The Washington Post: On graduations, vaccinations, publications… and holding it together (barely) when it’s time to let go. “So much of life — creating, parenting, aging — is getting used to one phase just in time for it to end, then stumbling forward to the next one. A new stage may feel exciting at the same time it feels unsteady. Like flying, but also like falling. Like exposure. But when it’s time, it’s time. You can’t go back.”
— As the World Opens Up, It’s Tough to Let Go
The Atlantic: Coining a term for when you love masks, because they protect loved ones and strangers alike, but you miss seeing people’s mouths move when they talk, noses wrinkle when they’re disgusted, and chins quiver when they’re sad. “There’s a reason people say, ‘It’s so good to see your face!’ and not ‘It’s so good to see your elbows!’”
— Face Hunger: What We Miss When We’re Masked
The New York Times: On the emotional whiplash of carrying around dread and hope at the same time: “We talked about how near-misses remind us that they won’t always miss, how no one can hide from bad news forever, and how lucky any of us are to wake up and live another day.”
— For Those We Can’t Always Protect
Real Simple: On the power of letting go: “Deciding what you won’t have in your life is as important as deciding what you will have. Trying out something you expect to love, realizing you don’t really love it, and giving it back—that takes guts.”
— Writer Mary Laura Philpott Knows When To Quit
The Washington Post: On the strange new stresses people will experience whenever “reopening” happens — and how patience will go a long way as we wait. “So much tentative rescheduling may end up being re-rescheduled… In reality, trying to restart the parts of life that have been on hold because of the pandemic feels like doing a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle while the picture on the box keeps changing.”
— In Search of Lost Time
The New York Times: On the mixed feelings of having the whole family back in the nest together: “I have a tendency, when I feel trapped, to sense a false permanence. I don’t think, This is my life right now. I think, This is my life forever. I panic. I forget, although I’ve learned it countless times, that every stage of life changes, then ends.”
— This Togetherness Is Temporary
Garden & Gun: On college tours, memories, and milkshakes: “When you love a place that connects you to your past, it can be hard to believe that it may not connect you to your future as well. And it’s easy to think that if you once belonged somewhere, all you have to do is come back to that place, and you won’t ever feel cut loose in the world.”More:
The New York Times
I’m So Excited for 40th Grade
The Great Fortune of Ordinary Sadness
To the Type-A Person Having a Meltdown
Hard Knock Life: What Are The Turtles Telling Me?
Shopping for a Car — And a Teenager’s Future
My Adventures in Accountability
Sing, O Muse, of the Mall of America
Wishing Away the Wish List
The Power of Place
How to See More Of Your Best Friends? Move Away
When the Honeymoon Is Over: Settling Into Real Life
In Praise of Name Tags
“Hookup Line”
And Then the Dog Died
Finding Friends in a New Town
Telling the Kids: We’re Moving
Rekindling a Love for Dinner
The Washington Post
This Novel Has a Cat Narrator — And It Had Me at Meow
Look to the Lessons of Theater Kids
Learning From Our Mistakes
Teaching Girls to Save Their Own Lives
This Shop’s Walls Can Talk (In 140 Characters)
The Paris Review
The Case for Seasonal Sentimentality
Lit Hub
Why, Exactly, Do We Have Subtitles on Books?
Surviving the Ordinary: Why We Need Memoirs of Regular Lives
Stealing Stories, Book Tours, and Staying Off Twitter
Girl Scout Heart, Henry Miller Mind
Garden & Gun Magazine
Soda Shop Time Machine
Southern Women: Lee Smith, Storyteller
Expand Your Southern Canon
The Los Angeles Times
It’s Not the Celebrities You Mourn For
Salon
Wearing Someone Else’s Scrubs: The Comfortable Cotton of the Road Not Taken
Publishers Weekly
Think Before You Link
Brevity
An Egg-Poaching Pep Talk That Is Definitely Not a Metaphor for a Writer’s Career
Bustle
Stay With Me Explores How Infertility and Loss Can Test a Marriage
McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
Literary Pet Names Using Puns Unworthy of Their Namesakes
MORE Literary Pet Names Using Puns Unworthy of Their Namesakes
A Usage Guide to Timely Phrases Beginning With “As” and Their Lowercase Abbreviations
Philpott often interviews fellow writers — from the latest up-and-coming novelists to celebrity authors such as Sally Field — both live onstage and in a variety of publications. She also profiled authors regularly for six years as founding editor of Musing, the digital magazine of Nashville’s legendary independent bookstore, Parnassus Books.
A few samples…
