When I was asked to write about an angry baby, I thought of an act of toddler ferocity I’d witnessed when a colleague brought her son to work at the University of Cincinnati. The kid was screaming his guts out in the English Department mail room, and when she leaned...

Though my first thoughts when approached with [the Very Angry Baby] assignment were “kitten” and “cancer,” in that order, it’s the mother’s voice that came through the strongest, after I’d written the initial boy-and-kitten caper that opens the story. Every chance we...

“Play Acting” aims to balance several obsessions. Firstly, I am a writer who enjoys experimenting with language as meaning (i.e., narrative, character development, etcetera), language as code (let’s get a beer and talk about semiotics!), and language as art (a.k.a.,...

I wrote the first draft of “Babyproof” eleven years ago, in a single six-hour sitting, as an attempt to make sense of several previous relationships and friendships that did not involve babies or car accidents or infidelity at all. The story’s mischievous “very angry”...

My very angry baby story, “War Games,” emerged during a writing workshop being given by my co-tutor on one of the Arvon foundation’s five-day residential writing courses. Adam Marek, writer of fantastic and fantastical short stories, was talking about plotting. He...

“First Song” (titled after the Galway Kinnell poem) is a much-revised version of one of the first stories I ever wrote. I was twenty-four and pregnant and had just quit the doctoral program in English at Princeton. My husband’s consulting job was taking him west, and...