Do you love AML and what it stands for? Would you like to help keep it alive? We’re looking for someone willing to do some of the very unglamorous work necessary to stay afloat. Currently, we are in desperate need for a Treasurer. Honestly, we’re not even sure what is involved in this position other than keeping track of financial matters and possibly helping with registration at the AML annual meeting.

We already have someone to pick up the mail, make all the deposits, write the checks, handle the membership database, and send out ordered copies of Irreantum. What we need a Treasurer to do is anything related to the accounting. Sorry—we hardly even know what that entails. We’ll figure it out together. Any takers? E-mail Darlene at youngbookshelf at gmail dot com.

When I made the decision to pursue writing more seriously, I determined to call myself a writer. To make it feel more true and to psych myself about it, I began sharing my triumphs with the people around me, very few of whom were writers. This included announcing my awards during the Relief Society "good news minute." I suppose these announcements (or the publications in The Friend, which continue to gain me more respect than any award for poetry ever could) were why a woman in my ward called me and asked if her son, who had written not just a novel but a trilogy, could talk to me about what he should do now.

When I wondered to myself whether I, who have yet to publish any book-length work, would have anything at all to share with him, I realized that I actually did know quite a lot about the journey he was setting out on--and I had gained this knowledge mostly through attending writers conferences. More...

Yesterday I happened to turn on the radio to hear Terry Gross in the middle of an interview with singer/songwriter Vic Chestnutt. I had never heard of Vic Chestnutt, but I like Gross’s Fresh Air program and settled in to listen.

Gross and Chestnutt were talking about a song Gross had just played. Chestnutt explained that it had been about his love-affair with death. He had, he confessed, attempted suicide several times in his life.

At this point, Gross’s voice interrupted the interview to explain that the interview was pre-recorded; it had actually taken place in early December of 2009. Then she explained that Chestnutt had actually succeeded in taking his own life this year on Christmas Day (2009). Then she returned us to the interview. More...