by Alec Clayton Going to visit Gabi’s brother and sister in Northern California at the end of June 2020, the first thing I noticed looking out the train window was that almost immediately after leaving the Olympia/Lacey Amtrak station the tracks were following along what seemed to be a high plateau, almost like a levy. …
By Alec Clayton On Father’s Day 2020 my niece Allison posted on Facebook: “Happy Heavenly Father’s Day, Daddy!” And another niece, Angelina posted: “Happy Father’s Day to my Dad that’s in heaven.” Allison’s dad was my big brother, Buster, and Angelina’s stepdad was my identical twin brother, Bill. Bill and I adored and hated big …
In a recent email thread, poet and novelist Jack Butler and I talked about writing sex scenes. I mentioned Barbara Kingsolver’s essay on the subject in “A Forbidden Territory Familiar to all” from the New York Times series “Writers on Writing,” in which she talked about how difficult it is to write sex scenes that …
By Alec Clayton I recently wrote about collage artists Sharon Styer and Gail Ramsey Wharton for Oly Arts (see Creative Minds: The Collage Art of Sharon Styer and Gail Ramsey Wharton). Since writing that article, I have had additional thoughts about their work that I’d like to share. Poet Isidore-Lucien Ducasse, writing under the nom …
Schmoozing with the nearly famous By Alec Clayton Early in the day, after driving all night, I parked my VW bus in front of the Montrose Apartments in Johnson City and started unloading my worldly possessions—clothes, books and paintings. I was met by a gangly guy who said, “Hi. I’m Richard. You must be Alex.” …
Growtown By Alec Clayton The rapid rise of this pandemic is like the growth of Growtown and the phenomenal fecundity of Henrietta Hawley and her multitude of descendants. Both are exponential. Henrietta is the oldest person in town. She lives alone now in the big house on top of the hill where she can stand …
The youth group at Beverly’s church is camped out at Staircase in the Olympic National Park. Most of them have spent the whole time competing at skimming rocks across the water. Beverly’s boyfriend, Kirby, is clearly the champion skimmer. He routinely gets his rocks to skip four, five and six times. When he hits seven, …
I woke up on a recent morning with the title in my mind but no idea for a story. But later this morning I sat down and wrote the whole thing in less than half an hour. And the next day I re-wrote it. And a few days later I re-wrote it again. It’s my …
I’ve never been successful when it comes to holding a job or making money. And through the first few tries I was not successful at marriage either. I think my inability to succeed came from being half of a cute-as-all-get-out set of identical twins who were spoiled rotten and the delight of our parents …
I got too much stuff on the grill. Hamburgers, hot dogs, barbecue chicken, corn on the cob, veggie burgers. Everything cooking at once. Uh oh, the hot dogs are about to burn. Gotta get them off the grill. Oops, chicken needs more sauce. Hey, ya’ll better get your buns and spread you some mayo and …