Alison Luterman
Alison Luterman lives, works, and coaches other writers from a hundred-year-old house in Oakland, California. For the past few years she’s been learning basic music theory and how to play piano and sing. She’s slowly making progress.
— From April 2024The Happiest Man On The Beach
He’s been so sad for so long now. Whenever we talk I have to confront his ocean of grief. I plant my feet sturdily in the ridiculous beauty of this world and offer him my hand, but he seems only to get sucked in deeper and deeper by the undertow. And the truth is, my own footing is none too secure.
April 1997This Thing About Goodness
“I’m sorry,” I say, finally, and she nods. Neither of us cries. My own two aborted pregnancies come to mind. It was never the right time to bring a child into this world; it was too much responsibility. But Linda has done it, and done it badly, done the unforgivable — damaged her own child. How could you? I think. But then, what mother doesn’t? The only other choices are do it perfectly, or don’t do it at all. And how can you make any choice when you’re not in control of your own life? How can you deal with this awesome female power to create new life among the garbage and broken glass of old mistakes?
January 1997What We Came For
They had to wait a long time for the harvest to begin. Gerard talked to Kate of nothing else for weeks. He imagined the two of them working their way across Canada, then down the West Coast of the U.S., picking fruit and living like gypsies.
October 1996Leaving The Reservation
Hannah Two Shoes was six feet tall and all bones except for the hard, high bulge of her pregnant stomach. Her thin, black hair was pulled back from her forehead in a skimpy braid, and she wore black-rimmed men’s glasses.
June 1995Love Class
All my teachers, from nursery school on, are alive inside me. Before long, their voice — someone’s voice, certainly not my own — is ringing out from my throat, authoritative, confident, as if I know what I’m doing.
December 1994
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