WRITING
"Demon Feeding" • Non-Fiction
Arts & Letters, Fall 2019, issue 39 •Non-Fiction Prize
You can't know whether speaking your shame aloud will destroy a world, or which world it will destroy. It could be yours. For years, the Army medic wanted to write about the layers of betrayal in war, but felt paralyzed each time he began. I thought it was because the subject was too vast. Then I began to write about my father. I flooded with terror.
"Errata" • Fiction
Finalist for the 2017 Algren Award, Chicago Tribune
Ken's role model was his social studies teacher, Mr. Goddard, who would openly bash the government and swoon about Constitutional law or Ben Franklin. Mr. Goddard made them all soar on a sense that they were the world's inheritors, its wizards and rescuers-to-be. His positivity had zapped through Ken. It made him feel mildly superhero, somehow perfectible.
"Greensboro Five" • Non-Fiction
Ploughshares
The image of these young Black men at a whites-only counter in Woolworth’s ignited a movement and is part of our national conscience. But this shot includes a terrified young man who has too long gone unidentified. Spencer was nineteen. He had worked at the store for five years and had advanced to working the grill. Though he knew two of the protesters from Dudley High School, he knew nothing about the planned sit-in.
"They Used to Burn Us" • Non-Fiction
Ploughshares
When Lisa told me, joyfully, that they’d decided to have the baby at home with a midwife, I took a breath before chorusing support. Because I love her, I resisted blurting my worries. “But you’re forty-one and this is your first baby. Are you sure?” It was clear she was sure. And serene.
"Literary Conversations" • Non-Fiction
About the Literary Conversation Series, volumes of complied author interviews published by University Press of Mississippi
Marquez loves Faulkner and Harrison loves Marquez and everyone loves Chekhov. “Reading Chekhov was just like the angels singing to me,” sighs Welty. Many borrow prompts from other writers. Kipling’s “Drift, wait, obey” delights Robertson Davies. The motto Kafka wrote on the wall over his bed, Warte, is Percy’s favorite. Wait, he says: You don’t have to worry, you don’t have to press, you don’t have to force the muse, or whatever it is. All you have to do is wait.
"Lawless Discipline and Other Western Charms" • Non-Fiction
Ploughshares
Nature kills without malice. I respect the deadliness of nature, which is different than liquor store shootings and failed levies and flaming towers. It just is. Only man is capable of inhumanity. Nature commands reverence and humility.
"In the Spirit of Catherine of Siena" • Non-Fiction
Ploughshares
I grew up in a small town in Michigan with thick-armed trees and noble Victorians, lush farm produce, a turn of the century Opera House. It’s leafy, kind, conservative, and typically Midwestern but for the blessed Adrian Dominicans–a tribe of women I sorely wish were running the world.
"Sentences as Witchcraft" •
Non-Fiction
Ploughshares
There’s a famous exchange between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, in which Fitzgerald prescribes moderation, invoking Flaubert as tutorial. “Don’t forget, Scott,” replies Wolfe, “that a great writer is not only a leaver-outer but also a putter-inner.”
"Tigerella Needs a Home" •
Non-Fiction
Ploughshares
I’m infatuated with our neighborhood listserv. We get instant alerts on foxes or mountain lions. When a new neighbor sends the alarm that a motorized La-Z-Boy just zipped down the street, they’re assured that it’s the guys from the Burning Man house. There are posts for piano tuners, tailors, knee surgeons, house painters, sledgehammers, free furniture, strange backyard disturbances, Santa suits, and “an old carbon road fork with 1″ threadless steerers,” which surfaced today. In case you have one to spare.
"Traveling on Foot: Werner Herzog" • Non-Fiction
Ploughshares
I first saw Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe at the Music Box, a Chicago theater with faux stars overhead and a live organist between features. While Herzog stuffs garlic and herb bundles into the toe of each boot, he invokes a “real war against commercials, against talks shows” and television, then pauses to add hot sauce to the boot before lacing it.
"Eddie Johnson's Indian Summer" • Non-Fiction
Ploughshares
In addition to how to swing, how to use sound to make the music come alive, how to create texture and smoke in their notes, the young musicians in Eddie’s bands learned all the unspoken codes, things older players used to transmit on the bandstand. Show up straight, well-dressed and on time. Don’t take more choruses than the leader. Give the singer space. Don’t play two tunes back to back in the same tempo, style or key.
"The Voice Inside the Book" •
Non-Fiction
Ploughshares
My friend Pip sent an intriguing note recently. “I opened The Iliad and out fell a note from my father, written thirty-one years ago, after I had read the books for college and replaced them on his shelves. As his handwriting had nearly failed by then, the note took several hours to decipher.”
"An Evening at the Blackstone" •
Non-Fiction
The Antioch Review, Summer 1999
On stage now were Clark Terry and Louie Bellson, Red Holloway. Bellson had a beatific grin. Then Terry started singing the bass player's solo's notes back to him - eye to eye, both of them grinning - till the bassist strummed a thumb-thick chord and Terry fell back on his stool, laughing. Later, he quoted "Salt Peanuts" in the thick of "Green Dolphin Street.
"A Jury of One's Peers: Flunking out of Jury Duty" • Non-Fiction
Chicago Reader
I push past hot-dog carts and curbside vendors into the Criminal Court Building, where a scruffy hand-written sign directs women to the left, men to the right, through metal detectors and X-ray machines and periodic friskings. Other signs prohibit things like magic markers and "seriously short shorts."
"Like Love, Valentines are Ever Changing" • Non-Fiction
(The people who pen Hallmark's valentines),
Chicago Tribune
Linda Elrod's cubicle is as homey as a lived-in den, full of plants and pillows. Along one of the half-walls sits her Troll collection. Across from it, there's a misty print of a country road, a British flag, a Mr. Smiley Face hanging by its feet.