Siobhan Vivian is the award-winning author of 2016’s The Last Boy and Girl in the World, 2012’s The List, and the trilogy of novels, Burn for Burn, which she co-wrote with Jenny Han. She graduated from the University of the Arts with a degree in Writing for Film and Television and received her MFA in Creative Writing: Children’s Literature from The New School in NYC. She was an editor at Alloy Entertainment and was a scriptwriter for The Disney Channel. Siobhan currently resides in Pittsburgh, PA, and teaches a Writing Youth Literature course at the University of Pittsburgh.
What was the first story you ever wrote?
It was a piece I had written to get into undergrad. I had done a little creative writing in high school because someone told me the [creative writing] class was easy.…
...continue reading
Linger awhile . . . so fair thou art.
–Goethe, Faust
the little honorary pallbearers
place their boutonnieres
on the casket before it is lowered,
but for once I am not thinking
about death or about the woman
I knew well long ago, nor—
when people I haven’t seen
for decades hug me as if
just last night we were swapping
stories around someone’s back-
yard fire pit—nor am I, in this
moment, obsessing about
the passage of time, caught
up instead, as it comes over
the slight rise, weaving through
the headstones, silk roses, teddy
bears, tiny American flags,
the guy in a straw hat throwing
wilted flowersinto the back
of a pickup truck, struck
by the sound of someone else’s
bagpipe procession, the wind
taking some notes, softening
the edges of others so that
one could almost believe
in some other land there, foreign
but familiar, just over the hill,
but fornow it’s enough to be here
in this moment, the one in which
my granddaughter kisses my wet
cheek, reminding me of nothing else,
carrying with it no dramatic irony,
no conceit, just a moment
like so many, these days,
I might wish to let linger.…
...continue reading
On March 7, 2004, the lifeless body of 62-year-old Spalding Gray was pulled from Manhattan’s East River. He had been missing for two months. An actor/storyteller who wrote and performed autobiographical monologues for stage and screen—his most well-known is Swimming to Cambodia—Gray had apparently committed suicide.
Gray became famous by talking about—among other things—his experiences in the warm waters of Southeast Asia while working as an actor in the acclaimed 1984 movie, The Killing Fields. But he ended his life twenty years later in the cold waters off New York City. Was he aware, during the last moments of his life, of that morbid irony? …
...continue reading
The smell of roasting coffee mixed with the funk of old coffee shop swirled in the air, just underneath the tang of stale cigarette smoke. Classic diner music played overheard as the rubbery seats underneath my ass cried under my shifting, restless weight. With the exception of a few lost souls sitting solo at the bar, coffee cups wrapped intimately around their index fingers and cupped warmly in their palms, we were the only two people in the out of the way truck stop at three in the morning.
I watched her across the laminate tabletop, her eyes fixated on the cup she swirled between her hands. A cigarette rested effortlessly between her cracked lips, it’s pungent plume flowing effortlessly into the depths of her diseased lungs and then back out into the air between us. …
...continue reading
For a week, the rose lived. Nightly, I brushed my nose against petals, preferring you. This is what I know: when a rose begins to die it gives up its color. At the edges, hardness and darkness take shape. Inside, blushing red petals cling to each other. This is a final intimacy, a softness enduring.
*
I know because I pulled at the petals till I got to the core, and I held the petals against my outstretched palm, fascinated by the natural bends, the blends of red—I don’t want our love to take on these darker shades. I want us as the last two petals on the stem. I remember Vermont and Italy and the miles in between; my belly without your hand; your chest without my head.…
...continue reading
Madeline knew it was her last day alive. It had to be. When something as natural as breathing takes every effort to do, it’s only postponing the inevitable. She was surrounded by her family, and even though she loved them dearly, she could not help but feel envious when looking at her grandchildren and of all the things they will know that she could not even begin to imagine. The future was uncertain, that much is sure, but the unknown had always held a special kind of allure for her. And now she had finally arrived to the most mysterious unknown.
Life, she thought, was both the longest and shortest experience she ever had. It really did flash before your eyes before you die, and as she inhaled the last breath she would ever take, she finally ended the eighty-seven-year blink that was her life.…
...continue reading
For over fifteen years, Corbin has worked as a developmental editor and writing consultant helping emerging writers. She holds a Master’s Degree in Education and teaches memoir, personal essay, and craft classes at the Richard Hugo House, universities, and at writing conferences. Her memoir Creating a Life (Catalyst Book Press) was nominated for Pacific Northwest Book Association and Washington State Book Awards; her other titles include Divorce as Opportunity (Booktrope) and her recent memoir God’s Cadillac (out for submission). Her essays have been widely published in journals and in parenting and writing anthologies. She lives in Seattle with her two children. Find her here.
How do you help emerging writers with their goals?
There comes a time when it would be helpful for every writer to have one-on-one feedback from someone with experience.…
...continue reading