Category: Non-fiction

A few weeks ago, I sat in the Fresh Side in Amherst, ruminating over the tea choices. Local author and professor of creative writing at Bard College, Jedediah Berry, was meeting me there to talk about writing and his very successful novel The Manual of … Continue Reading

Susan Stinson is the Writer in Residence at Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts, and the author of Belly Songs, Fat Girl Dances with Rocks, Venus of Chalk, and Martha Moody. Her upcoming book, Spider in a Tree (Small Beer Press, Oct 2013), is … Continue Reading

Once she lived in Arizona and she got an award, so her mother sent her an azalea. It was pink                   and pretty, so out of place in the apartment of nubby beige and ochre chair covers,                   cigarette smoke, monsoon grit. All her … Continue Reading

I always suspected Maggie was a witch. Even when she said she’d been in the novitiate – Franciscans, perhaps? – my belief persisted. There was awareness in her touch. The objects of daily life seemed more significant: a ceramic bowl revealed its earthe … Continue Reading

“Well, your brother’s gone off the deep end…” my mother sighed, with an undercurrent of anxious resignation. She had called me from a random hotel in New Jersey, not the kind of place she would ordinarily hang out, but extraordinary circumstances cal … Continue Reading

My father, a career IBM man, was one of myriad late-1960’s NASA-related personnel contracted in the effort to beat the Russians to the moon, and a few months in “I Dream Of Jeannie”-era Cocoa Beach was just part of the drill. It remains amazing to me h … Continue Reading