James Joyce

A Castle in Our Backyard: Activating Imaginations in Ireland
|

A Castle in Our Backyard: Activating Imaginations in Ireland

The fiction writing workshop I’m teaching for Spalding University is winding down the day I discover that, behind Oyster Lodge, where our classes meet, at the end of Galway Bay, there’s a small castle. I’m satisfyingly tired after exploring Dublin and Galway through the lenses of their literature and art: a walking tour of James…

The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Love” by Clarice Lispector
|

The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Love” by Clarice Lispector

There have been many craft essays written over the last few decades arguing the merits of the classic Joyce-ian epiphany. In “Love,” (The Offing), Clarice Lispector (translated by Katrina Dodson) explores the nature of epiphanies, and perhaps more importantly, what we do with them once they happen. We meet the protagonist Ana as she’s returning…

Review: THIS IS THE HOMELAND by Mary Hickman
|

Review: THIS IS THE HOMELAND by Mary Hickman

This Is the Homeland Mary Hickman Ahsahta Press, May 2015 80 pages $18.00 Buy book Mary Hickman’s first volume of poetry begins dazzlingly with “Joseph and Mary,” a poem carved out of Joyce’s Ulysses. Whether this was done by dramatic erasure or by mosaic-like re-arrangement of fragments is hard to say, but however it was accomplished,…

Borders

We moved to Pittsburgh from the Northeast almost two years ago for my husband’s job. I tell people here I’m new to the city, usually as a way of explaining that it’s new to me, that my mental map is hazy and lots of references still slip right past. Before we came to house-hunt two…