Victoria Dougherty

We Keep the Dead Alive by Putting Them to Words

I guess the great beyond is on my mind this week. The anniversary of 9/11 is certainly part of what’s stirring this up for me. I was pregnant with my first child when I watched the Twin Towers collapse, holding my belly the way pregnant women do, unconsciously, to protect their babes. I remember going through my husband’s rolodex some days or weeks later and coming upon a couple of business cards from colleagues whose offices were on the upper floors of one of the towers....

We Keep the Dead Alive by Putting Them to Words I guess the great beyond is on my mind this week. The anniversary of 9/11 is certainly part of what’s stirring this up for me. I was pregnant with my first child when I watched the Twin Towers coll…

My two happy places.

Distant Fireworks: On Four Homes and One Strain of Homesickness

AUG 16, 2026 snapped this on my morning walk yesterday I’m writing this from our family home in Virginia, where I’ve been visiting for the past couple of weeks. Misty, Civil War battlefield mornings, hummingbirds zigzagging like bees from one open-mouthed hollyhock to the next, the smell of honeysuckle, dew and wood smoke in a heavenly perfume. It wafts in as I open my front door....

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How about some hella atmospheric gothic vibes from Goth central (Prague)

You Don’t Look a Day Over 249!

I'm writing this from Prague, on a day that has always meant something different to me here than it ever has anywhere else. This is the city my family comes from, the streets my mother toddled on before the war took her childhood and the peace after it took her freedom. At only sixteen years-old, she was imprisoned here by the very people who called themselves her liberators....

You Don’t Look a Day Over 249! I’m writing this from Prague, on a day that has always meant something different to me here than it ever has anywhere else. This is the city my family comes from, the streets my mother toddle…

The Christian Witches of Appalachia

This Christian witch with her daughter in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We’ve all gone on ghost tours in cities like Charleston or New Orleans (or at least thought about going). We’ve read about cemetery ghosts and haunted mansions—maybe even experienced some of our own brushes with the woo-woo. It’s the bump in the night, the sudden onset of goose pimples, the whisper that comes from nowhere and from no-one you can see....

The Christian Witches of Appalachia This Christian witch with her daughter in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We’ve all gone on ghost tours in cities like Charleston or New Orleans (or at least thought about going). We’ve read about cemete…

Heaven, Whiskey, Wolf: A Few More Thoughts on Scent

My father is the guy on the left I couldn’t stop thinking about scent after I published my most recent essay. About my father, an earthy outdoorsy Czech who, after he retired, virtually stopped bathing—washing only in lakes and streams. It was funny, and it was also kind of awful, and unforgettable. About my babies, who arrived smelling of the remnants of heaven, like they still had one foot in there, and how I could never get enough of it....

Heaven, Whiskey, Wolf: A Few More Thoughts on Scent My father is the guy on the left I couldn’t stop thinking about scent after I published my most recent essay. About my father, an earthy outdoorsy Czech who, after he retired, virtually stopped bat…

A Woman with a Signature Scent

Two years in the Arabian Gulf finally turned me on to perfume. It started with my friend Zahra, who always smells wonderful. Hugging her is like being enveloped in a cloud of fresh roses, smoky whiskey, and something else I can’t quite name. I always hang on too long, just to breathe her in. So, when I opened my Christmas gift from my husband this year and found a bottle of Zahra’s perfume waiting inside the tissue paper, I was surprised twice over—first, that he’d noticed (though I shouldn’t have been; he’s always paying attention, which makes him a great gift-giver), and second, by how thrilled I was to receive it....

A Woman with a Signature Scent Two years in the Arabian Gulf finally turned me on to perfume. It started with my friend Zahra, who always smells wonderful. Hugging her is like being enveloped in a cloud of fresh roses, smoky whi…

The Beauty of Rotting Fruit: On Writing Body Horror

In first grade, at recess, I watched a girl in my class peel a big scab off her knee—actually reopening the wound—put it in her mouth, and chew. She didn’t know I was watching. When she looked up and caught me, she just kept chewing. Held my gaze. Didn’t stop. It was a little awkward, but neither one of us could tear our eyes away....

The Beauty of Rotting Fruit: On Writing Body Horror In first grade, at recess, I watched a girl in my class peel a big scab off her knee—actually reopening the wound—put it in her mouth, and chew. She didn’t know I was watching. When she looked up a…