20 September 2017
My son’s 29th birthday is today. He has, since we met, proven to be one of my best friends, a wise, funny, compassionate, loving child who grew into a wise, funny, compassionate, loving man. He has been and remains one of my greatest teachers.
Make art about your teachers.
16 September 2017
Make art about a difficult decision.
17 September 2017
Make art about not being heard.
18 September 2017
Make art about catching that second wind.
19 September 2017
Make art about what’s being seeded.
For more information regarding submissions please visit: www.placeholdermag.com/get-involved/
14 September 2017
Make art about living with the consequences of a regrettable choice.
15 September 2017
Make art about what the sea says.
12 September 2017
Make art about leaving your comfort zone.
13 September 2017
Make art about what you want to leave behind.
2 September 2017
Make art about money, having money, or not having it.
3 September 2017
Make art poverty of the spirit.
4 September 2017
Make art about the origin of a lie.
5 September 2017
Make art about the sound of animal, a purring cat, a growling dog, the whistle of a songbird, the cry of a hawk.
6 September 2017
Make art about the storm coming.
7 September 2017
Make art about arrogance, an arrogant person, about dealing with arrogance.
8 September 2017
Make art about preparing to leave.
9 September 2017
Make art inspired by or about water words: aquaduct, bog, creek, drizzle, fjord…
More here: 100 Words for Water: http://www.wallacejnichols.org/234/623/100-words-for-water.html
10 September 2017
Make art about rescue, rescuing, being rescued.
11 September 2017
Make art about recovery, about what that recovery means to you.
Jessie Van Eerden is the author of Glorybound (WordFarm, 2012), My Radio Radio (Vandalia Press 2016), and most recently, her collection of portrait essays,The Long Weeping, just released from Orison Books.
A West Virginia native, Jessie holds a BA in English from West Virginia University and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in The Oxford American, River Teeth, Image, Bellingham Review, Willow Springs, Rock & Sling, Appalachian Heritage, Ruminate, and other publications. Her prose has been selected for inclusion in Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Fiction and Poetry from West Virginia(Vandalia Press); Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean (Ohio University Press); Red Holler (Sarabande); Dreams and Inward Journeys: A Rhetoric and Reader for Writers, Seventh Edition (Longman); Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical (Cascade Books); and Best American Spiritual Writing (Houghton Mifflin).
Jessie has taught for over fifteen years in college classrooms and in adult literacy programs. She lives in West Virginia where she directs the low-residency MFA writing program of West Virginia Wesleyan College.
Follow Jessie on Twitter: @jessievaneerden. To see what Jessie has been reading, visit her Goodreads page. To learn more about WV Wesleyan’s MFA program (#wvwcmfa), visit the program website.
Visit Jessie’s website: http://www.jessievaneerden.com/
Buy Jessie’s beautiful books!
Praise for The Long Weeping
“In these startlingly honest and imaginative essays, van Eerden enlarges the world around her, giving flesh to what is all too often flattened by the outside eye, anointing places and people and the throbbing spaces between them as she searches out and sings litanies to what she calls the “larger body I belonged to and could not leave.” Lush and razor-sharp, The Long Weeping shimmers with intelligence and grace. The truest essays I’ve read in a long time.”
—Sonja Livingston, author of Ghostbread, Queen of the Fall, and Ladies Night at the Dreamland
“Van Eerden is one of the best essayists working today if judged by her craft and intellect alone, but her gifts go beyond those: she is also one of the most honest. The Long Weeping turns a visionary eye and a laser mind on subjects often simplified or even scorned by contemporary culture: white poverty; mysticism; love of family; the wisdom of modest people. Van Eerden is brave enough to say the hard things. She’s strong enough to love the hard places.”
—Ann Pancake, author of Given Ground, Strange as This Weather Has Been, and Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley
More from Jessie Online
http://www.jessievaneerden.com/short-fiction-creative-non-fiction/
https://imagejournal.org/artist/jessie-van-eerden/
http://appalachianheritage.net/2015/09/09/interview-jessie-van-eerden/
http://cheatriverreview.com/jessie-van-eerden/
http://memorious.org/?author=217
https://rockandsling.com/2011/03/30/an-interview-with-jessie-van-eerden/
https://web.tusculum.edu/tusculumreview/2014/05/14/jessie-van-eerden-2/
Hear Jessie Read
Happy Reading, y’all!
xo
Mary
8 August 2017
Make art about heat rising, literal or metaphorical.
9 August 2017
Make art about the smell of soil.
10 August 2017
Make art about what you see in an animal’s eyes.
11 August 2017
It’s my brother Bill’s birthday. He would have been 48.
Make art about brotherly love, about real acts of brotherly love.
12 August 2017
Make art leaning in, about what it means to you to lean in.
13 August 2017
Make art struggling to remember a dream.
14 August 2017
Make art about putting things away.
15 August 2017
Make art about struggling to stand.
16 August 2017
Make art about the sound of children singing.
17 August 2017
Make art about what you see in the sky.
18 August 2017
Make art about reaching for something.
19 August 2017
Make art about standing with strangers.
20 August 2017
Make art about a braggart who needs to be the center of attention.
21 August 2017
Make art inspired by the old meanings of the word eclipse: an abandonment, a failing, a forsaking.
22 August 2017
Make art about a moment you were blind.
23 August 2017
Make art about placing that call you’ve dreaded making.
24 August 2017
Make art about bullets.
25 August 2017
Make art about an instance in which you countered hate with Love.
26 August 2017
Make art about the first signs of autumn coming.
27 August 2017
Make art about the art of the apology.
28 August 2017
Make art about cooking together.
29 August 2017
Make art about learning to cry.
30 August 2017
Make art about a secret you carry.
31 August 2017
Make art about what’s being whispered.
1 September 2017
Make art inspired by a gray silk sky.
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
Recent Comments