I’m very excited to share a wonderful upcoming event. In a couple of weeks, on Monday December 12, at 5 pm EST, I’ll be giving a Zoom talk with my friend and colleague Dr. Julia Lee Barclay-Morton. Julia and I have both recently had books published: her hybrid collection The Mortality Shot is her first, and Fourteen Stones is my second.

Our books are very different, but Julia and I have a lot in common. Both of us came to writing “sideways,” as we call it, from other fields. We’ve gone at it in non-traditional ways; neither of us has an MFA, and we both work with indie presses and have found unique paths to publication. We’ve engaged a lot with questions and challenges relating to mental health. As middle-aged women, we’ve found ourselves navigating that tricky period in midlife where the sense of self can shift, and we run up against a real sense of our own mortality (Covid of course contributed to that a lot).

In our talk, we’ll share readings from our books, and talk about our experiences of the writing life and how our work as writers has been shaped by the other circumstances we have in common. As the publishing world continues to change, growing in some ways and contracting in others (especially with respect to traditional “big press” publishing), we think it’s important to highlight the many ways one can build a writing life, and emphasize the idea that there’s no single “right way.”

Because of that, we’re calling our talk “How Not to Get There Directly.” We think there’s a lot to be said for the roundabout, adventurous kind of path that lets you see a lot of the world. We hope you’ll join us on Zoom on Monday 12/12 at 5 pm EST!

Registration is free but required. To sign up, please click here. When you come, please also bring any questions you have; we’ll have an open-ended Q & A period at the end of the session. See you then!