“Miss Allison?” Shelly asks, because we are in Memphis and thus I cannot break 83 teenagers of calling me “miss” no matter how many times I say “Just Allison is fine.” Instead I say, “Yes ( Read more... )

This morning in Kuwait, the party at the next table left a wreckage of half-eaten waffles mired in strawberries and whipped cream. I looked over and longed to take just one bite.

Slightly embarrassing…but more ‘silly.’ And I didn’t.

When Chita Rivera walked into the afterparty of the song and dance show celebrating her career, I had the ( Read more... )

That Writer. Every writing group or class has one. The person who talks too much. Who comes in stoned, or just high on life. Who interrupts the teacher we’ve all paid big bucks/gone through a tedious application process to hear. Who comments as if they themselves are the teacher. Who says things like “Well, you know what Flannery O’Connor said” as ( Read more... )

I always watch for the tortoise. The back wall of the writing studio is mostly a floor-to-ceiling window about eight feet wide, one vast sheet of glass holding the Florida scrubland outside. There’s a white dirt road behind a strip of live oaks and sumac and Spanish moss, and once, in the middle of an afternoon workshop, I saw a tortoise stumping ( Read more... )

I have heard of a thing called, a blackout, and it is not the same. Mrs. Whelker told me that there is a thing called, alcohol, and that sometimes Mature Adults engage in drinking alcohol and even though it does not taste nice at first it can start tasting nice and then a Mature Adult might fail to observe Appropriate Limits. But Mrs. Whelker, I ( Read more... )

To Whom It May Concern ( Read more... )

TPA-JFK-CDG-DXB“We ask all passengers to please remain seated and keep your seatbelts fastened. Crew remain seated ( Read more... )

This is a new section from a YA novel in progress, a black comedy about a school shooter. The Fundraiser table currently holds a Christmas-tree sale put on by the Rojans all-girl student service club. "Eyedropper" is the name Aurora is called--there's a story, but you don't have to know it for this excerpt. ( Read more... )

We had $250,000. We earned it with tears, we earned it with arrogance. Kevin the Shark-Tank-Shark/Dragon’s-Den-Dragon yelling in person is 100% less funny, especially when it’s at you. Did you know the judges’ platform is raised, that supplicants are lit from below the platform, that our two minutes and thirty seconds was edited from almost an hour ( Read more... )

There’s a box ( Read more... )