Writer
I walked through the wide-open side door and climbed the steps to the upstairs half of a slightly scrummy duplex in one of Cleveland’s west side suburbs. It was the end of May, and my sister-in-law, Margaret, was turning twenty-two. Margaret greeted me and ushered me through the kitchen into the rest of the house, … Continue reading A Profile of Margaret : “I’m Not Really a Mess”
April 24, 2020 I sit in my car, parked in the middle of the bustling grocery store parking lot. I’m trying to gather the motivation to actually get out of the car and walk into the building, grab a sanitized cart, follow arrow stickers on the floor through a maze of one-way aisles crowded with … Continue reading Plague Diary, Part 4: “Don’t call me at home, ’cause I won’t be there.”
April 12, 2020 Patrick has been working from home for almost a month now. I’ve gotten used to waking up to the smell of coffee already brewing, the lights in the house already turned on, music or a podcast playing from the dining room. Patrick has set up his workspace in there: a laptop, a … Continue reading Plague Diary, Part 3: “I heard another beep. Who just joined?”
April 10, 2020 The first couple weeks of quarantine, I went out in the woods every day. This isn’t something specific to the pandemic; whenever it’s warm, I walk the parkway path to a patch of woods and murky creek near my house. I track deer, sometimes working my way close to the group of … Continue reading Plague Diary, Part 2: “Don’t come crying to me for any fish”
April 3, 2020 “You look like you’re in some future cyberpunk gang.” I am dressed in black jeans and a black hoodie, an oversized flannel jacket, and a pair of Docs caked in Cuyahoga mud. My hair is uncombed and dip-dyed a hue that I swear is blue but that my husband, Patrick, says looks … Continue reading Plague Diary, Part 1: “I hate this timeline”
Remember in January when I mentioned the Ice Man? Well, after that, I kind of went down a rabbit hole of ice mummies. The concept used to absolutely terrify me, after I learned about it in school via one shoddy paragraph and a horrifying photo of the preserved, leathery corpse. Now, how the tables have … Continue reading Frenemies & an Ice Maiden Obsession: February Reads
Apparently I got a bit too comfortable in the seeming endlessness of January. My goal had been to finish reading two books in that month (and the 11 subsequent ones), which, like many new years resolutions, fell a bit by the wayside only weeks into 2020. But also like many resolutions, I set the bar … Continue reading 2020 & what I read in January(ish)
The three-pound box of bees fizzed with movement, hundreds of little insect bodies churning and buzzing. Tanya held them in gloved hands and inhaled the spring air. The smell of back garden leaf litter and May mud filtered through the gauzy veil she wore to protect her head and … Continue reading Embracing the Weirdness
Yesterday I attended the second meeting of a class I'm taking through Literary Cleveland, all about creative nonfiction. I've been interested in creative nonfiction for a while now, but actually writing it, honing a pitch, and interviewing people are all relatively new to me. I think the last time I got really into interviewing people … Continue reading Observe & Scribble
Hannah Williams 