I miss American food. And salt. And pizza. Armagh is pretty cool, but the fact that no food establishments stay open later than 8p.m. is very inconvenient. Thinking about it I am sure it’s a good thing people can’t access fast food so late at night, good for your overall health and what not. But […]
. . .because an American writes for their self! Yes, Chloe McDaniel appeared in the dining area like a plot device and got Terri talking about ketchup and catching up and I’ve become acutely aware that I haven’t posted a blog update in God knows how long. Worse still, I haven’t posted a preachy, anti–American […]
I’ve just arrived back at the hostel after day one of the 26th Annual John Hewitt International Summer School. I know that as a writer, it’s my job to sum up overwhelming experiences in brief, pithy phrases, but I’m having trouble with this one. Perhaps just because the day was just so… so unbelievable. The things that […]
They say you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar So why are there so many flies on Vinegar Hill? Black-bodied, red-eyed sons of Satan Buzzing, droning across the stones Tasting them with their feet Do they taste death still? Are these the children of 1798 Whose fathers crawled across rosy flesh grown pale […]
“So where are yiz from?” asks the girl behind the counter at the gas station as she rings up the total for my chocolate. I smile as I step back and turn to my friends. By this point, I have this explanation down pat. “I’m from South Carolina, those two are from Baltimore, she’s from […]
Some people look at Armagh and say “why?” Actually, almost all people, as far as I can tell, look at Armagh and say “why?” One of the things that surprised me the most about interacting with the people of Armagh is how stunned they are that a group of eight American students would come here to study […]
A writer of books once asked, “Teacher, what must I do to sell my work?” “What do the self-help books say?” the Teacher asked. “How do you interpret them?” “Thou shalt love what you write with heart and soul, and thou shalt keep thy audience in mind as you write,” he answered. “You have spoken […]
The Benefits of Poetry for Professionals We should all be reading more, but the Harvard Business Review says that we shouldn’t neglect poetry. “For one, poetry teaches us to wrestle with and simplify complexity.” Read the linked blog post for more reasons to add poetry to our reading list. Nessa O’Mahony would be happy, too.
They say to write for your audience. They say a lot of things that I don’t necessarily listen to. I don’t write for my audience, I write considering the possibility that I might someday have an audience. When I sit down to write a story-slash-short-fiction-piece-slash-novella-explosion, my prime source of motivation is the nugget of a […]
The Rise of the Demolisticle: 40 signs you can publish any old crap nowadays as long as it’s well-targeted Is micro-targeting the future of journalism, too? Slate looks at BuzzFeed’s headlines: “He aptly compares BuzzFeed’s divide-and-conquer approach to the microtargeting that politicians have been doing for years, appealing to people’s identities to win their support. The […]
