I started a fire because I was sick of myself. I was discouraged and exhausted, wallowing in a humiliation that was entirely self-imposed and perhaps even imaginary. I won’t get into the details here, because the problem was that I …
Me and my dad, Spring 1974, NYC Me and my mom, Spring 1974, NYC I sometimes joke that after I die (many, many years from now) my children will say, with great tenderness, “Remember how old songs on the radio …
Shortly before the pandemic, when we still blithely breathed near strangers in small indoor spaces, I took the cat to the vet for his annual exam. (I say this so that you don’t worry about the cat, who is fine.) …
At some point in the past, you very kindly signed up to hear from me once in a while. It’s been quite some time since I last sent one of these out. Some difficult professional things happened, some difficult life …
(Go here for some background on Nick Cave’s Skeleton Tree) What do you do with a stranger’s grief? What do you do with a stranger’s grief when that stranger doesn’t feel like a stranger at all? When they have not just …
After listening to Nick Cave's Skeleton Tree for the first time… Read more »
Tomorrow, July 25th, is my husband’s birthday, and the third anniversary of my accepting Tin House’s offer to publish The Revolution of Every Day, and the seventh anniversary of my first of three miscarriages. Three days after that first miscarriage …
Hey all. It’s been a while, huh? A few days ago, I hauled a dusty cardboard box up out of the basement. It had been down there since we moved to Portland in 2007, full of cassette tapes that I …
There was a period of time—a solid three-year stretch—when I baked all of the bread my family ate, made all of our yogurt, grew most of our vegetables, picked 30+ pounds of three types of berry every summer and canned …
On Monday evening, my husband and I got all dressed up and went to the Gerding Theater here in Portland for the Oregon Book Awards. At the beginning of January I’d been named one of five finalists for the Ken …
As Mitchell S. Jackson likes to say, lit life is life Read more »
In 2010, Gail Hochman, my first literary agent, passed on The Revolution of Every Day, firing me after five years together. It felt as big as any break up, nearly as devastating as the end of my first marriage, even …