As If

  Recently, someone asked me why I read fiction. The way he asked it. As if reading fiction was a frivolous thing, even puerile. As if fiction didn’t corroborate, vindicate, heal, illuminate, question, relieve, clarify, shift and rip apart. As if fiction didn’t insist we climb into the membrane of another and examine thoughts, feelings, … Read more

thank you

I’ve been a hot dog vendor, a shoe salesperson, a middle-school teacher, and a catholic school principal, but owning a bookstore has given me moments with the most eclectic tribe of humans of all. There’s the crime scene cleaner who talked to me about the delicate line between detachment and sensitivity while I rang up … Read more

  dear sweet writer who recently dipped your pen back into the word waters and joined a writing group—i know you were nervous because it was your first writing group ever…i know you were worried about your grammar and that your 8th grade English teacher with her BIG FAT RED pen still loomed large on … Read more

Naked

When I first laid bare my personal writing in workshops, I puked before and after each meeting. I’m not talking about exposing my nature poems or opinions on the current state of education—I’m talking about writing with a truth stake driven through its heart. I puked before the meeting, because I had no idea how … Read more

all the stories breathe inside us

  Five decades ago, Enniscrone, Ireland. I’m in my mother’s arms, my grandmother, next to her, my sister in the arms of my grandfather, my beautiful aunt, next to him, my father behind the camera. The thousands of stories in these arms, these faces, these bodies. intimacies losses betrayals silences horrors triumphs enchantments seeping into … Read more

Inevitable.com

Sometimes, when I tell people I met my husband on Match.com they wince and act as if I’ve purchased him from Walmart, as if I’d wandered the aisles looking at shelf after shelf of men, all arranged in eye-catching displays; snazzy dentists wearing sailing shoes, bureaucrats with their sleeves pushed up, biologists rolling their own … Read more

Hooray!

    Today, a little girl, not more than six years old, came into the bookstore with her mother. While her mother perused the poetry section, the little girl bounced over to me. “Are you a writer?” she asked. “Yes, I am.” “How do you know?” she said, fingering the novels on the shelf next … Read more