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Books: Three women, three voices
One of the pleasures of reviewing books is the variety of stories that land on my desk. (It’s not the pay, since there is none.) Like these three memoirs by three women with very different and powerful...
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Road Report: Wildflowers!
Texas paintbrush at Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center I’m in Austin and playing hooky from the Stories from the Heart writing conference to write this blog post. I spent some time at the Lady Bird...
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Road report: Heading home
Coreopsis along the highway through the Hill Country (Thank you, Lady Bird Johnson!) Last Sunday I was in Austin, Texas, getting myself psyched to deliver the closing keynote for Stories from the...
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Road report: tough stuff
Cholla cactus stud the high plains east of Clines Corners, New Mexico I made it home Friday evening, exhausted. Now that I’ve had some time to sort through what I saw and felt and heard on the road, I...
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The hardest question
Self-portrait, Hotel Serrano, San Francisco Wednesday morning I parked at the VA Hospital in Denver, and made my way inside carrying a cardboard box holding two tall and healthy tomato plants, the last...
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Stumbling on stories
The mother-in-law apartment in back of my grandparent's house In my family, we don’t tell stories. We are reserved and refrain from either gossip or boasting, in part because of our northern European...
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Books: a memoir with birds; plus a brag
Mr. Troyer, the bluebird of the title essay, painted by Julie Zickafoose I am not a birdwatcher. After a childhood of being dragged out of bed at dawn to visit places as delightful as the local sewage...
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Drought and Grief
Smoke from the Springer Fire turns the dawn orange over the Arkansas Hills last week. You have to get over the color green. Wallace Stegner’s advice about how to live sustainably in the inland West is...
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Catching Up: Keynote & Comic
Rhymes With Orange, Copyright Hilary B. Price The comic first: I was cleaning out another one of Richard’s file cabinets the other day. (He had eight four-drawer file cabinets full of teaching files,...
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Opening a vein
My office with the desk Richard built to fit into the bay of windows overlooking the kitchen garden, town and the mountains. Every evening for the past few, I’ve thought: I need to write a blog post....
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Cranes and home
Sandhill cranes flying over a marsh, Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge, Colorado Last weekend, I taught a creative writing workshop at the Monte Vista Crane Festival, an annual celebration of the...
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Books I’m Reading & a Brag
Normally, I’m a voracious and eclectic reader. Right now, with two intense writing projects, plus consulting on the launch of a new program on landscaping for wildlife, finish carpentry at this house...
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Progress report: the Red Queen and Rainbows
Pouring the slab, the floor of my tiny-house-to-be. (The blue walls in front are the foundation.) I feel like the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass: running and running just to...
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Writing Memoir: progress report
Richard and Susan in the Tularosa Basin of Southern New Mexico, around 1992. Last week, I finished the first draft of Bless the Birds, my new memoir. Mind you, the story isn’t anywhere near finished....
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Road Trip!
Dad with Colin and his little brother Liam last summer This Tuesday noon, the little Subaru Forester and I will aim west on US 50, headed for my brother’s house in Olympia, Washington, 1,444 miles...
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Books: Women Who Chart Their Own Course
I’ve always been drawn to stories of women who chart their own paths, walking boldly outside the lines we draw in life. On my desk are two such books, equally compelling although the stories couldn’t...
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Life Changes in an Instant
Richard and Susan (I’m standing on a boulder in a rare moment of tallness) in the Tularosa Basin of Southern New Mexico, around 1992. “What’s with all the birds?” I scanned the surrounding landscape...
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Sculpting Memoir
My desk in Creek House–the two piles to the left of my computer are Bless the Birds. Last week was my first full week at home. Monday morning, after the usual contractor consults, I pulled out my...
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Lighting the Solstice Darkness
Sunrise at 7:52 a.m. near Winter Solstice. Winter Solstice, the day the sun “stands still” in its apparent journey southward, is the turning-point in my personal year. The calendar year runs ten more...
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Paring Story into Memoir….
Last spring, I finished the initial draft of Bless the Birds, the memoir I’ve been working on about Richard’s and my journey with his brain cancer. A journey I hope will show us all how to live with...
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