by Brian Bouldrey, Artist-in-Residence, Fall/Winter 2025

Over the decades, my writing and reading priorities have quietly shifted, and I think of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, in which a young Marco Polo casts fictions to aged Kublai Khan, who listens and believes, or doesn’t believe. I used to be chatty Marco Polo, and now I’m the Khan, who prefers to listen to listen to younger explorers of fictions in the class and on the page, some of which helps him in his own stories.  Lake Michigan also taught me about listening as well as seeing, and while I consider the necessities of a smart phone a very mixed bag of angels and demons, I’m grateful for having a camera with me at all times, especially when walking the dog along the shore every morning and evening.  The lake is a landscape, but sometimes I take portraits—don’t tell the professionals!