Mama said the way to keep a diary was to write down the opposite of everything that happened, so she gave Jason a blank book so each night he could tell how all the boys played kick the cans until the boogeyman came.

If you’re into Japanese Punk Rock, cake, puppies, women, anime, the 1960s, art, guns, easy money, festivals, bikes, photography, pottery, women, movies, drinks, great food, dancing, or even fairy tales, then there’s a good chance the perfect activity awaits you this weekend.

The rules are thus: No more than 100 words (supa flash!) about what would happen if a horror movie character invaded some place in Hampton Roads. You get to choose the character and locale. Give it a whirl, it might be scary how good it is.

A trifling little poem in the spirit of Halloween and mermaids.

New York and L.A. will be fine on their own, but we are all we have. We have to stick together.

Dederer, author of ‘Poser, My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses,’ reads at the Old Dominion University Literary Festival on Wednesday.

The theme of this year’s festival is centered on Pablo Picasso’s idea, first written in 1925, that “Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.”

Proposals are being solicited for projects, hands-on activities, performances, multimedia art works, sidewalk/store-front installations, written word and any other creative temporary art project ideas.

AltDaily is working with the City of Norfolk Department of Cultural Affairs on a yet-untitled zine featuring four or more urban legends set in Norfolk.

Like to write, edit, and make an impact in your community? Check this out.

Local writer Michal Mahgerefteh shares two poems with us. “Frozen in a Mask of Calm” and “The Childless”

We’re looking for writers willing to help give voice to those left unheard in the Norfolk area.

Comics plus bagels and pizza? Must be Local Heroes Free Comic Book Day.

Mary goes to a party of an acquaintance. Les is there. Mary pretends Les does not exist. No one exists to Les but Mary. Les floats through crowds to speak simple and mundane words at Mary. Les has an intuition about Mary.

“You want to know if everything you’ve read is a lie, all the funny stories and crazy misadventures I’ve had, the heart breaking realism you’ve come to love about my writing. You want to know if CNN, Oprah, and Amazon are right. Well, there’s a simple answer to that question.”

Writing and cooking are two of my favorite things.

Indeed, they’re a lot alike — a messy mix of knowledge and improvisation, experience and innovation, and continual revision with a lot going on in between the lines.

Ever daydream of becoming the next, great American writer…why not start here?

We’re looking for writers willing to help give voice to under-heard voices.

An interview with Katherine Riegel and Ira Sukrungruang, who will be reading at the ODU bookstore on February 8th.

I wanted so badly to be able to write a poem: a poem was beautiful; it held a certain power, like being punched in the heart.

Putting this together felt good.

Teaching someone how to write is essentially giving them the only tool they need besides an imagination (which I believe still comes standard in humans) to build their own universes.

“Cole Conversations Over Breakfast,” a poem found in today’s news.

The points made in The Art of Community about the challenges of galvanizing members of a community should resonate equally with committee organizers, clergy, corporate managers, and World of Warcraft guild leaders…

Poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction… We want it all. The more locally-themed, the better.

Let’s write something lovely, shall we?

Wes Cheney reflects on his ‘relationship’ with the local comic book store, which recently turned one year old.

My students wrote a letter to the administration asking for a change. And it worked.

Experimental art and poetry by Richard Perkins.

Vonnegut was a favorite of my buddies and I back in high school. Slaughterhouse. Cat’s Cradle. Time Quake. Breakfast of Champions. Reading him in class was our Farmville, or whatever the hell my students are doing on their cell phones the moment I turn my back on them.

A few poems inspired by Elliott’s Fair Grounds in Ghent.

This second half is where DPK really gets it going. If you’ve ever taught–especially if you’ve ever taught English–this is a must read.

“I’d like a Jesus so fat he broke the cross,” read David Sedaris at Chrysler Hall last night. “This is a Jesus who conjured 1,000 loaves of bread, then ate 50 of them.”

“Feed whatever it is that inspires you, that will make you do that excited dance inside, that will quicken the pulse. Don’t let anything steal your love to create, your love for the craft. Because, the moment you get cynical, you’re done.”

Loss has always been a reminder that things are tenuous, and out of such loss is, I believe, the implication of survival.

The controversial author of “Heather Has Two Mommies” comes to Virginia Beach.

Mark Bowden, consummate journalist and author of “Black Hawk Down,” read @ ODU Thursday.

The Civil War at Sea was planned as an eight-book series, but Simon & Schuster cut it off at three books because of declining sales with each volume. Which was shattering to me.

As an American poet who has experienced the front line of this country’s foreign policy, his writing provides a rarely seen, but nonetheless important, perspective on how the world sees us and how we see the world.

Reading “Final Salute,” Jim Sheeler’s account of Marines whose job it was to notify families of the deaths of their sons in Iraq, I was changed. For the first time I suffered a little. I felt, through the writing, enough of the pain of war to make me cry.

All people, New Yorker writer Jane Mayer reminds us, not just Americans, are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.

Mary Westbrook speaks with Dalia Sofer about her writing process, finding humor in grave situations, and whether or not she considers herself a spokesperson for Iran.

It’s right now through Friday. The theme is “Writers in Peace and War.” With writers like Steve Almond, Mark Bowden, and Jane Mayer coming to our sleepy ultra militarized area, expect (literary) bullets to fly.

A poetical love song to our local Family Dollar in Park Place.

At the beginning of the night we had a self-proclaimed former hustler leading us in a chant of “When I say Jesus, you say Christ!” “Jesus.” “CHRIST!” “Jesus.” “CHRIST!”

Dropping today, Cocker’s new album is called Further Complications, and that simple phrase has resonance to me here.

I’ve had a sweet Mother’s Day weekend full of offspring and offspring’s offspring. I’m just back from seeing my daughter.  I spent a few days in California with her, her husband and my 10 month-old grandson, aka Baby Danger. I’m arranging as much face time with the baby as I possibly can before my daughter [...]

Lately I’ve been watching movies.  Two this past week:  Rachel Getting Married starring Anne Hathaway, and I’ve Loved You So Long starring Kristen Scott Thomas.  Both of these films quietly portray the complicated life between siblings, yet my biggest takeaway involves what the films didn’t portray. Flashback. Neither film uses flashback to reveal or illuminate [...]

I lost two important things on Tuesday night:  my electricity and my humanity. But first, I lost my cookies. I had been sick most of the night before, and I woke up Tuesday sunk inside my own feverish skin.  I canceled my classes, and shrouded myself under my fuzzy comforter, creeping out of bed only [...]

Local Heroes Comics is one of the brightest new businesses enlivening Ghent culture. Fearless leader Greg Thompson was kind enough to answer seven ill-considered questions for us.

I have a friend who doesn’t believe in regrets.  She insists that if I’m happy now, I can’t regret my bad experiences, because I have been taught by my pain and it’s part of what makes me who I am today.  It sounds so pop-psych to me, but she’s smart, and she sets her argument [...]

I’m tired tonight, so I’m posting an older column that I’ll be playing off of in a new post Wednesday. * Can I Still Be a Grandmother Even if I Don’t Believe My Daughter Had Sex? They tell me that I am going to be a grandmother next month.  I guess it could be true.  [...]

It’s the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and I, for one, am celebrating. Okay, well maybe not celebrating, as in woo-hoo martini party; but I am taking notice. Just by coincidence, I’m reading (for the first time) Richard Dawkin’s 1970′s classic The Selfish Gene.  It was a gift given to my youngest [...]

This week, I’ve been working four close-to-my-heart writing projects, and teaching five college composition courses. Me and the words — we’re tight these days. The only word I’m not involved with lately is: “No,”  as in “No, I’m too busy to do that.”  I think it comes from being a freelancing adjunct consultant — which [...]

Below is my original post, and I have received a bunch of photos, for which I am thankful.  I have received none from Portsmouth yet – so please folks, snap them and send them!  Also, Beach people – keep ‘em coming.  I don’t yet have photos that represent all of the aspects of Virginia Beach.  [...]

“[Your mother] created you, so you always owe her and can never really repay the debt. Being born is like asking Don Corleone for a favor.”  – Dennis Miller * My mother tells me that is wasn’t her intention that my older brother and I be born only sixteen months apart. “But,” she adds. “It [...]

Over the next few months, 24sevencities will attempt to capture the essence of each of the seven cities, and highlight a few of the best places to be and see.  I’ll write these stories, so they’ll have my quirky perspective — but I hope you’ll help me. We’d like to get YOUR point of view, [...]

Last week, I arrived exactly on time at the gynecologist’s office for my yearly poke.  It wasn’t easy – the rush from work in soul-sucking seven cities traffic,  and my anxiety about being even one minute late, combined with my resentment over just how anxious I’ve become about a measly minute.  It’s a paranoia linked [...]

As I just told George, my point in the short article “Novel Ideas” was that literature is not removed from those who reject the genre.  But I never meant to suggest that Hollywood truly loves books.  Hollywood loves books like the wife-beater loves his family: he might think he does, but ego and insecurity have [...]

At the beginning of many residencies at the Bennington Writing Seminars, the late Liam Rector would screen this clip from Glengarry GlenRoss, leaving at least some of the new students squinting and wondering exactly what he meant by its display.  It’s the “Always Be Closing” scene, with Alec Baldwin aggressively berating the sales staff to [...]

The prolific American writer John Updike has died of lung cancer at age 76.  Internet eulogies abound. I read him. I read him throughout most of the real reading years of my life.  I read the Rabbit books and the short stories and much of the rest.  I praised a lot of his writing; I [...]

Reality and the blogosphere – I’ve written about this dysfunctional relationship before. (Here and here.) And I usually maintain that we writers and social networkers in cyberspace often capture emotional truth, but objective reality invariably suffers. So while I do hope folks relate when I joke about “giving the sex talk” to my teenagers, or [...]

I’m obsessed with this one line from Aleksandar Hemon’s novel The Lazarus Project: “All fears are memories of other fears . . .”  I’m not quite through with the 294-page book yet, but I’m a good ways along.  This line was on page 68.  I need to get over it. All fears are memories of [...]

Is that not THE best combination ever? My lunch was made, I’d gulped my coffee and I was glumly heading to my car, already dreading the messy evening commute home from Norfolk.  (It’s a foul commute even before you add snow and slush and ice.)  And then my gloating 9th grader, who’d already been pardoned [...]

For those who saw the Beer Can Chicken recipe in the print version of Taste and were referred to my blog for the accompanying Strawberry Spinach Salad recipe — here it is below.  You can get the Beer Can Chicken recipe (and see photos of both) here. Strawberry Spinach Salad * ½ cup of white [...]

Danger Baby’s coming to town this summer.  (For those who don’t know, Danger really is my grandson’s middle name.)  He’ll be about 13 months old when he arrives in Virginia Beach, and he’s staying with me for about a month, while his parents, my daughter and son-in-law, do research in the Middle East.  So, there [...]

Happy Birthday 24SevenCities.  I have a grandiose — and slightly subversive — wish for you today. But first, a quick introduction. I’m Leigh Rastivo, and my blog will center around two topics, in equal measure: modern motherhood and writing and literature.  I’m thinking local book club, and some podcasting on literature.  There’s a lot in [...]

The MacArthur Mall was quiet. Just moaning and scraping now. In the movies, when these types of things go down, everyone always runs for the mall. I think it’s bred into us somehow, like a cultural identity rooted in remake after remake of Romero films. You see them, you run. Where do you run; the [...]

When Kate and Jillian heard at school about the Halloween party at their friend Jamie’s house in Thoroughgood, they immediately decided on their costumes: Thelma and Louise.  No one in their grade would get the reference, probably.  The movie was older than they were, but it had been their favorite movie ever since elementary school.  [...]