Homing

Sherrie Flick is a senior lecturer in the MFA and food studies programs at Chatham University and a freelance writer and editor. She received a 2023 Creative Development Award from the Heinz Endowments and a Writing Pittsburgh fellowship from the Creative Nonfiction Foundation. One of the essays in Homing, “All in the Family: Waldo and His Ghosts,” was listed as notable in The Best American Essays 2023. Flick is the author of Thank Your Lucky Stars: Short Stories; Whiskey, Etc.: Short (Short) Stories; and Reconsidering Happiness: A Novel (Nebraska, 2009). She writes, works, and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“Homing is a book as generous and tender as it is fierce and funny. In these essays, Sherrie Flick writes about place with a clear-eyed precision, but more impressive still is the care with which she renders other people, from her coworkers at a woman-owned bakery in New Hampshire to her Pittsburgh neighbors, both irascible and kind. This book is a gift.”-Sarah Viren, author of To Name the Bigger Lie: A Memoir in Two Stories “In Homing Sherrie Flick turns a clear eye on the dying mill towns of western Pennsylvania that launched her into a nomadic seeking where she found her way, her people, and her love of writing-before returning, full-circle, to Pennsylvania. At times elegiac, at times sassy, frequently funny, and always well written. Flick’s essays transport us to the places where she finds her homes-bakeries and classrooms and gardens and dive bars where ‘body language and working-class etiquette let her Rustbelt slip show’-and invites us to think about the homes we’ve left and lost and found and loved.”-Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs “Flick is a great writer, often telling several stories at once, which means she does research, looks closely, and has a sure sense of time passing. And she’s eyes-wide-open honest with herself and us. Brilliant and analytical, grieving and powerful, these essays move with her soaring spirit. Read them!”-Hilda Raz, author of Letter from a Place I’ve Never Been: New and Collected Poems, 1986–2020

• AcknowledgmentsLaboring ThroughThe Worst Possible OffenseFaith in MovementBank ShotCalling Me OutTalk RightFinding HomeRebel, RebelAll in the Family: Waldo and His GhostsCultivationJade PlantCaretaker, Murderer, UndertakerInstinctsSource Acknowledgments