“Compensation” shows itself as a consistent, gendered thread in my life story.

    A story in parts   A list of things I thought of and

    What does genre mean to you and how does it build/unbuild your work?

occasional elements and bodies they make   Sunlight, consequence of sun, wakes me. Sweeps slow,

    Pluto   If we were starfish (who can regenerate limbs), what would trauma

      What does genre mean to you and how does it build/unbuild your

I wanted to belong — but I didn’t want to dress like everyone else. Down

I want to write about tierra, which means soil or earth to my people, maybe

Every year it was the same. The then Milwaukee Sentinel printed the pictures of all

Several years ago during my first semester in graduate school, some of my classmates and

Disclaimer One: The intended audience for this talk is mainly white writers, so I use

There has never been a consensus or even a plurality agreement among writers who identify

In 2014, I spoke on a panel called “Crossing (Imagined) Borders: Research, Writing, and the

When I was 10 in 1969, without permission, I went and had my hot combed

When I was a kid growing up in a white (and cis and straight) suburb

My ex-husband suffered bipolar disorder. We lived among the facts of his illness. Trips to

My graduate reading was supposed to be fifteen minutes, which is a hard number to

Of all the gifts a poet can be given, epilepsy is the richest. I fell

A few years ago, I taught a class on recovering joy in the writing process.

Somewhere in the middle of my fifth draft, I realized I was full of shit.

I write in a variety of genres: fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, and the interesting thing

Keep Pure. Rolling Hand. Big Wave. Breaking down the Fortress. Luck and Fortune. Sound Knowledge.

There’s one thing that can’t be taught in writing classes. It’s really too bad, too,

Every writer needs to read. A lot. All the successful ones say the same thing:

I learned how to write fiction by understanding the language of visual art. As an

I find inspiration in very unexpected places. I am a fan of reading biographies/ essays/

Franz Kafka famously said, “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within

1. When your mother calls you on a Monday night Asking you how to spell

I’ve always considered myself a no frills, linear, begin-at-the-beginning, chronological-until-the-end type of person. Experimental writing

My novel has received 70 rejections over the last 21 months. I have written dozens

I started working at Watson Wyatt in San Francisco after I’d been let go from

I had fantasies about how hugely creative I would be while pregnant — my body’s

The year my dad died, I was taking writing classes at University of Chicago. I

Writing on a keyboard has become a natural gesture of many modern humans. Not a

I wrote in a poem once that I am “ruled by ruled paper.” I buy

I wrote in a poem once that I am “ruled by ruled paper.” I buy

To say it now: I can hear the tangible skin of words — as one

How do we as writers best learn successful habits? By emulating the successful? As I

You imagined the chair of the creative writing program spoke the same words as the

Comedian Steve Harvey has a routine where he talks about the third eye of comedians.

My friend Chris invited me to visit her at work. She’s a nurse practitioner at

The first time I held an infant in my arms I was eleven years old.

“Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde. One of the hardest parts

The principle is simple: potential energy turns to kinetic energy. Momentum is a force of

“It is […] true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn

I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard with my half-sister, Judy. She’s 81, decades older than

It’s been two months since I sent my (possible) agent the book. My manuscript. My