by James Michael Starr | Feb 15, 2022 | Uncategorized
Above: Is it just me, or is there something weird going on in this picture? Y ES, I’M A STORYTELLER. I can’t help but make things up. I’ve been told I may even have a tendency to look at a family snapshot such as this and try to extract more meaning than is actually...
by James Michael Starr | Feb 10, 2022 | Uncategorized
Above: “Children in Midland, Pennsylvania” (1940) by Jack Delano. Library of Congress M Y MOTHER WAS TEN YEARS OLD in the winter of 1940 when photographer Jack Delano came to town. Employed by the Farm Security Administration component of FDR’s WPA,...
by James Michael Starr | Feb 15, 2022 | Uncategorized
Above: Who could blame her for wanting to flee the kind of place called “hell with the lid off”? W HEN I WAS THIRTY-SEVEN, my first marriage floundered, then ran aground. And like others who’ve been shipwrecked that way, I found myself confronted by...
by James Michael Starr | Jun 29, 2022 | Uncategorized
Above: My father used a 1962 road map much like this one to make our escape to Dallas. T HOUGH I WAS ONLY ELEVEN years old and so many decades have passed, I can still recall in great detail the day we fled Ohio. I remember my Dad, my sister, and I emptying the house,...
by James Michael Starr | Jun 29, 2022 | Uncategorized
Above: My mother, from her publicity photo, circa 1961. A MOMENT STANDS APART in my memory, in fact, the actual moment my novels were born. I was descending a snow-dusted slope east of Cleveland, having just walked away from my mother’s graveside. This woman who...
