Rocks & Roots
Donna Salli
Wild-Haired Women: On Writing, Portals, and Pig Sties
The barn was a portal—to step into it was to go back in time—and that barn, that farm, shows up repeatedly in my writing, literally in my essays and poems and fictionally in one of my plays.
Where the Sidewalks Ended
My mother and I were standing in the echoing salesroom of the feed store, one of those dusty, mom-and-pop sorts of places you’ll still find in the towns along Lake Superior. Mom was studying a stone urn we were holding between us, our arms wrapped around it in a...
Flames: The Life of a Writer
I like quiet. I like to be alone. I enjoy a social gathering but afterwards need to shut my metaphorical doors and unwind. I like my privacy. This perhaps seems a strange claim, coming from someone who spends a good deal of her time excavating her life and sharing it...
Rocks and Roots
When I was in my late teens—quiet, a bit shy around people I didn’t know well—I was hanging out one day with my cousin, whom I saw often and who knew me as well as anyone. With members of the family, I felt no reserve, and I was carrying on, chattering, about...
The Heart
I always knew I was going to write, to be a writer. When I was four, my family lived in town, close to a high school, and I would watch the kids walking by on their way to-and-from school every day. I remember the acute envy I felt. What I don’t remember, but have...
A Cat’s Tale
If you live in the sticks, you live with mice. My folks’ farm was in the sticks, a mile off the highway, ringed by woods and swamp, and many an autumn day, Mom opened a dresser drawer in the upstairs bedrooms and found her table linens chewed to shreds. Once, she even...
