May 30, 2019
Let It Be: In Memory of Wendell Mayo
Before sitting down to write this blog post, I went to the bookcase in my writing room and pulled out a tiny cloth sack of worry dolls. I hadn’t […]
September 11, 2018
Luck, Lit, & Gutter Spouts
I was twenty-three years old when I won the Hopwood Award for Poetry. A recent college grad, I lived in a leaky apartment that I’d furnished with lawn furniture and […]
June 4, 2018
Literary Wife
A few years ago, a fellow writer and I were chatting about a famous male author when she leaned in and said, “He has a literary wife, you know.” A […]
May 21, 2018
A Writer’s Capacity for Selfishness
During my time in the MFA, I met a woman a few years younger than me at the bar after a reading. She was also a writer, but not in […]
May 3, 2018
“It’s sexy, filthy, viscous, vicious. It’s religious. It’s archaic”–an interview with Montreux Rotholtz
A mélange of language by turns surreal and objective, with narrative poems intertwined with those more driven by sonics and music, Unmark is Montreux Rotholtz’s first book, and it’s a […]
August 29, 2016
‘Is that real?’: an interview with Justin Sanders
A few weeks back, I wrote about the work of emerging writer Justin Sanders. Here, Sanders takes some time to answer questions about truth and fiction, higher education, influence, and Baltimore. I’ve […]
August 20, 2016
MFA: Expectation vs. Reality
It’s mid-August, the time of year when aspiring writers all over the country are gearing up to begin MFA programs. Only three short years ago, that was me. I remember […]
August 5, 2016
Living the Dream, Taking the Pen
A friend left me a voicemail the other day. Right before she hung up, she added, out of nowhere: “I’m so happy you get to live your dream and be […]
July 26, 2016
Going Corporate: Writing After the Job Offer
Earlier this week, I visited my friend Liz Breazeale in Kansas City, where she recently moved after accepting a corporate technical writer position. In her new apartment, above her writing […]
September 2, 2015
The Daniel Swiftboating of Helen Vendler
The knives are out again for Helen Vendler. In a recent review for The Spectator, Daniel Swift accuses the poetry critic of performing a bloodless “scientific evaluation of literature.” Her […]
May 11, 2013
MFA Day Job: Ideas for Your Possible Future
A number of my conversations with writers this year have revolved around the difficulties of securing a job in the academic world. What happens if you’re a writer and can’t […]
September 15, 2011
Mix Tape: The Forest and the Trees
The biggest little poems you’ll ever see from the highway. On a much smaller scale: vintage dust jacket prints for your walls. Will Amazon create a Netflix for books? Now […]