I’m home from the Hurston/Wright Writers Week workshops. The experience was really intense. The class was terrific– beautiful writing and beautiful spirits. But still, I am really really tired. Next summer, I am going to limit myself to just one summer course. School will be starting in a week and I’ve much to do prepare. But enough about me. Here are some juicy links.
About three years ago, I had the pleasure of teaching the Jenny McKean Moore workshop at George Washington University. Since I am back in DC for a few days, I sent out an email to my former JMM students and a few folks showed up to say hello. (First semester JMMers, please forgive me. The group email bounced back and I didn’t know it!)
Anyway, I thought I would take this opportunity to tell all of you about the JMM program. If you live in Washington, DC, you may be able to take a FREE workshop. Please visit the GW English Department for information. The info for next year’s isn’t up yet, but you can call to get put on the list to be sent an announcement.
If you are a published author who loves working with community writers, please apply for the JMM job. I can honestly say that it was the best job I ever had.
And finally, here are some highlights:
Today on the New Yorker blog is a great interview with Natasha Trethewey about her forthcoming book of non-fiction, Beyond Katrina. Natasha is a native of Gulfport, Mississippi and in the new book,she meditates on what it means to be home and the ways that home can never quite be home again.
In this rare candid interview, she talks about her brother, Joe, and the way the storm which devastated Gulfport also devastated her family.
I got down there (to Gulfport), and it hit me that I wasn’t just doing the same thing. Everything had changed from 2007. At this point, my brother had been sentenced to jail time for having four ounces of cocaine that he was delivering. He was serving about eleven months in jail. That was a really tense year. The prison system is horrible on inmates, it’s horrible on families. There’s all this uncertainty and worry, and that’s what the year had been like for me. I was still working on the prose book, and had begun to really make these connections between the devastation in the lives of people on the coast and my brother’s life. I realized how my brother’s life was emblematic of that devastation; that his story could speak for many stories of people who are less visible, whom we don’t see struggling—the stories we may not know, about recovery and the choices people make when they have no jobs or they’ve lost everything.
Read the entire piece here.
Just a heads up. Tyehimba and I will be giving a reading on Tuesday evening at 7 pm in the Blackburn Center at Howard University. Tyehimba’s going to read from his newest collection of poetry and I’ll give a sneak peek at The Silver Girl– the last reading I’ll give until the book comes out next year. The event is free and open to the public, so come out out. Tyehimba and I are good friends so we promise a real fun reading and lively Q&A.
This blog entry comes to you live from the Acela train to Washington, DC. I have been aboard the train about twenty-minutes and I have have already eaten ALL the snacks I brought with me. (What does that say about my personality?) Anyway, I am on my way to DC because I am teaching in the 2010 Hurston/Wright Writers Week. I am really thrilled about the opportunity and this is why.
In 2000, I won the Hurston/Wright Award for college writers. It’s important because it was really the start of my career. Before winning the prize, I had been going through a looooong dry spell. Really long. Seven years long. I had written a novel that I couldn’t publish and I had a fat notebook full of short stories that just couldn’t get any traction. I’d applied to all sorts of prizes– Even the Huston/Wright Award.
Every year around my birthday, I would send off my entry, humming with optimism. Around Valentine’s Day I would get my rejection letter. Well, in 2000, I noticed that I was still feeling happy all the way until Februrary 20th or so. What was different this year? Well, I didn’t get that pretty Hurston/Wright envelope with my rejection enclosed. When I realised it, I got mad. “They didn’t even have the decency to send my rejection letter! Trifling.”
Literally, a day later, I received the call saying that “Press and Curl,” an excerpt from Leaving Atlanta had won first place! The prize, $1000, was more than what I lived on in a month! And, frankly, I hadn’t won anything since I placed in a writers contest in eleventh grade.
Shortly thereafter, good things started happening for Leaving Atlanta. I won a couple of other prizes and in May, the book deal. I’ll never forget winning the Huston/Wright.
The winners were driven from the hotel to the awards ceremony in a stretch limo! If you know me, you will know that I was way overdressed. (If it’s worth doing, it’s worth over-doing.) The other honorees were Selly Thiam– a 19 year old prodigy, and Faith Adelele– a fabulous memoirist. With us in the limo was Gloria Naylor. I was so in awe of her that I was almost afriad to speak. She was so bored, that she didn’t feel like being spoken to! To this day, this is a funny story that Selly, Faith and I tell whenever we get together.
Finally, it was time for my reading. I had practiced my little heart out. Just as I started on the first lines, “My mother tells lies…” There was a gasp in the crowd. A gentleman in the back had passed out and had to be rushed to the hospital.
Thirty minutes later, I took a deep breath and read again. “My mother tells lies…” I paused to make sure that no one else was going to fall out.
It was a beautiful night. I will be forever grateful to the Hurston/Wright Foundation for giving me that first affirmation when I needed it so bad.
It is an honor to be asked to return. It’s going to be a great week.
Let me tell you about PASSION PROJECT, a really cool competition from She Writes. If you have a great non-fiction project that you’ve been working on, you can win the opportunity to work with professionals who will help you whip it into shape and get it ready for publication. The contest is open to emerging women writers. Check out the details, ladies. And join She Writes. The contest is only open to members, but it only takes five minutes to join.
I know I am a little late to this party, but I have recently joined She Writes and I really dig it. The short version is that it’s a social networking site for women writers. (If you are already a member, please friend me!)
As you know, I am already on a million social networking sites– facebook, Red Room, Shelfari, Goodreads, Library Thing– but She Writes is different. This site is about women writers talking to each other. People aren’t over there hawking their books. It’s more a site for folks to talk about what’s going on with them as writers.
She Writes is open to writers at all stages of the their careers, and there is something there for everyone.
The slender moleskine journals come in two-packs. Last time I bought one, I decided to use one for my musings, and on a whim, I decided to give the other one to my new character, Bessie. I don’t want to give too much away because a new book is like a new romance. You start telling everyone about it and then you ruin it. What I can say is her name is Bessie she 21 and she lives in Chicago in 1930. (And fear not ATLiens… she is born and raised in Atlanta, but she moved to Chicago a couple years ago.)
So, the light blue journal is for me, and the deep blue one is for Bessie.
I really love this exercise. I write the journal by hand– like a real journal. In doing it this way I get the benefit of handwriting. (You don’t get frustrated and delete a days work.) And also, I am getting to know Bessie without the pressure of developing plot or knowing the themes of the work. With the journaling format, I can just wander and let her free-associate the way I do in my real journal.
I have tried this before, but this is the first time that I actually bought a notebook for the character to have all to herself. When I have attempted this in the past, I did it on the computer. I think that I had been thinking of it as “just” an exercise. If you have ever been in my class will know that for me “just” is a dirty word. If you do it as “just” anything, you will not do it right.
This time, I took is seriously and the results have been wonderful. I think about Bessie all the time. At the risk of sounding too crazy or woo-woo, my handwriting is even a little different when I write for her. The penmanship is more formal. She has more pride in her journal than I have in mine. I just scribble and scrawl, but Bessie is the first person in her family to finish ninth grade, so she is very pleased to be telling her story. She is also very aware that this story is being written. She says things like “Talking about something and writing it down is two different things. Pen and paper is forever.”
At the same time, I am not completely possessed by the character. The author-me, the one who is obsessed with Toni Morrison in general and Beloved, specifically has a hand in the project. When remembering her mother’s funeral, Bessie lets us know that she had money enough to get her mother’s full name– first, middle, maiden, and married name engraved on the tombstone. “And I didn’t have to pay with nothing but cash money.”
You know what they say.. if you say you love poetry, yet don’t buy poetry, then you’re part of the problem. And with that, I will end the guilt-strategy. The rest of this post is about the awesomeness of The Rumpus Poetry Book Club. This is how it works. For $20 a month, you get a copy of a poetry book, chosen by the very discerning poetry board of advisers. Then you can participate in an on-line discussion.(My favorite detail is that you get the book before publication so you can be the star of every cocktail party, talking about how you read an advanced copy of the most fabulous new book….)
Check out the site for more info. Meanwhile, the inaugural selection is Ceiling of Sticks by Shane Book. This debut which won the 2010 Prairie Schooner Prize was chosen by Camille Dungy. She is explains her choice here, but the summary is that she really really loved it and thinks you will love it too.
