Melanie Conroy-Goldman

In connection with the Red Hen Press authors’ reading at Politics and Prose bookstore, I made a batch of aphrodisiac cookies, using 3 (or 4) known love-enhancing ingredients. Now, an aphrodisiac is not like viagra. It’s not about pure libido. Instead, it’s mean to inspire love and passion in the particular person to whom the philter/potion/ingredients are fed. Now, you can use basically any chocolate chip cookie recipe for these, but sub in 1/4 cup […]

With gratitude to Kathryn Cowles for this review in Vol. 1 Brooklyn. Mellie is in Boston in 2010, one month clean, raising Juni, her damaged toddler daughter, solo, and doing her best to stay off the memory-scattering drug “cloud” when a familiar SUV she can’t place pulls into the driveway, flicks a familiar cigarette in a familiar way, then pulls away before her memory can catch up. There are so many things she can’t remember, […]

Literal Trash Can Fire: A How-To Like everyone in a somewhat northerly climate, I’m looking ahead to how to get through the winter. Like everyone everywhere, this year of corona, I’m desperately missing normal social interactions. Never have we so deeply understood the importance of physical connection, that mystery alchemy that happens when you share space with another human which does not happen when we meet via media.  In some places, people have a tradition […]

I’ve always had a particular affinity for teenagers. I’ve taught them for 20+ years as a college professor. When I was a young adult, my two half-siblings were in their teens. When my dear friend Deborah Tall was in the final stages of her life, I was honored to get to know her teen daughters who have turned, over many years, into friends. When I married, I acquired two beautiful girls on the cusp of […]