Keep Showing Up, Keep Listening, Keep Looking: Ann Patchett on Writing and Life

By Hillary Moses Mohaupt

Here’s what I remember from my college graduation: the commencement speaker, a famous alumnus of my college, encouraged us, the graduates, to lie down in the grass and really feel it whenever we needed grounding. This is the only thing I remember from his speech.

Many years later, though, when I get up from my writing desk and head into the woods near my house to clear my head, I imagine that I’m only just beginning to understand what that speaker meant about th...