I’ve been struck by the terminology of the Covid-19 pandemic: Essential workers. Stay home stay safe. Shelter-in-place. Masks, ventilators, hand sanitizer. Tests, tracking, social distancing. Working from home. Zoom. Virtual graduations, weddings, birthday parties. Isolation. None of these words and phrases comes close to describing the state of […]
Yesterday, I decided to play The Bookstore Game at home. Due to Oregon’s coronavirus shelter-in-place order, I haven’t been to an actual bookstore or library since March 10, when Claire Graman and I gave our presentation for Women’s History Month at the Eugene Public Library. I realize that […]
I woke up at 3:00 am thinking about bees (it’s one day before my 60th birthday, and I still can’t sleep through the night). The day before, my son and I were sitting in the garden when a swarm of bees flew over our heads and settled in a […]
Like everyone else on Planet Earth, the coronavirus landed in my life like a bomb. My months-long preparations for Women’s History Month went poof. Instead, I was now fretting about the availability of bread and toilet paper. In a matter of a few days, life as we knew […]
Let’s say, just for the fun of it, that you were left alone on some tropical island with an unknown amount of time ahead of you. Luckily, having anticipated just this emergency, you had the foresight to pack twenty books that would consume the hours while you await […]
I discovered wordpools in Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge’s Poemcrazy. “I collect…hats, coins, cougars, old Studebakers,” she writes. “That is, I collect the words. Pith helmet, fragment, Frigidaire, quarrel, love seat, lily. I call gathering words this way creating a wordpool. This process helps free us to follow the words and write poems.” […]
Happy New Year’s Day 2020! I decided to make a list of things I’d like to accomplish in my writing life this year. I’ll revisit the list in December and see how I did. Erica’s 2020 New Year’s Resolutions: Finish something big by the end of 2020. I […]
Here’s to another year of celebrating poetry! Each one of the books I reviewed in 2019 moved me in unique and unforeseen ways, from Shaindel Beers’ harrowing escape from an abusive marriage to Cynthia Anderson’s evocative descriptions of the Mojave Desert. These books went with me on […]
I admit it. I’m a sucker for books that claim to help me be a better writer. I even wrote one myself. I keep my favorite books on writing poetry, memoir, and nonfiction on the shelf closest to my desk. These books are old friends I turn to again and […]
I like to tell my friends that I never, ever have writer’s block, and yes, I rarely have the full-blown version. I do, however, experience creative slowdowns, periods where I produce less work than I’d like, or my ideas seem stale, or I feel a lack of interest […]
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