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An item worth repeating: Perhaps you had the opportunity to hear and meet poet Michael Collins when he was here from New York a few months back. Michael is offering an online poetry workshop that sounds perfect for anyone who’s ever had an interest. The description is all here, no need for me to echo: doable and reasonable. Michael is known as an accomplished teacher as well as poet. You ought to sign up while it's possible--and tell him hello from me!
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It's that time of year again, for the AWP Conference, the largest literary conference in North America. This year the conference will take place in Los Angeles, March 30-April 2, 2016. Why There Are Words will sponsor an offsite reading on March 31, at 7 pm, at the gorgeous Continental Club at 116 West 4th Street. You can check out the beautiful venue here. This will be a spectacular event. Read the authors' bios on the WTAW website. Join us if you can!
So looking forward to this event with Genanne Walsh, the author of Twister, in which I will try to sound intelligent about her very wise and beautiful debut novel. Please join us! Cake and bubbly, too! The Booksmith, Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - 7:30pm Twister won the Black Lawrence Press publication prize and was a finalist for the Brighthorse Prize. Set in a small Midwestern town steeped in its own history, the storms in Twister begin to build as a tight-knit community mourns the death of a young soldier. In a constellation of family, friends, and neighbors, the story unfolds as the town secrets are illuminated, pasts are resurrected, and lives are shaken to the core. Twister is terrifying and humorous, clear-eyed and deep-hearted. Genanne Walsh is the author of Twister. Excerpts appeared in earlier form in Puerto del Sol, Blackbird, and Red Earth Review. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and lives in San Francisco. Grateful and gratified to have a little story of magical realism in the latest issue of Eleven Eleven. The story, "U+2204," is part of a larger ms. of stories titled Paper Bird Ash. One of these days I'm going to get around to seeing about having the ms. published in its entirety. Meanwhile, I like seeing the individual stories getting into print one by one. You don't have to know what "U+2204" means to appreciate the story but if you google and find out, it will add to your enjoyment and/or deepen your understanding. I hope. Okay, it's established: I'm not a blogger. Some people blog and then pull together a newsletter from their blog posts. I don't do that. I put together a newsletter. Maybe now I need to take info from the newsletter and put it on this so-called "blog." It's a thought. The more time that goes by between posting something here on this news page/blog, the less I feel like changing that, which would seem to imply that I spend time thinking about this, when in fact, I don't. In any case, here's something that needs sharing, and seems to insist on its own dedicated space. Yesterday, Tupelo Quarterly launched its first issue, and I'm proud to have my story "An Uncle" in it. The lit mag promises to be fabulous, with Jessamyn Smith as editor and Elizabeth Eslami as senior prose editor. This is TQ's foray into prose, and I'm thrilled to have been asked to contribute something. Happier still, to have Elizabeth Eslami's comments about my story, which appeared on the TQ Facebook page today. She's a fine writer and astute editor, and that makes her remarks all the dearer. Here's what she said: I love this story…Where “An Uncle” succeeds, for me, is voice, which is so hard to pull off and which she does so beautifully. And that’s where this story has to live or die, because…nothing much happens except the cracking open of a window into this girl’s life. She’s clearly at a transitional age, and Peg nails that shift, from a narrator who slaps Barbies against her sister’s arms to one who lets her mind go there, romanticizing that uncle who isn’t so much older than she is. Antonya Nelson writes about making the most of transitional ages, not only capitalizing on their “built-in” associations – first periods, dating, sex – but especially working against those associations, and damned if Peg doesn’t do that. There are a million ways she could have been predictable here, but she isn’t. What is real is a pre-teen who at once doubts she’ll be able to learn those dances but who also has the maturity and prescience to simply smile with the hope that Uncle Lew will see her, that something like a smile will shape how he sees her. …I truly think this is one of our best stories, one that I’m proud to publish in the first issue. "One of our best stories," she says. Thanks so much to Liz, Jessamyn, and TQ. I'm inordinately fond of this story, for reasons I don't care to analyze, and so happy that it's had some readers. I'm not a blogger! I do put together a newsletter full of, well, news. Yeah, old school, so old school it's cool. You can get your own. You know you want it.
The Next Big Thing continues. Kara Vernor was tagged by Michael David Lukas.
What is your working title of your book (or story)? She Could Maybe Lift a Car (a chapbook of short shorts) Where did the idea come from for the book? Each story sprang from a different idea, though several were sparked by memories of the TV shows I watched in the '80s. What genre does your book fall under? Literary flash fiction. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? Many of the female characters are young and a mix of heroic and tragic. Jennifer Lawrence comes to mind because of her role in "Winter's Bone." For the men, someone pretty-ugly, like Joel Kinnaman from the show "The Killing." What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? A flash fiction chapbook with stories about potential, restlessness, the influence of '80s television, sex, beer, feminism, blood, alienation and desperation. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? I hope it will be published by a small press. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? Two years. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? My stories are similar in style to many of the flash writers published by Rose Metal Press, the female writers in particular. Who or what inspired you to write this book? I was inspired by flash journals such as Quick Fiction, Wigleaf, Smokelong Quarterly, and Necessary Fiction, and as well by many flash writers: Stephanie Freele, Kathy Fish, Elizabeth Ellen and John Jodzio come to mind. Discovering writers and markets I appreciate and "get" made me think they might "get" me back. What else about your book might pique the reader's interest? Maybe some of the individual titles? Here are those of the '80s-themed stories: "Don Johnson Is Not Your Man"; "The True Love of Magnum P.I."; and"David Hasselhoff Is From Baltimore". Kara tags Dave Dulberg, who will post next about his novel, Makeshift. Check out Thaisa Frank's discussion of her novel in progress, currently entitled Light and Transient Causes. Great title -- find out from where it came, and from where her idea for it came. (Hint: "pneumatic tube of the imagination" is involved.) Thaisa also provides a great definition of literary fiction.
Ilana Simons' work-in-progress Ilana Simons is an amazing writer who I met through the publication of one of her beautiful short stories years back. She's also a psychotherapist, teacher, and painter. Oh, also a marathoner. She's the author of the wonderful A Life of One’s Own: A Guide to Better Living through the Work and Wisdom of Virginia Woolf (Penguin Press, August 2007). Currently she's working on a novel with the working title (today) of Is Clara Burns a Narcissist? I'm fascinated by the sounds of this work-in-progress and appreciate her generosity in sharing her process. Example: I’m a psychologist who doesn’t like being in therapy but trusts that my disciplined routine of fiction writing taps and organizes my unconscious. Check out her share. Extra bonus: photos and art. More of The Next Big Thing soon, with Thaisa Frank next! |
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