Eating has presented challenges for everyone this past year and has been one of the biggest topics of conversation. I seized the opportunity to write about it, and my abecedarium “Quesadillas in Quarantine” is recently published in the national literary magazine MORIA.
My hardships have been nonexistent, and I’m aware of my good fortune while so many have suffered so much. Best wishes to all for good health and good eating as we stagger into another difficult year.
Today’s Thursday, and tonight I’ll have pizza, as I have on alternate Thursdays throughout the age of Covid; and that’s what I wrote about–more or less–in a single-sentence mind gush that muses and fuses on the way things are and how we adapt, because what else can we do?
“Pizza on Thursday, or, the isness of what is” is recently published in the Fall-Winter issue of Sleet Magazine.
A bean counter counts beans; a nitpicker picks nits. My recently published essay in Hobart is “In Praise of Bean Counters.”
If, like me, you are one, here’s to you; if not, maybe this will give you an appreciation for the detail-oriented among us.
Things to do during the long early days of quarantine: bake bread, read Proust, re-watch all 22 seasons of Midsomer Murders, assemble a 2000-piece jigsaw puzzle, do workouts and/or yoga on Zoom, learn a language.
For better or for worse, and in spite of past failures, I tackled the latter and here’s my story: “Subjunctive Mood” was published in the Fall 2020 issue of DOOR = JAR: Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine.
This is a true story of sorts, but not mine. My friend Eva may remember telling me about her trip to Paris some years ago for a friend’s milestone birthday. I’ve hung onto the idea all these years, tried to turn it into a personal essay, then forgot about it until I found it in my slush pile & redeemed it.
Here’s “Autumn in Paris,” my first published fiction after 90+ essays, in the current issue of Burningwood Literary Journal.
Had I written this a few months later I could have included a section on pandemic hair–long & straggly, telltale roots–but this was from before, & I’m happy to have “My Hair, Myself” published in the summer issue of Eclectica.
A trifle for tense times that might find you humming “The Age of Aquarius.”
A group called Writers and Artists Under Quarantine started “How We Are” back in May, a place for people to check in and reflect, ponder, philosophize, kvetch, whine, opine and otherwise post pandemic prose and poetics. Here’s mine.
And you can click on How We Are (upper left corner) to see what a couple of hundred others have to say … or add your own!
What do Manhattan, southeast England, and Wichita Kansas have in common? Find out in “Cities I Never Lived In”, published in the Spring-Summer issue of South 85 Journal.
My latest work, “What remains”, has just been published in the June issue of Anti-Heroin Chic.
In memory of my grandson, Cory Williams.
I wrote this piece when I was still relatively new to the game but had celebrated my first handful of publications. I was familiar with Lorrie Moore’s “How to Become a Writer,” but as a late bloomer I’d done it my way, so I gave the topic a new twist from my vantage point.
“How to Become a Writer After Sixty” was originally published in Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative, which ceased publication a while back, so I’m happy to see it given a new lease on life in this re-airing by our very own San Diego Writers, Ink.
