Category: THE WRITING LIFE

  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER: ROMANI GUARDINI’S “THE LORD’S PRAYER,” CONNEMARA, TRAGIC YOUNG DEATHS

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER: ROMANI GUARDINI’S “THE LORD’S PRAYER,” CONNEMARA, TRAGIC YOUNG DEATHS

    God’s will, says Guardini, is what “by his decree should be accomplished in the world” — and that depends, absolutely, on our cooperation and consent to his grace. Read all about it in this week’s Angelus News.

    Next Thursday I fly out to Dublin. Why? To host a MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP at Kylemore Abbey!

    We’ve already calendared out next year for September 6-12, 2026, so put that in the hopper.

    We had a death in the family this week, my 23-year-old grand-niece back in New Hampshire: car accident. Then–the chlldren in Minneapolis.

    Makes you kind of want to hunker down.

    Visit and subscribe to my Substack at DESIRE LINES: BOOKS, CULTURE, ART, for at least twice-weekly posts.

  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AUGUST 22, 2025: ONE SPOT REMAINING IN IRELAND WRITING WORKSHOP

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AUGUST 22, 2025: ONE SPOT REMAINING IN IRELAND WRITING WORKSHOP

    MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP! IN CONNEMARA! COMING UP! NAB THAT LAST SPOT…

    FOR MORE INFO AND TO SIGN UP:

    CLICK LINK

    THIS WEEK’S ANGELUS COLUMN

    Boston native Nicole Treska has written a memoir to read with an ache in the throat: “Wonderland” (Simon & Schuster, $27.99).

    “How do you turn the province of drunks, sailors, and hookers into a dream of bright escape?” she asks in the opening paragraph. “You build Wonderland, one of America’s first amusement parks, located on the water right outside of Boston. Wonderland only operated for a few bright seasons, from 1906 to 1910, but its legacy shines on.”

    It’s one of the best books I’ve read in ages–I even wrote Nicole a fan letter–and if you love memoir, and especially if you grew up in New England, I urge you to buy and read it.

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AUGUST 15, 2025: OVERWHELMED WOMEN, THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BVM, AND A MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AUGUST 15, 2025: OVERWHELMED WOMEN, THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BVM, AND A MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP

    This week’s Angelus News column is on a book called The Most Overwhelmed Women of the Bible by Mary DeMuth. Granted, they didn’t have e-mail and cell phones, BUT.

    Today of course is a beautiful Solemnity and a Holy Day of Obligation: The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary body and soul into heaven. A few years ago, I went to a Mass at a women’s retreat place and the “progressive” priest man-splained the whole homily about how of course we women didn’t believe such nonsense, and all but apologized on behalf of the Church for having to celebrate the feast. I can’t bear playng “the woman card,” but give me a break–he didn’t even get how insufferably obnoxious it was to be forced to sit and listen to a guy tell me what I was supposed to believe and feel…especially because I was in fact trembling with joy at the thought of Our Lady’s special way of being welcomed into Paradise, there to be crowned QUEEN OF HEAVEN AND EARTH.

    I felt exactly like the hungering and thirsting send-off crowd in Titian’s painting–

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AUGUST 8, 2025: AGAINST EASE, SUMMER IN THE DESERT, AND IRELAND AHEAD

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AUGUST 8, 2025: AGAINST EASE, SUMMER IN THE DESERT, AND IRELAND AHEAD

    This week’s Angelus News column is called “Against Ease” (or was, before they changed the title to “How Much Failure and Suffering Must One Endure for a Good Life”).

    Anyway, as Flannery O’Connor observed: “We are all rather blessed in our deprivations if we allow ourselves to be.”

    Here in the Sonoran Desert, the high yesterday was 113. The whole last two weeks it’s been well above 100 every day. The effect is kind of like an extended snow day back East. You’re excused from just about all activity. Noon Mass is fun cause the thermometer in the car will say like 121 degrees when you come out afterwards and till the A/C kicks in you have to handle the steering wheel like a hot potato.

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER MAY 23, 2025

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER MAY 23, 2025

    This week’s Angelus News column is about the (my) unfortunate tendency to want the people I help to have PROMISE! Ha ha, good luck with that! Just ask Jesus…

    On other fronts, I am having fun over at Substack and invite you to join me there.

    I’m working up a column on four or five California food writers, which will make for some juicy reading.

    I’m looking forward to my upcoming visit to LA, followed by a retreat at St. Andrew’s Abbey.

    I have subscribed for a month to MAX in order to watch ROLAND GARROS aka the French Open. It took me months to recover from Garbine Muguruza’s retirement, but now my gal is Peyton Stearns.

    And I am deep in silence, solitude, gratitude, and prayer.

    Wishing one and all a lovely three-day weekend.

  • NEW!!! READ IT OUT LOUD 8-WEEK ZOOM WRITING WORKSHOP FROM MEMOIRIST HEATHER KING—

  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER MAY 3, 2025

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER MAY 3, 2025

    This week my Angelus News column features several iconic California novels:

    “West was an eccentric and a huge boozer. He died at 37 when, en route back to LA from a trip to Mexicali, he ran a stop sign near the Salton Sea and caused an accident which killed him and his young wife.

    He achieved posthumous semi-cult fame and “The Day of the Locust” was later made into a movie.

    That’s a story with California written all over it.”

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER: BLESSED TRIDUUM 2025

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER: BLESSED TRIDUUM 2025

    Greetings, all.

    This week’s Angelus News column is a reflection about sitting with Christ in the Garden at Gethsemane.

    It begins with a quote from Albert Camus: “When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy rises in man’s heart: this is the rock’s victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane.” 

    —from “The Myth of Sisyphus”

    After Easter, I hope to start working up a new Writing Workshop format and setting some dates.

    Wishing you all a rich, blessed, profound Triduum.

    Meanwhile, I urge you to subscribe–which you can do FOR FREE if you wish–to my new Substack, which is essentially the blog you’re used to reading here.

    As always, a thousand thanks for any and all support.

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  • COME OVER TO MY NEW SUBSTACK, AND WELCOME!

    COME OVER TO MY NEW SUBSTACK, AND WELCOME!

    I’ve been writing here for a long time, and swiitching over to post mainly on SUBSTACK is a huge change.

    It’s a change for me, and I know it’s a change for many of you.

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