Jennifer Simpson 
Karen O’Reilly is a writer and human rights and humanitarian worker. She has worked as a human rights educator for Amnesty International, and in refugee protection and resettlement for the UN refugee agency in Uganda, the Central African Republic, Senegal, Guinea, Kenya and Jordan. In between UN deployments she writes expert witness reports for lawyers … Read more
I remember watching soap operas with my mom. We were a CBS family so we were loyal to the lineup that included not only The Young & The Restless but As The World Turns, and the Guiding Light. We watched on a black & white Zenith television set. The one my parents purchased after they … Read more
This year Melanie and I had hoped to attend the largest conference for creative writers–the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) in Portland at the end of March. We wanted to promote Plume and we also wanted to hang with fellow writers, many of them colleagues from grad school who’ve gone on to other … Read more
Dear Memoir, I met you for the first time in a writing workshop facilitated by Jill Badonsky. You were scribbles and snippets that filled my notebooks. Some of those bits were silly and some were too personal to share, but those bits were life rafts that kept me afloat when I was sinking: my sister … Read more
Welcoming in Eros Energy by Maria DeBlassie I’ve experienced a swirl of synchronous happenings these past few weeks all of which were centered on the myth of Psyche and Eros. There was the Facebook post about walking through our private underworlds in order to find our way to Eros and, ultimately, the hard work it takes to cultivate … Read more
My best friend Karin told me that when she sleeps it’s like going to the movies. She dreams complete stories. And she doesn’t always have the lead role! That surprised me because I’m always the star of my own dreams. If I remember them. Of course she’s a fiction writer and I write nonfiction—I’m working … Read more
Resolutions or Intentions? I don’t know about you, but the whole idea of New Year’s Resolutions is a bit confounding. In fact, I’m not really sure what “resolutions” are. They are not “goals” which are measurable so it seems they are never quite attainable. The idea of setting intentions seems to be all the rage, … Read more
I met Suzanne in graduate school–she was a year (and a generation) behind me and started out with an emphasis in fiction but soon expanded her studies. I remember one conversation we had. She was complaining about the “old dudes” in her fiction workshop. How they were dismissive of her (and the younger writers). And … Read more
I hate Christmas. I think the fact that I’ve been working on this blog post for over two weeks is a pretty good indication that it’s hard to explain. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the beauty of a Christmas tree, or a Christmas truck. And chestnuts roasting and mulled wine, hot apple cider, … Read more
In this world it is SO easy to get caught up in what we don’t have, especially as writers. Everyone (but me) has publication credits, everyone (but me) earns their money with their writing, everyone else (but me) has interesting things to write about, everyone (but me) has immense talent… Then there’s refugees,wildfires, hurricanes, elections, … Read more