Articles

To be driven by—aside, even before physical
hunger; to be driven—above all, perhaps—by a force
more basic and fierce: the need, as tidal

Kataleya, the word of the day the day
you were born was inveigle, in case you ever
want to know. You can pronounce it vay-guhl

I remember the land less brutal, less
crowned in shotgun shells,

We were traveling in Melbourne Australia back in January of 2018. The location was at the entrance to the Melbourne Museum of Art. The image was made looking through a window that had water running down on the outside.

I’ve kept writing because I don’t know a better way to regularly orient myself to the world. It realigns the cells and makes the world manageable.

What’s kept me writing is the inability to shake it off, and my continual interest in deconstructing and reconstructing the world on the page. People, motivations for action, control, and the natural world are themes and areas which I habitually return to and pull from, although not always directly.

I love stories. I love hearing them. I love reading them. I love telling them.

Epiphanies come when I am doing something else.

The impulse to break silence compels me to the page. I write to interrupt self-imposed silences and the silences of family and culture. This impulse is the most significant impulse in my life, and I write every day.

Years ago it occurred to me that my children could never imagine what my childhood was like, so I began to jot down “one-phrase” recollections of meaningful childhood memories.