Every one of us is making choices about what tiny fraction of the world’s art we’re going to spend our precious time on; I have my priorities and you have yours. I love exchanging book recommendations. This is related to, but distinct from, my passion for reading; I find it both challenging and satisfying to […]
“If I were the kind of person who could believe, I would believe.” I have been an atheist—at first, secretly, from about age 12, and then openly from my mid-20s on—long enough to know that there will always be times when I wish I still had God. I feel the absence of faith most profoundly […]
How did this happen? What part of me had managed to hold onto the idea that my vagina made my writing more trivial? I’ve written poems off and on, mostly off, over the course of more than two decades, and I’ve published them in Ploughshares,The Antioch Review, and maybe 10 other respectable literary magazines. I work […]
What’s so wrong about a happy ending? Everybody who loves “chick lit” knows that it has an entirely undeserved reputation for being frivolous and silly. It seems this label is bestowed by those who don’t read books in the genre. They, whoever they are, take one look at the mauve or pink book jackets and […]
