Bourbon and Milk dives into the perplexing spaces parenting sometimes pushes us, and explores the unexpected ways writers may grow in them. If you’re interested in joining the conversation, query Giuseppe Taurino at: giuseppe [at] americanshortfiction.org. — This past summer, for the first time in ten years, I didn’t work on a book. I'd been working on one difficult book or another since before I got pregnant with my son—he is nine now—and even the thought of beginning another difficult, … [Read more...] about Bourbon and Milk: On Time
parenting
Bourbon and Milk: Response Training
I sit at my desk at home in my New Jersey suburb, writing poems about gun violence, and I hear police sirens. My first thought is that there is a shooter at my daughters’ high school three blocks away. Since the Newtown massacre, police presence, sirens, and lockdowns are a feature of my daughters’ lives. Kids accept this new reality. My girls tell me that they are used to being told to “shelter in place”—which means there is no active danger—and they often can decode when a “lockdown drill” … [Read more...] about Bourbon and Milk: Response Training
Web Exclusive Interview: Amy Stuber
Amy Stuber's flash fiction story "I'm on the Side of the Wildebeest" distills a familiar modern dilemma into a crystallized moment. On a road trip, a mother contemplates a very different childhood for her kids than the one she had—one in which technology, the constant deluge of information, and the threat to the planet create anxieties that are harder to escape. But despite these anxieties (or maybe because of them) we feel the sweet gratitude for a moment that is good, one we know will become a … [Read more...] about Web Exclusive Interview: Amy Stuber
Monster
The last couple times I took my boys to the playground, there was this guy there. He looked harmless, nice even, a baseball cap, jeans, T-shirt. He could have been my age, maybe ten years older or ten years younger—his long, untended beard made it hard to guess. While my boys hit the slides, the swings, and the monkey bars, I’d sit, let them do their thing, on hand in case they fell or decided to wander off. The guy with the long beard, though, he was all in, rotating kids on the little … [Read more...] about Monster
Bourbon and Milk: “Oh, My Dear. Where Is That Country?”
Bourbon and Milk is an ongoing series that dives into the perplexing spaces parenting sometimes pushes us, and explores the unexpected ways writers may grow in them. If you’re interested in joining the conversation or contributing a Bourbon and Milk post, query Giuseppe Taurino at: giuseppe [at] americanshortfiction.org. — The world, like the Tower of Babel… [is] made out of stories, and it [is] always on the verge of collapse. That [is] proverbial.” … [Read more...] about Bourbon and Milk: “Oh, My Dear. Where Is That Country?”
Web Exclusive Interview: Siân Griffiths
In our January web exclusive story "The Key Bearer's Parents," a pair of loving parents (clowns, by trade) explain how they raised their son in order to try and make sense of his very troubling decision—a decision whose implications seem to depend entirely on the reader's point of view. It's a story that prompts an endless number of questions, so we were thrilled to have the chance to ask them of author Siân Griffiths. Erin McReynolds: This story supposes an alternate present—or a plausible … [Read more...] about Web Exclusive Interview: Siân Griffiths