She was young, the same delicate age as my vulnerable grandson is now. Full of pip, but spindly arms and legs, no bigger than a minute. All she’d ever known was the lapping of the Gulf, innocent of actual waves. Even so, had she grown up with the Atlantic, it wouldn’t have mattered.
A riptide is a riptide.
We were exploring our...
Each time we appeared in public, we wore fewer clothes. My sister, my cousin and I – Redbird Brain Productions – hit Capital Street the first time in long dresses, flouncy skirts and, for me, a full-length carrot costume. We were “Goon With the Wind,” a walking-float in the annual St. Paddy’s Day Parade. When we rounded the corner, 75,000 people...
I like flowers that stink. But then, growing up, I loved the smell of dry cleaning fluid that seeped through my grandparent’s Everyready Cleaners. Driving to their house, when we passed the linseed plant, I’d roll the window to suck in the sickly sweet air. Unwatched, I’d crawl into the back dash of Mamo’s Dodge to get close to the hot cardboard...
Carson McCullers? Eudora Welty? What better company could I ask to be in?
Take a minute and read the wonderful review Susan Cushman wrote on THE HART WOMEN. Plus, read all the way to the blog Comments on for more on this gem:
“An intergenerational story set in Mississippi, I was intrigued from the first page and finished the entire...
I wrote a book, and I made an assumption. I assumed you were like me. I assumed that, some nights, as you fall into that state before sleep actually takes you, you startle awake. When that happens, you remember that moment when you quit going to see your grandmother in the nursing home because you were flush with new love and you abandoned her as...
We’re having a grown-up event at Novel Memphis. It’s happening two weeks from today. The celebration is for THE HART WOMEN. I wrote the story. Marisa Whisett Baker is hand-sewing it into a novel. The event will have tickets and everything (the tickets are so Marisa will know when she’s made enough books). You can read about Marisa’s...
When I read the theme for the summer issue of Exterminating Angel Press was “Eternity or Bust,” I knew I had the perfect submission. Thank goodness Tod Davies of EAP: the Magazine thought so too. I’m grateful to her for including my piece in her fabulous magazine.
The short story is an excerpt from my novel THE BONE TRENCH....
This is my America.
Where three white Mississippians stand in the heat and praise the knowledge of Raul, a landscape artist, because he knows what the heck he’s doing in this demanding climate. Because, in my America, we value competence, period.
Where all the windows on the antique stores and clothing stores and breakfast hang-outs...
It’s time once again to offer some Odd Ellen Facts (is the adjective on the facts or on Ellen? You decide). They’re “Strange but true” statements from my life, unembellished, unfootnoted. Let’s begin:
My uncle once wrote me a letter to suggest I buy a Roomba. Not only would the robotic vacuum cleaner keep my house...
One day, when I was walking around my sister’s fabulous Hays-Barton neighborhood in Raleigh, North Carolina, I looked up to see a stately house sitting on a hill. Spying such a house in her neighborhood isn’t unusual. Hays-Barton is an old area with beautiful trees and sweeping lawns and an esplanade wide as a park running through the...
