My husband Mike Knezovich and I have written posts about our writer friend Jean Thompson many times before – everything from the one I wrote about how she introduced herself to me decades ago from the barstool next to mine at Champaign’s Esquire Lounge to the one Mike wrote after Who Do You Love? (One of […]

School is out now, which means DJ Mermaid has time to blog for us again. Hooray! A lot has happened to DJ Mermaid since her last guest post. Most importantly, she had a birthday. Ten-year-old DJ Mermaid has been in a casting program the past couple months. She still has casts from her hips down […]

Lots of people have interesting life stories to tell. The hard part? Getting those stories down on paper so that others can read — and reread — them. As the writers in the memoir classes I lead for the City of Chicago, Lincoln Park Village and at Grace Place in Printers Row master the art of writing […]

In my meeting with DJ Mermaid this week we talked (among other things) about expressing our honest feelings in our personal stories, and the importance of using strong verbs to express ourselves. DJ Mermaid is a very fast learner, and you’ll see an example of this in today’s post #3. IN her original draft she said […]

I’ve been visiting elementary schools with my Seeing Eye dogs more than 25 years now, so it’d be reasonable to think I’ve heard every single question a kid would dream up when it comes to blindness or guide dogs. Jackie Petrozzi But hey, who ever accused kids of being reasonable? Last Friday afternoon my Seeing Eye […]