Ben East Books

Category: Writing

  • Review: If You Turn to Look Back

    Review: If You Turn to Look Back

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    Ben East
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    We’re with him now, vibrant present looking back at blurry past, teased as much from this vital trip as from old photos, journals, and letters. He has three more stops to make.

  • watch out for puddles

    watch out for puddles

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    by

    Ben East
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    I walk slow and careful through the dark rainy morning to keep my socks dry. The traffic splashes past the bus stop on the soaked street. Not all the kids have an umbrella. I stand under my umbrella, keeping dry, except my backpack. I dread wet feet all day. The yellow bus with the flashing…

  • A universe of content

    A universe of content

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    Ben East
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    My glorious moment today came from the Longform podcast. Aaron Lammer interviews New Yorker writer Sam Anderson, who puts into concrete form the struggle I’m up against. I’m grappling with a super-sized project involving tens of thousands of document pages and dozens of hours of interviews and interview transcripts. This, an entire universe of content,…

  • What is mine to do?

    What is mine to do?

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    Ben East
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    God Holds You offers a chronicle of hope. As we entered the Pandemic Wilderness in March 2020, progressive Lutheran pastor Sarah Scherschligt began publishing daily reflections about adapting to the new constraints. Written with her congregation in mind, these real-time posts transcend the self and her faith community to form a relatable narrative that is both…

  • Losing it

    Losing it

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    by

    Ben East
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    Used to be I could write by hand for ninety minutes at a stretch. My first attempt at a novel, a quarter century ago, I wrote two drafts out longhand, sometimes squatting on my haunches in the African bush, copybook resting on my thigh. I wrote physically as much as mentally (that story, a shoddy…

  • Dreaming. Writing.

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    Ben East
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    I keep waking to the nightmare of a perfect opening line. In my half slumber the opening line gives way to what comes next, a sentence followed by yet another. Soon a paragraph emerges and the full landscape of my project unfolds, the horizon glorious and attainable. In the winter months, these words march forth…

  • A writer in residence

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    Ben East
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    I’ve taken on a surprising new assignment. I have a nice official title, but what it boils down to really is writer in residence. And what is this residence? I report to a cozy white cottage behind a row of heirloom corn off the beaten paths traversing the expansive training grounds of our nation’s foreign…

  • Ben’s Franklins

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    Ben East
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    Micro-fiction channeling moments of truth. Walking the forests of the Shenandoah National Park last week, I thought about how I’d pass the days and weeks and months as a thru-hiker on the Appalachian Trail. One exercise I settled on for keeping sane step after step was to craft a 100-word story each day out there.…

  • Live on, Scarlet Tanager

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    Ben East
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    The Scarlet Tanager mostly hangs out in the upper canopy, making it a rare sighting for hikers in the Shenandoah National Park. This one visited us in the lower canopy, hunting insects for his mate or flashing his red plumage to make her love him. Mohan later rendered it in pen and color pencil. It…

  • Speaking of Tone-Lōc

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    Ben East
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    I haven’t thought about Tone-Lōc in years, but I woke up on Friday eager write about him. The next day, a horse called Medina Spirit won the Kentucky Derby. It so happens I’m also studying synchronicity right now. Here in Mumbai we’re living through our own Tone-Lōc moment, a sort of Tone-Lōc-down. It’s déjà vu…