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There are no children’s books in your house growing up. No dictionaries. No encyclopedias. Not even a Bible to skim through. Your main reading material consists of Catholic leaflets given out at Sunday Mass.
By Olga García EcheverríaDecember 2015It’s never been easy for me to talk openly with my father. Now I have to talk openly with him about an essay that describes, among other things, how difficult it is for me to talk openly with him.
By Lad TobinNovember 2015is a book about loss and heartbreak, / also delusion, distaste, quiet villainy, and sabotage. / There’s a strong pulse of hope near the beginning, / the rhythm of which weakens as the narrative develops.
By Maggie RoweSeptember 2015As the class winds down, I go over the answers to the quiz: Thoreau moved into his ten-by-fifteen-foot cabin on July 4, Independence Day, 1845. He chose that day to make the point that political independence is just the beginning. We’re not completely free until we also throw off our inner masters: greed, laziness, ignorance.
By Jim RalstonSeptember 2015Once again a student asks me why I became a writer and this time I say: Because of the staggered, staccato music of my dad’s old typewriter in the basement. Because when he really got going, you could listen to it like a song. Because after a while you could tell if he was writing a book review or a letter just from the shift and drift and thrum of the thing. Because it sounded cheerful and businesslike and efficient and workmanlike and true.
By Brian DoyleJuly 2015April 2015The worst thing that can happen to a writer is to become a Writer.
Mary McCarthy
Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the crossroads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her.
By Virginia WoolfApril 2015Having been a writer myself, I should admire her refusal to give up. Instead it makes me impatient with her. I believe M. lives in this myth of greatness in which her every habit or quirk is worthy of the autobiography being written in her head. It is the endless soliloquy of the interior paramour. Why do I believe this? Because I used to be that way myself.
By Sybil SmithApril 2015Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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