Hammer and Company

Listed here are recently published or forthcoming articles. Some links are provided for online versions, though publishers' link can change without warning.

Recently Published Non-Fiction

I am the Entertainer
Boston Globe December 9 2012
My first gig was in a bar.

Household Familiars
Hunger Mountain, 2011
I suggested some literary monikers like Tobermory and Mrs. Micawber. The children named her Cat. She grew into a slow, contemplative pet. Her lengthy meditations concluded with a shudder. Apparently she foresaw the end of the world.

viol
"I didn’t want to go anywhere. I wanted to remain fondling the keys of an old Hermes typewriter that sits on a desk in a small apartment looking out on a city park. I wanted to work on my current story and read other people’s stories and listen, if it’s the right day, to the cheers or groans of the fans at nearby Fenway Park."

I am the Entertainer, The Boston Globe, December 8, 2012

Reading My Mother
Women’s Review of Books January/February 2011
Anthony Trollope says that women are instructed by the books they read. When I realized that my mother, dead now for a quarter of a century, was still a mystery to me, a riddle in pearls and a peplum, I decided to take Trollope to heart.  I would read or reread the books she was instructed by.  Perhaps I’d finally figure her out.

Plan B: Someday You'll Find Me
Ploughshares Winter 2010-2011
All afternoon she does battle with the keyboard, pausing only to ram her glasses upwards with an exasperated knuckle or pull out another hank of hair. Your heart is an icicle, she accuses her heroine. Your gestures – are you made of tin? she inquires of her hero, kicking his ankles for good measure. And as for you, she sneers at her comic relief, you are a worthless ham; somebody should hook you off the page.

Borrowing Life
Ecotone Spring 2010
In the single extant interview Berry Morgan gave… she talked [about] rewriting. “You make a rough draft and then then the next time around you get a little closer and finally you achieve… the correct sound.”

Wheel of Fortune
The Boston Globe online March 31 2010
At that early hour only a few roulette tables were in use. At each sat ancient men and women, in black. I found a chair. My new companions viewed me with indifference. They were busy with pencils and notebooks, noting the number of the miniature trough where the ball landed and immediately engaging in furious calculations.