We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest. — Horace The bathroom remodel is coming along fine, and thanks for…
Guest Post: Loving-Kindness for Writers by Jessica Demarest
Confession: I’m obsessed with yoga. I took my first yoga class three years ago, and I’ve been hooked ever since. As obsessions usually do, my yoga practice has seeped into my everyday life in more ways than one. More often…
Guest Post: Making Piñatas and Making Time by Eva Langston
When I was a kid, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas stretched, becoming magical and seemingly endless. Each day my brother and I opened a paper window on our Advent calendar to reveal a tiny square of the hidden picture….
Guest Post: Why Some People are Still Afraid of the ‘L’ Word by Lyndsey Ellis
I remember the first time I had the guts to tell someone I wanted to be a writer. I was a sophomore in college. At the time, my horrible grades in math weren’t enough to help me transition into one…
Guest Post: A Late Bloomer’s Guide to Publishing by Chelsey Drysdale
Until I walked into a UCLA Extension personal essay class in January 2013 when I was 39-years-old, I was an unpublished perfectionist with a fear of failure so debilitating I hadn’t written a word in two years. I was a…
A Conversation with Vanessa Blakeslee
An interview by Alicia Cole. Vanessa Blakeslee is the author of the debut novel, Juventud (Curbside Splendor, 2015), hailed by Publisher’s Weekly as a “tale of self-discovery and intense first love.” Her story collection, Train Shots (Burrow Press) won the…
Guest Post: Creating a Handmade Life by Shavawn M. Berry
When I finished my Master’s degree eighteen years ago, I had this Virginia Woolf-ish daydream of living in a cottage overlooking the sea – windows open to the salty air – companionship and solitude in perfect measure. I dreamed of…
Guest Post: Revision: Knowing When to Swing the Darlings-Axe by Allie Gove
One of the first things that really struck me to hear from a writing teacher was this: “there is no good writing, only good re-writing.” As a first semester student in my first Intro to Creative Writing class (because yes,…
Guest Post: The Importance of Hickory-Nut Hunting by W. Royce Adams
Although I’m looking back decades into the ‘50s, I still remember my first college freshman English class assignment. I had been placed in what was then called “dumbbell English,” or Subject A, a course designed for those who didn’t qualify…
Guest Post: On Lena Dunham and Growing Up By Sarah Goncalves
Maturity has a strange way of sneaking up on you. A few years ago, I had watched the first few episodes of Girls, written by and starring girls’ girl Lena Dunham. At the time, I lauded it (as many critics…
Guest Post: Shaped by Our Childhoods by Diana Raab
Shaped by Our Childhoods “We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.” Anaïs Nin How do the events of our childhoods affect our adult passions and mold who we become? Some believe that our…
A Conversation with Rob Mosca
Interview by Alicia Cole Before being gainfully employed as a mild mannered bureaucrat toiling mindlessly in the bowels of one of Corporate America’s numerous cube farms, Rob Mosca was haunted by dreams of becoming an author. Envisioning a lush life…