If you’re a mom, then you know it looms large in your identity. You are the finder of socks! The cutter of crusts! The only one the baby wants to hold him most days. She who carpools everyone to baseball practice and the movies with their friends. I like to think of my motherly identity as a heartwarming slog. As in, you love your kids dearly, but it’s not always … Read more
Woz Flint is a writer, mama, and lover of green olives and toast. She has published pieces in places such as The Huffington Post, Brevity, and BUST Magazine. When she isn’t playing Nintendo with her 8-year-old son or binge watching episodes of This Is Us or Schitt’s Creek, you can find her at her kitchen table tapping away on her computer keyboard working on her latest WIP. She’s in love … Read more
As we enter into April, we wanted to share this interview with creative nonfiction dynamo, Jennifer Jordán Schaller, who is Plume’s featured writer for May. I met Jennifer because we both teach writing at the same community college, and I have to say that she is as kind as she is talented. Recently, Plume had the pleasure of hearing Jennifer read from her work at our Albuquerque Women Write event. … Read more
Hello, Plumesters! It’s already time for the AWP Conference. Some of you may be wondering What’s that? The annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference, as described on its very own website is: “…an essential annual destination for writers, teachers, students, editors, and publishers. Each year more than 12,000 attendees join our community for four days of insightful dialogue, networking, and unrivaled access to the organizations and opinion-makers that … Read more
I have never been much of a mystery reader. For whatever reason, I was never drawn to them. Even when I worked in a library, was responsible for displays, and had to make sure one of said displays was always a different flavor of mystery every month, I wasn’t interested. Cozy mysteries? Mysteries with pets? And what was all this fuss about Norwegian and Danish mysteries? Reluctant Reader Becomes Obsessed … Read more
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 representing asylum seekers in the UK and the US. Much of her creative writing looks … Read more
Our featured writer for April is Cynthia Patton, an accomplished essayist and poet. Cynthia tackles very personal topics in her writing, and we are so honored that she wanted to share this beautiful work with our Plume community. We hope you enjoy our interview with her! Plume: When did you know you were a writer? Cynthia Patton:I’m not sure, but I suspect it was fairly early. My grandfather was a … 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 got married in 1956, or was it 57? It was the size of a milk … Read more
A review of the poetry collection Everything Hurts by Julianna McCarthy, published August 2018 by Latitude 34 Press Julianna McCarthy (who once played the matriarch on the iconic soap opera The Young & The Restless and had a recurring role on Star Trek) is known for saying that her son, poet Brendan Constantine, mentored her into her autumnal poetry career. She began writing poems in his workshops and later followed … Read more
Hello, friends (a.k.a. Plumesters)! We hope that your transition from winter into spring is going well. Over here at Plume we’re busy with our day-to-day operations and with coming up with new ideas for how to foster a supportive writing community. Sometimes, though, it can be easy to forget to slow down a little and take a breath. There are days when people ask us, “What exactly is this ‘Plume’ … Read more
So, you’ve written a book… If this is the case, first of all–congratulations! Writing a full-length manuscript in any genre is a daunting, all-consuming, audacious task. Be sure to treat yourself to a well-deserved reward.The act of sitting down and doing the thing–writing!–is in some ways the hardest part of being a writer. But then…what if you want to share your work with the world? There are many avenues through … 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 parts of the country. It wasn’t in cards this year, but we’re participating from afar. … Read more