Category: Personal

  • Notes from New York

    Way back in March, I spent a weekend in New York City with a dear friend for her birthday. Since I was in town, I also met up with my agent Tina Dubois for the first time in person. It was magical. Her delicate beauty is almost as captivating as her passion and intellect, the…

  • I drove my daughter to daycare this morning, and passed the square — the heart of downtown — where three people were senselessly murdered last Thursday. I wasn’t here that day, so in some ways I don’t feel entitled to the grief and outrage that I feel. To the tears and the trembling. On the…

  • Seen on screen

    On Friday, I indulged in two movies, one on the big screen, and one on my iPad mini. Both filled my heart with joy, and made me cry several times, because of the stories themselves, and also because of what these stories mean. I haven’t stopped thinking about them all weekend, and I can’t wait…

  • WORK “Mother Courage” by James Wood In Offill’s original book: a young mother and ambitious writer, committed to her daughter and to her writing, tries to find energy and ambition for both; she must claim for writing the authority of necessity that usually attends parenthood. Art-making, unlike the great bourgeois panoply of family life, comes…

  • I had intended to post this in January, as a way of looking forward. But time sneaks by, and here we are, knocking on March’s door. Sometimes you wonder where the days and hours have gone. But in this case, I know exactly where. They’ve gone to Elmo, and flashcards, and Old MacDonald’s farm, and…