Reader & Writer
I contributed to an article written by Alisha Haridasani Gupta of the NY Times. She is a gender writer and has tackled some big topics in Women's news lately--notably the restriction of abortion rights in many states. The genesis of my contribution was a call for submissions from the National Women's History Museum looking for "journals" or... Continue Reading →
This week as I'm navigating cataract surgery, heat wave, going back to work--I appeared on a local podcast, Written in the Stars, put out by Lansing Community College. I think it went well, except for the coughing fit I succumbed to in the beginning and my phone dinging from notifications. (I'd turned off the ringer... Continue Reading →
Maybe a year ago while out running in the neighborhood, I saw a bus letting students off and a young boy juggling a back pack and instrument case. I kept running. But something stayed with me. I wrote a piece from the perspective of voice messages. I wasn’t sure if it worked and forgot about... Continue Reading →
Intervals (description below*) put out a call for work reflecting places no longer there. Not abandoned, but lost now to time. Erasure. * Intervals is an experiment in call and response—between prompt and reply, between Pictura and its contributors. Each exchange becomes part of a continuing conversation, carried on in the spaces between our regular issues. Hidden Valley... Continue Reading →
So on the way up to Grand Rapids for a writing conference while n the bus, I saw that I got an acceptance. Great! It was for a flash I'd written awhile back and then largely forgot about. Then while out running, I remembered it at exactly the same place in the run that I... Continue Reading →
I've started a new series--you still have time to catch up--at my Freeze Frame Substack based upon my own self-doubts about being a writer. Writer. Gardener. Grandmother. While still working another job. You see, like most of us, writer is just a fraction of my life, while taking up a lot of my time. It's... Continue Reading →
Check out a new piece at Wild Greens Magazine. https://www.wildgreensmagazine.com/archive/april-2026-vi-vi#h.z2znarx3yh0i I'd had the shorty in my portfolio for almost 2 years and it finally found a home in an issue of Wild Greens with a theme of transportation. It's LOOSELY based upon a real persona nd a real incident, none of which happened at the... Continue Reading →
Soooo it wasn’t exactly a launch, since the book had several soft coming outs, but last week we had a party to celebrate Woman of a Certain Age. And oh my goodness. Yes I was nervous and scared—but I wasn’t doing it by myself. I had Dawn Burns a professor in the Rhetoric Dept. at... Continue Reading →
Actually this piece has BEEN out. I just didn’t know it. Someone at work was asking about my new book, Woman of a Certain Age, a story collection, and I said let me show you my website. I googled my name and up popped the piece, published online in Third Wednesday. Okay, that’s a surprise.... Continue Reading →
A creative nonfiction piece, commonly called The Essay—is out now! About a trip I took in 2007 to Albania, I know, no one goes to Albania. Albania is a weird mix of contradictions=cultural progress meets social mores, modernity butts up against resistance to change, hundreds of years of political upheaval. Versus. Versus. Turning towards. Against.... Continue Reading →
A piece that was accepted ages ago and is out now. Hoot Literary Review is a postcard, Sea of Lingerie is their November postcard, which yu can order--this from their website: The idea is: -to have stories and poems on a postcard, so that they can be displayed and shared easily. Stick it on the... Continue Reading →
Jane Hertenstein 