My Blog
“I thought my way through the puzzle of the poem”
My most recent interview over at Catapult focuses on Niki Herd’s poem “Bird.” "Bird" was originally published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series. Niki Herd is the author of The Language of Shedding Skin and the coeditor (with Meg Day) of Laura...
The First New Question
Through my day job, I recently had the chance to work with Angela Blanchard, the former head of BakerRipley here in Houston and an expert in community development. Angela is a big believer in appreciative inquiry: an approach that recognizes and builds on strengths...
“Putting Your Ear to the Tracks”
This month’s interview over at Catapult focuses on Leesa Cross-Smith’s short story “Whiskey & Ribbons,” which was published in Carve magazine after winning the Editor’s Choice Award for the 2011 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, and which later became a novel...
Research as Creative Practice
Eudora Welty once said, “Always be sure you get your moon in the right part of the sky.” That was always how I thought of research. Research was fact-checking. Research was stagnant. There was nothing creative about it. My approach changed ten...
Bring on the Architect
My March 2021 newsletter just went out to subscribers. To sign up, click here. This Wednesday night (March 24th), I’m teaching a virtual class on nonfiction book proposals. For a lot of people, writing a book proposal probably feels a lot like doing your taxes:...
Day by Day
My February 2021 newsletter just went out to subscribers. To sign up, click here. When my memoir came out a few years ago, I did an inventory of all the writing projects I could focus on. I had a bunch of essays in various stages of development, the first draft of a...