March 2014 – The Trailer Park MFA

Losing Faith

For me, the loss of my faith was much like gaining it. Something outside my control, like a storm blowing in. And this frightened me when it happened. Growing up Mormon, I had been taught that faith is a virtue. And virtues, by definition, can be chosen. Cultivated. Integrity, loyalty, honesty, charity. But faith, it turnsContinue reading “Losing Faith”

All in the Family

I imagine my mother at my age. A little older. Maybe 36. It’s all she has left, she tells herself. And then she flips the switch. The motor hums. And she leans into the sharp light at her sewing machine and plows another seam. One woman mattered to my mother more than any other: herContinue reading “All in the Family”

Just Another Cupcake Mishap

I first discovered Seattle’s cupcake culture five years ago, on a display table in a Queen Anne grocery store. Cupcake Royale packages single and double cupcakes in boxes color-coded with childhood memories of Baskin Robbins’s circa 1986–those brown cartons crowned with polka dots of alternating pink and brown. It was love at first sight. Under the little cellophaneContinue reading “Just Another Cupcake Mishap”

Circa 1939

Grandpa Ellis didn’t talk about the time he spent riding the rails. He didn’t talk much at all. He’d come of age in the company of hungry, hollow-eyed men, and he’d learned their silence well. Latched on like barnacles to the roofs of freight cars, they clicked off the miles of open country. He diedContinue reading “Circa 1939”