A friend of mine, Jayne Martin, is a master of flash writing, which is the art of depicting an entire story from start to finish in 100...

Talk of war atrocities, scams and political shenanigans got you down? Have I got a podcast for you! Interesting Humans by Christain Ward...

I just finished reading Fredrick Soukup’s Blood Up North, a thriller set in the backwoods of northern Minnesota. The book features a...

Today is Mary Donahue’s birthday! That’s right, born April 13, 1963, Mary — the protagonist in Winter Light — turns 59 today. She’s...

My author friend, Annalisa Crawford, recently asked about the definition of “speculative memoirs.” I love such questions, because they...

CUSSING — OR NOT — MONDAY Do you think swearing is therapeutic? The question occurred to me when I was scrounging around for a Swahili...

I got to talking with a writer friend of mine, Ian M. Rogers, about how our "official" work life can push aside our creative life. He...

When I was a kid, I loved reading Scott O’Dell’s 1960 Newbery Medal Award-winning novel Island of the Blue Dophins. Forever after, the...

When on the island of Kauai in Hawaii recently, we met surf guru Bill Hamilton. He grew up in the 1950s in southern LA, where some of the...

I happened upon an article in The Conversation titled Why does experiencing ‘flow’ feel so good? Apparently “flow” is when we’re so...

I knew my author photo was getting old, but loathed the idea of getting a new one. Though I’m somewhat photogenic for informal cell phone...

When my husband and I lived in Madison, WI, where he went to grad school, we started reading The Onion, a hilarious, free satirical...

If you don’t know, SPAM — the canned meat, rather than junk mail — is a big deal in Hawaii. I ate the meat when I was a kid. Pale in...

All right, so the “must read” in this list featured on Bookglow — “all about books, all of the time” — is probably an exaggeration. But...

My friend recommended the movie, Soul Surfer based on the Kauai surfer girl who got her arm bitten off by a shark near the same area...

When researching for this trip to Kauai, I remembered from my previous trip that the island has a lot of non-native wild boar and...

What kind of traveler are you? My typical ratio is 20% planned activities that require reservations. The rest of the time is...

Before the pandemic, we used to go to Hawaii regularly. I'm happy to say I'm vaccinated, boostered, masked, and as such, leaving for...

Today I’m recommending My Year of Magical Thinking and Joan Didion’s other works today in honor of her death on Dec. 22 at the age of 87....

I never tire of memoirs. I love learning about people and experiences that are vastly different than my own. That and there are so many...