Month: June 2018
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José Orduña: Writing and Justice
I met José Orduña at the Associated Writing Program conference in Tampa, Florida this past spring. He had arrived at the conference about 48 hours after getting arrested in D.C. for civil disobedience, fighting for the rights of DACA recipients. José is a Professor of creative writing at the University of Nevada. His take on…
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George Plimpton, Graywolf Press and the State of Literature Today
Today’s podcast of The Writing Bull offers you a two-fer: Years ago I had the opportunity to interview one of the founders and the editor of The Paris Review, George Plimpton. You might recognize him, his face popped up all over the place in the second half of the twentieth century, playing in a professional baseball game…
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To My Fellow Bipolar Bloggers
I’ve been reading the blogs of other folks who suffer from bipolar, which is very helpful, because I see that I’m not alone with this buggering illness. We share many of the same symptoms: constant anxiety, chronic dread, delusions, insomnia, paranoia, suicidal tendencies, amazing spurts of creativity, the ability to feel life much more deeply…
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Bipolar Cocktails
I’m on three medications for bipolar now, let’s call them Huey, Dewey, and Louie. They’ve worked for a few years, but I’ve been going through some rough times, so it’s time to change the cocktail. Unlike your plain old, garden-variety, soul-crushing depression, in which you usually can take one pill a day, and use that…
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The Exiled Poet: Guisell Gomez
While I was at the Associated Writing Programs conference in Florida this past month, I met Guisell Gomez, a student of creative writing and a published poet. Born in Colombia, she and her family moved to the United States when she was a child. She remembers the move, the brutal act of being torn out…