I’d been holding them close every time I had to leave them somewhere, send them somewhere, or take myself somewhere other than where they were going to be. My daughters. Last night, as I stood in a zoo decorated with thousands of bulbs, a Christmas in New Jersey, the oldest, the one . . .
Read MoreI’m over at my favorite journal, VQR, writing about what feminism means to me. You can read the full text here. Below, an excerpt: We are accustomed, in this other country of my dual-citizenship, to bemoaning the lack of freedom in faraway places—in Jane Smiley’s post on this same blog, even, when . . .
Read MoreWhere I come from we didn’t do regular mammograms. We went to doctors when we got sick – same with dentists. The daily preservation of health, the consciousness of a life in our nineties when we would be zipping around in full control of our facilities and our various moving parts, these . . .
Read MoreIran has been on our collective mind over the last several weeks. The administration listened at the UN while the Iranian president was speaking (a departure from past policy) – even as the Israeli lobby was urging military strikes against Iran – and in an article in the New York Times, reporters . . .
Read MoreWas the debate upsetting? Hell yeah and for a number of reasons, including the fact that my twitter account suddenly froze me out for having more than 1000 tweets – not possible! Mostly, it had to do with expectation. I expected the Prez to wipe the floor with the skanky scum-bucket that . . .
Read MoreThere are people in my own house who wonder where my loyalties lie with regard to Barack Obama. Oh, so do you like him? they ask. I remember, back in the day, feeling sick when I had to vote for John It-Could-Be-Worse Kerry over Bush. My candidate was Dean at the time. . . .
Read MoreI am over at the Huffington Post talking to Reginald Dwayne Betts, who was named a Ruth Lilly Fellow for 2012. You can read the full interview here. Below, a taste: RF: You were an avid reader before you went to prison but you became a writer while you were there. As . . .
Read MoreI’m over at the Huffington Post speaking with Cheryl Strayed, the author of the best-selling memoir, Wild (Knopf, March, 2012 ), whose collection of advice-columns, Tiny, Beautiful Things (Vintage, July 2012), just came out. You can read the full interview here. Below, a taste: RF: You have said that our work in . . .
Read MoreI am over at the Huffington Post with a review of Natalie Serber’s Shout Her Lovely Name (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, June, 2012). You can read the full review here. Below, a taste: “There is an element of the miraculous in a collection of stories whose characters reveal the fundamental predicament of all . . .
Read MoreI’m over at the Huffington Post, talking to Ted Conover (Routes of Man, Coyotes, Newjack etc.). You can read the full interview here. Below, a taste: RF: While researching Rolling Nowhere, you jumped the freight trains, going from being distrusted and robbed by the hoboes you were writing about to making a . . .
Read MoreI’m over at the Huffington Post with a Q&A with author Tayari Jones, whose third novel, Silver Sparrow, just came out. Here’s a snippet (below). You can read the full interview here. RF: In 2010 you joined the boycott of Arizona, in protest against SB1070 which penalizes non-Whites. In your letter you . . .
Read MoreOn August 3, 2006, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelem (LTTE),slaughtered over 100 Muslim civilians including women and children at Pachchanoor, Sri Lanka. Before then, the LTTE butchered 103 Muslims while they wre praying in the grand mosque of Kattankudiy in the coastal city of Batticaloa. You can see the images of . . .
Read MoreI’m over at the Huffington Post talking to Chang-rae Lee, one of the judges of this years Man Asian Literary Prize. You can read the full interview here. Below, a taste: RF: You have said that you are “fascinated by people who find themselves in positions of alienation or some kind of . . .
Read MoreOver at the Huffington Post with a recap of AWP 2012. You can read the full post here. Below, an excerpt. …Best of all, with each succeeding year, you learn how to navigate the conference. You don’t dart from panel to panel like a deranged bat trapped at a raquetball tournament, you . . .
Read MoreI’m over at the Huffington Post with a review of Eugene Cross’ Fires of Our Choosing. (Dzanc Books, March 2012). There’s a taste of it below. You can read the full review here. As Eric says in the title story, “Dignity was a faraway country from which I had been exiled years . . .
Read MoreJust yesterday I posted on FB that I had “99 problems” and was trying to whittle them down to 98. I was feeling overwhelmed. I have two out of state meetings/conferences to go to, one of which involves a flight, sub-zero temperatures and 10,000 other people. I have mountains of readings to . . .
Read MoreLast evening I went to listen to the Lower Merion A-Cappella Winter Invitational. As happens whenever I attend any of the band, orchestra, chorus, theater or any other kind of performance in this district, I was struck by the quality of the show. There is a confidence and a certain joie-de-vivre to . . .
Read MoreLast year, my middle-child, the thinking feeling one, wrote a question to me in a book that we pass back and forth to each other: Is Santa Claus real? She had already experienced a near-miss with the tooth fairy who hadn’t yet come by 4.30am, a fact which she had taken, tearful, . . .
Read MoreAs promised, the third in the line up of guest blogs from the people who attended my workshop on blogging at the Montgomery Community College Writers’ Festival. This is from Kate Fazekas, a student at Montgomery County Community College, and an aspiring writer of Y/A Lit. She was born in San Francisco, . . .
Read MoreA few days ago I posted this status update: Americans, when they’ve got guns in their hands, are so quick to define how and when they’ll kick some poor sod’s posterior – in the streets of poor neighborhoods, for instance, all dressed in navy blue, or more commonly in some other corner . . .
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