These days it’s easier to find personal essays on websites and blogs than in print. But I so enjoy reading essays—and, even more so, having the opportunity to write them—because they’re the literary equivalent of a journey; they require that the author follow a line of inquiry to a destination. As for reviews, I’m a promiscuous reader, and it’s always nice to be asked your opinion about a book with which you’ve dallied!
Here are a few links to some of the essays and reviews I’ve written; unfortunately, many of my essays aren’t archived online, including “I Sensed her Presence in Every Room,” for Parade magazine in August, 2004, “Email from Epiros” for The American Scholar in Spring 2003, and a five-part series of cultural commentary I wrote during the 2004 Olympics in Athens for the now-defunct New York Sun. But I do have a record of the first year or two of motherhood, and other transitions and rituals, from back when I used to blog at The Liminal Stage. And I now write a parenting-with-the-help-of-folklore column for Le Scoop, so find me, and some magical thinking there.
“Let There Be Light…and Pomegranates,” Le Scoop, maisonette.com, December, 2022
“A Little Mess is Good for Guests” Real Simple, October, 2022
“Rosh Hashanah: A Time for Hope,” Le Scoop, maisonette.com, September, 2022
“We’ll Take the Supermoon for a Walk,” Le Scoop, maisonette.com, August, 2022
“Geraldine Brooks Probes Racing—and Race—in Her New Historical Novel, Horse,” OprahDaily.com, August 2, 2022
“The Era-Hopping Narrator of Emma Straub’s This Time Tomorrow Finds Love Is the Only Thing That Lasts,” OprahDaily.com, July 6, 2002
“You’re Not Growing Old, You’re Getting An Upgrade,” Q and A with The Upgrade Author Louann Brizendine, OprahDaily.com, June 2, 2022
“Midsummer: Post-School Pizza Parties and Summer Magic,” Le Scoop, maisonette.com, June, 2022
“The Neighborly Art of May Baskets,” Le Scoop, maisonette.com, May, 2022
“Something’s Fishy: April Fool’s Day and Mandatory Mischief,” Le Scoop, maisonette.com, April, 2022
“Marching On: Magic Bracelets and the Ties That Bind,” Le Scoop, maisonette.com, March, 2022
“This Was Us: Eleni N. Gage wonders: Why is everyone moving on without me?” in 6 Writers on How They Emerged Stronger from the Pandemic, oprahdaily.com, July 8, 2021
“Foti’s Wild Boar Tusks,” @thekeepthings, May 12, 2021
“Asking Jill Biden to Drop “Dr” From Her Name is Telling All Women to Dumb it Down,“ oprahdaily.com, December 14, 2020
“The Keeper of the Flame.” O, the Oprah Magazine, June, 2020.
“How Not to Raise a Ray of Sunshine,” The New York Times, September 7, 2017
“In Flight: Her First American,” Panorama, The Journal of Intelligent Travel, “Seen” quarterly issue
“Eaten: When the Cock Crows,” Panorama, The Journal of Intelligent Travel, November 27, 2016
“A Nicaraguan Paradise That May Soon Be Lost,” Traveler’s Tale, The Wall Street Journal, August, 2015
“The Same River Twice,” Autograph Collection Magazine, Summer 2012.
“One Great Year,” Martha Stewart Weddings “Real Weddings” Special Issue, Summer 2012
“Confessions of a Bad Mother,” The Huffington Post, April 2, 2012
“Baby’s First Bling,” The New York Times, March 15, 2012
“If We Ask Nicely, Can We Have Our Marbles Back?” The Huffington Post, June 22, 2009
“This Birthday Boy Wants to be King,” The New York Sun, July 27, 2005
“Emblem of a Swinging, Wife-Beating Era,” The New York Sun, September 21, 2005
“Tales of Love, Sex and Pantyhose,” The New York Sun, September 7, 2005
“It Prepares You for Life, But What Prepares You for Prep School,” The New York Sun, January 19, 2005
“Siren Song,” Travel+Leisure, August, 2004
“Thank You, Zip Code of My Dreams, for an Emotion-Packed Decade,” The New York Times, May 14, 2000