Interview to Forgiveness to Weather to Tanka to Book Review

One of the very top creative nonfiction journals is Hippocampus Magazine. I was pretty jazzed to be interviewed for them by Rudri Patel, the co-founder and co-editor of The Sunlight Press about Scrap. 

Link below:

HIPPOCAMPUS INTERVIEW

Here’s a sample Q&A:

RBP: Forgiveness is a complicated theme that you present in your work. As you learned about your father’s backstory, how were you able to navigate your feelings toward understanding him better. Did the writing help you forgive him in real time, or did you have a complete understanding of his perspective before you wrote Scrap?

LC: From the first moment I began to write my memories about my relationship with my father, I was beginning to heal. Every memory written out was a burden released. For me, writing was the best form of therapy, better than therapy visits, although I used the material from those for crafting the middle section of Scrap.

During the time my father was sick and then dying, I jotted down notes and rough drafts of events. But my focus was his daily phone calls and talking him through his illness and our past. It felt as if the barriers between us were melting away, and I just kept my mind open. I didn’t realize I was finally forgiving him until later, after he died.

As I’ve mentioned too many times, I worked on this project for eighteen years. I’ve been blogging for FOURTEEN of those years. In the past I posted quite a few memoir reviews because I was reading a lot of memoir to learn from them. What I didn’t do during most of that time was ever once think about forgiveness and my story.

Funny how life has a way of tracking its own path, separate from one’s mind.

You know what I won’t forgive? This hideous heat in Arizona. It’s disgusting, and it’s making my neurological system go haywire. Constant feelings of vertigo, seared sinuses, all kinds of symptoms. The minute I leave for another climate I’m better.

This week I was in southern California where the air was so tender. I’m working on tanka sequences for my Sunflower Tanka submissions, trying to write about the difference in weather, and all I could think of was tender air.

Speaking of Sunflower Tanka, Editor Colleen Chesebro wrote a wonderful review of Scrap. Thanks, Colleen!

5.0 out of 5 stars A Flash Fiction Memoir!

Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2026

Format: Kindle

This is a hybrid flash memoir called Scrap: Salvaging a Family, which explores the author’s journey through childhood into adulthood and how she reconciled her emotions with an aging or dying parent.

Written in chapters or flashes, the author shares her memories of growing up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, from the 1950s onward.

From her memories, we meet the Wolf, the author’s father. It doesn’t take long to realize that the author has experienced mental and physical abuse. At one point, the author questions why her mother let this abuse go on. The writing is raw and grabs you in the heart. There were several emotional moments in the book.

I love flash fiction, and this was my first time reading a flash-memoir. At times, I felt like I was going through a photo album featuring the memories of the author’s life. Secrets are revealed, and like a murder mystery, the clues are scattered for the reader to find.

This memoir helped me reflect on my own childhood. This was a memorable read!