BRUSSELS SPROUTSA CAUTIONARY TALE Photo Courtesy of Jodi Pender 0:00 / 0:00 Brussels Sprouts I used to have impossibly high hopes for family holiday dinners. I blame Norman Rockwell. Remember his painting of a well-dressed family gathered around a flawlessly set table? The children, parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents sit shoulder-to-shoulder, admiring an unpardoned turkey […]
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THE CELESTIAL VAULT Photo Courtesy of Unsplash Years ago, I read a book that animated and forever changed my creative process. In The Mind of the Maker, Dorothy Sayers says, “It is a universal experience that a work of art has no existence apart from its translation into material form.” That is, people think a
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KILLER ANGELS Our first Christmas tree was a pine branch stuck into a white plastic milk jug. That year, we’d been married for only two months when I came down with meningitis in mid-November. Distracted by my potential imminent demise, my husband, Bruce, did not attempt to decorate. So, on Christmas Eve, a friend
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DREAMING BIGGER 0:00 / 0:00 Dreaming Bigger MEDIUM just published this essay. You can read it below. A while ago, a video made the rounds on Face Book. In it, a virtual Santa on a large screen greeted passengers in an airport lobby. As the folks had their tickets scanned, the Santa asked what
SEARCHING FOR ARTHUR’S STONE Photo Credit Simon Godfrey This story was first published in the Virginia Quarterly Review. Between grief and nothing I will take grief. William Faulkner Rain splattered against the windshield of the van. The glass fogged. Meg fumbled with buttons on the unfamiliar dashboard, trying to find the defrost. After turning on
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REQUIEM FOR ONE TUBA Photo Courtesy of Nathan Bingler This short story was published by the Virginia Quarterly Review. REQUIEM IN B Flat MAJOR FOR ONE TUBA The old lady stood so close I felt her hot breath on my neck. Her cramped apartment was filled to overflowing: moving boxes stacked on end, brass
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TRIAGEA SHORT STORY Photo Courtesy of Daniel Ramierez My short story, TRIAGE, won first place in THE HOOK fiction contest. You can read it below. TRIAGE Thursday Night (Emma) Upstairs in bed, Emma hears the front door creak. She stiffens. It’s Alex coming in late. She listens to him open the refrigerator. Something tumbles
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HOLDING VIGIL:FOSTER CARE Photo Courtesy of Atharva Tulsi 0:00 / 0:00 Holding Vigil One result of the overturn of Roe v. Wade will be that many more children will be entering foster care, a system that is already underfunded and overwhelmed. Years ago, at my first job out of college, I saw firsthand how a
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IN DARKNESS AS IN LIGHT Painting by John Nicolay My short fiction just won first place in the Virginia Writers BLUE NIB contest and was published in the Journal of the Blue Ridge 2022. You can read it below. (Warning: the story deals with both domestic and child abuse.) IN DARKNESS AS IN LIGHT The
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CHA CHA REAL SOMOOTHMOVIE REVIEW When I heard that 25-year-old, Cooper Raiff, wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the quirky, indie film, Cha Cha Real Smooth, I had low expectations. I remembered suffering through two ponderous movies where Clint Eastwood and Denzell Washington directed their own acting. In both cases, the camera lingered much too
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