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Free to Use Dangling Participles: The Heartlands Interview with Katherine James, 2 of 3
Let’s not put Katherine James’s debut novel, Can You See Anything Now?, (recently reviewed here on Heartlands), into a box called Christian fiction. She is a Christian and there are strong Christian themes in the book, but this is not an Amish romance. James tackles difficult themes like suicide, cutting, and substance abuse with vivid, →
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Writing and Painting Through Pain: The Heartlands Interview with Katherine James, 1 of 3
How can we see the world in new ways? In her debut novel, Can You See Anything Now?, (recently reviewed here on Heartlands), Katherine James uses her background in painting and the difficult passages in her life to weave a story of a healing town named Trinity and the people who live in it. It’s →
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Coming Off Leave(s)
Leaves don’t so much change color in the fall as they become what they’ve always been. The chlorophyll that gives all deciduous trees their summer uniform of green begins to break down in the cooling days of autumn. The carotenoids in the leaves remain, lending trees their brilliant yellows and oranges. Those colors have always →
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Can We Talk About Sexuality?
“In every family there are subjects that seem to bring out the worst in us when we discuss them. For United Methodists, that topic is currently homosexuality.” (9) So says Jill Johnson, one of my co-authors of the new book, Living Faithfully: Human Sexuality and The United Methodist Church, just out from Abingdon Press. But this →
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A Dialect of Longing – Poetry Tuesday
And what is wind but a dialect of longing?–: the high pressure rushing to fill the low, the sky trying to slake its heats against the earth’s asymptotic cool, its somersaulting cools against the earth’s radiance. All weather springs from currents of failed desire. No wonder the wind, when it says anything at →
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Writing: “A Blessed Unrest” – An interview with Trudy Hale – part 3 of 3
Trudy Hale, editor of Streetlight magazine, and owner of The Porches writing retreat, has talked in previous segments of this interview about her love affair with the retreat house and the writing life. In this segment we continue the conversation about the compulsions of writing and the forms it takes in her life. And we come →
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Writing at The Porches – An interview with Trudy Hale – part 2 of 3
In the first part of my interview with Trudy Hale, editor of Streetlight magazine and owner of The Porches writing retreat, we discussed the relationship she developed with a neglected farmhouse in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge mountains. In this segment, we talk about the writing. (And all the ways we contrive not to.) The Porches →
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This Old House: The Love Story – an interview with Trudy Hale, part 1 of 3
There’s a great love story going on up in the Virginia foothills rolling up to the Blue Ridge. Actually, there’s a bunch of them. Every writer that finds his or her way to Trudy Hale’s writing retreat in the little village of Norwood discovers something to love. I’ve got my list: The big stony bluff →
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How to write a good country song
When was it that a hit country song became a list of country-fried images? Seems like all you have to do is string together bare feet, pickup trucks, fishing poles, and mama and you’ve got you a bestseller. (And, yes, I do know that I was a country music DJ back in the day when →
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How to write with words you use all the dang time – a review of Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir
“At the nadir of my confidence as a writer, I despaired of ever finishing Lit. I considered selling my apartment to give the advance money back. Then a Jesuit pal asked me, quite simply, What would you write if you weren’t afraid? I honestly didn’t know at first. But I knew finding the answer would →
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