My Personal Creative Nonfiction
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Telephonophobia (An Experiment in Memoir)
My thanks to Bear River Review, in which this essay was published. The sound I heard that morning was from one of those Bell telephones, still in common use in the 1970s, with a rotary dial and an actual bell with a mechanical clapper. It jangled its urgent ding-a-ling-a-ling, demanding attention. I sometimes recall one Continue reading
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Moment on a Bridge in Western Maryland (An Experiment in Memoir)
A police officer stood in the road ahead signaling for me to stop. I had just left the campus of the community college where I taught and had driven less than half a mile when I saw him standing under the freeway overpass. He seemed to be stopping traffic for no reason. No one else Continue reading
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The Sign (An Experiment in Memoir)
One year a few weeks before Easter, we in the hills of Western Maryland received a sign. As the new light of a spring morning appeared over the mountains, a man trudged down Baltimore Street in Cumberland dragging an eight-foot log cross. He shouldered the cross beam and leaned forward at an acute angle, pushing Continue reading
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The Arrival (An Experiment in Writing about Family)
On the day Mother arrived, I went to the post office. Michigan was in the midst of its winter deep freeze, temperatures below zero day after day. Ice patched the roads. Until now, Mother had always refused to visit. Two years ago, I moved here to the outskirts of Ann Arbor. I came to pursue Continue reading
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Lawrence Welk Is Dead: Confession of a Bad Daughter
My thanks to Texas A&M’s Front Porch Journal, where this essay was published. I have to break the news to my mother. She has been chatting her way through her usual Saturday evening phone conversation topics: her friend Shelby’s forty-five-year-old son who has lost his job and moved back home with his mother; the new Continue reading
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How to Restore an Abandoned Garden (An Experiment in Second-Person Point of View)
My thanks to Bear River Review, in which an earlier version of this essay was published. How to Restore an Abandoned Garden at a House You Bought in Ypsi First: Realize that you have moved into someone else’s house. Wander through the leavings of another person’s life. When you are a firmly established mid-lifer, get Continue reading
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
If so, this blog is for you.
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