Best news ever, for me, as a writer: I have a memoir-in-essays forthcoming (Spring 2023) with Shanti Arts Publishing. “Mischief & Metaphors: Essaying a Life” will include 26 essays. The best part? The book will also feature a dozen or so beautiful works of art by my mother, Rose Marie Cunniffe. My personal essays and her abstract paintings/collages/drawings were each created to stand on their own. We have had great fun finding ways to “pair” our respective (and retrospective) works of art. Rosie (a.k.a. “the Artist Formerly Known as Mom”) describes her work as “lyrical landscapes.”
I am so grateful to Funny Pearls for giving a home to my spelling bee nerd essay, “Forsooth and Forsythia,” along with a school photo from circa 1970.
Thanks to The RavensPerch for publishing “When the World Was a Grocery Store.” This essay is a blend of family history with the history of a Philadelphia neighborhood from the 1930s through the early 1960s. By happy coincidence, this piece about my mother’s family was published on her birthday.
Delighted that my micro-essay “Sheer Coincidence” was featured in Paragraph Planet on March 9, 2022. Some stories can be told in (exactly, including the title) 75 words.
I am so pleased that “Suburban Soundscape, April 2020” has been reprinted in the gorgeous Summer 2021 issue of Still Point Arts Quarterly. The theme for the issue is “The Art of Isolation: Finding a Silver Lining in the Pandemic Response.” A year after I wrote this essay, I take solace, and discover newfound joy, in walking around my neighborhood, as the masks come off and we begin to see each other’s faces again. First published by The RavensPerch.
So, this is exciting: My essay “Everything I Need to Know I Am Still Learning from Mary Richards” is now available as a podcast from PenDust Radio, a project of Rivercliff Books & Media. They were good enough to interview me about the story as well.
Honored to have my essay “Bogside Tutorial” published in Global City Review, in an issue with the theme of “Setting the Record Straight.” What began as a travel essay about an unforgettable morning in Northern Ireland now links with the Black Lives Matter movement. Bogside Tutorial
Most days I am grateful for public transit. Some days, a little less so. Thanks to Emrys Journal Online/Medium for giving a home to “Honor Among Commuters.” Honor Among Commuters
One of my favorite moments of 2019 is captured in my flash essay “Shall We Dance?”, published by The RavensPerch. Shall We Dance?
“The Granny, the Grocer and the Cobbler” has been published as a featured essay in bioStories. This one is a labor of love, and it went through several revisions before I realized what (who) it really was about. This essay is now archived in Volume 8, Issue 1, p. 164 of bioStories, from 2018: The Granny, the Grocer and the Cobbler
Eileen Cunniffe 