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So, what is a chapbook?
My brother just asked. And before I fired off something snappy, I checked the hefty Random House Dictionary of the English Language that I keep on the dictionary stand in my study. According to which, a chapbook is: 1. a small book or pamphlet of popular tales, ballads, etc., formerly hawked about by chapmen. 2.…
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Microclimates
Running in an unfamiliar neighborhood, I passed a house, back up against the park, with a banana and two palm trees in the yard. Three blocks later, two more palm trees. It was raining hard, but not cold–around 60 degrees, gray sky offsetting the heavy June greens. For a moment, I was somewhere tropical, on…
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Anniversary Toast
On Friday, my husband and I will have been married 21 years. Last year, impatient (why wait for 25?) and feeling more than a little pleased with ourselves for having so well enjoyed our first two decades together, we threw a big party. This year, we’ll probably take the kids to the coast. But I’ve…
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Spring recitals, then and now
♪♪♪♬♫♪♩♪♪♪♪♪♬♫♪♪♪♪♪♬♫♪♩ When I took piano lessons as a kid, recitals were a big deal. Memorized piece, new dress, public auditorium or church endowed with a good piano. The city arts center where my first teacher held her recitals contrasted with the dark and smelly living room where she gave lessons. My highly-organized second teacher’s home…
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Family Business/Sharing Books
Winter’s Hill Vineyard UNO Press Last week, visiting my family’s winery, one of the wonderful women who often works special events there told me she’d bought a copy of Beyond the Islands for a friend of hers who would be diving in the Galápagos. What should she tell her friend about the book? Pirates, I…
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Some River Twice
Because it’s not the same river, right? But it’s a river all the same–another river, or the same pebbled bank on a different day, or the same water, further down stream. I recently participated in a writing workshop with Gary Soto–even better, I went as my daughter’s guest; a workshop spot was part of her…
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May memories, Mayhap, May help
When I was little–four or five–we used to hang May Baskets from the doorknobs of elderly neighbors. My mother instigated this, of course, but I enjoyed filling the construction paper cones with garden flowers, placing the surprise, ringing the bell and running away. It’s not a tradition I ever tried to continue with my children.…
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Guest post tomorrow at The Blabbermouth
I’ll be guest blogging tomorrow with agent extraordinaire Linda Epstein (Associate at The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency). Linda always has something interesting to say about writing, publishing, reading, traveling. . . and talking, naturally: her blog is The Blabbermouth. I’m thinking about writing and saving, writing and frugality. A few days late, but still…
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Burnside Review Fiction Chapbook Contest
The official notice is up on the Burnside Review website, so I can spread the word far and wide myself: my sequence of linked prose poems/flash fictions, “Detours,” was chosen by Blake Butler as winner of the 2011 Burnside Review Fiction Chapbook Contest. I’ve been detouring with these words for a good while; winning the contest is…