by Richard Tillinghast
While I loathe the frantic search for expensive gifts in shopping malls resounding with irritating music, and while I sigh with relief when the decorations are finally taken down and the last desiccated Christmas-tree needles are hoovered up, I do not agree with Ebeneezer Scrooge that “Every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.” I love Christmas with the same awe and wholehearted sense of ritual participation that I have felt since childhood.
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by Ashley David
Like the bulk of writers and artists in the U.S., I do many, many things in order to carve out space for my creative work. I have, for example, tended bar, worked on Wall Street, taught classes, held three jobs at once, babysat movie stars’ children, babysat movie stars, developed marketing campaigns, cleaned houses, made jelly, ghost written dating advice for a matchmaker, enrolled in degree programs, started a dot.com, cooked meals on land and sea, juggled friends and family, and fought the demons of other people’s expectations and my own insecurities. What I have not done, until now, is find myself with four weeks of nothing to do but write. No meals to cook, no house to work on, no critters to care for, no 1001 things competing for my time and energy. Just the work. A desk, a chair, some paper, a computer, some books, a pen, and a view of the Gihon River. What a terrifying and beautiful prospect.
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by Lily Brown
Beck has a slow-jam my sister and I used to love when we were growing up. It’s called “Debra,” and it goes like this: “I wanna get with you / And your sister / I think her name’s Debra / I pick you up late at night after work / I said lady, step inside my Hyundai / I’m gonna take you up to Glendale.” “Debra” is important to this tour blog entry for two reasons: 1) Three ladies—Cynthia Arrieu-King, Claire Becker, and I—just spent four days in a royal blue Hyundai Accent and 2) We spent the tour driving the California freeways, including the 210, which we took through Glendale on our way from Pomona College to UC Merced on November 18th. This tour blog entry will consist of photos that provide a blow-by-blow of our travels in California, alongside some reflections on the tour experience.
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by Keith Taylor
When my daughter called from college to talk about coming home for Thanksgiving, she mentioned in passing that she’d just seen something she thought I might enjoy at the library—a display of first edition poetry books, including a first edition of Paradise Lost. Now I readily admit that Milton has been one of my blind spots, one of the few pieces of canonical literature I haven’t warmed to, although I keep trying and I think I’m getting closer. Still I thought I might like to see this book.
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by Ashley David
Our new website and blog have been up for a couple months now, and here’s a taste of what folks have been saying: Fiction Writers Review reviewed the new MQR website, and Randall Mann’s “The One Sentence Review” buzzed around Book Forum, The Poetry Foundation’s Harriet: The Blog, and The Rumpus. In addition, posts have been tweeted about on Twitter and posted on Facebook. In short, the conversation is on the move. There’s only one problem…
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