Essays

Writers share their hearts, their limbs, their breasts -- even their teeth! -- in this stunning collection ...

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“Think of it like a raspberry,” he said. It was an odd visual, certainly, yet I followed his lead  …   

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A favorite quote I keep tacked to a bulletin board in my office reads: “One’s destination …   

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I’m not sure why my mind keeps returning to my time on the hill, the remote hill in Vermont …   

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We’d arrived at the ER just after midnight, January 5, 2016—ironically, Mom’s eighty-first birthday.  

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In late winter, 2020, I—and the world—learned that V is for virus. Shapeless, unable to be seen, heard ... 

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I was a late bloomer, learning to ride a bike. While most kids learn by kindergarten ... 

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The revolving door conveys people from congested streets into its halls like a major vein into the hospital’s heart. 

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I’ve had a headache for thirty days. OK, I’m lying. It’s closer to sixty, but sixty days sounds terribly long.  

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The mane streams behind the dog as it tears across gray floorboards.

“Frickin’ lion.”  

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My brother Sean and I had a routine the summer we spent in hospital waiting rooms. He’d pull ...

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I was at the final winery I’d be visiting in the Chianti region, seated at a long farm table with ... 

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A breeze swept off the water and into the car’s window as we crossed the Tobin Bridge toward home. 

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I hiccupped and slid into the booth beside Shelly. Wiggled out of my down coat. It was March, slushy ...

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You were there, not conscious but in body, when they draped you, intubated and hooked you to a ventilator  ...  

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Sunshine streams from a cloudless sky through leafless maple branches, winter white bright  ...   

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I’ve felt the pull for years, to see what’s out there, how it differs from what I understand of the world ...

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Our neighborhood has a sidewalk chalk artist, and I think she’s a girl.  Twelve, maybe thirteen ...

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My mother announces on a mild June afternoon, a Sunday, that she wants her birdbath moved. 

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Wake me up when September ends, lyrics implore, beneath a lonely chord. Twenty years have gone so fast ...

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Dispatch, from a May morning. The birds don’t know. They didn’t get the memo. Their songs outside my ...  

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It snuck up on us, most of us. We see this now. Outside of a handful of specialists ...

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It’s the news, it must be the news. Why else would I dream something so horrific?   

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The buildings flow as one attached with lumber and nail and stories of conjoined life across two centuries.  

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A feathery kiss brushes my skin. Tingly, in the best possible way. Fleeting, as it melts and trickles ... 

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Kindergarten “show-and-tell” day. I trailed my brothers to school, clutching my Hanna-Barbera ...

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As spring springs and buds bud, soon petals push open and bees bumble. Everywhere, breezes.

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Yellow rose topiary, big blooms billowing atop ball, ruffled roses commanding attention. Admiration.

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Orange, the color of sunsets missed all summer as I retreated to a bedroom, shades drawn ...  

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Pinwheels of pain, blue and bursting, radiate from my shoulder, furious fireworks lit and launching off  …  

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Mounded moonbeam tickseed tickles your torso among day lilies that disco-dance in a breeze …  

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We plod in silence through slices of the Sahara the color of honey: wavy and warm  ...

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She puffs and the flame, bending and swaying at the top of the solitary birthday candle  ...

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I am from an Irish Clan’s love,

strong as bedrock, deep as ocean. I am from a surgeon's scalpel ...

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Garden gargoyle, rumpled of brow, drowsy of eye, pointy of ear, peeks at me as I work the earth ...

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She feels January in her joints,

her bones a built-in bellwether to barometric bounces  ...

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Susanna Baird, Editor-in-Chief of Five Minutes, discusses the micro-memoir form with me ... and more!

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Dr. Megan Pillow - award-winning writer, teacher, and author - discusses her new book with me ... and more!

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Diane Gottlieb, Prose and CNF Editor with ELJ, discusses with me the new anthology she edited ... and more!

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Joy Clark, Managing Editor with eMerge, highlights the magazine from Dairy Hollow Writers Colony.

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Claire Oleson, Senior Poetry Editor with Cleaver, deep dives on what makes poetry sing ... and more! 

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Brooke Warner, Publisher of She Writes Press, shares "a third way" to get a manuscript published!

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Kathy Fish, award-winning writer and teacher, shares her expertise on all things flash writing ... and more!

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Tobi Harper, Deputy Director with Red Hen Press, deep dives on what this independent press wants.

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EIC Betsy Boyd and Poetry Editor Micaela Walley share what Welter looks for in writing submissions.

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Christy O'Callaghan, Managing Editor with Barzakh, highlights the journal ... and how she picks a word for the year!

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Amy Giuffrida, Literary Agent with The Jennifer De Chiara Agency, talks trends, querying, and home renovations!  

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Not one, not two, but three Co-Editors-in-Chief with Exposition Review join me for a wide-ranging chat.

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Janna Maron, Editor & Publisher of Under the Gum Tree, shares more about her Nonfiction Bootcamp ... and more!

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Maria Rogers, Literary Agent with The Tobias Agency, talks trends, querying, social media ... and more!

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Lilly Dancyger - author, essayist, and editor - discusses her new memoir, her editorial services ... and more!

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K.B. Carle, Associate Editor with Fractured Lit, talks flash fiction, fables, fairytales ... and more!

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Marissa Glover, Senior Editor with The Lascaux Review, discusses contests, reprint opportunities ... and more!

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Taylor Byas, Poetry Editor with Flypaper Lit, deep dives on the art of poetry ... and more!

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Diane and I dig in on my memoir's message, the writing life, and exotic world travel!

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I thought I had written a gripping memoir. (Don’t we all?) My story is about the mysterious ...

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As the discussion surrounding the use of AI in our creative writing lives rages on, I’m clear on how I want to use it.

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... a devastating diagnosis is not always a death sentence, even when it involves a bleeding brain tumor.

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When I wrote "Singultus" I was enrolled in a six-week writing workshop where we were encouraged to include ...

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A fiction writer starts with meaning, then manufactures events to represent it. A memoirist starts with events, then ...  

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Jo Varnish, CNF Editor with X-R-A-Y Magazine, discusses nonfiction with me in all its wonderful forms! 

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I spent my 2017 Thanksgiving in Barcelona. It was a departure, in many ways, from how I typically celebrate this U.S. holiday ...

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There’s no better way for me to remember to appreciate my blessings than to travel, and to begin to understand how the other half ... 

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