I’m a poor author, and I’m beginning to wonder: when am I going to get the housekeeper that so many of my favorite books have promised me? Jo March, the girl who made me want to become a writer, grew up with a housekeeper named Hannah. That, even though Jo’s sister...
I'm excited to announce that my latest creative nonfiction piece is now published in this month's edition of Rivet, the new literary "journal of writing that risks." In Which Words Come Last, I reflect on the way my mom's last words carried us on a journey into our...
Once many years ago, when I was staying with a friend, she ran outside to kiss her husband goodbye before he drove off to work. “Wait, I have to kiss you!” she said. “We don’t want you to have an accident.” They chuckled together as she kissed him. She explained to me...
We all have favorite local businesses. I believe the best are those where we almost forget that buying and selling have anything to do with it, where we exchange something meaningful and the money that changes hands merely supports that exchange. Sometimes I describe...
I think about death a lot. That’s not to say I’m obsessed or depressed. It’s just one of the two weirdest things I’ve ever been aware of: the inevitability of my demise, of the demise of all of us. The other weirdest thing: that I’m here in the first place, that we’re...
When Ilona Fried of the À La Carte Spirit blog invited me to a blog-hop on writing, I was thrilled for a different reason than you might think. Yes, I love to write about writing. Yes, I felt honored to be chosen by a wise, thought-provoking blogger. I’m also in awe...
I write at home, which sometimes gets lonely. Here are ten of my simple strategies, for better or worse, for dealing with that: 1) Watch an hour of Netflix at lunchtime 2) Walk to my favorite neighborhood coffee house to write 3) Take a five-minute break to...
When my aging mom broke her femur and our aging house’s sewer line broke in the same week, I felt overwhelmed by dealing with both, but also by the idea of finding a connection. The result is a creative nonfiction piece called Subterranean. I’m honored to announce...
I was listening to a lot of silence during a discussion in my high school writing workshop today, when I realized two things: 1) I’m usually comfortable with silence, and when I’m the only instructor in a room I’ll usually let it go, but 2) when I’m a visiting...
Sometimes I don’t want to wake from my dreams and that scares me, just a little. This morning, I found myself wrestling between my interest in what the day would hold and my interest in what returning to a really good dream might hold. The dreams won, several times....
Cara Lopez Lee is the author of They Only Eat Their Husbands. She’s a winner of The Moth StorySLAM and performs in many storytelling shows, including Unheard L.A., and Strong Words. Her writing appears in such publications as Los Angeles Times, Manifest-Station, and Writing for Peace. She’s a traveler, swing dancer, and baker of pies. Cara and her husband live in the beach-town of Ventura, California, where they enjoy tending their Certified Wildlife Habitat full of birds.
