My work explores an inner world of stored images and reflects on the shifting space of landscape, narrative, and memory. In the context of globalization, I am interested in how any image conveys a sense of time and place specific to a personal and cultural history; drawing and painting have been the constants on which I rely to investigate these questions […]
I turned the freakish timing over and over in my mind that night, on the verge of connecting the dots, not quite ready to assign meaning to the event that had saved my life.[…]
I often wonder of the women before me, what if they were encouraged to soar? What farther heights could we reach? if half our wings were not caged away.[…]
That radical melding of reader and character is, in my opinion, one of the highest rewards of reading, and I strive to create stories that encourage readers to experience it.[…]
The women of ancient Greece took this story to heart, they knew that Athena had given power to someone who was seen as powerless.[…]
And this is when fear grips me the tightest. How can I protect them? How can I keep them safe—[…]
#weclapbecausewecare. New Yorkers stop and give daily thanks and gratitude for coronavirus frontline workers. In Brooklyn, at 7 pm, my neighbors clap and whistle, bang pots. Cars honk. In the apartment across the street, two little girls hang out the window, howling like wolves. […]
One of the mountains of belongings had seemingly collapsed into the negative space, leaving a sloping pile that scattered out several feet on either side. But amongst the avalanche of things, the hill of hard, solid, tangible objects, was something organic.[…]
Magpie’s Dazzling
when the magpie comes
he skulks behind his splendor
listen as he mirrors your tongue
careful, your ear, to the mummer
My naïve assumption was the expectation of shaping her personality, igniting her spark. Staring through the bars of her crib at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday, I thought about this full-throttled willful child. She came with character included. I could not have foreseen how that spark would burn me […]
Chief Smiling Officer of the Art Cart, Saba Shahid-Moir, MS, has made it her mission to help those who can’t smile so easily anymore due to complications from Parkinson’s disease […]
Experiencing personal tragedy against the backdrop of collective tragedy is disorienting. On April 6, I made the terrible decision to say goodbye to the magnificent Lester. In the midst of our global pandemic, I sense that my grief over my dog—and my guilt over my decision to end his life—seems trite and self-indulgent, even to some who understand who he was and what he meant to me. But regardless of this, I continue to mourn and wrestle with what I find to be a nearly incomprehensible question: how can the last act of love be a decree of death?
ink is no different from skin, hair, spit and sweat: it bleeds, it weeps, it cakes like peat. And writing a memory down will not save it. […]
Words like vapour from skies redeemed
Enchanted from the start
The nectarous rill of romance.
A perfect Magic.
Women always choose survival over sadness. The story of our constant lack goes like this: in a land, some land, any land, men
stole the beans & rice, fed our bodies to the war, any war […]
All of Adana’s therapists had been interested in her survival although that sentiment was a global curiosity. Survival stories of resilient people used to inspire and motivate others who couldn’t even begin to fathom such misfortune. But after the Merciless Spread followed by the Ruthless Contagion, every American citizen was left in a quasi-apocalyptic world that was still functioning and still had billions of people living in it.[…]
My art was born out the quest for perfection, and in every work that I create, I make a realistic drawing of people, showing the emotions they wish we could see through their eyes, with pencils. […]
There’s a certain weight a person holds when they’ve been part of a monumental moment in history. That weight can influence the way they act, how they cope, and, ultimately, who they become. I’ve seen this weight on people like my grandfather, who flew in a total of 91 combat missions during World War II.[…]
on the day the world ends you pray for a portal to open above the teacher’s head, shining deep cosmic blue saying you weren’t wrong, that you deserve better than the ones who say you deserve better than the futures you already predict in cold-handed silence, in the words you read and will read again […]
When she visited Antioch University, Los Angeles in December 2019, Rae Dubow hosted a seminar entitled, Writers at Work: Performance Workshop for Writers, where she worked with several students to teach more effective ways for them to read their work in front of the class. […]
(It’s about skiing.) Skiing requires too many accessories. Don’t get me wrong, I like accessories.[…]
Our management team addresses interconnectivity and creativity in this time of crisis […]
It takes an inundation to isolate my isolation. I hope you remember―how a moon flooded fields for yellow spirits to rove, how we hastened through terraces into shrubs of pleasure. You: denuder, I: stony road. […]
I transformed my lengthy, ash brown locks to a pixie in May 2019. I wasn’t nervous until I sat in the chair because that’s when a stylist asks, “What do you want?” And based on what you tell them things can go just as planned or take a left turn.[…]
I do not think my family knows how to talk without belligerence behind the lilt of their jaws. We are the kind of people who do not deserve to love. I want to place a bouquet of flowers I cannot name in my mouth […]
As I sit and write this, it’s been a few days since the government announced that our nation is officially in a state of emergency over the coronavirus. I have been laid off for the same amount of time with no clear end in sight. There is ZERO work as all restaurants, bars, country clubs, hotels, and resorts have been shut down.[…]
Can I find the words I mark electronically without the cluster of stars I draw in margins to show what is important? Can I discover a buried treasure finger-flicking entries on a screen? Can I flip pages for perusal of bright maps on unexpected pages? […]
On nights like this, I’ll watch Hoarders to learn/unlearn empathy (for my mother). I love them, I cry with them, and I think I understand. Sitting criss-crossed in a pile of clothes, I fix ramen, wait (for you) to come home […]
I think the question for writers is what do you want the legacy of your work to be? And how can approaching your work through an inclusive solidarity-driven cultural humility framework actually support the expansiveness of your legacy? I want writers to sit with that, to let that shape their writing […]
I look out of the small kitchen window
above the table,
and saw the skin of your elbow
hanging from the outline
of a phantom shard glass.
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