When I picked up Sukey Forbes’ new memoir, The Angel in My Pocket, my first thought was, “Oh, another memoir about grief.” It’s not that I don’t appreciate grief-focused memoirs. In fact, they’ve been a lifeline for me in the four years since losing my ex-fiancé. Even though my own loss was due to separation, not death, I’ve found comfort and…
Originally posted on Wood Lake Publishing's blog:
Photo courtesy of Donna Sinclair by Donna Sinclair A long long time ago I was a mystic. I remember it well. I was about five years old. We lived on an island in Lake Temagami. My father had placed me in the bow of the rowboat, and…
We’ve all had one or two of those dreams that turn out to be eerily similar to an event we later experience. Or those times when we start thinking about someone right before they call. Some of these episodes are easy to dismiss as coincidences, but other times the correlation is so striking that it…
There are not many books I’ve read more than once. While my appetite for the written word is pretty much insatiable, I’m generally hungry for something new. Fortunately, this is not as much of a vice in reading as it would be in other spheres of life. But every now and then, a book comes along that inspires in me a…
Whether you’re an aspiring or accomplished writer, you’ve likely had moments (or years at a time) when you’ve worried that you just didn’t have what it takes. I certainly have. I’m a very methodical and analytic person, and for a long time, I thought that these personality traits might prevent me from ever producing a compelling piece of…
The Summer 2014 issue of The Baltimore Review is now available online. On its site, you can read not only one of my recent flash nonfiction pieces, “Cop Cars,” but also some excellent poetry and fiction from writers around the country. My favorite pieces from this issue include: Vincent Poturica’s short story “Habte,” about an Eritrean immigrant at a child’s…
My favorite part of reading blogs is discovering extremely gifted writers whose self-published books I might never otherwise have heard of. My most recent ecstatic find is Natalie Burg, author of the hilarious, page-turning memoir Swedish Lessons. An ambitious but slightly directionless 23-year-old fresh out of a soul-crushing romantic relationship, Burg is offered a position as…
I am scandalously happy. The sun is setting in a pink sky, the May breeze is turning slightly cool, and I’m sitting on my front steps gazing at the abandoned field just beyond my front lawn and reveling in this surprising truth that unveiled itself moments ago. Why ‘scandalously’, you ask? Well, because it’s kind of a scandal to be happy in…
Perhaps you’ve read about this experiment from the 1980s: Subjects were told, “Linda is thirty-one years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in antinuclear demonstrations.” Then they were asked to estimate which further statement…
What would it take for you to be content? For a long time, I thought all I needed was a loving husband, a warm home, a bunch of animals, and a publication with my name on it. Then the day came when I had all those things, and I found myself wanting more. More animals. Bigger…
Those who know of my intense interest in near-death experiences and past-life memories might be surprised to discover that, not so long ago, I was an atheist. Four years ago, I didn’t believe in a higher power and I didn’t believe in life after death. I had given up all those “spiritual” beliefs around age twenty, when I…
“[B]eing trailer park trash doesn’t preclude intelligence.” If only we lived in a world where this was not news. If only we lived in a world where this was not something a person could prove only by discarding the way of speaking they grew up with and adopting “standard” English. But we don’t live in that world. And that’s what…
I don’t care how many friends you have or how many heart-to-heart talks you manage with your loved ones, I think we all have moments when we feel alone. Moments when we’re stuck inside an emotion that we don’t see any possibility of sharing. Or when we’re thinking thoughts we have no way to convey. These are…
“You will learn that when the truth isn’t pretty, expected, or delivered with a fair dose of charm, people will almost always put their faith in a lie.” So reads one of many chilling lines in H.G. Beverly‘s recently released memoir The Other Side of Charm, about her unwitting marriage to a sociopath. Before her marriage to…
I had the suspicion, when I ordered Anita Moorjani’s memoir Dying to Be Me, that it was going to be a book that I needed to own in hardback. Something told me it would become one of those books I would keep on my shelf for years as a souvenir of an important spiritual and intellectual turning point.…
