When I was a kid, my mother never had enough money to fill the tank on her old Chevy with one missing back fender. She would pull into Percy’s garage and buy a dollar’s worth of gas at a time. In those days that would last us a while and she’d parcel out the funds…

Here in Broomfield, CO we embrace One Book, One City, in which many citizens all read a selected book and talk about it, listen to lectures and readings. Turns out we also have a national version, The Big Read, originated and promoted by the National Endowment for the Arts. This year The Big Read features…

Sena Jetter Nasland’s ninth novel, The Fountain of St. James Court: Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman, is a good read, mostly. I did carp to myself about the sumptuousness of both the language and the settings. The book is a novel within a novel, no mean feat, eh? The outer shell shows…

A little something for the season from The Great Hunger: SOLSTICE   Belief sits like meat on the table before us. I fix the roast, mash the potatoes. The old world has shriveled to a candle flame in the middle of the table.   Why don’t we fall to our knees, given the huge labor…

Cicadas have a long larval stage, seventeen years for some, thirteen for others. My novels also go inert for years. I have often felt guilty and frustrated about my “inability” to finish these manuscripts. I see myself as one of those mossy sloths hanging upside down on a branch and gazing at a world that…