National Poetry Month: Day Three

In honor of Opening Day, a baseball poem by Kate Glavin from Hobart, which publishes great baseball poetry, fiction and nonfiction.   Men Try to Teach You Things you already know. Never take the first pitch. Never buy a glove too … [Read more...]

National Poetry Month: Day 2

Of course, Wendell Berry is wise enough to understand that a marriage is a kind of place, home made flesh and walking about the earth.   The Country of Marriage I. I dream of you walking at night along the streams of the country of … [Read more...]

Whatever It Takes

You read a lot of writers who talk about the need to write every day. At first you don’t believe them. At least I didn’t. Every day? Writing isn’t supposed to be a chore. It’s something you do for fun. It’s art. Inspiration. Blah, blah, … [Read more...]

My year in writing

2015 has been a year of contrasts where my writing life is concerned, with some great accomplishments and excitement alongside a lot of reflection and re-thinking. Here are some of the highlights: My Chapbook!!! Here's the excitement and … [Read more...]

About The Face of Major League Baseball (and my dad)

My story, “The Face of Major League Baseball,” is out now in a chapbook from WhiskeyPaper Press along with two other short stories. The story will also appear in Volume 28:2 of CALYX Journal. I’m very excited about both of these things. The … [Read more...]

On (sort of) not writing

We’re a month into the semester, and I’m still not submitting any new writing. I’m down to nine pieces in my queue. I’m kind of excited about letting that number go down to zero for the first time in two years, though there’s no telling how long … [Read more...]

On not submitting

I haven’t submitted any new writing to a magazine or journal since mid-June, which is just three months, but seems much longer. I didn’t arrive at the decision to stop submitting after long soul-searching and contemplation. I felt burned out. … [Read more...]

About “How to Preserve Food for the Winter”

It's September and the windows are open and the air coming in is just cool enough to make me contemplate a sweater or fuzzy socks. Fall is creeping in and that seems like a perfect time to write about my essay in the Little Fiction/Big Truths … [Read more...]

About “The River Fell”

A little bit about my story at WhiskeyPaper, "The River Fell." Fast Facts First draft written: September 2014 Number of drafts written: 2-3 Number of rejections: 0 From submission to publication: 3 months The idea I go through … [Read more...]

iTunes and the Block

I've never been much of a believer in writer's block. Like Neil Gaiman himself, I always have several projects going at once. If I find myself struggling with one project, I move to another for a while. It's a scattered kind of approach and I know it … [Read more...]