September threw itself at our household with hurricane strength. While the wind and rain trashed Haiti and the U.S.’s lower southeast, evil peppered my New Orleans home in the form of my mother’s surprise cancer diagnosis, my uncle’s death, and a ratcheting up of tantrums from my children that makes me consider constructing a panic […]
Author Archives: Stephanie Knapp
Five days from now I’m leaving my fluttery skirts and tank-tops behind and going to Iceland. I’ve skimmed a guidebook or two, but mostly I’m preparing by reading The Sagas of Icelanders. Sure, it might not be super relevant to cafés in Reykjavik or useful as to which camping sites are the best, but for […]
When I was young, I wanted to be a nun. This was actually a compromise. I aspired to be a monk, but reality was creeping in, and when I cast my eyes into the adult future, I worried that even if I kept my short hair, my double X chromosomes would somehow be discovered. It […]
In the early days of December, in a fit of indignation , I joined two political groups. This is surprising because although I’m political, I’m also a disillusioned introvert. Basically no system in America is left enough for me, and I wouldn’t attend your rally unless it had fewer than ten people. But I can […]
The other night I had one of those dreams that had all the narrative juices going… at some point in the dark warp of early morning it turned lucid, and I scrambled to remember characters, speech patterns, plot. I was certain upon waking I would shove all that meat into a novel. Drinking from the […]
We are on our way to the hospital, Ryan’s father says. Listen to me, Son: You are not going to bleed to death. Ryan is still aware enough that his father’s words come through on the edges, like sunlight on the borders of a window shade… On the seat beside him, in between him and […]
Écoutez bien: In one corner is Picnic in Provence by Elizabeth Bard. This is a memoir-cookbook out April 7th of this year. It’s the sophomore book from Ms. Bard, a sequel to Lunch in Paris, which was stuffed with delicious and stories of l’amour far from home. Rumbling in the other corner, we have a […]
Alcée Fortier doesn’t get it. He’s spent decades listening, absorbing, and translating a vast collection of stories recounted by the humans living in and around the great estate of Le Petit Versailles built by his grandfather – the first to refine sugar in Louisiana – Valcour Aimé. It is a strange fact that the old […]
So I’m writing a book. Rather, I wrote a book. A novel. Years ago – when it had emerged from the hatchery but was still weak and blind and needed basically everything from me – I bashfully called it a “project.” After a few months of nurturing it, I told a few family members about […]
Every day from nine to six, a salaryman sits on a park bench. Unable to tell his wife he’s lost his job, the man boards the same train he has boarded for thirty years, bento box in hand. At noon each day he unwraps the box and slowly, in great contemplation, chews each bite. I […]
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