The Oxford English dictionary defines traction as, “The action of drawing or pulling a thing over a surface, especially a road or track,” or, “The extent to which a product, idea, etc., gains popularity or acceptance.” It can also refer to the application of a sustained pull on muscles or a fractured bone. It’s a word we […]
I’ve just completed a writing residency at the Vermont Studio Center, a two-week get-away in Northern Vermont, where I lived in a community with approximately fifty visual artists and twelve writers. I found inspiration in the work of other visual artists, despite the fact that I wasn’t there for art, and I ended up in the […]
I’m in the midst of a two-week writing residency and I’ve given myself permission not to write. Unlike the everyday reality of life back home in Virginia, where childcare or freelancing or teaching whittle my writing time down to small chunks of hurry up and write, here, in Vermont, there is nothing but large spaces of time […]
Lately, I find myself envisioning my fingers on the keyboard as paintbrushes sweeping swaths of color across a canvas, as an e xacto knife carving an image into a rubber plate, a piece of wire bended and curved into an imaginary shape, flesh meeting clay, molded into story, unfolding across the screen of my laptop. […]
A graduate school friend of mine, with her husband, just started a new storytelling site called YouShare. I was thrilled when they asked me to write a story about my 2008 health crisis. I’d recently finished a full book proposal and sample chapter for a memoir on the topic, and I’d been thinking about turning my […]
Writers and storytellers fill my family tree. On both branches, story is an important family value. One ancestral grandfather was a Revolutionary War poet, another a songwriter. The Scottish, American Indian, and Norwegian branches imparted dramatic oral storytelling. The English side (the colonial poet) includes newspapermen, poets, and artists. I often wonder, if the women […]
Blog Hop! So here’s how it works: I was asked by author Shelby Settles Harper to participate in the hop. Last week, she eloquently blogged about her writing process and ongoing projects. Take a look – you won’t be disappointed. This week, it’s my turn. Every writer answers the same questions, so you can literally hop from […]
Anton Nixdorf travels from Breslau, Prussia to Boston, Massachusetts by ship in 1850. Eighteen years old, recently graduated with a medical degree, he finds himself thrust into a confusing world of idealism, inequality, and shifting allegiances. As a young physician, he searches for knowledge and additional training. This quest finds him at odds with the […]
Evie is a young woman with a complicated past. Taking a leave of absence from her job in Washington D.C. after her mother is committed to an asylum, Evie returns to her childhood home in Nelson County, Virginia, where racial tensions are high. Family secrets are soon uncovered. Secrets that will change everything. Bess, the […]