by Dana Cass
I was going to make this an annual thing after doing it in 2020, but then I forgot to do it in 2021, but this year I learned about the Costa Book Award and was reinvigorated! The article where I learned about this prize describes the award as “[pitting] novels, children’s books, biographies, and poetry…More
The other week I went full Churchill on one of my more Covid-shy friends, trying to talk her down from worrying about catching Covid at a distant cousin’s wedding. You know the drill: We shall not flag or fail, we shall dive maskless onto the dance floor. Life is short, and who knows how many…More
I caught Covid last December. Around the same time I sank into a profound depression. The depression was easier to source; it was dark in London every day before four, I hadn’t seen a friend in person in months, and the thrill had long gone out of changing your Zoom background to the most salacious…More
Which, I think, is why I pulled the rope ladder out of the well and put the cover on with you down inside there that time, kind of like sealing you off. That way, there would be no more Mr. Wind-Up Bird around, and I wouldn’t have to be bothered by those thoughts for a…More
9 years ago I had a degree in English and a job selling ballet shoes for barely above minimum wage. I had left Vassar the year before assuming that a job would make its way to me in the way jobs did in the books I grew up reading, in which smart people made livings…More
In the spring of 2010, not long before my college dance company’s annual gala at the local opera house, I borked something deep in my hip. The gala took place each year in the dead of upstate New York winter, which meant that there was always a spate of injuries right before, mostly slip-and-falls down…More
Sometimes I am boggled by the gallery of souls I’ve known. By the lore. The wild history, unsung. People crowd in and talk to me in dreams. People who died or disappeared or whose connection to my own life makes no logical sense, but exists, as strong as ever, in a past that seeps and…More
I thought this might be the year I beat my 2015 reading record: 89 books, 32,379 pages (thanks, Goodreads). Even a pandemic is no match for commuting from Astoria to the Meatpacking District, I guess. I came close this year with 79 books, 31,284 pages. That mismatch between books and pages relative to 2015 is…More
Reader, I got it. More
At 31, with my faculties and most of my dignity intact, I’m hard-won. People know me and know of me. More
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