"I wrote my first published story on a ranch in South Dakota. I'd had a bad year, had moved west, probably in part to escape myself. At the suggestion of a friend, I was writing in order to address the shame and vulnerability I was feeling regarding a difficult real-life event. Shame lives in dark corners. When you talk about it, it's like shining a light on a pile of shadows—they scatter, they abdicate. Vulnerability is complicated. Responding to and accepting it takes time and practice and an understanding of human frailty. We're not all coming out of the cradle with the same skill sets or the same wounds. Human connection and empathy are necessary for successful writing, yet sometimes we shy away from them, because unprepared, we find them immobilizing."
See the full essay HERE |
Spring Course |
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I'm so excited that The Cincinnati Review Issue 10.2 is here, and in it, the story "Assets," which I wrote during a very rocky period in my life (as the twenties often are). This issue includes fiction and poetry by Steve Almond, Catherine Pierce, Virginia Smith, and many more. Please consider ordering a copy of The Cincinnati Review, and support some lovely artists and a great magazine. http://www.cincinnatireview.com/#/issues/upcoming/10.2
"This story is striking, in part, for its adept use of mechanical imagery in a narrative very much concerned with the living body. “Machines hum from every corner of your apartment: television, refrigerator, coffee maker,” Romanosky writes. “You are a good listener.” Erica’s mother, after losing a breast to cancer, “lopes around the house like a machine with a loose wire.” Throughout the story, the characters attend to and imitate machines with ample emotion but little enlightenment. The artificial industriousness around them comes into sharp contrast with their living, breathing, malformed selves. For this family, women’s bodies exist in a perpetual state of brokenness." -Natalie Shapero
Check out the rest of the "Why We Chose It" on The Kenyon Review blog at: https://www.kenyonreview.org/2013/10/chose/
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Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.
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