Tag: mental illness

  • Marjorie Taylor Greene is Nobody’s Fool

    Marjorie Taylor Greene is Nobody’s Fool

    Let's fix a myth: Marjorie Taylor Greene is not from the North Georgia District she won in. I lived in Rome, Georgia. I went to school there. It's a lovely place full of kind-hearted mountain folks and some brilliant minds, and a wonderful college -[..]
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  • Writing Memoir with Author Ann Hite

    Writing Memoir with Author Ann Hite

    Editor's Note: I first met author Ann Hite through her book Ghost on Black Mountain. It was one of the best ghost story novels I had read in decades. Ann and I share a love of Appalachia and the stories that come out of the mountains.[..]
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  • Stories Behind the Story

    Stories Behind the Story

      There was that moment, (you knew there would be one, didn't you?), when Kimberly Faith Hickman, the insightful and masterful director of MOTHER OF RAIN, took me by the hand after the show and said, "You have to hear this story." This was on[..]
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  • In the Image of God

    In the Image of God

    My son called me from Winslow, Arizona. It’s one of several stops he’s making this week as he winds his way from Oregon to Georgia. He’s doing the reverse migration that his momma made. Stephan, who has grown up in Oregon, has accepted at job[..]
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  • If you’re a Nashville fan

    If you’re a Nashville fan

    From 2004-2013, I worked on my first novel, Mother of Rain (Mercer University Press). It was hard work. I was trying to tackle a lot of things all at once. Put aside the fact that I had never really written fiction. I'd been a journalist. An opinion[..]
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  • Contemplating Mass Murders

    Contemplating Mass Murders

      I circled the wagons in my classroom in the aftermath of the mass shootings.  I put on some Eliza Doolittle tunes and greeted the students with the admonition to not talk among themselves about the writing prompt, rather to write down everything they were[..]
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  • Holy Fiction

    Holy Fiction

    [caption id="attachment_7466" align="aligncenter" width="403"] A friend walked into a client's home and found my book among a stack on the client's table. What friend is in your stack?[/caption] The kindly looking fellow in the light blue shirt pulled me aside moments before my presentation at[..]
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  • Mothers & Mental Illness

    Mothers & Mental Illness

      My childhood girlfriend was institutionalized following the birth of her first-born. Here she was, ten years later, in the third-trimester of her second pregnancy, talking out of her head again. We were having one of our catch-up phone calls. She from her home in[..]
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  • HEROES OF HOPE AND HEALING

    HEROES OF HOPE AND HEALING

    This was posted first at the Vietnam Memorial Wall Foundation blog.  By Karen Spears Zacharias Some people know them as the “Yellow Hatters”, the familiar park service volunteers dressed in bright yellow shirts and matching hats who stand ready at The Wall. Ready to help with a pencil[..]
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