“Rapture Basement,” the first short story I’ve written in well over a decade, is out from Narrative Magazine today. It arrived in a great rush this summer, and I think of it as a kind of fictional fraternal twin to my Baffler essay, “Taking T for Jesus.”
In a recent newsletter, I wrote about (what I see as) the necessity of moving away from the idea of cities as “not nature” or “the opposite of nature.” I connect this binary, for many of us at least, to the far-ranging effects of fundamentalist conceptions of the Earth as a waiting room for heaven. Here’s part of what I . . .
In my latest newsletter: my mom and stepdad finally have their power back in Asheville after a scary couple of weeks, and in celebration I shared this photo of the two of them from 1983. Also: writing election postcards; some tried-and-true soup recipes; audiobook recommendations; gathering in (remote) community on Sunday nights for Sebene Selassie’s Making Sacred Space; cultivating attuned . . .
There is truly nothing more fulfilling to a writer than knowing your book found a reader who connects with it as something longed-for. And this week I learned that it’s even more exhilarating if the reader pulls out a quote from the book that describes the motivation for writing it. On Instagram, the writer Leah De Forest did just that! . . .
I’ll be appearing remotely this Friday, October 18, as part of Narrative Healing’s in-person “Listen to Your Ancestors” weekend retreat at the beloved Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, led by Lisa Weinert, with Jamia Wilson, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, and Kim Thai. I’ll be teaching on writing about ancestors as a transformative and even sacred practice.