…and take the excellent advice of Mavis Staples. One and all, y’all.
Read moreThe Cheapskate Intellectual
A journey through matters of spirit, sustainability, and self-reliance
Castles in the air – even now.
Colleagues and I have been sharing lots of ideas about how to help students cope with the ambient uncertainty of life and futures in the pandemic – heightened by the uncertainty of election day today, all of which can create anxiety it’s hard to see beyond. So to the excellent resources here (thanks to Luther’s […]
Read more“So much time to write?”: Sabbatical-ing in the pandemic (for our college magazine).
In August 2019, an alarming number clarified my mission in life. “How Much Hotter Is Your Hometown Than When You Were Born?” asked a New York Times infographic. “As the world warms because of human-induced climate change, most of us can expect to see more days when temperatures hit 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) […]
Read moreAn Awful Rainbow: possible introduction, part 2.
Possible introduction, continued, to An Awful Rainbow: Reading the Romantics in a World on Fire. Read Part One here. *** We Frankenstein pilgrims came home to a year that only got scarier. First, there was barely-averted war with Iran. The presidential caucus – Iowa’s pride and joy – came apart in our hands. Then the […]
Read moreDear Mary Shelley….
First of all, happy birthday to my fellow Virgo. Today! You look wonderful for age 223. Here’s my brand-new, just-finished, 800-page first draft of Creature, a novel I wrote about you. I hope you don’t mind. Thank you for inspiring me more than you ever could have known. We’ll talk. XOXO, Amy
Read more“Gaze Upon This World” is now an ORION Father’s Day feature.
Thanks to the good folks at ORION Magazine for featuring my essay about my late father, “Gaze Upon This World,” online as a Father’s Day special, with an updated introduction from me. Previously print-only, this piece (workshopped with Scott Russell Sanders at the 2016 Bread Loaf/Orion Environmental Writers Workshop) is now online. They’ve also been […]
Read moreNow under contract: Advanced Fiction Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology.
Delighted to announce that I’ve signed a contract to write and compile a craft guide and textbook called Advanced Fiction Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology as part of this series for Bloomsbury Academic. The Corita Kent image here (discovered while teaching in London last year) is its presiding spirit: writing, like life, is about […]
Read moreBarns and Edens: metaphors and the virus.
Like soap punctures the fatty envelope around its own RNA strand, coronavirus punctures our human envelopes of comfort and forces rethinking, in so many ways. One is metaphor (x “is” y) and simile (x is “like or as” y), which guides us – for better or worse – in comparing unlike things, and thus helps […]
Read moreThinking through coronavirus.
“It’s a matter of common decency. That’s an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is — common decency.” Albert Camus, The Plague Read War and Peace in a free virtual book club with the writer Yiyun Li. From A Public Space. Free virtual book clubs and […]
Read moreTouching the glacier: teaching the Romantics in a world on fire.
From the introduction-in-progress to my book-in-progress A Thing of Beauty: Reading the Romantics in a World on Fire. All photos by me. – A glittering blue day at the top of the world: Montenvers in the Alps above Chamonix, France. January 15, 2020. Elevation 6276 feet. Everything here is ice and rock and sky. Look […]
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