Abortion in the Name of God
The following was in Dame Magazine on October 2, 2014: I had an abortion, when I was a covered woman in a fundamentalist community. I live in Texas. I thought about that recently when U.S. Judge Richard Yeakel struck down [...]
Why do I write? I don’t.
Thanks to Anna B. Sutton, writer & co-founder of Porch Writers’ Collective, for inviting me to be part of her blog tour. Anna was born in Nashville and received her BFA from the Appalachian Center for Craft in Smithville, TN and [...]
Getting a (writing) life
Let me get this clear: if I hadn’t turned to writing, there’s no way I would have been able to change my life. Writers often stumble onto this phenomenon—how studying this impossible craft has an inescapable effect on a person. [...]
My Book Has a Beard
A young man I know was raised to be a Hassidic Jew. As a young adult, he started reading secular books and was soon gobbling up whatever he could find on history, politics, and economics, like tools to grasp a world he [...]
A Cultural Immigrant
I joined the Hassidim when I was fifteen. You've seen them--the men in full beards and yarmalkas, long black coats on the Sabbath, the women in wigs and careful modest dress. All those years in my Hassidic community, we didn’t [...]