The Weight of Words

I devised my favorite teaching exercise just after the US went back to war in Iraq, taking my inspiration from a seemingly unlikely source: President George W. Bush. Though the forty-third president had a sometimes-tenuous command of words, he surrounded himself with masters of manipulating language. Remember when we used to call climate change global

Puppies Make Everything Better

Because I’ve been working on a fantasy trilogy, I haven’t written many posts recently. But if you scroll down my blog page, you’ll see a clear shift in my focus over the past year. Before the 2016 election I wrote mostly about my life as a writer, with the occasional essay about something deeply personal.

Oh the Depravity!

I can’t get my mind around what’s happening in Washington. The GOP “health care” plan guts the ACA, making it much more difficult for poor people to get health insurance while providing obscene tax cuts for insurance company CEOs, and several Republicans say they will reject the new plan because it doesn’t GO FAR ENOUGH.

White Anxiety

Here’s what’s been on my mind today–bear with me, this might be a little rough and take some time to work through: Yesterday I saw a lovely post on a Facebook group dedicated to the Women’s March. It celebrated diversity and inclusion and featured a drawing of a Native American woman. The caption was something

Voting Your Conscience

When I was a graduate student in the late 1990s I took a seminar about postcolonial literature and theory. We spent a lot of time discussing how colonizers oppressed those they conquered by taking away their ability to understand and make meaning in the world by, for example, making it illegal to teach or speak

Emily June Street Blog Tour!

When my Luminous Sister Emily and I started writing together in 2012, she sent me several chapters from a beautiful fantasy novel that takes place in a world called Lethemia. Her poetic language hooked me immediately. The intricately imagined details of the story’s world—its fashion, magic systems, cultures, and languages—fascinated me. The epic story enchanted

Liebster Award

My sister in Luminosity, Maestra of Pilates, and Mother of Dragons, Emily June Street, tagged me to write this post. Although I’m not sure what the Liebster award is, I’m happy to play. Here are the rules: List eleven random facts about yourself. Answer eleven questions posed by the tagger. Devise eleven questions for the

Five Hundred Words of Magic

Emily and I just finished hosting a seven-week flash fiction contest over on the Luminous Creatures Press website. Emily gave the contest its wonderful name, The Winter of Whimsy and Wyrdness, chose all the photo prompts, and posted them each Thursday morning. She also put all the winning stories into e-book and paperback formats for

Final week of the Winter of Whimsy and Wyrdness Flash Fiction Contest!

Today begins the final week of Luminous Creatures Press’s winter flash fiction contest. Emily posted the photo prompt on the LCP website this morning, and you have until Sunday at 7 AM (PST) to submit a 500-word story based on the photo. We select up to four winners a week whose stories will be featured

Margaret Dashwood Outtakes, Part One

In honor of Jane Austen’s birthday, I decided to post a few scenes from early drafts of Margaret Dashwood and the Enchanted Atlas. I imagine Lucy and Robert Ferrars might be mortified to realize that they didn’t survive the editor’s knife. (All errors in the French are mine as my lovely translators never got a