Joanne Leedom-Ackerman's Blog, page 4

Mothers in the World

The one commonality around the world, in every country, every religion, for every sex, race and culture is the mother. We have fathers too, though paternity is not always as clear.

When I travel in different countries and cultures, be it in Africa, Asia, Latin America, in communities whose language I can’t decipher and sometimes without a translator, I can usually communicate with a mother and her child. Even hardened men yielded to a mother.

I remember a colleague who was a mediator and also a ...

Nashville: Facing the Wind

In the wake of recent events in the Tennessee General Assembly which expelled two African American lawmakers for their role in an unorthodox protest calling for more gun control after deadly school shootings in Nashville, I wanted to share my short story “The Beginning of Violence.” The story is set at the first sit-in in Nashville in 1960 and was published in my short story collection  No Marble Angels. It was republished in Short Stories of the Civil Rights Movement: An Anthology (ed. Margaret...

The Manuscript in the Drawer

The Manuscript in the Drawer

by Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
published by The Hopkins Review

I’m sitting at a bar sipping club soda and writing. I’ve discovered this corner of a Washington, DC restaurant that has a long bar with plugs underneath for my computer. If I sit at the very end, I can occupy two or three seats—one for me, the others for my work—without inconveniencing anyone.  I order soup or a cheese board, drink soda or a cappuccino and write for hours with the hum of trivial and sometimes...

Burning Distance—The Daughter of Jesse West

Umbrellas snap open like a flock of blackbirds arriving at the grave. Twelve of us stand wing to wing as clouds roll over the green hills and the rain falls harder. Few families endure one murder. I am mourning the second in my lifetime. I’m nineteen years old, and I am beginning to see that life connects.
My father used to say, “There are no coincidences, only life showing you its patterns.”
As I watch our small gathering on the hillside, I strain to see the pattern….

So begins my new novel Bur...

Waiting for Spring

The winter solstice has passed, and each day adds two to three minutes of daylight.

The crocus buds have already broken through the soil. So far winter in the mid-Atlantic, at least in Maryland and Washington, DC, has been wet but not freezing though we are not yet safe from frost. I wish the buds would hold off, not be too anxious to pop above the ground. February can still be a fierce month.

In the garden the birds are clustered around the bird feeder for food which is still scarce on the tree...

Lights in a Dark Season

The winter holidays start with lights in the U.S. and in many countries around the world. In the U.S. the lights begin to appear in early November, shining on street corners, in department store windows. By the end of November and the U.S. Thanksgiving, holiday lights are up and twinkling in white, blue, red, green, and gold on city streets and on country roads. By early December the lights are entwined on the trees and strung around front porches and lawns, and in shop windows, challenging the ...

Birds, Books, and the Sky Above…

The geese have returned, flying in from Canada as the weather turns colder up north. The honking above each morning and evening signals the changing seasons.

Photo credits: Joanne Leedom-Ackerman

As autumn accelerates with in-person meetings and events in Washington and New York, many for the first time in almost three years, I’ve been away from this haven on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. But I have now arrived back for a few days, and in the morning quiet before the birds awake, my eyes and th...

Clouds Have Lifted…Leave the Balcony Open

The clouds have finally lifted after days of grey and rainy skies. The sun is rising in all its quiet splendor. I can see light hovering at the horizon on the far shore this early morning.

Photo Credit: Joanne Leedom-Ackerman

Since I returned from PEN International’s World Congress in Sweden earlier this week, the landscape here has been shrouded with the outer edges of Hurricane Ian. As the storm moved up the eastern coast of the United States, it delivered rain and wind and grey skies to the W...

The Summer Sky…

I keep taking pictures of the sky and its changing scenery. I don’t need to go anywhere to travel its corridors of beauty and drama though as the summer ends, I will be on the road more often, and the sky will more often turn gray and the drama on the ground more compelling.

But on this last week of summer, this first weekend of September, I share the sky and its vistas, the sun rising and setting, and hope the perspective inspires days ahead.

Photo credits: Joanne Leedom-Ackerman

The po...

Looking Up…

There’s a chill in the air this morning. I don’t know if it will last, probably not since it is still August, but I turn on the fire pit and wait for the sun to rise in the sky and warm my sleeveless arms in the tee shirt I slept in. My dog sits on my lap keeping me warm as she watches and listens to each morning sound, the starlings in the bird house, the crows in the trees, the many other birds whose sounds I can’t identify. A friend has given me a book on birds so perhaps I’ll learn to identi...