Every summer, I read the issues of Poets & Writers that I haven’t had the time to read during the school year. (AKA all the issues.) This summer, as I was perusing “5 Over 50” (a favorite with this 59-year-old), I came across debut poet Shareen K. Murayama. When she’s questioning herself as a writer, … Read more
It was 1984, the summer between my sophomore and junior years at Saint Mary College, and I was twenty. Along with another Saint Marian, Diane, I was an exchange student in an international program at Sophia University in Tokyo. I took two courses, Japanese Religion and Japanese Literature. The literature professor had translated one of … Read more
When I taught LGBTQ+ Literature this past fall, many students were so locked in on queer oppression and trauma that they overlooked queer hope and joy. Their negative focus was partly because of the pandemic and political climate, but also because of my text choices and teaching strategies. So I wrote a post about the … Read more