Tayari's Blog: June 2005
June 30, 2005
Terry Mac again, sort of
I want to post again about the Terry Mac saga. I don't think that there is anything wrong with using your real-life to come up with a plot for fiction. People do it all the time.. some better than others.
June 28, 2005
Some Thoughts on Terry MacMillan
The internet has been buzzing for two days about the messy divorce of author, Terry Mac Millan. MacMillan, author of the bestseller, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, is now getting a divorce from the man who is said to have inspired her novel. The plot: Older woman meets sexy younger man in Carribbean and lives happily ever after. Some critics balked at the novel and movie, arguing that it glorifies sexual tourism, but most thought it a perfect love story-- a "Plan B" for African American women who suffer from the much-talked-about shortage of mariageable African American men.
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June 26, 2005
What I'm Reading
It's summer and summer is for reading. This summer, so far, I have gone memoir crazy. Last summer I read Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett. And this summer I just finished Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy.
June 23, 2005
BLESSED IS PEER CRITIQUE
I like to think that I am a good and capable writer. It's sort of integral to m self-image. But I'd be nowhere without rigorous peer critique. Maybe it's just because I came into my mature writing voice via an MFA program.
June 19, 2005
Here's One For My Daddy
It's Father's Day, so I really must post an entry about the time this weekend which I have spent with my Dear Old Dad. As I blogged earlier, I was in Atlanta this weekend because Nikki Giovanni is being inducted into the HistoryMakers. But let us not forget that it is Father's Day weekend, too.
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Falling Off the Wagon
Claudia asked me to write an entry about the times when I fall off my writing schedule. When I was working on LEAVING ATLANTA and THE UNTELLING, this wasn't a problem. Back then, I was a full-time writer. The good thing about being a full time writer is that you have plenty of time--- afterall, you have no MONEY so you can't go anywhere. But now that I am working full time and travelling with THE UNTELLING, I find myself doing what I never thought I'd do-- I'm sacrificing my writing time.
June 17, 2005
My Double Life
Here's an essay I wrote a couple of days ago for Conversational reading:
http://esposito.typepad.com/con_read/
My Double Life
By Tayari Jones
Publicity is a weird thing for writers. I’ve just come back from the second book tour of my career. The first time, in 2002, I went out on the road to promote Leaving Atlanta, a coming of age story set against the backdrop of the Atlanta Child Murders. My publisher, Warner Books, decided to package me as a “southern” writer. For the last couple of months, I’ve been on the road with The Untelling, another novel set in Atlanta. But this go round, I’m doing it as a “black” writer.
June 16, 2005
Nikki Giovanni @ Starbucks
Yesterday, Nikki Giovanni gave a reading and signing at in Atlanta. The venue: Starbucks on 14th street. If you go to ANY starbucks in the USA, ask to have your drink served in cup #33. That's the "Nikki Giovanni Cup" which has a short poem printed on the cup itself!
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The Writing Life
June 14, 2005
Off to Atlanta
Two of my favorite writers, Pearl Cleage and Nikki Giovanni will be in Atlanta this week. The occaision? Pearl is interviewing Nikki for The HistoryMakers series on PBS. (The HistoryMakers is the largest African American video oral history archive, dedicated to recording and preserving the personal histories of well-known and unsung African Americans.)
I am tickled to pieces that Pearl and Nikki have invited me to tag along for all of the festivites.
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The Writing Life
Not about the MiJac Verdict
Since this is a literary blog, I can't very well take this opportunity to say what I think are the implications of the Michael Jackson verdict. (and besides, I don't know that there ARE any.) I keep seeing the clips of MJ walking around with his kids-- they are wearing those crazy Victorian looking clothes and gauze veils over their faces. And I couldn't help thinking, I bet one of those kids is going to write a hell of a memoir.
June 11, 2005
Report From The Road: Chicago
In all honesty, I'll have to say that Chicago wasn't really the highlight of my book tour. It hurt my feelings a little bit. Afterall I live in Illinois now.. I am even gung-ho about my new state. I changed the tags on my car! I left my OBAMA sign in my yard until it started to fall apart in mid-Feb.
But the snub of a certain bookstore aside, some really good things happened in the Windy City.
June 09, 2005
MY APOLOGIES
I am sorry to report that my reading tonight at Afro-Centric Books, has been canceled. Yesterday, I read at the Harold Washington Library to a small, but enthusiastic crowd. The book seller, Desiree Saunders of Afro-Centric Books, let me know that because the crowd at the library was small and because the weather in Chicago is so hot this week, that she would rather not host me at her store as we had scheduled. I am very sorry to anyone who may have been planning to attend the book signing. Please accept my apology and know that I am very embarassed about this.
June 03, 2005
Who Are These People Anyway?
The most common questions I hear during Q&A ia this: Are the characters based real people? or Who are the people that you've based these characters on? I always know the question is coming, but I don't know quite how to answer it.
June 01, 2005
ON THE RADIO...
Did you know I was a Donna Summer fan? When I was ten I saved for the double-album "Bad Girls." But that's not the point. Tomorrow I am doing about ten radio interviews. A few are live, some are not. But I'll post them here so you can listen out if I am in your town:
GUSHER or EKER?
My MFA advisor, Ron Carlson, once told me that writers are either gushers or ekers. Ekers are the romantic sorts that stare at the page for an hour and a half and then carefully write down four perfect words. Gushers are people like me-- or at least people like I used to be-- who write four or five pages in a sort of frenzy.. And then they look it over and decide that there is only a half-page of useable writing. That's how I used to be. When I write, I was like me-- on crack. But now, my paterns have changed.