Apr 6, 2025
"I had this English teacher once who told us that the study of literature was about three things: improving our thinking, our feeling, and our thinking about feeling."
- Meghan Flaherty on Uncertainty from 100 Days of Creative Resistance
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"I had this English teacher once who told us that the study of literature was about three things: improving our thinking, our feeling, and our thinking about feeling."
- Meghan Flaherty on Uncertainty from 100 Days of Creative Resistance
“I’m drawn to gray, as to a dream, but not to any old gray. Not storm-cloud gray or corporate monolith. I prefer tranquil gray: the undyed wool of sheep in rain, the mood inside a Gerhard Richter painting, the mottle of an ancient cairn. I don’t mean any one gray either but the entire underrainbow of the world, the faded rose and sage and caesious. Liard, lovat, perse. The human eye perceives five hundred—not a mere fifty—shades of gray. Paul Klee called it the richest color, ‘the one that makes all the others speak.’” —Meghan Flaherty, “Ode to Gray,” The Paris Review Daily (August 21, 2018)
(painting: Vilhelm Shammershøi, Støvkornenes Dans i Solstrålerne [Dust Motes Dancing in Sunbeams], 1900)
A debut book from HMH and Rumpus writer Meghan Flaherty, Tango Lessions: A Memoir. The review in Kirkus calls it, “ A vibrantly intelligent reading pleasure.”
Listen to episode 6 (unofficial title: The Womb Show) right here. Then scoot on over to iTunes to subscribe.
Episode 6: Meghan Flaherty & Matthew Rossi
This week's episode, This American Life-style, brings you pieces on a theme. Our theme is: wombs. Or uteruses. (And what is the difference between those two words?) Act one: Meghan Flaherty reads an essay about mothers, sisters, and a womb. Act two: Matthew Rossi tells a story about a uterus gone astray.
Listen here now, or download from iTunes
If you'd like to read more--
by Meghan:
"The First Man" (The New Inquiry)
"Ode to Pablo Neruda" (Treehouse)
"Feast of the Epiphany" (Printed)
by Matthew:
"The Headmaster" (JERRY Magazine)
he'll have a story in Gigantic Worlds
About the writers:
Meghan Flaherty's work has appeared in The Intentional Quarterly and The Iowa Review, and online at Treehouse, The New Inquiry, and Catch & Release. She has an MFA from Columbia in Nonfiction and Literary Translation, and is currently finishing her first book, a personal history of Argentine tango. She tweets at @msmeghanbean and blogs at meghanbeanflaherty.wordpress.com.
Matthew Rossi's fiction and criticism is published or forthcoming in NY Tyrant, JERRY, Common Ground Review, Gigantic Worlds, West Branch, and others. Additionally, you can find his 140 character recipes at @FlashRecipe. He lives with his partner and their cat in Brooklyn, where he is finishing work on a novel.