Mystery and the Unknown: Talking with Lauren Haldeman
Lauren Haldeman discusses her most recent poetry collection, Instead of Dying, making poetry accessible, and being open to the surprising possibilities of form.
...moreLauren Haldeman discusses her most recent poetry collection, Instead of Dying, making poetry accessible, and being open to the surprising possibilities of form.
...moreRenee Simms discusses her debut collection, Meet Behind Mars, leaving law to become a writer, and writing through major life changes.
...more[O’Connell’s] baby, once born, is not the answer to any question, but rather the genesis of a thousand new ones.
...moreLeslie Jamison discusses The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, understanding that every text is incomplete, and whether motherhood has changed her writing.
...moreAndrea J. Buchanan discuss The Beginning of Everything and processing trauma through narrative.
...more[S]quint at the story one way and you see a woman’s life hollowed out by the very privilege that allows her to coast; look at it from another angle and you see a regular person living a multi-faceted, flawed life.
...moreFor Sarah A. Chavez, the body works as a site of difference and violence, but also magic and wisdom.
...moreIs there a relationship between the violence that came through me, and the violence that came at me?
...moreI do the best I can to reach out to those I see isolated or disturbed, but I have to also be careful I don’t make myself a target.
...morePoet and novelist Kim Fu discusses her new novel, The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore, how poetry impacts her fiction, and the expectations that accompany a book about lost children.
...more“[T]here was something really empowering about being honest and open about this part of myself. Somehow, writing helped lessen the shame.”
...moreWomen grooming their daughters to be good housewives teach them how to cook, no? A woman grooming her daughter to be something else in the world would keep her out of the kitchen.
...moreI’m still working on this balance, and given that I only have about eighty or ninety years tops to get it right, I doubt I ever will.
...moreWe want your essays on mothering outside the margins!
...moreShe said something to me, then, that has been a great comfort. “You had a choice,” she said, “but you did not have free will.” A choice that was no choice at all.
...moreI have become the nanny. I hope my nanny is getting some good writing done.
...moreBroken people are drawn to other broken people. Comparing scars. Laying belly to belly. Two similar pieces of different puzzles.
...moreWe want to protect our children from everything, even sometimes ourselves.
...more“One of my core beliefs is that, by sharing our stories, we come to understand each other more and build empathy.”
...moreMary Jo Salter discusses her latest collection, The Surveyors, writing about the domestic as a feminist act, and how her title poem came from someone else’s dream.
...more“Becoming an essayist has always seemed to me as a bit of a pratfall.”
...more“That’s right: George Bailey needs to chill. Don’t @ me.”
...moreCan you see it now? Is the image different in your mind yet? A thing you can’t unsee.
...morePraise the family that tethers me. Praise the well-used kitchen utensils and scoured mixing bowls and butter knives, thick slabs of jelly on the bread.
...moreWhat makes him think she’s in any less pain? Because hers isn’t prolonged by uncertainly, isn’t moored by hope.
...moreThe female body here is as palpable as image. As the images and objects transform, so does the female’s body.
...moreIt makes sense to me that Johnny Appleseed, a man, would travel God’s earth spreading his profligate seed. And then women are doomed to their lives trying to make that seed into something useful.
...moreMegan Stielstra discusses her new essay collection, The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, fear, privilege, and the intersection of politics and everyday life.
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