There’s a glass building rippling in the sun,
a sidewalk littered with cigarette butts and bus tickets,
a blue-eyed boy teetering precariously close to the curb,
and a distracted mother staring off into the distance.
There’s an old woman standing at the bus stop,
clutching a brightly flowered handbag to her chest.
I smile at her and she glares –
what the [...]

I feel like I should give some disclaimer to this piece, some explanation of why, not only because the topic is tough, but also because it’s become a cliche.  Writers, film makers, and students alike have been steered away from the topic of child abuse — it’s been done, the subject is stale, and every [...]

She’s got that low, sensual, beautiful, Southern voice. The perfect blend of drawl and inflection that’s all at once a lullaby and a catalyst — an invitation to lay back on the porch swing and lazily watch the moon, or to rise up in the morning like Joan of Arc, prepared to honor [...]

In 2000, I was awarded a month-long fellowship to Norcroft, a women’s writing retreat on the North Shore of Minnesota. A few years later, when the retreat closed its doors, I was asked to contribute to an anthology about the Norcroft experience.
I set out to do it, but realized that whatever I wrote [...]