I went to graduate school in New York City a year after college for a Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) in creative writing. The best thing about being one of the younger students in the program was befriending writers who were a little older and much wiser than I. In
The night before our eldest son’s graduation from high school, the five of us go out to a quiet family dinner. The weekend calendar is already booked solid with events gathering different circles of family and friends; knowing how big celebratory moments can splinter your energy and attention, it
Our daughter is in the 7th grade and this is her second year participating in the Middle School musical. She is a part of the ensemble cast, which means she does not have any speaking lines, but sings and dances in all the group numbers. It is a role she
My mother is a serious person. She doesn’t read, she studies. The first time I was taught to annotate in literature class, I recognized it immediately as the way my mother combs through texts. She underlines and makes marginal notes for everything – even recipes, instruction manuals, museum pamphlets, and
In the late 1980s, my family got our first 8-track karaoke machine. It was huge and extremely heavy and we kept it stationed by the piano. We weren't the type of family to host karaoke parties at home, I think my parents wanted it to practice so that
When I was little, my parents would often take us to Beitou, up in the mountains just north of Taipei, where there were several hot spring hotels that made good use of the natural underground sulfur. When we drove up the mountains, the eggy smell permeated our car, and the
I fell into translation the same way I fell in love with my husband – without expecting to and wholeheartedly. Both experiences were so embodied, I appropriately (or ironically?) did not have the words to translate what was happening. When I met my husband, I was 20 years old, too busy
Six months ago, I started tracking my menstrual cycle with my dear friend, S. We are both 48, on the cusp/midst of perimenopause and fascinated by the tidal rhythms of our changing bodies as we enter this new phase of womanhood. S has always had a regular, almost textbook
Sci-fi has never been my genre - especially if it involves space and time travel (or worse, aliens dripping with goo). I like both my feet firmly planted on the ground. If you ask me what my favorite age is, my answer will always be: right now. When I was
When I was nine, I felt frustrated by the adults around me, who seemed to have forgotten that they had once been children, too. They functioned in an air space that floated many heads above mine and when they occasionally turned their attention down towards me, it was in a
I like to do something with my hands when I'm talking on the phone or when I'm in the midst of a long, face-to-face conversation. In high school, I would doodle on the backs of envelopes and worksheets while I chatted for hours with my girlfriends.
The poet, Safia Elhillo, wrote a craft essay on Catapult Magazine (back when it was still a magazine) about turning poems into prompts. I read it during a time when my writing was at a lull - the reason why I was combing the internet for writing ideas in the