The schedule for Northwestern University’s Summer Writers Conference just came out, and guess what? I’m on it! Here’s the workshop I’ll be leading there on Saturday morning, August 11: Smelling is Believing: Writing Using Your Other Senses with Beth Finke Visual descriptions come easy to most writers, but when it comes to bringing readers into […]

A lot of folks who read my Love Letter to Cultural Arts post last week about the panel I was on at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium asked me to write about the answers we gave to the questions provided. Your wish is my command, but first, a review. Last Tuesday I sat on a panel at Chicago’s […]

When I assigned “Spirits” as a writing prompt over the Halloween weekend, I expected the writers in my memoir classes to come back with stories of living in houses that were haunted, going to psychics, reading Tarot Cards, seeing ghosts or visits from the “other side.” Instead, I heard essays about team spirit, kindred spirits, […]

Here’s a piece Ninety-five-year-old Wanda Bridgeforth wrote after her WGN Radio interview last weekend. Remembering DuSable by Wanda Bridgeforth The interview with Dave Hoekstra and Beth Finke brought back more memories of my happy days at DuSable High School. On February 1, 1935, it was a thrill to be entering a Brand-New building at the […]

Wanda Bridgeforth and I had a ball during our interview on WGN Radio last night, and as our amiable host Dave Hoekstra walked us out of the studio afterward, he called out, “Wanda, you’re a pistol! Will you come back to do another show?” As they say in radioland, “Stay tuned.” Audrey Mitchell and I […]