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Six months ago, I could not have imagined this moment. Five months ago, I sent a tweet into the world about my book, SWIMMING LESSONS, and my indefatigable agent, Eric Smith, liked it. A few days later, he offered rep. That was improbable enough. We went out on sub. Anxiety dreams and much pastry eating commenced…. Read more »

  For my 40th Birthday (dear reader, I won’t even tell you how long ago that was). My husband gifted me a first edition of The Great Gatsby. I died. Then I revived myself because, Hello! My husband is amazing and he got me a first edition, first printing of The Great Gatsby. There’s even… Read more »

  #OwnYourOwn a hashtag to encourage and inspire marginalized voices was started by the ever-amazing @gildedspine who hosted a Twitter dialogue on June 20th. Look for other blog entries this week; here’s my contribution.   Writers are a dreamy. We talk a lot about dreams. Dreams of a creative life. A writing life. Dreams of… Read more »

I’m not a fan of boxing. Watching two humans in hand-to-hand combat, faces bloodied, noses broken. It’s just not for me. But for a kid growing up in the 70s, Muhammad Ali loomed large. For a Muslim kid, for a brown kid living in a small town in the Midwest, he was legend and myth and… Read more »

High school Junior, Khalil, carries letters from a girl named Ayesha. They aren’t love letters, not exactly. But Khalil hopes, so he carries them, perfectly folded in the bottom of his backpack. Some late afternoons, as he sits on his porch, drinking his mother’s iced tea, he takes them out and reads them in the… Read more »