And then I changed my mind and had a baby late in life.

Sometimes the hair on the back of my neck stands up when I think about how I almost missed this experience.

It’s no secret that Atlas is my favorite person on the planet. But it’s more than that. He changed everything about who I was. He made me grow in ways I wouldn’t have otherwise. I lost my 20s to addiction and spent my 30s trying to heal and then I discovered how much joy there is in the world when this bright little being showed up.

Years ago, a woman I had met on a volunteer trip in Haiti told me a story about another trip she was on, where the team had traveled to a remote village and a woman was in the middle of a dangerous labor. As the team worked to bring the baby into the world and save them both, the people in the village had surrounded the small building where they sang for the mother all night long.

I had an easy labor and delivery without a chorus, but my memory of that day includes a sound like angels singing because it was the best day of my life.

Thank you for indulging this mother as I reminisce about the years that have gone by too fast and celebrate my only child.

Thank you for reading.

Maybe laughter is always a decision to really be here, to commit to being present in the world, to being connected.

Last Monday, I was in Jamestown, Rhode Island, where my family and I go in the summer, and I taught on zoom from a room at the Airbnb. I checked into my class and then couldn’t stop laughing. The Airbnb, which was very nice and met all of our various needs, including the dog who got the zoomies in the fenced-in enormous back yard multiple times a day, was filled with signage. Every room, every surface, as if a Home Goods devotee had been given a challenge to fit as many Live-Love-Laugh messages inside the walls as is humanly possible. My favorite was a sign in the room where I taught that said, “Stay Salty.” After class, my wonderful students sent me images of equally terrible signs to keep the joke going.

By the next class on the next night, I was used to all of the words decorating the rented walls. I taught my class with this one student I have who is one of the funniest writers I’ve had the privilege of working with. She’s going through a lot right now and is writing her way through it in a way that fills me with admiration. These pieces are vulnerable and fearless, and then suddenly very very funny. I thought about her after class when I couldn’t sleep that night, tossing and turning in sheets that had a repeating pattern of shells and the words “coastal life” in fancy script, and I wondered if her humor is a kind of commitment to really be here right now, no matter how hard it gets, to be present and connected and completely with us. And I marvel at that choice and love her for it. How lucky are the rest of us to be in class with her?

***

And just for fun, these are photos of Fort Wetherill in Jamestown, RI, with a different kind of signage.

Thank you for reading.

I grew up in a working class suburb in a little ranch house with an above ground pool and a vegetable garden my dad kept. At the edge of our back yard, there was a slope down to a creek with a hill covered in large rocks. At the time, I thought of it as a cliff but I know now that it was a modest incline at best. Sometimes we would climb on those rocks and collect the discarded snake skins we would find there. It might be more accurate to say that my brother would do this. I was probably in the house with a book.

Although I remember climbing trees and watching ants, like any kid. But the closest I came to being outdoorsy were the years when my son was small and I wanted to get him out of the house. Just because I preferred to sit inside and read didn’t mean I wouldn’t try to offer him more. And I’m so glad he brought me outside during those years, so happy I didn’t miss that. Because of Atlas, I bought snow pants and proper boots and learned to appreciate the value of a puddle, a good net for collecting river rocks, the mystery of praying mantis babies, tadpoles, a good snowstorm.

The local home school community where I taught writing workshops introduced us to the Salmon River in Colchester, CT and we went every summer, sometimes alone, sometimes in a pack with other mothers and their kids. I still miss it, especially when summer is winding down like it is now. I don’t know what keeps me from going back to visit. We spent many long summer days there, turning over rocks to see what might lie beneath, dipping our hands and feet into the always cool clear water.

During covid, Atlas and I went on hikes together, a regular habit that made me forget what was going on in the world. We were on a trail somewhere during that endless summer of 2020 when we accidentally spooked a deer who had been silently standing near us although we never saw her until she fled. In my memory, I come face to face with her, maybe only a foot apart, and we make eye contact before she leaps over the foliage, her white tail a blur through the trees.

And then there is the time we’ve spent in Rhode Island, most summers during his childhood, always visiting Beaver Tail State Park multiple times. One year, Atlas said to me and my husband before we were leaving at the end of our stay, “Hey guys, just take a moment to take in the beauty before we leave, okay?” And so we did.

I hope you are taking a moment to find beauty in the outside part of the world right now. Thank you for reading.

This act of taking the stories of our lives, the tale we’ve told many times before, under many different circumstances, at parties, to new friends, to ourselves, and opening up the details to interrogation is really what the job is about. The kinds of epiphanies that can happen through this process can be felt on the page by the reader and this is part of what makes great writing.

It makes me think about where we are right now as a country and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and how there are versions that are so drastically different.

In the early summer of 2024, an acquaintance confessed to me that she planned on voting for Trump and sent me an email with all of her reasons. Much of what she had typed out could be easily taken apart and found to be untrue if she’d only looked. I didn’t have the energy to try to change her mind and opted instead to cut off contact. Right or wrong, that’s all I could do at the time.

It is hard to listen to a story we know is not true, whether it’s our own personal narrative that we’ve been fed by family over the years or whether it’s thirty percent of the country trying to cram it down our throats while calling us libtards. And I don’t know the way out of this except to do my own interrogating of my own beliefs and life story.

There is something familiar about this feeling. I’ve spent more than a decade trying to co-parent with someone who has never looked at his own behavior, even once claiming that I paid a child psychologist to say what I wanted her to say. When everything is always someone else’s fault, it means you have no control over your own life. You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge and therefore, the same results will happen again and again.

I am tired, so tired, of listening to ridiculous narratives. I am too tired to argue. It’s been years of arguing. This may be why I like to spend so much of my time with writers, with my students, people who are so busy getting honest with themselves, in writing, over and over again. I read one student’s revised piece this weekend and wanted to jump up and cheer. The incredible insight she found on her second, third, maybe fourth round of editing the same piece was remarkable. Moving, inspirational, thoughtful. Maybe the whole world would be a better place if everyone wrote their memoir the way memoir should be written. Maybe it would be easier to live in this world.

Thank you for reading.

My dog under a table interrogating her fate of not enjoying a lobster roll like her people above her. I did slip her a French fry to sweeten the injustice.

1. Supremely Tiny Acts by Sonya Huber

This is a memoir that covers one day in the life of the author. We are privy to Huber’s thoughts on watching her son grow up and her anxiety around a court appearance for an arrest that occurred while she was protesting. The book somehow captures what it feels like to be alive right now. I also just marveled at the skill it took to write a memoir about one day while never boring the reader.

2. Allegra Goodman, Isola

This is a novel based on a true story about a French noblewoman who was abandoned on an island off the coast of Canada when her husband discarded her and how she somehow survived winter, bears, and near starvation.

3. Cameron Crowe, The Uncool

How does a teenager find his way as a music journalist when he’s not even old enough to get into the bars where the bands are playing? I love Crowe’s youthful ambition and weirdly shrewd choices on his way to this unlikely career.

4. Sinan Unel, Pera Palas

This is the only play I read so far this year and it was written by a friend and colleague who is currently my son’s writing mentor. Sometimes it can be nerve-wracking to read the work of a friend- what if you don’t like it?- but I admire so much about this elegantly constructed play with characters I could see. It made me wish I had been able to see it when it was performed and I feel so grateful to have such talented people in my life.

5. Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

This broke my heart more than any other read this year. Goldberg-Polin’s son Hersh was kidnapped on October 7th from the Nova music festival in Israel and survived a year in the tunnels before he was finally murdered. His mother writes beautifully about the worst thing that can happen to a parent and I think about her all the time.

6. Russell Banks, The Sweet Hereafter

I decided to read this after sitting next to Ellen Levine, Banks’ long time literary agent, at the Academy of Arts & Letters luncheon in May. This was a book that showed a deep understanding of human nature and featured a plot line that revolved around one tragic, life changing event and kept me turning pages straight through.

7. Ann Patchett, Whistler

Patchett really pulls you in and creates characters you can’t forget. There is a pivotal scene in this book that is so well written, I still think about tiny moments within the scene. Reading this book made me decide to teach a new class about scene just so I could share that moment from Whistler.

8. Edward Hirsch, 100 Poems to Break Your Heart

This book is like taking a semester-long class taught by someone who lives for poetry. The way Hirsch took apart each poem taught me so much and his taste in heartbreaking writing is unmatched. I’m not a poet but I learned so much reading this book.

9. Maggie Haberman & Jonathan Swan, Regime Change

I found it strangely comforting to read about Trump’s horrible first year in his second round of narcissistic leadership, if only because it’s good to know someone is writing it all down.

10. Lauren Hough, Monster of a Land

This is a book driven by voice and there was something lovely about traveling with Hough as she drove all around this broken country in a van with her dog. The end felt surprisingly hopeful and I didn’t realize how badly I needed to spend 200 + pages with a writer who is kind to her dog and sees the country as it is but finds things to love anyway.

Thank you for reading.

As we walked around the African Art room, I found myself talking about the second book situation. I have been keeping the work to myself the way I need to in order to make it. I told Michael that I feel obsessed with it, which is a good sign. I feel the novel knitting together. Writing is not a product, it’s an event, an epiphany, a trip into myself. I am at the place in the novel where it whispers to me constantly, where it tells me where it should go. Where it starts to shift what it’s about. I thought I knew what it was about but now it’s starting to root a little deeper, reaching lower for the things I couldn’t say out loud at first. This is part of what I love about writing. This aliveness, this weird secret to keep as a book forms. There is no other way I’d rather live.

And part of living this way is the community we get to make with other writers. I hadn’t seen Michael in a couple of years, I think, and I am so glad we got this time today. We talked about the writers we see on zoom, the writer friends we have in common, the writing itself. It was an afternoon well spent.

It’s been about two months since my last wall update so I thought I’d end this post with some photos of the last few weeks of drawings. I am still at it. Tired, sick to death of the news and all that is happening in our country, but I keep drawing.

Thank you for reading.

I’m thinking about this partly because I recently read Rose Horowitz’s depressing article in the Atlantic, The End of Reading is Here. This is the line that gave me goosebumps: The literate era will prove to be a brief interlude between the oral and digital ages.

As a writer, this article felt like especially bad news. But also as a person in the world. My favorite people are well read.

Years ago, I was perusing the Facebook of a particular nemesis in my life, someone I was forced to deal with periodically, and I saw a gushy post she had made about her sister-in-law. She wrote about how the woman had seen her children off to school and was such a good mom! And then, get this, she started reading a novel! A novel!

I remember being amazed and horrified by this post. The absolute awe my nemesis revealed for the reading of a book. The liberal use of exclamation points. One book. And yes, I judged the shit out of her. Nothing says you haven’t read a book in decades like making a post fawning over someone else for reading a book. My mind is still blown.

The article wasn’t all bad news. Book stores are still opening and book sales are still sometimes robust. However, this is only because of a small percentage of readers.

“Text is thriving among a dwindling proportion of the population. Just 20 percent of adults accounted for more than 80 percent of all books read last year. ‘It’s becoming a kind of niche hobby, like stamp collecting or growing orchids.’”

As I read Horowitz’s article, I realized that I have inadvertently created my own bubble where besides seeing strangers’ spelling mistakes on social media, I can walk through my days believing that Horowitz is wrong. My favorite people write and read constantly. I make my living coaching other writers, having the unique privilege of reading hundreds of pages about their lives and their experiences and their thoughts. Many of my conversations in any given week revolve around books and books in progress. It is a kind of heaven and I don’t want it to change.

But Horowitz’s article took me out of my own life and made me think. Mostly, I thought about young people. I just started teaching a private class for two eighteen-year-olds and the article put me in their shoes. They have grown up with YouTube and iPhones and TikTok. One of the students in this private class is my son, Atlas. He and I have had many conversations about screens and about books. He acknowledges the hardships I’ve identified as unique to his generation- ten years of Trump, the pandemic, school shooting drills all through school- but thinks that the single most destructive element to infiltrate his generation is online life.

Horowitz writes, “Could the generations growing up with their brains hooked to endless video feeds be developing some kind of novel, as-yet-undetectable cognitive brilliance? Perhaps. But for now, the decline of reading seems to be ushering in a less rational, analytical, and sophisticated mode of thinking. It’s difficult to see any advantages in that.”

This one passage gave me a hint of hope and so I latched onto it. Last week, I gave my two young students a prompt based on covid. I wanted to see what they might make from the strange time when they experienced the pandemic lockdown as twelve-year-olds.

“I may just selfishly give you guys prompts every week based on the things I most want to get your perspective on,” I said to them. We laughed.

We turned our cameras off for fifteen minutes and when they came back, they read their work.

They both blew me away. Each piece was completely unique, all their own, but both pieces truly moved me. They were like nothing I’ve been hearing in my classes with adults. They wrote with emotion and beautiful phrasing and a definite vision of what that global event meant to them as developing human beings. There was a thrilling creative recklessness or risk-taking in both pieces but without losing the reader. I was floored. Maybe they are different from their peers. They both grew up pursuing creative endeavors and both want to find creative careers. Or maybe every young person just needs the chance to be asked to write creatively about their own lives. I don’t know. But while I sit with Horowitz’s article lodged in my consciousness, I’m going to hold the memory of those two pieces close to my heart, just to keep the walls of my bubble up a little longer, to give myself some hope in the nearly hopeless world that we currently live in.

Thank you for reading.

You can read Rose Horowitz’s article here.

Recently, a neighbor I have never met has taken it upon himself to install individual flags on almost every telephone pole up and down our main street. At least a mile’s worth of patriotic symbolism. It started with a handful and has steadily grown, including the telephone pole right outside my front door.

There is a neighborhood group on Facebook that occasionally crosses my feed. It is mostly where people post pictures of especially vibrant sunsets or the group of old men who play Bocce together in the park down the street. Sometimes there are complaints about the wedding venue on the beach and how loud their events can be.

Recently, a woman posted to ask about the flags. She was concerned that they might interfere with the power lines, especially during heat waves or windy storms. The response was awful. A lot of grown men all caps-ing her with demands that she thank the man who put the flags up, that she show some gratitude, that she is what is wrong with this country. Heaps of praise for the flagman and nothing but condemnation for the single mother of three who didn’t want her house to catch on fire or her power to go out.

Now every time I leave my house and drive up my street, I am staring at these flags. They are already showing signs of wear and tear, are already wrapped around power lines, wrinkled and flapping in the wind. I wonder what they will look like by labor day after summer storms and the bleaching effect of the summer sun. Will someone take them down?

The man who put the flags up made his own post on July 5th. He had gone to the sea wall the night before where every year there is a fireworks display over the water and people gather to watch, bringing blankets and snacks. He brought his own sound system and played patriotic songs at an uncomfortable volume and made a post, with a video, to complain about people who complained. Not everyone enjoyed his soundtrack. Again, people were screamed at and told to be grateful.

You know who this sounds like, right?

Yes, it’s the country’s 250th birthday. No, not everyone is in a celebratory mood.

I decided to post my own favorite flag images, a substack post to counteract the flag nonsense all around me. And then maybe we’ll just get to August already.

“Untitled (The Pequod)” (2014) by Robert Longo

“Untitled (Flag)” (1979) by Jean-Michel Basquiat

“Untitled” (1991) by Barbara Kruger

“What is the Proper Way to Display a US Flag?” (1988) by Dread Scott

Thank you for reading.

And while I stayed in all weekend missing the festivities, I started to plan my next round of classes coming up and thought about the privilege of working with so many writers with such interesting stories. I thought about how the best writers always seem to be a little unsure of themselves. They bravely present their work and stay open to the feedback because they truly aren’t sure if it’s working or not. I had one lovely class of all women recently and I had to make a rule when we did prompts in class- they weren’t allowed to badmouth their work before they read it out loud. Because there was a lot of apologizing happening from people who then read work that wowed the whole room.

It’s not that I think people shouldn’t know their worth or should be so hard on themselves. I regularly set the intention to build a student up, especially when I’ve seen tremendous growth and I’m not sure they understand how good their work is getting. But I can’t help but notice this trait in really talented writers and it makes me think there is something there that serves the particular job of writing. It’s a kind of work that takes a long time, that must go through many many drafts, that has to age and sit and be returned to again and again. You can’t write a piece and just think it’s good enough. You can’t settle. It isn’t the kind of thing that you can just talk up, sell, and bam, you have a book deal. It’s a long slow process and you have to love the tediousness of going back again and again. The saying that writing is rewriting is absolutely true.

A good book is not a pitch. It’s a kind of magic that can’t even really be described.

A couple of days ago, I read a brief review of Lauren Hough’s new book, Monster of a Land, a very positive opinion from a writer I admire, and I finally started the book today, read the first essay, and was blown away. I liked Lauren’s first book so I was expecting to like this one but that first essay was magic. It’s everything the opening of a book should be. It moved me, it made me laugh out loud, and it made me hear a very specific, likable narrator speaking in my ear. From reading her twitter account years ago and more recently her substack, I know this book was full of ups and downs and came together through hard work and draft after draft and four years of just going back to it again and again. And it shows. I can’t wait to read the rest of it.

There’s no shortcut. It’s not a product to be sold, something whose worth you can talk people into. A good book speaks for itself and the author doesn’t have to say a thing. Write the best work you can possibly make and be okay with discomfort when it’s still in those early stages, when it feels wobbly and you don’t know if it’s working yet. I’m standing on a wobbly novel right now, today. Yes, it’s uncomfortable. It’s also fine.

Thank you for reading.

Note: I still have a couple of spots open in two of my classes starting soon. Feel free to send a note if you’re interested.

I knew what he meant.

There was a life-sized Dalmatian statue in a star-spangled top hat. Red, white, and blue elves sitting on the pastry case. Streamers above our heads. Images of fireworks and the flag covering the backs of booths. A coffee station draped in more flags. Red, white, and blue disco balls hanging from the ceiling.

Once our eyes adjusted to the explosion of patriotism, he told me he watched his favorite movie again. I asked him if he ever got bored watching something multiple times and he said no because he always found something new with each viewing. Just as I was thinking about the stories and essays I read and teach again and again, he said, “Just like you reread things you love, right?”

He wants to study film and this was one of the moments when I understood his passion and could relate it to my own. We are both spending time taking apart the art that we love, asking ourselves how the artist made it, sparking our own art-making process.

Last week, I finished Edward Hirsch’s beautiful book, 100 Poems to Break Your Heart and I learned so much. I’ve been wanting to learn more about poetry for a while now and I love the way Ed Hirsch talks about why and how poems work.

One chapter was about Camille Dungy’s poem Requiem, a piece that truly did break my heart.

Hirsch wrote about the way this poem came together for Dungy, based on a terrible accident she happened to witness and how it stayed with her.

I shared the poem with my class last Wednesday night and then I invited them to write about an event in their life or even a headline that never left them, something that haunted them or disturbed them for years. When I thought about this prompt, what came to me was a child abuse case I read about years ago when my son was three. One night when I couldn’t sleep, I looked for every single newspaper article I could find and read them all. I made myself ill. And then I slowly forgot about it, went on with my life. But one day while I was washing dishes and my son came up to me, I looked down at his beautiful little face and realized he was exactly four and a half years old, the same age as the boy in the news who died so horribly. And I fell right back into that horror, became haunted all over again.

The pieces that my students wrote that night were so beautiful, so incredible, and it made me think about the fact that we live in a really hard world right now and people are suffering everywhere in all kinds of ways and sometimes when we can’t forget this or when one particular instance of cruelty stays with us in a way we can’t shake, a path to managing it is to write about it. All my life, making something out of the ugliest and meanest facts has saved me. It is always a place to turn, a kind of home for me.

As Atlas and I sat there together in a restaurant that looked like July 4th had been murdered inside, I thought about the great good fortune to have a home in art when life felt cruel or difficult and how it was one of my wishes for him as his mother when he was a tiny baby, that he would have that kind of rich inner life where ideas and beauty could sprout from pain. And as I rubbed the star-spangled artificial flowers in the vase on our table between my fingertips, I felt grateful for both of us.

Thank you for reading.

So it is with this sentiment that I’d like to announce the next round of classes that I’m offering on zoom this summer. There are still a few spots open and please feel free to ask me questions if you have them. I hope to see you on my zoom screen in the next few weeks. In addition to these two classes, I’m offering a six month intensive workshop but it filled quickly and is now closed. If you’re looking for a longer commitment, I will probably offer it again in the fall.

Generative/ Flash Nonfiction Class

Wednesdays, beginning July 15th

7:00 to 10:00

$500/ 9 weeks

This class will be part generative, with in-class writing prompts, and part study of the art of flash nonfiction writing. A flash piece is generally defined as less than 1000 words. How can we dazzle through language, movement, and emotional resonance in one short page? Through close readings of powerful flash pieces, we’ll identify the elements that make for impactful pieces. Guided with prompts and discussions, you will craft and refine your own flash pieces, with each person receiving three critiques by the end of the session. There will also be discussion about literary magazines currently publishing flash work and encouragement to submit.

Payment plans available. $50 to secure your spot in the class.

Scenes as Building Blocks

Mondays, beginning July 20th

7:00 to 10:00

$600/10 weeks

In this class, we will analyze scenes in both fiction and nonfiction for the power and emotion they deliver as part of understanding what makes a memorable scene and how we can improve our own. Because scene is the craft element that engages the reader before all else, perfecting our own skills in this area is the way to stronger work. We will break down the difference between narrative summary and scene and examine fantastic examples from writers such as Ann Patchett, David Sedaris, Jemison Ward, as well as examples from recent award-winning books. We’ll look at personal essays, flash, short stories, and novels to identify those scenes that capture the reader’s heart. There will be in-class prompts, optional homework, and two critiques of longer pieces where scene work will be evaluated for each writer in class.

Payment plans available. $100 to secure your spot in the class.

Thank you.

I am teaching a glorious flash nonfiction class of all women writers right now and we are about halfway through the session. Last week, I found this delightful piece where the author embraces her hate:

https://splitlipthemag.com/poetry/00526/despy-boutris

It inspired me to give a different sort of prompt in my flash class, something I’ve never done before.

I told these brilliant women writers to write about hate. To jump in and swim around in their own rage, to see what happens when they are given permission to screech at the sky.

Yes, reader, I know there’s too much hate in the world right now. Yes, I know it’s destroying our country and we’re having to navigate this every day. I know we are enduring an administration built on the pettiest hate possible and I know it’s exhausting.

But women are raised to be nice, to smile, to be the bigger person, and so I wanted to see what would happen if we just wrote down our hate this one time. If we let it out.

Twenty minutes later, the writers started sharing. We gasped. We laughed. We clapped for each other. It was the highlight of my week and the sound of that session, the joy, the explosion of the release, has stayed with me for days.

I have been on the receiving end of hate, at times that I knew of and I’m sure at times when I didn’t know. When my son was five years old, he came home from visitation with his father and told me that his stepmother played a game with him where she stepped in front of an automatic door at a grocery store and said, “Open the gate, who do we hate? We hate Cindy!” I don’t mind being hated by someone like that but I do mind that my five year old had to endure her bullshit.

But I digress. Making art out of your hate, but obviously not in the presence of the small children of those who have earned your fury, is a whole different thing. I was delighted to see that hate was a prompt that could serve as a spark for people whose work I already love.

So if the hate is keeping you up at night, ruining your appetite, distracting you from the joy in your life, go make some art about it. Let it go, put it down on the page, and if you can, share it with some people who will cackle and applaud you for your honesty.

Thank you for reading.

I parked near Mitchell’s Kitchen, a bright yellow awning advertising Jamaican food with its metal gate firmly closed and locked, not open for business on a Saturday afternoon. I looked it up just now as I was writing this and found a Yelp review that said, “I almost want to sue for attempted murder.”

Hurley wore a fish necklace and a bright metallic blue pedicure inside plastic lavender Mary Janes.

We walked to a cafe with only 5 tables and lots of blond wood everywhere and ordered the same thing, a savory yogurt bowl with smoked salmon and Kim chi and spicy garbanzo beans and cucumbers covered in sesame seeds. Neither of us finished it.

Back at Hurley’s sublet, we sat in the garden and talked. Hurley called her sublet a palace and it reminded me of this storefront I lived in with a boyfriend years ago, back in Chicago on Fry Street. We called our place the Palace, too. It had a basement where the boyfriend tried to paint but the space was dark and depressing. One day, I rented a Budget van and drove away from the Palace all the way to San Francisco.

There is nothing better than sitting around in a garden with a writer friend. My trip to Brooklyn was about catching up with someone I hadn’t seen in a while and it was well worth the drive. Even though I am not at a stage in my current project where I can discuss the details, it felt good to be with someone who knows what it is to try to make something you’re not sure will work, who understands the marathon that writing a book can be.

At the end of our visit, I walked the few blocks back to my car in the late afternoon sunlight, breathing in the smell of weed once again. I saw no one smoking it and yet, the smell was everywhere. I saw two toddlers in a ferocious bear hug, a puppy in a stroller, a couple wearing the same exact pair of Doc Martens, and curtains blowing in the breeze at the front window of a garden apartment where the sound of the Supremes singing “Come See About Me” blared into the street and kept me company all the way back to my car on Decatur Street.

Thank you for reading.

There are 498 drawings now. I’ll be honest- it feels a little endless and some days, it’s exhausting to keep trying to document this nightmare. But I am committed.

Thank you for being here.

I love this Amy Hempel quote that I say to my students often. “Write your heart on the page and people will read to find out how you solved being alive.” Amy Hempel was one of the first people I spoke to at the event and she was seated at our table. She is shockingly lovely and down to earth. When I told her how much I loved her work, her reaction made me feel like the only one who had ever told her this and I know that’s not true.

I spoke to Zadie Smith, who gave her speech barefoot on the stage. I gasped when I found out the person I was speaking to was Leanne Shapton, author of Swimming Studies, a book I often teach from and have adored since I stumbled upon it a few years ago. I spoke to Lorrie Moore and Rick Moody, Joy Williams and Mona Simpson. Basically, many of my heroes for as long as I’ve been writing.

The back of Zadie Smith’s brilliant head.

And then towards the end of the reception, as the sky over New York began to darken, I met Edward Hirsch and his wife, the writer Lauren Watel.

Years ago, I read Edward Hirsch’s beautiful book Gabriel and I told him how much it meant to me. We ended up having a long conversation about parenting, about grief, about the fact that he’s losing his eyesight. I felt like I’d known him for years. He was so present, so warm, so lovely.

All the way home on the train, I thought about how strange it was that my imposter syndrome had been a no show for most of the day and instead of having to listen to that awful voice inside, I felt connected, a part of the community of writers in this world, the people who do this thing that I do, try to make sense of the world, try to solve the problem of being alive.

It brought me back to my students. So many of the people I work with are writing about truly difficult experiences, about grief and pain and illness and loss and hope and joy and fear. And I realized that no matter where we are in our careers, whether we are just starting to try to publish or whether we have published a dozen books and won multiple prizes, we are all capable of seeing each other and finding each other at dusk, leaning in to whisper the truth of hunting down the meaning that makes everything bearable. And for this, I could not be more grateful.

Thank you for reading.

Today my eyes welled up while watching a chihuahua run through an agility course with the theme song from Rocky playing.

Chen, one of the Yale grad students, asked, “How do you teach people how to write?”

The restaurant, Heirloom, gives away packets of seeds. Lisa took some but I didn’t.

Chapel Street had a green line painted down the middle for St. Patrick’s Day.

Everyone came back to the waiting room with a giant plastic shield taped over one eye, like fight club for old people.

The nurse who walked out the patients after their surgery, delivering them to whoever was there to drive them home, made the same joke every time the patient was a woman and the driver was a man. “She can’t do anything in the house now so it all falls on you.” It was depressing, like she was trying to beg a day off for a mule. I was happy she didn’t say this to me as she handed my mother over.

Lying in bed, writing notes for Peter’s piece, enveloped in a cloud of dread, I hear someone walk by my house outside, full on wailing. By the time I sit up and look out the window, I can’t see anybody. Did I just imagine it?

When I went to court last week for unpaid child support, as I was walking back to the parking garage, some guy on a bench yelled, “Have a great day, Superstar!” And it has stayed with me.

“It’s amazing to be outside right now,” Atlas said, walking through the parking lot to our car. There was a warm light rain, the sky gray and moody.

I couldn’t remember the name of the grocery store I’d shopped at that morning and it scared me. It’s Ferraro’s. I thought it started with an Sh for some reason. I kept wanting to say Shapiro’s even though that’s not Italian.

I drew a hideous, exaggerated MAGA face for my drawing today. It’s so ugly sitting next to a drawing of Lena Dunham but that seems appropriate.

Atlas makes me try Foxon Park cream soda. “It tastes like a marshmallow, doesn’t it?”

Parking the car, I picture Dr. Eng walking across the lot to the Aldi, buying a sandwich for lunch.

In the car, driving to the clinic, I hear an old song on the radio and instantly remember Linda Ronstadt singing her own version of it, on a record my mother had when I was about six. “And I ain’t saying you ain’t pretty…”

I watch Dr. Eng slip on his gloves, thin, stretched purple, like a second skin, like a blister casing.

Thank you for reading.

So when I think about the mothers whose worst fears have come true, it steals my breath. I have two of these mothers in my life and they have changed me.

I spent a lot of this weekend in both tears and in awe. One of my students recommended Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s new book, When We See You Again, (thank you, Rivka) and I could not stop reading it. Goldberg-Polin’s twenty-three year old son, Hersh, was taken captive on October 7th, 2023 at the Nova music festival and although he initially survived after having his hand blown off, he was murdered in the tunnels almost a year later.

I won’t lie. A lot of the book is raw anguish and I sobbed through much of it. I followed Hersh’s story as it unfolded and mourned his loss when his death hit the headlines. I felt sick imagining Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s agony and I still feel sick thinking about her suffering.

But when I finished the book, there was something else sitting with the pain. A kind of wonder and awe at one mother’s survival and commitment to choose life even after trauma.

This morning, I was emailing with a student who said, “Don’t cry, read something happy.” And I told him that I didn’t mind crying, that good writing can make the whole world mourn someone’s child. And that reading her beautiful book was the least I could do.

It’s Mothers Day and I spent some quality time with my son today, maybe appreciating it more than ever because of Rachel Goldberg-Polin.

I want to leave you with an excerpt from the book, an incredibly beautiful section:

My love is the realest reality there is.

My hallowed Hersh Love is more real than I am.

And that love will outlive me.

We do not feel grief for people we did not love.

And that is why we can feel grief for people we didn’t know.

Because we can love people we didn’t know.

So I feel grief for Carmel. And all of them. And so many others.

I didn’t know them, but I love them. And so I grieve for them. And this is why countless people grieve for Hersh. Because they grew to love him even though they didn’t know him. It’s comforting. Beautiful.

And I hope I can teach myself how to miss someone forever and love someone forever, in a way that doesn’t run me over each day anew.

Happy Mothers’ Day to all the mothers out there. Thank you for reading.

It was the early days of my divorce and my single parenthood and I fell right into this story about women in their 20s, maybe because it was a good escape from the life I was actually living. I appreciated the writing, the dialogue, the humor.

And then I watched the world bully Lena Dunham for years.

I am currently reading Famesick, Dunham’s new memoir, which inspired me to rewatch the series so basically, I am happily living in a Lena Dunham tunnel.

She was twenty-three years old when she landed the series at HBO, after winning awards for her film, Tiny Furniture, and she made something that lasted six seasons and helped to launch several careers, like that of Adam Driver and Allison Williams. It won awards: Emmys, Golden Globes, a Peabody, a Gracie award, and an award from the Director’s Guild of America.

And the world tried to destroy her and almost succeeded. I was scratching my head then and I’m scratching my head now. It is hard to think of another young, brilliant talent who has been quite so vilified as Lena Dunham. And it makes me furious.

I’ve been admiring Famesick for its candor and vulnerability but also I’ve been in awe of Dunham’s resilience and bravery. Maybe part of why I loved Girls so much is because I could relate to living a messy life in my twenties, a life where I fell apart over and over again, where I made terrible decisions that I knew were terrible even as I made them. Dunham’s characters live this way and Dunham herself, while hugely successful in her twenties, suffered through depression and rehab even while she won awards and continued to write this show.

And I don’t know how she survived the sheer meanness hurled her way. I don’t know why people hated her so much. This afternoon, I watched an interview where she talked about the misogyny she encountered, the specific flavor of the attacks she experienced, and she said it feels like that was the beginning of the war on women that we are seeing now. That extreme right wing misogyny that exists today sounds to her ears like the same tone of voice she heard back in the 2010s.

I’m not here to repeat any of the horrible things that were said about Lena Dunham years ago but can we all collectively wish her well, celebrate her success, and look forward to the years of art-making she has ahead of her? Can we notice that there is not this same thread of viciousness directed at young male artists? Can we do better?

She doesn’t need anyone to tell her anything, she’s a total survivor, a brave writer, but I wish I could tell her that I’m so glad she’s still here in the world, making things.

Generative/ Flash Nonfiction Class

Wednesdays, beginning April 29th

7:00 to 10:00

$450/ 9 weeks

This class will be part generative, with in-class writing prompts, and part study of the art of flash nonfiction writing. A flash piece is generally defined as less than 1000 words. How can we dazzle through language, movement, and emotional resonance in one short page? Through close readings of powerful flash pieces, we’ll identify the elements that make for impactful pieces. Guided with prompts and discussions, you will craft and refine your own flash pieces, with each person receiving three critiques by the end of the session. There will also be discussion about literary magazines currently publishing flash work and encouragement to submit.

Payment plans available. $50 to secure your spot in the class.

Essay Intensive

Mondays, beginning May 4th

7:00 to 10:00

$550/10 weeks

Join me for a 10 week class where together, we will create an essay in multiple steps, focusing on one step each week and sharing our progress as we go. If you’ve struggled to keep up with the daily observations I prescribe, this is the class where we will make it a habit and use them to begin our journey. You will leave this class with a complete draft of a lyric essay with feedback and exercises throughout the process. Using voice as the foundation, we will deconstruct the process of investigating our own lives for compelling content to build from.

Payment plans available. $100 to secure your spot in class.

One delightful part of the evening was the fact that so many of my students showed up, some coming in from New York for the event. I so appreciate these writers and to have them there in person made my night.

If you are a student in my current class, this week I’ll be talking about this quote from Hester Kaplan and the idea of invention in nonfiction:

“Memoir, like biography, relies on some measure of invention—not of the facts or details, but of how we assign meaning, motive, and causality to experience, and where we begin and end the stories of our lives.”

How we pull from our own lives as nonfiction writers or memoirists and thread moments, images, and events to make meaning is such an important part of the work.

I’ve been reading Famesick by Lena Dunham this week, which I am loving, and part of her book launch included a night on a stage with her friend, the actor Andrew Rannells, in bed, discussing her book.

I think most writers don’t write books just to be able to sit around with their writer friends talking about them, in bed or not, but it wouldn’t be a bad thing if that was our sole motivation. Because nothing is better than a night out with your writer friends talking about this job we do alone most of the time.

And it feels like a precious gift when someone you know finishes a book that was years in the making and you finally hold it in your hands, ready to sink into it. It feels like being with them, like getting to know them all over again, and the sheer awe of loving something created by someone you know can carry you for a long time.

On that note, this morning, I spent some time reading something new that my son wrote and it gave me goosebumps because it was so good. Years ago, when I watched my little baby master more and more things as he grew up, I didn’t dare imagine the pleasure of experiencing art that he created, the absolute thrill of the moment when the artist in me sees the artist in him. I am still a little shaken by the joy of reading his pages earlier today.

I think this is a substack post about loving your artist friends and family, one of the truest and most profound gifts in my life.

Thank you for reading.