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.
Ancestor Trouble is a finalist for the John Leonard Prize, for a first book in any genre.
Ancestor Trouble is named a best southern book of the year by Garden & Gun Magazine and a best of the year by Entertainment Weekly.
Did “y’all” originate with 17th century English poetry? A particularly interesting follow-up to my letter of recommendation for “y’all” mentions my own evolution on the word in the context of a larger argument from David B. Parker, a professor at Kennesaw State University.