Stephen Newton Stephen Newton

Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?

In 2009, our friend Woody Hartman asked me to put Maybelle Carter’s solo version of “Will you miss me when I’m gone?” on a CD for him in honor of his late father.

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Stephen Newton Stephen Newton

Christmas 2023

My friend Terry Wild met Jean in Lexington, Kentucky. For me, their story is a confirmation that Everything Is Already Perfect.

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Stephen Newton Stephen Newton

Father’s Day

In 1951, my mother Betty met Mack Newton Jr. A year later, they were married in Chestertown, Maryland by a justice of the peace. I was eight-years-old.

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Stephen Newton Stephen Newton

Letting Go: A Lifetime of Practice

“The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You do not wait for fulfillment, but brace yourself for failure.”

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Stephen Newton Stephen Newton

The Big Easy

I met the author James Conaway in 1964. At the time I was taking a night class in creative writing at San Francisco State College and working days as a shipping and receiving clerk.

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Stephen Newton Stephen Newton

I Feel Your Pain, Philip Wylie

In the summer of 1970, I wrote a letter to Philip Wylie, the author of Generation of Vipers. I first read the book in college, nearly two decades after it was published in 1942, but its vitriol informed my own growing sense of rebellion against the way things were.

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Stephen Newton Stephen Newton

The Masked Man Exhibition

On March 10, Create Appalachia will open a new exhibit, The Masked Man, featuring the photography of Glade Spring Virginia photographer Mike Miller. The show will be free and open to the public.

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Stephen Newton Stephen Newton

Where There Is Smoke…

Photographer Mike Miller continues exploring his masked psyche with a new series of photographs

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Stephen Newton Stephen Newton

What We Have In Common

“I can’t begin to write about homelessness when I have never been homeless. What I can write about are the emotions and the feelings we have in common.”

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Stephen Newton Stephen Newton

How Does It Feel?

I feel desperate. What do I do now? I don’t know how to do this. I was barely capable of living my previous life with its comforting routines and other ways of assuring me that I was ok.

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Stephen Newton Stephen Newton

Twenty-Eight Years and Counting

Seed of Doubt, my novel in progress, was inspired by a true crime that I researched for more than a year with the intention of writing an article for a Philadelphia Inquirer series.

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Stephen Newton Stephen Newton

Knocking On Wood

Lately, I’ve been knocking on wood a lot whenever I get careless and talk about the future—and not the far future. I’m worried about jinxing the very next second after this one.

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Stephen Newton Stephen Newton

Jack and Me

My unexpected encounters with the late actor Jack Palance

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Stephen Newton Stephen Newton

The Singularity Has Arrived

One definition of ‘SMART’ according to the Merriam Webster dictionary is: having or showing a high degree of mental ability. If that’s true, then my iPhone is smarter than I am.

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