Each year, Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver enlists a series of guest bloggers for its Lit Counts series. It’s a lead-up to Colorado Gives Day and it offers writers the opportunity to blog about why literature matters. Head over to the Lighthouse Blog to read my entry this year. If you are a Denver-area writer, reader, lover …
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 …
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 …
In 1991 I spent a long week covering the capital murder trial of Henry Curtis Jackson Jr. Curtis, as everyone called him, stabbed and killed four of his nieces and nephews, all under the age of five. He also stabbed his adult sister and left another child a paraplegic for life. All of this violence was committed …
I fell in love this summer. It was unexpected and thrilling, the sort of toe-curling romance found only in movies or in first-love memories. It started, as so many good things do, with a book.