Michael Shay's Hummingbirdminds

My historical novel, "Zeppelins Over Denver," will be out soon from The Ridgeway Press. I recently proofed all 395 typeset pages a...

How did the Dominican sisters think I could understand an Emily Dickinson poem, "I could not stop for death?" Sister Miriam Cath...

We live in a place called Ormond Station. It is located in Central Florida on a line where Volusia County and Flagler County meet. Our maili...

I spent the past couple weeks with James. I knew him in my youth as Jim, Nigger Jim, from Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn.” On the eve of the...

I am rereading "Love in the Ruins or The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World" by Walker Percy. He wil...

Blame my errant imagination. As I read "Glorious Exploits," a new novel by Irish writer Ferdia Lennon, I kept hearing Roddy Doyle....

Reading contemporary fiction has many rewards. First, you get a whopping good story. Second, when the writer knows their stuff, you feel...

My sister sent me a packet of stuff she cleaned out of her attic. In it, I found a printout from The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundati...

This is my version of a prose poem that I dashed off late last night. Maybe it's not a prose poem. A ramble, maybe, or just a burst of w...

A friend once asked me to name my favorite writers. It's a long, long list, but I gave him the top five: Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, G...

The fog comes/ on little cat feet Thought of this Carl Sandburg poem as I sat watching the ocean as fog crept in. Cats weren't on my min...

Wind from the ancient sea A hurricane-force wind blew down the pine onto my roof on a February day. The house shook and I looked out the f...

I blame Max Brooks. Yes, the guy who wrote “World War Z” and the excellent graphic novel, “The Harlem Hellfighters” (artwork by Caanan Whi...

Crash Grief clouded my sight and I rear-ended the van bearing biopsies Bound for the cancer lab, one of them snipped From my wife. T...

Chris, Annie, and I took in “Dune 2” at the Capitol City Digital Cinemas LUXX Studio Theater. It’s new. Not quite as fancy as the ARQ Theate...

There’s magic in Elmore Leonard’s writing. In his novels, he tells a whopping good story and entrances the reader with the banter among char...

I was gobsmacked by an historical novel written about a famous author’s experiences in World War II. “Sergeant Salinger” by Jerome Charyn ...

I’m reading two books concurrently. One is labeled historical fiction and is Amor Towles’ “A Gentleman in Moscow.” The other is a sci-fi pos...

The cover of Jane Campbell's story collection, "Cat Brushing," shows a ringed hand sweeping across the fur of what must be a v...