Literary Reflections

Every morning starts at a deficit. The day has not even begun, and I’m already behind. I hear shouting: “I want to take a shower!” “I don’t want to take…

When people asked me when I planned to get pregnant, I used to say, “After my first book.” I’d chosen to put my energies elsewhere, and I figured publication was…

I had a routine before starting to write. First, I’d read a couple pages of a mystery, or more than a couple. I’d check email, play some solitaire, and finally…

There was a game my parents used to play at dinner parties in the farm house down the road called, “Sardines.” The game was similar to hide and seek, but…

“I think it is a way of looking at the created world and of using the senses so as to make them find as much meaning as possible in things.”…

It is the end of May, and the goat-baby (the bubble, the little being — all these nicknames to help us both be fond yet keep our distance) is eleven…

Midsummer — I am wallowing in an oppressive heat and a morning sickness that lasts all day. Maia sits on the back step with her dad eating popsicles. Through the…

Begin at the beginning. Be born to parents who read to you and buy you the whole My Bookhouse collection — blue, hardbound volumes packed with text and illustrations, stories…

In her eighth month, Ella began to acquire language. Late one afternoon, we sat together on her floor, a dozen picture blocks scattered before us. She turned one block after…

My family didn’t have much money growing up, but I always knew I could mark an “X” next to as many books as I wanted in the Scholastic catalogue. I…

When literary mama begets literary mama, the resulting journey is bound to make an interesting story. My own has been. As an adolescent, being the daughter of a well-known writer…