The End

I recently published my first edited book,  Labor of Love: A Literary Mama Staff Anthology ,  with  Small Harbor Publishing . It's an anthology of writing from  Literary Mama  staff over the past 20 years. It's a beautiful collection and I am proud of the writers and proud to share the book.  It seems a fitting moment, as I pondered sharing about the book here on the blog, to reflect on my life as a blogger, and acknowledge that it is time to officially end this blog.   I started blogging in about 2007, when my baby was learning to toddle, when I was learning how to be a mother and stepmother, when I was just starting to see my way as a writer. I needed it back then. I craved it. I had a variety of blog iterations--family, art, creativity, writing things I delved into. There's a freedom in blogging, a casualness, an easy familiarity that's lacking (for me anyway) in other kinds of writing. I loved blogging and the words came pouring out.  Ove...
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Balance Wednesday- Be Grateful

Today is a good day. It is a day when I feel like a writer. Or, more specifically, I feel like an author. Today in Colorado Springs, CO, Pilgrimage Magazine is having a Release Party celebration for their newest issue. Volume 37, Issue 1; in which I have an essay. Today I feel like an author because I was asked to show up there and read.  

Unfortunately, I will not be able to visit Colorado Springs on this day, but I am utter grateful for the invitation to do so. When I think about Colorado, I think about the place that inspired my essay to begin with. Hovenweep National Monument. 

 I went there as a fluke thirteen years ago, after I had finished hiking the Appalachian Trail. I was struggling with reentry into the "regular world," and while staying at my parent's house got a call from Jim at Hovenweep. He had my info through the Student Conservation Association application I had put in a year previously, and wondered if I wanted to come work in Nowheresville CO. I didn't, really, but I had nothing better to do. So I went.

 And thus ensued one of the most poignant times in my life, part of which this essay is about. A time that I can be nothing but grateful for. A time of new friends, and a connection to the desert.  A time of solitude and of learning. A time that I could write whole volumes on myself.  

 I am utterly grateful to have been given the opportunity to publish my first essay in Pilgrimage. You can't find this magazine on local shelves here in the East, but you can find the introduction by Guest Editor Juan Morales at the Pilgrimage website. You can also subscribe online and get this current issue, and future ones, mailed to your doorstep. The Release Party information is up on their Facebook Page, and I strongly urge you to go if you are in the area.

 Today, I am grateful. And I very much hope that next time I am lucky enough to get a piece published in Pilgrimage, I will be able to get back to Colorado to read a little, party a little, and slip on back into the quiet of that little Monument in the desert that touched my heart.

Comments

Sue Heavenrich said…
congratulations! Way to go.... and, yes, getting something in print helps that "being a writer" thing.
May 16, 2013 at 11:52 AM
Anonymous said…
Congrats!!! Hooray!!!
May 16, 2013 at 1:43 PM
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