We’ve got a fun new way to ponder your writing life, promote your blog, and get published!

Each month at WritersBucketList.com, we’ll post a prompt andinvite writers to submit personal blog posts in response. We’ll choose four or five to publish each month (1/week), and encourage you…

Want to get away and write? TMI Project, the non-profit storytelling workshop I co-run, is planning a women's writing retreat the weekend of March 15th, at beautiful Lifebridge Sanctuary. This is our third retreat. In a safe, alcohol and drug-free environment, over the course of 2.5 days, my partner…

This Christmas there is at least one book I will read with my family, a tradition begun by my mom: Van Dyke's …

Home is a perspective.

People can live inside the same four walls, sheltered by the same roof, sit around the same dining table and see different things. Or see the same things in entirely different ways.

My memories of my childhood home are of a mostly delightful kind of chaos in an over-crowded ranch. Short on bedrooms, big on bedlam. Age-wise, I fell dead center of six kids and can recall a heated discussion among siblings about where exactly the eminent next arrival was…

Normally, I'm polite. But stick a notepad and pen in my hand, and I become a shameless snoop.  I will casually ask the sorts of questions your mother probably taught you were rude.

For example on a story about a startup : How much money do you earn?  For a quick quote from a front row celebrity at fashion week: Who are you wearing? It never ceases to delight me that complete strangers are most often quite happy to give direct answers.  And then some. Even so, I was taken aback several…

I was four days shy of my 10th birthday when I first realized what it was that I needed more than anything in the world. 

I sat in my fourth grade classroom listening to Mrs. Johnson explain to me the crucial importance of not writing outside the margins and the, not to be taken lightly, serious necessity of dotting your “I’s”, while I dreamily gazed out the…

In the rural small town in Northern California where I live, we are surrounded by seven wilderness areas. It is said that there are 5 head of cattle for each person who lives here. Such isolation has led me to appreciate the writers as diverse as Basho, Wallace Stegner, and Mary Austin.…

I am so thrilled to have this piece published about my relationship to Ani Difranco and her music on The Rumpus!!!

http://therumpus.net/2012/07/albums-of-our-lives-ani-difrancos-like-i-said/

Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series presents the following readers on the theme Underneath August 9 at Studio 333 in Sausalito, 7-9pm. $5. Join us for an extraordinary night as seven authors reveal worlds underneath words. Visit the website for authors' full bios and more info. http://whytherearewords.com

Melissa Cistaro's stories have been published in the…

Tuesday afternoon, someone said, "You're a study in self-denial."

The woman began to weep, in spite of herself, pressing her lips together, taking her gaze toward the ceiling and away from the face of her friend.  She questioned herself aloud, "Why have I always denied myself what I want? No one has ever said that I can't have things."

Pondering her own question, she awakened from sleep the following day and realized she hadn't recently asked herself what she wanted,…

Fellow personal essayists/ memoirists, READ THIS: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-personal-essay-by-a-personal-essay

Christmas has come and gone and with that, all of the gift money my husband and I received has been spent.  I spent mine on a Kindle (the $79 one).  My husband spent his on an MMORPG.

I know you’re asking yourself what that conglomeration of letters stand for.  It stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game.   If you know someone who plays World of Warcraft, they are playing an MMORPG.

I have now become an MMORPG Widow.

My husband is a big geek who likes to…

I wrote my first essay for The Fix, called "Recovery Envy," which may sound facetious in a soundbite but if you read the essay, I hope it’s clear that I don’t mean it facetiously at all. I have the utmost respect for those in recovery, and anyone striving to improve their lives, by whatever means. If you like it, I’d really, really…

I wrote this essay for a collection entitled Amazing Gifts: Stories of Faith, Disability and Inclusion.

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My first experience with chronic illness, disability, and faith arrived when I was in elementary school. A girl in my class had been stricken with cancer and had to undergo regular chemotherapy treatments. Her hair vanished and she wore a hat for the rest of the year. All of this was, of course, explained to us as a class on days she was not physically…

From my essay, <a href="http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/why-i-had-my-iphone-in-my-hand-while-viewing-the-nirvana-exhibit-at-experience-music-project/">"Why I Had My iPhone In My Hand While Viewing The Nirvana Exhibit At Experience Music Project,"</a> which is about a lot of things - I love Thought Catalog and am considering some pieces for Best Sex Writing 2012 (they don't know that yet, but their sex essays are really outstanding and lively) and am very happy to have my…

Tsuris (noun): trouble, aggravation, or misery



      I’ve just completed a memoir in essays I’m calling, How I Lost My Bellybutton and Other Naked Survival Stories, in which I try to make sense of the ridiculous amount of tsuris I’ve had in my fifty-seven years. As I begin sending it out into a publishing world that’s become quite weird, I’m feeling surprisingly Buddhist. Of course I want to entertain, illuminate, and move others with published work, but…