Dear Ones, 2020, apart from the collective traumas of covid-19 and the election, also marked the 13th anniversary of Madeleine’s death and the 102nd anniversary of her birth. She loved celebrating her birthday, November 29, and often bemoaned its coming too close to Thanksgiving. I have intense, impressionistic memories of Thanksgiving as a child: crowded […]

Reposted from Sarah Arthur‘s facebook page, with permission. Dear ones, One year ago today I was wrapping up a glorious weekend co-directing 2019 Walking on Water: The Madeleine L’Engle Conference held at All Angels’ Church in NYC. A truly fantastic team of authors, musicians, visual artists, filmmakers, theatre educators, writing teachers, editors, booksellers, creatives, and […]

by Jessica Kantrowitz Dear Ones, I’ve all but given up reading non-fiction lately. I’m too saturated with reality, too overwhelmed with a never-ending news cycle that keeps my mind in fight-or-flight mode constantly. There are so many good writers right now grappling with questions of faith, trauma and healing, parenting, social justice, and racial justice, […]

The Moment of Tenderness

Dear ones, The response to the short story collection The Moment of Tenderness has been wonderful — I knew that I loved these stories and saw something in them, and that others do too is such a beautiful thing. There have been several notable recent reviews, including from The New York Times, The Christian Science […]

Earlier this week I relished a custard-filled pączki, just on time. You can set your watches to these Polish fried dough things showing up in Midwestern convenience stores, just in time for Fat Tuesday. By Wednesday they’ll grow stale (and half price!). See, Wednesday (Feb. 26) marks the beginning of Lent. Lent is the 40 […]