Time’s Up Billionaires: Why I’m Voting For Daniel Biss
On 1/27/18, I participated in Writers for Biss, an event to support Illinois gubernatorial candidate Daniel Biss, along with Martha Bayne, Julia Sweeney Blum, Christine Sneed, Rick Perlstein, and Claire Zulkey. This is what I read. I have two kids, a nine year old and a sixteen year old, and obviously they’re growing up in a very particular political moment. It’s what we talk…
From the Editors
On November ninth, we woke up—Sandra and Sarah, but also most of the older queerfolk in the country—not to a world we didn’t know, but to one we remembered well and had hoped was gone for good.… Source: From the Editors
I’ve Been Elsewhere
I haven’t posted much on this blog for the past few years. Instead, I’ve been working on a memoir called What to Tell that’s about growing as a mother while I work through a dark spot in my own childhood, and I’ve been posting the essays I’ve written in between that elsewhere on the internet. Here are some of them that continue to resonate…
My Morning-After Oscar Fantasy
When I was a very little girl, I used to say I wanted to be a movie star, but by adolescence the idlest whiff of that desire had flown, never to return even while sitting with a drink and watching the Oscars. But this morning I found myself fantasizing about having reason to go up on stage last night, and in the scripted stupid…
Talking to Lisa Carver
I recently interviewed Lisa Carver for The Rumpus. We talked on the phone for two hours about her new book __________, which includes paintings she did as part of a memory-reclaiming process that led her to recall the torture, exploitation, and sexual abuse she lived through as a child. It’s a strange, heartbreaking, beautiful, raw, brave, informative, confusing, and emotional book. You can buy…
Top Ten Things from My 2010 Book Tour
For me, 2010 will always be The Year My Book Came Out. (Hopefully someday I’ll need to add the modifier first to that sentence, but it won’t be anytime soon.) One of the best parts of the publishing experience was the book tour. I got to leave behind my day job and my role as mama and be an author on the road. I…
Thanksgiving
Getting ready to host this year’s Thanksgiving, I find myself getting nostalgic for all the Thanksgivings past. They’re playing in my mind like a movie, especially those that occurred after I quit going to my parents’ house in 1987. At the ripe old age of 42, I often find myself getting bombarded with memories like this–things twenty years gone are as clear as if…
My Dad: Veteran, Author, All-Round Great Guy
It’s hard for me to write about my dad, Paul Zolbrod, in anything other than sentimental clichés: He’s been my life-long inspiration as a parent, a person, a thinker, a writer. A Native-American scholar for over forty years, he was made fun of, at first, for attempting a poetics of the oral tradition, but the world caught up with him: His translation of the…
Zoe Zolbrod 