This week’s blog is written by Maria Caballero, a summer intern from North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. She is majoring in English, with an emphasis on writing, and will be spending the fall studying abroad in Canterbury, England. On December...
Every summer I go on a retreat with a group of writers. We met when we were students in a creative writing MFA program at Goddard College. Five of us travel from the edges of the country to meet on tiny Decatur Island, in the San Juan Islands, to talk shop and lend...
At The Fairmont Acapulco Princess hotel’s outdoor lobby in Acapulco, Mexico. The lobby’s view is nothing short of breathtaking with many carved stone pillars. The pillars are covered from floor to ceiling in Aztec symbols and stand several stories high. I...
“There’s a disconnect between up here and down there,” my new acupuncturist said on our first date. “What is it about your body that you don’t want to hear?”She said this to me as she pointed first to my head and then to my achy bones. She said we have some work to...
When I was seventeen, I met a striking young woman named Victorine Meurent. She wore her hair tied back in a blue ribbon and an embroidered white blouse. She had eyes like brown beach glass and a bold gaze that held me without blinking as we stared each other down,...
I have had the pleasure of reading the latest issue of the online magazine Sugar Mule. Titled “No Place Like Home: Borders, Boundaries, and Identity in South Asia and Diaspora” and guest-edited by Soniah Kamal (one of our friends at the Atlanta Writers Club),...
“But I can’t write fiction,” I heard myself say a few nights back as I hoisted myself up to the rim of the hot tub. School had just let out for the summer, and soaking in the heat, I felt the grind of the year dissolving into the mist. To jumpstart...
One of the best things I could have done for my writing was to take a painting class. Though it uses the same skills that I use as a writer, I’m less obsessed with the outcome. I’m more aware of thoughts that encumber my progress. I notice areas of resistance and...
The Council for the Arts in my hometown of Jacksonville, North Carolina is the place where I want to be, especially on a Sunday afternoon four times a year. That’s the time when poets congregate to share their works at an Open Mike Reading. When...
I recently lost a very dear friend. Her death was unexpected and senseless and incredibly sad. While I don’t want to dwell on the sadness of her death, I think it’s important for me to acknowledge it because for several weeks I couldn’t. In my mind...
