“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!

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“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

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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

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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 —

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Stonewall Jackson’s last week

One hundred and fifty years ago today, Stonewall Jackson, general in the Confederate army, died of pneumonia in a small cottage in central Virginia.  A week earlier he had his right arm amputated after being shot — by accident — by his own men.  I wrote a piece about looking for the arm’s grave, and you can read it at The Virginia Quarterly Review’s blog.

I’ve been thinking about Jackson all this week.  My piece was posted the day before the amputation and I read it (again) when it came out.  I imagined

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Mountain time

I’ve been off the grid for a while, first because I was on retreat in the North Carolina mountains and then because I was trying to retreat from the virus the twins picked up while I was away.  But I’d rather think about the green spring mountains than green stuffed noses.

I set up a little table by my window so I could write while looking out.  I had planned

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Sehnsuchtsstudio

A friend of mine posted a picture from VCCA and it made me long to be back there.  VCCA stands for the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.  It’s an artists colony in the middle of Virginia at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains and is one of the more magical places I have ever been to.

The evening light across the fields at VCCA.

The first time I went was about this time of year and I wrote about it in an essay I called “Flight” but which The Millions retitled “A Hybrid, Trapped” — they published it earlier this month and

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“Advent” on Easter

It seems odd to announce, on Easter Sunday, that an essay of mine, “Advent,” is now up in r.kv.r.y quarterly‘s “Faith and Doubt” issue, but perhaps it’s not so odd after all.  Musings about being lost and found, decline and recovery, living and learning — I suppose it’s always a good time for that.

“Private Devotion” by Suzanne Stryk, the artwork paired with my essay. See more of her gorgeous work here: http://www.suzannestryk.com/index.html.

You can read “Advent” by

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How should an essayist be?

The New Republic recently published an article called “The New Essayists, or the Decline of a Form?”  In it, Adam Kirsch wonders if the work of self-proclaimed essayists like David Sedaris, Sloane Crosley and Davy Rothbart is more like a reality TV show in writing than a collection of actual essays.

The new essayists? (Image from newrepublic.com.)

I read David Sedaris many years ago and was so put off by a particularly gross and fecal scene that I haven’t picked him up since.  I think I need to do so, if only to see what I’m missing.

I read Sloane Crosley a few years ago when my agent and I broke up because I wouldn’t revise my collection of essays into something a little dirtier, a little sexier, a little more like a memoir — a little more like Sloane Crosley.  I think I need to read her again, now that my heartache has dulled and I am even more firmly committed to the form of the essay.

And I’m reading Davy Rothbart right now.  Davy and I were

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“Marked” at Brain, Child

Instead of a post today, you get a link … to my essay, “Marked,” which is up at Brain, Child Magazine!

You can read it here.

“Marked” at brainchildmag.com.

P.S.  That’s not me in the picture!

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