This past week we hosted our first summer writing resident of 2018 at Northern Virginia's Woodlawn & Pope-Leighey House and Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture. Samantha was the first resident on site for the third season of our local residency program focused on writers with a commitment to using writing as a means to build community, to bring awareness to critical social and environmental issues, and as a creative force of empowerment. By way of this post, S

Summer is in full swing and the new season brings new content as we revive our Writer of the Month features. This past June was a bit warmer than expected (heavy understatement), but we put the heat aside to come together in the upper room of the Colony Club for June Moon. Our Writer of the Month is Donald Illich, whose poem “The Ad” finds the humor and tragedy in selectively searching for love. In this piece, Illich pinpoints the perfect balance between humor and melancholy,