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Creating a New Orleans Courtyard

When we bought our house, my husband wanted a New Orleans courtyard. What we had was a small, grassy square with a deck. It was COVID when we bought the house. Then the contractor was kinda sloooow. So it was only last summer—a year after buying the house—that we began creating a New Orleans courtyard. I want to share its stages with y’all....

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Writing Poetry Against My Will

I don’t write poetry, y’all. But a delightful writing group I’m a member of contains a wonderful and amazing poet. Her writing prompt this month was, “We’re gonna write some poetry.” Wait. Say, what? But I am nothing if not compliant. Usually that applies to medical instructions, PT exercises, and spiritual...

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Six Month Literary Assessment

I made a resolution at the first of the year. What was the resolution? To hold book conversations. Specifically, “I’ve decided that, with the enjoyment the books have given me, I owe the authors to get the word out on their work.” Let’s look at my six month literary assessment. So far this year, I’ve done 10 blog posts...

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Opening Our Literary Eyes

I fancy myself embedded in a new strata of American history. That strata is white people gaining awareness of how whiteness shapes society. It’s a stupid conceit. White Americans have always known institutions were shaped for them. We only momentarily “forgot” for the years from, oh, 1972 to 2008. In our forgetting years, we told...

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Writing in Troubling Times: Join Us!

Thursday @ 6:30 in a ZOOM conversation about writing in troubling times Register now for what promises to be a great Zoom conversation about writing in troubling times. Jarvis knows what he’s talking about—he wrote for the Times-Pic newspaper during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. His Pulitzer Prize-winning columns are searing,...

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Writing Home and Beyond

In 2014, Nautilus Press published the memoir, Writing Our Way Home: A Group Journey Out of Homelessness. The book was an intense year in the making. The authors, all of whom personally knew homelessness, selected their writings to include. A hoard of volunteers typed up the writings. Lawyers reviewed the draft to insure the writers weren’t...

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Best Legal Thrillers

I wrote this legal thriller. Then I wondered, what other legal thrillers are like my legal thriller? I embarked on a reading research campaign. I read—and charted by title, author, and salient features; after all, I’m a former lawyer—twenty-three legal thrillers in about two weeks (I don’t want to exaggerate). I want to share with you...

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Putting Out Fires

My father used to tell a story about his job and putting out fires. He sat at his desk, concentrating, and the phone would ring. A problem had flared up, demanding his immediate attention, diverting him from what he really needed to be doing. It drove him bonkers—when would he get his real work done?—until he realized putting out fires was his real...

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Hidden Mississippi Novels

Ok. These Mississippi novels aren’t exactly hidden. But I didn’t know them. I do now, thanks to the confluence of two things. One, I’ve been intentionally reading African American writers for almost two years now. Second, I thought to myself, Ellen, you’re hoping to publish a Mississippi novel. You need to know the canon...

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Arts Alive

Oh, man. Sometimes you just need to do something to remind yourself how much you love it. Arts Alive reminded me of that truth today. My kind, wonderful, incredibly talented friend Emma Connolly invited me to participate in Bay St. Louis’s Arts Alive as an artist in its MakerSpace. In the morning, the schedule had me talking about my book...

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