Last week, I had the privilege of teaching at the Antioch Writers’ Workshop in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and what a wonderful teaching experience it was. I got to see some old friends while also making a number of new ones. The participants were smart, engaged, generous . . .and they even laughed at my snail…

Because I’ll be gone next week, teaching at the Antioch Writers’ Workshop in Yellow Springs, Ohio, I’ve decided to post an extra entry this week. Here’s a snippet from the keynote address I’ll be making tomorrow evening in Yellow Springs. Each year, in July, my thoughts turn to my father, and I’m swept back to…

I received a triumphant message from a friend this morning about a breakthrough with the memoir she’s writing. She reports “a strange and wonderful happening,” the shedding of tears as she wrote, tears that came from the clear memory of her at a previous time, a time retrieved through the careful cataloging of specific concrete…

Summertime and the reading is easy. It’s that time when I can read the books I never find time to get to during the school year. I can range far and wide, from Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys, to Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, to a re-reading of The Great Gatsby, to Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful…

I’m lying on my left side while the technician moves the transducer over my bare chest. Nine months after my stroke, and six months after my PFO closure, I’ve come to see whether the occluder that my cardiologist implanted over the hole in the septum between my atria is doing what it’s supposed to do,…

I just got back from teaching at The Sun magazine’s three-day writing retreat in Rowe, MA. The retreat is called “Into the Fire: The Sun Celebrates Personal writing.” In all my sessions, but particularly in the last one that I offered on Saturday night, I invited participants to walk into that fire to see what…

From time to time, I hear someone comment on what they consider to be the ugliness of the Midwest–the flat, agricultural land that for them holds no beauty or charm. Here, in a photo essay, is my response. In early summer, the wheat starts to change from green to gold. I remember going with my…

The Columbus Dispatch recently ran a feature on the area’s scholar-athletes who are about to graduate from high school. They all responded to a series of interview questions. I took particular notice of the question that asked them to name their least favorite class. More than a few said that English was their least favorite…

Is it just me, or is it true that somewhere along the line we became a culture that values (nay, practically demands) the snark? You know what I’m talking about, that sharp-tongued voice that cuts to the quick, that often mean-spirited comment meant to belittle. We hear it on our television shows and in our…

When I was in the first grade, my class took a field trip to Santa Claus Land, an amusement park in southwestern Indiana. My mother gave me a quarter in case I had need of it. Maybe I’m thinking about this because it’s Mother’s Day, or maybe because this happened in May when it was…