This is the catalog for episode three of The Laboratory, part of The Outrider Podcast. If you’re not sure what this is, start here. Episode 3 began with our discussion of our unique failures in handling the last prompt. Jason wrote a paragraph or so and I wrote over 2,100 […]
I’m co-hosting a writing podcast with Jason Quinn Malott called The Laboratory. We are giving each other monthly writing prompts and then seeing what comes of them. We get into writing process and mechanics in a way that’s at least interesting to me. Our third episode was released today. I’ve […]
Read Quinn’s new post here. Reading White Egrets by Derek Walcott. Sometimes I read for surprise and difficulty. Sometimes I read for comfort. The voice and craft of this book put it in the latter category. Not that all the topics of the book were comforting: aging, losing gifts or […]
For years, I have celebrated Day of the Dead by writing “calaveras literarias.” Some people write poems for loved ones, but another tradition is to write humorous “tombstones.” I write the latter–or try to. I mostly try to make fun of myself for my students. This year’s is Bama-centric. I’m […]
We received Lucy’s ashes yesterday. Unsure at first what to do with them, we’ve kept them since they are in a nameplated urn. She was part of our daily lives for eleven years and there’s unusual silence in the house. She served as a muse at times, odd as that […]
Several interesting possibilities may be coming up, but for now they are all potential energy. It’s been a busy few weeks and I hope that some of the work pays off, but I also know that sometimes it just doesn’t. One of the projects that I know will pay off […]
A highlight of my week was having Abraham Smith jump-start the visiting writers series I’m developing for my school. On the day he spoke his new book came out and we got to hear him read from his own work and from greats like Dylan Thomas. I hope my students […]
In order to hone my fiction chops, I decided to join The Five Hundred, a site that presents a prompt every month with the outcome being some form of flash fiction between 400-600 words. Next week, I’ll have a ghazal (based on a “bonus” 100 word prompt) and flash fiction […]
I have a poem and interview available at Driftwood Press. My previous post is a reflection on a Hemingway reading project that covered fourteen books. And now I have a two-hour delay at work. Not a bad way to start the new year.
