ARCHIVE FOR Nadine Kenney Johnstone

Ever since I found out I was pregnant, I've been keeping a journal to my son, Geo. I started it as a way to feel connected to this tiny being I could not yet feel inside of me, and now I write to express the excitement and anxieties I have over his birth, just a month away. I write to him the way I plan to respond to his questions when he is a toddler--in an honest yet P.G. manner. I sign every page with "Love, Your Mama." I detail his ultrasound measurements, the joy that the blooming ...

Recently, I did something that I believe all writing teachers should do--I took a class as a student. I try to do this at least once per semester, to keep up with my own writing and to sharpen my teaching skills. How quickly we forget, when we're standing in front of a sea of eyes, what it's like to be on the other side. The instructor of the Grub class I took, Mark Fogarty, did a fantastic job of explaining the elements of "good" dialogue, and I highly recommend taking his class if you get the chance

I’d like to share a secret with you, and women with children can prepare their laughter now. I honestly thought that within my nine months of pregnancy, I could and would finish my memoir. What better deadline to motivate me than the birth of my child? And what better time to compose than during those glowing, euphoric months?

Then week-eight of gestation hit, and along with it arrived the everyday hangover known as morning sickness

For this week's post, I interviewed my friend and colleague, Leslie Ann Starobin. Leslie is one of those people you'd love to envy (if she weren't so humble). In addition to being a non-fiction writer, she is a photographer, and a montage artist. Her work is currently on exhibit at the Holocaust Museum Houston, and, if that isn't enough, she's also got a new iBook out.

Leslie and I met a couple years back at a Grub class taught by James Scott

I spent last Thanksgiving not giving thanks, but, doing the opposite, actually—secretly crying over someone else’s good fortune. That someone was my relative, and what she had was what I wanted: a positive pregnancy test. In fact, she was due to give birth exactly when I would have been, if my IVF procedure hadn’t taken a very unexpected turn, landing me in the E.R.