Meander over to www.randonbillingsnoble.com

Hello, dear Hatchery readers.

As you know, I’m not posting to this blog as regularly as I used to — largely because my writing energies have been going into essays and reviews that are being published by others, both online and in print.  If you want to keep reading about “writing, babies, ideas, plans,” please consider following my writing website, www.randonbillingsnoble.com.

My latest news there includes the publication of the essay “Stripped Down and Redressed,” which is about shopping for maternity clothes … as well as figuring out how to clothe the post-pregnancy body.  Hope you take a look!

And, as always, thanks for reading.

“The View from Here” at Literary Mama!

Hello, dear Hatchery readers!

My short piece on the ups and downs of being a writing parent, “The View from Here,” is up on Literary Mamma’s “After Page One” series … and you can read it here!

In other news,

“Fall at Steepletop” at Superstition Review’s blog!

I’m very pleased to announce that my post “Fall at Steepletop” (which is about Edna St. Vincent Millay, her house Steepletop, and the Millay Colony for the Arts) is live at Superstition Review’s blog!

“Writing the Spiritual Journey”

Last night I led a short workshop on “Writing the Spiritual Journey” as part of the Cathedral Crossroads program at the Washington National Cathedral.

Cathedral Crossroads happens the last Tuesday of every month.  You can come walk the labyrinth, attend a program (like “Writing the Spiritual Journey”) and then

Millay, Millay

I have just come back from a glorious two-week residency at the Millay Colony for the Arts.

The Colony began in 1973 on the estate of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, nearly 25 years after her death.  The barn that Millay and her husband built was converted into artists’ studios.  Forty years later, I wrote in one of them.

Studio Barn at the Millay Colony.

If I felt like a change of scene I could

“Chilly winter books …

… for hot summer days” is a review I wrote of …

• The Snow Child: A Novel by Eowyn Ivey
• Blankets by Craig Thompson
• The Voyage of the Narwhal: A Novel by Andrea Barrett

The review is up at Equals, and you can read it by clicking here.

Things found in the wake of the twins …

A list of things I have found in the bathroom — mostly on the closed toilet seat lid — after the twins (not quite two-and-a-half) have been there:

• a small stuffed owl
• a handful of bendy straws, chewed
• two bendy straws and a plastic pot
• a ladybug scooter and a book about the letter Z
• a plastic snake
• a pile of shredded toilet paper
• an empty paper towel tube
• a set of toy keys
• a set of real keys
• two unused

My first interview

Mary Akers, editor of r.kv.r.y quarterly, interviewed me for r.kv.r.y’s blog this week.  (You can read the interview here.)

r.kv.r.y had published my essay “Advent” earlier this spring and it is this journal’s (wonderful!) practice to interview its writers.  This was my first interview, and I have to say: I’m pretty floored!

The most excellent Mark Akers. Read her work at maryakers.com.

Mary asked terrific questions —

“Bye-Bye Brain” pregnancy cartoons

My short series of pregnancy cartoons, “Bye-Bye Brain,” is up at Sweet: A Literary Confection!  They’re under “Graphic Nonfiction,” a new thing for me.  And no, that doesn’t mean X-rated stuff.  Maybe R.  But it is nonfiction: all the quotes are things people actually said to me.

Here’s the first panel:

Click

Cookbooks, more cookbooks and the New Domesticity

My reading has taken an interesting trend recently: cookbooks, more cookbooks and a book on the New Domesticity.

It started with An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler.

I asked for this book for Christmas but (with two-year-old twins, an increasingly demanding writing schedule and, you know, life) I just got around to reading it.  I made the very first recipe on page 17, for salsa verde (think Italy, not Mexico) and ate nearly all of it on slice after slice of sourdough toast.  (You can eat it on nearly anything — boiled vegetables, pasta, roasted chicken — but I had toast so I slathered it on and dug right in.)

The tone of this book can be lofty and precious at times, but if you don’t mind looking at food lovingly, profoundly and (at times) religiously, you’ll either eat this rhetoric up with a spoon or gently push it to the side of your plate and read greedily on for new ways of thinking about and preparing food.

The next book is Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity by Emily Matchar.

This book explores what Matchar has named “the New Domesticity” — a trend for highly educated, liberal women to spend considerable amounts of time and energy on