My husband James and I are heading out tomorrow morning for Macondo, the writers' workshop founded by Sandra Cisneros. (Isn't she pretty in that picture on her website? And gotta love those boots, too.)
That's Sandra's house, the site of the original Macondo Workshop, below. Now the workshop has grown so big that it's housed at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio.
I'm excited to be co-teaching a workshop on memoir with the gifted and hilarious Lorraine López, author of the great story collection Soy la Avon Lady, the YA novel Call Me Henri, and the forthcoming novel The Gifted Gabaldon Sisters, which I can't wait to read. Our masters-level students are knockouts, too: editors, authors, professors, and award-winning journalists. It's going to be tons of fun.
Macondo is terrific: warm, nourishing, and focused on both writing and on social justice activism. It's a great place, and I can't wait to reconnect with writer Maribel Sosa, who first suggested Macondo to me. It's where I've met so many cool people, including writer and Chicana lit scholar Amelia Montes, who brought me here to Nebraska, and Pat Alderete, about whom I've blogged before (here and here).
James & I'll be driving down from Nebraska and stopping along the way in Oklahoma City and Austin, to see my brother Tony, his wife Cool Julie, and fearless baby Indigo. I'm so excited.
My
That's Sandra's house, the site of the original Macondo Workshop, below. Now the workshop has grown so big that it's housed at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio.
I'm excited to be co-teaching a workshop on memoir with the gifted and hilarious Lorraine López, author of the great story collection Soy la Avon Lady, the YA novel Call Me Henri, and the forthcoming novel The Gifted Gabaldon Sisters, which I can't wait to read. Our masters-level students are knockouts, too: editors, authors, professors, and award-winning journalists. It's going to be tons of fun.
Macondo is terrific: warm, nourishing, and focused on both writing and on social justice activism. It's a great place, and I can't wait to reconnect with writer Maribel Sosa, who first suggested Macondo to me. It's where I've met so many cool people, including writer and Chicana lit scholar Amelia Montes, who brought me here to Nebraska, and Pat Alderete, about whom I've blogged before (here and here).
James & I'll be driving down from Nebraska and stopping along the way in Oklahoma City and Austin, to see my brother Tony, his wife Cool Julie, and fearless baby Indigo. I'm so excited.
My
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I returned from Boston to learn that a lovely colleague and friend,
Nick Spencer, had passed away unexpectedly over the weekend. He will
be painfully missed.
Generous, kind, and smart, Nick was our graduate chair in the English department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His book is After Utopia, and he loved, studied, and taught twentieth-century American literature and critical theory.
I didn't know Nick well or for long, but when I arrived on campus for my initial interview, he welcomed (and interrogated!) me warmly, and that warmth continued throughout our interactions over the past year as we worked and socialized together. Nick was unfailingly thoughtful, interesting, and interested in other people.
We only talked briefly about our personal lives, but as I understand it, he came from a working-class background in Great Britain and worked his way through Oxford University and then, here in the U.S., through Emory. At UNL, he worked hard and enthusiastically on behalf of the department and the graduate students, and he worked hard and sincerely to help recruit minority students to our program. He was encouraging and appreciative. He connected with people. He was generous and gentle, a bright soul.
All of our hearts are a little bit broken today. To paraphrase Jane Austen, Where shall we see a better teacher, or a kinder colleague, or a truer friend? Nick, you will be so missed.
Generous, kind, and smart, Nick was our graduate chair in the English department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His book is After Utopia, and he loved, studied, and taught twentieth-century American literature and critical theory.
I didn't know Nick well or for long, but when I arrived on campus for my initial interview, he welcomed (and interrogated!) me warmly, and that warmth continued throughout our interactions over the past year as we worked and socialized together. Nick was unfailingly thoughtful, interesting, and interested in other people.
We only talked briefly about our personal lives, but as I understand it, he came from a working-class background in Great Britain and worked his way through Oxford University and then, here in the U.S., through Emory. At UNL, he worked hard and enthusiastically on behalf of the department and the graduate students, and he worked hard and sincerely to help recruit minority students to our program. He was encouraging and appreciative. He connected with people. He was generous and gentle, a bright soul.
All of our hearts are a little bit broken today. To paraphrase Jane Austen, Where shall we see a better teacher, or a kinder colleague, or a truer friend? Nick, you will be so missed.
I'm just back from a wonderful, whirlwind residency at Pine Manor College in
Boston. It was a joy to see the students and faculty, and I love the
readings at night in what used to be a grand old mansion and is now
devoted to one of the most diverse women's colleges in the country.
I got to see my lovely friend (I always think of her as an Arthurian Celtic supermodel in deep cover as a contemporary librarian and mom), the YA author Laura Williams McCaffrey, who writes the blog Here There Be Dragons. She was reading from her forthcoming new YA novel, which will include panels of an original graphic novel within its text. (The graphic novel is a book some of the characters are reading, and the two texts are interwoven throughout the novel. Cool!)
Mike Steinberg, founder of creative nonfiction journal Fourth Genre, read from his lovely, dogged memoir Still Pitching, which I'm now reading. Thumbs up. If anyone you know loves baseball, Still Pitching is a no-brainer gift, but even as a clueless non-sports-fan, I'm still really enjoying it. I'm also reading More Daring Escapes, by poet Steven Huff, who's new to the faculty and who seems like a complete gem. He also has a weekly radio show, "Fiction in Shorts," on NPR-affiliate stations. (I understand that you can stream the show, and as soon as I find out how, I'll put up a link.)
I also got to see my beloved Laure-Anne Bosselaar, poet and LaureAnnetini maker extraordinaire, who gave a dazzling reading in that throaty voice of hers. Her work makes me swoon (and I learned, to my deep un-surprise, that she was taught and mentored by one of my all-time favorite living poets, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, who makes me high every time I hear her read). Laure-Anne not only gave a knockout reading but also made us her famous drink each evening, when the faculty sat out on the porch of the big old house where we stayed and talked writing and life for hours. It was like writers' summer camp.
Helen Elaine Lee read a beautiful story about an aging couple that made me want to run home and hold my husband. YA novelist An Na read from her new book, The Fold, and she did all the voices--a hilarious performance. An adolescent Korean-American girl is offered the "gift" of plastic surgery, which will make her look more "American"--i.e., more white--by removing or reducing the epicanthal fold in her eyelids. The gorgeous cover is below.
It was a terrific trip, with lots of great reunions with old friends and discoveries of new, especially the three lovely new students in creative nonfiction, who had the kindness (and stamina!) to keep showing up for three-hour workshops each day. Kerry, Cindy, and Erin: Thanks! Great job! You made the week great. And my former student Faye did a knockout job introducing my reading. She was so moving that it was a seriously tough act to follow. But what an honor to be introduced so warmly. Thanks, Faye!
I got to see my lovely friend (I always think of her as an Arthurian Celtic supermodel in deep cover as a contemporary librarian and mom), the YA author Laura Williams McCaffrey, who writes the blog Here There Be Dragons. She was reading from her forthcoming new YA novel, which will include panels of an original graphic novel within its text. (The graphic novel is a book some of the characters are reading, and the two texts are interwoven throughout the novel. Cool!)
Mike Steinberg, founder of creative nonfiction journal Fourth Genre, read from his lovely, dogged memoir Still Pitching, which I'm now reading. Thumbs up. If anyone you know loves baseball, Still Pitching is a no-brainer gift, but even as a clueless non-sports-fan, I'm still really enjoying it. I'm also reading More Daring Escapes, by poet Steven Huff, who's new to the faculty and who seems like a complete gem. He also has a weekly radio show, "Fiction in Shorts," on NPR-affiliate stations. (I understand that you can stream the show, and as soon as I find out how, I'll put up a link.)
I also got to see my beloved Laure-Anne Bosselaar, poet and LaureAnnetini maker extraordinaire, who gave a dazzling reading in that throaty voice of hers. Her work makes me swoon (and I learned, to my deep un-surprise, that she was taught and mentored by one of my all-time favorite living poets, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, who makes me high every time I hear her read). Laure-Anne not only gave a knockout reading but also made us her famous drink each evening, when the faculty sat out on the porch of the big old house where we stayed and talked writing and life for hours. It was like writers' summer camp.
Helen Elaine Lee read a beautiful story about an aging couple that made me want to run home and hold my husband. YA novelist An Na read from her new book, The Fold, and she did all the voices--a hilarious performance. An adolescent Korean-American girl is offered the "gift" of plastic surgery, which will make her look more "American"--i.e., more white--by removing or reducing the epicanthal fold in her eyelids. The gorgeous cover is below.
It was a terrific trip, with lots of great reunions with old friends and discoveries of new, especially the three lovely new students in creative nonfiction, who had the kindness (and stamina!) to keep showing up for three-hour workshops each day. Kerry, Cindy, and Erin: Thanks! Great job! You made the week great. And my former student Faye did a knockout job introducing my reading. She was so moving that it was a seriously tough act to follow. But what an honor to be introduced so warmly. Thanks, Faye!
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I just read the opening whirlwind manifesto on the blog Streetheart: Ethics of Graffiti. The writing's good, and the anonymous author really throws down:
The new McDonalds in your city, the one running on factory farms that keep animals drugged in minuscule cages for their entire lives--were you asked if they could decorate your skyline with their golden arches? And Coca-Cola--the same Coca-Cola that has employed paramilitary groups to murder and torture Colombian workers to break up their union--did they ask you before taking up a patch of your commute bigger than your front yard with one of their advertisements?He/she's not pulling any punches; see for yourself. I'm curious to see what comes next.
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Despite therapy for it (from a psychotherapist/commercial pilot, no less, and I recommend him), I am still afflicted by a lingering anxiety about flying. At least I can get on a plane now, though, and magazines or light reading help to distract me at thirty thousand feet--an excellent reason, I think, to have bought a novel for my trip this Tuesday to teach in the Pine Manor
low-res MFA program.
I got Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's Playing With Boys, her 2004 follow-up to the chica lit breakout The Dirty Girls Social Club. (And $5.99 in hardcover at Walgreen's--you can't beat it.) I just finished the first chapter, and I'll share this little bit from the voice of one of her co-narrators, Alexis:
LNK-ORD-BOS, here I come.
I got Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's Playing With Boys, her 2004 follow-up to the chica lit breakout The Dirty Girls Social Club. (And $5.99 in hardcover at Walgreen's--you can't beat it.) I just finished the first chapter, and I'll share this little bit from the voice of one of her co-narrators, Alexis:
As I often had to tell reporters, America was changing, fast. Tortillas now outsold bagels. Famously, Americans now ate more salsa than ketchup. Wal-Mart carried plantains, yuca, and Goya products. Kraft in the U.S. had come out with something they called "mayonesa," a Mexican mayonnaise with lime. Why? Not because they were nice. Because they had to. The top FM stations in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago now broadcast in Spanish, and the U.S. had become the world's fourth-largest Spanish-speaking country. I was one of those lucky people who had long existed in a United States that spoke Spanish and English with matching facility. I swung with ease between the cheesy comedy of Sábado Gigante and the cheesy comedy of WB sitcoms. Some academic types, like my professors at Southern Methodist University, called people like me bicultural. But with Latinos poised to make up one in four Americans in the blink of a big brown eye, I preferred to call it American.And here's one more clip:
Dangit. He was married? I'd been hoping he wasn't, and was a little surprised, given the shameless way the boy had flirted with me, that he was married. Or at least I thought he'd been flirting. But that was the problem with me. I misread men all the time. I thought they wanted me when all they wanted was a sandwich.I laughed out loud. Playing with Boys will be a frothy counterbalance to the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, which is 2600+ pages of Bible-paper, dense with theory, and from which I'll be teaching while I'm Boston. It's very, very good, and my friend, the lovely Laurie Finke at Kenyon, co-edited--but, as you can imagine, it's way less fun. Give me drama, sex, quips, and cultural observations any day.
LNK-ORD-BOS, here I come.
