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.
To run or not to run. The perennial question pops up whenever I think I’ve got it figured out. The dilemma is explained here, in “When I Run,” my first published piece of 2020, appearing in the excellent online journal JMWW.
My latest essay looks back to an earlier life, happily left behind (though I still speak fluent Gregg). “Shorthand as a Second Language” was published in the Fall issue of Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine. Read it here.
Have you heard the phrase “mutton dressed as lamb”? I thought it was well known, but I’ve been surprised at how many people, even vintage models like myself, don’t know it. Good news–if you didn’t, you will now.
“Dressing the Mutton” has been published in The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review. Read my essay here, and if you don’t get the journal’s title tribute you’ll find it briefly on their “About” page or, even better, the complete passage at the beginning of Chapter 2 of The Great Gatsby.
When my daughter and I went to New York to celebrate her birthday two years ago, she took selfies and I took notes. My personal essay about three memorable trips–our “mother-daughter quality time”–was recently published in Sleet Magazine’s tenth birthday special issue. Read “Bridges” here.
This one’s for you, Jenn….
Making lemonade out of life’s lemons: my failed attempts at visual art and handiwork of any kind became material for an essay.
“Drawing Life” breathes new life in the Spring-Summer issue of Mojave River Review—read it here (at pages 57-60).
Color associations: blue–my first boyfriend’s eyes and my first new car; green–the Emerald City of Oz; little brown birds, a purple bathrobe, Antarctic white that isn’t all white; history, psychology, and Virginia Woolf.
“The Blue of Doug Wyatt’s Eyes” encompasses all this and more. It was published in the Spring-Summer issue of Concho River Review, a print journal, but you can read it here.
