I know now I was grieving something , the death of an ambition. I started attending reading events at Green Apple Books, my local bookstore, because it was something I liked in grad school, and I had to get myself out of the house. Going to those events was (is) a way of traveling without moving; they have afforded me an incredibly valuable... See more

’ll share two general ways to approach the prompt (and really, essays in general). An essay is a personal reflection that links individual experience to socially relevant ideas. You might begin with the particulars of your own life, or, the broader patterns of culture, but eventually you have to bridge the two. An essayist fuses many genres—the pen... See more

On a rainy Saturday morning, some twenty writers, published and aspiring, piled into one of the bookstores for a workshop called “Texts and Betrayal: Secrets and Boundaries.” The session was led by Irena Klepfisz, a poet, essayist, and child survivor of the Holocaust whose work I’ve long admired. After brief introductions, she led the group through... See more