Emily Brisse

Hi Friends, I'll be saying this with a sigh, but O Summer!  I am already deep into classes with my students, and where it does feel good to be back with young minds talking about things that matter, summer is a particular treasure. We were everyday outside, at parks, at beaches, in lakes and rivers and streams, up to our armpits in our garden flowers. We also spent a lot of time with family and friends, at cabins, birthday parties, splashpads, and swimming lessons. My boy learned to fish. He wanted to fish every day. He would spot the earthworm wiggling into the hole behind the branch and grab it, lift it up, study its perfectly spaced indentations. I watched his body lengthen, and I listened to him tell me stories, and it is a little astonishing to me, that I have been in this world for three and a half years with him, and he is still articulating things with the lift of his eyelashes that I hadn't known existed. I am a proud mama, a happy mama, a mama thankful for a seaso...

Taking a break from my plant-focused summer to point you all to a recent publication of mine in Hippocampus Magazine. It's a very short essay, called "I Am Still Here," which focuses on my immediate reaction twenty-some years ago to the abduction of a neighborhood boy. As one would assume, the events surrounding his kidnapping haunted me as a young girl, and still do. For me, writing is generally a matter of trying to figure something out. This boy's case has now gone unresolved for decades. I doubt I will ever stop writing into the center of that night, not at least until some closure is reached. So: there's that. Not flowers or bouncing summer grasses. But one of my earliest memories of understanding the necessity of story, and how upturned and unstable things can feel without one. Also, as a result of this essay, a young woman from a college in Massachusetts read it, and asked for a short interview for one of her classes about publishing. I'm inclu...