Category Archives: People
Unexplained Fevers and Burn This House—Blisteringly good poetry
We know the story: A beauty at the mercy of a mean stepmother or wicked witch is trapped in a tower or glass coffin awaiting rescue by a huntsman or a prince. Beauty, youth, passivity are the salient female characteristics … Continue reading
Posted in On Writing, People
Two Rejections, a Reading, and a Photo (Sort of) with Peter Coyote
Getting one’s writing published can be an exercise in both perseverance and masochism. Most of us have experienced both seemingly endless strings of rejections and mercifully short ones. This is a story of the latter. Two rejections indirectly led to … Continue reading
An Interview with Jaina Sanga
I met Jaina Sanga in 2009 when we were both associate artists at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. I remember hearing her read her work and being struck by how clearly I could visual … Continue reading
Posted in On Writing, People
An Interview with Deborah Miranda
Deborah Miranda’s book Bad Indians (Heyday) is a powerful collage of oral histories, personal narrative, poems, newspaper clippings and haunting photographs. Reading Deborah’s personal story within the larger story of her California Indian ancestors is sobering, unsettling, and absorbing. Deborah … Continue reading
Posted in On Writing, People
The Next Big Thing—Skinny, awkward brown girl
Wendy Call, author of No Word for Welcome (winner of the Grub Street 2011 National Book Prize in Non-Fiction), tagged me in the Internet chain game in which writers answer a set of questions about their next writing project. You … Continue reading
Posted in Events, On Writing, People
An Interview with Poet Annette Spaulding-Convy
“Annette Spaulding-Convy was a nun and she is a poet.” This simple sentence by Hilda Raz encapsulates for me the beauty of Annette Spaulding-Convy’s book of poems In Broken Latin. There are the contrasting verb tenses that demarcate past from … Continue reading
Posted in On Writing, People
I See the World Differently
As a writer in Seattle, I’m lucky to have had the support of two arts organizations. Funding from 4Culture and from the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs helped me complete my novel When the de la Cruz Family … Continue reading
The Beauty of a Hedgebrook Salon
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being one of six workshop leaders at Hedgebrook’s December Salon, a day-long event at this writers retreat for women located on Whidbey Island, WA. The salon was an opportunity for women … Continue reading
The Art of the Long Walk
When my husband dropped me off at Golden Gardens Park last Thursday for the start of the Long Walk, many of the walkers had already assembled. “That’s not your demographic,” he chuckled. Indeed, many of the participants were decades younger … Continue reading
Posted in Events, Miscellaneous Musings, People
“…where the land stops, the sea begins, and the mind keeps going. “
There’s a gem of a writers’ conference in my backyard. Okay, not literally. There’s a ferry ride from Seattle involved and a scenic drive on the Kitsap Peninsula across Hood Canal and up the northeast tip of the Olympic Peninsula … Continue reading
Posted in Events, People
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