Books and Authors
Author Photos: The Blue Series
Before I ever needed an author photo, I thought that if the day came that circumstances demanded one, I would use the drawing my daughter did of me when she was in third grade. The likeness was undeniable, the colors vivid, and the vibe cool. Those blue glasses were seriously daring, and not all reflective…
Read MoreA conversation about power, community, and art with CMarie Fuhrman and Bryan Fry
For years now, I’ve been going to the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference at Centrum. It’s a ferry ride and a scenic drive 60 miles from Seattle. Located on a peninsula on a larger peninsula, the surroundings are beautiful, the faculty stellar, and the participants fun to be around. Every year, I meet remarkable people. Though…
Read MoreCoincidence, Luck, Magic (and My Mother) at Hedgebrook
Recently, on the third anniversary of my mother’s death, I went to Hedgebrook to have some writing time as well as to teach at the Summer Salon, a day of small-group writing workshops given in the Hedgebrook cottages. Three years earlier, I had been scheduled to do the same, but the week before my departure…
Read MoreLiterary April (and the tail end of March)
Every month is literary for readers and writers, but it seemed like April has been especially full of events for me, both as participant and audience. Here’s a brief rundown: AWP I’m going to cheat and start with AWP, which was at the end of March, so practically April, right? I went to a lot…
Read MoreArt and Nonfiction and Books I Want to Read: Finding Inspiration at the NonfictioNOW Conference
“We are essayists. We can make a difference,” Stephanie Elizondo Griest said in her electrifying keynote talk that capped the three-day NonfictioNOW Conference in Phoenix recently. I’m a fiction writer. But I went – an interloper, a mole – to glean what I could about writing essays. Not to forsake fiction. I’ll always wants to…
Read MoreWhen a poem takes the stage
Claudia Castro Luna’s book Killing Marias is subtitled A Poem for Multiple Voices. Each page addresses the lost life of one of the women or girls disappeared and murdered in Juárez, Mexico on the other side of the border from El Paso, Texas. Claudia invited me, writer Catalina Cantú, and dancer Milvia Pacheco to share…
Read MoreWhat to do with a two-star review
“Like reading a soap opera script,” opines sacintl, a user name that faintly suggests the word “succinct,” in keeping with her six-word review of my story collection Hola and Goodbye. Sort of like Hemingway’s six-word story (For sale: baby shoes, never worn) – tragic and sad, but without the tenderness. We are advised not to…
Read MorePlease don’t say goodbye to HOLA AND GOODBYE
November 1 is the one-year anniversary of the publication of Hola and Goodbye! I’m marking the occasion by matching some favorite photos of events I did over the past year with excerpts from stories in the book. One of the first events I did was at the North Carolina Writers Network Conference where I sat…
Read MoreThe Dock Street Salon at Phinney Books
There’s a great monthly reading series at Phinney Books called Dock Street Salon. It’s organized by Dane Bahr and Heather Jacobs of Dock Street Press, a boutique publishing house in Ballard. The press was founded by folks who believe that “a book is a piece of art.” Dock Street brings that same sensibility to the…
Read MoreThe Geologies of Us
When I was in college I took a geology class. I learned about igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. I learned about formations and their layers of sand and stone. Whatever their scale – the immensity of a cliff or the insignificance of a pebble – I saw them as inert and objective, separate from or…
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