Do you suppose Hannibal Lecter does his own laundry? It’s easy to see a white collar criminal doctor sending his whites out to be dry cleaned and pressed by an efficiently outsourced place with pink boxes. But I imagine, what with the blood stains and all, doing it himself is a better plan. So there he is in the basement—or, I guess he has one of those fancy laundry rooms on an upper floor with sunny yellow walls and a sign that says “Wash. Dry. Fold. Repeat.”— sorting whites and red and pulling out the bleach and hoping it doesn’t ruin his favorite sweater…
As a disabled writer, for over two decades I’ve looked at how disability is represented in our literature. This interest has taken me across the globe, with a special focus in disability representation in Japan, and more recently in Germany. I’ve taught classes and given talks on disability representation at many universities and conferences in North America, Japan, and Europe.
Get out your pens! Head for the future by writing big!
My mom died three years ago and long before then, I knew I’d be writing about how it would all go down. Somehow, so did she. I was barely a teen, when after a particularly disturbing episode in our family’s constant chaos, my mother jerked my elbow towards her oversized chest and through her teeth spat, “Don’t you EVER write about this!!”
Sassafras Lowrey: these words can’t wait for spell check
(Word Count: 478)
Dear Books,
From the moment my father gave me Go Tell It on the Mountain and told me,
“Read this and you’ll know more about who I am,”
I knew one thing was inescapable:
I would need to read that book, get back to him about it, and keep on reading and reading—
I don’t know why you write, he said (in a text). You don’t believe in anything. But is that true?
I am a would-be artist, for now content in the sadistic pursuit of mastery.
I once met a newly-retired cereal executive who asked me what I did for a living. I said I was a writer. He said, hey, what a coincidence, he was thinking of becoming a writer. “Hey, what a coincidence,” I didn’t say, “I was thinking of becoming a cereal executive.” I’m sure he didn’t mean […]
Goddard College MFAW alum John Schmidtke:
“Okay,” I said. “But just in case, what’s the residency’s theme?”
“Lust and fun,” Elena said.
My foot came off the gas a bit.
“Lust and fun?” I asked.
“Yes,” Elena said.
Let me pause right here to confess that while I attended Goddard, lust took over my life.
I cheated on my wife Mary almost every night for two years.