Personal essayist Brenda Miller is keeping a blog entitled Spa of the Mind, a phrase she borrowed from a chapter in William Powers’ book Hamlet’s Blackberry. By keeping this blog, Brenda is dedicating herself to exploring “the ways we find respite for our weary minds in a connected world.” She wonders how “we find and cultivate inner space…
Category Archives: Literary Gallery
Of Eucalyptus And Elm Trees And Fathers, Too
The guest judge for Writing It Real’s summer/fall 2011 writing contest was Susan Bono, who chose “Eucalyptus And Elm Trees And Fathers, Too” as our third place winner. Susan wrote about the work that it “flowed so naturally. The writer uses the eucalyptus tree that used to be part of her view to trigger a…
Making Peace
Susan Bono, our guest judge for the Summer/Fall Writing It Real contest, chose the following essay as our second place winner. She writes of the essay: “I felt like the writer touched all the bases as she ran home. I was very satisfied with its shape and scope. This writer takes the simple act of…
I Know How the Wild Goose Feels
Our Summer/Fall WIR guest contest judge Susan Bono awarded first place to Sher Laughlin’s essay. Susan enjoyed the essay’s “many layers of emotion and craft.” She wrote that the essay “employed great use of scene, dialog, imagery/symbolism and moved effortlessly between the tension of the unfolding incident and the narrator’s ever-expanding drama, realizations about beginnings…
The Adventures of Super Joni! (And Her Amazing Dog E-Pie-Pie)
When Writing It Real contributor Joni Cole sent me a review copy of her new collection of essays Another Bad-Dog Book: Tales of Life, Love, and Neurotic Human Behavior, I was excited to get started reading. The book proved both funny, sometimes sidesplitting so, and poignant, especially when she writes about her elderly father. This week…