Q&A with Hilma Wolitzer

by Lisa Peet

“I never think in terms of topics, and I never think in terms of readers. What happens is that, at the risk of sounding like Joan of Arc, I hear a voice in my head that just says the first sentence of the story.” Continue reading →

Bloom Creative Writing: “Necessity” by Mary Cuffe Perez

Slates come off every spring, he tells his son. Ice works up under them all winter so a strong wind can kick them lose. Keep an eye out, he said, and the barn doors, tell the girl who feeds the horses to close them tight or the wind will tear them off. His son nods. She’s still coming, every day, that girl who said she would? His son nods but doesn’t look at him. He is older somehow, the top of his head a pink bowl. He asks his son again, feeling that old necessity working its way into his blood, drumming his heart faster than it should go. Check the fences by the road. Continue reading →

An Excerpt from Joyce Becker Lee’s debut story collection, Casualties

“…Whether you’re a young reader searching for a way forward or an older reader reckoning with a past self who won’t leave you alone, you’re likely to find unexpected insights in Joyce Becker Lee’s emotionally complex and superbly crafted collection.” Continue reading →

Q&A with Kimberly Olson Fakih on Little Miseries and Little Graces

by Lisa Peet

“I’m not comforted by happy endings. I’m deeply comforted by always being in the middle of a story. I tell myself, this is the middle, and I hang on to that—I don’t know the ending and I’ve got to see this through.” Continue reading →

Bloom Creative Writing: Poems from “A Sad and Tender Time: Memorial Poems” by Sharon Whitehill

I never thought to put coins on your eyes,/ shroud the mirrors in black,/
freeze the hands on the clocks— Continue reading →

BEST OF BLOOM: The Years by Annie Ernaux: Memoir of a Generation

By Alice Lowe

I have no frame of reference for Ernaux’s memories of the restrictions and reconstruction of postwar Europe, of the domination of the Catholic Church and attending all-girl convent schools.  I’m not yet a part of her collective “we.” But then she describes a photo of herself in 1955, wearing a short-sleeved sweater, polka-dot skirt, and ballerina flats, and I see myself. Continue reading →

Beginner’s Mind: Q&A with DJ Lauren Bufferd on the Mixtape Aesthetic

by Lisa Peet

“There’s a part of me that’s all about the accidental find—you go to a museum to see one thing, and then you see something else and you’re amazed by it.” Continue reading →