It’s Pride month! Diversity is an important concept in every system from microbiomes to our society. In the U.S., we used to think it meant “not just white,” which was a start. The dialogue in our country progressed from being ethnically- and racially-minded (I’ll use the race concept since it still holds a lot of

My mom is a Virgo, which is the perfectionist of the zodiac. Supposedly, Virgos have a perfect version of themselves that they hold in their minds, and they are very self-critical by nature. Growing up in my household, I would have to say that my mom definitely fits these traits of her astrological sign. She

I really hate writing sometimes. Maybe I should back up. I do love writing, those moments when I can’t not write anymore, after the idea’s been going around and around in my head for too long. After I carried it and it scratched at me while I sorted laundry into piles and decided not to

“Do I know you?” “I feel like we’ve met before.” “You look exactly like my sister-in-law.” These sentences or some variant of them are words I hear every week. And they are usually followed by the person telling me a story. At the gas pump. In line at the grocery store. After a workshop. I

This is the part I’m not supposed to say in a grad school or writing job application because it’s too cliché: I’ve been writing stories since I graduated from holding a crayon in my fist. It started with spelling words telling twenty-five sentence tales and progressed to diaries, then contest-winning essays, then songs and poems

I’ve been writing all my life. I remember my very first “published” piece that was proudly hanging on my grandparents’ wall. I had drawn a series of pictures with captions of a bear going to sleep, though it might have been a large dog (my artistic talents weren’t quite developed at age 6)! When in