A Useful Pot to Put Things In

An Intro and User's Guide

Why here? Why now?

Because I’ve been looking for the right material and the right vehicle to try something like this for a long time.

Because I love the stories I am planning to release here, in all their odd lengths, mixed colors, microtonal notes. And for a change, as an experiment. Instead of trying to wedge these pieces into an existing home that doesn’t really fit them, I decided to build them one instead.

Because I love engaging with and immersing in and chattering about books and music and teaching and creativity, and I love sharing all those things, and my friends and family keep seeming to think they have lives and need to go immerse in their own things sometimes.

What will subscribing get you?

At least two substantive posts a month. Could be a serialized story. Could be a story and a piece of criticism. Or an interview, Could be a Q&A and a reflection on a story. I just still have so many words. They needed a room of their own.

Want some samples?

Later this week, I’m going to share an extended interview/critical review I completed not long ago about the massively undervalued songwriter Thomas Anderson. That, like most of the nonfiction I put up here, will be free to everyone.

I’m not going to put up new, unpublished fiction for free. Like most writers, I have done that too often, and too willingly. And like I said, I love these stories. These aren’t doodles. Some of them are experiments. But everything you’ll find here by subscribing is something into which I have poured everything I’ve got. So, if that intrigues you, please do consider subscribing.

If you want to see the types of stories you might find here, I have two examples:

1. Last summer, I published a new short in the Michigan Quarterly Review, inspired— if that’s the right word— by my experiences with my marvelous, much-missed dad during the last year of his life. You can read that story for free here:

https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mqr/2020/07/over/

2. Several of the longer pieces I will serialize on this newsletter come from a set of linked novellas I’ve been working on for the past couple years, under the collective title All Happy People. I published one, “We Are Sitting in a Room”, as a thank you for a GoFundMe I ran for Direct Relief during the early stages of the pandemic. You can read and download that story for free here:

http://glenhirshberg.com/site/we-are-sitting-in-a-room/

Oh, And also:

Have other things you’d like to see from me? Let me know. If the interest and subscribers materialize, I could see camping here for quite some time. Lots of Mark Strand’s (virtual) white paper waiting to be kissed.

If not, I’ll try reaching you some other way.

Thanks for taking a look.