What I'm Reading...

I just finished a book by LA-based author Aimee Bender called An Invisible Sign of My Own.

So good.

Bender is a contemporary writer with a witty and wild prose style, imaginative plot and characters, and heart-breaking pitch. I admire so much about her writing and loved how she pulled different elements of the story together. The story is about family. It's about finding yourself. It's about breaking down barriers and learning how to just get on with life despite its overwhelming frustrations and inevitable disappointments. It's about numbers, an axe, a hardware store, cancer (both fake and real), soap, and failing.

I am looking forward to checking out Bender's two other books soon.

Stay tuned for more installments of What I'm Reading, too! My goal this year is to read a book (or novella) a week. So far, so good!

Home from Sewanee...

Yesterday, Shawn, Riley, and I returned from our summer home on the Domain after six beautiful, fun, tiring, and enlightening weeks.

As far as classes go, I took a fiction workshop with Ellen Slezak and a course on the novella with Michael Griffith. Both classes were fantastic - we read great stuff, analyzed a lot, wrote a lot, and learned a lot. Even after just six weeks, I feel I have come a long way as a writer. Very exciting. I owe that all to my inspiring, intelligent teachers, and my terrific classmates.

In addition, to classes, we filled the past month and a half with weekly basketball matches, readings (Richard Wilbur and Richard Bausch in the past week), dinners, trips to the lake with Riley, visits from my parents (a weekend and a week!!), Claire (two whole weeks!), Alli and CE (a week!), and our friends from Colorado (Clay, Krista, Connor, and Amara). What fun we had! Thank you to everyone who joined us at Sewanee for making our summer so special.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention Monday night Bachelorette nights, a date night for Shawn and I to Chatanooga (thanks Mom and Dad!), weekly golf outings (for Shawn with some of my classmates), bi-weekly trips to the thrift store on campus, lunch buffet at Crust, and a few nights on the Shenanigans' porch!

Then, there was Stirlings, and the stops Claire and I made on our way to class for coffee, and the trips Mom and I made in the mornings before hitting the library, and the trips Dad and Riley made for Strawberry smoothies...we spent a bunch of time there for sure!

Wow! We really were quite busy! Amazingly, I had time to write two short stories, a twelve-page paper, a major revision, an artist statement, a writing exercises, a five-page close reading - and, read 22 short stories and write critiques, 12 novellas, and Burroway's book on craft (all 12 chapters!).

Sewanee really feels like my home away from home. Something about the stone buildings and breeze moving through the tops of trees....or maybe its something about the smell of the library and the heavy drone of cicadas at night...or maybe its something else entirely. Something else about reading and writing and being in a beautiful place to do it with my family....

Friday Already?? Here are some more favorites..

In effort to capitalize on the peace and quiet I have before Shawn and Riley and friends and family descend on us today, my post today will have to be short and sweet. Enjoy!

Favorite thing to do for others:

Buy gifts! I just started collecting money for presents for our teachers this summer. So exciting!

Favorite part of the Fourth of July at Sewanee:

The fireworks!

Favorite seasoning:

Salt (I'm sitting at the kitchen table, staring at a salt shaker...)

Favorite Poem:

"Lullaby" by Auden. I have to memorize it for my fiction workshop. Such a great poem!

That's all for now! More next week...