May 2010 Archives
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:
Thanks to Maureen Dowd for today's quotable quote:
Onto more literary issues: I love this post about writerly self-censorship by Tayari Jones so much, I'm going to link to it from my syllabus. It's a classic: sane, sound, humane. If you're a writer, read it. If you teach aspiring writers, send them there.
And in terms of dishing too-much-information in your memoir, I had to laugh out loud when I read this interview with Sarah Silverman about her new book The Bedwetter:
Rock 'n' roll, Maureen. Thanks for having more guts than the White House's PR machine.If roughly one out of nine Americans is gay, why shouldn’t one out of nine Supreme Court justices be?
Onto more literary issues: I love this post about writerly self-censorship by Tayari Jones so much, I'm going to link to it from my syllabus. It's a classic: sane, sound, humane. If you're a writer, read it. If you teach aspiring writers, send them there.
And in terms of dishing too-much-information in your memoir, I had to laugh out loud when I read this interview with Sarah Silverman about her new book The Bedwetter:
And on that note, gentle readers, I'm back to work.Q: Your former boyfriend Jimmy Kimmel is barely mentioned. Why did you refrain from spilling your secrets?
SS: I guess mostly because I'm not a desperate douchey scumbag.
Categories:
The other day, I happened to be at a bookstore with a new acquaintance, browsing. She came up and said, "Did you find anything you can't live without?"
Without thinking, I laughed and said, "No, I'm great at living without things I really want."
Which made me think. I'm no fan of asceticism for its own sake, and I do buy stuff. But we've been on a relatively careful budget for many years now (so much so that many well-to-do people's new "economies," due to the downturn, just seem funny).
We--James & I--both enjoy being generous; we like to treat, to give gifts to other people (which is good, so we don't have to argue about it; we share the hospitality gene). And my job has sometimes meant having to pretend to have more than I do in those work-social situations that are semi-required (like, bringing a nice bottle of wine to a colleague's dinner party when you're already putting groceries on the credit card that month and should probably stay home, eat a peanut-butter sandwich, and watch The Daily Show). We've foregone a lot of things we've personally wanted over the years, and we've kept up appearances, more or less. I think that's just life as most people live it.
Looking ahead, though, to the moment when our Pride-&-Joy crosses the stage and we owe Oberlin nothing, has got me thinking about aparigraha, one of the five Yamas, or restraints, from the Yoga Sutra. Aparigraha means limiting possessions to what is necessary or important. (The other four have to do with refraining from injuring anyone, lying to anyone, including yourself, and coveting things, and sexual purity, which means either celibacy or (whew!) faithful monogamy.)
I like the five Yamas and aspire to them--they make you feel clean and simple in the world, and they help keep you from messing up.
But the difficult part of aparigraha, "limiting possessions to what is necessary or important," is, of course, that defining necessary and important is left up to you, and important, in particular, leaves a lot of wiggle room.
I'm thinking about this as I look ahead to furnishing my wee office. Maybe blogging about this in the midst of a global economic crisis shows how hopelessly out of touch and insensitive I am. I'm not sure. But there are two things I'd really like to have, so I'm weighing their necessity and importance.
First, I'd like to have a chaise. I draft by hand, with my notebook propped on my knees, and I like to sit somewhere squishy and super-comfortable while I do. (I've often drafted in bed.) Only when my brain drifts comfortably free from my body, in a quasi-dream state, do the images and lines start to arrive.
So a chaise would be ideal: half-chair, half-bed, all squish.
And then comes the part when I have to type the good bits into computer files, so the other thing I'd like to acquire is a stand-up desk. Right now, I have a little table that the former owners of our house in Indiana left behind thirteen years ago. It's about the right size, but it's wildly uncomfortable to sit at--wrong height--and I get fidgety, anyway, when I sit here. It's like I have slightly too much energy to sit obediently, like my own good clerical assistant, and type things in. I get restless, and the energy has nowhere to go, and so I start wanting to eat ginger snaps or drink a soda or bite my nails. Ugh.
Thus the stand-up desk.
So I think I want to commit to planning to save for those, but honestly, this whole room-of-one's-own thing is still unsettling for me, however pleased Woolf would be. Fact is, I've been writing for years without any of these luxurious accoutrements. The whole enterprise, while delicious, smacks of bloated self-indulgence--but that just could be my poor-kid-background talking, or the whole Jehovah's-Witness thing about eschewing materialism still ringing in my back-brain.
So I'm curious about you several writers out there. What necessary and important accommodations do you make to help your writing flourish? How do you feel about them? Do they share the status of guilty pleasures, or are they factored matter-of-factly into your budget like groceries and toothpaste? How do you balance them against other imperatives in your life and in the world?
Without thinking, I laughed and said, "No, I'm great at living without things I really want."
Which made me think. I'm no fan of asceticism for its own sake, and I do buy stuff. But we've been on a relatively careful budget for many years now (so much so that many well-to-do people's new "economies," due to the downturn, just seem funny).
We--James & I--both enjoy being generous; we like to treat, to give gifts to other people (which is good, so we don't have to argue about it; we share the hospitality gene). And my job has sometimes meant having to pretend to have more than I do in those work-social situations that are semi-required (like, bringing a nice bottle of wine to a colleague's dinner party when you're already putting groceries on the credit card that month and should probably stay home, eat a peanut-butter sandwich, and watch The Daily Show). We've foregone a lot of things we've personally wanted over the years, and we've kept up appearances, more or less. I think that's just life as most people live it.
Looking ahead, though, to the moment when our Pride-&-Joy crosses the stage and we owe Oberlin nothing, has got me thinking about aparigraha, one of the five Yamas, or restraints, from the Yoga Sutra. Aparigraha means limiting possessions to what is necessary or important. (The other four have to do with refraining from injuring anyone, lying to anyone, including yourself, and coveting things, and sexual purity, which means either celibacy or (whew!) faithful monogamy.)
I like the five Yamas and aspire to them--they make you feel clean and simple in the world, and they help keep you from messing up.
But the difficult part of aparigraha, "limiting possessions to what is necessary or important," is, of course, that defining necessary and important is left up to you, and important, in particular, leaves a lot of wiggle room.
I'm thinking about this as I look ahead to furnishing my wee office. Maybe blogging about this in the midst of a global economic crisis shows how hopelessly out of touch and insensitive I am. I'm not sure. But there are two things I'd really like to have, so I'm weighing their necessity and importance.
First, I'd like to have a chaise. I draft by hand, with my notebook propped on my knees, and I like to sit somewhere squishy and super-comfortable while I do. (I've often drafted in bed.) Only when my brain drifts comfortably free from my body, in a quasi-dream state, do the images and lines start to arrive. So a chaise would be ideal: half-chair, half-bed, all squish.
And then comes the part when I have to type the good bits into computer files, so the other thing I'd like to acquire is a stand-up desk. Right now, I have a little table that the former owners of our house in Indiana left behind thirteen years ago. It's about the right size, but it's wildly uncomfortable to sit at--wrong height--and I get fidgety, anyway, when I sit here. It's like I have slightly too much energy to sit obediently, like my own good clerical assistant, and type things in. I get restless, and the energy has nowhere to go, and so I start wanting to eat ginger snaps or drink a soda or bite my nails. Ugh.
Thus the stand-up desk.
So I think I want to commit to planning to save for those, but honestly, this whole room-of-one's-own thing is still unsettling for me, however pleased Woolf would be. Fact is, I've been writing for years without any of these luxurious accoutrements. The whole enterprise, while delicious, smacks of bloated self-indulgence--but that just could be my poor-kid-background talking, or the whole Jehovah's-Witness thing about eschewing materialism still ringing in my back-brain.
So I'm curious about you several writers out there. What necessary and important accommodations do you make to help your writing flourish? How do you feel about them? Do they share the status of guilty pleasures, or are they factored matter-of-factly into your budget like groceries and toothpaste? How do you balance them against other imperatives in your life and in the world?
Categories:
Lovely readers, right now, as I type, Lorraine López and the other PEN/Faulkner finalists, including winner Sherman Alexie, are being feted at a dinner at the Folger Shakespeare Library in DC. Congratulations, Lorraine, on the national success of the probing, funny, honest stories of Homicide Survivors Picnic.Congratulations to poet Carrie Shipers, whose collection Ordinary Mourning is just out (as in yesterday) from ABZ Press. To read three of her striking poems, go here.
Also right now, in the USA, an estimated two and a half million women--most of whom are women of color from the global South--labor as domestic workers, making possible the labor and leisure of all those who choose to leave the care of "the most precious elements of [their] lives: their families and homes," to others. Ai-jen Poo's essay looks at our interconnections, sketches out a feminist bill of rights for domestic workers, and calls for change:
The upside-down concentration of the world's resources and wealth in the hands of a small minority at the expense of the vast majority is in fact unsustainable for everyone. Domestic worker policy demands that we recognize and value the basic care that we all require to live and provides a model for reshaping our economy to serve our collective human needs.
Categories:
Dearest all, I will be quick, because I'm in the thick, thick, thick of grading. But I saw this at the gym yesterday and couldn't help laughing out loud.
Vicky Ward's forthcoming book about the fall of Lehman Brothers, the Manhattan financial firm that went bankrupt in 2008, is excerpted in the April 2010 Vanity Fair (which someone had left at the Y). The article is specifically about "the plight" of the wives of these guys who pulled down $15 million annual salaries.
Describing the long-suffering, loyal wife of one philandering deputy to the C.E.O., it includes this immortal line:
So this is just a little shout-out to all of you who wouldn't consider the absence of window treatments to be "tough times," exactly, together with a wry little moue in the direction of Wall Street.
Vicky Ward's forthcoming book about the fall of Lehman Brothers, the Manhattan financial firm that went bankrupt in 2008, is excerpted in the April 2010 Vanity Fair (which someone had left at the Y). The article is specifically about "the plight" of the wives of these guys who pulled down $15 million annual salaries.
Describing the long-suffering, loyal wife of one philandering deputy to the C.E.O., it includes this immortal line:
No blinds? Gasp. The tragedy.She had stuck with him through tough times when they were so poor they couldn't afford blinds for the windows in their house.
So this is just a little shout-out to all of you who wouldn't consider the absence of window treatments to be "tough times," exactly, together with a wry little moue in the direction of Wall Street.
Categories:
