Nebraska, Just Say No to Wintry Mix in April. Please.
Dear ones,
First, thank you. Thank you for reading, thank you for commenting, thank you for being out there. It's kind of amazing and wonderful to write one's thoughts and know that folks will read them. So mil gracias, my sweet and clever folks.
Second, special thanks to Sonam for this photo of a fabled beach in St. Maarten, which is right next to the airport and which he was describing over dinner the other night:
It sure gives new meaning to the word flyover.
Third, here's a lengthy excerpt from Jennifer Weiner's blog, where (it's good to know) she's on the job and keeping score:
Fourth, I am addicted to this music video and to Joanna Newsom's work generally. Fifth, if you see my Aunt Barb, tell her she owes me a letter.
On Friday night, I was happy to serve on a panel at the local Barnes & Noble with poet, memoirist, and Prairie Schooner editor Hilda Raz, novelists Sean Doolittle and Timothy Schaffert, and poets Anthony Hawley, Grace Bauer, and James Engelhardt. Several distinguished writers were also in the audience, and we got lots of lively questions about writing, publishing, and the Nebraska Summer Writers' Conference, in which most of the panelists will be teaching this June.
Some powerhouse folks like Jewell Parker Rhodes, Lauren Cerand, and Curtis Sittenfeld will also be offering classes. (I'll be leading a generative workshop, "Kick-Start Your Memoir: Finding a Focus," on June 13th & 14th. If you're interested, you can still register.)
It was a good, fun panel. (Insert graceful segue here.) I'd been browsing the new releases tables beforehand, and after having given that lecture on the differences between Josefina López's stage play Real Women Have Curves and the screen version, I was happy to run across López's brand-new novel, Hungry Woman in Paris.
Grand Central Publishing seems to be pitching this straight-to-paperback project as chica lit, to wit: Chicana protagonist in crisis ditches her life and goes to Paris, where she attends cooking school. Sensuality ensues.
I want to like it, but after only a few pages, I'm mixed. So are the reviewers. Booklist says, "Lush and sensual, Lopez’s first novel is as rich as a meal at a four-star restaurant," but Publishers Weekly calls the book "choppy and amateurish." Has anyone out there read it yet? What did you think?
In contrast, after devouring two of John Banville's literary thrillers (published under his pseudonym Benjamin Black) as part of my autodidactic read-literary-thrillers project, I sank into The Sea, and I must say, I'm still swooning. I recommend it highly. Maybe it has spoiled me for ordinary prose. (Maybe I'm part of the Weiner-identified problem. Heaven and saints preserve me.)
In totally unrelated news, if you were one of the many meddling Westerners who signed petitions against Afghanistan's new law restricting women's rights, take heart. You've been heard. Keep on meddling. Forced submission to marital rape and restrictions on when women can leave their own houses are not, last I checked, advances in human rights.
With help from colleague Carleen Sanchez and my lovely research assistant Monica Rentfrow, I was able to revise and send out a new essay last week, "'Quién es ese Jimmy Choo?': Latina Mothers Come of Age," written for a collection on Latina mothering due out from York University's Demeter Press. Acceptance isn't guaranteed, so here's hoping the editors like it. I also heard the happy rumor that my story, "Whore for a Day" (about a cubana housewife in 1960s Miami), came out in Vanderbilt's Afro-Hispanic Review, but I've yet to receive copies, so I'm not sure. A short story, "Liking It Rough" (what is it with all these raunchy titles?), came out from Texas Review. Nice.
Mr. James is tearing it up in the next room. That guy can seriously play guitar.
Listen, speaking of Demeter Press, if you're in the mood or market for a ton of poems about mothering, check out their anthology White Ink, edited by the wonderful poet Rishma Dunlop. It's full of the work of fantastic poets like Natasha Trethewey, Naomi Shihab Nye, Rita Dove, Joy Harjo, Sharon Olds, and so on.
In the spirit of guerilla publishing, I'll share with you here my own poem from the collection, with thanks to Camille Dungy, who gave me feedback and encouraged me to send it out.
The poem's about living in San Antonio when Grey was a baby, and if you know San Anto, then you might recognize the museum in the poem. I was really excited because I don't generally write poetry, period, and even though it's an autobiographical narrative poem, it's also fairly formal, which is hard for me to do with any success whatsoever.
First, thank you. Thank you for reading, thank you for commenting, thank you for being out there. It's kind of amazing and wonderful to write one's thoughts and know that folks will read them. So mil gracias, my sweet and clever folks.
Second, special thanks to Sonam for this photo of a fabled beach in St. Maarten, which is right next to the airport and which he was describing over dinner the other night:
It sure gives new meaning to the word flyover. Third, here's a lengthy excerpt from Jennifer Weiner's blog, where (it's good to know) she's on the job and keeping score:
Well, the National Book Critics Circle handed out its yearly prizes, and every single winner was a man.Maybe, if we all keep fussing and hollering, by the time we retire. . . .
Best novel? Dude.
Best criticism? Dude.
Best poetry collection? A tie between two dudes.
Best biography? A dude, writing about another dude.
It was shocking!
Okay, it was not shocking at all. When you’ve got an organization whose members flat-out admit that they find the male voice more powerful and persuasive than female one (and, mind you, these are the lady members saying so), what chance does a book like Olive Kittredge, linked stories about the goings-on in a small Maine town with a heroine who’s a grumpy middle-aged schoolteacher, have against Roberto Bolano’s sprawling, bloody 2666? None chance, that’s how much!
In other bookish news, I was glad to see I wasn’t the only one who noticed Times critic Janet Maslin’s strange foray into hot-or-not territory…and that I’m not the only one who’s noticed the Times Book Review’s strange practice of calling female writers by their first names and men by their last. Not that publishing Joan Acocella's letter (which began, marvelously, “I am writing, as I have before…”) means the Times will change its practice, but, you know. Baby steps.
Fourth, I am addicted to this music video and to Joanna Newsom's work generally. Fifth, if you see my Aunt Barb, tell her she owes me a letter.
On Friday night, I was happy to serve on a panel at the local Barnes & Noble with poet, memoirist, and Prairie Schooner editor Hilda Raz, novelists Sean Doolittle and Timothy Schaffert, and poets Anthony Hawley, Grace Bauer, and James Engelhardt. Several distinguished writers were also in the audience, and we got lots of lively questions about writing, publishing, and the Nebraska Summer Writers' Conference, in which most of the panelists will be teaching this June.
Some powerhouse folks like Jewell Parker Rhodes, Lauren Cerand, and Curtis Sittenfeld will also be offering classes. (I'll be leading a generative workshop, "Kick-Start Your Memoir: Finding a Focus," on June 13th & 14th. If you're interested, you can still register.)
It was a good, fun panel. (Insert graceful segue here.) I'd been browsing the new releases tables beforehand, and after having given that lecture on the differences between Josefina López's stage play Real Women Have Curves and the screen version, I was happy to run across López's brand-new novel, Hungry Woman in Paris.
Grand Central Publishing seems to be pitching this straight-to-paperback project as chica lit, to wit: Chicana protagonist in crisis ditches her life and goes to Paris, where she attends cooking school. Sensuality ensues.
I want to like it, but after only a few pages, I'm mixed. So are the reviewers. Booklist says, "Lush and sensual, Lopez’s first novel is as rich as a meal at a four-star restaurant," but Publishers Weekly calls the book "choppy and amateurish." Has anyone out there read it yet? What did you think?
In contrast, after devouring two of John Banville's literary thrillers (published under his pseudonym Benjamin Black) as part of my autodidactic read-literary-thrillers project, I sank into The Sea, and I must say, I'm still swooning. I recommend it highly. Maybe it has spoiled me for ordinary prose. (Maybe I'm part of the Weiner-identified problem. Heaven and saints preserve me.)
In totally unrelated news, if you were one of the many meddling Westerners who signed petitions against Afghanistan's new law restricting women's rights, take heart. You've been heard. Keep on meddling. Forced submission to marital rape and restrictions on when women can leave their own houses are not, last I checked, advances in human rights.
With help from colleague Carleen Sanchez and my lovely research assistant Monica Rentfrow, I was able to revise and send out a new essay last week, "'Quién es ese Jimmy Choo?': Latina Mothers Come of Age," written for a collection on Latina mothering due out from York University's Demeter Press. Acceptance isn't guaranteed, so here's hoping the editors like it. I also heard the happy rumor that my story, "Whore for a Day" (about a cubana housewife in 1960s Miami), came out in Vanderbilt's Afro-Hispanic Review, but I've yet to receive copies, so I'm not sure. A short story, "Liking It Rough" (what is it with all these raunchy titles?), came out from Texas Review. Nice.
Mr. James is tearing it up in the next room. That guy can seriously play guitar.
Listen, speaking of Demeter Press, if you're in the mood or market for a ton of poems about mothering, check out their anthology White Ink, edited by the wonderful poet Rishma Dunlop. It's full of the work of fantastic poets like Natasha Trethewey, Naomi Shihab Nye, Rita Dove, Joy Harjo, Sharon Olds, and so on.
In the spirit of guerilla publishing, I'll share with you here my own poem from the collection, with thanks to Camille Dungy, who gave me feedback and encouraged me to send it out.
The poem's about living in San Antonio when Grey was a baby, and if you know San Anto, then you might recognize the museum in the poem. I was really excited because I don't generally write poetry, period, and even though it's an autobiographical narrative poem, it's also fairly formal, which is hard for me to do with any success whatsoever.
How We Are Made
The way we lived then wasn't much to see:
a plastic stroller, used, and given free,
pushed thirteen blocks down split concrete. I pushed
beneath the Texas sun, the streets' bleak noise,
the baby's face, though shaded, flushing rose--
those hot and dirty walks the price I paid
to put my boy down onto grass: thick grass,
still gilded silver with the sprinkler's rain,
leaves hushed and luscious to the eye and tongue--
so he could crawl, his soft, uncrafted skin
on bladed earth, flesh pressed to what's unmade
by man.
That strip of tender, tended grass
unspooled between a high brick wall and smooth
sidewalk. Within the wall there rose a blond
brick brewery, transformed (not long before)
into an art museum. Lavish lawns
swirled all around, tricked out with painted steel,
wood, stone: a sculpture garden. We lacked
the dollars to go in. We stayed outside
the rolling lawns, the art-strewn walls. We crawled
along the strip, a spectacle for all
the passers-by, who passed, appalled. The price-
less art inside compelled its pricey fee.
The way we lived then wasn't much to see.
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