D. A. Hosek

Just another writer

  • Final Residency—Day 3

    We began the day with another fiction workshop, this time led by Jessica Anthony, who answered the question of how do we compete with all the multitudinous inputs of contemporary life? Her answer: Surrealism! We did a few surrealist exercises: First was the two minute conversation: Two  eople speak to each other for two minutes continuously…

  • Final residency—Days 1 and 2

    Day 1 In a near-replay of last January’s travel difficulties, I arrived at the hotel at 4a. Despite a mere three hours of sleep, I managed to make it to the opening session on time and even have a bit of prep time in the morning. After the initial orientation, we had a breakdown by…

  • “Le Pont des Arts”: The Story Behind the Story

    I wrote the first draft of this story while staying in the same apartment building in Paris where Katherine Mansfield wrote “Feuille d’Album.” The apartment was located on Ile de la Cité a short distance from Pont de l’Archevêché which has become a popular spot for tourists to attach locks declaring their eternal love as…

  • “Thy Neighbour’s Goods”: The story behind the story

    Some background on my story, “Thy Neighbour’s Goods” which appears in the Spring 2014 issue of The Southampton Review. The story began with a conversation with my wife about language. We were discussing the lack of distinction between singular and plural second person in English and I told her that actually the English “you” is…

  • Beautiful sentences

    She looks down at the playbill. She looks down. Terese Svoboda, Bohemian Girl.

  • Beautiful sentences

    My iniquity/punishment is greater than I can bear. In the Hebrew, her father said, that one word had two meanings and we chose one of them, which may make it harder for us to understand why the Lord would have pardoned Cain and protected him, and let him go on with his life, marry, have…

  • Beautiful sentences

    Once, five of the six younger Boughtons—Jack was elsewhere—played a joyless and determined game of fox and geese in the tender crop of alfalfa, the beautiful alfalfa, so green it was almost blue, so succulent that a mist stood on its tiny leaves even in the middle of the day. Marilynne Robinson, Home.

  • Beautiful sentences

    You have probably heard that we all became janitors, sitting in basements next to boilers reading cheap paperback books of Italian poetry, and never sweep a thing. Yet the world runs fine. Mary Ruefle, “Middle School”

  • Beautiful sentences

                   … I haven’t heard from him and wonder if in every contact there are apologies inherent for feelings hurt and falling out of touch— Michael Morse, “Void and Compensation (Facebook)”