When Robert Frost wrote, "Good fences make good neighbors," he offered it not as wisdom but a questionable assumption. As a Mexican American, I sometimes find it awkward to talk about fences and walls. That's nothing compared to my neighbor who was sure he knew it...
I grew up in Los Angeles, so I was sure that driving was in my blood. It was not. This became ridiculously clear one long and scary night in L.A. I shared this story at The Moth StorySLAM, in the city where it all went down: https://vimeo.com/1023096950?share=copy#t=0...
I shared this story, The Ponytail Holder, in Los Angeles, at the great Pablo Marz's Family Fun Time episode of Tell It! Personal true stories told live onstage. Heads up: this story includes themes of mental illness, which is not always fun in the family. But...
For those of you who don't mind a little salty language - in the service of telling it like it happened - here's video of a true personal story I told last fall, live at The Moth StorySLAM. Don't let the title fool you. This is a love story. I was thrilled, and a...
Do you feel it, the desire to tiptoe into the New Year, lest you wake a new giant that might confront you with another endurance test of our humanity, our environment, our peace? Yet it was with unexpected joy I opened my mailbox this holiday season to find a reminder...
As many of you know, I'm writing a historical novel inspired by family stories my Mexican-Chinese grandma used to tell me: tales of secret immigrants and mixed races, family loyalties and betrayals. I'm also involved in the world of live personal storytelling, and The...
Almost nobody would publish my funny little ditty, Never Kill A Dog Or Cat In Your Novel, because they found it a tad too disturbing. Cue Slackjaw, a humor journal that specializes in over-the-top weirdness. Thank you, Slackjaw, because without you I'd be forced to...
A story can mean different things at different times. In 2019, I first told this one, Cara Lopez Lee Gets A Reporting Job (a.k.a. The Boss of Last Resort) for Daniel David Shapiro's podcast, Two Truths and a Lie. It's the story of the most racist, sexist, intolerant...
Just before the new coronavirus became the 2020 Pandemic, my story Disaster Pants was published in DoveTales, the journal of the nonprofit Writing for Peace. I briefly stopped sharing the link to that story, about living through the Thomas Fire, when fears over the...
At The Moth StorySlam in L.A., at Busby's East on December 11, 2019, I told a true personal story I've long hoped to tell, on a theme that means a lot to me: Family. It marked one of my most treasured moments connecting with an audience. I was proud to come in third...
Cara Lopez Lee is the author of the novel, Candlelight Bridge, and the memoir, They Only Eat Their Husbands. She’s a winner of The Moth StorySLAM and is featured in many personal storytelling shows. Her writing appears in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, Manifest-Station, and Rivet. Cara and her husband love traveling, but their home is coastal Ventura, California, where they enjoy tending their Certified Wildlife Habitat full of birds, bees, and butterflies.
