In Ron Rash’s 2008 novel Serena, he creates a female character who is so ambitious and ruthless that she seems devoid of moral considerations. It is a stunning accomplishment in an era when readers clamor for likability. Frankly, I think likability is overrated in fiction. I believe the likability complaint is mostly used as a way to dismiss …
I write fiction about working class and lower middle class people in the south. It’s not a popular choice. Readers don’t seem to know what to do with my characters. I don’t blame them. It’s not what they’ve come to expect from books set in the south. Most southern fiction tends to portray societal extremes: the …
At this time next week, the election will be over. I don’t know about you, but I can hardly remember what it feels like to live in a world without political advertisements and October surprises that are really just the same old news reported in a different way. I’m so glad I live in a …
I’ve left the train, but the train has yet to leave me. I went to yoga less than a full day after I disembarked at Denver’s Union Station. I chatted with a woman on the Empire Builder and we both agreed that train yoga would be a great addition to the journey. We wanted to …
The Coast Starlight train leaves Emeryville (San Francisco) just after 10 p.m. Much like Ben Franklin, I’m an “early to bed, early to rise” person. Embarking on anything at 10 p.m. is detrimental to my body clock. I got to the train station early, because it’s a bit of a drive and I wasn’t sure how …
I’ve spent the last two days on a train as part of my Amtrak residency. I rode from Denver to Emeryville in a compartment the size of a closet. I’m now in San Francisco and I’m listening to someone play the saxophone on the street beneath the window of my hotel. Tomorrow night, I’ll board the …
I taught a high school class this morning in the Denver suburbs. It’s homecoming week and the whole school was decked out in black and gold. In the middle of all this manufactured enthusiasm, I told the students to pay attention to those things that truly light a fire in them, to be aware of the ideas …
I went for a run yesterday morning. There is nothing newsworthy about this; I go for a run most days. Usually I run in Colorado, where the morning air is cool and crisp and the early morning sky is clear and blue. Now I am in Mississippi, and the sky is blue enough but not the same …
In Dispatches from Pluto Richard Grant tells the story of moving from New York City to live in an old farmhouse in the Mississippi Delta. For some reason, the book was shelved in the travel section at my local bookstore, but it’s not a travel guide. Instead it’s part humorous memoir and part cultural anthropology. Grant, who is …
We’re barely past Labor Day and Colorado is making a decisive swing toward fall. We’ll have a few more warm days, but the morning temps have turned decidedly nippy. Most Tuesday mornings throughout the summer, I attend an early outdoor yoga class at a local park. We gather at 6:30 a.m. to stretch and balance and …