The Discomfort of Death

Yes, death is the last frontier. In my circles, even friends who talk about sex, politics, and that most forbidden of topics, paychecks, rarely talk about the nitty-gritty of death. That’s something we save for our own private hells or heavens. This is the opening to MacKinnon’s novel, Tethered.: I plunge my finger between the folds of … Read more

JESSE, A MOTHER’S STORY: A Ferocious and Raging Love

I started Jesse, A Mother’s Story twice. The stark beauty of this memoir hit me the moment I began. Marianne Leone’s narrative, written with an unrelenting immediacy, yanked me into her world. Leone’s son Jesse owned me from his first moment on the page. By the end of the prologue, Leone had so engaged me … Read more

Fiction From Emotional Fact

  A parent’s tragedy will always influence the life of their children—often to an overwhelming degree. Writing fiction from the emotional truth of one’s past can be liberating and also confusing. How do writers use their past without being wedded to events as they happened? How do we write honestly, without spilling family secrets that … Read more

Raised by Books

Perhaps every insatiable reader has a book so thoroughly imprinted at a vulnerable age, that they carry those characters like family of the heart forever. Some marked me for horror. IN COLD BLOOD assured I’d never stay alone in a country house. Others taught me about the awful mixes of fear, revulsion, and sadness we … Read more