I don’t know what gave me the nerve to apply to Billy Collins’ poetry workshop in January 2014, part of the prestigious Key West Literary Seminar.   The “best writers of our time,” boasts the brochure, “ join readers from all over the world for four days of readings, conversation, lectures, panel discussions, and parties that add up to one of today’s smartest and high-spirited literary gatherings.”     Then there was Key West, a hallowed ground for famous writers:  Ernest Hem

Another Tuscarora Tale I wrote this piece in Tuscarora on Memorial Day 2013.         Lilac bushes withstand winters here, but not every spring.  Hard frosts leave the buds black as burnt match heads.  In a bad year, only half the bushes bear a few blossoms. In a good year, the town is softened by a lilac haze and the sight of this place I love—an assemblage of mobile homes; abandoned shacks and wrecked cars; a few stick houses; a post office and a historic cemetery—makes me b

In the fall of 1956, my friend Karen Toothman and I met Ernest Hemingway at the bar of the Stockman’s Hotel in Elko, Nevada.  My friend’s father, Dick Toothman, managed the casino-hotel.  Hemingway was on his way to his home in Ketchum, Idaho. High school freshmen, Karen and I were doing homework in her basement when the phone rang.  Her mother called down the stairs, “Karen, your father says Ernest Hemingway is at the bar.  If you girls want to meet him, come down right awa