There was a little girl
There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
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Thanks for visiting my web site. I am a writer, editor and certified Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) Method writing workshop facilitator. In my sixty-plus years, I have been many other things, though becoming a published author was always the dream, one that sustained me through decades working and supporting a family. An essay about my belated journey to becoming a published author appeared on the Brevity blog a bit ago. You can read it here.
With my first published book at 61 and an MFA in Creative Writing at 60, some might call me a late bloomer. I prefer to see myself as a perennial and anticipate many incarnations and firsts yet to come. I grew up in San Francisco's Sunset District, blocks from the Zoo and Ocean Beach, during the fifties and psychedelic sixties - an iconic time and place that infiltrates much of my writing. My first book, The Reluctant Artist, is a memoir and full-color, illustrated art book about my dad, Joe Rice (1918 - 2011), an obscure, reclusive artist of many talents. In the final years of his life, it was important to create a tribute to both his artistic legacy and its influence on me. My shorter fiction and essays have appeared in numerous journals and magazines - links to many of them are here. My essay, In Photographs, won second place in the 2018 Kalanithi Awards. TinyDancer, one of my flash fictions, received nominations for the 2018 Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. I have a new memoir, not yet under contract. Gray Is the New Black (85,000 words) deals with universal issues of aging, taking stock, revisiting the roots of female shame and the bumpy path to self acceptance in this youth-obsessed culture. Particularly for baby boomers (I was born in 1954), barring a major scientific breakthrough, our lives are more than half over. To dye or not to dye? Going gray became my metaphor for the broader journey. Two recent essays, Hi, My Name Is Dorothy and I'm a Sugar Addict and White Rabbit, draw on the material and themes in Gray Is the New Black. |
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I still had my secret. It had hardened by now, becoming a familiar stone in my belly. My secret had a name: Ron.
Walking home from school one afternoon, he’d pulled onto the shoulder alongside the football field and offered me a ride. I’d seen him before, cruising in his black Mustang. He was going my way that day, he was sort of familiar, he looked like a guy in a band, and there were guitar cases in the back seat. I got in the car.
From White Rabbit, Memoir Mixtapes, June 2018