When they announced Bev’s name, I think I half expected Drew Barrymore to walk out onto the stage. I had just watched Riding in Cars with Boys only weeks earlier and, despite having read the book first, the image of a brown-haired Barrymore with a Brooklyn accent still resonated in my subconscious. Instead, a slim, tall woman with a very full wig, a funky hat and a glittery dress walked out onto the stage.
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.
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 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.
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.
mensah demary’s piece, “Depressive Episodes”, was featured in Hippocampus in July. I liked it when I read it because I, too, have suffered depressive episodes (though it’s never occurred to me to call them that or even think of them that way). But, I wanted to know: what the heck?
Words have substance, texture, definition. The word “word” is given distinction by Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary – yes, the bulky print version – as being both a noun in the form of something that is said, as in “I just can’t think of the word right now,” and a verb meaning expressing something, as in “Benjamin, we have to word the declaration just right.”
Youn may shape breasts (and other body parts) by day, but here, he sculpts a beauty of a memoir. I spoke with Tony in mid-July and, in our almost hour-long phone conversation, we talked about his book, his family, his media experience and the challenges he faces as the author of “a doctor” book—and whether or not I should consider liposuction for my problem area.
I initially judged The Home for the Friendless by its cover and expected a story like that of Annie. I pictured the Home for the Friendless as an orphanage, and I thought I would be reading about all of the children living there. However, I soon discovered that the facility was merely a temporary home for author Betty Auchard and her two younger siblings and was written about as a small memory intertwined into hundreds of memories. I never expected to learn so much about a poor girl’s faith in her family as well as rich historical details about the war and the Great Depression.
I was nervous when I first picked up Bobblehead Dad, Jim Higley’s new memoir about his battle with cancer. Ever since I became a mother, four years ago, my emotional quota has essentially been drained. Watching, hearing about, or reading anything where parents or children die or deal with death really bothers me. This rules out watching any Lifetime Movie. I was convinced that by the end of the book, I would be sobbing uncontrollably while hugging my daughters. So, just in case, I placed a box of tissues within arm’s reach.
