Lee Martin

In the aftermath of the recent presidential election, much blame has been put on the voters from the rural Midwest, my native land. I’ll admit this is a complicated time for me. Like many of you, I’m angry about a Trump presidency and fearful for what lies ahead. The election has made it clear how…

Let’s say you’re at a public event and you run into a couple, who also happen to be your dear friends, and let’s say you look at the man and then say with great solemnity, “You have my condolences,” and the woman says as a joke, “Why? Because he’s with me?” And let’s say the…

Over twenty-five years ago, I was working on a story that ended up being called “The Least You Need to Know.” I’d reached a point in the composition of the story where I didn’t know what would come next. This happened to me often in those days and still does to a certain extent. I’ve…

When I was in the third grade, I went trick or treating in a Bullwinkle J. Moose costume. You know the kind. It came in a box, and my mother probably bought it at a Zayre department store. It was a thin, rayon suit with a plastic mask, the kind with the elastic band that…

Our lives are made up of many strands—some of experience, some of memory, some of meditation and reflection, some of ongoing action. Those who write memoir must find the appropriate forms for ensuring that the textures of life will have their full expression. What we know about the braided essay offers us a plan for…

Flannery O’Connor famously said, “Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.” Granted, there’s probably more than a nugget of truth in what O’Connor said, but this quote has…

I’ve often reported a saying of my father’s: “If if’s and but’s were candies and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas.” For a man who didn’t read any book but the Bible, he had a way with language. His saying takes me into the land of if-only’s, and I start to think about how…

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about memoirs that don’t tell their stories in traditional narratives. Maybe they shake up chronology. Maybe they fragment it. Maybe they let it spin off into patterns of association. For the sake of convenience, I’ll call these lyric memoirs, though I suppose we could just as easily call…

I just came back from a weekend in my native southeastern Illinois where it’s harvest season. Combines are cutting soybeans and picking corn. Sixty years ago, my father made the mistake of trying to clear a clogged shucking box without first shutting down the power take-off. The spinning rollers in the shucking box pulled in…

So You Want to Be a Writer: Ten Tips for Handling Disappointment I remember a time when I was frustrated with the whole writing game because it was just too darned hard, and I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted when it came to publication. Now was that thirty years ago, or last week? My…