Poetry and Recipes
In addition to my position at Rutgers as a part-time business librarian, I am also a food writer and historian. While the vocations might not seem connected, they really do … Read More
Blog
Persimmons… friend or foe?
In November of 2009 a boy named Brady invited me out to his farm home in Creal Springs, Illinois, which is roughly 45 mins outside of Carbondale, Illinois (SIUC) where … Read More
Rutgers Alumni Writers: Janet Evanovich
Rutgers Today, published by Rutgers University Communications and Marketing, recently featured a Douglass Alumna in its Alumni News. Author of the popular Stephanie Plum series, Janet Evanovich graduated from Douglass … Read More
Chatting with Carmen Maria Machado
Motherhood, genre, and form took center stage during the first session of Summer Tales when we examined the story “Eight Bites” by Carmen Maria Machado. Machado is the author of … Read More
Possession
Possession can take many forms. The ownership of things, for example. I think back to the time we moved into our rented duplex in England for a two-year expat assignment. … Read More
Summer Tales with Natalie Díaz
Poet Natalie Díaz will be virtually coming to Rutgers for a live Zoom session! Register Today Díaz won an American Book Award for her first collection of poems, When My … Read More
Something’s Happening and You Don’t Know What It Is: “Adolescence II”
This post, and this poem, is about puberty… I chose Rita Dove’s poem “Adolescence-II” for this summer program in part because (like all of our poems this session, actually) I’ve … Read More
Poetry Month with Summer Tales
Are you taking classes this summer? The Summer Tales Books Club operates as a non-credit course in Canvas. Started first in the summer of 2020 in response to the changed learning … Read More
Carmen Maria Machado, Between Persons
A heads-up: This post, like Machado’s memoir, discusses intimate-partner abuse. There are two distinctive formal features of Carmen Maria Machado’s In The Dream House: A Memoir that are apparent from early … Read More
Why Read Banned Books
In a recent New York Times opinion article entitled Banning My Book Won’t Protect Your Child Carmen Maria Machado shared that parents in a school district demanded the removal of her … Read More