The Herd Boy is not the story of Nelson Mandela. Not exactly. The author, Niki Daly, gives her main character a different name, Malusi. But he is a herd boy like Mandela was, and he is living in a village similar to the one Mandela grew up in. And like Mandela, Malusi has dreams of becoming President. The book… View Post

I haven’t been sleeping well and we have an abundance of pears that are about two days away from turning to jam. The pears aren’t what’s keeping me up at night, but they did pop up in my string of thoughts somewhere between 3-5:30 in the morning, and it was the pears I decided with a groggy conviction that I… View Post

When I was teaching, I had a student one year who, no matter what I assigned, would connect the assignment to a horse. I taught sixth grade at a small school and the only subject I wasn’t in charge of was Music, so I enjoyed the efforts she went to in including a horse not just in writing and reading,… View Post

A small conversation: Hadley, Harper, and I are in the car and John Mayer’s “Edge of Desire,” comes on the radio. Hadley huffs, rests her head on the window, then mutters, “John Mayer is a boy who likes to be sad.” Harper looks out the window and listens to the song, then says in a voice that I can only… View Post

Following is the first in a series of essays that take a look at how books work in order to write essays and stories of our own better.  Women finding themselves with child this year will walk out of their OB/GYN offices with a bag full of parenting magazines, samples of things like formula and diaper cream, and oodles of… View Post