The Gettysburg Review

It’s here! I have a personal essay ("Family Pictures") in the summer issue of THE GETTYSBURG REVIEW! I’m completely floored to be in this top literary journal (among their writers: E. L. Doctorow, Rita Dove, James Tate, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Wilbur). A big check arrived from them last week, but I didn't expect the magazine to come out so soon. Walking on air.

When they accepted the essay, the editor Mark Drew called it "a smart, compelling, and moving look at the reasons why we keep and display photographs." He was a wonderful editor, a very close reader with great suggestions.

Print and digital copies of the journal are available here.

This is one of the first creative essays that I wrote, and I've revised it off and on for years (sometimes shelving it for very long periods). It's completely different now than it was then, but has retained an academic element (the outside readings from Sontag, Barthes, and others all confined to section epigraphs now). My San Francisco writing group, the Leporine Conspiracy, was enormously helpful. An essayist that I only know from an online essay group, Lucy Bryan Malenke, did a thorough close reading of the essay and made invaluable suggestions. And it was fun to get the edits from GETTYSBURG REVIEW when my good friend, the poet Sharon Dolin, was visiting from New York, and get her input too. It takes a village.

Great cover art by Tina Newberry. There's a color insert with 8 more of her paintings.