Margaret Renkl surveys a complex, confounding region
…writing life as a poet. In her 2018 column eulogizing John Prine, she focuses on “Paradise,” which may be his best-known song. It’s a lament for a lost Eden destroyed…
Book Excerpt: Focal Point
Penelope Looks Back You know, I thought you were a fool, and if I were lovely and clever, I wouldn’t wait, idle behind shrouds while my probably dead, definitely faithless,…
When is it time to let go of a book?
…I know all there is to know about writing. The exact opposite is the truth. I have found the best approach to writing fiction is to convince yourself that you…
A life bird
According to the notes in my old National Geographic bird guide, on November 8, 1980, I saw a trumpeter swan at the Crabtree Nature Center in Barrington Hills, Illinois. A…
Standing along the fragile edge
…teaches writing at the Washington-Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis. She says the book came out of conversations with psychoanalysts and writers interested in the connection between writing process and analysis. Near…
An accidental food writer looks for lessons from the canon
…from businesses to food justice nonprofits. Because food writing — or for that matter, all writing — is really about people. *** ~Lesson 4: Be careful with people’s lives. That’s…
