Follow Margaret's essays at Letter from Home!
A LIFE OF LETTERS
September 8, 2022 Every Monday through Saturday, when I hear the clink of the mailbox lid, I remember a time in my early twenties when, dazed by all the career choices for which I didn’t qualify, I decided to give my life to the United States Postal Service. I didn’t have any idea how to make this happen, but I knew why I wanted it to happen, starting with my affection for our local...read more |
INTERDEPENDENCE DAY; MEDITATIONS ON INDRA'S NET
July 14, 2022 The town of Wellfleet, Massachusetts, is famous for its oysters, its beaches and its Interdependence Day parade. The parade takes place on the Fourth of July as neighboring Cape Cod towns are hosting their own celebrations, but only in Wellfleet is the notion of independence scrapped for the higher ideal of interdependence...read more |
TO FIND HOME
June 2, 2022 Sometimes I just want to tell you who I am and where I come from, forget the need to write and polish a piece for a newspaper column. I want to leave behind my professional training, my writing skills, my accomplishments, and open the heart's door. I'd start at the beginning if I knew where that was. Oh, so many ways to tell a story. I'll just say there was a long time...read more |
Welcome!
The trains go by my house 62 times a day. Some say no, 120 times a day. Now, that's a big difference. Why do some of us see double what others see, hear twice as many trains as everyone else? Has anyone actually counted? If I'm out walking by the tracks, I count the engines and wave at the engineers, and sometimes they toot their horns and wave back at me. But it's curious, don't you think, that we all see and hear different numbers of trains? I'm curious to know what you're curious about, what your mind and brain are thinking. I'd like to make this space a place of conversation. I do it by decree at this very moment: From here on out we think and ask and answer out loud to each other. Let's begin!
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Margaret Erhart earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the author of five novels and many essays and articles. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Best American Spiritual Writing 2005, and most recently in Northern Arizona’s Mountain Living Magazine and Flagstaff Live!. Her commentaries have aired on NPR. Her fourth novel, Crossing Bully Creek, won the Milkweed National Fiction Prize. Her fifth, The Butterflies of Grand Canyon, was a finalist for an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. She has taught poetry to first-graders in Tuba City, and fiction to college students. She lives and works in Flagstaff, Arizona.
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