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Published in The Coachella Review, January 2022 burning The wind brings in the morning even sooner than the birds. It’s covered in smoke. One sniff— clean-moist-grass    dirt-tumbled-down-from-the-night-before peeling-eucalyptus    the-promise-of-heat —All the smells are smudged with ash. Fire. Not here, but close enough. There’s no direction it’s not. Enough reason for me to get […]

Before I left for my writing retreat in Lake Arrowhead, courtesy of the Yefe Nof California Residency, I was warned by some that around the one-week mark of being solo I would go stir-crazy from the isolation and want to run screaming down the mountain. Perhaps they didn’t take into account my monastic tendencies, but I’m happy to […]

“I wish I had more time to write.” Every writer’s constant refrain. Lack of time is the giant impediment standing between you and your finished project. But what if that obstacle were lifted? What if all the appointments, chores, niggling errands, and social interactions were wiped away from your daily calendar, and you had nothing but time to devote to your writing? What would happen then?

I’m about to find out.

Let’s do a little time traveling, shall we? Twenty-six years ago, I debuted my adaptation of Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time at Lifeline Theatre in Chicago. In a couple of weeks, a new version of that adaptation will begin previews at Lifeline. It’s hard to believe that more than a quarter of a century separates the current […]

This is the best time. Writing. Well, maybe not writing. Some writing, pre-writing. Research. Jotting down ideas, startling plot twists, random thoughts. Imagining lists of songs on a phantom iphone. Plucking out interesting faces from the past, recalling scraps of conversations that never happened, creating families that have never existed, but were always there, waiting. The […]

Just saw Kubo and the Two Strings. It was created by Laika, an inventive, quality studio I have always loved (they also created the movies Coraline and Paranorman) It’s a gorgeous movie set in ancient Japan, with an imaginative plot, a few surprising twists, and and an emotional heft not usually found in your usual popcorn fare. It […]

Sometime over the last week there has been a rustling of dark wings inside your chest, a presentiment, and you suddenly realize why: it will soon be your book’s first birthday.

Just when I thought I was out… I’m in Chicago, sitting in a frigid theater in the middle of the afternoon at the end of summer, watching a steady succession of actors strut and fret their way across the stage while their photographic counterparts smile beatifically up at me in stacks piled up in the aisle, and […]