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• Marie Mutsuki Mockett, #3 of the Amazing 8
• The Perfect Age To Get Published
• ToMo's Biggest Truest Fan
• John Charles Palazzo's Brush With Greatness

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WTG Carleen and Kelly!

Remember last summer when this blog ran a series called Cocktails With Writers? Well two writers featured in that series have fabulous news which I am delighted to share!

CARLEEN BRICE has just been told that her novel, Orange Mint and Honey, will be made into a movie for the Lifetime network! You can read about her novel, and see her recipe for Orange Mint Mojitos! (It IS summer, you know.)

KELLY MCMASTERS has just gotten the Oprah seal of approval! Her book, Welcome To Shirley: A Memoir of An Atomic Town, tops Oprah's list of "addictive non-fiction." Read about Kelly's book here, but try her recipe for Long Island Iced Tea for at your own risk!

Posted at 06:52 PM | Comments (1)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Marie Mutsuki Mockett, #3 of the Amazing 8

Here is another installment of "The Amazing Eight." Marie Mutsuki Mockett is the author of Picking Bones From Ash which will be published by Graywolf Press in September.

Marie Mutsuki Mockett is a writer who lives in New York. Her fiction, essays and poetry have been published or are forthcoming in Agni, Epoch, South Dakota Review, New Delta Review, North Dakota Quarterly, The Portland Review, LIT, The Texas Review, Primavera, Blue Mesa, Carquinez Poetry Review, The Distillery, Fugue, The Ledge, West Wind Review, The Griffin, and Berkeley Poetry Review.

Now you have a listing of her accomplishments, but I urge you to trot over to her webpage and read the more personal account of her journey that is posted there.

Below is her essay about publishing her debut novel as a grown woman. It's called "The Perfect Age To Get Published." I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

(author photo by the incredible genius Rachel Elliza Griffiths.)

Posted at 06:02 AM | Comments (1)
Category: Guest Bloggers

The Perfect Age To Get Published

By Marie Mutsuki Mockett

I wrote the first draft of my novel when I was thirty-one. My husband, who is Scottish and warm and funny but schooled in that British way, read the early manuscript and murmured: “Hmm. I like this one paragraph.” So I put the novel aside, then wrote and published short stories for a while. At thirty-five, I dragged the manuscript back out again. The one paragraph is the only thing from the original draft that is still in my book.

I had always wanted to be a writer, and I sometimes wonder if I might have succeeded earlier in life if I’d attended an MFA program in my youth. We’ll never know. Instead, I worked a variety of jobs—test prep question writer, online store manager, non-profit administrator, failed antique picker—while writing in the corporate toilet stall, on the weekends and during company meetings. When I was disappointed or hurt by rejection, I would try to remind myself to take the long view; it takes time to become a writer, and many of the people I admire have had long careers.

In the beginning, I was often told what many female writers hear: I was talented, but my writing was “too quiet.” I revised. An editor rejected me because she “already had a half-Asian writer.” I was devastated. Much as I loved this other writer’s work, I knew that our material was different. Would anyone else notice? Another editor rejected my book because: “I have just had a child and I cannot accept what the mother in your book has done.” I tried to tell myself that another editor would not confuse her personal experience with an unmarketable product. These rejections were often paired with variations of this one line: “I know someone else will publish this work with the enthusiasm it deserves,” which I dismissed as an empty compliment. As I got to know other writers who had been through the same grueling process, I learned they too had heard the same semi-praise. When I finally met my editor Fiona McCrae, from Graywolf, I was absolutely positive I wanted to work with her. She understood what I was writing, and saw ways to strengthen the novel that meshed completely with my vision. I was relieved. And then I was grateful for all the other rejections that had kept me from working with someone who might not have been a good fit for my book.

My wonderful agent said to me earlier this year, “Sweetheart, you are the perfect age to get started.” I think I know what she means. As writers and artists, it’s our job to develop a vision of the world—to see what others are missing. This is the kind of thing that takes time, and that you cannot learn in school. It’s wonderful to see a writer like Kazuo Ishiguro, for example, turning out even more probing material as he matures. I do not mean that younger writers don’t manage complexity, because of course I can think of plenty of examples where they do. It’s just to say that writing generally takes time and can be painfully slow. About the only thing you can really control is the quality and uniqueness of your work. Make this your focus, and I really and truly believe that you too will find someone who will publish your book with the “enthusiasm it deserves.”

Posted at 06:01 AM | Comments (3)
Category: Guest Bloggers

ToMo's Biggest Truest Fan

You know I think of myself as Toni Morrison's biggest fan. And yes, I did coin the term of endearment, ToMo. However, there is a member of our blog community who is more Hard Core than even me.

John Charles Palazzo is an expat living in Rome. He came across this blog while looking for information on all things Morrison. He comments pretty often when ToMo is the topic. Well, yesterday, he emailed me in what I can only call a frenzy. ToMo would be speaking in Milan. What should he call her? Dr. Morrison? He could never call her Toni. Perhaps her given name, Chloe? We decided on Ms. Morrison, and of course, Ma'am.

What happened next? Below is his report and a absolutely fantasic video.

Posted at 06:03 AM | Comments (0)
Category: Guest Bloggers

John Charles Palazzo's Brush With Greatness

hi Tayari
so here is my story of my brush with greatness!

first, Ms. Morrison was in a really great mood, she seemed rested and really full of energy and enthusiasm. My intuition, seeing her up so close is that she's a person who gets energy from personal relationships, and there did seem to be a feeling between her and Umberto Eco.

so... after about 40 minutes of Q&A between Umberto Eco

mostly I was just flat out impressed with just how brilliant she is. I've watched every interview, read every interview, read all the books, so I obviously realised long ago she's a genius but I really cannot put into words what I felt like to observe her in person. She is just so fluid and fast intellectually, strong yet poetic in her breathless way of speaking, so many things come together in her that I could not see on a screen or a piece of paper. a brilliant academic analytical mind, a person capable of handling complex emotions, yet a person who seemed very open, honest but also brutally severe when necessary in her ability to size a wide range of issues up. She really is amazing to watch over the course of two hours.

So.... she was very professional the entire time. After about an hour Eco opens up to questions from visitors and I sat silently and didn't say a word. Then one person's question leads to another give and take between Eco and Morrison that goes on for about 20 minutes and I start thinking that I lost my chance to ask her my question (that I have wanted to ask her for years) but I still wasn't convinced to find the courage. Then I thought, here I was, 10 meters from one of the greatest authors in the history of the world, someone from my own hometown, and I was risking to lose the chance that for some short time, Toni Morrison would look at me and listen to me. Then I realised I didn't want to miss this chance, as I would regret it forever. so.... I start hoping they will open the floor for more questions and indeed they did.

Continue reading this entry

Posted at 06:01 AM | Comments (2)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Tiphanie Yanique: #2 of the Amazing 8

I first became aware of Tiphanie Yanique about a year ago when I read her brilliant essay "My Superhero Secret." I posted it about it and a lot of you were moved by her words. I then read her chapbook, The Saving Work, and I knew that I was reading an important new voice. I knew it was only a matter of time before she published her first book, but in the essay below, she writes about not being so sure.

But before you read the essay, here is a quick bio of the fabulous Ms. Yanique:

Tiphanie Yanique is an assistant professor of creative writing at Drew University. A former Fulbright Scholar, she has received the Mary Grant Charles Award for fiction, the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Tufts University Africana Prize for Creativity. She is the recipient of a 2008 Pushcart Prize, the 2006 Boston Review Fiction Prize, and was the Parks Fellow/Writer-in-Residence at Rice University. Her short story "The Saving Work" was chosen by Margot Livesey for the 2007 Kore Press Short Fiction Award. And here is the new bio line: Her first book, How to Escape from a Leper Colony is forthcoming from Graywolf Press.

So now read the essay below. It's good.

Posted at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)
Category: Guest Bloggers

I Just Wanted to be Writing

by Tiphanie Yanique

When I left graduate school I just knew I was going to have a book immediately. I had an agent, I had a novel that had just been picked up, I had all this drive, and wasn’t I talented, too? Well, maybe all of that was true, or maybe not. Either way my agent had a baby and then retired from agenting; my novel was taken by a press, and then that press closed its Caribbean line without publishing my book; I moved to New York and being a full time tenure track professor had sucked out all my drive…and maybe I wasn’t that talented. I appealed to friends. More than one said, “It took me ten years!” At a writer’s retreat a very successful author held up the rejections from her first book that went on to be a best seller and corner stone of American literature. There were more than thirty rejections.

Again and again, when they weren’t commiserating with me, my friends said, “Just keep writing.” This was hard. I felt betrayed by fiction and the whole system of publishing. I felt betrayed by readers who bought used books, or who didn’t buy books by writers of color at all. I was watching really talented friends tank and less talented ones soar. I liked to believe I was amongst the talented tankers, but who knew? And what did it matter, if you couldn’t get published?

I’d always been a poet even before I decided to take an MFA in fiction, and now poetry became a kind of salvation for me. It kept me writing when I didn’t trust prose. And since I teach fiction, I could read poetry and feel I was doing it just for myself, for the pure pleasure of it. I kept writing poems and then, every now and then, when I could stand it, I edited stories in a collection of which I had a draft. I wasn’t writing with a mind towards publication—I knew the novel was the ticket to publication, not poetry or stories. I was writing because I just wanted to be writing

Almost a year later, Fiona McCrae of Graywolf called me. I knew she had already felt my novel wasn’t right for Graywolf. We had sent it to her when I’d made the mistake of giving it to the other press that then canceled its line. Still, I was hoping, maybe, she’d help me take it to another level before I started sending it out again. When we met her at her office she said that she had read my short stories. My short stories. Not the novel. The only problem was that there weren’t enough stories to make a collection.
I peered over her shoulder. “But you only have about half of the collection. I’ve written more.”

“Well, that’s great news,” she said.

The collection, How to Escape from a Leper Colony, comes out with Graywolf Press on March 2, 2010.

Posted at 08:38 PM | Comments (0)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Meet Matthew Aaron Goodman

This is the first profile of a member of the Amazing 8-- debut writers from our blog community.

Matthew Goodman is the author of Hold Love Strong which was published just last month from Simon And Shuster.

Matthew Goodman earned a B.A. degree in literature from Brandeis University and an MFA from Emerson College. He has been a student of writing at the 92nd Street Y, Breadloaf Writer's Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center, and has taught and worked in inner-city communities for years. Working hand-in-hand with formerly incarcerated men and women, he created The Leadership Alliance, a community empowerment project that unites community leaders and volunteer partners. He lives with his wife in Brooklyn, New York.

You can read more about this new novel, here. If you're in NYC, he's got readings coming up. If you're not in NYC, content yourself with this Q&A.

Posted at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)
Category: Guest Bloggers

All Things Possible Through Patience and Zeal

5 or So Questions for Matthew Aaron Goodman, author of Hold Love Strong

Was there a particular trigger that got you started on this novel?

Stand in a small hot, overcrowded room with folks and eventually you either sing and live or stay silent and die. It isn't solely about mortality. I'm talking about your human spirit, that fire that keeps one alive. You can get jaded or impervious or indifferent too, or you can fill with some other variation and/or derivative of hate. What I mean is I don't want any part of my spirit suppressed or snuffed out, and I don't want any part of the spirit of the people I loved snuffed out either. Hell no. If I knew how to play a trumpet or a trombone or a clarinet, then I wouldn't have written a word. But I don't, so I had to write.

What do you hope to accomplish by publishing Hold Love Strong? What would have to happen for you to know you have succeeded? Has it happened already?

How about equal educational opportunity from the kindergarten on? How about affirmative action beginning when affirmation must begin for one to have a full chance to fulfill their innate human potential? How about discarding Emerson's obstinate preachings of "Self-Reliance" as a touchstone in the American Literary Canon and replacing it with David Walker's Appeal? Am I asking for too much? Judging by history, I am. So I am not delusional. I know no novel ever birthed justice. But many novels have contributed to conversations. That's what I most hope for.

What was the first thing you did when you found out it would be published?

I lay down on my back, put my hands behind my head, and cried.

What is the first thing you did when you finished the novel? How did you know it was finished?

I want to think of a novel as a chapter in a writer's story, in their life, so finishing a novel for a writer is like finishing a chapter. That is, there is still much more to write, or that I hope to write. But when I finished, I celebrated. Lord knows, I danced my damn pants off that night.

What is your advice to all the people out there trying to publish their first books?

All things possible through patience and zeal.

Posted at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Meet Karen Batchelor

As some of you know, I taught Remedial Reading for several years when I was in my mid-twenties. This experience really changed the way I understood my life and this country. I couldn’t believe how many people graduate high school without the sort of basic literacy that would allow them to, say, really enjoy a magazine article. The job was tough as no-one really cared about this population—evidenced by the fact that they let a 23-year-old kid to run the joint. One of the biggest challenges was finding reading material appropriate for students on this level—people with the mind of adults, but the literacy skills of a much younger person.

A couple of years ago, I met Karen Batchelor, author of Murder at Ocean View College. It’s a mystery, and a good one, but also it’s a novel designed to help adults who are just learning to read. Q&A with her below.

Posted at 07:22 AM | Comments (0)
Category: Guest Bloggers

When Charlotte's Web Just Won't Do

Tayari: Karen, Congrats on your novel. When I read Murder at Ocean View College, I couldn't’t help wishing that I had a tool like this when I was in the class room.

Karen: I know what you mean. Since I teach ESL at City College of San Francisco, I have seen the trend—more students unable to read the psych books, the history books, the biology books required to graduate from college. I can still hear the groans when I assign students to read three pages out of the textbook—too hard, too may new words, too boring, they say.

Tayari: But the point of ESL and college remedial classes is to get students ready to read textbooks, right? I know when I was teaching, it was all about prepping them for practical needs, not reading for pleasure. It was reading for day to day survival.

Karen: Yes, this is often the focus of the curriculum, but people learn to enjoy reading by reading for pleasure. This is what gets people practicing reading when they are away from the classroom.

Tayari: Had you used novels before?

Karen: Yes, but it soon became clear to me that there was a serious need for literature for adults who are ESL and reluctant readers. The only novels we could assign were novels written for children and teenagers. Not only are the issues and interests of adults different from those of children, but adults are usually embarrassed and demoralized to have to read kids’ books. They have experienced life and are not inspired by Charlotte’s Web
Embarrassed, a young Chinese woman whispered to me, “I go to the library with my son and I read his books.” One young macho male kept his copy of L.L. Stine’s horror book hidden in his backpack so that the “regular” college students might not realize what he was reading.

Continue reading this entry

Posted at 07:22 AM | Comments (2)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Introducing Kendrick Daye of Art Nouveau

As you can probably tell, I spend a lot of time on the internet and one of my favorite destinations is Art Nouveau. It's an on-line magazine with all the-- I don't know what to call it-- all the-- well, the--- umph? the funk?-- of my favorite print magazines. The Sept/Oct issue, "Art is Everywhere" has just posted and features interviews with Jasmine Guy about her directorial debut with "For Colored Girls..", new poems by Academy of American Poets prize winner Kyla Marshell, an op-ed piece about self-publishing, a pictorial essay on fashion photography and surrealism. I could go on and on. And that's just one issue. Check out the archives.

I was clicking through yesterday and I thought about Kendrick Daye, one of the founders. I caught up with him on google chat and did a little bit of a Q&A.

Posted at 08:08 PM | Comments (0)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Art Is Everywhere

Tayari Jones: Kendrick, I just took a look at Issue 5. What a fantastic accomplishment. I looks great and there's a lot of substance to go with the eye-popping layout. Tell me, how did you start Art Nouveau and what motivated you? How did you pull it off? Did you get a grant or something?

Kendrick Daye: First off, Thanks for the compliments. We really worked extremely hard to make this the best issue we could. We wanted the layout and photos and graphics to be out there but we also wanted to cover topics and issues that more mainstream magazines don't. Me and stylist Phillip Holmes started it back in the Fall of 07. We were sitting in my room one day and out of nowhere I just blurted out let's start a magazine. And he was excited, I was excited and we planned and planned all that night. I'm a graphic designer also, so I was designing the site and the graphics and we just went ahead and did and promoted the hell out of it on MySpace and Facebook and it just bloomed and kept going. We didn't get any grant or any monetary assitance, lol. We paid for everything ourselves.

Tayari: When you say your room, do you mean you DORM room? How old are you anyway?

Kendrick: Well I was in college when I started it, but I haven't lived on campus since Freshman year. My room in my apartment in downtown Atlanta. I'm 21 and graduate from Morehouse this July.

Continue reading this entry

Posted at 08:05 PM | Comments (0)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Shelley E.'s Excellent Adventure

I wasn't the only one who spent the summer at a colony. Shelley Ettinger is up at Staltonsall Foundation for the Arts for a month-long retreat. She was kind enough to take time out to send us this report.

by Shelley Ettinger:

My fellowship at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts colony outside Ithaca, NY, is almost over. It's been a wonderful experience. Every summer the foundation offers a monthlong residency to 15 New York state artists in three sessions; each session has one prose writer, one poet, one photographer and two painters/visual artists. Applications can be downloaded from the foundation's website.

The colony provides just about everything you need to be freed from daily cares and open your mind to let the creativity flow. Each resident artist has a lovely private apartment with bedroom, living room, bathroom and balcony or patio; in addition the writers have a desk/work area, the photographer has a darkroom, and the painters each have a big studio full of natural light.

Continue reading this entry

Posted at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Meet Guest Blogger: Dwayne Betts

I met Dwayne Betts a couple of years ago. He was a nice young man interested in poetry and all around good guy. In a very very short time, he has published his beautiful poems all over the place, scored a wait staff position at Bread Loaf, interned at The Atlantic, been written up in the Washington Post for his outstanding work with kids, enrolled at The University of Maryland, and made a beautiful family for himself.

About a year ago, I got a call from an editor who had read the WaPost story about Dwayne. She wanted him to write a memoir. I put him in touch with my agent. I would say the rest is history, but the rest is about writing the book, and learning what life has to teach us.

Read his story here.

Posted at 09:38 AM | Comments (1)
Category: Guest Bloggers

To Grow, To Change, and To Love

by Reginald Dwayne Betts

Now that I have a baby boy, every day is the start of a story. It's something about a smile, a laugh, or the way Micah will try to summersault from my arms to the waiting floor. He's six months old and thinks everything he can grab a hold of is food. The remote control, my poems, socks, receipts, pacifiers and teething rings all fit the same category. My arm, shirt, face and car keys do too. He'll reach from the couch, stretching out his arms unaware of the damage that fall to the floor can do. He smiles when he reaches out. In seconds he goes from smiling beside me, to stretching toward the floor, body tilting. I’m good at intercepting him before he reaches the floor. My improved reflexes are one of parenthood’s true gifts.

Now, my eyes are always open, even when I’m working and I work a lot these days. In addition to being in school, I’m working hard on my memoir, A Question of Freedom. The book contract was a godsend, coming just about the same time Terese and I found out that Micah was on the way. The finished manuscript is due in just a few weeks, and although I’m starting to see daylight, I still have a ways to go.

Yesterday, I was working on the memoir, struggling through a difficult passage with my laptop on my lap, the flash drive sticking out. As engrossed as I was in my own memories, a shout from my fiancé pulled me from my written past to my living breathing present. I jumped, not caring that my laptop fell to the floor; I sprang with my arms out, ready to catch my little boy.

When I looked down, my son was looking up, smiling, a sock in his hand. Terese was holding him, smiling too. A beautiful false alarm. My laptop was beside me. I examined it and it seemed to be working. I breathed easy. How could I afford another computer right now? Then, I noticed the flash drive containing all my hard work. The silver piece of the flash drive that sticks into the USB port was still in the computer. The other part, the important part, with all the data is stuck between cushions of the couch.

Continue reading this entry

Posted at 09:37 AM | Comments (7)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Guest Blogger: Sarah Schulman

Sarah Schulman is mentioned quite often on this blog because everytime I go out with her, she tells me something I just have to share. Last night, Rigoberto and I were at her home for dinner, and it happened again.

"Did I tell you that Grace Paley was my teacher?" No, she hadn't told me this. She also hadn't told me that she was enrolled in graduate school for exactly one day. And then she told her how Grace Paley saved her life as a writer. "Please," I said. "Will you write it up for my blog community?"

She did, and the story is below. Grace Paley passed away this year at the age of 84.

Posted at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Thank you, Grace

A Remembrance by
Sarah Schulman

For ten years I worked as a waitress, and during that time I started publishing books. I really didn't know what an MFA was. But as a waitress at Leroy's, which was the first coffee shop in Tribeca, a lot of our customers were artists just moving into that neighborhood. A friend- got me the job. We were collaborating on plays with titles like "Art Failures", which we performed at The University of The Streets, then on the cheap, and deserted Avenue A. My friend was also a painter and the painters I knew, knew about MFAs. But I was not aware that writers could also get them.

This was probably 1984, when the gentrification of the city was already underway- and a cultural shift was accompanying it. As part of yuppification, the arts were "professionalizing", this meant that work was coming less and less from community and more and more from institutions. There was a kind a Apparatus being put into place that - like most structures of American life right after Reagan's election- was replacing sixtiesque values of access and expression, expansion of representation. This professionalization favored more mainstream and dominant cultural voices and styles and made it harder for civilians to gain access.

After talking to a number of customers I realized that MFAs were increasingly giving people professional advantages, and increasingly excluding those without, so I decided to pursue one of those degrees. Since my work had lesbian protagonists, and was political, I already had enough problems, and I hoped that "getting inside" would help me along. I applied to the graduate program in writing at City College because it was in Manhattan and the cheapest, and I was accepted. In my naivete I didn't fully realize that the City College program was actually an MA. But since it was a graduate writing program, in my mind, it was an MFA.

The first day I went to class, and the teacher was Grace Paley. Grace was the "people's choice" emblematic New York writer. She was Jewish, she was on the left and an active participant citizen. I had participated in many political actions that she was involved in over the years, most memorably the 1979 Women's Pentagon Action. She wrote stories about people's need for justice that were true, complex and funny. And she was both extraordinary and regular. Her three beloved short story collections were : Enormous Changes At The Last Minute, Little Disturbances Of Man, and Later The Same Day. What I now realize is that, despite how well known and beloved she was, she had to work for a living for most of her life. I believe that at that time she was teaching at City College and at Sarah Lawrence.

During the first class session, we sat around a table, and each student read a sample of their own work. Mine, was a lesbian story written in the first person, and my classmates thought that the protagonist was a man. I started to worry about spending the next two years in that environment. Was getting an MFA going to be a endless process of self-justification?

After class, Grace said "Come to my office."

I went to her office and she sat me down. All the warm and fuzzy stuff went out of her demeanor, and she spoke very directly and with a real sense of gravitas.

"Look," she said. "You're really a writer. You're really doing it. You don't need this class."

I felt really relieved. So, I went home and never came back. That's how I had only one day of graduate school. She saved me two years of explaining myself. She knew better than I did what the process would have done to me. It could have destroyed me. That was one of the most important moments in my life as a writer. When someone with authority actually understood the value of what I was doing, understood what the machinery was about, and stepped up to honestly protect me with respect and care.

Now that I have taught writing for 15 years, I can see that many of these programs still don't really know what to do with writers of color, lesbian students, sometimes with gay male students. You hear a lot of "survival" stories, and realize that many current writing programs in 2007, cannot offer minority students the same quality of experience as they offer to majority students.

This story has two happy endings: 1) Now I am a Full Professor of English in the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. 2) I later read with Grace and Sonia Sanchez at a reading at Saint Mark's Church at a benefit organized by the late Laurel Shreck for The Committee In Solidarity of The People Of El Salvador. It was one of the most exciting, proud moments of my life.

For the next twenty years, Grace Paley encouraged me every time we met. She nominated me for PEN, she got me a teaching gig at The Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Whenever we saw each other, she would say "I keep an eye on you. You're doing so well. I'm so proud of you." This made the difference every time.

Posted at 04:11 PM | Comments (6)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Its Not The Points

BY TARA BETTS

This is a brief history of slam, from its birth in Chicago over 20 years ago under the direction of Marc Smith who thought most poetry readings were too sterile and polite. It is also my personal slam history, and it’s a report of recent history—the 2007 National Poetry Slam. Before I go further, let me make it clear that if you want to know who won The National Poetry Slam, you won’t get that here. “The point is not the points, it’s the poetry.” It’s the slogan that I’ve heard for at least 10 years.

When I came into slam in 1998, I thought it would a great opportunity to share my work with different audiences. My first slam team was Mad Bar-Mental Graffiti , the first team outside of The Green Mill representing Chicago. We felt overwhelmed and excited to think we were on the precipice of changing the direction of literature. At first, it led to splashes in newspapers and lots of low-paying gigs and lots of teaching, but it also led to much more teaching, much more reading, traveling and meeting people I never would have met in my small hometown of Kankakee, Illinois.

But even as things were expanding, I knew I was starting to see the ceiling of the slam.

Continue reading this entry

Posted at 07:20 AM | Comments (0)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Summer Report: VONA

Two members of our blog community, LeConte Dill and Teri Elam, have a summer ritual-- taking part in the Voices of Our Nation summer writing Workshops. VONA is the only multi-genre workshop in the country exclusively for writers-of-color. This year’s faculty included Junot Diaz, ZZ Packer, Willie Perdomo, Chris Abani, David Mura, Elmaz Abinader and Suheir Hammad.

Below you'll find a conversation about thier experiences. But before, let me tell you a little bit about them.

LeConté Dill is a 29-year-old with roots in South Central Los Angeles, branches in Atlanta, and leaves now blossoming in the San Francisco Bay Area. A public health scholactivist by day, LeConté has been writing poetry and fiction since elementary school. Her work has been featured in ProperGanda magazine, CityFlight newsmagazine, and others.LeConté is passionate about the power of writing for healing, empowerment, and social justice. She credits her mom, sister, and Nanas for fueling her creative endeavors.

Teri Elam-Blanchard is an Atlanta resident whose poetry has been published most recently in the Cave Canem anthology, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South. She is also a poetographer whose photos have been featured in Chops, a book of poetry by Cherryl Floyd-Miller that has become part of the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. Teri, an HRD Consultant and Corporate Coach, is currently working on her M.Ed. at UGA as well as her first collection of poems that VONA has helped bring to life, Southern Black Female.

Click here to read "VONA has Saved My Life"

Posted at 07:06 AM | Comments (0)
Category: Guest Bloggers

"VONA Has Saved My Life"

TAYARI: Okay, you first, LeConte: How did you choose VONA?
LECONTE: I feel like VONA choose me…in all sincerity. Four years ago, I wasn’t searching for writing workshops, wasn’t subscribed to writing listservs, or reading literary journals. Nevertheless, an email about VONA came my way, and I applied. I realized that I was entering something bigger—a movement. Although I’ve written since I was a child, even minored in Writing in college, I always listed writing as a “hobby”—something that I love to do. VONA helped me gain the confidence and consciousness to identify myself as a writer.

TAYARI: And Teri, you have been coming back to VONA every year since 2002. It’s like you can’t get enough!
TERI: My first year there, I was brand new, you know? Even after years of living, I was a baby of sorts. And it felt as if I was given birth to by all of the writers and workshop leaders there that year…and especially by my workshop facilitator at the time, the beautiful Ruth Forman. That week back in June 2002 changed the entire trajectory of my life experience. Each year, I leave different. Each year, VONA has saved my life, so to speak.

LECONTE: Literally saved your life?
TERI: Sometimes, LeConté, quite literally…but that’s another story…another day.

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Posted at 07:04 AM | Comments (1)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Summer Report: The Cave Canem Song

by Guest Blogger, NICOLE SEALEY

In 2004, I applied and was accepted to Cave Canem’s (CC) New York regional poetry workshop with Patricia Smith and, as my mother would say, “[began] to smell myself” soon after. In other words, I got cocky. I just knew I was a shoe-in for the summer retreat that same year. I mean, I got into Patricia’s workshop, and she’s an award winning stage and page poet. How hard could it be? So, I decided to apply for—and get into—the summer retreat, and wear the coveted title of “fellow” humbly. All that to say, I did not get in that year…or the next.

Though I’ve been writing creatively since I was eight (even won an essay contest in 3rd grade for my letter to Santa), I wasn’t quite ready to be a poetry fellow. CC knew this and demanded more of me and my work. Come to think of it, I am grateful for that time and the opportunity that followed. Rejection gave me the time needed to ready myself and my writing. In 2006, I was accepted. The third time was definitely my charm.

To prepare I began thinking about subjects I want to write about, writing in different forms and reading, reading, reading. I thought a lot about women in prison and teen-aged mothers. I tried my hand at Sonnets and Villanelles (my favorite form). I read Tyehimba Jess’ Leadbelly, Terrance Hayes’ Hip Logic, Patricia Smith’s Teahouse of the Almighty and others. And, after all that, I was still felt unprepared and anxious—not at all knowing what to expect or what they expected of me. This was just the prep, the warm-up…CC would be the intensive, and I had no idea what I had gotten myself into.

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Posted at 07:58 PM | Comments (0)
Category: Guest Bloggers , The Writing Life

Summer Report: Tin House Workshops

FeLicia Elam, a member of our blog community, attened the Tin House Summer Writers Workshops this summer. Now that she's back, I asked her a few questions. See our Q&A below. (If you are interested in summer workshops in your area, visit the AWP website or pick up a copy of Poets & Writers Magazine!)

Q&A with FeLicia Elam:
Tayari: How did you first start attending workshops? How did you choose the Tin House workshop?
FeLicia: Attending workshops came as a natural progression of my writing career. Initially I wrote stories until I felt comfortable sharing them. Then I found a critique group and stayed with them for three years, completing nine stories and getting two published. When I wanted a challenge as a writer so I could grow, I started attending week-long, intensive workshops.

This year I was accepted into Tin House at Reed College in my new city, Portland, Oregon. I applied to Tin House because they have an excellent quarterly magazine and a publishing company. Additionally, Tin House is known for pulling in top notch writers, and their students have a habit of returning. I have attended two ten-week long workshops here and could tell how much my writing has improved.

Once you decided on Tin House, how did you decide which writer you wanted to work with?
I had to select three teachers from the short story section in order of choice; not all workshops give that option. I got my first pick, Colson Whitehead. He’s one of today’s top writers, well-respected with four published works since 1999. A key to getting the most from workshops is to choose carefully. Find a writer who writes similarly to you. If you’re not familiar with the writers, read some of their work and then determine who best fits your style.

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Posted at 08:13 AM | Comments (5)
Category: Guest Bloggers , The Writing Life

Martha's Director's Cut

Martha Southgate has written this piece to accompany her essay in the NYT. She explains her motivations for writing the piece and also includes a few quotes that didn't make it past the editors cut.

"Writers Like Me: an addendum"
by Martha Southgate

Four years ago, I had the honor of reading with Edward P. Jones as a part of Paule Marshall’s New Generation reading series. In introducing him, Paule Marshall, who was the evening’s organizer, told of how Jones wrote “The Known World” in six months, 10 years after his first short story collection. He said that he’d been thinking about the book and forming it in his mind the whole time he worked at the magazine. But what if he hadn’t been laid off? What does it mean that he felt compelled--both financially and emotionally-- to return to that day job for so long? What did it mean that he didn’t feel safe enough to quit and let his brilliance shine through?

That’s when I started thinking about the issues that led me to pitch this piece to the New York Times Book Review. In writing it, I can’t say that I found anything I didn’t think I would find: The publishing industry is still overwhelmingly staffed by white people, a lot of whom are oblivious or disingenuous about how race plays out in this country and it’s damn hard for anybody of any race to get a book published and get people to buy it. I also had something confirmed that I suspected—partly because it was so much my own experience—that it’s very hard to step out and be a fiction writer unless you feel safe enough to try. It’s very hard to feel safe enough.

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Posted at 08:25 AM | Comments (5)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Jazzing My Way Through

by Renee Simms

Not long ago, I sat in a workshop where everyone was asked to describe their writing routines and the spaces where they write. I began to sweat as we went around the table. Writing routine? Does writing inside your shower stall before the kids find you count as routine? Everyone else had very detailed descriptions: certain pens they liked to use, clothes they needed to wear, or exercises they did beforehand. Some described windows through which they gazed as they wrote. It was all so…nice.

With two kids, aged seven and two, my writing is everything but routine. I couldn’t think of one place or a single set of circumstances under which I’ve written anything. I grab slices of time when I find them, and when there are no slices to grab, I’ve learned how to drown out a swirl of activity, including: boys kickboxing, boys break-dancing, husband on cell phone, baby climbing me as I write, Dora the Explorer singing, I play the maraca, shake-a shake-a shake-a.

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Posted at 10:35 AM | Comments (8)
Category: Guest Bloggers

The Novel as Nightcap

This year, I will write my second novel. I’ve been thinking about writing this book for a while now. I began it once before and somehow lost steam. I’m a very goal-oriented person and I had a detailed outline of how the novel would unfold and develop, a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the story. After writing a few of the chapters, I realized that nothing in my pages excited me anymore; I loved the premise and the hearts of the characters, but the story lacked a fundamental sense of passion. I realized that I had regimented the life out of the story.
I had the goal of writing three pages a day, six days a week. I marked page goals in my daily planner. If I missed a day, I promised myself that I would make up those pages on the weekend, but that never happened. The result of this tough love approach was that I felt like an uncommitted slacker—a failure--when I couldn’t squeeze in my self-imposed, daily page quota. Never mind the fact that I’d published a novel, a collection of poems, completed my law degree and my MFA, moved to New York City, started a tenure-track teaching position, am knee-deep in a challenging poetry collection, and am about to attend the college graduations of two of my four children—I’d missed the mark, had the tangible proof of my neglect in my planner, and carried the weight of this guilt with me daily.

What I have learned is that I need to practice being kind to myself and my work. Demanding unrealistic requirements of my writing is certainly not being kind to me; it’s cruel and it needs to be unusual. Nowadays, I work on my novel daily but I write a single page and only a page. My novel page is my daily nightcap: a tiny way of rewarding myself for a day well-lived, a time to convene with characters that I like and enjoy visiting. I don’t overstay my welcome; I don’t put crazy demands on them anymore or make them do anything they don’t want to do. My novel page has become an adventure and I’m surprised and delighted daily. And so what if it takes me an entire year to finish this draft? If I didn’t write a page a day, it would take me longer. I’m not in a hurry: it is the process of writing this novel that is joy to me now, not the promise (or the threat) of publication.

Jacqueline Jones LaMon
22 April 2007
Brooklyn, NY

Posted at 07:01 AM | Comments (4)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Remembering Phebus

On March 31, 2007, the beautiful, talented poet Phebus Etienne passed on. Phebus-- whose name meant light-- meant poetry. Phebus, crafter of language that captured the spirit of loss and of love and of longing, whose quiet smile could make you smile, whose smart, sly wit rode out on her every word.

I have her unpublished manuscript, Chainstitching, on my shelf with all my books of poetry because this book, printed at her desk and bound only by a clip, deserves a dust jacket, a cover photo, an ISBN. And this is part of why I mourn the loss of Phebus Etienne.

Although her gorgeous book was never published, know that she was not unsung. Those of us who knew her and knew her work know her unique relationship to beauty and the way it has benefited all of us. We understand why she has been anthologized in Cave Canem's Gathering Ground, in Edwidge Dandicant's The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States. We understand how her manuscript was often recognized as a finalist in first book contests (Tupelo Press, 2005, Alice James Book, 2006…) But we don't understand how any judge could resist choosing her as a winner. We understand that this brilliant Haitian-born, New Jersey-based woman, whose mother "packed for diaspora in one suitcase and left Port-au-Prince with warning to none," had the power to speak through her poems, and that her poems, thank heavens, will live on with us.

But there will be no more of them. No more of her soft words, the gleam of her smile, no more of the quiet support she unselfishly offered the people and organizations she believed in.

No more Phebus? She was only 41. She could not be with us long enough. I've said it to others, and I'll say it again. This is how it will be for a lot of us, for a long time. We're going to be steady missing this one. This marvelous, talented, brilliantly beautiful one.

--Camille T. Dungy

To read some of Phebus's poetry, click here.

Photo credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Posted at 08:47 PM | Comments (0)
Category: Guest Bloggers

A Healing, A Welcome Home

Last month, while hanging out with Remica Bingham, I noticed that she shared the same last name as the artist who designed the cover of her book.
"Are you related?" I asked.
She smiled and said, "It's my father."
"Really," I said. "How did that happen?"
She answered me in writing.

A Healing
by Remica Bingham

It’s a strange thing to find your father where you never thought he would be. So when I found my father pouring through the rows of poetry on my bookshelves I was a bit taken aback. He wasn’t reading any poems, just looking at spines and covers, examining each book, its texture, style. This was July 2006, after I found out I’d won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award and that my book, Conversion, would be published, in a matter of months, by Lotus Press.

When Lotus Press asked me if I had any input as to what I’d like to see on the cover of the book, I knew this was the right press at the right time. I told them my father was an artist and that I’d like him to do the cover art. Not only were they agreeable, but they seemed fond of the idea as well, without even knowing our story. I suppose they had read the book, though, since they’d chosen it for their book prize, and did get to glimpse into our past. My father takes a bit of a thrashing (as do many others—myself included) in the book. I tell so much about the dark times in his life, in our lives. My father and mother divorced when I was twelve and remarried when I was twenty. After many years of turmoil and distance, they found their way back to each other, older, wiser and more open to the possibility of happiness, of trust.

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Posted at 09:13 AM | Comments (4)
Category: Bookshelf , Guest Bloggers

The Original Old Girl Goes On An Artist Date

Hello, I am Ladylee, one of the many readers of Tayari’s blog. I am currently reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist's Way with Tayari and a few of you. Tayari asked if I would take a moment to describe my Week 1 “Artist Date”. (For those of you know on the program, an "Artist Date" is when you treat yourself to an outing, just to see something new, to entertain and indulge your inner artist.)

First of all, a little about myself: I am an Atlanta native in my mid-thirties and I am a chemist holding a doctorate degree in the area of organic chemistry. I have published numerous papers in my area of expertise, and consider myself very well grounded in the area of technical writing. Herein lies my issue: I have a habit of approaching any and everything from a scientific, technical, and/or formulaic point of view. When I try to apply my knowledge in technical writing to creative writing, well, there’s a problem. So needless to say, this book and its exercises are providing much needed help, helping me to think a bit differently about my writing and attitudes toward it.

At first, I was a bit perplexed by this whole “Artist Date” assignment, especially the requirement of doing something once a week. Personally, I thought that was a bit much. What would I do? Where would I go? I am finding through the first and now the second week of this process that I have a tendency to pontificate a bit too hard about such things. I even got caught up in trying to make a straight list of twelve things I could do. I found that a bit annoying. I stopped discussing it with people because for some reason, they are just more than ready to tag along. I really needed to just find something interesting to do, stop trying to analyze it all, and just DO IT.

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Posted at 02:24 PM | Comments (5)
Category: Guest Bloggers , The Artist's Way

Debate Is A Metaphor

by Joe Miller, Guest Blooger

I want to complain for a minute.

I'm not happy with the response to my first book, Cross-X: A Turbulent, Triumphant Season with an Inner-City Debate Squad.

I know that sounds crazy, because the book has gotten good reviews and a lot of media attention. It's selling well.

But still. I'm not happy. I'm pissed, to be perfectly blunt, because a few dozen people have decided they don't like the book. They've chosen to ignore it. To pretend it doesn't exist.

So during what should be the time of my life, when I'm traveling around giving readings in cozy little independent book stores and appearing on NPR, I'm actually miserable because I'm carrying out this ongoing argument in my head with a small group of people who just don't get it.

My book is, as the title suggests, about a debate squad from an all-black high school that routinely beats the pants off of debaters from all-white high schools. That's the story. But on a deeper level, it's about power and education, and the ways in which our nation remains divided and unequal.

In the end, debate becomes a metaphor. It signifies injustice in the corridors of power.

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Posted at 01:53 PM | Comments (3)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Remembering Jenny Moore

I have the honor this year of serving at the Jenny McKean Moore Writer in Residence at George Washington University. It's a lovely position-- I get to live on the campus and teach a reduced course load. The best part is that I teach a community workshop to DC writers who are not in school. All this was specified by Jenny McKean Moore, whose estate funds the position.

Through a series of coincidences, I found out that the poet, Honor Moore is the daughter of Jenny Moore. I asked Honor to write a short remembrance of her mother so the people in the community class could know whose generosity made this all possible. She was kind enough to contribute the piece below, a small but loving tribute to an amazing woman:

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Posted at 07:34 AM | Comments (0)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Jelani Cobb on Rio

I have been in touch with Jelani Cobb about a Q&A for this site regarding this trip to Rio, which he wrote about in Essence. His revealations about African-American men and the sex trade in Brazil have caused quite a bit a controversy. He has received so much feedback, postitive and negative, that he has prepared a sort of FAQ about his trip. The questions range from "Why did you write this aticle in the first place" to "What can women do". Interesting stuff.

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Posted at 07:11 AM | Comments (1)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Shot Up, Locked Up, or Somethin by Eisa Ulen

I sat on the steps of a Washington DC row-house one day back in the murder capital crack years of the 1980s, and I heard a young woman walking with her friend up the street past me say: “I’m just gonna go on and have his baby before he gets locked up or shot up or somethin.” I never lost that resignation – and eerie, twisted strength, the kind of strength that endures physical assault and survives, sort-of – in her voice. I never lost her. I wrote about this moment more explicitly in my “Letter to Angela Davis,” which has been anthologized and favorably reviewed. However, I needed to give that voice an entire world to occupy.

That’s why I wrote Crystelle Mourning. It’s not a story about that particular girl, it’s a story about all the nameless, countless, girls and women who watched, powerless, as the boys and men they loved most “got shot up or locked up or somethin.” How were their bodies responding to this destruction of Black male flesh? How were their souls?

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Posted at 01:36 PM | Comments (3)
Category: Bookshelf , Guest Bloggers

We Still Wear The Mask, by Jelani Cobb

You all might remember my moking response to Ice Cube and other hip-hop stars' critque of Oprah Winfrey. Ice Cube, et al, accuse Ms. Winfrey of having a "problem" with hip-hop and demand that she invite them onto her show. Jelani Cobb, professor of history at Spelman College (my alma mater), intense culture-critic, and all-around righteous brother, has written a more serious and thought-provoking response. Meet Jelani, and read his essay.

These days, camouflage is the new black. Hip hop now operates on a single hope: that if the world mistakes kindness for weakness it can also be led to confuse meanness with strength.

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Posted at 03:59 PM | Comments (7)
Category: Current Events , Guest Bloggers

Q&A With Shalema K. McGee

Fresh out of college, Shalema K. McGhee moved to New York to try to make a career in trade book publishing. If you read Black Issues Book Review, you’ve read plenty of articles about the young black stars of publishing. But I thought we would spend a little time with Shalema and hear from someone still in the trenches, someone who is still trying to make her way.

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Posted at 07:29 AM | Comments (3)
Category: Guest Bloggers , Writing

Why I Self-Publish by Tinesha Davis

Who likes poetry? No one. Nor do they like romance or mystery but especially not poetry. This is the unofficial message that I’ve heard for years. This is the message that I let become my truth.

I’ve participated in many conversations that went a little something like this:
Me: I’m a writer.
Them: Oh really, what do you write?
Me: Poetry.
Them: [Silence. Then,] Oh, that’s nice.
Or
I don’t really read poetry –its boring… don’t understand it… just don’t care for it.
Or
Poetry. Well, what black woman doesn’t write poetry?
With comments like these shaping my opinion of public opinion writing poetry has not only been my greatest honor but my greatest shame. I even stopped calling myself a writer in public just so I wouldn’t have to answer the dreaded “what do you write” question. No one likes poetry. And if no one likes poetry, who was going to publish it?

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Posted at 09:42 AM | Comments (6)
Category: Guest Bloggers

Joy Castro, author of THE TRUTH BOOK

I get a lot of email from people who feel they have a life story worth telling, so I thought it would be cool to devote some blog space to someone who has written a memoir. I asked Joy Castro a few questions about the process of writing and publishing, The Truth Book, her memoir about growing up in and escaping an abusive childhood among Jehovah's Witnesses. This description doesn't do justice to this beautiful and moving book.

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Posted at 05:32 PM | Comments (3)
Category: Bookshelf , Guest Bloggers

Flanked by Andria Cole

My name is Andria Cole and I am a fiction writer depending on literature to save my life. I used to feel guilty about the wishes I send along with the stories I submit every month: “Please God, let them publish this, and then please let Oprah happen to see it and read it and love it and bring me on her show and make me a millionaire.” But I stopped feeling sorry when I read a quote of James Baldwin’s (I can’t recall it exactly) where he said essentially the same thing: that he needed writing to save him.

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Posted at 08:30 AM | Comments (3)
Category: Guest Bloggers

EVER WONDER WHY POETS WEAR BLACK?

My good friend, poet Camille Dungy, author of the recently released WHAT TO EAT, WHAT TO DRINK, AND WHAT TO LEAVE FOR POISON, has written for us a blog entry to answer that age-old-question: Why do poets wear black? And just to make this more fun, write in comments the most remarkable experience you've had with an in-person poet (good, bad, sexy, weird.. go for it!) and I will give away autographed copy of Camille's book for the best story!.

Meanwhile, here's her essay:

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Posted at 08:10 AM | Comments (2)
Category: Guest Bloggers

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