Gingher s unabashed account of her literary education is chock-full of side-splitting observations. She invites us along on a raucous tour of soul-sucking jobs, marriage, and a teaching career, with accompanying disquisitions on blasphemous reading preferences, 60s pop culture, writing workshops, and other amusing detours and distractions on the way to publication. She also shares her keen insights into the role of a southern writer in American literary culture and the experience of writing as a mother. Lighthearted illustrations by novelist Daniel Wallace (author of Big Fish) depict this writer and her imagination growing up together....