Dad and me at the Eagle and Child in Oxford, England! (2014) It’s my dad’s birthday today, yay! Since I’m away from home and didn’t get a proper gift (whoops), I thought I’d dig into my old blog archives and see if I could find a post I wrote in March 2005. My dad’s love language is words of affirmation, and I remember him sharing this to Literally Everyone after I posted it the first time. I was fourteen years old when I wrote this, so it’s pretty sappy and dad-worship-y. (Disclaimer: My dad isn’t perfect, surprise! Though he’s still pretty...
I thought I’d take a little trek down Memory Lane via Sentimental Highway and talk a bit about my writing journey. My family has a home video of me at age three telling a story in an unintelligible Southern accent about pink dogs (my mom translates in the video, which is the only reason we can understand it now). So basically: I’ve been telling stories since I could talk. Growing up, Dad read to me and my siblings every night—you know, the light stuff like Lord of the Rings (three times between the span of me being 7-13) and Once...
10. Mont St Michel, France Before dawn, when the tourist buses haven’t arrived and cats rove the alleys with bleary-eyed delivery men—that is when Mont St Michel is alive. You stumble half-asleep through its medieval streets, and in the cold and the dark it’s not a tourist trap, it’s timetravel. You stand on the old walls, look out at the treacherous marshes and watch the tide come in. At first the water hardly seems to stir, but then you look away, look back, and the ground’s vanished. When the monastery opens, and you elbow past the late-comers to an empty nave, echoing...
I worked with Letter to an Unknown Soldier to create a digital memorial for WWI by asking people to write letters to the unknown soldier in Paddington Station. We had an astounding result–over 21,000 letters. And several of those were by my classmates, friends and family! Similar to the daily featured letters on the website, I’ve gathered these letters together so that you can read them side by side. One of the fabulous things about this project is how the letters talk to each other—how they enter a dialogue together. I hope that by reading the very different entries below, you’ll be encourage to think...
I have been working since the end of June with Letter to an Unknown Soldier, a project which created a digital memorial for WWI by asking people to write letters to the unknown soldier in Paddington Station. We had an astounding result–over 21,000 letters. They came from the UK, from New Zealand, from Egypt, from Iceland. They were written by prisoners, school children, mothers, and politicians (including a prime minister). At times they were sweet, at times funny, at times heartbreaking. It’s been an amazing project. This is my last week working for it. We closed our submissions on Tuesday, and...
