“There is no such thing as a beginning. Beginnings only exist in stories, and stories are what get us into trouble. Stories separate us, keep us apart. ‘We tell ourselves stories,’ Joan Didion wrote, ‘in order to live,’ but she wrote that at the beginning of an essay about madness in herself and in California, in the news and in a nation, the one I write to you from.”
— “Or the Poem of Force,” March 2026
Letters to others. dearyou@substack.com
“A story is like a letter. Dear You, I’ll say. Just you|”
— MARGARET ATWOOD
Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century
Milkweed Editions, 2016
Paper Dreams: Writers and Editors on the American Literary Magazine
Atticus Books, 2013
Story 1
TriQuarterly 142
Creative Nonfiction 44
Hamilton Arts & Letters 4
Ninth Letter 4.2
