People
Taos Magic
Most summers I attend a writers conference. I want to be inspired by other writers, meet new people, and learn from an established writer whose work I admire and who has a reputation for being a good teacher. This summer I especially wanted an atmosphere that was serious, but not intense, a vibe that was…
Read MoreLaid bare on Facebook: Affirmation of self, revelation of character
I never intended for my Facebook page to be the site of a highly personal revelation. Nor did I ever intend to use my blog for such purposes. But since an incident on Facebook in early July, I have been kept awake at night with anger and have broken down in tears in front of…
Read MoreA Vortext of Words during a Weekend on Whidbey
Impatience, hope, despair, rage, fear, acceptance. Path to self-destruction? Guests at a pity party? No. They are states of mind of the writer and they were lived and witnessed during the course of an uplifting, inspirational three-day writing salon for women called Vortext, held May 31-June 2. Created by Hedgebrook, the writing retreat for women…
Read MoreWhen de la Cruz Family Danced Goes to Indianola
It’s been nearly two years since my novel When the de la Cruz Family Danced was published, so more than ever it’s a delight to discover readers, especially when they are practically in your own figurative backyard. Having lived in Seattle for thirty-six years, I’d heard of Indianola, but had only a vague idea of…
Read MoreUnexplained 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 on display in these fairy tales. But what if these trapped damsels are freed, not…
Read MoreTwo 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 my essay “Home is Where the Wart Is” being included in New California Writing 2013,…
Read MoreAn 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 the scene she had written. Jaina’s prose is vivid and sensory laden. In her recently…
Read MoreAn 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 graciously answered my questions about Bad Indians and she did it with the same passion…
Read MoreThe 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 can read Wendy’s lovely responses here. Her next book promises to be a lush and…
Read MoreAn 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 present, but also at some level suggest a kind of inherent bipolarity. There are the…
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