New U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, son of migrant workers, writes often about his child self and writes poems for children and teens. In his preface to Laughing Out Loud, I Fly, he writes that when he was seventeen years old he discovered Picasso’s book of poems, Hunk of Skin and says he was…
Monthly Archives: September 2015
Writing for Teens – Another Research Story: The Kirsten Lee travels with the Blood Moon
This is a bittersweet fishing story. This morning as I write, fisherman Mike Pawluk is steaming toward Montauk on the Kirsten Lee, a boat he went ground fishing on for about fourteen years. He fished with Captain Steve Lee and they were friends and still are. They’d been through changing fishing regulations together, documenting days…
Lowell Southeast Asian Water Festival
The Lowell Southeast Asian Water Festival, formerly Riverfest, happens every August on the Merrimack River in Lowell, Massachusetts. There’s everything Cambodia. Music, dance, ginger trees to buy, golden bracelets, river boats, lime papaya salad. I went with our family friend who is also a photographer, Ty Paterson, and she took these photos at the last…
Dal Mukarung remembers Bhutan
I saw Dal Rai yesterday. He is the illustrator of the Bhutanese folktale published by the New Hampshire Humanities Council, The Story of a Pumpkin. Like many Bhutanese families who moved to Laconia, New Hampshire, Dal’s family is leaving this small lake district city. He’s pictured here with his sons, Adrin and Anmal, his wife…