For the Ploughshares blog, I wrote about Julia Fine’s The Upstairs House and Makenna Goodman’s The Shame and how I am turning to fiction, in particular a spate of recently published novels that portray the challenges of the postpartum period and early motherhood, to make sense of my attempts to hold together the identities of writer and mother. “While…Read More
“If Birds Can’t Survive”
Redivider recently published a lyric essay, “If Birds Can’t Survive,” that braids my experiences learning how to parent with learning how to birdwatch at a time when climate change is threatening America’s birds, and so much more, with extinction. Read the essay and the rest of the issue.
Reading “On Immunity” During a Measles Outbreak
“What will we do with our fear?” This is the question that stands out to me from Eula Biss’s book, On Immunity. And it’s the question I returned to postpartum as I felt fear and frustration over anti-vaccine sentiment. I re-read Biss’s book during the most recent measles outbreak and found it to be as…Read More
Chuckanut Radio Hour #121
I shared a conversation with the brilliant Frances McCue about her latest poetry collection, Timber Curtain, last night during the Chuckanut Radio Hour taping held at Whatcom Community College.Frances McCue is a poet, essayist, reviewer and arts instigator. If you missed it, you can watch the recording here. The whole hour is worth your time, especially…Read More
Beautiful Flesh: A Body of Essays
I’m so delighted that my essay “Drawing a Breath” was included in the just published anthology Beautiful Flesh: A Body of Essays (University Press of Colorado, 2017). The essay originally appeared in Prairie Schooner (Vol. 90, Issue 2). Hugest thanks to editor Stephanie G’Schwind at the Colorado State University Center for Literary Publishing for her editorial role in shaping such…Read More
“Drawing a Breath”
I’m grateful to the editors of Prairie Schooner for publishing my essay, “Drawing a Breath” and for awarding it the Bernice Slote Award for the best work by a beginning writer.