Cindy Bradley

Cindy Bradley obtained her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from Fresno State University, where she also served as an editorial assistant for The Normal School. She is currently a Nonfiction Assistant Editor at Pithead Chapel. Her essays have appeared in 45th Parallel, Front Porch Journal, Minerva Rising, San Joaquin Review, and Under the Sun, among others. Cindy writes personal essays, lyric essays, and memoirs that explore discontent, family, loss, memory, and nostalgia, and are often located in Southern California during the sixties and seventies. She is currently at work on an essay collection titled Death, Driveways and California Dreams, a memoir about growing up in Southern California during the 1970s and beyond, while ruminating on a memoir that will take place in Central California during the 1980s and early 90s. Cindy lives in Fresno, California.

Content by Cindy Bradley

Nonfiction,

From the Front Porch Archive: It Started With a Centerfold

BY Cindy Bradley

Here, in the center pages of Cosmo, was my mother’s celebrity crush, lying on a bear skin rug, a slender cigar dangling from his mouth, bad boy smile in full effect. In 1972 Burt was in his mid-thirties, and held a reputation for being a ladies’ man. At the time of the centerfold, Burt had been in a two-year relationship with singer/actress Dinah Shore, twenty years his senior, something unheard of in those days.