I haven’t been very available on here in the past few months. A lot of my time has been taken up with my mother’s affairs (financial, medical, moving arrangements). Last week she moved into Memory Care, and it’s been a very difficult journey there–and her adjustment is, as she described, rough. My mom still knows everyone very well, can discuss family news, etc. but she doesn’t know which day of the week it is–or the date. She has hallucinations. It’s a horrible kind of limbo to be in since she understands so much.
Coincidentally, today Editor Barbara Harris Leonhard published a story I wrote before I knew this would happen to my mother. Missing His Birthday This story is dedicated to my mom.
On this double pub day, Editor Nolcha Fox has published three of my poems. Three Poems
The middle poem is another Little Red that I wrote after the publication of Our Wolves.
I’m grateful for my brother who moved my mom and visits her often. We’re a team. I do all the stuff that can be done long distance, and he does the in-person.
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“Deeply moving and unforgettable…” —Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works
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Luanne Castle’s new hybrid flash memoir, Scrap: Salvaging a Family (ELJ Editions 2026), is available for pre-order now.
Scrap. A piece cut from cloth. Something left over. Scraps from the table. A small child: a scrap of a girl. An altercation: the kids got in a scrap. Torn fabric, bits of cloth swept from the floor of a dress shop. Fabric remnants. What remains. |
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Scrap: Salvaging a Family explores the stain of childhood fear and anxiety on the adult spirit and the experience of reconciling with an aging or dying parent. A daughter has grown up in a household with an angry and abusive father. He keeps the secret of his own biological father’s identity from his daughter for decades. Can this family be salvaged?
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“Luanne Castle’s Scrap is a memoir in flash. . .a family story told in bursts of memory and image, puzzle pieces waiting to connect. . . an exploration of the long roots of generational trauma and identity erasure and a vivid look back at growing up female in mid-century America.”
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~ Kathryn Kulpa, author of A Map of Lost Places
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Luanne Castle’s story, “Garden Seasons,” was selected for Best Microfiction 2026. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, Grist, Verse Daily, and Lunch Ticket. She has published four award-winning poetry collections. Luanne has been a Fellow at the Center for Ideas and Society at the University of California, Riverside. She studied English and Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside (PhD); Western Michigan University (MFA); and Stanford University (Certificate). Luanne lives with her husband and four cats in Arizona along a wildlife corridor.
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