Intersections

by Nicki Salcedo, Dan Whisenhunt (Editor), Dena Mellick (Editor)

Intersections are stories.

I’m not a storyteller. I don’t tell stories. Stories tell me. I’ve been told I’m not Southern, because I’m not Southern by birth or ancestry. But I want to be. I’ve lived some easy striking distance from Atlanta most of my life. There were those San Francisco years. I admit it. I left and brought my heart back with me. I came back for the trees and the grass and the stories.

Intersections are connections. Intersections are people.

Nicki Salcedo writes a weekly column called Intersections for Decaturish.com, a locally sourced news site based in Atlanta. Each week she watches the world and captures what she sees. She is drawn to opposites. When she sees snow and pollen, she looks for similarities. These columns are her observations. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and always looking for a bit of goodness.

Nicki is an Atlanta native. She is a novelist, blogger, and a working mom. Chances are good she is the room parent for your child’s class at school, and she is doing a terrible job.

Despite her West Coast education, she considers herself Southern by sensibility, if not by birth. Southern things include talking to ghosts, saying hello to strangers, and waving to drivers with nice manners.

She loves Star Trek, football, poetry, church, romance novels. She will never ask for your permission or forgiveness. She finds something in common with just about every person she meets. That’s the untold story. That’s why she writes.

215 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 12, 2015

About the author

Nicki Salcedo is the author of a novel and three books of essays. The title piece for her latest collection, “In My Father’s Shoes,” is based on the bittersweet experience she had wearing her father’s shoes after he died. She’s a graduate of Stanford University where she studied English and Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Good Housekeeping, Decaturish, and AtlantaLoop. Nicki has four kids. She works in the corporate world by day and writes at night. She loves connecting with writers and readers. Find out more at www.nickisalcedo.com

Reviews

[Sally Kilpatrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, Salcedo talks about those places where we find that we are similar, the Intersections. Her supposedly singular experiences take on a universal appeal as she gets to the heart of the matter on current issues, the struggles of motherhood and being a woman, and just about everything else in between. Expect references to Star Trek and Zoolander as well as poignant passages on losing her father. Her essays remind me a great deal of Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist in their ability to distill troubling questions down to almost simple answers.

She says that fiction is easy and telling the truth is hard. This is true, but she bares her soul with a grace that I can't help but envy. In her essays she'll often zig when you expect her to zag and sometimes she'll leave the ending open just as life does. Don't let the word "essay" scare you, and I guarantee that'll you find new folks and new perspectives at some of those intersections.

[Jami Becker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love essays and Nicki Salcedo's clear, optimistic prism voice was enchanting. She managed to talk about all the sweet and sour things in life while still cradling your mind in a cozy chair bathed in sunshine. That's a true gift. I highly recommend this book.