Contract Stories

      The Importance Of Being Ernest Hemingway It happened at a Maryland yacht club after Labor Day, when summer lingers. Philip Wright was adjusting lines aboard his forty-something-foot sailing ketch. Suddenly dark-haired Adrienne Racine called from the dock, “You’re publishing a novel?”   That Saturday was stormy, and this bold belle’s voice battled the wailing wind: “Alex Gooding told my uncle. He’s your agent, right?...

I remember the day the call came in, June 21, 2013, two days after my fourth anniversary and just over three years from my last full-time work day. My husband had left the day before and was in New Mexico driving an eighteen-wheeler so we could make ends meet. I was sitting in my living room wearing my pajamas, chatting with him on the phone and having coffee. An email came in telling me that a principal had a fifth-grade...