Naomi Shihab Nye, Age 22
Guggenheim Fellow, Lannan Fellow, and Witter Bynner Fellow Naomi Shihab Nye is author and editor of over thirty poetry, story, and essay collections, picture books, novels, and anthologies. This essay, never published, was written in her early twenties. Forty years later, at the age of sixty-two, she returned to the essay and rewrote the piece as a story. The essay is presented here; the story will appear next month in the spring issue of Nashville Review.
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— Naomi Shihab Nye, Age 22