Foreword Finalist
I’m honored to be among the finalists for the Foreword Indie Book Awards in the category of Autobiography/Memoir for The Comet’s Tail: A Memoir of No Memory. Winners will be announced in June.
Tears come down wet
Tears come down wet, whether in fear, grief, delight, or gratitude. Read my latest essay, “Failing Feet and Finger Lakes” in the autumn issue of Fired Up! Creative Expression for Challenging Times. My poem, “Lucifer Falls, New York,” was also inspired by the gorges and trailheads near Cayuga Lake. What’s the connection between poetry and […]
Scars and How We Wear Them
“I’m looking for a soap dish. . . . ” This is how I begin “Giving up the Chokehold,” an essay about searching and about finding. What I find first is a necklace, actually a bunch of them, “chokers I haven’t worn in years.” One, is woven into a braid, “a thin zig-zag, like […]
Invitation to Stillness
It’s been over twenty-five years since I wrote these lines: The doctors invited me to be still. Then the X-ray revealed one of van Gogh’s sunflowers dying inside me, just beneath my ribs. Not enough sun, they said, prescribed antibiotics and suggested lemon juice to ease the pain. A few of the remedies worked; stillness […]
New Release
Just released, the first episode of The Vanguard Podcast featuring writers David K. Leff, Katherine Hauswirth, and me, along with musician Lys Guillorn. Join these conversations at the Forefront of Creativity with hosts L.M. Browning and Kelly Kancyr. See also The Vanguard Podcast to subscribe (or listen on iTunes, YouTube, and more). This episode includes a […]
“un-memories”
In my latest book, The Comet’s Tail: A Memoir of No Memory, I ponder the nature of memory–what we remember, what we forget, how our identities are built by and shaped by memories. While I can’t recreate any single memory into a perfect film of the past, I can stare at the open sky of […]
Coils
Losing the Summer Winter enters the body and it collapses, the blood cells attack, the fever leaves the brain with its patterns of coils and discs like a red stovetop, an alphabet of rivers and branches. This landscape, contoured for activity, settles into animal hibernation, while remnants of ancient languages howl from the hospital monitor. […]
Half dove
From Little Bound Books and Homebound Publications: The Comet’s Tail: A Memoir of No Memory. About the book: I do not remember the tubes, the tests, or the icy cold of space. I do not remember losing six months of my life. At age nineteen, Amy Nawrocki returned from her first year of college, scribbled […]
