontal blue ribbons marking the trail, My beautiful, brand-new sparkling engagement ring, And the fact that, aside from my lime-green running shoes, I am completely naked. It is the first time I’ve ever really thanked god that I […]
The Art Of Resemblance In Nonfiction
When I walked into the apartment of memoirist Alan Kaufman in Lower Nob Hill around 2011, I noticed paintings covering his walls. I’d already read his nearly 500-page memoir, Drunken Angel. The book chronicles how he became a writer and drunk (and how he recovered from alcoholism). There was nothing about him being a painter. How could he […]
The Deep End
TUCKED MY HAIR UNDER my daisy-covered swim cap until my scalp stretched so tight my face hurt. Mom said I had to wear a rubber swim cap because girl hair clogged pool drains. In beginner swim class, mostly I held on to the side in the shallow end, kicked and blew bubbles for a pretty […]
English Only?
IT WAS AUTUMN in suburban Richmond. Cheerful, acute voices overwhelmed the muted sounds of falling leaves. “Córrele Guillermo,” yelled Elena to her toddler. “Te tengo aquí unas galletitas.” Just next to her, a round, middle-aged face surfaced from behind a USA Today. With deepening, fresh wrinkles, he glanced and gruntled, “In this park we only […]
Writer Turf Wars
I RECEIVED AN EMAIL today from writer Nancy Edwards talking about me getting mentioned in a newspaper article. She’s a student at my Random Writers Workshop. The irony is she was my college English professor in the early 1990s. I always point this out. At a recent memoir event I blamed my last twenty years of […]
Dealing With The Killing Squads
DURING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE of 1915, one of the many ways a woman could die at the hands of the killing squads was by the game of swords. The killing squads were bands of ex-convicts, released from prison or recruited by the Ottoman government for the purpose of massacring Armenians. The game of swords involved […]
Spelunking
I FALL DEEP INTO OBLIVION – into something that’s too big to hold me. The history is too big, my color is all wrong and even while I hold the sides I can’t see my hands. Somewhere, there’s a rope. I know it’s there because it’s around my waste. I start to climb. The rocks […]
Reading Aloud For Meaning
READING ALOUD HELPS catch those pesky typos and shifts in verb tense. That’s obvious. What if there’s a deeper meaning to crooning your fiction across the dining room table? I thought I would dig a little deeper and explain why I like to read my drafts aloud. The word “writing” for me regarding fiction often […]