I piled everything into a boxy folding cart, the kind only New Yorkers use because we don’t have cars to haul junk in, and pushed it to Goodwill, around the corner on Second Avenue. It was my seventh trip that week.
Insider Tips: Lori M. Myers
Insider Tips is a recurring series in which members of our reading panel and editorial staff share advice about submitting to Hippocampus Magazine. Each Insider Tips Q & A column reflects the opinions of the individual interviewed, not the magazine as a whole. We hope you find this helpful! Advice from Lori M. Myers: 1.…
Reading The Feminine Mystique in Norman Mailer’s Home by Deirdre Sinnott
I was gazing out at Provincetown Bay through the enormous picture window in Norman Mailer’s home. Betty Friedan’s classic analysis, The Feminine Mystique, sat open on my lap. Jessica, an administrator of the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, entered through the patio door, bringing in the chilly fall air and the news that Norris Church Mailer had died.
How I Got to be None of the Above by Alvin Burstein
When I arrived at the Army Induction Center in 1954, I was required to fill out a form so that my dog tags could be punched out. Among the information to be included, beyond name and serial number, was religious orientation. The choices were Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or None. I chose the last.
1968: Chaos and Turmoil, in the Streets, in Our Bedroom by Amalia Pistilli Conrad
“Wake up! Wake up, little Amalia! Wake up, my daughter! We must go, we must go and turn your father in, he’s poisoning me and his stinky family is in cahoots!” The Mother pulls the covers off her nine-year-old daughter’s small body, warm with the scent of sleep and dreams.
Perfectionist by Vanessa Chastain Rivas
I read a passage, but I did not read it. Words entered and passed against the hardened nerves of a paralyzed brain. Trembling, trembling. Shriveled, calloused and jaded, the nerves registered nothing, transported no phrases through epic distances, and deciphered no code.
Review: Something Inside Me, Chitoka Webb — by Pauline M. Campos
I imagine I would get along famously with Chitoka Webb. The author’s smiling face graces the cover of Something Inside of Me: How to Hang on to Heaven When You Are Going Through Hell (Emerald Book Company, July 2011), and she radiates the kind of warmth that tells me I would probably love to go shoe-shopping with her.
Jumping the Gun by Donna Steiner
When I began teaching, none of my students ever asked about publishing their work. They were content, it seemed, to learn the craft, hone particular pieces, and perhaps, someday, begin the process of submitting to literary journals or editors or agents. That has changed.
The Writing on the Wall by William Henderson
The hallway connecting the bedroom I shared with my brother to the bedroom my parents shared. I wrote on the walls in this hallway with crayon, then with pencil, and once with blank ink.
Bone Tattoos: Writing Lake Eola by Lisa Ahn
Lake Eola Park, in the center of Orlando – a world away from cartoon Disney – makes me wish that I could draw. Some places demand the bold strokes of acrylic, the definitives of ink, the texturized weight of Bristol paper. Nothing but a painter’s hand, a drafter’s arm will do. The precise skills I am lacking.
