In advance of this week’s midterm election, I find myself recalling an Election Day from my childhood. I must have been somewhere between five and seven because we still lived on our farm in southeastern Illinois. These were the years in the aftermath of the farming accident that cost my father both of his hands…

At dinner last night with a group of our neighbors, the story and joke telling began. We’d already discussed the unsettling state of the country in a time of hatred and intolerance. We’d shaken our heads and sat in silence in recognition of the tremendous feeling of powerlessness that so often steals over us these…

Last week, I was on the road for a few appearances: The Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, the River Styx Reading Series in St. Louis, and the public library in my home county in southeastern Illinois. Whenever I’m in this part of Illinois, I spend my days writing on a laptop in the library’s…

Yesterday, Cathy and I went bowling with some of my MFA creative nonfiction writers. I’d told everyone in advance that they’d have to arrive with assumed names—bowling names, if you will. They took the task seriously, and just like that we created our alter egos. In other words, we created second or different versions of…

Here at the end of Banned Books Week, I’m reminded of a time when my mother bought two boxes of books at an auction and shared them with me. This was in the town of Sumner, Illinois, population 1,000. I went to a high school where there only thirty-seven kids in my freshman class. By…

This morning at the YMCA, a man I didn’t know asked me, “What did Mr. Cheever write?” I had no idea how this man knew I had any knowledge whatsoever of John Cheever. “I read the quote on the back of your shirt,” the man said. I realized, then, I was wearing a tee-shirt from…

It’s a rainy day here in the Midwest, a perfect day for staying inside and doing. . .well. . . doing nothing. It’s the sort of day that doesn’t make good material for a narrative. A sleepy day with not much from which to make a scene. Whether we’re writing fiction or memoir, our narratives…

On Labor Day, I like to give thanks for the fact that I’m able to spend a good portion of my time moving words about on the page. When I left college between my junior and senior year, I worked for a year and a half in the press room at a tire repairs manufacturing…

We’re making the turn to autumn, and with it many parents are sending their children off to college. For them, it’s a thrilling time, not unlike the feeling we writers get when we start a new project. The beginning is also just a bit nerve-wracking, and at times downright scary. It comes with equal measures…