Posts by Donna Miscolta
Visit the Real National City, Unfiltered
There’s a new promo video about National City, California, the place where I grew up and about which I wrote an essay titled “Home is Where the Wart Is.” As you might imagine, my essay is at odds with a Visit National City tourism campaign. All soft focus with bouncy music and a honeyed voiceover,…
Read MoreConnor—A Dancer
For a couple of hours one warm September afternoon in 2011, I had the sublime pleasure of watching a quartet of lithe and polished dancers perform a bolero, which was expertly captured by a filmmaker to create the book trailer for my novel. Now three Septembers later, a memorial will take place this week to…
Read MoreOther Talents
“Why didn’t you tell me… to bring along my harmonica?” the Baroness says to Max when Maria leads the Von Trapp children in song in The Sound of Music. The Baroness is being sardonic. We know she has no musical talent. I felt for the Baroness back then when I saw the movie in 1965…
Read MoreMy Writing Process—Blog Tour
I was invited to participate in this Writing Process Blog Tour by Kelcey Ervin Parker, whose first book For Sale by Owner (Kore Press) won the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Award in Short Fiction. I highly recommend these stories. They’re smart, funny and insightful. Her latest book is the highly praised Liliane’s Balcony (Rose…
Read MoreMe, Angie Rubio, and Magic in Port Townsend
This summer I’m going to the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference—again. I’ve been to others, all wonderful places, each offering its unique atmosphere and particular added attraction—a mountain to hike at Squaw Valley, readings held at wineries at Napa Valley, fierce bonding at VONA, a sense of history and celebrity at Bread Loaf, the D.H. Lawrence…
Read MoreHow Katharine Whitcomb’s Sad Poems Lifted Me from the Blues
A few weeks ago I was blue. I can’t say exactly what caused my melancholy as I rode the bus to work that day amid passengers whose ears were occluded with ear buds and whose thumbs busily scrolled the smudged surfaces of their smart phones; or as I sat in my cubicle attending to my…
Read MoreThe Ugly Years
Recently I posted on Facebook several photos of me with others. In each photo, I’m standing with a different set of friends. All the photos were taken on the same day so that I appear in the same clothes in each one. I’m on the right, which is to say, I am actually standing to…
Read MoreTour the Hourglass Museum and Cloud Pharmacy
As a prose writer with very little experience with poetry, and, therefore, without the vocabulary to properly reflect on it with any degree of sophistication, I offer some unschooled, gut responses to these lovely new collections of poetry by Kelli Russell Agodon and Susan Rich. I also asked them each a question, to which they…
Read MoreThe Endurance of the Raven
This year Raven Chronicles, the literary journal based in Seattle that publishes work reflective of the cultural diversity of the Pacific Northwest and beyond, turns twenty-three. To mark this milestone, there will be a panel at the 2014 AWP Conference February 26-March 1 held this year in Seattle at the Washington State Convention Center. The…
Read MoreMelancholy, Wonder, and Other Moments of Deep Feeling—Three Books to Immerse Yourself In
Like many of you, I have stacks of to-read books. Often, I’m reading more than one at a time. When I finish one, I might remember to add it to my Goodreads list. Once in a while, I feel organized enough to jot down a few thoughts about a book or three—such as these I…
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