by Jane Devin on 02/06/2009
In the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, we abandoned Eloise’s Suburban and walked the wet, rutted road that led to her house. It was lightly raining, and there was an orange tint to the sky that made even the sagebrush look beautiful. There was a rainbow forming to the North, and a pair [...]
by Jane Devin on 01/09/2009
A finished story isn’t meant to stay pristine and isolated — it’s meant to get dog-eared, creased, bookmarked, and highlighted. It’s meant to get dirtied by critiques, loved by some readers, hated by others, passed around, or given away.
by Jane Devin on 02/13/2008
“Jane,what do you do for a living?” This question comes up often in letters received from readers of this blog, and while my favorite answer is “breathe”, most people don’t find that satisfactory. They want to know what company I work for, what college I teach at, or how I became so independently wealthy that [...]
by Jane Devin on 02/03/2008
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 would [...]
by Jane Devin on 05/01/2007
There are predators who can intuitively pick out the insecure and solitary child. The cautionary childhood watchfulness I learned at my mother’s feet had not evolved to warn me of other people’s intentions, only to observe their features and actions with some amount of fascination or horror. The idealistic daydreams I relied on as saving [...]