A few years back I attended a reading by Carolyn Jessop who had escaped a fundamentalist Mormon community. Piled her children in a van in the middle of the night and made a run for it. She’d written her memoir, published as Escape (2008), and now was reading at Third Place Books. She had receivedContinue reading “On Death and Defiance”
Tag Archives: courage
Climbing Mountains
“Oh my god.” I came home and banged my head onto my desk. “What am I doing with my life?” And thus began another episode of writerly angst. I’m not a big believer in writer’s block. But avoidance and angst? I gotcha covered. My attic room (not kidding) is a mess. Stacks of filed writing and notesContinue reading “Climbing Mountains”
Courage in All Its Forms
I love this painting. It hangs on a white wall in a spare black frame in the Museum of Modern Art at 11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan. Kazimir Malevich painted it, probably in 1912, amidst Russia’s bloody and prolonged transition from imperial state to democratic republic. With Russia’s loss of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905,Continue reading “Courage in All Its Forms”
Terror and Hope
“Make art from the places that terrify you,” my artistic mentor, Amy O, said this time last year. And it has proven good advice. Most of us have a lot of things that terrify us, and that turns out to be a good thing. If you’re an artist. But a surprising thing happens when youContinue reading “Terror and Hope”
The Trailer Park MFA 
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