July 22, 2019
Thrown to the Weeds
Last Sunday, I picked wild black raspberries in my backyard. The berries were tiny, dark, and prickled with miniscule seeds. Sweet. As I plucked berries from the bush, I thought […]
April 23, 2019
The Story of My Life
When I started reading Educated, Tara Westover’s memoir of growing up in rural Idaho as a Mormon survivalist with no foundation of formal education, I was captivated by the chance to […]
April 5, 2018
An Interview With Leslie Jamison
Caroline Hagood: In The Recovering you braid literary criticism, memoir, and cultural criticism in an innovative manner. How do you see these different strands interacting with and enriching one another? […]
February 15, 2018
Uncle Jack and the Three Georges
Oscar Elmer had never liked his name. The moment he enlisted in the military to fight fascists as a young man, he told the recruiting officer to call him Jack. […]
February 6, 2018
Stripped
“You gonna clean my balls?” my grandmother asks, slowly sliding into the closest espresso stained wooden chair. I hold my breath. She sees. “Somebody’s got to do it & damn […]
September 11, 2017
Joseph Brodsky, the Incredible Star: An Interview with Ellendea Proffer Teasley
Let’s be honest: as writers, we sometimes fantasize about writing a bestseller. We daydream that the book we worked so hard to craft goes on to receive national press and […]
August 23, 2017
Charlottesville Fabulous
My big brother lives in Charlottesville. We grew up together in Groveport, Ohio, rode the bus with a girl whose dad was a Columbus cop, whose grandfather was a World […]
June 20, 2017
Strippers and Lost Tampons: In Defense of Women’s “Personal” Writing
A New Yorker article recently declared the death of the personal essay, but I won’t be attending the funeral. The article’s author, Jia Tolentino, identifies personal writing with women and […]
June 16, 2016
Expecting Something Else: an interview with poet A.M. O’Malley
Like all great writers, A.M. O’Malley’s work defies easy categorization. She’s a poet who often writes prose; a memoirist who writes such evocative, lyrical passages that they can only be […]
June 8, 2016
What Life Is All About
Just finished Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. Here are four things the sordid, elegant, contemplative, coke-infused pages of this wonderful book made me want to do: […]
November 30, 2015
A Moveable Funeral
Sales of Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast spiked in the wake of the Paris terror attacks. The media has framed it as a book that captures the dream of Paris, […]
April 24, 2015
a Chamber – to be Haunted –
“The only way to be honest is to be haunted,” says poet Joseph Lease, closing a panel exploring “Where Art & Activism Meet” on Saturday, April 11th, the final panel […]