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The Pie Was a Final Draft: Homecoming
By Michaella Thornton Last month, at age 45, I attended my first Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference in my hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, and it was glorious. I sang karaoke two nights in a row with writers I love and admire (Salt-n-Pepa’s “None of Your Business” and Wilco’s “Heavy Metal Drummer”…
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The Pie Was a Final Draft: On Bourbon Pecan Pie & Rediscovering Love
By Michaella Thornton Bourbon pecan pie is one of my love languages. A language I express maybe once a year at Thanksgiving, but last November I was recovering from walking pneumonia and traveling by train with my 6-year-old daughter to visit my mother, her grandmother. I was in no space to pack pecans, bourbon, dark…
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The Pie Was a Final Draft: A House on Fire
By Michaella Thornton It’s a little after 8 p.m. and my cozy brick bungalow smells of my favorite recipe for chocolate chip cookies. While we may not have much, I can always whip up a little bit of magic on a Friday night as my six-year-old daughter builds new worlds out of little plastic bricks…
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The Pie Was a Final Draft: Tourist Eyes
By Michaella Thornton Florida is a myth and an amusement park for its tall tales and figurative language[1]. Astronauts who launched from this place recount the moon smelling like fireworks. A cheesy mini-golf course where the history of swashbuckling pirate queens Anne Bonny and Mary Read is on display at Hole 15. The gatekeeper at…
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The Pie Was a Final Draft: Good Grief
By Michaella Thornton Lately, it’s been harder to gather my resolve and joy to bake or write much. I won’t lie; I’ve been struggling through a slow-moving season of pain and endurance, and that’s okay, too. My focus lately has been on: Of trying so hard to remember good enough is great, Rome wasn’t built…
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The Pie Was a Final Draft: On Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls and the Root of All Suffering
By Michaella Thornton Last Thursday my work hosted a Great Pumpkin Bakeoff, and while I’m usually not one to brag or indulge in trash talk, I knew I would mop the floor with the competition. Ah, hubris. How easy you are to spot in others but not in myself. While I faithfully followed the tried-and-true,…
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Beginnings
An Interview with Lyndsey Ellis by Michaella Thornton I had the good fortune of being introduced to Lyndsey Ellis’ phenomenal writing through a creative writing teacher and indie publisher we both love, Christi Craig of Hidden Timber Books. Once I read Lyndsey’s debut novel, Bone Broth, last summer, I was in awe of how Lyndsey…
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The Pie Was a Final Draft: On Baking a Bad Cake
by Michaella Thornton “Words are my magic, antiproverbial cake. I eat it, and I still have it.” — Ursula K. Le Guin For my daughter’s fifth birthday this spring, I didn’t special order her birthday cake but rather baked her cake from-scratch. I’ve fallen into an unplanned rhythm of baking her cakes on odd-numbered years…
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The Pie Was a Final Draft: Scraps
by Michaella Thornton It’s a little before 5 a.m. and, instead of lying in bed and wondering why I cannot sleep, I get up. Maybe it’s my anxiety about Omicron and trying to keep my too-young-to-be-vaccinated child safe while navigating single-parent frugality (keep her home, but still pay preschool fees to keep her spot). Maybe…
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The Hottest and Longest Lasting Fire
Fiction by Michaella A. Thornton A few of the mothers from the neighborhood stand in line together six feet apart at an Illinois pot dispensary. To get here, they have ridden the shuttle bus from the now-shuttered Gateway Fun Park, an amusement park their teenagers once loved to visit as kids. While these moms now…