Writing
My writer friend Debbie Daniel and I talk about my book, Everybody Here is Kin, in Columbia, S.C., December 2023.
I wrote several versions of Everybody Here is Kin before settling on its two main characters' perspectives. Lucille is a bossy 13-year-old. Will is a wary, suspicious 30-year-old. In early drafts, smitten with Haruf's multiple-narrator strategy, I tried it, too, but the novel felt choppy and chaotic. I rewrote Lucille's chapters, switching from third-person-close to first person, the "I" narrator, the closest possible point of view from which to tell a character's story. I then rewrote Will's chapters from his first-person perspective.
Totality
In 1970, the total eclipse opened my universe. I recorded thoughts on "Totality" for WVTF
In 1989, the white supremacists seemed a dying breed
Geronimo
Short story, shortlisted for the Ron Rash prize
Laser Vision
In Transit
Short Story, Cville Weekly 2015 fiction prizewinner
Caretaking the Culture
Art museums are a public good. How do they survive?
Attacks on Reproductive Rights Harm Women's Health and Rob their Constitutional Rights
"The Supreme Court's June overrule of Roe v. Wade denies women the right to control their bodies. Those privacy rights are constitutionally guaranteed—to women and men—by the 14th Amendment, the same amendment that underpinned the Court's original decision affirming women's right to abortion."