Author Archives: allisongreenwriter

About allisongreenwriter

Author of The Ghosts Who Travel with Me, a memoir, and Half-Moon Scar, a novel.

Dispatch from Seattle #1

I opened the Zoom meeting on March 9, and as my students’ faces appeared before bedroom walls, living room windows, and closets, one blurted, “How sad that we aren’t together!” Sorrow washed over me. It was the last Monday of … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

What’s Best

It’s “best of” season. Best books of the year. Movies. Songs. And because we are approaching 2020, the lists are expanding to cover the entire decade. It’s hard to resist such categorization. I keep a list of books I’ve read … Continue reading

Posted in Literature, Mount St. Helens, Writers, writing | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Of Books and Brownstones

  As a child, I knew nothing about the east coast; what I understood about the metropolis of New York City came from Sesame Street. The show debuted in 1969, so my family was probably living in Wisconsin when I … Continue reading

Posted in LGBT, Literature, Travel, Writers, writing | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

A Tribute

Two friends recently gave us sourdough starter at the same time and, not knowing what we were doing, we accepted both. One came with a name: Bobby. One came nameless. We soon took to thinking of our starters as “hers” … Continue reading

Posted in Aging, Family | Tagged | 4 Comments

Thirty-Nine Years Later

On the 39th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, I tagged along on a geology field trip with students from my college. This was my fourth visit to the volcano (spoiler alert: manuscript-in-progress), and I was hoping to … Continue reading

Posted in Mount St. Helens, Travel | Tagged | 2 Comments

Apocalypse

“Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we?” So begins N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, which appeared under our Christmas tree wrapped in cheerful, glittery paper. Arline gave me the boxed Broken Earth trilogy, knowing I’ve been … Continue reading

Posted in Death and dying, Faith/belief, Justice, Literature, Uncategorized, Writers, writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Toasted

A week ago, the sky above Seattle turned hazy, and an eerie orange sunlight fell across our hardwood floors. The air smelled burnt, toasted. Yesterday, we had the worst air quality for a twenty-four-hour period in recorded history. Almost exactly … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Ones Who Stay

Recent events have reminded me of Ursula K. Le Guin’s much-anthologized story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” in which a utopian society depends for its continued existence on the suffering of one child. Some, when they learn of … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Ursula K. Le Guin, 1929-2018

Our class took a break one sunny afternoon and hiked along the McKenzie River in the Willamette National Forest of Oregon. Our teacher, Ursula Le Guin, led the way, naming the trees, shrubs, ferns, and groundcovers. It was the summer … Continue reading

Posted in Literature, Writers, writing | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

A New Year

At midnight on December 31st, Arline and I followed her cousins out of the house where we’d been eating tamales and into the empty residential street to watch fireworks bloom over the neighborhood. We toasted. We hugged and wished each … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments