Tag: writing
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a gift, not a given
“I was in a gang growing up.” “I’m a slam poet. I actually have a show on Friday if anyone is free.” “I just moved here from Berlin.” Well, geez. How was I supposed to follow those? I was 21, in a two-week training that kicked off my AmeriCorps year, faced with the hated icebreaker…
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begin anywhere.
“I’ve been thinking of writing a book for years,” a friend told me the other day. “But…where do you start?” I hear this all the time. Many people have ideas for a book—yet most never get written, in part because getting started is one of the hardest things to do, ever. I don’t have all…
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how to find your voice
The other day I saw an Instagram post from a fashion icon and poet, where someone asked them, “How do you find your style?” They answered, “Heal.” Wow. What an answer. And how true. You can only know what clothing expresses your inner self when you know and accept that inner self. You can only…
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water and shared water
One night eleven years ago, my best friend came over for dinner. We were chatting along as usual when I began chopping a sweet potato, and she interrupted herself to say, “What are you doing?” I stopped. “What do you mean?” “The pieces are so uneven,” she said (not critically—just neutrally, surprised, curious).“You’re just, like,…
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and that makes you hard to see
After college, I worked as an AmeriCorps volunteer in Rochester, New York. My friends and I spent a lot of time at dive bars, namely one where we could spin a wheel to win cheap beer and hog the jukebox all night with our laundry quarters. We talked about anything and everything, and one night,…
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advice from a stranger
In February 2020, I took a road trip around the U.S. I met my friend Sam in New Mexico, and we decided to hike the Atalaya Mountain Trail. Around 8,000 feet we passed another hiker, a guy in his sixties decked out in hiking gear, standing in the middle of the trail. He waved his…
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on keeping the channel open
I just counted, and I have 37 houseplants. I only bought about 10–the rest came from propagating, cuttings, and lately, now that my compost is the ripe old age of six months, from the soil itself. In fact, so many seedlings have sprouted that I just scooped some compost into a tin can and am…
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a night at the tiki
“What do you do?” a random drunk guy yelled over the crowd. The guitarist in the corner was on his third “Wagon Wheel” of the night, so you know the tiki bar was hopping. A little tipsy myself, I yelled back, “I’m a writer!” A moment of alarm. Did that sound dumb? Would he laugh?…
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a bridge, a mask
Last week I sat down to write an essay about the year I spent leading creativity workshops in a women’s prison. It felt like an obvious topic, one that would hook people’s interest and inevitably lead somewhere interesting. But it didn’t. Every paragraph was a dead end. Finally I walked away. Later that night, though,…
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an epiphany at church
A snapshot of a memory: I’m seven or eight, at church, sitting in a short pew with my mom and sister. The choir is to our left, where my father stands with about half the teachers from my school. Sunlight streams in through the skylights onto the wooden altar steps. The choir sings—pretty, polyphonic, a…
Kimberly Bunker, MFA 