By Andrea Crowley-Hughes If 2016 was a wake-up call and the start of a marathon to protect the most vulnerable – and our civil liberties – from the Trump administration, 2018 felt like the part in a marathon where the runner’s exhausted and has to take frequent breaks to keep from running out of steam. That’s why this year, podcasts were my self-care. I work alone during the day, and instead of the cold companion of a news feed (where…
by: The Refresh Editors It’s that time of year when you might be looking for gifts for your literary friends or excellent material to read or watch in front of a real or imagined fireplace. Well, reader (or listener or viewer), our community of talented writers are here with suggestions for you. We asked the authors who participated in our Author to Author interview series to give us a recommendation for someone else’s book that they love and a recommendation…
By: The Refresh Editors If you’ve ever gotten one of our email newsletters or glimpsed our Twitter feed, you’ll have gathered that we at The Refresh are animal lovers. Lauren has written with love about her cat, Jelli, and Andrea’s starting the journey to fur-parent-dom with visits to animal shelters and cat cafes. We purr with delight whenever a pitch about pets hits our inbox. (By the way, if you’ve got one, sent it to rfrshmail (at) gmail (dot) com. Although this list is…
by Dina M. Di Maio In the 1860s, there was a civil war between the North and South. Of Italy. The famous General Giuseppe Garibaldi led his troops through Southern Italy to liberate the people. However, revisionist history is showing that they didn’t necessarily want to be liberated. Many felt their homeland was under attack, and they fought to remain part of what was known as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. However, they lost, and the Northwestern region of…
by Lauren Jonik Warm amber light filtered through the trees creating a dappled pattern of light and dark on the road. The surface of the street was no longer smooth—I could never remember a time when it was. My feet had memorized every nuance of these back country roads that I had been traversing since I was a small child. My dad frequently had taken my younger brother and me for strolls after dinner. He pointed out the shape of…