In this month’s column, we double down on fun as we sit down with Editor Diane Gottlieb to discuss an online literary journal “and” an exciting small press dedicated to elevating emerging writers for more than ten years. What does emerging mean? Here’s how the small press, ELJ Editions, and its affiliated journal, Emerge Literary…

In her stunning essay “On Excellence,” Cynthia Ozick pays tribute to her mother, a woman with a big heart and many gifts and passions. Ozick recalls how her mother used to make her laugh, for she was “so varied, like a tree on which lemons, pomegranates, and prickly pears absurdly all hang together,” and she…

In Awakenings: Stories of Body & Consciousness, you bring together 49 brilliant, diverse voices writing short essays about inhabiting the body. There are moments of intense self-awareness, such as when Maureen Aitken asks, “What if your body is glorious now, and you are about to miss it for the ritual of beating yourself with a scale?” …

Flash Fiction by Diane Gottlieb Ironing Out the Creases        Friday mornings before Joe went to school and after his father left for work, his mother would start the wash. She would bundle the clothes into the baskets and Joe would help her carry them to the elevator of their WWII brick building. He’d press the button…

Diane Gottlieb Editor of Awakenings Stories of Body & Consciousness on The Kathryn Zox Show Podcast Go To Podcast

I’ve often thought about the word “closure” when used in conjunction with loss. Closure. It’s a nice, convenient idea. Who wouldn’t, in the throes of grief or even beyond, welcome the promise of putting the loss behind them, the opportunity to quell the “whys” and the “what-ifs,” so they could focus on the “what nows.”…

When I picked up James J. Patterson’s lovely Junk Shop Window: Essays on Myth, Life, and Literature (Alan Squire Publishing 2023), I did not know that I had accepted an invitation to spend several hours with a wise and charming Muse. Patterson graciously welcomes us into his world and into his thoughts about our larger one. This…

Wolfsong (ELJ Editions 2023), Kathryn Silver-Hajo’s first full-length publication, is a gorgeous hybrid collection of flash fiction and CNF stories capturing formative moments in girls’ and women’s lives. There is pain in these stories. And longing. There are bad decisions. But there is also a remarkable fierceness in these girls and women and a deep wisdom,…

Imagine putting your relationship under a microscope and then sharing what you’ve discovered with the world. That is exactly what Jennifer Lang has done in her memoir Places We Left Behind, and we are all the better for it. When American-born Lang, a secular tourist, falls in love with French-born Philippe, an observant immigrant, during the…

Ana Maria Spagna is a master at bringing the power and beauty of her beloved Pacific Northwest  to the page. She is a four-time finalist for the Washington State Book Award, and in her latest book, the braided nonfiction narrative Pushed: Miners, a Merchant and (Maybe) a Massacre (Torrey House Press), she documents her investigative journey through the landscape…