Author: Lara Avery

Among the list of Questionable Habits I have been chipping away at for the past few years is the tendency to stage a dramatic breakup with the places I call home. A few months or weeks before I'm set for departure, I will begin cataloging perceived flaws of my living situation, incompatibilities with the city… Continue reading Things I’ll Miss: An Updating List →

I'm typing this with one hand because I jammed my left pinkie during an intramural basketball game. We got beat so badly the refs invoked the "mercy" rule. There were only five of us from the English department, and only one of us under 30. Our team name is 'As I Lay Dunking.' Last week… Continue reading The Rules →

This is adapted from an email I recently sent to an old friend.   I had an incredible workshop leader a couple years back that was a bit precious about his approach to writing. He was all about guarding his time with his "craft" at all costs, protecting it from the demands of the market, insisting… Continue reading Art and the Market →

Some friends and I got together virtually to write our "real time" reactions as we read Ben Lerner's The Topeka School. As native Topekans and graduates of Lerner's high school, we thought it would be fun to explore our reading experiences of a book set in our childhood home, lauded by The New York Times Book… Continue reading The Topeka School →

When I longed for my future, I never thought about a fixed name. I couldn't see myself as mother or writer or wife, more just floating through different atmospheres, a sensory montage of days that begin by waking up in a high-ceilinged, long-windowed room in an old building, ending with the slow carousel of a neighborhood as… Continue reading A New Internet →