Just for fun, I’m going to post an irregular series on native planting. Calling all fellow gardeners and lovers of pollinators in these parts and beyond—advice, corrections, general shooting of the shit welcome. The first installment includes Virginia rose, arrowwood viburnum, various kinds of creeping phlox, some native grasses, and a passing mention of false indigo, about which more soon.
For the New York Times Book Review, I had the honor of reviewing Leah Myers’ slender and poetic Thinning Blood, a finely crafted totem pole of a first book.
I’m offering a new stand-alone online class: Family History With Imagination. This class overlaps a little with part of the Writing About Ancestor Trouble course I offered, but is structured to allow more people to join, and will focus on cultivating imagination around tough family histories and how to draw on creativity transparently in nonfiction while prioritizing fact and being clear about how the two intersect.
I reviewed Rachel Jamison Webster’s first book, Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family, for the Washington Post Book World. I appreciated the author’s intentional, thoughtful, and inclusive approach, and also had some hesitations and came away with some questions.