Dear Mark

Dear Mark, Here is my reflection of Dear Layla, I thought at first that I should apologize for the scatter-brained style of writing I’m sure this letter will take. Then I thought, he probably doesn’t…

Reading/Writing/Seeing

for Emily, Kelley, and Lindsay 1. In reality every reader is, while she is reading, the reader of her own self.  The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to…

It’s About

As I offer to share a 250-page novel/collage (Dear Layla/Welcome to Palestine) With a friend here and there A typical question is– “What’s it about?” OK It’s about good mimesis It’s about memory, resistance and…

Writing To Wake Up Course

Writing to Wake Up: A Course in Creativity and Community Think about it: Even with all our technologies and modes of communication, who has enough time?  And yet, we need time, as community activist Grace…

Epistolary Ecstasy

A while back, I read a selection of letters of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: Hand-written, wild-typed marvels and postcards, written and sent from around the world—on work, books, loves, life, loss, Dharma, and gossip….

Writing at the CWE BC

Our Writing to Wake Up class is meeting next Thursday 19 April  to hold our weekly session at the Saint Louis Bread Company at 4561 Forest Park Avenue in the Central West End. We go…

Nawal El Saadawi: Uncalled-for-boldness

This year I have invited people to participate in an Arab Writers in Translation Reading Circle. Last month, several friends and I met to discuss Egyptian writer Nawal El-Saadawi’s 1983 Memoirs from the Women’s Prison,…

One Day

When you are twenty-seven And at last done Done DONE with medical school We should do a marathon/festival of words Reciting poetry to each other Then writing off of the lines of Neruda, Szymborska And…