Bethanne Patrick is the author of the memoir Life B (Counterpoint, 2023). Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and NPR Books.
I was perched, fully clothed, on Erich Honecker’s toilet seat, hoping for the night to end. My friend Isa was turning fifty and she’d invited every Berliner of her acquaintance from the over three decades she’d lived in the city to her...
Robin Black’s collection of short stories, If I loved you, I would tell you this, was released in March 2010 and earned critical praise and acclaim. It was a finalist for the Frank O’Connor Short Story International Award. And yet Black’s...
I have a photo of myself on a bed with six other girls; we’re all lying on our sides, kicking our legs in the air like reclining Rockettes and laughing wildly. The photo was taken sometime during our senior year in college, after we’d spent...
I have a friend who is a professional archivist. Her master’s in library science has led her to a career she loves in helping clients (mostly corporate ones, but the occasional rich person, too) sort, categorize, and store their materials...
What I knew deep down and can articulate now is that the danger to anyone’s writing does not come from living in comfort, but from believing you might have nothing to say because you live in comfort. The danger to your writing comes from...
