Nerissa Nields

On Navigating in Disorienting Times

This is a sermon I delivered at the West Cummington Church on Lay Sunday Feb 16, 2025 Right before the election of 2016, my parents sold their lovely Virginia property,…

Ellen Meeropol and The Democracy of Multiple Points of View

I love multiple points of view. That clash of perspectives is something I care about. I think it opens up dialogue and invites the reader in, especially if there’s a real conflict in viewpoints. So, where do you fit in this chorus of voices, each with a different perspective? It feels like a democratic way of writing a novel, right?

Of Course I Prayed for Kamala

And of course I know that God does not Keep a tally of the prayer-votesLike an old man scratching lines on the edge of a deskWith a pen knife Well, if…

A Trickster the Size of a Grain of Rice

This essay first appeared in my newsletter, so if you read it there, don’t bother to read this again! Also, thank you all so much for your kind words and…

England, Wales, Old-Fashioned Vacation Log

This trip should be called “Nothing Went According to Plan.”

All the best of our meticulous plans were laid to waste by a combination of Acts of God/Climate Change/Strep and exhaustion. Mostly to the good, I think. After all, it had been my goal to be in the moment, to refrain from thinking about work (which I did!), and to have a great time with my family. Below you will see in BOLD all the things we were supposed to do that we did not do.

Live to Work, or Work to Live?

I’m with my husband, daughter and son—my family—for a ten-day trip to England and Wales. As I write these words, I feel a lump in my throat. Lila is 18, and in late August, she’s off to college. Johnny, almost 16, also has his own busy happy life. It’s very likely that the four of us will never again travel as a contained unit. Tom and I seem to have done what we were supposed to do in that department—raised independent kids who are engaged in their own interesting lives, form successful relationships, seek our advice, but don’t cling. More to the immediate point: they don’t need us the way they used to, and they don’t like being dragged around any more than you or I. 

Karl Wallinger and Our Midwest Tour

Music has a power that I don’t understand. I feel it sometimes when I experience the loyalty of our own following. But it took Karl’s death for me to remember its sway on me. Lately, I’ve avoided listening to music. Why? Music makes me feel. I can’t have it playing in the background. It’s distracting––not so much to my mind but to my heart. Listening to music, I become a sea creature, at the mercy of the waves. When I get fearful, I pull myself out of the water and sit on a rock, my knees to my chest, glowering at the fickle ocean.

Choreography: How to Save a Scene from Too Much Interiority

In her second novel Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie achieves an ideal to which I aspire: a smart, literary, highly readable love story full of cultural references, history, and vivid, textured characters––just the kind of novel I love to read and want to write. I was particularly impressed with Adichie’s technique in moving her characters around in space, as I have trouble with this. Choreography!!! I scold myself, scrawling the word in red ink in the margins of my drafts. More importantly, because of the way she weaves her character’s growing comprehension into the action of the scene using a skillful interplay of description, movement, dialogue, and interiority, we are riveted to both the inner world and the outer world of our protagonist, Olanna.

How to Think About Writing Prompts

I use several kinds of prompts. Most often, I use an entire poem. I see poems as secular prayer, a way of borrowing a bit of genius when I myself feel depleted. Reading a poem, or hearing it, puts me in a literary mind, a new state. I think of it as kindling; a little bit of torched wood tossed onto my log. Or the way, at a peace vigil, we hold candles and pass the flame to our neighbor.