Letting the Real You In
In the fall of 1988, when I was fourteen, on the morning of Yom Kippur my parents began to argue as we […]
Category: Posts by WROB Fellows
How True to Life this Strangeness
A few weeks ago at the Harvard Bookstore, I had the pleasure of listening to Joy Williams read from her new book of […]
To Begin at the Beginning
Yesterday (September 2) was my first day back in the classroom in twelve years. I work with first-year students enrolled in EN104—these students […]
Back to School
No one ever told me that I’d still have back-to-school nightmares, long after I’d actually finished school. Or that when September rolled around, my back-to-school nightmares would take me back to […]
The Writer-Detective Team
A writing mentor once told me, “To be a writer [of memoir] is to be a very good detective.” Like a detective, […]
On Floating
Here are a number of indecisions—if they can be called that—that have plagued me lately. Whether I felt like typing or writing […]
Keeping Records
When I spent two weeks at the VCCA last year, I wrote poem after poem after poem about Virginia—growing up there, burying […]
Thoughts on the Fourth of July
When I think of the Fourth of July, I think of stories. Fifty-nine years ago, my grandparents took advantage of cheap reception hall […]
Writers as Readers
The Writers’ Room of Boston held its annual reading on June 9, featuring members and fellows reading from their works-in-progress in a […]
Artist Self
Several years ago I wrote a few short stories, one after another, that each had some kind of artist for a protagonist. […]