I spoke with some young writers yesterday. They happen to be poets, and had just read a couple of chapters from The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser. We were talking about establishing good writing habits, and one student said, “I always make sure it’s quiet where I’m writing, and I try to make…
Category: Issues
The Reluctant Grown-up by Fred Amram
In 1938 I was five years old and I could already feel my childhood slipping away. Mutti first noticed my developing maturity one day when a loud demanding knock frightened her. Mutti’s face tightened and she pursed her lips. The Victorian pallor, in which she prided herself, seemed especially white. We both looked at the door as if awaiting a miracle.
Switched at Midlife by Sharon Carmack
I wasn’t expecting another daughter. I was expecting a mother. But there comes a point when mothers and daughters switch roles. Her voice on the phone: “Hello, Sharon? This is your daughter.” I smile. “No,” I say. “I’m your daughter. You’re my mother.”
Confirmation by Nikki Foltin
November rain drummed the stained-glass panels of St. John’s southern exposure—not with the intruding rat-ta-tat-tat of a snare, but the low, rolling of a bass drum, more of a feeling than an actual sound—like the third cello in an orchestra, whose part is only appreciated in absentia. On any other day I might not have given such weather any consideration, but, on this day, I worried that the rain might somehow distract or detract from the service.
Debbie Did by Deborah Thompson
Forty-seven years ago my parents named me Debbie. The birth certificate says Deborah, but the intention was always Debbie. They said the name was unusual at the time, and that their choice had nothing to do with Debbie Reynolds. It was a good Jewish name—but not too Jewish. It just felt right.
The Writing Life: the unruled page by mensah demary
i allow myself many vices: cigarettes, more cigarettes, various Apple products [my apartment is wired to Apple’s hive mind], and Moleskine journals. while i don’t believe in the so-called “writing life,” there is value in journaling one’s thoughts. i guess. still, i buy Moleskines because somewhere in my reptile brain, a $17 journal makes me more of a writer than, say, a $0.99 notebook from Walgreens.
Review — Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian by Avi Steinberg
In 2005, Avi Steinberg did what any Harvard-educated, obituary-writing, non-practicing Orthodox Jew would do at a crossroads in his life: he took a job as a prison librarian with the Suffolk County House of Correction in Boston.
Insider Tips: Nathan Evans
… it would be easy to say that’s why I read for the magazine – because they published me, or because they asked me, but actually there’s more to the answer than that. The reason why I read for Hippo is because I really believe in what it’s doing and the sort of writing it seeks to publish and promote.
The Writing Life: Tastes by Hilary Meyerson
I’ve been involved in a love triangle for almost twenty years. My two loves have never met, but the time is coming. My first love is the man with whom I’ve shared my public and private life; the other is my writing, a more private love. One would think they would be easy to introduce, but I have not found it so.
The Patriotic Chicken by Krista Creel
Riding in my Sunday dress in the passenger side of a well-equipped Cadillac Deville down an old gravel road, I was feeling the kind of sublimity that not even my small town southern preacher could’ve gleaned from me that day. Why? Because I had a rooster on my lap.
