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Harold R. Johnson on How We Tell Our Own Stories
We are all story. We are the stories we are told and we are the stories we tell ourselves. To change our circumstances, we need to change our story: edit it, modify it, or completely rewrite it. You...
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When Awe Meets Narrative: On Chasing Local Folklore at the Edge of the Ocean
The events of that summer happened a long time ago, in a place far away from where I live now. This is the setting and the time frame. Some of the plot points—let’s call them functions—have faded from...
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Hot, Cute, and a Little Bit Punk: Mina Seçkin on Exploring the World of Pokémon
I thought I had a lot of free will, playing Pokémon. As a kid, when my mom would grant me and my siblings precious time with our Gameboy color via a reward system—say, if we did well in school, or...
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In Praise of the Liminal Spaces and Uncertain Endings of Folklore
When I began writing my novel, Banyan Moon, I arrived on the page with an image of a locked trunk. I could picture it in startling detail: scuffed steel with dented sides and an embossed honeycomb...
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On Trying to Teach Brian Doyle’s “Leap” to the Post-9/11 Generation
During the first few weeks of the fall semester, when I teach with the windows wide open, it’s not uncommon for the whine of lawnmowers on the quad to interrupt our work. Sometimes I’ll shut the...
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On Being a Writer and a Mother to Children Who Don’t Love to Read
Last November, I made a birthday cake from scratch for my daughter, and both of my darling kids pitched in to help. My son wanted to help mix the ingredients and make the strawberry reduction for the...
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Megan Kamalei Kakimoto On The Many Ways To Tell a Hawaiian Story
The Night Marchers came before Aiko, the writer. In fact, the Night Marchers came well before my ancestors and will likely be around well after my own generation passes. I fear them as much as I revere...
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Memories Aren’t Enough: Why Sometimes Only Fiction Can Solve the Mysteries of...
The spring I was fourteen, I watched my mother slip into a coma over the course of an hour. The day began with “Mom has a flu,” but it was to be only the start of a 10-day battle for her life against...
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“No Nights (or Chapters) Off.” And Other Grown Up Lessons From Reading to My...
There has been one single experience that taught me more about storytelling than anything else in my life: telling bedtime stories to my children. Live audiences can be merciless; ask any comedian....
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The Past is a Fairy Tale: On Remembering and Forgetting in Modern Ireland
Once upon a time my grandfather got lost on the bog. He was still a young man, not much more than a boy, and he was out in the Kerry mountains, near Bearna na Gaoithe, says my mother. I don’t believe...
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