Catherine Smart Writes

I consider the foundational cake to be chocolate, with chocolate frosting.

Once upon a time, there was a land known far and wide for its outlet mall and its Ikea, and for excessively long traffic lights at...

Making pie crust involves a lot of aggressive pummeling…It’s very restorative. Like meditation that you can eat.

I’m sitting in a Starbucks in the city, hunched over a spreadsheet. The radio is playing 1940s swing. An elderly gentleman comes in and...

Eastham is a tiny town about 40 miles out on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts. I was lucky enough to go to high school there way back when,...

The world is full of designated grownups. You might be one because of your job, or your role in a family, or in a community. Designated...

This election meant a lot in so many ways. One of the coolest parts by far was that my son, Mr. Thing One, voted for the first time. The...

November 1st. The day when, in a non-plague year, people are waking up from the (perhaps excesses of a) night of celebrating the...

These weren’t the great wracking sobs from the night the accident happened, but the kind of crying where your heart constricts and your...

The world is on fire. Mostly figuratively, but also…actual fire. We talk to each other hatefully, hurtfully. People suffer – far and...

I’m about to take a trip. A trip on my own, for the first time in (counts fingers on both hands). I’m flying to Germany to visit family...

While assiduously not grading MacBeth exams, I found myself scrolling through the internet looking for, well, pug memes (if you must...

ACT I SCENE I. A basement place, a Thursday after school. Fluorescent lights flicker. Enter THREE TEENAGERS with bags of chips, sodas,...

Our youngest rugrat, Facetiming Dad before school to show him a Lego creation Twenty years ago today, I was cutting the cake at my...