Recently in on the move Category
The Idea of Order at Key West
Traveller's palms (a few blocks from Casa Marina)
Seven stunning, sun-bleached days with my aunt in Key West--visiting graves, memorial sites, and locations that were important for my Dad particularly and for the family generally--were more rewarding, more beautiful, more humorous, more informative, and more emotionally exhausting than I'd reckoned on.
The pier my father leaped from as a boy, which has now been partly washed away by hurricanes, is also the pier where my aunt scattered his ashes one evening, alone, after he committed suicide in 2002. The pier stretches into the water directly next to Casa Marina, the grand resort where Wallace Stevens (on whose difficult, gorgeous poetry I wrote a masters thesis) spent his winters from 1922 until the military commandeered it in World War II.
I floated there in the warm waves in the Straits of Florida where long ago my father took my brother and me to swim when we were children. My gaze and thoughts pinged back and forth: pier, resort. Childhood, death. Poetry, privilege.
There were other things I did. Lovely things. Fried sweet platanos at El Siboney, delicious bollitos at 5 Brothers, sandals for Emily and Alexis from Kino, a guayabera for the Handsome Husband from a tiny little shop on Fleming (apparently the only place on the island that carries them; tourists want t-shirts), banana body lotion and white ginger perfume from Key West Aloe, which has been there since I was a kid: the fragrances brought back all kinds of crazy memories of my mother and stepmother. Cool galleries like the Blue Turtle, Cuba! Cuba!, and the Haitian Art Co. Touring all the sites where my father, as a local, never thought to take us: the Hemingway House (wow!), the lighthouse, Truman's Little White House, and so on. Touristy things that were interesting and fun.
We drove to the salt ponds, where my aunt herself had never been, after decades living on the island: two huge green iguanas scuttling fast into the mangroves, a rusting old Cubana airlines prop jet behind a high fence, and nary a tourist in sight. At night, my aunt and I'd watch mysteries that she'd Netflixed, and then I'd go to bed and read a history of the Keys and a book on Santeria I'd purchased at Key West Island Books.
I saw the big pink building where my father was born on the second floor and where my grandfather ran the print shop down below, the Red Barn Theatre where my father acted in plays, my grandparents' house/print shop (now a little inn) where I'd visited each year as a child. My aunt patiently guided me around and answered all my questions, and we called my other aunt for a conference call on speakerphone when she didn't know the answers. The week was rich, full, hectic.
But on the plane ride home, I felt uneasy and depressed. I'd come seeking something.
But closure, resolution, peace with the past? All still felt elusive. There'd been no crescendo, no epiphany, no sense of relief.
It's not that I was expecting instant gratification. I'd waited nine years since my father's death. I'd put in the walking miles, the research, the effort. But I expected something.
As we jolted through turbulence, I began to work on a little essay. I think it will be about the futility and yet necessity and inevitability (if we're lucky enough to have the means) of "roots trips," those hopeful, fraught journeys back to places of origin. Line by line, it started to take shape on the page.
And as I wrote, gentle reader--as I began to craft vignettes that rhymed with one another, to quote things my aunt had said, to weave in lines from Wallace Stevens, to make it all shapely and true--everything slowly began to coalesce. To mean.
The order of things--such as it is and can be--comes, for me, not with the raw experience, but with writing it down.
Categories:
Key West Bound!
Thanks for sticking with me, gentle readers! I've been on the road a lot this summer and working hard on Nola Novel #2--which I'm happy to say I've now drafted! Hurray! A complete first draft, finished before the back-to-school flurry begins. Whew!
I've also been working on editing the great essays in FAMILY TROUBLE, which is just such a terrific project. I love it. I've learned so much from the contributors. Their insights about writing memoir about family members are dynamite. So wise. I think this book of essays is going to be really useful to writers, CW teachers, and aspiring writers.
I head out soon to visit my aunt in Key West, my last remaining relative on the island. (I've written about her in the forthcoming ISLAND OF BONES.) We get to spend a week together, and my cousin, who's four days older than I am, is taking some time off to come down from Miami, too! Castro family party!
In addition to mojitos, the Kino Sandal Factory (a family tradition), and the beach, my aunt is going to take me to see family graves and other sites of importance, because she's leaving Key West this fall for retirement, and she wants to make sure as many of the grandkids as possible know our history before she leaves. Since it's become such a resort destination, Cayo Hueso (island of bones) is just too damn expensive for ordinary working people to afford to live there. My family, which has been there since the nineteenth century, will be there no more. Qué lastima.
I'm looking forward to seeing my sweet aunt, a long-time librarian at Key West High School, and my cousin, who works to ensure that female horticultural laborers in Latin America have decent workers' rights and protections. They both rock. Cool single Castro women. We're going to say coño and make flan and laugh a lot.
I haven't been to Key West since I was seventeen and spent a week with my grandmother, who's gone now, so it's kind of emotional for me. I remember taking the Greyhound there from San Antonio. It wasn't exactly the most fun spring break for a college freshman--Nanny wouldn't let me go to the beach; she was sure I'd get "corrupted by the hippies"--but it was love, you know? Family. And this will be, too.
I've also been working on editing the great essays in FAMILY TROUBLE, which is just such a terrific project. I love it. I've learned so much from the contributors. Their insights about writing memoir about family members are dynamite. So wise. I think this book of essays is going to be really useful to writers, CW teachers, and aspiring writers.
I head out soon to visit my aunt in Key West, my last remaining relative on the island. (I've written about her in the forthcoming ISLAND OF BONES.) We get to spend a week together, and my cousin, who's four days older than I am, is taking some time off to come down from Miami, too! Castro family party!
In addition to mojitos, the Kino Sandal Factory (a family tradition), and the beach, my aunt is going to take me to see family graves and other sites of importance, because she's leaving Key West this fall for retirement, and she wants to make sure as many of the grandkids as possible know our history before she leaves. Since it's become such a resort destination, Cayo Hueso (island of bones) is just too damn expensive for ordinary working people to afford to live there. My family, which has been there since the nineteenth century, will be there no more. Qué lastima.
I'm looking forward to seeing my sweet aunt, a long-time librarian at Key West High School, and my cousin, who works to ensure that female horticultural laborers in Latin America have decent workers' rights and protections. They both rock. Cool single Castro women. We're going to say coño and make flan and laugh a lot.
I haven't been to Key West since I was seventeen and spent a week with my grandmother, who's gone now, so it's kind of emotional for me. I remember taking the Greyhound there from San Antonio. It wasn't exactly the most fun spring break for a college freshman--Nanny wouldn't let me go to the beach; she was sure I'd get "corrupted by the hippies"--but it was love, you know? Family. And this will be, too.
Categories:
Strength, Service, Vision
"Your Body, Your Voice: Human Rights Now" went beautifully! I have long been interested in (okay: obsessed with) structural similarities among violence at the macro level (the political space of the nation-state), the mid-level (the realm of the street: of crime, law enforcement, and prisons), and the micro level (the domestic space of the family home). How do the dynamics of these three levels of violence differ, and where do they coincide?
Being invited to give a lecture at Indiana State University's tenth annual Human Rights Day conference was a great opportunity to pull my thoughts together into a coherent argument about how illegitimate regimes use traumatizing violence upon the bodies of resisters to shatter the self, thus silencing opposition--and how narrative can function to heal trauma and resist oppression. It was a great chance to share the insights of these wonderful books, which have long been favorites, and others, like Ari Kohen's In Defense of Human Rights: A Non-Religious Grounding in a Pluralistic World, with a big, interested audience.
The talk got a huge turnout of students, staff, faculty, and community folks--it was SRO, w/people lined up in the hallway to hear. Awesome. Afterwards, a lot of people came up to pick up copies of the little "For Further Reading" handout I'd prepared. Great!
I was nervous, naturalmente, when I looked out at the crowd, because you know public speaking makes me shake, but I kept thinking of that great Audre Lorde line that always motivates me:
And she doesn't say, When I dare to use my strength in the service of my ego, or my bank account. No. When I use it in the service of my vision. Then fear ceases to matter.
Hats off to ISU for sponsoring such an important conference every year! Human rights discourse itself is a fragile narrative, one to which we need to give as much attention as possible as often as possible.
I loved getting to read my creative work, too, to a lively and generous audience, and to visit classes in social work and counseling psychology.
A highlight of the visit was meeting novelist Aaron Morales, who's on the faculty there. I'm reading his book Drowning Tucson now, and I like this interview that Rigoberto González did with him last summer.
Many thanks to my host Dr. Keith Byerman and everyone else who worked so hard to bring me to ISU. You spoiled me rotten, and I had an awesome time. Human rights now! ¡Órale!
Being invited to give a lecture at Indiana State University's tenth annual Human Rights Day conference was a great opportunity to pull my thoughts together into a coherent argument about how illegitimate regimes use traumatizing violence upon the bodies of resisters to shatter the self, thus silencing opposition--and how narrative can function to heal trauma and resist oppression. It was a great chance to share the insights of these wonderful books, which have long been favorites, and others, like Ari Kohen's In Defense of Human Rights: A Non-Religious Grounding in a Pluralistic World, with a big, interested audience.
The talk got a huge turnout of students, staff, faculty, and community folks--it was SRO, w/people lined up in the hallway to hear. Awesome. Afterwards, a lot of people came up to pick up copies of the little "For Further Reading" handout I'd prepared. Great!
I was nervous, naturalmente, when I looked out at the crowd, because you know public speaking makes me shake, but I kept thinking of that great Audre Lorde line that always motivates me:
I love that. Notice: she doesn't say, I become less and less afraid. No. You're still afraid. It just becomes less and less significant that you are. You're afraid, but you cease to care about that. You care about others. You care about justice."When I dare to be powerful--to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."
And she doesn't say, When I dare to use my strength in the service of my ego, or my bank account. No. When I use it in the service of my vision. Then fear ceases to matter.
Hats off to ISU for sponsoring such an important conference every year! Human rights discourse itself is a fragile narrative, one to which we need to give as much attention as possible as often as possible.
I loved getting to read my creative work, too, to a lively and generous audience, and to visit classes in social work and counseling psychology.
A highlight of the visit was meeting novelist Aaron Morales, who's on the faculty there. I'm reading his book Drowning Tucson now, and I like this interview that Rigoberto González did with him last summer.
Many thanks to my host Dr. Keith Byerman and everyone else who worked so hard to bring me to ISU. You spoiled me rotten, and I had an awesome time. Human rights now! ¡Órale!
Categories:
After the Day's Work
Like many of you, I've been following the news about Japan with pain, sorrow, and concern. Such misery and grief--and anxiety, as we continue to watch and wait. I'm glad that other countries are using this moment as a chance to question the wisdom of building new nuclear facilities, but I'm not sure glad is even the word to use. Peace on Japan.
Here's some much more local news about friends, colleagues, and happenings.
First, a shout-out to my friend and colleague Rhonda Garelick, whose recent op-ed piece in the New York Times leaps from Galliano's recent bout of verbal cruelty and anti-Semitism to link fashion's and fascism's "cult of physical perfection." Bravo, and pass the chips.
Next, though it might seem ironic on the heels of Rhonda's piece, file this little splat of fashion limelight under Reasons To Be Terrance. All this, and writes dazzlingly, too--and he's one of the nicest colleagues I've ever had (at Pine Manor). We should all be so blessed with gifts and grace.
Me, I'm finishing up my manuscript of personal essays, ISLAND OF BONES, for delivery to the University of Nebraska Press on April first--very exciting, nerve-wracking, panic-inducing, etc.--while packing for a week at the University of Iowa, where I'll be spending my spring break teaching a memoir workshop to graduate students in the creative nonfiction program.
And I get to read at Prairie Lights, people! Prairie Lights is a sort of heaven, an icon, a wee paradise for book-lovers traversing the Midwest. James and I have spent many happy hours there on various trips, and now it'll be a thrill to get to read there. I may not return to campus with quite the tan that my students will be sporting after spring break, but I'll get to see friends Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Daisy Hernández, and who knows who else?
I'm also receiving the final batch of essays for FAMILY TROUBLE: MEMOIRISTS ON THE HAZARDS AND REWARDS OF REVEALING FAMILY, an editing project that some of you saw flopping about in its inchoate beginnings back at AWP in 2008. Some great pieces from Dinty Moore and Faith Adiele recently arrived, with just a few more left to come. It's going to be an amazing book--a book I wish I'd had as a graduate student, and a book I'll definitely teach with.
My research assistant Sindu, a meticulous copyeditor and insightful reader, is helping me tremendously on both of these collections. Thank you, Sindu! Thank you, UNL!
And my new editor for THE DESIRE PROJECTS sent me a copy of Denise Mina's Field of Blood, which is why I'm now using wee as a modifier about everything. (Read it and you'll see; it's addictive. Wee bastard. Wee lassie. And what does bint mean?)
Nothing like having a young, poor, ambitious Glaswegian girl who's worried about her fat tummy all the time as the protagonist of a novel. She's a "copyboy" (ah, the casual sexism of the 1980s) who wants to be a journalist, and the guy who asks, "Who's that fat lassie?" when he first sees her is the one she ends up in bed with (after quitting her solid, dull fiancé). Very happily, I might add.
I have to say I loved it. Very well written crime fiction, if you're in the mood for that.
And wasn't it nice of my editor to send it?
Lastly, my friend Barbara DiBernard has just been awarded the Louise Pound-George Howard Distinguished Career Award here at UNL for a lifetime of stellar teaching, research, public service, and administration. She started here as a James Joyce scholar but moved her teaching and research into LGBT and disability issues and is beloved by generations of grateful students and colleagues; my friend Kim (who owns Indigo Bridge Books, which I'm told I rattle on about incessantly) still vividly remembers the class she took from Barbara long ago. I visited Barbara's women's lit class this morning to talk with her students about The Truth Book, which they'd been reading, and had a wonderful time.
Barbara, you'll be so missed when you retire this spring.
Here's some much more local news about friends, colleagues, and happenings.
First, a shout-out to my friend and colleague Rhonda Garelick, whose recent op-ed piece in the New York Times leaps from Galliano's recent bout of verbal cruelty and anti-Semitism to link fashion's and fascism's "cult of physical perfection." Bravo, and pass the chips.
Next, though it might seem ironic on the heels of Rhonda's piece, file this little splat of fashion limelight under Reasons To Be Terrance. All this, and writes dazzlingly, too--and he's one of the nicest colleagues I've ever had (at Pine Manor). We should all be so blessed with gifts and grace.
Me, I'm finishing up my manuscript of personal essays, ISLAND OF BONES, for delivery to the University of Nebraska Press on April first--very exciting, nerve-wracking, panic-inducing, etc.--while packing for a week at the University of Iowa, where I'll be spending my spring break teaching a memoir workshop to graduate students in the creative nonfiction program.
And I get to read at Prairie Lights, people! Prairie Lights is a sort of heaven, an icon, a wee paradise for book-lovers traversing the Midwest. James and I have spent many happy hours there on various trips, and now it'll be a thrill to get to read there. I may not return to campus with quite the tan that my students will be sporting after spring break, but I'll get to see friends Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Daisy Hernández, and who knows who else?
I'm also receiving the final batch of essays for FAMILY TROUBLE: MEMOIRISTS ON THE HAZARDS AND REWARDS OF REVEALING FAMILY, an editing project that some of you saw flopping about in its inchoate beginnings back at AWP in 2008. Some great pieces from Dinty Moore and Faith Adiele recently arrived, with just a few more left to come. It's going to be an amazing book--a book I wish I'd had as a graduate student, and a book I'll definitely teach with.
My research assistant Sindu, a meticulous copyeditor and insightful reader, is helping me tremendously on both of these collections. Thank you, Sindu! Thank you, UNL!
And my new editor for THE DESIRE PROJECTS sent me a copy of Denise Mina's Field of Blood, which is why I'm now using wee as a modifier about everything. (Read it and you'll see; it's addictive. Wee bastard. Wee lassie. And what does bint mean?) Nothing like having a young, poor, ambitious Glaswegian girl who's worried about her fat tummy all the time as the protagonist of a novel. She's a "copyboy" (ah, the casual sexism of the 1980s) who wants to be a journalist, and the guy who asks, "Who's that fat lassie?" when he first sees her is the one she ends up in bed with (after quitting her solid, dull fiancé). Very happily, I might add.
I have to say I loved it. Very well written crime fiction, if you're in the mood for that.
And wasn't it nice of my editor to send it?
Lastly, my friend Barbara DiBernard has just been awarded the Louise Pound-George Howard Distinguished Career Award here at UNL for a lifetime of stellar teaching, research, public service, and administration. She started here as a James Joyce scholar but moved her teaching and research into LGBT and disability issues and is beloved by generations of grateful students and colleagues; my friend Kim (who owns Indigo Bridge Books, which I'm told I rattle on about incessantly) still vividly remembers the class she took from Barbara long ago. I visited Barbara's women's lit class this morning to talk with her students about The Truth Book, which they'd been reading, and had a wonderful time.
Barbara, you'll be so missed when you retire this spring.
Categories:
Psyched!!!
AWP is almost here! It's like a non-stop party for writers, and I'm completely geeked out with excitement, like I get every time. Parties and cocktails and old friends and fascinating panels--and a big fresh fluffy hotel bed to crash into every night. (Aaahhh. I'm just old enough to love that moment for itself.)
This year, I'm really proud to be chairing a panel that's been forever in the making: "Memoir and Latinidad," about the intersections between the genre of memoir and Latin@ issues. If you'll be there, please come! If you know a memoirist, or a Latin@, or a Latin@ memoirist who'll be there--or someone who teaches memoir and wants to amp up his or her knowledge about how ethnicity inflects it--please send them to
Thurgood Marshall East
10:30-11:45 a.m. on Thursday, February 3.
Here are my crazily major panelists (it's going to take me my whole 12 minutes just to read out their awards):
Rigoberto González, lookin' mighty fine . . .
Gustavo Pérez Firmat, also lookin' fine--and also shockingly friendly and approachable for someone who's todo brilliant and prolific . . .
Luis J. Rodriguez, lookin' all rugged and thoughtful . . .
. . . and Stephanie Elizondo Griest, lookin' all smart and beautiful.
These are all awesome, awesome people, and--since I've gotten sneak previews of their papers--I'm dead serious when I tell you that they have some really fascinating and surprising things to say. Seriously. If you teach and/or write memoir, you're gonna wanna know this stuff.
I'm also happy to be reading a brand-new essay on a panel hosted by Lorraine López called Reverent Irreverence: Women Writing Spirituality. One of my favorite writers--and one of the funniest I know, too--will be on the panel, too: Heather Sellers. I can't wait to hear everyone read.
As a teaser, here's the first line of mine:
Believe me: strange things. And I ain't just a-kiddin', as we used to say in West Virginia.
So that panel is in Thurgood Marshall West, on Friday the 4th at noon.
About both of these panels, I'm ridiculously excited. I have to confide, though: I'm also excited about getting to debut my pretty new coat. (If you happen to see me with it on--and that will be easily accomplished, since I may not take it off, at all, ever--please do spare a moment to drink it in.)
Hope to see you there! If you're a reader of the blog but we haven't met yet, do come up and introduce yourself!
This year, I'm really proud to be chairing a panel that's been forever in the making: "Memoir and Latinidad," about the intersections between the genre of memoir and Latin@ issues. If you'll be there, please come! If you know a memoirist, or a Latin@, or a Latin@ memoirist who'll be there--or someone who teaches memoir and wants to amp up his or her knowledge about how ethnicity inflects it--please send them to
Thurgood Marshall East
10:30-11:45 a.m. on Thursday, February 3.
Here are my crazily major panelists (it's going to take me my whole 12 minutes just to read out their awards):
Rigoberto González, lookin' mighty fine . . .Gustavo Pérez Firmat, also lookin' fine--and also shockingly friendly and approachable for someone who's todo brilliant and prolific . . .
Luis J. Rodriguez, lookin' all rugged and thoughtful . . .. . . and Stephanie Elizondo Griest, lookin' all smart and beautiful.
These are all awesome, awesome people, and--since I've gotten sneak previews of their papers--I'm dead serious when I tell you that they have some really fascinating and surprising things to say. Seriously. If you teach and/or write memoir, you're gonna wanna know this stuff.
I'm also happy to be reading a brand-new essay on a panel hosted by Lorraine López called Reverent Irreverence: Women Writing Spirituality. One of my favorite writers--and one of the funniest I know, too--will be on the panel, too: Heather Sellers. I can't wait to hear everyone read.
As a teaser, here's the first line of mine:
Mired in the culty weirdness of my upbringing, I imagined strange things as a child.
Believe me: strange things. And I ain't just a-kiddin', as we used to say in West Virginia.
So that panel is in Thurgood Marshall West, on Friday the 4th at noon.
About both of these panels, I'm ridiculously excited. I have to confide, though: I'm also excited about getting to debut my pretty new coat. (If you happen to see me with it on--and that will be easily accomplished, since I may not take it off, at all, ever--please do spare a moment to drink it in.)
Hope to see you there! If you're a reader of the blog but we haven't met yet, do come up and introduce yourself!
Categories:
Lots of Good Things
Lovely, patient readers:
NonfictioNow was great! Highlights for me were a great process talk by Alison Bechdel, an exploration and enactment of collage by John Edgar Wideman, and a fantastic panel on women's travel writing organized by Stephanie Elizondo Griest and featuring Mary Morris, Michele Morano, and Faith Adiele, which was extremely well organized, thoughtfully prepared, thought-provoking, and practically helpful--not what every panel achieves! EJ Levy was great on Hazlitt on the pleasures of hating. And, of course, I got to hang out with the huge-hearted, super-smart, wicked-tongued Ralph Savarese, who makes me laugh so hard I cry.
But did I hit the ground running when I got back? Did I have meetings out the wazoo, a reading to attend, a paper to deliver? Am I failing to form coherent thoughts?
Yes, yes, and yes, but luckily, I've been collecting these interesting tidbits for you. So--until I get a full night's sleep--here you are:
Laugh out loud at this Dinty Moore animated original, What Is Creative About Creative Nonfiction?
In the same vein: Why Teachers Drink. (Thanks, Kwakiutl!)
More seriously, Water~Stone Review has inaugurated the Judith Kitchen Prize in Creative Nonfiction for a single piece of creative nonfiction (maximum word count 8,000 words). It costs 15 bucks to enter, and the deadline is December 1st. Go here for details.
Academe, the journal of the AAUP, is seeking an editor for its book review section, which runs four times a year, and here's the lowdown:
That's it for now. More soon.
NonfictioNow was great! Highlights for me were a great process talk by Alison Bechdel, an exploration and enactment of collage by John Edgar Wideman, and a fantastic panel on women's travel writing organized by Stephanie Elizondo Griest and featuring Mary Morris, Michele Morano, and Faith Adiele, which was extremely well organized, thoughtfully prepared, thought-provoking, and practically helpful--not what every panel achieves! EJ Levy was great on Hazlitt on the pleasures of hating. And, of course, I got to hang out with the huge-hearted, super-smart, wicked-tongued Ralph Savarese, who makes me laugh so hard I cry.
But did I hit the ground running when I got back? Did I have meetings out the wazoo, a reading to attend, a paper to deliver? Am I failing to form coherent thoughts?
Yes, yes, and yes, but luckily, I've been collecting these interesting tidbits for you. So--until I get a full night's sleep--here you are:
Laugh out loud at this Dinty Moore animated original, What Is Creative About Creative Nonfiction?
In the same vein: Why Teachers Drink. (Thanks, Kwakiutl!)
More seriously, Water~Stone Review has inaugurated the Judith Kitchen Prize in Creative Nonfiction for a single piece of creative nonfiction (maximum word count 8,000 words). It costs 15 bucks to enter, and the deadline is December 1st. Go here for details.
Academe, the journal of the AAUP, is seeking an editor for its book review section, which runs four times a year, and here's the lowdown:
Got views about higher ed? Throw your hat in the ring! Shape the conversation. Why not?It is an unpaid position with minor expenses covered--and a great opportunity to affect the conversation about critical issues facing higher education. You need not be a tenure-track or tenured faculty member to be considered. Send a paragraph or two about your interest and qualifications to Michael Ferguson, managing editor of Academe, at mferguson@aaup.org
That's it for now. More soon.
Categories:
Gone Voting
Despite the Lincoln Journal-Star's claim that Nebraska's races are not "hotly contested," I was at the polling booths this morning all hot and contestatory, and I hope you had a good time wherever you voted, too.
Update on my literary noir novel: Good news! THE DESIRE PROJECTS is in play at several major presses, with editors loving it and getting back-up in-house reads. Discretion forbids me to say more, but I'd love to.
Lovely Agent Mitchell explains that "these days you need extensive support in-house before you [the editor] can buy something," so that's the process that's going on now. My fingers are so crossed they're cramping, people.
I'm just about packed for NonfictioNow, and I look forward to seeing some of the readers of this blog there in Iowa City soon.
Creative nonfiction writers might welcome this heads-up from writer Faye Rapoport DesPres:
Writers of creative nonfiction, that pesky fourth genre, might also be interested in this cool blog, Essay Daily. The post on Prairie Schooner's box-defying editorial preferences intrigued me, seeing as the liberally quoted managing editor James Engelhardt is a colleague and friend--and, from what I've read in the Schooner's pages, he's absolutely right.
And speaking of Prairie Schooner, the search for a new editor goes on. This is, of course, an impossible task, as the committee's trying to replace the irreplaceable (sob) Hilda Raz.
Cool things coming up on the blog here:
Offline 'til next week--
Update on my literary noir novel: Good news! THE DESIRE PROJECTS is in play at several major presses, with editors loving it and getting back-up in-house reads. Discretion forbids me to say more, but I'd love to.
Lovely Agent Mitchell explains that "these days you need extensive support in-house before you [the editor] can buy something," so that's the process that's going on now. My fingers are so crossed they're cramping, people.
I'm just about packed for NonfictioNow, and I look forward to seeing some of the readers of this blog there in Iowa City soon.
Creative nonfiction writers might welcome this heads-up from writer Faye Rapoport DesPres:
Prime Number Magazine . . . is "actively seeking" nonfiction for their next issue, which will be online in January. . . . They've published some impressive writers and are attached to a small press.
Info is at http://www.primenumbermagazine.com/
Writers of creative nonfiction, that pesky fourth genre, might also be interested in this cool blog, Essay Daily. The post on Prairie Schooner's box-defying editorial preferences intrigued me, seeing as the liberally quoted managing editor James Engelhardt is a colleague and friend--and, from what I've read in the Schooner's pages, he's absolutely right.
And speaking of Prairie Schooner, the search for a new editor goes on. This is, of course, an impossible task, as the committee's trying to replace the irreplaceable (sob) Hilda Raz.
Cool things coming up on the blog here:
--and of course, the continuing saga of my publishing angst, the forbearance of the HH, and the general spiffiness of Spyder von Zeppelin, feline extraordinaire. Let me just get back from soaking up the ambience of Iowa City, and I'll start knocking the stuff out of this pipeline.You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, a new memoir by Heather Sellers: warm, funny, true, featured in the New York Times Book Review and O Magazine, and selling like proverbial hotcakes
Sisters, Strangers, and Starting Over, the second novel by Belinda Acosta, whose interview on this blog featured so largely when her first novel came out
"The Events of October": Murder-Suicide on a Small Campus, by Kalamazoo professor of literature and women's studies Gail Griffin, a thick description of a horrible crime and an all-too-common pattern of male-on-female dating violence, and how it affected a small liberal arts college in Michigan
No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy, by Wendy Call (whom you might know as the co-editor of the awesome and necessary Telling True Stories), forthcoming from University of Nebraska Press this spring and endorsed by lights no lesser than Philip Lopate and Sandra Cisneros
an interview with Kim Coleman, founder of independent bookstore Indigo Bridge Books
Offline 'til next week--
Categories:
Buongiorno!
Hello, hello!
Note to readers: This is a mostly personal post, so if you just tune in for the literary things, skip this one. The next several will be bookish.
That said, the Handsome Husband and I are just back from Oberlin, Ohio, a tiny town with excellent little restaurants, a fine new coffeeshop--the Slow Train Café--and the marvelous vintage Apollo theater, all refurbished to its former glory with help from Oberlin alumni. The college's architecture is eclectic and beautiful, and the town has a rich history of activist engagement with progressive and liberatory politics, from the Underground Railroad to women's rights. Lorain, Toni Morrison's hometown, is just to the north. If you're ever in Cleveland for the day, I recommend a quick side-trip to both towns.
All of which is just context for the fact of my heart, which is that we got to spend 5 days with Grey as he went through graduation. Every mother waxes rhapsodic about her children, so I'll just hold my tongue and not rattle on about what a sweet, kind, well-liked, talented young man he is. I'll just say it was wonderful to catch up with him, meet his friends, and observe him in the campus environment that has become his natural habitat these last four years. It was a joy. Leaving him behind was (understatement of the year) a wrench.
However, I'm so glad to report that he has found employment--even if it's just washing dishes in an Oberlin dining hall for the summer. A paycheck is a paycheck, and manual labor is important. Despite the scary unemployment statistics for people in Grey's age bracket, we really didn't want to encourage the failure-to-launch syndrome by making our sofa too inviting, so we're glad it has worked out. At summer's end, he plans to move to a very cool West-Coast city to live with friends and look for work more suited to his interests.
But, fair and tender readers, I had barely unpacked, when it was time to pack again. Due entirely to the generosity of my birthmother, Sharon (whom you might know a little about from The Truth Book), I'm heading out for a voyage across Europe. My brother--not Tony, the one I grew up with and who figures so largely in that abovementioned narrative, but Sharon's son--is about to marry the Italian woman he fell in love with on a study-abroad program twelve years ago. Since then, they've been carrying on a transatlantic romance, and now it's time to make it all official. They'll wed in a church in the tiny Umbrian hill town of San Gemini (which is too small to even show up on any of the maps I've consulted; it's near Terni, if you know the area). It's a fortress town and very old.
Sharon decided to make an odyssey of it, so I'll be flying with her, her husband, and my sister Lisa from Chicago to Amsterdam this Wednesday, then going to Paris, then Genoa, then the Cinque Terre, then Venice, and finally to San Gemini for the nuptial festivities. Heavens! I'm not a person who's traveled very much as an adult--and, if I can confide something a little embarrassing, I've been jonesing for Venice since, as a child in Miami, I was taken to the Venetian Pool in Coral Gables, which I found a utopian bliss-scape. It's like longing for Paris because you once saw an imitation of the Eiffel Tower in Vegas; not exactly Jamesian, but there you have it.
So anyway, this is extremely exciting for me. It's an astonishing opportunity, and I'm thrilled.
The places will be, of course, amazing, but the trip itself--the traveling, the being in train cars and hotel rooms--should be very interesting as well, particularly because I'll be rooming with my sister--my half-sister, technically--for over two weeks, and I don't know her well. We didn't grow up together, and from what I do know, we're very different. Very different. In almost every way. (Just to sketch a sense: she's 33, single, and a bartender, whereas I'm 42, long married, and an English professor--the very recipe for staid. I'll say no more.) Yet half of our DNA is the same, and I've always liked her when we've spent brief periods of time together. Two weeks of being roomies, gallivanting across the continent, should be fascinating.
Reports to come (she murmured mysteriously, tossing her red silk dress into her case).
Note to readers: This is a mostly personal post, so if you just tune in for the literary things, skip this one. The next several will be bookish.
That said, the Handsome Husband and I are just back from Oberlin, Ohio, a tiny town with excellent little restaurants, a fine new coffeeshop--the Slow Train Café--and the marvelous vintage Apollo theater, all refurbished to its former glory with help from Oberlin alumni. The college's architecture is eclectic and beautiful, and the town has a rich history of activist engagement with progressive and liberatory politics, from the Underground Railroad to women's rights. Lorain, Toni Morrison's hometown, is just to the north. If you're ever in Cleveland for the day, I recommend a quick side-trip to both towns.
All of which is just context for the fact of my heart, which is that we got to spend 5 days with Grey as he went through graduation. Every mother waxes rhapsodic about her children, so I'll just hold my tongue and not rattle on about what a sweet, kind, well-liked, talented young man he is. I'll just say it was wonderful to catch up with him, meet his friends, and observe him in the campus environment that has become his natural habitat these last four years. It was a joy. Leaving him behind was (understatement of the year) a wrench.
However, I'm so glad to report that he has found employment--even if it's just washing dishes in an Oberlin dining hall for the summer. A paycheck is a paycheck, and manual labor is important. Despite the scary unemployment statistics for people in Grey's age bracket, we really didn't want to encourage the failure-to-launch syndrome by making our sofa too inviting, so we're glad it has worked out. At summer's end, he plans to move to a very cool West-Coast city to live with friends and look for work more suited to his interests.
But, fair and tender readers, I had barely unpacked, when it was time to pack again. Due entirely to the generosity of my birthmother, Sharon (whom you might know a little about from The Truth Book), I'm heading out for a voyage across Europe. My brother--not Tony, the one I grew up with and who figures so largely in that abovementioned narrative, but Sharon's son--is about to marry the Italian woman he fell in love with on a study-abroad program twelve years ago. Since then, they've been carrying on a transatlantic romance, and now it's time to make it all official. They'll wed in a church in the tiny Umbrian hill town of San Gemini (which is too small to even show up on any of the maps I've consulted; it's near Terni, if you know the area). It's a fortress town and very old.
Sharon decided to make an odyssey of it, so I'll be flying with her, her husband, and my sister Lisa from Chicago to Amsterdam this Wednesday, then going to Paris, then Genoa, then the Cinque Terre, then Venice, and finally to San Gemini for the nuptial festivities. Heavens! I'm not a person who's traveled very much as an adult--and, if I can confide something a little embarrassing, I've been jonesing for Venice since, as a child in Miami, I was taken to the Venetian Pool in Coral Gables, which I found a utopian bliss-scape. It's like longing for Paris because you once saw an imitation of the Eiffel Tower in Vegas; not exactly Jamesian, but there you have it.
So anyway, this is extremely exciting for me. It's an astonishing opportunity, and I'm thrilled.
The places will be, of course, amazing, but the trip itself--the traveling, the being in train cars and hotel rooms--should be very interesting as well, particularly because I'll be rooming with my sister--my half-sister, technically--for over two weeks, and I don't know her well. We didn't grow up together, and from what I do know, we're very different. Very different. In almost every way. (Just to sketch a sense: she's 33, single, and a bartender, whereas I'm 42, long married, and an English professor--the very recipe for staid. I'll say no more.) Yet half of our DNA is the same, and I've always liked her when we've spent brief periods of time together. Two weeks of being roomies, gallivanting across the continent, should be fascinating.
Reports to come (she murmured mysteriously, tossing her red silk dress into her case).
Categories:
Getting By with a Little Help
Many thanks to Faye for pointing out the gender of all of the editorial gatekeepers of the 2010 Best American collections in this literary news I completely missed. Father Knows Best, anyone?
Another essential gem for writers by Tayari.
Congratulations to my cool friend Naca for having her first, gorgeous book of poetry, Bird Eating Bird, nominated for a Lambda award. I still remember reading it in manuscript and being quietly blown away--before Yusef Komunyaaka picked it for the National Poetry Series. Good luck, Naca! Amelia blogs about the Lammys here.
Big abrazos to Belinda Acosta, who was interviewed here on this blog, for winning the International Latino Book Award for Best First Book for Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz, her debut novel. The sequel, Sisters, Strangers, and Starting Over, is due out this July, and it's already making lists of recommended books and getting good press. Watch for it.
To see all the winners of the International Latino Book Awards, go here. Marjorie Agosín, whose work I have long loved, took home the award for best biography for Of Earth and Sea: A Chilean Memoir.
Good things happening for good people! ¡Órale!
Gentle readers, on Monday I FedExed the new and improved (and improved, and improved) manuscript of THE DESIRE PROJECTS, a literary noir novel, to my agent. My fingers are crossed!
Here's the elevator blurb for it:
When I first conceived the project, I thought it would be cool to try to blend literary writing with the suspense of a thriller and the fun conventions of chica lit. However, no such blending occurred. What has finally emerged is more like a collision between noir and chick lit. A five-car pile-up. Nola, the protagonist, just took over (with nods to Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Walter Mosley, Sara Paretsky, Kate Atkinson . . .). We'll see. It wants to be a beach read for smart people. Or a smart read for beach people. I don't know.
Many, many thanks to the good friends who read early versions of the book as it struggled to find its feet: Sandra Scofield, Barbara Brandt, Bryn Chancellor (third one down), Grey Castro, and the Handsome Husband. THE DESIRE PROJECTS has changed so much, you'll barely recognize it!
Speaking of Baby Greyby, we fly out tomorrow to see him graduate from Oberlin. I'm todo excited & Mama-giddy.
Graduation may not be the biggest achievement of his life thus far, but it is by far the biggest achievement of mine--bigger than writing books, or tenure, or anything. Here's why. Grey is a sweethearted, artsy, slacker guy who would much rather skateboard than study, bless his heart (as we say in the South). On the up-side, he breathes, he lives in his body, he's kind and open and thoughtful and non-judgmental--not to mention a great songwriter. All amazing, wonderful things.
For me, as someone who's always been academically driven and ambitious by nature (or perhaps by necessity)--and who's truly had to fight her own judgmental, impatient inclinations--this has been a tough personal challenge. How to accept and support who Grey really is, at heart, while still equipping him responsibly for his future?
If he ends up being able to skateboard and write songs for a living, great. But if not, he'll need a fallback position. It's a parent's job to think about that, however uncool or un-fun it makes us. (And I say this even as a devoted artist. Publishing stories in little magazines was hardly gonna pay the rent.)
Seeing him graduate from a good school at 21, debt-free, with good grades, has been a long haul, people, but he has done great, and we couldn't be prouder.
Or more relieved. At the graduation ceremony, I may faint.
So at the tail end of this graduation season, here's to all the parents. Respect. Solidarity. You've worked so hard, and you've made sacrifices no one will ever see. A good education is probably the second-best gift you can give your children, and it's huge.
Moreover, an ethical, kind, well educated young adult is one of the best gifts you can give to our shared community. So thank you.
*Yes, Cuban history buffs, her last name is no accident.
Another essential gem for writers by Tayari.
Congratulations to my cool friend Naca for having her first, gorgeous book of poetry, Bird Eating Bird, nominated for a Lambda award. I still remember reading it in manuscript and being quietly blown away--before Yusef Komunyaaka picked it for the National Poetry Series. Good luck, Naca! Amelia blogs about the Lammys here.
Big abrazos to Belinda Acosta, who was interviewed here on this blog, for winning the International Latino Book Award for Best First Book for Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz, her debut novel. The sequel, Sisters, Strangers, and Starting Over, is due out this July, and it's already making lists of recommended books and getting good press. Watch for it.
To see all the winners of the International Latino Book Awards, go here. Marjorie Agosín, whose work I have long loved, took home the award for best biography for Of Earth and Sea: A Chilean Memoir.
Good things happening for good people! ¡Órale!
Gentle readers, on Monday I FedExed the new and improved (and improved, and improved) manuscript of THE DESIRE PROJECTS, a literary noir novel, to my agent. My fingers are crossed!
Here's the elevator blurb for it:
The blurb still sounds a little wonky to me, but you get the picture. If you can think of ways to make it more inviting, let me know.During and after the chaos of Katrina, over a thousand released sex offenders (required by Megan's Law to register their whereabouts with law enforcement) went off the grid. Nola Céspedes*, a mouthy young cubana cub reporter for the Times-Picayune who grew up in the Desire Projects of New Orleans, gets assigned a feature story she doesn't want: to explore the human realities behind the statistics on child molesters' rates of recidivism, their rehabilitation, their reception back into the community--just as a seven-year-old girl disappears from the French Quarter.
And then things get personal.
When I first conceived the project, I thought it would be cool to try to blend literary writing with the suspense of a thriller and the fun conventions of chica lit. However, no such blending occurred. What has finally emerged is more like a collision between noir and chick lit. A five-car pile-up. Nola, the protagonist, just took over (with nods to Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Walter Mosley, Sara Paretsky, Kate Atkinson . . .). We'll see. It wants to be a beach read for smart people. Or a smart read for beach people. I don't know.
Many, many thanks to the good friends who read early versions of the book as it struggled to find its feet: Sandra Scofield, Barbara Brandt, Bryn Chancellor (third one down), Grey Castro, and the Handsome Husband. THE DESIRE PROJECTS has changed so much, you'll barely recognize it!
Speaking of Baby Greyby, we fly out tomorrow to see him graduate from Oberlin. I'm todo excited & Mama-giddy.
Graduation may not be the biggest achievement of his life thus far, but it is by far the biggest achievement of mine--bigger than writing books, or tenure, or anything. Here's why. Grey is a sweethearted, artsy, slacker guy who would much rather skateboard than study, bless his heart (as we say in the South). On the up-side, he breathes, he lives in his body, he's kind and open and thoughtful and non-judgmental--not to mention a great songwriter. All amazing, wonderful things.
For me, as someone who's always been academically driven and ambitious by nature (or perhaps by necessity)--and who's truly had to fight her own judgmental, impatient inclinations--this has been a tough personal challenge. How to accept and support who Grey really is, at heart, while still equipping him responsibly for his future?
If he ends up being able to skateboard and write songs for a living, great. But if not, he'll need a fallback position. It's a parent's job to think about that, however uncool or un-fun it makes us. (And I say this even as a devoted artist. Publishing stories in little magazines was hardly gonna pay the rent.)
Seeing him graduate from a good school at 21, debt-free, with good grades, has been a long haul, people, but he has done great, and we couldn't be prouder.
Or more relieved. At the graduation ceremony, I may faint.
So at the tail end of this graduation season, here's to all the parents. Respect. Solidarity. You've worked so hard, and you've made sacrifices no one will ever see. A good education is probably the second-best gift you can give your children, and it's huge.
Moreover, an ethical, kind, well educated young adult is one of the best gifts you can give to our shared community. So thank you.
*Yes, Cuban history buffs, her last name is no accident.
Categories:
What I Learned at AWP
Welcome home, everyone who trekked across the country for the annual AWP conference!
Here's the report. I learned that Nebraska can throw you a freak snowstorm in April (we drove through it on the way there), that I am affected by altitude (huff, puff), that Denver has wild architecture and great restaurants, and that folks smoke pot right on the sidewalk. I learned that by-invitation-only parties in penthouses are not as exciting as they sound, though it still feels nice to be on the list. I learned that even very glamorous-looking people can sometimes need a bit of social rescuing, and that it feels good to reach out when they do. I learned that having your partner along at a professional conference is great fun. I remembered how lovely it can be to reconnect with friends.
I learned that I love the paintings of Moyo Ogundipe! Holy wow. This is the one we saw at the Denver Art Museum:
In this small venue, you can't really see the intricacies, the details, the repetitions and rhythms. (Look at the birds, the snake, the image on the headgear.) But please know: the work is gorgeous.
But in more literary terms, I learned the following:
I learned that elena minor, who founded PALABRA, runs it as a complete labor of love. She does everything herself, and she funds the production costs out of her own pocket--while working a full-time dayjob doing bookkeeping for a performing arts center. If you've ever been interested in the journal, which promotes avant-garde work by Latin@ writers, you might consider supporting it by subscribing. Read Francisco Aragón's interview with elena here and Marcela Landres's interview with her here. I got to spend an hour talking with elena at the PALABRA/Con Tinta table at the book fair, and it was one of the highlights of the conference for me.
I learned that Janice Harrington does a knockout close reading. I heard her speak on the Black Goes Green panel, which featured contributors to Camille Dungy's anthology Black Nature, about which you've heard on here. Some of the panelists, in addition to reading their own work, very generously offered their analyses of other poets' contributions. Janice's close reading of Anthony Walton's "Carrion" was superb, and I trotted right over to the BOA table afterward and picked up her own collection, Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone, and it's excellent. There's no guarantee that someone who's a precise, original reader and a generous, enthusiastic person will write good work, but it's sure true in this case.
I learned that I really want to read Manuel Ramos's work. He read just a sliver on a panel of Latinas y Latinos who write mystery, and I really liked the energy and precision of his language. All of the panelists were great, and I liked hearing them articulate how, for them, mystery novels are about social justice. For Ramos, the genre can provide "a sense of justice that isn't always found in real life." Panelist Alicia Gaspar de Alba sees the detective protagonist as no better than other people, but simply "more outraged, more indignant" about injustice.
On a panel about biography, here were the quotable quotes:
Bob Root: "Even if I don't entirely catch the person I'm tracking, I can bring the pursuit alive for the reader."
Kim Stafford, quoting the advice his father William Stafford gave him about where to put his writing energies: "Do the thing that's trying to happen. Do the thing that's most alive."
Honor Moore, quoting the advice Arthur Miller gave her when he read a draft of her biographical work: "Throw away the research and write it like a novel. You are the authority. We will come to know her through you." (This was after she'd totally immersed herself in the research and knew all the facts intimately.)
Honor Moore: "Write the hot spots."
I also learned that Nick Flynn and Natasha Trethewey have reading voices of gold. They were on a panel for the new anthology The Art of Losing, edited by Kevin Young, and seriously, there should have been a table of hankies at the end of every aisle. Such gorgeous pieces, so well read.
And that's me, really.
We got home late Sunday night to this:
Okay, so it looks a little like a cage, alarmingly, but I couldn't be more excited. Drywall will make a difference. Here's Spyder, looking coy:
Here's the report. I learned that Nebraska can throw you a freak snowstorm in April (we drove through it on the way there), that I am affected by altitude (huff, puff), that Denver has wild architecture and great restaurants, and that folks smoke pot right on the sidewalk. I learned that by-invitation-only parties in penthouses are not as exciting as they sound, though it still feels nice to be on the list. I learned that even very glamorous-looking people can sometimes need a bit of social rescuing, and that it feels good to reach out when they do. I learned that having your partner along at a professional conference is great fun. I remembered how lovely it can be to reconnect with friends.
I learned that I love the paintings of Moyo Ogundipe! Holy wow. This is the one we saw at the Denver Art Museum:
In this small venue, you can't really see the intricacies, the details, the repetitions and rhythms. (Look at the birds, the snake, the image on the headgear.) But please know: the work is gorgeous.But in more literary terms, I learned the following:
I learned that elena minor, who founded PALABRA, runs it as a complete labor of love. She does everything herself, and she funds the production costs out of her own pocket--while working a full-time dayjob doing bookkeeping for a performing arts center. If you've ever been interested in the journal, which promotes avant-garde work by Latin@ writers, you might consider supporting it by subscribing. Read Francisco Aragón's interview with elena here and Marcela Landres's interview with her here. I got to spend an hour talking with elena at the PALABRA/Con Tinta table at the book fair, and it was one of the highlights of the conference for me.
I learned that Janice Harrington does a knockout close reading. I heard her speak on the Black Goes Green panel, which featured contributors to Camille Dungy's anthology Black Nature, about which you've heard on here. Some of the panelists, in addition to reading their own work, very generously offered their analyses of other poets' contributions. Janice's close reading of Anthony Walton's "Carrion" was superb, and I trotted right over to the BOA table afterward and picked up her own collection, Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone, and it's excellent. There's no guarantee that someone who's a precise, original reader and a generous, enthusiastic person will write good work, but it's sure true in this case.
I learned that I really want to read Manuel Ramos's work. He read just a sliver on a panel of Latinas y Latinos who write mystery, and I really liked the energy and precision of his language. All of the panelists were great, and I liked hearing them articulate how, for them, mystery novels are about social justice. For Ramos, the genre can provide "a sense of justice that isn't always found in real life." Panelist Alicia Gaspar de Alba sees the detective protagonist as no better than other people, but simply "more outraged, more indignant" about injustice.
On a panel about biography, here were the quotable quotes:
Bob Root: "Even if I don't entirely catch the person I'm tracking, I can bring the pursuit alive for the reader."
Kim Stafford, quoting the advice his father William Stafford gave him about where to put his writing energies: "Do the thing that's trying to happen. Do the thing that's most alive."
Honor Moore, quoting the advice Arthur Miller gave her when he read a draft of her biographical work: "Throw away the research and write it like a novel. You are the authority. We will come to know her through you." (This was after she'd totally immersed herself in the research and knew all the facts intimately.)
Honor Moore: "Write the hot spots."
I also learned that Nick Flynn and Natasha Trethewey have reading voices of gold. They were on a panel for the new anthology The Art of Losing, edited by Kevin Young, and seriously, there should have been a table of hankies at the end of every aisle. Such gorgeous pieces, so well read.
And that's me, really.
We got home late Sunday night to this:
Okay, so it looks a little like a cage, alarmingly, but I couldn't be more excited. Drywall will make a difference. Here's Spyder, looking coy:And here's how we're living for the duration. James calls it a yurt, and I've always been a big fan of yurts, tents--anything soft and portable, anything nomadic and lovely.
I think it's kind of cool. It reminds me of those childhood forts, with sheets draped over the table, and it makes our apartment todo mysterious. I might not want to take it all down.
I think it's kind of cool. It reminds me of those childhood forts, with sheets draped over the table, and it makes our apartment todo mysterious. I might not want to take it all down.Categories:
