If you have lost a time, a person, a means of knowing yourself – and let others know your grief, you have most likely heard this response: “It is time for you to move on.” Laraine Herring, writer, teacher and loss survivor, would disagree. Her new book, A Constellation of Ghosts is both a fiercely… Continue Reading >>>
Category Archives: Latest News
Crow Truth: Breakthrough for the week of March 29, 2021
Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over. —Neil Gaiman Tell us a lie. Tell us a lie about your truth. Shape what isn’t into what is. Don’t tell… Continue Reading >>>
You don’t have Forever; and you may have it easy: Breakthrough for the week of 2/22/2021
I don’t work – and “work” is the operative concept – on my new novel. I edit. I look at the photos of much younger writers reviewed in main-stream media and want nothing more than to finish off the salted caramel ice cream in the freezer. Or go for a walk. Or watch yet another… Continue Reading >>>
Plagued: Breakthrough Writing for the week of 2/8/2021
You give into distraction as if it is a murderer; you lie there, waiting to be killed Today: fight for your life. —-Miranda July I have avoided writing about the Corona virus – in the same way that I almost never wrote about Donald Trump. I have believed that both pathogens have been treated in… Continue Reading >>>
Give-away:Breakthrough for the week of 1/25/2020
So it went, with safety, the more you guarded, the less you had. —Richard Powers I once walked along a placid river in a placid town. I was anything but placid. I had lost much, not the least of which was the mountain town that had once seemed an ordinary paradise. I walked along the… Continue Reading >>>
Forget resolutions; forget “hope”: Breakthrough writing for the week of 12/28/2020
She is on familiar ground – and not. She has lived near this forest long enough to know how to move in and through it. She sees what she has been looking for. It is her husband – and not. Chera Hammons’ novel, Monarchs of the Northeast Kingdom, is a harsh – and wonderfully written –… Continue Reading >>>
Ending/Conjunction/Beginning: Breakthrough for the week of 12/21/2020
Form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The… Continue Reading >>>
Interactions of great and ordinary consequence: Breakthrough for now and the unknowable future
For all of you, especially Gabe and Lynette I don’t know how anybody does anything these days. You’re right about COVID. It feels like a fugue state. I’m tired and uninspired, and realizing the importance of all of those seemingly inconsequential interactions that made life exciting or interesting or upsetting or frustrating, like a conversation… Continue Reading >>>
Thank you, writers…and here is Hurricane Jack:11/20/2020
I wrote last week: “Write about your post-American-election world – and let us know we are not alone. If I receive at least three pieces in my personal email: bstarr67@gmail.com, I will illustrate next week’s Breakthrough with a photo of Jack, the new and very very busy ginger kitten.” Thanks to Lis Venetiou, Cin Norris,… Continue Reading >>>
No Rest for the Writer: Breakthrough for the week of 11/9/2020
I scarcely know how to stay upright without the fear that has fossilized my spine for the last four years. Perhaps you know how it was to not only be afraid for our country (which had ceased to feel like my country), but for your safety. I didn’t put anti-Trump bumper stickers on my car.… Continue Reading >>>
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