Bluff Fort: The only original cabin still standing sits on local sandstone slabs to keep the wood from rotting. And keep in mind: no chain saw to cut down [...]
The road trip report continues: Here I am in full hiking regalia, ready to tackle what turned out to be a rather tough climb to a plateau overlooking Pueblo [...]
The sun is still high up in the sky so the color for this month of August is the color of the sun - yellow. For the uninitiated, the [...]
My report from our road trip to the Southwest continues, this time with a program in contrasts: The Texas Panhandle is flat, so flat you feel some higher [...]
This installment on the benefits and practicalities of getting an MFA in Creative Writing covers the issue of finding the time to pursue on an MFA in the midst [...]
Some impressions from the Big American Road Trip with my family, driving from Chicago to explore the Southwest this summer. City Museum St. Louis - the name does it [...]
We visited the Memorial of the Oklahoma City bombing on Thursday. It saddens me how oddly fitting that visit now is given Friday’s rather similar tragedy in Norway. Visits [...]
I love it when a book becomes a place, an alternate reality I can dwell in. That’s what happened as I was reading Terry Tempest Williams’ now classic memoir [...]
Red, white and ____. You guessed it: In honor of Independence Day, the color of this month’s color list is blue. For the uninitiated, the idea here is to [...]
Today is the 50th anniversary of Ernest Hemingway’s death. An article by Jeffrey Meyers in the Wall Street Journal on Hemingway’s literary achievement reminded me of that. He died, [...]
Now that my kids are all away at camp, I’m doing an odd thing: I’m writing them letters. It’s an unfamiliar thing. It feels awkward to recount my daily [...]
In honor of Father's Day, here are my six words on Dad: "Died too young. Found in pictures." Feel free to add yours!
Today I’m sharing with you the one piece of advice that was the key to me becoming a writer. Many years ago I took an online travel writing class [...]
Many years ago I took a writing class in which the instructor asked us to eavesdrop on a conversation in order to practice writing dialogue. One way to bring [...]
Since my color list for green was a success, I've decided to create, with your help, one color list each month. The idea remains to come up with nouns [...]
Last weekend I was in Charlotte, NC for the alumni conference of the Queens MFA Program in Creative Writing. I made a point of swinging by downtown and the [...]
What words to use describe the sound of rain? We had terrific rains this morning in Chicago, the kind that darken the sky at eight in the morning. [...]
If you're ever looking for a break from dark and heavy memoirs and want to read one that is light yet literary; or if you wouldn’t mind spending time [...]
My shot of the outside of the synagogue. I love the mix of palm trees and live oak! Today a short note from my travels: I spent [...]
“i never can get interested in things that didn’t happen to people who never lived.” Helene Hanff, in her letter of January 9, 1952 in 84, Charing Cross Road [...]
One of the challenges in writing evocative descriptions is getting the color just right. Making your reader see what you see will draw him or her into the scene, [...]
In all my years of studying memoir, I have read many how-to-write-memoir books but I only go back to these three. I'm also not a big believer in books [...]
Reading poetry is a wonderful way to infuse your mind with the beauty of words. For me April as National Poetry Month is a good reason to get back [...]
My Advanced Memoir Workshop students and I were fortunate enough to host Michael Steinberg, founding editor of the esteemed nonfiction journal Fourth Genre, and author, most recently, of Still [...]
Every story develops its own integrity. There are things that belong in it, and things that don’t. If you’ve worked on it for a while, it will take on [...]
For those of you whose New Year’s resolutions include getting published or publishing more: The first rule of the submission game is: don’t submit your writing just anywhere. Have [...]