Thoughts about writing, and the universe.
Just a quick post for today. I’m writing en route south to Italy by bus, boat, and train. Saturday our friends drove us to the bus stop. I’m writing this post now on the boat from the north bank of the Sognefjord headed towards Bergen. A few minutes ago, I was up on deck, and... Continue Reading →
These last two weeks, I have been taking part in a workshop on nature writing with Granta. With about ten other writers located around the world, I am learning about the genre, reading essays by Kathleen Jamie, Jason Allen-Paisant, and others, and experimenting with how I engage with nature in my own writing. In a... Continue Reading →
During the last month, I've read (or listened to) two books of history of different Native American peoples, Staci Drouillard's Walking the Old Road: A People's History of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Anishinaabe and Elizabeth Fenn's Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People. These narratives took two... Continue Reading →
I worried I was making the wrong choice with books this school year. I worried the book was too long, that the students wouldn't read, and I worried that there was not enough depth of language to warrant the kind of study we needed. But I kept coming back to First They Killed My Father--I... Continue Reading →
Content warning: this post contains discussion of genocide and associated acts of violence, in the context of a literary analysis. The week has been packed. On Tuesday and Wednesday, I led student orientation workshops on diversity, introducing ideas of social identities, individual differences, and how assumptions arise when we meet people different from ourselves. The... Continue Reading →
Words like Trees began two and a half years ago, December of 2018, as a way to build some kind of an online presence for myself and for my writing. I was planning at that time to be applying to MFA programs in the near future, and I was focused on the science-fiction novel I... Continue Reading →
Let me begin this post as clearly as I can, knowing that the later paragraphs will invariably (for I have already written them and know) diverge, get muddy, lose themselves. I'll be clear: Good writing must be readily understandable. Clarity of expression should be a writer's foremost goal. Artistry of language, implied meaning, symbolism--these things... Continue Reading →
They say the best way to learn a thing is to teach it, and in the trial by fire that is the teaching of a new syllabus, I have been learning a lot this week about the literary essay. I am looking explicitly at the theory now of a genre I have long read, enjoyed,... Continue Reading →
Words like trees 