Last week, the Kincade Fire tore through Sonoma County, where I live, and 200,000 people were evacuated. My town of Petaluma became the first stop for evacuees. I interviewed some of the evacuees for The Washington Post. Hearing their stories was a moving experience, and I’m still in shocked that this keeps happening to my beloved home.

Then the story was on the front page of The Washington Post! Wow! I didn’t expect that at all. Heather Kelly and Scott Wilson also worked on the story.

Here’s the article in full. Give it a read!

In September, I had the honor of spending two weeks at a writing residency hosted by Hypatia-in-the-Woods in Washington. During that time, I stayed in a cabin called Holly House and worked on my current novel. Here’s the living room:

There was a little loft upstairs, and I spent most of my time sitting on the bed with my laptop.

I got so much done. I’m grateful to Hypatia-in-the-Woods for the opportunity to focus on the work I most want to be doing.

When not writing, I ran into some nature, like this praying mantis:

And this dome-like spider web:

And the Mima Mounds National Preserve. No one knows what made these mounds–my favorite theory is prehistoric gophers.

This being Washington, there was lots of water around:

All the sea shells on the beach were covered with barnacles. Here I am being horrified about it on Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

It's fine it's fine nothing disgusting at all about this

A post shared by joy (@joylanzendorfer) on Sep 11, 2019 at 8:37pm PDT

Speaking of Alta, I was also on their podcast talking about my article on Jack London.

Listen here!

(The above picture makes me laugh.)

I got my new copy of Alta and am thrilled with the layout of my article on Dorothea Lange. In the 1950s, Monticello in Napa was turned into a lake and reservoir. Lange, who took iconic photos of the Dust Bowl, documented the human and environmental toll of Drowning A Town.

It looks like a juicy issue, which book reviews, fiction, poetry, and articles about hummingbirds, professional poker, and a movie museum. Pick up a copy if you get a chance.

For The Washington Post’s KidsPost section, I wrote about summer in Antarctica, lost penguins, and mummified seals. Excerpt:

Bergstrom frequently sees mummified seals in the valleys, as the cold, dry atmosphere preserves their bodies. Carbon dating reveals that some of the mummies are thousands of years old.

“They’re all over the place, too,” Bergstrom says. “They’re up on the glaciers, and we don’t know how they got up there or why they got up there.”

Read the rest here.

I wrote a humor piece with Marcia Simmons for The Belladonna.

The other day my grandson made the woman in the GPS British. Do I need some English lady bossing me around? I threw his phone in the harbor, told him which way was West, and left him there. How’s he going to get home, you say? Well, if he could read a map, he would know.

Read the rest here.

For Poetry Foundation, I wrote about Anne Brigman, one of the first women photographers, probably the first to photograph herself in the nude. A fascinating person whose unique worldview was also captured in her poetry.
Excerpt:

On June 8, 1913, the San Francisco Call asked Brigman—by then a local celebrity—when she would divorce her husband, with whom she hadn’t lived for three years. Her reply was that she saw no need for divorce. She had “absolute freedom” and felt “unhampered now that I have no fear.” She continued:

Fear is the great chain which binds women and prevents their development, and fear is the one apparently big thing which has no real foundation in life. Cast fear out of the lives of women and they can and will take their place […] as the absolute equal of man.

Brigman enjoyed the bohemian life of a “New Woman,” a 19th-century term coined by the English novelist Charles Reade to describe an independent woman. She was a successful artist living by herself in Oakland, with thriving plants, a dozen birds, and a little dog named Rory. An active member of the Bay Area’s burgeoning art scene, Brigman was friends with author Jack London, artist William Keith, and poet Charles Keeler. “To her friends, poets and artists and patrons she keeps open house, and Rory barks welcome,” reported the San Francisco Call.

Read the rest here.

I have an essay up on LitHub! It’s about Anne Sexton’s networking skills, social anxiety, and the time I hid behind a column at a writing conference.

Check out What Anne Sexton Taught Me About Self-Promotion

My short story Double Feature was in a recent issue of The Maine Review. I hope it’ll make it online eventually, but in the meantime, if you see a copy, check it out.

I wrote about paleoartists for The Washington Post. Excerpt:

Most people know what a Tyrannosaurus rex looked like. Its snarling teeth, slashing tail and tiny arms make it one of the most recognizable dinosaurs that roamed the planet. Yet if it weren’t for paleoartists, the T. rex would be just another fossilized skeleton in museums.

Check out What did dinosaurs look like? Paleoartists enliven what would be only bones.