A short, short story. Today I finished my first MFA Writing residency – ten days of intense learning and workshopping before jumping into the first term. Then we do this all over again four more times. Words used regularly that I had to google for definition: Ekphrastic, Perspicacity, Magical Realism, Peripatetic, Belies, Frowsy, Obsequiousness, Autofiction,…
Twenty years ago, I wanted to apply to graduate school. I wanted to study art or writing or psychology, anything that let me continue exploring the inner struggles of humanity. It seemed as good a time as any since my Dad was newly dead, I’d recently left my son’s father, and I was turning 30.…
I am sitting in a plastic orange chair, fit for a six-year-old. My first grade class is seated in a circle because it is almost time for show and tell, which is my favorite part of the morning. It is my turn today and I am bursting with excitement. As the last of five children,…
In June of 1992, I embarked on a month-long cross-country trip with a woman I’d met only two weeks earlier. Her name was Coco and she’d been mildly dating my on-again, off-again boyfriend while I was out of town. (Objectively, I see now that the level of sexual intermingling amongst my friends back then wasn’t…
Failing better. 