I write because I love stories. That’s how I enter the world – through telling anecdotes and yarns and by reading others’ stories. Stories let us see ourselves, help us solve our problems, distract us from our problems, make us cry or laugh out loud. I honed my craft by teaching community college students who could always be encouraged to put down cell phones or stop doodling when I began a story. Tell someone a story today. Or write it down in a journal and tell it to yourself. Stories, like The Iliad, like From Here to Eternity, like Beloved, like Invisible Man, like The Joy Luck Club, like To the Lighthouse, like Misery preserve history, psychology, culture, communicate what’s universally human as well as being fun, as my students would agree.
