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Jill Talbot reconsiders: “Is this how I slide the chair of your sturdy heart across a carpet of years and back beneath my table of regret?”
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“WordPress and blogging gave me a voice, a voice that reached a vast amount of audience which otherwise would not have been possible.” — Designer Jan Cavan Boulas on the path that ultimately led to her work at Automattic.
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I Think, Therefore I Am Getting the Goddamned Epidural
Western philosophy clashes with Rebecca Schuman’s birth plan in her hilarious, harrowing Longreads essay.
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From a tribute to Roy Halladay: “When my teammates made a big play behind me or I made a big strikeout, I didnât stand there celebrating. I didnât scream. […] I didnât jump around. Halladay didnât, so I wouldnât.”
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Walls
On teenage rebellion, thwarted: “Nothing had changed. I was still the same person with the same stupid clothes and the same baby toys. The house was still library quiet and Richard Marx was still my favorite singer.”
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Know Your Audience
“I became aware of this phenomenonâpeople believing fiction is trueâsome years before this mass delusion about a popular novel swept the nation.” At The Mendocino Humanist, Todd Walton recounts his experiences with audiences who assume his stories are autobiographical.
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Proximity MagazineProximity “is a quarterly collection of true stories exploring place, space, and connections in the modern age,” featuring solid writing and a weekly blog post to help ease the wait between issues.
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Tin HouseTin House offers an artful and irreverent array of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and interviews and covers both established authors and undiscovered writers.
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Draft by Draft: The Narrowing Lens of âStrandedâ
At Brevity, Jill Talbot, author of the memoir The Way We Weren’t, gives us a masterclass in revising our writing after rejection: “So many times, we have to get out of our essayâs way.”
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The Normal School“Weâre just sort of the lit mag equivalent of the kid who always has bottle caps, catâs eye marbles, dead animal skulls, little blue men and other treasures in his pockets.” The Normal School is a biannual publication for people who love to read.
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Betsy LernerBetsy Lerner is a literary agent and author of Bridge Ladies, The Forest for the Trees, and Food and Loathing. On her personal blog, you’ll find thoughts on writing, publishing, and more.Â
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cleaning the house, tending the weeds.
On the accretion of stuff: “And so, without siblings in whose faces we might see our pasts, and without children who reflect back to us ourselves and our future, we cling to the representational, the inanimate, the stuff to which we attach memory and meaning.”
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Goodbye Piper
Dementia took the mind of Bruce Jenkins’ mother, but it could not erase their shared love of words. “Take a book, and read to her just as she read to you.”
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The Old Green Singers
Angie recalls her family’s beat-up truck, “Old Green,” which became a concert hall on wheels as she, her mom, and her brothers sang their way through good times and bad.
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Negative Inspiration
When there was nothing else for Kevin Richard White, there was writing: “I want them to know weâre given a voice at birth. Weâre given a chance to use it. All you need is paper and time.”
Memoir Filter
