The author looking at old publications / notes with young assistant. Photo: Laura Bernhein
1. Damn. I just built more shelves at my parents’ garage. (There are no basements in Florida.) I don’t want to leave anything here but I’m not sure what to do with my boxes of old notebooks, newspapers, journals, magazines. My first publications. What do other writers do with this stuff?
2. I collected my first crate of this stuff in college. Early journals of creative writing, assignments from Coleman Barks’ class. Later I looked at it and thought ‘I hope nobody ever finds this.’ One day my parents asked if I could take a bunch of stuff to the landfill and I threw those early notebooks in there too. Thinking back now I should’ve burned them.