Blog

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Strata

My new essay Strata (Salt Hill issue 48) describes these two photos I took under the Golden Gate Bridge during an ice storm in January...

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Writing About Place

Three elements are central to my writing practice: finding a deep personal experience, locating the place, and learning more about the...

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Dear Gay Boy Made of Saltwater

A few days ago, I told Jack about a poem I had read while we were in Pennsylvania last fall. The poem, crossing the Pacific via an...

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The Rooster

New drawing. 5x7 graphite and water color, brown craft paper. 2022 Seventeen years ago, a traditional tattoo master in Siem Reap asked me...

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Craft: How I Used Google Earth in Writing Personal Essays in 2022

Last year, I spent hours on Google Earth while working on a few personal essays. The reasons varied. Sometimes it's for bits of...

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Writing Crucial Stories in 2022

Many of us wrote down our most crucial, most personal stories of survival in 2022. The most demanding story I wrote was the...

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