Robert Kumpel wrote for the Reader from 1993 through 2007. He lives with his family and teaches school in Georgia. Editor's picks of stories Kumpel wrote for the Reader: She let me know what she …

Busy Fingers Are Happy Fingers — Joe Deegan Mother Reader — Barbarella Build Your Writing Muscles — Ollie Let the Tape Recorder Do the Work — Matthew Lickona Faith — Abe Opincar Make Something Better …

"Writing is like a muscle, honey." Judith always called me honey, and her voice was warm like cinnamon tea. "The more you use the muscle, the stronger you get; the more you can write. Write …

I used to send Judith gifts around Mother's Day. Not on, but around -- because she wasn't my mother. But among her many titles -- mentor, boss, friend -- there was also this: the mysterious …

Our dealings from the beginning had a mother-daughter feel. Judith played the loving, nurturing mother; I, the eager-to-please daughter. It was curious, because we never met. But she headed her e-mails "Dear heart," "Cream puff," …

I knew Judith Moore only through her voice: a baritone with a slight Southern accent. And I knew her writing. The first time I spoke to Judith -- in early 1997 -- she called me …

Aside from my father, the only real, if informal, writing teacher I've ever had was Judith Moore. I met her in 1989, when I was working at Hunter's Books in La Jolla, one of the …

I could almost be tempted to resent Judith for getting my hopes up. When she signed my copy of her food memoir Never Eat Your Heart Out back in 1997, she inscribed it, "To Matt …

Judith was a ghost to me. She was present, but never corporeally. It strikes me as ironic that I never met her, considering that the body — her body — was one of her principal …

Judith Moore called me in the fall of 1995, when I was living temporarily in Laguna Beach and teaching at UC Irvine for a semester. Judith was familiar with my poems and deduced from some …

Judith Moore remains an enigma to me. When first asked to write for the Reader, I was instructed to run everything by Judith. Who was this lady? Why did she live in Berkeley if she …

A friend once told me, "Nothing ruins a bird but its beak." It wasn't until Judith told me that the biggest mistakes a writer can make are (a) talking about what he or she is …

Though she was my editor, I never met Judith. I knew her instead via calls and e-mail. When she phoned, there'd be that throaty alto, so sure, so self-possessed. I'd grab a pen, and she'd …

I was 26 and unemployed when a friend told me about the San Diego Reader and its editor, Judith Moore. I had published a few essays and stories in small literary journals while amassing a …

Though I never met Judith Moore, she was one of the most significant people who's ever entered my life. She believed in and nurtured my writing abilities even before I really did. She liked my …

Judith often referred to herself in the third person as "Mother Reader." An appropriate epithet, considering that after coming across my blog, she elicited a job offer from "Father Reader," thus giving birth to my …

"Execrable." And... "You sound like a fluttering dilettante." There were many more in a similar vein. I have all her editorial comments saved somewhere on the jittery hard drive of my old computer. The two …

Her first order to me, sent by fax, was to buy and read Joan Didion's Slouching towards Bethlehem. I was 23 and recently graduated from Thomas Aquinas College, a Catholic liberal arts school where the …

I never met Judith Moore. To me she was a voice over the phone: slangy, half-cynical, eager to talk about her dog, and passionate about writing. I first talked to her in the summer of …

Judith came out of nowhere. She called one evening and asked if I'd like to write something for the Reader. I'd read the Reader enough to feel flattered, since the writers I'd encountered in it …

Point-blank, Judith is the reason I'm here. When she found out that I, at 20 years old, had a love for writing, she wanted to see for herself. A piece I'd written for another magazine …

Judith and I shared an October 14 birthday. We met when a mutual friend threw a party for us both, 30 years ago. I was freshly graduated from a state teachers' college, where I had …

My long conversation with Judith Moore about writing began in 1980. We first met at a monthly campus ministry shindig for the faculty of Central Washington University, in Ellensburg, Washington. Judith was escaping the small-town …

"This is horrible, this stuff about your mother. Just awful, Susie." Not since my father had someone called me Susie. And not since my father had the endearment arrived with such menace. "It's what I …

Judith made this whole gig happen, I mean Tin Fork and the cheap-eats world she gave me. Actually, it wouldn't have happened without Carla either. She met Judith first and must have mentioned this layabout …