Barbara DeMarco-Barrett’s work has been published in Cutbank, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Ocotillo Review, Poets & Writers, Los Angeles Times, and USA Noir: Best of the Akashic noir series. Her dystopian typewriter story was just released in Paradigm Shifts (Cold Hard Press). She hosts Writers on Writing on KUCI-FM and her book, Pen on Fire (Harcourt) was a Los Angeles Times bestseller.
When the family next door moved out 15 years ago, they left behind a potted ficus. For weeks, the tree stood by the trash, begging to be watered. I dragged it to our courtyard and flooded it. It came back. Green buds became leaves. Twigs grew into branches. A year later, that plant-abandoning neighbor—a…
Summer vacation was almost here, but my photography professor, Jeff Weiss, said going on vacation was no reason to stop shooting pictures, that making pictures every day of your life was how real photographers lived. I wanted to be a real photographer. That summer after my freshman year of college, I stayed with Mom…
