Six years ago today...

Six years ago today, Vic Chesnutt played my birthday celebration. Chris Sugiuchi and Eric Harris backed him.  They set up on the skateboard ramp which used to be in our backyard.  

I love so many things- Vic's guitar, which said "Chesnutt." The break where he throws his head back and howls in Cobbham Blues.  My favorite moment's last, when he looks toward the camera... it's right where I was sitting by Ben beneath the walnut.  Vic and my eyes met briefly. Even now, watching, I get chills.

Tin House, Hambidge, Missing Vic Chesnutt

At Tin House Writer's Workshop...attending creative nonfiction workshop with Stephen Elliott...Big fan of his work as well as his instruction style.

Have seen great readings:  Wells Tower, a mind-blowing performance on said topic by Dorothy Allison, Elliott, etc...


Feels like I have found my tribe...


Two weeks ago, I attended a residency at Hambidge. Finished the final ten percent of UnReformed.  Next up... revise, revise, revise.

Finishing fulfills the last promise I made Vic Chesnutt. I wish he were here every single day.


Three years ago, he wrote me a recommendation.  Whenever I feel lost, he guides me back.

"She's working on an ambitious psychological memoir project about her teenage years as a rebellious daughter of a Mississippi doctor sent off to a brutal Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic. Now a schoolteacher with her own son in grade school and with the political tenor of the times, her story has a fresh relevance informing a shadowy current surging through fundamentalist Christianity in the American south."