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Embracing Revision
If you haven’t read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, you might want to stop reading this post right now and bury yourself in the book instead. It’s a book I’ve been...
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How It Will Come Back to the Beginning
More than seven years after I first meet her, Madeleine has a baby girl named Cléa. On Facebook she looks like any other baby, small and pink and bundled in blankets, but I can tell that she’s...
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Kösem Sultan: Ruler of the Ottoman Empire
Photo credit: www.kocaeliaydinlarocagi.org.tr (Note: Be careful when you Google her name. Nothing bad, but there is a Kosen Sultan who appears to hold the Guinness record for being the world’s tallest...
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Book Trailer Number Two: Maxed Out by Katrina Alcorn
Though she lives across the country from me, I was able meet Katrina Alcorn a few days after agreeing to do the trailer for her memoir, Maxed Out; American Moms on the Brink (Seal Press). When I sent...
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Chilly Winter Books for Hot Summer Days
Randon Billings Noble is a creative nonfiction writer living in Washington, DC. A graduate of NYU’s MFA program and a former teacher of writing at American University, her work has been published in...
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Orange Is the New Black and Diverse Ensemble Casts
I’ve been binge-watching (is that what it’s called?) the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black for the last week, especially since I just moved to a small Midwestern town and my laptop is one of my...
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What Are You Writing?
In my last column, interlaced throughout was a yearning for second chances. For Jenny Hollowell, her focus lies on a second book, a project that hearkens back to the arduous task of completing her...
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Lady Jane Grey: Nine Day Queen, Fabled Innocent
The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, by Paul Delaroche, 1833 I usually focus on historical women who have accomplished a whole lot, against all odds and expectations given their oppressive historical...
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“What Are You Writing, Alexis M. Smith?”
Sometimes, on the rarest of rare occasions, a story just happens to you. You don’t expect it; you assume it will contain words similar to stories past. And then it shocks you, but a pleasant jolt akin...
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Margery Kempe: Medieval Pilgrim, Autobiographer
I read about Margery Kempe, in the aptly titled The Book of Margery Kempe, in my senior year of college, for a class on medieval history. My first impression was: “Man, b**** be trippin’.” Actually, I...
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