A tale of a silver skunk, quiet talk of an unknown sonneteer, and friends at a distance together at York’s. Share in this surreal pandemic journal entry, with Callie Feyen.
Friendship Project: Somebody I Used To Know
When writer’s block threatens to derail, one writer finds a way forward in music, baking, friendship and the practice of “living it a while.”
Between Friends: Breathing Lessons
Whether we’re in high-altitude locations like Santa Fe, or in high-challenge situations that feel out of our grasp, it can help to have a friend to remind us how to breathe.
Between Friends: Two Writers Try Out the Friendship Project (And Get a Few Surprises)
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Between Friends: Wordplay and Other Playful Bonds
Author Laura Brown recounts how a friendship grows through wordplay — a private version of words with friends — for Tweetspeak Poetry’s Friendship Project.
Between Friends: A Playful Reckoning
If home offers a place to launch, maybe it’s because home can be a place where we can play. Callie Feyen explores the idea of play and reckoning with ourselves at home.
Making a Life With Poetry, Together
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Friendship Project: On Writing Well — Just Say It
Callie Feyen finds the page more forgiving than the podium, and friendship more forgiving yet.
The Art of the Handwritten Letter: A (Typed) Letter on Handwriting
Sara Barkat writes about the power of handwriting, where paper and ink let a single word grow to fill a line, or fold itself up small.
The Handwritten Letter: How To Tell A Friend You Adore Her
Author and teacher Callie Feyen tells the heartwarming story of an unlikely friendship sealed with a legacy of handwritten letters.
Gratitude Together: Leftover Astonishments
“Do you know any of Anna Kamienska’s poetry? ‘Astonishments’ is my favorite,” Callie Feyen texted to her friend Stephanie. “I’ve been contemplating the last two lines of her ‘Gratitude’ poem: ‘Gratitude is a scattered / homeless love.’”
Literary Friends: Charles Dickens, John Forster, Jane Carlyle, and Me
“I’d decided going to graduate school was a mistake, and began to make plans to give up,” says Callie Feyen. “Enter Charles Dickens, John Forster, and Jane Carlyle.”
Literary Friends: Keeping Anna Akhmatova Alive
Anna Akhmatova’s friends memorized her poems to keep her work alive when it was too dangerous to put pen to paper. Sandra Heska King spotlights this life and death role of literary friends.
Cross-Generational Friendships: I Signed Up for a Toddler Swim Class
Join Claire Haidar as the beach umbrella among little bottles of suntan lotion (or, the grownup in the toddler swim class) in this delightful cross-generational story.
Cross-Generational Friendships—Wanted: Inquisitive Angel
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Difficult Conversations: Eleven by Sandra Cisneros
Author Sandra Cisneros tells the poignant story of Rachel, a girl pulled unwittingly into a crisis of identity on her birthday, when her teacher coerces her into accepting a red sweater that has been hanging for some time in the cloak room, unclaimed. The sweater does not belong to Rachel, and she doesn’t want it. Just like we sometimes don’t want, or understand, the discomfort of identities colliding, in a difficult conversation.
Difficult Conversations Pod Club: On Being’s “The Art of Peace” with John Paul Lederach
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Introvert Paradise: To Find the Imperial Friend, Part II
Richard Maxson concludes his reflection on growing up and finding the confidence to live as himself, this time in the engine of a white ’64 GTO.
Difficult Conversations: Book Club & Pod Club Announcement
In October, the focus of our Friendship Project turns to the subject of Difficult Conversations. Join us for upcoming book and pod club discussions on this important topic.
Introvert Paradise: Pod Club Announcement: How Do Introverts Share Ideas?
A few years ago, researcher Susan Cain quietly raised a hand at the back of a crowded, extroverted corporate and academic culture and created, for some among us, a veritable raucous permission to continue to be our introverted selves.