tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936180203232676172024-03-18T05:47:52.064-04:00The Writer's GuidePublished by The Writer's CenterThe Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.comBlogger987125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-39642881602488944862018-11-26T10:18:00.001-05:002018-11-26T10:22:38.218-05:00Tara Campbell on the Power of Writing Short <br />
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The author of <i>Circe’s Bicycle</i> talks about worst case scenarios and the magic of flash fiction </span></b></span></div>
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By Yohanca Delgado </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; margin: 0px;">The reported </span><span style="margin: 0px;">resurgence<span style="color: #222222; margin: 0px;"> in the </span><span style="margin: 0px;"><a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/06/08/618386432/poetry-is-making-a-big-comeback-in-the-u-s-survey-results-reveal"><span style="color: blue;">popularity of poetry</span></a></span><span style="color: #222222; margin: 0px;"> suggests a broader hunger for <i>brevity</i>, for lean literary art. Tara Campbell is ahead of curve. Though her first book was the novel <i>TreeVolution </i>(Lillicat Publishers, 2016),<i> </i>she has been writing poetry and flash for years and teaches flash fiction across the DMV area. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Tara Campbell's second book, <i>Circe's Bicycle </i><span style="margin: 0px;">(LitFest Press, April 2018)<i> </i></span>is a collection of flash fiction and poetry. We talked about creating the connective tissue in a flash and poetry collection, writing the dreaded “what if,” and the difference between writing long and writing short. </span></span></div>
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<b><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Your second book, <i>Circe’s Bicycle</i>, is a collection of flash fiction and poetry. What inspired you to bring those two forms together in one collection? What is about these two forms that works well together?</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I have my editor Jane Carman of Lit Fest Press to thank for the inspiration to bring poetry and prose together. I had submitted a couple of micro-pieces to their magazine, and Jane asked if I had enough for a collection. I hadn’t been working toward a collection, and wasn’t sure I had enough of one particular form to put together. Fortunately, Jane was open to a hybrid collection, so I looked back at all my small, strange things to see what made sense together. I took the paintings down from one wall of my office, then printed the poems and stories out and jotted potential themes on each page before taping them to the wall. Pretty soon my office looked like one of those movies where the detective is staring at a web of strings attached to various photos and pieces of evidence stuck to the walls—except I used red sharpie instead of string. Out of that process emerged the two thematic sections of the collection: “Tradition & Transition” and “Love & Consequences.”</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Let’s talk about “We are Twenty-Six,” one of my favorite pieces in this collection. It’s a deliciously fabulist meditation on stagnation and addiction—told from the perspective of twenty-six renegade teeth. How did you combine these two seemingly disparate ideas: stagnation and teeth? </span></span></b></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I tend to fixate on the worst-case scenarios for any situation that comes my way, no matter how unlikely I know my imagined outcomes are. I’ve always ground my teeth in my sleep, but for some reason, I didn’t really stress about it that much until I went to a new dentist. She’s very thorough and competent, and explained to me what grinding was doing not only to my teeth, but also to my gums. So of course my brain created the most ridiculous image of all my teeth spontaneously spilling out of my mouth, and I suppose that combined with my concern about becoming stagnant as a writer (I see all my fellow writers’ heads nodding out there), and this story is the result of those two anxieties. Because that’s what writers do, isn’t it: we fixate on something and then have to write through it.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Along those same lines, the title story, “Circe’s Bicycle,” evokes the siren call of a particular form of escapist grief. A giant bee that carries away a mother who is mourning her child. Can you talk a little bit about how that story came together? </span></span></b></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This story came out of a dream where I was in a room with a small insect that was growing gradually bigger and more threatening, and I was trying to figure out what it wanted from me. I usually don’t write from dreams because the resulting stories can so easily wind up going nowhere. But there was such a curious combination of dread and fascination in the dream, I had to figure out what that was about.</span></span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I suppose it’s also about love and vulnerability. When you really fall in love, whether with a partner or your children or whomever, it’s like a little piece of your heart is no longer safe inside your chest, but walking around on its own. It’s a beautiful and terrifying thing. You start to think about how easily everything could change, and while on the one hand you’re happy and grateful, you also have to face the realization that there’s no way keep your loved ones completely safe in the world. </span></span></div>
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<b><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Flash is having a moment these days, but you’re not new to the form. You teach flash in various places, including The Writer’s Center, American University, and the National Gallery of Art. What do you think it is about the form that appeals so much in 2018? </span></span></b></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Well, the first thing that comes to mind is the trend toward distraction (i.e. multitasking) and shorter attention spans, and some people may feel that’s a simplistic answer, but I think there is something to it. It speaks to a deeper anxiety about not having enough time to absorb all of the information coming at us today. Books, TV, movies, music, news, fake news—it’s no longer enough to read; we have to read even more to figure out if what we’ve just read is real. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and stressed, and flash fiction can be a brief respite from that. It’s not written as fact, yet it can express truths that are often drowned out in all the media whizzing around us.</span></span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Flash is also super accessible. There’s lots of amazing flash online, most of it for free, which means readers can experience a story at any time on their phones wherever they are. Perhaps there’s an element of commitment-phobia or FOMO to the trend toward shorter forms, but I view that in a more positive light. In a world where we all feel pressed for time, flash allows readers and writers to experiment without inhibition. We can try a new author/voice/form, and concentrate entirely on that one thing, without fretting over “losing” the time we’re dedicating to it. If someone who doesn’t think they have time to read a whole novel still carves out time for flash fiction, that’s a good thing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The prospect of resolution is also a powerful motivator. There is peace in being able to complete something, read or write this one little story, to feel like you’ve understood at least one thing in an endlessly complicated world.</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Your first book was a novel (<i>TreeVolution,</i> Lillicat Publishers 2016). How did you transition from writing long to writing short and back to long again? How do the demands of long-form work differ from those of flash for you? </span></span></b></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I have to admit that I don’t normally start a story knowing exactly where it’s going or how long it’s going to turn out. Most of my work starts out with a “what-if” and I spin out various solutions until the story sorts itself out in my head. Poems are a little different, because they usually come to me when I’m pissed off about something. But if I figure out I’m writing a book, I’m like, “Oh crap, here we go,” because we all know novels aren’t easy. When you’re lucky, it’s the subject matter, the problems you throw at your characters and solutions they come up with, that keep you going, no matter what the length.</span></span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I’m usually working on both short and long projects at the same time. Quite often the poems and stories are safety valves for the longer work. When I get stuck on a book, being able to turn to a more immediate goal like a story is much better than shutting down altogether. Above all, I try to keep writing.</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Even as you move across forms and genres, are there themes and questions that consistently spark your curiosity and drive your work? </span></span></b></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As I mentioned earlier, I often write poetry in response to something that pisses me off—violence, racism, sexism, all the -isms. That doesn’t necessarily mean an angry poem comes out of it. Some poems come out playful and hopeful, imagining the world that might be if those various -isms were kicked to the curb, like “When Peanut Butter Baby Ruled the World.” Sometimes real-world problems morph into imagined worlds, and other times imagined worlds become places to speak to real-world problems and examine human nature. </span></span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I get a lot of ideas from the news and popular science articles. Yes, of course additional research is required, but things like IFLScience and stories on NPR fuel a lot of great ideas. In fact, it was a radio segment about scientists listening in on thirsty trees on that inspired my novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">TreeVolution</i>. </span></span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In short, the overarching theme of my work is “what if?”</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What do you read to fuel your work? Do you read flash when you’re working on flash, for example, or do you read across genres? Whose work inspires you?</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I often say I write science fiction for people who don’t think they read science fiction, and that’s what I like to read as well. My favorite speculative fiction considers possible futures while remembering that the science should be in service of the story, not the other way around. Margaret Atwood is a master of this, whether the primary focus is political, as in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Handmaid’s Tale</i>, or our bioengineered world, as in her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MaddAddam</i> series. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Station 11</i> by Emily St. John Mandel is another example of speculative fiction that crosses genres: dystopian with a lush, literary feel.</span></span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I’ve always read across genres, and all over the map: Ray Bradbury, Alice Munro, ZZ Packer, Barbara Kingsolver, Ursula le Guin, Mitchell S. Jackson, Octavia Butler, Joyce Carol Oates. I went through a big John Irving phase, and Christopher Buckley’s always good for a laugh. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hitchhiker’s Guide </i>was huge for me, naturally, and I read all the books in the series.</span></span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And I’ve found wonderful additions to my reading list by going to local readings. I encourage folks to support their local authors, not just the big names, because there’s a lot of talent on the ground. I think at last count there were approximately eleventy-billion amazing writers in the DC-metro area.</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What books do you recommend to writers interested in exploring flash? </span></span></b></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Reading lots of flash and finding stories that make you shiver is the best way to go. There are lots of journals available online, mostly free, so enjoy! Of course, I have to start with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Barrelhouse</i> (full disclosure, I’m a fiction editor there). But there’s also <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(b)OINK</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brevity</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">CHEAP POP</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cotton Xenomorph</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ellipsis Zine</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Every Day Fiction</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash Fiction Online</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Heavy Feather Review</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jellyfish Review</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">jmww</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal of Compressed Creative Arts</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">KYSO Flash</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Literary Orphans</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lost Balloon</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Matchbook</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">PANK</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SmokeLong Quarterly</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spelk</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Split Lip</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tin House</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vestal Review</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">WhiskeyPaper</i>, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wigleaf</i>. And then there are the compilations like Best Small Fictions, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wigleaf</i> 50, and Best of the Net (this last one isn’t restricted to flash).</span></span></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I always hesitate to single out individual authors, because I know I’ll remember dozens more I should have added once the thing goes to print. But I will mention some contemporary writers whose stories I’ve taught in flash courses: Amber Sparks, Rion Amilcar Scott, Kathy Fish, Jan Elman Stout, Kathryn Kulpa, Brynn MacNabb, Christopher Gonzalez, Tyrese Coleman, Tessa Yang, Dorothy Bendel, Cathy Ulrich, Jennifer Young, Megan Giddings, Ben Loory, Miranda Stone, and Virgie Townsend.</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What are you working on these days? Any new projects on the horizon? </span></span></b></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My eternal book project still looms large: a historical novel about a “troupe” of Ashanti (now Ghana) on an ethnographic tour to Vienna, Austria in the late 19<sup>th</sup> century. I came across an Austrian author’s account of this exhibit while working on my MA in German, and I couldn’t believe what I was reading. These ethnographic exhibitions, in which human beings were put on display, sound more like an episode of <i>The Twilight Zone</i> than history. But they actually happened, often taking place in zoos. I wanted to know more, and particularly from the perspective of the people on display. This project a bit of a departure from anything I’ve done before, but the story so captivated me, I have to keep chipping away at it.</span></span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span>The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com136tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-4245841407538002392018-11-07T13:12:00.002-05:002018-11-07T13:12:32.980-05:00An Interview with Nan Kilmer Baker, author of NAKED JOY<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By Tessa Wild, TWC Front Desk Associate</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Tessa: Why did you decide to write NAKED JOY?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Nan: Born with a passion for writing, I had written stories for years about people, places and events around the world that intrigued me. Most of these wound up in a large dress box under my bed. Bolstered by the confidence and skills acquired through writing courses taken over the years, I eventually assembled those earlier works, along with some newer, into a collection of essays. My book, NAKED JOY, Confessions of a Skittish Catholic from Idaho, was published in July, 2017. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Tessa: How did your time at TWC impact your writing?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Nan: The courses I have taken at TWC over the past fifteen years have inspired me to continue writing, polishing previous work, honing my skills, and above all, refusing to give up. Experienced instructors/authors along with fellow classmates provided invaluable feedback. They offered both the praise and criticism I needed to refine my manuscript into a book worthy of publication.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Tessa: What kind of impact are you hoping your book will have on the world?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Nan: While I doubt NAKED JOY will have much of an impact on the world, I do hope my writing resonates with readers on a personal level. Reviews thus far, from men and women alike, have expressed an appreciation of my writer’s voice, describing often mundane occurrences in life with compassion, humility, and a droll sense of humor. I’d also like to believe I have put my Podunk little town of Nampa on the map for readers, by sharing a little of “My Own Private Idaho.” Despite being born and bred in this small western town, I have been fortunate to have traveled the world, called nearly a dozen locations home, and lived to write about my adventures before I’m too old to remember…</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Tessa: What is the most difficult part of your artistic process? </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Nan: Without doubt, the most difficult part of the artistic process for me is the sharing of deeply personal, sometimes painful events with my readers, many complete strangers. An introverted, private, highly sensitive woman, I had to overcome this obstacle in my attempt to write honest, factual, believable stories.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Tessa: Did publishing your book change your writing process? </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Nan: Publishing my book only changed my writing process in that I now have more confidence in myself. For years I could push my work aside and listen to that gnawing voice inside my head—“Face it. You are never going to be published. Give up!” This excuse is no longer valid. And it doesn’t hurt that sales have exceeded my expectations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Tessa: What are you working on now? </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b></b><br />Nan: I am currently working on writing a book about writing a book. After a decade of toil and countless rejections, I believe I have a story of interest for both writers and readers. I like to say “everything in the publication process that CAN go wrong, DID go wrong for me.” From shady agents, to lost submissions to computer catastrophes, I experienced some of the worst. But the highs made up for the lowest of lows and I survived. All should make for an enlightening, astounding, sometimes humorous, often infuriating, first-hand account of the world of publishing.<br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Tessa: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers? </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Nan: Here is my advice for naïve, aspiring writers like myself a short time ago. Besides the usual “don’t give up, develop a thick skin, believe in yourself,” etc., I might add—“BEWARE!” There are many “publishing experts” out there eager to help you in your quest to publish your work. And they will find you and contact you and entice you with promises for success. And they will want to charge you incredible fees with NO guarantees. These people seem to prey upon indie writers trying to make it on their own. I am not saying there aren’t some who are reputable and honest and able to help. But the money most are demanding is difficult to justify and their success rates highly questionable. With some effort and time, most writers can do for themselves what these professionals are promising. A writer and not a business person, I found myself learning more about marketing and publishing than I ever wanted to know, but my hard work paid off in the end.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Tessa: Is there anything else you'd like to share? </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Nan: Not to boast, but my cousin’s grandfather<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">—</span>that would be my father’s sister’s husband’s father—helped invent the TATER TOT. And who doesn’t love these frozen Ore-Ida gems?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Nan Kilmer Baker hails from Idaho, the “Famous Potato” state, where she began writing as a young girl and never looked back—moving from diary entries to ghost writing term papers to copy writing. NAKED JOY is her first book, but in her dependably quirky blog she has been musing for years about topics as diverse as Mr. Clean, travel, toilets, butter and stain removal. Nan is the mother of two young adults. Having lived abroad for years, she currently resides in Northern Virginia with her husband—and other treasures she collected during her travels.</span><br /></div>
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The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-80582006118255485772018-10-24T17:59:00.001-04:002018-10-29T15:05:50.162-04:00An Interview with Mary K. O’Melveny, author of A Woman of a Certain Age<div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Tessa Wild: Why did you decide to write <i>A Woman of a Certain Age</i>?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Mary K. O’Melveny: Being one myself, I have been writing for some time about issues that affect women as they age, including their “visibility” and place in the world. While the book includes “personal” stories about the writer, I believe the issues and topics are experienced far more broadly by women of many ages. (And men can relate as well!)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>TW: How did your time at TWC impact your writing? Did it impact your career in any way?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">MO: I have taken several poetry workshops at TWC and found them helpful in allowing me to improve my skills as a writer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>TW: What kind of impact are you hoping your book of poetry will have on the world?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">MO: As noted above, age-related issues affect or will affect everyone. I hope my take on personal stories as well as more “worldly” events will add to the dialogue about how we can make our world kinder and understand that we all share things in common, such as our reaction to losing parents, illness, feeling validated, coping with a rapidly changing universe. Some poems in the book, however, are also meditations on the state of the world in which we are all struggling to survive, regardless of age.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>TW: What is the most difficult part of your artistic process? </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">MO: I think there are three answers to this questions: (1) Deciding when a poem is “done” and ready to be read/heard by others. (2) Being willing to “take chances.” Not trying to wrap everything up at the end of the poem. (I am a retired lawyer so my legal writing always required “conclusions,” a habit that is hard to break.) (3) Finally, accepting “rejections” and continuing on with a clear heart.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>TW: Did publishing your first book change your writing process? </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">MO: It felt very validating (see the last part of my answer above).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>TW: What are you working on now?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">MO: I am working on a new book titled “Merging Star Hypotheses.” It is a mix of personal and political poetic responses to our troublesome times. I am always inspired/outraged by something in the news.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>TW: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers? </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">MO: Write every day. The world is filled with poetry prompts. Also, try to find a supportive writer’s group that is both “safe” and able to give constructive feedback.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>TW: Is there anything else you'd like to share? </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">MO: I live part of the time in Washington DC and part of the time in a country home near Woodstock, NY. The contrast between these two places could not be starker -- so my “place” at any moment often informs the topics I decide to write about. My Woodstock-based/inspired poems are a lot more about the natural world. The DC-based ones often focus more on whether that world will survive. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Mary K. O’Melveny's </span>poems have been published in various print and online journals as well as blog sites such as “Writing in a Woman’s Voice” and “The New Verse News.” Her poem “Cease Fire” won the 2017 Raynes Poetry Competition sponsored by Jewish Currents Magazine. Her poem “A Short Bibliography of Secrets” (included in her book) was a finalist in the 2018 Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest as well as a finalist for the 2017 Pangaea Prize sponsored by The Poet’s Billow.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Learn more about A Woman of a Certain Age and order a copy here: <a href="https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/a-woman-of-a-certain-age-by-mary-k-omelveny/">https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/a-woman-of-a-certain-age-by-mary-k-omelveny/</a></b></span></div>
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The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com182tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-80060505348484491582018-09-21T09:59:00.004-04:002018-09-21T10:05:22.385-04:00The Long View: Giving Novels the Time They Need<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By Susan Coll, TWC Novel Year Instructor</span></b></span><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Students are frequently more interested in polishing their query letters than in perfecting their manuscripts. That’s a common thread I’ve observed in the many workshops that I’ve run at The Writer’s Center. I’ve heard many a student express the hope that even though the book is not yet the best possible version of itself, an agent or editor will recognize its potential. Perhaps they will even sit by the author’s side and serve tea while they revise.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Writers are always in a rush to publish—I get it. I, too, am always itching to send off my not-quite-ready manuscripts. The tension between taking the time to write the best book I can and wanting to get it out into the world right away, is part of what keeps my fire burning.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Last year’s Novel Year class—an intensive workshop in which ten novelists spend the year writing and revising their work-in-progress—aimed to take the long view, to slow down and give the novel time to breathe. Sometimes the novel is not ready for publication, and sometimes the world is not yet ready for the novel. Accordingly, I brought in three guest speakers whose work took years to find publishers, and yet who each ultimately had great success:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><b>Julie Langsdorf</b><br />In 2008 I ran a workshop at The Writer’s Center called Intro to the Novel. In walked Julie, who could have been teaching the class herself. The novel she had already largely completed was terrific, and I had little to offer her by way of advice other than to encourage her to find an agent. She did, rather easily, but the book failed to sell. The timing might have been off—at the center of her book are affluent suburban neighbors feuding over a behemoth home development project. Her novel was being shopped to publishers just as the housing market began to crash. She thought, “Well, okay, the huge house concept is dead now. I guess I missed the boat.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Julie put the novel in the proverbial drawer and moved on to other pursuits, but every once in a while she would pull it up, revise it, and put it away again. Last fall she decided to send it back out into the world. The agent who offered to represent her sent the book out on a Friday and by the following week she was fielding calls from editors. The novel, <i>White Elephant</i>, will be published next spring by Ecco.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><b>J.H. Diehl</b><br />A middle grade author and Chevy Chase resident, Jean describes her book journey as more odyssey than cruise. She had an agent offer representation for the novel in late 2012, and the manuscript generated a flurry of interest. She was asked to revise for two major publishers, but when the second one still wasn’t satisfied with her second round of revisions for them, she and her agent pulled the book and started searching for a publisher all over again. In June 2016 she received an offer from Chronicle Books, with what she describes as “the kind of over-the-top enthusiastic letter from the editor that every writer dreams of getting.” The book is called <i>Tiny Infinities</i>, and Diehl’s protagonist, Alice, has the charming quirk of mentally categorizing life events. <i>Tiny Infinities</i> was picked as a Fall 2018 Junior Library Guild Selection almost as soon as it appeared in printed galleys. Alice would surely file this one under, “all you need is to find the right editor.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><b>Paul Goldberg</b><br />When I first met Paul some six years ago, he told me that although he had successfully published three books of non-fiction, he’d been unable to sell any of the three novels he had written over the last decade. I took a look at his dusty manuscripts and zeroed in on one that seemed to me particularly smart. He made a round of revisions, gave it a new title, and his agent agreed to send it back out. Many of the editors who had initially rejected it were by now long gone, and it went back out to several of the same imprints. <i>The Yid</i> was published by Picador in 2016 to wide acclaim and was a finalist for two prizes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Why did this one succeed the second time around? Perhaps the manuscript needed some sharpening, or maybe the provocative new title cast it in a new light, or maybe it was just a matter of serendipity. (Also full disclosure, Paul and I are now married.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />The drive to put your work out into the world is healthy, and I’m not suggesting anyone stop trying. It’s good to keep pushing forward—it’s also good to step back. I happen to believe that there is a nugget of truth in clichés about waiting and that sometimes good things happen later in life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Susan Coll is the author of five novels, most recently <i>The Stager</i>—a <i>New York Times</i> and <i>Chicago Tribune</i> Editor’s Choice. Her other books include <i>Acceptance</i>—which was made into a television movie starring Joan Cusack—<i>Beach Week</i>, <i>Rockville Pike</i>, and <i>karlmarx.com</i>. Her work has appeared<br />in publications including <i>The New York Times</i>, <i>Washington Post</i>, NPR.org, atlantic.com, and <i>The Millions</i>. She worked as the Events and Programs Director at Politics & Prose Bookstore for five years.</span>The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-22101751833507914182018-09-19T12:02:00.000-04:002018-09-19T13:27:03.670-04:002017 First Novel Prize Winner Sheila Martin<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><i>Sheila Martin will read at The Writer's Center on Friday, September 28, 2018, 7:30pm. <a href="https://contestwinners.app.rsvpify.com/" target="_blank">Click here for details »</a></i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It’s the beginning of summer at Coney Island in the 1950s: the rides are whirring and cranking, kids are screaming and laughing, the smells of Nathan’s Famous hot dogs and sea water hang in the air. In <i>The Coney Island Book of the Dead</i>, the 2017 winner of the McLaughlin-Esstman-Stearns First Novel Prize, Sheila Martin draws from her own memories to create the character of Brooklyn, a spunky 11-year-old who goes on a magical chase to find a mysterious blues singer who may or may not be real. Brooklyn narrates the story with a voice that conveys both innocence and eloquence as she deals with her abusive aunt, her missing cousin, and the old woman who rents the upstairs room in the house she shares with her mentally ill mother. To add to the magic, each chapter includes a painting done by Sheila herself, who is originally a painter and only recently has begun to write. Her debut novel is a triumph; it’s beautifully strange, vivacious, whimsical, and a bit dark. We spoke to Sheila about her prize-winning novel, her art, and her influencers.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">TWC: What was your inspiration for the book? Did the idea come all at once, or did it develop as you wrote?</span></b><br />
<b></b><b></b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />SM: It came mostly from growing up in Coney Island and the many oddball people I knew back then, and to a lesser degree from living in Memphis for the past twenty-six years. The idea developed slowly after I did a number of paintings inspired by Coney Island. It occurred to me to write down a few of my memories. I think a lot of people start writing this way, though they usually go on to write memoirs. After a while I thought maybe I could turn it into something publishable, so I turned to fiction.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">TWC: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?</span></b><br />
<b></b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />SM: I’ve always been a visual artist and as a kid I had a knack for story-telling. When I was in the second grade I wrote a fictionalized memoir with scary pictures. In my working life I used to be a<br />graphic designer before I took very early retirement so I could paint full-time (thanks to my husband Jim). I was also inspired by a talk by Allen Ginsberg in 1993. Shortly after that I started writing<br />down my memories and eventually the Coney Island stories, which was the first fiction I ever wrote. That’s when I got hooked.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><b>TWC: How do your art and writing influence one another?</b></span><br />
<b></b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />SM: As for painting, not much. Some of the paintings are intentional illustrations, like the one of Mississippi, but most of them are visions inspired by Coney Island. But there’s another connection—<br />writing is a graphic experience for me. I print out sections to see how the words look on paper, then edit from that. It’s very important that they look right.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><b>TWC: Did you weave any of your own personality into your characters?</b></span><br />
<b></b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />SM: I drew on memories, sure, but Brooklyn is probably smarter and spunkier than I was. I really was fascinated by the music bar on the boardwalk, but I never could sing and I never had a dog.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><b>TWC: What was your favorite scene to write? What was your hardest scene to write?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">SM: There weren’t any. I rewrote them all more times than I can remember and every time was fascinating. A couple of scenes felt cathartic—Brooklyn singing in chapter 19 and the musical duel.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">TWC: Growing up did you have authors that influenced you?</span></b><br />
<b></b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />SM: When I was very young I had a book called <i>The Little Golden Book of Verse</i>. It had “The Swing” in it by Robert Louis Stevenson. I’ve tried to find that book online, but can’t. I think I could still draw some of the illustrations from memory. I also loved “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I even memorized part of it when I was a child.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />In writing this novel, I was influenced by To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. In general, I’m influenced by many modern writers such as Francine Prose, T.C. Boyle, Alison Lurie, George Saunders, Jennifer Egan, and Mary Karr.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><b>TWC: What advice would you give first-time authors?</b></span><br />
<b></b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />SM: If they are young—in high school— I’d recommend they major in creative writing in college, if for no other reason than they would at least have a few years to write before they have to get a job. I’m probably saying this because I had such a blast in art school. If they’re starting late in life, like I<br />did, I’m not sure. When I started writing at about age fifty, I realized there was a lot I didn’t know, but I had no idea how much. I read books on writing and a lot of fiction. Then, when I had a big, messy, overwritten body of work full of purple prose I engaged master fiction editor, Renni Browne, coauthor of the classic <i>Self-Editing for Fiction Writers</i> to help me work it into something readable. I was thrilled when she agreed to take it on. I learned a tremendous amount from her. I never took a<br />writing class (which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t). I got most of my writing education from Renni. I highly recommend her book.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><b>TWC: What’s next for you? What are you working on now?</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">SM: I’d been writing and painting for The Coney Island Book of the Dead for about twenty years. I wrote reams and reams of subplots with major characters that didn’t make it into the final version. I was sad when it was finally done, so I wrote another novel, The Time Artist. I’ve been trying to get an agent to represent it and have had some close calls. I was also inspired to write fourteen short and flash fiction stories right after I finished <i>The Time Artist</i>, and have been sending them and novel excerpts to journals.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />I know it’s off topic, but I want to say what a thrill it’s been to win the McLaughlin-Esstman-Stearns First Novel Prize. I’ve never won anything before. I didn’t even tell anyone except my husband for three days in case it wasn’t really true. I want to especially thank Grace Mott and everyone<br />at The Writer’s Center for all their support.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">About the First Novel Prize</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Each year, The Writer’s Center awards $1,000 to the author of an exceptional first novel published in the previous calendar year. Conceived and funded by former board member Neal P. Gillen, the McLaughlin-Esstman- Stearns First Novel Prize honors the late Ann McLaughlin, along with dedicated writers and members of The Writer’s Center faculty Barbara Esstman and Lynn Stearns. Books are judged on a number of criteria, including but not limited to quality and originality of character, setting, plot, and language.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Sheila’s prints can be purchased on her website, <a href="http://sheilapmartin.com/">sheilapmartin.com</a>. You can <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Coney-Island-Book-Illustrated-Novel/dp/0997282207" target="_blank">purchase your copy of <i>The Coney Island Book of the Dead</i> on Amazon</a>.</span>The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-72615215484600682642018-09-13T09:37:00.002-04:002018-09-13T09:43:34.986-04:00Meet Amy L. Freeman, TWC’s Development Director<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By Tessa Wild, TWC Intern</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I sat down with Amy L. Freeman, our new Development Director, to chat about what brought her to The Writer’s Center. She comes to us from Bethesda Cares, where she worked to end homelessness in our community. Now she’s embracing her literary side and is eager to support writers and people who want to write. Her own bylines include <i>The Washington Post</i>, <i>Huffington Post</i>, and more, and she was named 2017 “Voice of the Year” by Blogher.com for her piece on gender pronouns. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Tessa Wild: What brought you to the Writer’s Center?</span></b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Amy L. Freeman</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Amy L. Freeman: I left a job in February after my beloved executive director retired, and I was gonna write full-time for a year, and about three months into it somebody sent me the ad for a position at The Writer’s Center, and I thought: why would I not surround myself with people who care about what I care about? I tend to believe that every decision we make puts us incrementally closer or farther to our goals, and that seemed like one that would move me closer to my goals.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">TW: What are your goals?</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">AF: Not only to write, but to be part of a literary community in the area in which I live.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">TW: What’s your favorite thing about The Writer’s Center so far?</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">AF: Right now, my favorite thing about it is how much it’s in transition. We’ve got a physical renovation going on upstairs, we’ve got a new season of classes, we’ve got a new website launching in January, and we have a lot of new staff. It’s a time of great transition, but it’s also a time of great opportunity.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We’ve got an extraordinary team of dedicated professionals right now who seem really committed to our mission. So it seems like an extraordinary time to have landed here, and a chance to really help shape the direction of the organization moving forward. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">TW: What’s the story you would most like to tell? </span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">AF: I’m interested in emotional candor in writing. I know I’ve written something good when I feel physically sick afterwards — it means I’ve gotten down to the core of whatever the humanity, whatever the issue is at which I’m looking. So the story I want to tell is one of emotional honesty, which is rare to find, at least in my personal life. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">TW: If you could meet one author, who would it be?</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">AF: Probably David Sedaris if he still drank. I would meet him over drinks, cause he’s pretty amusing. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">TW: What writing are you working on now?</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">AF: I’m always working on essays — two of which got rejected yesterday — and I’m close to finishing what I hope is a final revision of a novel. </span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">TW: What’s the novel?</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">AF: It’s called “Smotherly Love.” It's told in three voices, and it’s the story of a mother and two adult daughters. It basically looks at the question of the long-term impacts of a toxic upbringing that masquerades as utopia.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">TW: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">AF: I know this is standard advice, but keep writing, keep writing, keep writing. Get involved in communities, because you will get rejections, you will get rejections, and then you will get more rejections, and it’s really, really great to have the support of people who are also getting rejections, even though their writing is good. It’s also great to have writing groups, and critique groups, and get feedback, because other times we as writers spend too much time with our own spectacular, yet tiring, brains. </span>The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-51216072743443980842018-08-29T14:05:00.001-04:002018-08-29T14:05:26.744-04:00How I Came to The Writer’s Center...<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>By Caroline Bock, TWC Instructor</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Death is a good way to start.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maybe you don’t think so, but I wouldn’t have written my debut collection of short stories, <i>Carry Her Home</i>, without the death of my Pop. My husband and I had just put our Long Island home on the market when Pop died, not unexpectedly, from the ravages of Parkinson’s. We were planning to make a big move to the D.C. area for my husband’s career. It would be the first time in my life I would be living outside of New York.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />In late October, four days after Pop was buried, Hurricane Sandy hit us. While we were spared the worst of it—the winds felled a line of evergreens in my yard and power lines were strewn across our streets—I told my husband to stay in Maryland where he had already started his new position. I would take care of the house and our two kids. I was my father’s daughter. Pop, who had singlehandedly raised four children, even came to me in the cold, dark howl of the wind. He said, “Toots, write all this down.” I couldn’t. I could only cry out that I missed him before the wind took his voice.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />When we arrived in Maryland in August, I had no friends in the area, barely an acquaintance. Years before, I had given up my career in cable television to focus on raising a family and to circle back to my original plan: to write stories. I had completed an M.F.A. in Fiction at the City College of New York. I had the very good fortune of having two young adult novels published. Still, with the death of Pop, with the move, I was adrift, displaced. And even more, I was losing any desire to write another<br />novel, or anything at all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />Within weeks of settling into our new home, I decided to take a creative writing class. At least, I’d have somewhere to go. And I thought: I could go forward by going back. Short stories were always my first love, even as I had abandoned them to focus on writing novels. I had many years before studied as an undergraduate at Syracuse University with Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff. Hadn’t I always wanted to write short?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />Pop always said I’d write about him someday. He was a remarkable man. When my mother suffered a massive stroke, which resulted in brain damage, paralysis, and institutionalization (she would live on another forty-five years), he declared that he would raise his four children by himself. I was the eldest at four-and-a-half years old. It was 1967. Fathers, especially single fathers who were working two jobs, did not raise four children alone. I’m parsing my story. The bottom line: I needed fiction<br />to help me understand my loss, and for a while, fiction was lost to me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />So, I took my first class in flash fiction. I had no idea what flash fiction was—I had never read any, and I had never written any. The appeal of a story compressed to a thousand words, or less, drove me to The Writer’s Center. I also signed up for another class, 6 Stories/6 Weeks, figuring it would fire me up to write. And I did write. I wrote about a Jewish guy from the Bronx, who had a tumultuous, shortlived marriage to an Italian-American girl from Queens. I called him ‘Pop.’ I wrote stories about love and family and tragedy. I wrote short, sudden fiction, and I wrote long, short fiction. In my new home in Maryland, I sat in front of my old computer, fortified by tea with milk and honey, and wrote.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the 6 Stories/6 Weeks class, I met Angela. After the official class was over, at Angela’s urging, several of us continued meeting. We agreed our focus would be full-length stories or novel chapters. For the first meeting, we gathered at her house, which was fantastically filled with ravens, photos and paintings of ravens, sculptures of ravens, and ravens from the Poe museums in Baltimore and Richmond. From atop her bookshelf, one sleek, glassy-eyed raven, a taxidermist’s handiwork, urged us on. If I knew what ravens symbolized then, bad luck, the Greek gods’ messengers, it might have foreshadowed what Angela soon shared with us. She was battling cancer. In a few months, she would be dead. However, by then, our group, born out of The Writer’s Center, was determined to continue, if only to show up Death with our writing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />In the past five years, I’ve taken half a dozen classes at The Writer’s Center, and more recently, I’ve leapt into leading workshops as well. All the while, I am writing my fiction with the support and friendship of the people I discovered there.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><i>Caroline Bock’s debut short story collection, </i>Carry Her Home<i>, winner of the 2018 Fiction Award by the Washington Writers’ Publishing House, will be published on October 15th in trade paperback and ebook by WWPH. She will read from her new work at The Writer’s Center on November 10 and lead a workshop in short story writing in November.</i></span>The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-13821363129227453042018-07-11T09:56:00.000-04:002018-07-11T09:56:13.127-04:00Poetry & Baseball: An Interview with E. Ethelbert Miller<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Originally published in the Summer 2018 issue of </i>The Writer's Guide</span></span><i></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i><a href="http://poetlore.com/" target="_blank">Poet Lore</a></i> executive editor and beloved poet <a href="http://www.eethelbertmiller.com/" target="_blank">E. Ethelbert Miller</a> has hit another home run with his 16th book, <i><a href="http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/If-God-Invented-Baseball/E-Ethelbert-Miller/9781947951006" target="_blank">If God Invented Baseball</a></i>. Drawing on his love of sports and baseball's zen like quality, the 49 poems in Miller's new book center around America's favorite pastime. B. Perryman caught up with the Bard of Baseball just in time for spring training. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">BP: This is your 16th book and your first about baseball. What separates these poems from your prior works?<br /><br />EEM: I’ve become a better writer after years of editing and teaching. I felt when my collected poems edited by Kirsten Porter and published by Willow Books (2016) came out it marked the end of a chapter in my life. Many of those poems were written during my 40-year tenure at Howard University. Since departing from Howard I’ve grown considerably as a result of new opportunities and having more time to read and write. The increase in my leisure time has provided a chance to watch and attend more baseball games. I like how <i>If God Invented Baseball</i> is a collection built around one theme. One will find in this book the game explored from many angles and in a variety of poetic forms. I’ve always made references to baseball in my work but this new book is an expansion of love.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">BP: Who is your favorite team? Favorite player of all time?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">EEM: I’m a Washington Nationals fan. I’m happy baseball returned to this city before my last inning. All major cities need ballparks and teams that help develop a sense of community. Look at the importance of the Houston Astros winning the World Series last year after the city of Houston was hit with a terrible hurricane. I love that the Nats play just a subway ride away. Growing up I lived not far from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, so the Yankees were the team I cheered for during my childhood. There are many references to people who played for the New York Yankees in my new book. But I guess my heart will always have a special place for Sandy Koufax who pitched for the Dodgers. When Ichiro Suzuki entered the major leagues in 2001 he was the player I began to follow daily. But going back to my favorite team The Nationals, I’m a fan of Bryce Harper, Trea Turner and Michael A. Taylor. Oh, and I miss Dusty Baker.<br /><br /><br />BP: How is baseball like poetry, for you? What do the disciplines have in common, and what makes baseball so compelling to write about?<br /><br />EEM: Baseball teaches one patience. Getting a hit is like trying to find the right word. Striking out can be like writer’s block. Standing alone in the outfield can be as lonely as sitting at one’s desk. We all want to make it to the majors; we what to be successful and win. Baseball instructs us that the majority of the time we won’t get a hit; we will seldom pitch the perfect game. Baseball reminds us that we are human and we make not just mistakes but errors. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />I find baseball compelling because it teaches me how to embrace aging. Every year there is spring training. An older returning player never knows if this is the season a youngster might take his place on the roster. We are all replaceable. I take comfort in the slowness of the game. I admire the beauty of a great fielding play or a majestic homerun. Trying to capture this on the page is what I attempted to do in my new book.<br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">BP: What is your writing process like? Do you have advice for budding (or established) poets?<br /><br />EEM: I’m always writing, especially on social media. Some of my poems begin with letters to friends. Lines start in emails and get posted on Facebook. I’ve written more poems the last two years than at any other point in my life. I write fast and revise when I’m sending things out for publication. I’ve been deeply grateful to have my friend Kirsten Porter work as my literary assistant. She is always providing excellent feedback on the new work I create. I’ve been visiting museums more and spending time with visual artists. This has help me look at poetry in terms of color and white space on the page. My daughter has returned to drawing and we’ve begun to have nice conversations around her work. I think it’s very important for poets and writers to be engaged with our changing world. I’ve been trying to add more science and technology to my diet. I want to create art that embraces the new while respecting the past. My advice to writers is that they always attempt to tackle the big philosophical questions – who are you? Why are you here?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />BP: When did you first know you were a poet?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">EEM: The idea of becoming a writer started during my college years at Howard. I gave my first public reading in 1969 at All Soul’s Church located in Northwest Washington. I read with poets Carolyn Rodgers, Askia Muhammad Toure, and Ebon. The jazz musician Marion Brown also performed that evening. My early poems were published in the college newspaper (<i>The Hilltop</i>) and read on the radio (WHUR-FM). Having an audience will encourage you to believe in yourself.<br /><br />BP: When did you first know you’d be a lifelong baseball fan? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">EEM: I love sports. One of things I most enjoyed was watching my son play basketball in high school and in college. He remains my favorite basketball player. I keep a picture of him on my desk and I always wear one of his NCAA rings. I admire my daughter for her passion for running and her discipline. Now that both of my children are married I look back at the past and realize it’s been a lifelong journey of not just loving baseball but other sports too. Maybe I knew I would be a lifelong fan after walking into Yankee Stadium as a young boy and looking at a field of green, a sea of grass.<br /><br />BP: What’s next for you?<br /><br />EEM: I want to see the public response to If God Invented Baseball. Maybe this is the book that will finally bring me a World Series ring. In the preface to the book I made the following comment:<br />“I admire Dusty Baker and should have written this book with a toothpick in my mouth.”<br />Dusty is no longer the Nats manager but what is baseball if not memories of the good times and the people that we loved.</span>The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-62511024227198394722018-06-25T09:14:00.001-04:002018-06-25T10:04:52.108-04:00Screenwriting 101: Liar, Liar Pants on Fire<br />
<b>By <a href="https://www.brianpricescreenwriting.com/" target="_blank">Brian Price</a>, author of <i>Classical Storytelling and Contemporary Screenwriting</i></b><br />
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Any decent screenwriting program will tell its students that the very first writing manual was Aristotle’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poetics</i>, in which he examined the Greek tragedies of his day in meticulous detail to discern the patterns and recurring elements in the most successful ones.<br />
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These programs usually have their students read it, discuss it profoundly, and then summarily forget about it as they deal with more contemporary filmmaking realities.<br />
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Which is why, during speaking engagements, I’m constantly meeting screenwriters who say: “Yeah, we had to read <i>Poetics</i>, but couldn’t ever get through it. But it’s really just about Greek tragedies, right? Well, I don’t write those. I write superhero body swap serial killer comedies.”<br />
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Which is a shame.<br />
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Because what’s most interesting about <i>Poetics</i>, for writers today, is not what Aristotle had to say about <i>Oedipus Rex</i>. But what he had to say about <i>Star Wars</i> and <i>Some Like It Hot</i>. Because those observable patterns and universal principles he identifies and explores are not at all specific to Greek tragedy—but to EVERY successful dramatic narrative that’s ever been told.<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZAGR9yGzeO4/WzDmbv5XKfI/AAAAAAAACMo/Q-FyVi_cPAwaZ-y1CaiFjqpnLtcxKvfPwCLcBGAs/s1600/Classical%2BStorytelling.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1240" data-original-width="833" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZAGR9yGzeO4/WzDmbv5XKfI/AAAAAAAACMo/Q-FyVi_cPAwaZ-y1CaiFjqpnLtcxKvfPwCLcBGAs/s320/Classical%2BStorytelling.jpg" width="214" /></a>But for a full accounting of those principles and how you can utilize them in your own creative work to make it more successful (warning: shameless plug), you’ll have to read my book. In the meantime, I wanted to mention one of my favorite observations.<br />
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When discussing history’s most successful stories, Aristotle defines the craft of dramatic writing as simply “the art of telling lies skillfully.”<br />
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His point is that, as writers, we must embrace the artifice of our craft. We tell lies—but we tell them to reveal a bigger, general truth, a truth about the human experience.<br />
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I think about this whenever a student comes to me with a “brilliant movie idea” based upon some experience they had in their real life. They often think that if they can just get it down on the page precisely as it happened, it will make a great script.<br />
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It won’t.<br />
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That’s because movies are <i>not</i> life. Though the best ones certainly illuminate something interesting <i>about</i> life.<br />
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For Aristotle, dramatic writing is of a much higher order than historical writing since the latter is simply concerned with the <i>particular</i>, while the former is concerned with the <i>universal</i>.<br />
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So a good story cannot simply be a depiction of events in another person’s life. It must show <i>our</i> lives reflected back to us in the experiences of that other person.<br />
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And for Aristotle, a story cannot accomplish that when it is strictly bound to what HAS happened. Instead, it must dramatize what MAY happen—what is POSSIBLE according to the same laws of <i>probability</i> and <i>necessity</i> that govern all our actions and outcomes. Only then can we relate the events to what COULD happen to us.<br />
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That is why the first rule in my writing classes is “…but that’s the way it happened” is barred from ever being spoken. I don’t care what actually happened. Your audience doesn’t care. The only valid reason for any choice you make in a story is that it makes the story BETTER.<br />
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For no matter how well it is written, it will matter to no one but the writer and those who participated in that history. It will have no resonance <i>beyond</i> the particulars, since it is just concerned with recounting the facts, not getting at the universal truths that transcend those facts.<br />
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But before you dream up some wildly fantastical movie premise, know that the opposite of this observation is just as true.<br />
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For every real-life TRUE STORY OF MY CRAZY COLLEGE ROOMMATE, I’m pitched THE ROBOT HOBBITS OF NINJA ALLEY, a story far too removed from real life to accurately reflect anything of it.<br />
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If we are looking for LIES to tell a GENERAL TRUTH then we must find a balance, a sweet spot between reality and artifice that allows truth to be spun from fiction, the universal from the particular.<br />
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I’m reminded of that movie written by that guy who grew up in Modesto, California with dreams of becoming a racecar driver while all his friends spent their dead-end lives simply cruising around the Malt Shop. His dad wanted him to join him as an office supply salesman and never quite understood his son’s wanderlust, leading to increased conflict between them. As a student at USC film school, this writer actually got to write about that experience growing up. What do you think he called this deeply personal work?<br />
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If you answered <i>Star Wars</i>, gold star to you.<br />
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George Lucas made a very personal film by taking his <i>real</i> feelings and concerns, and placing them within a <i>fiction</i>. By doing so, he made those experiences universal, by dwelling not on the facts of his adolescence, but on the truth of it.<br />
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As screenwriters, we must find that proper proportion of CREATIVE INVENTION and PERSONAL TRUTH. That balance allows an audience to laugh and cry and scream, and say, ah, that is <i>my</i> experience up there on the screen.<br />
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The personal truth makes it real, authentic, and believable. But the creative invention makes it universal, relatable, and accessible.<br />
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So while screenplays may contain lies, the spark that creates them must be a truth. A truth about YOU. Not just your experiences, but your passions and interests. Your fears and obsessions. What you dream about. What repulses or consumes you. But above all, the idea must be predicated on something personal that you <i>care</i> deeply about—or you will never have the necessary investment to devote the blood, sweat, tears, and <i>time</i> required to see it through to the end.<br />
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That then is the most basic and essential quality of a solid movie premise: If a screenplay is made of lies to get to general truths, then its foundation must be a truth about YOU that has been transplanted into a fiction, allowing it, through <i>your</i> experience, to relate a <i>universal</i> one.<br />
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And if you don’t believe me, go ask Aristotle.<br />
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Brian Price is a screenwriter and screenwriting professor who teaches at UCLA, Yale, and Johns Hopkins. His new book <i>Classical Storytelling and Contemporary Screenwriting</i>, an examination of the universal patterns and recurring elements found in the great dramatic narratives throughout history, from <i>Oedipus Rex</i> to <i>The Incredibles 2</i>, can be ordered at: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Storytelling-Contemporary-Screenwriting-Scriptwriter-ebook/dp/B0789HXHQH">https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Storytelling-Contemporary-Screenwriting-Scriptwriter-ebook/dp/B0789HXHQH</a>The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-79764982389904943112018-06-18T09:49:00.001-04:002018-06-18T09:51:57.346-04:00Interview with Ryan Habermeyer, author of The Science of Lost Futures<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">By <a href="http://zachpowers.com/" target="_blank">Zach Powers</a>, Communications Manager, <a href="https://www.writer.org/" target="_blank">The Writer’s Center</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One of my favorite literary topics to discuss is weird fiction. Why are some writers drawn to the fabulist, the speculative, and the strange? I’m certainly one of those writers myself, and so is Ryan Habermeyer, author of <i><a href="https://www.boaeditions.org/collections/fiction/products/the-science-of-lost-futures" target="_blank">The Science of Lost Futures</a></i>, which won the BOA Short Fiction Prize and was published earlier in 2018. My own story collection was also published by BOA Editions, so though Ryan and I hadn’t met before this year, we’re literary brothers of a sort. When he’s not writing, Ryan is Assistant Professor at Salisbury University on the nearby Eastern Shore, where his specialties include, among many others, “Monster Studies.” Ryan joins us now at The Writer’s Center blog to answer a few questions about authoring far-fetched fiction, his influences, and the writing life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>ZP:</b> I’m going to start with the big, broad question: why weird stuff? </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Ryan Habermeyer</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>RH:</b> That’s a little like asking why someone is left-handed. I’m not sure we choose our aesthetic obsessions. There’s a mysterious instinct to it, or so I want to believe. Weirdness is something I feel innately drawn to. That’s not a very satisfying answer, though, so I would add that since I was a child I always wanted to be elsewhere. Someplace different. I daydreamed considerably. I found relief in odd things, grotesque things. My friend and I, for example, used to snap Polaroids of road kill and turned it into a photo album. We were very popular with the girls. Somewhere along the way, subconsciously I think, this leaked over into my sensibilities as an artist. I decided the purpose of art—whether it’s literature, music, painting, sculpture, whatever—is to make life strange. Depict real things, familiar things, but strangely. Estrangement. That’s the key. Estrangement pulls us away and brings us closer in the same breath. I love seeing things, reading things, that wrench me out of my routine. You look away but you can’t look away. Isn’t that what literature is supposed to do? Make us uncomfortable while simultaneously desperate to see the object of our discomfort. That’s what weirdness does for me. The weird is the real. Or in the least it’s what lies behind the façade of realism, of normalcy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><b>ZP:</b> There’s a certain dark logic to fairy-tales, and I think I see that in your writing. Instead of moving forward through cause and effect, I feel your plots are often driven by cause and comeuppance. Many of the stories are about paying a price for actions or desires. Is this something derived from fairy-tales? How does a fairy-tale differ from, say, contemporary realist fiction? </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>The Science of Lost Futures</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>RH:</b> You’re not the first person to point out the lack of cause and effect in my writing. Which is odd because I think of my stories as very much contingent upon cause and effect. What throws people off, I suppose, is that the effects in my stories are quite random, sudden, inexplicable, chaotic, without any correlation to the cause in question. A giant foot washes ashore in town. What do we do? Well, we clean it, of course, and try to assign it an identity, and empathize with it to come closer to this monstrous tragedy. But the one thing that can’t happen in that story (the most natural and normal instinct) is to dispose of it in a biohazardous-friendly manner. You can’t pursue that rational impulse if you’re going to have interesting speculative fiction. Or, in another one of my stories a woman wakes up and discovers her womb has fallen out. Quick—call the doctor? Nope. That story is D.O.A. So you’ve got to pursue a sideways logic. And, yes, you’re absolutely right: such tangential cause/effect relationships are very much a fairy tale motif. It’s the strange logic of fairy tales to defy our rationalist, scientific perspective of cause and effect, which is why I think they’re so lovely. There is a beauty to the randomness of fairy tales, a harmony to their chaos I find satisfying and truthful. With realist stories you're tethered to existing reality. If you write a story set in, say, Iowa, then you had better depict Iowa flawlessly. Those are the rules. But I think there’s more to learn about life, about ourselves, when we deviate from realism by following that unconventional thread of cause and (illogical) effect. Like going down the rabbit hole.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><b>ZP:</b> What drew you to the fairy-tale form as an influence for your writing? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>RH:</b> Well, I’m not a fairy tale revisionist. I’m not Angela Carter (but I love her work!). Fairy tales manifest obliquely in my writing. I’ve always been drawn to the imaginative quality of traditional tales. I love the imagery, the narrative leaps, the grotesqueness, the playfulness of the genre. I love how fairy tales invent reality and make it seem as if what happened was historical fact. And they’re instructive for writers, stylistically. Fairy tales are not all magical indulgence. They teach us something about creative restraint, which I think is incredibly important for those of us who are fabulists. Magic is used sparingly in fairy tales, and often comes with a price so if you use it, beware. Lately, though, I’ve been attracted to the form of fairy tales more than their content. The flatness of characters. Lightness. Brevity. Compression. The elegant simplicity of fairy tale language. Eschewing showing for telling. My current projects try to capture a mood, an ambiance of fairytale-ness. One of my incredible former professors, Kate Bernheimer, talks about these very elements in an essay she wrote: “Fairy Tale is Form, Form is Fairy Tales.” It should be required reader for anyone serious about writing, especially those aspiring to be fabulists.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><b>ZP:</b> What other writers of the weird would you recommend to someone who may not be familiar with speculative literary fiction? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>RH:</b> Before I go on endlessly about great weird writers, let me say I benefited considerably from reading realists. Weirdness, fabulism, magical realism, slipstream—whatever you want to call it, is grounded in realism. It’s not a complete abandonment of reality. Writing weird fiction is about inventing reality. Raymond Carver, Alice Munro, Amy Hempel, and Joy Williams are wonderful realists. As far as literary weirdos…there are the obvious choices: Calvino, Borges, Kafka, Marquez. Bruno Schulz is one of my favorite writers ever. On this side of the pond: Aimee Bender, Karen Russell, Kelly Link, Helen Phillips, Kevin Brockmeier and Steven Millhauser do a particular kind of American fabulism. Should I keep going? Read Russians. Nobody does weirdness better than the Russians. Gogol, Bulgakov, Nabokov, Kharms, Krzhizhanovsky, or someone more contemporary like Ludmilla Petrushevskya. She’s amazing. There are times when I lament I am not a Russian—but probably because it is my dream to ride shirtless on a horse reminiscing about my time in the KGB.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><b>ZP:</b> Let’s talk publishing. If I recall correctly, some of the stories in your book are over a decade old. Can you talk about the long haul of writing and compiling a story collection? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>RH:</b> I wrote the oldest story in the collection in 2004. So, yeah, it took a while. I’m not bothered by that. Hats off to those people smarter than me that figure it out quicker. To be honest, I’m not sure I could have arrived at the collection sooner. I’m slow. I’m meticulous. I’ll sit on a single word in a sentence for two days before going on to the next one. I want the right words in the right places. It took me a while to find my voice, find my aesthetic comfortability. And then it took a while to puzzle out the collection. Compiling a story collection is a strange beast. You want stories that resonate with each other, build off each other, but also dissonance; stories that feel incongruent, stories that clash thematically or stylistically. It’s all about finding balance. I kept plodding along for years, publishing pieces here and there, waiting for the right combination of stories to manifest. Writing is a long, lonely process. It might take me another decade to get the next book out. So be it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><b>ZP:</b> What keeps you writing? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>RH:</b> Somewhere, I read Toni Morrison said something like this: if there is a book you want to read that has not yet been written you must write that book. That should be motivation for every writer. It’s hard to argue with Toni Morrison.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><b>ZP:</b> What’s one piece of writing advice you’d give to an aspiring author? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>RH:</b> Read. You’ve got to be in love with words if you want to be a writer. Otherwise, don’t bother. Read old stuff and read new stuff. And when you read pay attention. Writing fiction is not just about plot and characters. It’s about structure, it’s about form, it’s about style, it’s about voice. Read, because the more you read the more voices you’ll discover and then you’ll borrow and steal from all those writers to create your own voice. So, read voraciously. Oh, and stop writing fan fiction. It doesn't count. Whoops. That's two pieces of advice. Feel free to disregard me entirely.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b></b><a href="https://www.boaeditions.org/collections/fiction/products/the-science-of-lost-futures" target="_blank"></a><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://www.boaeditions.org/collections/fiction/products/the-science-of-lost-futures" target="_blank">Order Ryan's book »</a></b></span><br />
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</span>The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-6489821499331669212018-06-04T13:32:00.000-04:002018-06-04T13:32:20.507-04:00LOVERS: A TRIBUTE TO POET LORE'S FOUNDERS<div style="text-align: center;">
LOVERS: A TRIBUTE TO POET LORE’S FOUNDERS</div>
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<i>But I say courage is not the abnormal.</i></div>
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<i>Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches…</i></div>
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<i>Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The marriage,</i></div>
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<i>Not the month’s rapture. Not the exception. The beauty</i></div>
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<i>That is of many days. Steady and clear. </i></div>
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<i>It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment. </i></div>
- Jack Gilbert<br />
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We know this much: after Helen Clarke died in 1926, Charlotte Porter left Boston and moved north to their old house on Isle au Haut, where they used to spend summers. There were the old familiar hills and pines, rocks leading to the sea and sharp-eyed gulls for company. Maine’s coast-line was visible but only reachable by boat, and that was fine.<br />
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Sixty-some years early, three years apart, the two had been born in Pennsylvania and, improbably, were both named “Helen”—though Charlotte later shed the name and took “Endymion” (after the Keats poem) for herself. Maybe Helen (“bright one,” “torch-bearer”) better suited her partner. Charlotte Endymion Porter: her names meant “free man,” “diver,” and “gatekeeper,” respectively. There was irony for a woman holding these identities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when laws were being debated and passed above her head, out of reach. But Charlotte must have known what all overlooked people know: that there are subterranean worlds—that there are ways to outlive surface dwellers.<br />
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I don’t know if they met in autumn, but I picture it that way, the frost of breath and collegial intelligence of the season cutting through summer’s haze. They met first, fittingly, in words: Helen had written an article about music in Shakespeare’s plays that Charlotte admired published in Shakespeariana, the journal she edited in the mid-1880’s. I can see her reading at her desk, pen poised above Helen’s paper. Did she recognized this stranger’s voice even as she read?<br />
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They loved the same writers—Shakespeare, Robert Browning—before they loved each other, and they loved each other, in part, because of this shared passion for art: a sign, perhaps, that it might be safe to land, that friendship was possible. And so they became friends, and within a few years formulated and founded the journal Poet Lore together as a way to share the art they admired with the wider world.<br />
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Porter and Clarke launched the magazine in January of 1889 in Philadelphia as a monthly “devoted to Shakespeare, Browning, and the Comparative Study of Literature.” The comparative aspect of this work was essential: art, to them, lived in exchanges, in the folding over and combing through by multitudes of minds: in community. The magazine quickly drew an avid readership from among the nation’s many literary clubs and societies, though it was not particularly lucrative. Porter and Clarke actually moved the operation three hundred miles northeast when, in 1891, a Boston publisher offered them free office space in exchange for advertising. They continued to edit the journal for more than 30 years after that, publishing their own critical essays and commentary alongside featured artists.<br />
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They wanted art to pierce the ordinary. They thought that if enough Americans absorbed literature into their lives and then discussed it with each other, the broader culture would evolve, and so they made Poet Lore a vehicle for introducing new, often foreign, voices to their readers. They encouraged subscribers to respond critically, both in their own private literary clubs and in written letters to the magazine. Charlotte and Helen believed it was not enough to read literature, though that was the starting point; they felt that culture would not change if people kept their thoughts to themselves. Through their journal, they succeeded in engaging literary communities across the nation.<br />
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I can’t help wondering how much of Poet’ Lore’s continuing legacy—its culture of aesthetic openness, its willingness to take risks in pursuit of discovery—stems from their imperfect, entirely human, flesh-and-blood love. Having never started a magazine, or stayed with the same person for more than a few years, I can’t help romanticizing their ability to build a life and an enduring literary institution together.<br />
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Like me, most of the women I know write alone, on the couch or bed of a modest apartment. If we share our work, it is often with outer women writers—those rare friends scattered near and far—rather than with our partners whom we love with tender ambivalence, with parts of ourselves. Our lives are often fractured, not because of indifference to connection but, more likely, because of the difficulty we’ve had maintaining it. We move through the day, navigating our various duties. We speak quickly and sometimes forget what we’ve said, or typed, moments later. That is the pace at which we live now; that is the level of distraction. Was there more time to think—more time to focus—for Helen and Charlotte<br />
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When they met, they were in their twenties. Helen would live another four decades, and Charlotte six. Helen would die in Massachusetts, and so would Charlotte, years later. And many years after that, I would stumble upon their magazine, when I was close to the age at which they met. I would publish my first poem in its pages.<br />
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It occurs to me that to see myself as isolated, a lone writer working sporadically in the quiet of her home during the short stretches before and after work, would be to miss the truth that Helen Clarke and Charlotte Porter devoted themselves to making clear: that we are all part of an ongoing conversation, connected by a mutual love and admiration for art, the language that flows beneath all language. My writing—everyone’s writing for that matter—is the product of an old and ongoing interplay of minds, of voices, and the best thing we can do is to pick the conversation up when it flags. The best thing we can do is to keep it going.<br />
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-<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>MEGAN FOLEY,</div>
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<i>Volume 109, No. 3/4</i></div>
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MEGAN FOLEY works as a producer for FoundTrack creative and 522 Productions. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia University, where she also taught creative writing. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Freerange Nonfiction, Thought Catalogue, Canteen Magazine, The Village Voice, Poet Lore, and others. She lives in Washington, D.C.<br />
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The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-50736045441691508162018-05-31T11:53:00.002-04:002018-05-31T12:13:45.669-04:00Poet Lore Remembers Walt Whitman<br />
It's a question we've asked over and over: <i>Walt Whitman subscribed. Do you? </i><br />
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But today, on Whitman's 199th birthday, we remember that he not only subscribed to <i>Poet Lore</i> but engaged with us, too.<br />
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In 1892, Whitman purchased ads for "Leaves of Grass" in three consecutive issues. When he passed later that year, our editors included a memorial message for the poet in the Notes and Notices section, highlighting his prior impact and predicting his lasting influence. "<i>Inclusiveness</i> was his point," an excerpt of the message reads. "For illimitable hope and love he stood and for that his style stood also; although it was strange, it was fit, and had a music all its own."<br />
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Many years later, in our 107th volume, Poet Lore would feature a page from Whitman's notebook on the cover of our spring issue. In the accompanying Editor's Page, our editors would echo their forebearers sentiment, saying, "The [image of the notebook page] radiates conviction and <i>expansiveness</i>. Who can fail to recognize Whitman in that?"<br />
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Today in particular, though hopefully always, we remember Whitman by finding and crossing the blurred lines between expansion and inclusion. We try to cross those lines—extending ourselves only by fiercely embracing the world around us. Perhaps we try to recognize those elements of Whitman our <i>Poet Lore</i> editors have cherished for so many years—hope, love, evolution, style—not only in his own work but in that of our peers and ourselves.<br />
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And if we find it hard to do so (or if we'd prefer a music all our own), there's still hope. It's simple enough to follow in Whitman's prodigious footsteps...just <a href="https://poetlore.com/store/subscribe/" target="_blank">subscribe</a> to Poet Lore!<br />
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The full text of the 1892 note on Whitman's death can be read below:<br />
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<br />The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-5659694656912145442018-05-30T11:06:00.000-04:002018-05-30T13:24:01.476-04:00Interview with Philip Dean Walker, author of Read by StrangersBy <a href="http://zachpowers.com/" target="_blank">Zach Powers</a>, Communications Manager, <a href="https://www.writer.org/" target="_blank">The Writer’s Center</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.philipdeanwalker.com/" target="_blank">Philip Dean Walker </a>was one of the first writers I met when I moved to this area. A native of Great Falls, Virginia, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from American University and now lives, works, and writes in Washington, DC. His first book, 2016’s <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Danceteria-Other-Stories-Philip-Walker/dp/1941960057/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473099089&sr=8-1&keywords=philip+dean+walker" target="_blank">At Danceteria and Other Stories</a></i>, imagines the personal lives of 1980s-era celebrities as the AIDS epidemic simmers in the background. His follow-up story collection, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Read-Strangers-Philip-Dean-Walker/dp/1590216784/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510433098&sr=1-1" target="_blank">Read by Strangers</a></i>, was released last month. Phil was gracious enough to answer a few questions about his new work and what it’s like to be a working writer in Washington.<br />
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<b>ZP:</b> Your first book focused on a cultural moment, but <i>Read by Strangers</i> covers a lot more ground. What were the advantages and disadvantages of writing thematically linked stories?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>At Danceteria</i> by Philip Dean Walker</td></tr>
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<b>PDW:</b> Before my first book was published, I always resisted writing a “linked” short story collection. It seemed like everyone in my MFA program was either writing one of them or working on a novel (which has always seemed equally daunting to me). My stories have always been, like, all over the place and were only ever linked by virtue of the fact that I was the one who wrote them. I never thought I would (or even could) write a linked collection. Then I stumbled upon the first story of <i>At Danceteria and Other Stories</i>. Then I wrote another, then another and another and another and then, all of a sudden, I had a thematically linked collection. So, never say never, I guess! The advantages of writing a linked collection is that you have a kind of blueprint for each new story. I had five elements that each story in <i>Danceteria</i> needed to hit in order to make it into the book so I had a rare road-map by which to travel (you just DO NOT really get those in the world of fiction). One disadvantage would be that lack of free range malleability one has in a collection that is more disparate (like <i>Read by Strangers</i> where I kind of “off-road” quite a bit with stories, characters, form, etc). This disadvantage can easily be made into an advantage though. I think it’s always a good idea to not let the reader get too comfortable. I wrote a story for <i>Danceteria</i> that veers off the path of the other stories, yet is also still of a certain theme (“The Boy Who Lived Next to the Boy Next Door”). It gave me some room to play around within my genre. This sounds super corny, but I love the power of turning a supposed negative into a positive. <br />
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<b>ZP:</b> For me, the most striking aspect of your writing is your characters. They come alive on the page in even the simplest of interactions. Why is character so important to you and how do you develop it so well?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Read by Strangers</i></td></tr>
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<b>PDW:</b> Thank you for that compliment, Zach. It means a lot to me because I really love character. The only thing I love more in writing is probably the language itself. Characters drive story. When characters do something on the page, they are moving the momentum of the narrative (this seems obvious but it actually needs to be stated outright sometimes). I spend a lot of time with a character before I even put a single word down on the page which might be why they seem more “alive.” I love flawed people mainly because they provide so much material for story. I love to think of the things they would say – dialogue has become really important to me in the past couple of years, it just has to be believable or your reader will check right out. I might have spent too much time worrying about the characters in <i>Read by Strangers</i> and how readers would respond to them. Many of them are, to put it plainly, not good people. Some of them make horrible choices and do bad things. But I don’t think people want to read about nice, boring people doing nothing. If someone walks away remembering a single detail about a character, weeks or even months after reading a story, it’s a success to me. I think one of the most important skills a writer can possess is empathy. A good writer must have it and must be able to summon it to deal with all kinds of characters. I think that’s one of the key ingredients to making them seem real. I mean, who was the last sociopath you know who put out a good novel or short story?<br />
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<b>ZP:</b> You also write about place beautifully. How has living in Washington influenced your writing?<br />
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<b>PDW:</b> Living in Washington has given me an appreciation for all kinds of people and all kinds of stories. And story can be located anywhere—at a big weekend brunch, at a party, on the other side of town in a neighborhood you've always driven past but never ventured into. I was speaking about setting and place with another writer and I told her that setting should never overwhelm a story (unless the setting or place is essentially acting as a character in the story similar to what I do in <i>Strangers</i>’ “Unicorn”). There are a couple stories in my new collection that take place in Washington, DC, or the surrounding environs, but it’s really just lightly suggested. Place is as important to a story as a writer chooses to make it. My stories that take place in Tokyo are very much connected to that setting, so “place” has a more vital function in those pieces. <b><br /></b><br />
<b>ZP:</b> Finally, what’s one piece of advice you have for aspiring writers?<br />
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<b>PDW:</b> This is a great question, Zach. My biggest piece of advice is this: if you’re afraid of writing it, you must write it. Simple but true.<br />
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Read the rest of the interview in the Fall issue of <i>The Writer's Guide</i>. <a href="https://www.writer.org/resources/workshop" target="_blank">Click here to sign up for a free subscription »</a><br />
<br />The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-3945211308989533002018-05-24T13:20:00.000-04:002018-05-24T13:20:18.162-04:00Meet Zach Powers, The Writer’s Center’s new Communications Manager<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Chances are you’ve already seen some of Zach Powers’s work in one of our emails or on Facebook and Twitter. He started helping us out at <a href="https://www.writer.org/" target="_blank">The Writer’s Center</a> at the beginning of the year and came on full-time this month. Zach is a seasoned media specialist with 15 years of experience, including many years working with nonprofits. He’s also an accomplished author of literary fiction, including an award-winning short story collection (<i><a href="https://www.boaeditions.org/products/gravity-changes" target="_blank">Gravity Changes</a></i>, BOA Editions, 2017) and a novel, <i><a href="http://zachpowers.com/firstcosmicvelocity/" target="_blank">First Cosmic Velocity</a></i>, forthcoming from Putnam/Penguin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We asked Zach a few questions so he could introduce himself to The Writer’s Center family.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>TWC:</b> We’re all writers here, so let’s start with that. Can you tell us a little about what you write?</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Gravity Changes</i> by Zach Powers</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>ZP:</b> I usually call it “weird literary fiction.” My first book is full of stories that borrow speculative elements from genre fiction, or have premises that upend reality in some way. I love fiction that uses absurdity as a lens through which to view the more mundane aspects of existence. Haruki Murakami, another writer of the weird, was one of my first and greatest influence, as well as Aimee Bender, Karen Russell, and Italo Calvino. I could of course keep listing similar influences. My novel is a little more straightforward than my stories, but it still has a sort of existential strangeness. In short, I hope I write stuff that some people will love but will make others say “what the heck?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>TWC:</b> You didn’t start out in either in writing or media. How did you end up at this point?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>ZP:</b> I actually studied music in college. After graduating with no practical job skills, I took an entry-level position at a TV station in my hometown, Savannah, Georgia. I worked my way up from there, and stayed in TV for nearly a decade. I started writing seriously on the side, and eventually got my MFA and started publishing. I was a little disappointed in the writing community in Savannah, so I co-founded a literary arts nonprofit called Seersucker Live. The organization hosted readings and events, featuring well over a hundred national, regional, and local authors. I also led the writers’ workshop at the <a href="http://www.flanneryoconnorhome.org/" target="_blank">Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home</a>, where I served on the board of directors. I was looking for a similar literary community when I moved to the DC area, and that’s how I ended up here at The Writer’s Center.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>TWC: </b>What other nonprofits have you worked with?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>ZP:</b> After I left the television industry, I worked at Savannah’s <a href="https://www.telfair.org/" target="_blank">Telfair Museums</a>, the oldest public art museum in the South. I was the digital communications coordinator, and worked in a small marketing department. I love visual art, and it was great to be behind the scenes, helping exhibitions come together. I also served as a volunteer with <a href="http://www.deepcenter.org/" target="_blank">Deep Center</a>, teaching creative writing to middle and high school students.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>TWC:</b> You’ve also taught college writing, correct?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>ZP:</b> That’s right! I taught composition and creative writing at University of South Carolina Beaufort, and I currently teach classes at Northern Virginia Community College. I like sharing my love of writing with students. That’s one of the reasons it’s been so exciting working at The Writer’s Center. I’m also looking forward to becoming more involved with the DC literary community, and I know The Writer’s Center puts me right in the middle of things.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You can learn more about Zach and his writing at <a href="http://zachpowers.com/">ZachPowers.com</a>.</span></div>
The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-18289918390923474532018-05-15T14:12:00.002-04:002018-05-30T10:12:22.868-04:00Quality or Quantity: Which is More Important For a Writer?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>By Patricia Gray</b><br />
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If you’re busy turning out bestsellers, quantity is the answer, right? But if you want to write a literary masterpiece, then quality is more important. Well, not exactly. These two writerly desires for most of us are inseparably linked, and here is why.<br />
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The more you write, the more you increase your chances for the really good pieces to emerge. Not only does writing a lot help you learn the craft, but writing proves to your subconscious that you are what you profess to be—and you have the pages to prove it. Once your subconscious gets the message, it won’t distract you as much when you sit down to write. And sitting down does help. As fiction writer Flannery O’Conner once said, “I sit at my typewriter from ten to twelve every day, so just in case something comes I’ll be there to receive it.” <br />
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To remind myself of all this, I promised a group of writers to finish a piece of creative writing every day in May 2018. We email our finished pieces to about six other committed souls before midnight each day. We do that without giving or receiving feedback. Every day there’s a feeling of having done what one was meant to do. It’s also a reaffirmation of what is important to people like us—actually doing the writing!<br />
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Though we may have to trick ourselves to do what our whole hearts want to do, the next step in the process—sending it out for publication—may also require some sleight of hand. <a href="https://lithub.com/why-you-should-aim-for-100-rejections-a-year/" target="_blank">LitHub author Kim Liao wrote recently about setting a high rejection goal</a>. If you aim for say 100 rejections this year, you will have to send things out. In the process, you’ll up your acceptance rate and remove some of the sting of rejection, because, after all, isn’t rejection what you’re aiming for?<br />
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“Ok, ok,” you may be saying, “but I want to write really well, if I’m writing a lot.” The Writer’s Center has plenty of workshops to help you do just that—but here is something especially for poets that you might want to look into. <b>I will be teaching <a href="https://www.writer.org/online-workshops?&nccsm=21&__nccspID=6285" target="_blank">3 Poems in 4 Days</a>, June 4, 5, 6 and 7, 2018 </b>in TWC’s temporary home. In this workshop, you will find that it is possible for you to write both often and well.The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-91824548332445298522018-04-26T10:46:00.000-04:002018-04-26T10:46:26.523-04:00Poet Lore 2017 Pushcart Nominee - Julie Wendell<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Poet Lore</i> has 8 poets and 17 poems nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize! We spoke to nominee Julie Wendell about her poem “The Art of Falling.” Read it here and see what Wendell has to say about it. From the <a href="http://poetlore.com/store/archive/volume112number34/" target="_blank">Fall/Winter 2017 issue</a> of <i>Poet Lore</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>THE ART OF FALLING</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><b></b><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">You fall from a horse enough times</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and you learn how to fall—</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">like snow, rain or love,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">all goose-down and no elbows.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He spooks at a leaf, knocking you</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">sideways, the saddle slips—and well,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">you’re going down again.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Relax, you’ll get used to it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Relax, you say to the lobster,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">just before plopping him</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">into the roiling pot.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Relax, you say to a friend</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">on the eve of another bender.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Or to yourself, falling off a ledge</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">onto a concrete floor.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It’s easy when you imagine</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">a soft landing. But when your mother</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">sinks into her pillow in her final hour,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">she knows she’s not falling the right way.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Blah, blah, blah, she mouths,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">flicking the back of her bruised hand</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">as if brushing away a gnat,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">when the priest lowers his head</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">to trace the thumbprint of oil,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">first up and down, then sideways</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">on her glistening forehead.</span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Poet Lore:</b> Your poem seems to be a treatise on handling loss. Do you believe there is such thing as a happy ending? </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Julie Wendell:</b> Fate is a series of inevitable accidents. You can't change that, but you can become good at the accidents. I have been falling off horses for years, and like anything you do a lot, you get better at it. There's a way to fall and not get hurt. You can practice the falls until you're so good at them your conscious mind doesn't even obsess over them anymore. But there are other falls you can't rehearse, like losing your mother. After some falls, you don't land the right way; you break your hip, you lose your life. Loss, you have to practice that too. Does anyone really want to say she doesn't believe in happy endings? I guess that's why some of us cry when we hear about a friend having a baby.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Julia Wendell’s most recent book of poems is </i>Take This Spoon<i> (Main Street Rag, 2014). She is the author of several other poetry collections, as well as a memoir, </i>Finding My Distance<i> (Galileo Press, 2009). She currently lives in South Carolina with her husband, poet and essayist Barrett Warner, and is finishing another memoir, </i>Come to the X<i>. </i></span>The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-56008524219090621092018-04-25T10:39:00.000-04:002018-04-25T10:39:04.554-04:00Poet Lore 2017 Pushcart Nominee - Frank Stewart<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Poet Lore</i> has 8 poets and 17 poems nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize! We spoke to nominee Frank Stewart about his poem “Light Work.” Read it here and see what Stewart has to say about it. From the <a href="http://poetlore.com/store/archive/volume-112-number-12/" target="_blank">Spring/Summer 2017</a> issue of <i>Poet Lore</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>LIGHT WORK</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Desolation makes us peaceful</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Makes us gentle with ourselves </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For now, seeing the ragged </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Pillage, their shoulder blades</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Rounded and yellow as leaves </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Some fall by the river, others</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Remove their clothes and defecate </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">No infants except</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A red-haired girl with inflamed skin</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Villagers brought us hot broth and horsemeat</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Then hid again under the earth </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Three got down from the train without light</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Except for some stolen candles</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Which wasn’t enough</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Poet Lore:</b> Can you comment on “Light Work” in relation to our historical moment?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><b>Frank Stewart:</b> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Forced human migration is among the greatest global crises of our time. Although men and women have been displaced in every era, we are conscious of individual suffering in greater detail than was ever possible before. “Light Work” is one of a series of poems that concern refugees and exiles; the pieces are set in a variety of locations and time periods, some recognizable as caused by specific wars, famines, or other traumas, and others not; some voices are those of real men and women.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Frank Stewart has published four books of poetry, most recently </i>By All Means<i> (El Leon Literary Arts). He edits </i>Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing<i> in Honolulu.</i></span>The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-2500609523262739202018-04-24T09:00:00.000-04:002018-04-24T09:00:15.641-04:00Poet Lore 2017 Pushcart Nominee - Steven Sanchez<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Poet Lore</i> has 8 poets and 17 poems nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize! We spoke to nominee Steven Sanchez about his poem “What I Didn’t Tell You.” Read it here and see what Sanchez has to say about it. From the <a href="http://poetlore.com/store/archive/volume-112-number-12/" target="_blank">Spring/Summer 2017</a> issue of <i>Poet Lore</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>WHAT I DIDN’T TELL YOU</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><b></b><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">—for my brother</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">You can ask me anything,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">even about my first kiss, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">which was at your age</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and tasted like stale beer.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I used to feel guilty swallowing</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">the pulse of another man,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">but now I know there are many</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ways to pray. There’s a name for </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">that most intimate prayer: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">la petite mort—the little death. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If, when your lover rakes </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">your back, you recall </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">the flock of worshippers</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">surrounding you like raptors</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">when they learned you’re gay,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">clawing at your shoulders,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">squawking for your salvation, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">remind yourself you have to die </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">before you can be resurrected.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Never forget what the Bible says: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">when two people worship together,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">they create a church</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">no matter where they are—</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">which must include</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">the backseat of a car</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">or the darkest corner</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">of Woodward Park.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">These are some of the things</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I wanted to tell you</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">that night in April</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">you called me for help</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">with your history report</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">about the gay-rights movement. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Neither of us admitted</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">what he knew about the other. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Instead I started </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">with the ancient Greeks, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">told you it was normal for them,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">that for one brief moment</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">they were allowed to shape</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">their own history and religion, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">organizing the stars, forming</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Orion, for example, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">flexing in the sky, arms</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">open in victory, belt</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">hanging below his waist.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But he was punished</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">for his confidence, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">a scorpion’s hooked tail</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">piercing his body</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">like a poison moon.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When I see Orion,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I think of you and remember</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">what it felt like</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">for my knuckles to sink</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">into your stomach,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">for my fist to collide</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">with your face. Your voice,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">your walk, your gestures</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">reminded me of myself,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">your figure bright and fluid,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">creating a reflection</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I wanted to break.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And now I see</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">your body spill open—</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Big Dipper hooked</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">to your ribs, North Star</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">nestled in the middle.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I reach for that ladle</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and drink.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Poet Lore:</b> Can you comment on the longing in this poem, which seems, to me, to be well satisfied with its deep expression of love?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Steven Sanchez:</b> I like to think that the speaker gains power (and by extension, finds some small bit of happiness) by acknowledging, confronting, and challenging their internalized homophobia. However, I don’t think a person can ever truly finish interrogating the ways we internalize toxic cultural narratives. Poems can absolutely end with a moment of happiness, but I wouldn’t consider happiness an ending—rather, happiness seems like a place to rest before moving forward.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><br />
</i></span> <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>S</i></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>teven Sanchez, a CantoMundo fellow and a Lambda literary fellow, was selected by Mark Doty as the winner of Marsh Hawk Press’s 2016 Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award. His poems have appeared in </i>Nimrod<i>, </i>Crab Creek Review<i>, </i>Assaracus<i>, </i>Tinderbox Poetry Journal<i>, and </i>Glass: A Journal of Poetry<i>, among others.</i></span>The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-5664555996004653222018-04-16T09:00:00.000-04:002018-04-23T08:53:25.012-04:00Poet Lore 2017 Pushcart Nominee - Andrew Motion<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Poet Lore</i> has 8 poets and 17 poems nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize! We spoke to nominee Andrew Motion about his poem “The Edge of the World Twice.” Read it here and see what Motion has to say about it. From the <a href="http://poetlore.com/store/archive/volume-112-number-12/" target="_blank">Spring/Summer 2017</a> issue of <i>Poet Lore</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">THE EDGE OF THE WORLD TWICE</span></b><br />
<b></b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">1.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The first time I reached the edge of the world</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I lay in the prow of my ship and looked down.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The water beneath me was now so shallow</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I could very easily have dipped my fingers</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and dragged them through the ocean floor.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As it was I preferred simply to take notice</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">of the way our gentle bow-wave magnified</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">the least yellow pebbles and white stones,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">a single knobbly and sick-looking boulder</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">flying a flag of bright green oily seaweed,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and the miniature collapses of sand-grains</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">where a timid creature fleeing my approach</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">buried itself and waited for the threat to pass.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">You have to see this, I called over my shoulder,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">forgetting for a moment that I was now alone.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">2.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Or to put it another way</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I might well be </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ballooning,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and today the day </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">wind switches from the north</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">to north-north-east,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">which makes my wicker basket</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">leap a yard into the air</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and creak</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">exactly like the collie’s bed</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">whenever she treads round</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">then round again</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and settles down to sleep.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Be that as it may.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A little change is all it takes</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">to let me climb away</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and find immediately below</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">the moss-starred tiles </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and chimney stack of home,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">which as it shrinks and fails</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">appears to crowd my eye</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">like matter in a microscope</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">with my collie outside now</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and barking in the yard.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">While I consider that</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and what it means, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I see the garden table </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">where my children sit,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">which tells me among other things</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I must be traveling through time </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">as well as space.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The boys as usual convulse</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">at something that escapes me,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">but my daughter, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">she is silent,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">staring hard into the laurel bush</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">as though she meant to seize</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">that shadow slinking off the leaves</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">because she really thinks </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">it might be mine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Then all this also falls,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">or maybe I should say</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">it rises from my sight,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and after that the flight</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">begins in earnest. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Deer I notice</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">plunging through deep bracken,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and a farmer in his field</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">as shadows lengthen</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">calling home his cows.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Afterwards a mill-wheel</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and the river driving it,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">which sometimes shines like mercury</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and sometimes darkens</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">with reflections of the roofs </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">heaped up like dirt on either side.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In this way daylight fades</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">but never quite gives out.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Although</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">when I approach the coast at last </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and hear long waves </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">hiss-hissing on a sandy beach</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">like human hands</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">arranging tissue paper,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I still struggle to believe</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">that sunset is already</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">hammering the water.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Only now does it occur</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I should have left much sooner </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">or </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I should have left tomorrow.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But I am where I am—</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and for all the good it does me,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I continue looking down.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I wonder</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">which is one more thing among the many.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Are those lights below</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">reflections of the sun,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">or are they—magical—</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">the fire of phosphorescence?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Poet Lore:</b> Can you talk about how your poem navigates time?</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><b>Andrew Motion:</b> </span>‘The Edge of the World Twice’ derived from an impulse (and then another one, which attached itself to a different little narrative) to explore the ways in which our sense of time passing intensifies as we get older. Intensifies, that is, to a point where our dismay at not having that much time left is held in more or less equal balance with our pleasure (admittedly sometimes mangled with regret) in remembering the times which comprise our past. The mingling of these feelings (and the tension that inevitably remains between them) is often painful, but it also gives our existence its salt and savour.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Andrew Motion was the UK Poet Laureate from 1999–2009; he is now a Homewood Professor at Johns Hopkins and lives in Baltimore.</i></span>The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-10215280100055631682018-04-11T15:43:00.001-04:002018-04-12T10:47:44.846-04:00Poet Lore 2017 Pushcart Nominee - Ruth Elizabeth Morris<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Poet Lore </i>has 8 poets and 17 poems nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize! We spoke to nominee Ruth Elizabeth Morris about her poem “Woman with a Postcard.” Read it here and see what Morris has to say about it. <a href="http://poetlore.com/store/archive/volume112number34/" target="_blank">From the Fall/Winter 2017</a> issue of <i>Poet Lore</i>.</span><br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b3jPCGYnjvk/Ws5kRkPQKlI/AAAAAAAACJo/SsQ5NAasPYACq-ktDG4BjUJIE21mNC_KQCLcBGAs/s1600/Les_Demoiselles_d%2527Avignon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1545" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b3jPCGYnjvk/Ws5kRkPQKlI/AAAAAAAACJo/SsQ5NAasPYACq-ktDG4BjUJIE21mNC_KQCLcBGAs/s320/Les_Demoiselles_d%2527Avignon.jpg" width="309" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>WOMAN WITH A POSTCARD</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><b></b><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I stick the postcard to the fridge, writing-side down,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">so the <b></b>miniature version of Les Demoiselles D’Avignon</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">is visible. Each time I go for milk, the women</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">in the painting stare back at me with strident focus.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For years, Picasso called this painting my brothel</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">with affection. He observed his models for months,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">confronting each angular cheekbone and sturdy muscle,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">rendering each woman as colossal, nude, all hacked up</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">and somehow intact. They made eye contact as Picasso painted,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">so even now, when you look at them, they don’t look away.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He plucked their unblinking eyes and reset them</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">in animal masks over bodies agape as windows—</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">above a head, a dismembered hand against red dirt.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Darker still, a fractured body, fused to a thrust of sky.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Arrested in brushstrokes, the disjointed women move</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">as if guided by unseen strings, like grotesque marionettes</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">poised before the point of collapse. These women</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">remind me of another version of myself, sleeping naked,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">wholly open, as an ex-boyfriend sat at the foot of the bed</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">writing a poem about the parts of me he found most beautiful:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">my sleep-hooded eyes when he woke me for sex, the cleft</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">at the center of my chest where he annexed his thumbs,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">his hands sliding from breasts to spine</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">as if pulling apart the segments of an orange.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Picasso said his women had within them a savage magic</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">that thirsted to be captured and seen. I wanted to reveal</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">this magic in my flesh, to see what men could see</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">that I couldn’t—so when I left my old lover,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I kept his poem. But the woman he’d fashioned on the page</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">didn’t seem anything like me. Parts of her were close:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">her stunted torso, the mole on the bottom of her foot,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">her small mouth with its open smile. From this, I learned</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">a muse is only a woman cut to pieces.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>PL:</b> In what ways do you think “Woman with a Postcard” might relate to the #MeToo movement? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Ruth Elizabeth Morris:</b> “I became obsessed with this painting after a relationship ended with a college boyfriend who was also a poet. At the time, he was more accomplished in his craft than me, and everyone agreed that I should accept his opinions as expertise. When he wrote poems about our sexual experiences together and workshopped them with my teachers, I spent months walking around the campus feeling like my professors had seen me naked. If I expressed discomfort, I was reminded of the honor it was to be a muse, even if the woman I was on paper was only a body with male fingers that curled like a nautilus inside her. I kept quiet and tried to ignore it all. I like to reimagine his poem, sometimes, in a version where the woman on paper is more like the women Picasso painted: even in “his brothel” they look strong and sharp, and they don’t look away.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Ruth Elizabeth Morris has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Marlyand, where she is a coordinator for Academic Programs. She was the first-prize winner of the 2015 Writer’s Digest Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in </i>The Seventh Wave<i>, </i>[PANK]<i>, and </i>JMWW<i>.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; font-size: x-small;"><i>Pablo Picasso, Spain, 1881–1973</i>Les Demoiselles d'Avignon<i><br />oil on canvas<br />244 x 234 cm<br />Museum of Modern Art<br />Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest<br />New York City</i></span>The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-54763581914308687262018-03-16T10:30:00.000-04:002018-03-16T10:59:02.211-04:00Inside The Writer's Center - Monthly Member Newsletter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yYedoqeBGCs/WqvUzHx0kGI/AAAAAAAACJU/webW52w6RJg8vFNkiPDPKw4CSflhceNtQCLcBGAs/s1600/Teen%2BWriting%2BOutside.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yYedoqeBGCs/WqvUzHx0kGI/AAAAAAAACJU/webW52w6RJg8vFNkiPDPKw4CSflhceNtQCLcBGAs/s320/Teen%2BWriting%2BOutside.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Roof, Renovation, and Relief</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Our beloved building is about to get some much deserved TLC! With help from the county, we’ll begin replacing the roof in March, so please expect some noise if you meet at the Center on a weekday. We will move as many workshops and meetings as possible to the lower level, which should mitigate the disruption. However, if you have ADA issues and need to meet on the main level, please be aware that the roof work will be in progress. This project should take 6 to 8 weeks to complete.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For a variety of reasons (one of which is the roof!), the date for breaking ground on our upstairs renovation has been pushed back to the beginning of May. The good news is that we can finish the Winter/Spring semester on-site. The bad news is that our re-opening date has been pushed back, as well. We will host our summer and fall workshops at the Regional Services Center in Bethesda, along with our regular Capitol Hill and Glen Echo locations. Once the plans are finalized, we will post details on our website and in a special email to our members.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">NEW! Teen Classes Coming This Summer</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In an effort to continue supporting the next generation of writers, we are expanding our workshop offerings this summer to include courses for teens (ages 14-17). This will include five new classes: Prepping for the College Essay, Techniques and Style for Contest Entries, Creative Writing for Teens, Virtual Fiction Camp, and Fearless Writing for Teens. Visit our website for registration starting in mid-March.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We’re Feeling Festive This Spring!</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There are a lot of reasons to look forward to spring, and literature lovers have even more with a season full of festivals that celebrate the written word. We’re proud to partner with the <a href="http://dayofthebook.com/">Kensington Day of the Book </a>on Sunday, April 22, and the <a href="http://gaithersburgbookfestival.org/">Gaithersburg Book Festival</a> on Saturday, May 19. Join us at these fabulous festivals, and stop by our table to say hello!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The New Issue of Poet Lore Arrives in April!</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Like a dream—or a poem—the cover image of the next issue of Poet Lore unsettles the distinction between inside and out. The framework of doorways, shutters, and walls is called into question by a rowboat in shallows and clouds roiling overhead. Inside the magazine, you’ll find work that subverts expectations in much the same way—blurring boundaries between memory and perception, the self and the world. Maybe shelter’s less a matter of what we keep out than of what we keep close.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><a href="https://www.writer.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=458&nccsm=21&__nccscid=156&__nccsct=SUBSCRIBE+NOW&__nccspID=2103" target="_blank"><span id="goog_2028137499"></span>Subscribe now »<span id="goog_2028137500"></span></a></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Front Desk Staff Needed</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We’re looking to hire additional part-time staff to support the Center on Saturdays and weeknights. Primary duties include answering the phone, supporting instructors and guests, room set-up, processing registrations, and occasional special projects. The job offers $15 per hour, free parking, and one free class annually. Help us get the word out!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Interested parties should email <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null">grace.mott@writer.org</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-83565619785614994122018-03-12T09:32:00.004-04:002018-03-12T09:32:39.195-04:003 Ways to Access Your Writing Talent<h3>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By Patricia Gray, The Writer's Center Instructor</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some of us write using a different genre based on what we have to say—an essay to clarify an idea, a poem to capture a moment. Others use the same genre because it suits whatever we have to say.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>How do you discover what your best mode is?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>There is no right way to write, but here are some ideas for accessing your talent.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Definitely keep a journal.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Write something in it every day, even if you have no time. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Artist’s Way </i>author Julia Cameron is famous for her “morning pages” idea.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>She suggests writing three pages each day as a way to get past whatever hurdle crops up that day.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Write without stopping or editing or putting the pencil down, she advises.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I agree, no one need read your journal but you, so you are free to be absolutely honest.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In the first few paragraphs you’ll probably write the commonplace—things you already know—but if you keep writing for about three pages, what comes out can be wonderfully surprising.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It might even be used in your next story or poem.<br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Consider your favorite movies (books or poems) and why you like them.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Was there a gut-wrenching conflict that got resolved in a totally unexpected way?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>If so, you might enjoy writing an action story with deep-felt emotions complicating the plot. Did you fall in love with the protagonist, the male or female lead? As an author, you could develop a character, the kind you, yourself, would like to meet and fall in love with (Hopefully, he won’t be Heathcliff). Was the movie full of exciting visual images?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Poems often reply on creative visual images to give resonance to the lyric moment or the main metaphor.<br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Have you noticed that in recounting true stories, the teller often builds interest or suspense the way a good novelist does?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>If you write about true events from your own life and master narrative timing in the process, you’ll have a very readable memoir.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To discover more about yourself and your style, consider taking The Hill Center workshop I’ll be teaching March 24 and 31, 2018.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It’s called “Getting Started: Creative Writing” and meets on two Saturday afternoons from 1-4pm. <a href="https://www.hillcenterdc.org/event/the-writers-center-getting-started-on-creative-writing/2018-03-24/" target="_blank"><b>Learn more and register »</b></a></span></div>
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The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-49597413470481460802018-02-23T14:01:00.000-05:002018-02-23T14:06:51.767-05:005 Ways to Find Your True Story's Heart<div style="text-align: left;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Writing true stories is about more than reporting the facts; it's about creating art from real life. In memoir and personal essays, you want to go beyond what happened and into what it means.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Here are five ways you can write beyond the facts and into the heart of a story. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>1) Create meaning, not morals. </b><br />Give your readers enough meat of the story and its implications to help them understand why the story matters. But don't turn a story into a Sunday School lesson. Nobody likes a moralizing know-it-all. (Trust me, I know; I've been one.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>2) Use details.</b><br />Great stories include details. But not too many. Or too few. And only the important ones. All presented in the best way. Yikes! So how do choose which details to include? Details should create texture and interest, and they should focus the readers' attention on what matters. Be selective: Don't try to capture the whole world at once, not even when you're writing true life stories. </span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3) Cross the personal-universal bridge.</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Even when you're telling an intimate story about a unique experience, readers should find something in it to relate to as fellow humans. But again, beware of moralizing here! Don't build a literal bridge that points out the obvious or talks down to the reader. Oddly enough, the more specific your details, the more universal your story can become.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>4) Stay focused.</b><br />The focus of a story determines the meaning, the details, and the bridge. I usually don't know a story's focus until I've written a large chunk of it. Only after sketching out and connecting ideas do I find a story's heart. I've rewritten essays many times before I found their real essence. A story can contain a lot of seemingly disparate elements, but you need to know how they fit together. If you don't know -- at least on some intuitive level -- your readers won't know either. Keep writing until you find that focus and fit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>5) Be True.</b><br />That's "True" with a capital "T." This may be the most important point of all. Your story needs to feel authentic on the page, in your mind, and in the eyes of your readers. I've written stories that are technically true by dutifully capturing my thoughts or the true-to-life details of a scene. But the scene fell flat and veered outside the heart of the story. Annie Dillard says it best in her essay "Notes for Young Writers": "The work's unity is more important than anything else about it. Those digressions that were so much fun to write must go</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We explore these tips and more in the online class, <a href="https://writer.org/online-workshops?&nccsm=21&__nccspID=6023" target="_blank">Write into the Heart of Your Story (begins March 5. 2018)</a>. You'll learn how to use the building blocks of creative nonfiction to write stories with texture and depth. You'll also learn how to deal with some common challenges that hold us back when writing true stories. </span></i></div>
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The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-75057997465222116252017-11-22T12:20:00.002-05:002017-11-22T13:58:07.520-05:00Q&A with Author Neal P. Gillen, "Rendezvous in Rockefeller Center"<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rendezvous in Rockefeller Center </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is the newest novella, play, and short story by Neal Gillen. Author of twelve books, Mr. Gillen is a longtime friend, former board vice chair and benefactor of The Writer's Center. He sponsors the McLaughlin, Esstman, Stearns First Novel Prize that highlights a new novelist and up-and-coming talent ever year. We caught up with Mr. Gillen to learn more about his new work. What we got was a true gift -- a personal look into the mind and perspective of an accomplished wordsmith. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>TWC: </b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Your new story, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rendezvous at Rockefeller Center</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, is a novella, a short story, and a play. What brought you to sharing your story in all of those formats? Is there one you think works best?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>NG:</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> First of all, I thank The Writers’ Center for its dedication to the written word and for its availability to those in the Washington DC region who have found that inner spark to tell a story, be it be theirs, that of their family, or a work of fiction that their life experience, a particular person or event, or maybe a story that has inspired them to write.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the case of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rendezvous in Rockefeller Center, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it was the experience of an old friend, considerably embellished, that motivated me to write the short story that was published by the Veteran’s Writing Project in its literary review </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">O-Dark-Thirty. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once it was published, I heard from a number of people that they wanted to know more about the characters. After some thought, I decided to expand the story and bring out the emotions of the characters as they dealt with the complexities of their lives and their real feelings for each other after many years of separation. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had never written a play, but I felt that would be an appropriate vehicle to bring the characters to life. After four workshops with Richard Washer, I completed it and sent it around to other writers and playwrights. I ended the play leaving the audience wanting to know more, but I left it up to them to determine what that might be. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The more I thought about it and as others did, including my editor, Barbara Esstman, and my wife, Mary-Margaret, I agreed that there was more to be told, especially the conflict that had to be dealt with, so I began anew and wrote the full story as a novella that ends leaving the reader wanting to know more, but as in the short story, I leave that up to the reader.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As to which form I like best? I like all three forms, the short story, the play, and the novella. I found the progression of the story in each format challenging. Each is a different medium and perhaps serves a different purpose. The play is perhaps the most interesting format because as Richard Washer would say, “It’s only a blueprint.” Unlike the short story and the novella, in the play the actors will interpret the story, give it life, provide meaning, and bring out the true emotions felt by the characters. I have yet to see that, but I hope to do so.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>TWC: </b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How has your writing changed from your first books to now? Where can you see that you've learned and grown?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>NG:</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I started with fast paced thrillers that became more involved with the emotions of the characters with each new story. After eight of them I completed a memoir that I had started on when I first began to write. That was a new challenge, contacting people, extensive research on events that had happened 50-years ago, bringing forth old emotions, failures and challenges. It was difficult to do. I migrated from thrillers to memoirs to short stories to where I am now. It’s an evolving process.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think my writing has grown, but I leave it up to the reader to make that determination. Here’s a long answer of what I have learned:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In brief, my fiction comes from my imagination and life experiences. I grew up in a large extended Irish family in New York City in a multicultural and crowded neighborhood in the days of radio and lengthy stories at the kitchen table from aunts and uncles, the aunts having the best stories. Their stories had all the necessary arcs and conflict that moved them along. It was the same for the radio programs we listened to. You hung on every word. You could see the characters through the voice of others along with the setting, and the dialogue was priceless. And of course, the stories were all enhanced by the tellers. It was an art form that I was exposed to as a toddler. It encouraged me to read. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In constructing fiction you can wing it and develop it as you move through the story letting the characters lead the way. To make it more believable, however, you have to research the subject matter. The setting for your story has to be realistic. You want the reader to feel that he or she is part of the story -- the setting will do that. You have to nail down the time frame of the story and the events of that period to put the story in its proper context. If it’s a thriller or a crime story you must either know from your personal experience or learn about police, military, CIA, FBI or foreign intelligence operational procedures. You must also know about weapons or maybe explosives. Getting the details right is critical to the credibility of your story and you as an author. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The same is true for memoirs. You have to search your mind -- get your mind to open up in a honest way. You must get at the truth. You have to search through personal and family records, diaries or date books and telephone logs (if you keep them), photo albums, correspondence, and news stories -- virtually every written thing that you can locate to help you jog your memory and to unearth concrete facts essential to your story. Your memory might be excellent, but it may be hiding something that subconsciously you don’t want to come out. You have to dig down deep even though you’re reluctant to do so. You have to contact and question others, who were there, about their recollections of your story. It involves tracking down people -- old friends, co-workers, relatives, former spouses or significant others, children, even people you might not like or haven’t talked to in years. You have to consider their memory of things -- their views on the matter at issue. And should they differ with your memory, you have to reconcile any differences. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most importantly, for the memoir to be honest and true to the story, you cannot sugar coat it. You have to forget about hurting the feelings of others or even embarrassing yourself and your family. You have to provide your reader with your true emotions and the emotions of others to make the story work. You must get at the truth.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If your father was an SOB or your mother was unloving -- that’s part of the story and must be told. Told in such a way to let the reader know how you felt at the moment and how it affected you then and perhaps now. For example, were you, as a teenager, intimate with a girl who became pregnant or if the reverse is true did this intimacy result in your pregnancy? The reader wants to know your emotions when you learned of this situation as well as the other person’s emotions. Was it just your secret? How did you handle the situation? Did the parents find out? Who else knew about it? How did they react? The reader wants to know what was going through your mind and how you dealt with the situation. The same is true if someone close to you died in an unfortunate accident or was murdered. Perhaps a parent or spouse walked out on you. Maybe you were homeless. How did that affect you and the friends and family of the deceased? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Memoirs are rife with emotions. Few people’s lives are a bed of roses, and should that be the case, no one wants to read about it. Readers want to know about the thorns in the rosebush. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have all known good and bad times in our lives. We have all been tested. The reader wants to know how you passed or maybe failed that test. They want to know how you became who you are.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Summing it all up, I have written fiction and memoir. It’s a different discipline with memoir being the more difficult in my view. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>TWC:</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> What are the most compelling characteristics about the main character(s) in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rendezvous?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> How do you bring them to life in the story as part of your craft?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>NG:</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The strength of the female character is most compelling. The story uncoils the mysteries of life, love, and lost opportunity. She is a rock who nurtured a young man unsure of himself only to have him abandon her and take flight into the military and lead an indifferent and insecure life. He acquires wealth, but is unfulfilled. She moves on in life, raises a daughter and starts a successful business. Her life has meaning and purpose, but deep down there is an emptiness. By chance, some 35-years later, they Rendezvous in Rockefeller Center, where in their tense and revealing meeting she repurposes their relationship and changes his life for the better. Simply put, she’s strong, he’s weak but basically good but unmoored and still seeking direction. Her revelation and strength begins to finally get him there. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>TWC: </b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When did you know you were a writer? What really "flipped the switch" for you?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>NG: </b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reading two books a week for most of my adult life convinced me that I could do this. As a lawyer, I was always writing, but it was a different style: state the issues, explain them, and summarize why your argument should prevail. It was brief and to the point. I knew that I could do it, but I needed guidance from others. The Writers’ Center provided that along with introducing me to a legion of capable writers who were willing to offer advice about the basics of telling a story. I had the stories. What I lacked was the techniques to tell those stories.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>TWC: </b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What advice do you have for budding writers? Anything to share with established writers?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>NG:</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Anyone reading this obviously has an interest in writing. To those budding writers I would say, keep at it, don’t be discouraged, follow your gut, take your time to get it right, and ask for advice. To established writers I would say what they already know, that the times and the methodologies of publishing and marketing are no longer subtle, they are changing at warp speed and you have to adapt to that change. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>TWC:</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> What is the most underestimated component of a short story? What makes or breaks it for you?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>NG:</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> This is the most difficult kind of writing. You must grab the reader in the first sentence or two and tell your story in short order. How to be brief, concise, and thorough in a few words is</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a daunting task. Driving the story from the beginning is perhaps the underestimated component. Another factor is how you resolve the conflict. On the other hand, as I did in the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rendezvous in Rockefeller Center </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">short story, you can leave it to the reader to resolve it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I cannot define what makes it or breaks it for me, be it the traits of the characters or the plot or theme of the story. I get an idea and I begin to write. I may get it right in one shot, or I might stop and wonder why it’s not working. Who can tell on any given day? It’s a process that’s not always satisfactory, but when it clicks, nothing is more intellectually rewarding than to know that you have created a story. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>TWC:</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> How do you write good dialogue? What's the secret?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>NG: </b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was raised in a verbal society, so that has never been a problem for me. Dialogue is listening to or having a conversation. I put myself in the shoes of the characters and the emotions of the moment and it usually flows. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>TWC: </b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You weren't always a writer. You're a veteran and have worked all over the country. How has your life experience shaped your writing? How could a new writer conceptualize of their life as an augmentation to their stories?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>NG:</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> True, I’ve lived a full and well-travelled life, had a successful career, served in the Navy, and have a wonderful family, but it is through my reading that I have learned to write. The life experiences expose you to situations and people that make for good stories. If you haven’t been anywhere or lived that long, then write about that place and the people you have met in your life where you’re from. You can take ordinary lives and create an interesting story, be it in a farming community, a fishing village, or a small university town. A lot goes on behind closed doors and there is always conflict within a household or a community as well as rich characters waiting to be defined.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>TWC:</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Where can we find your book?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>NG: </b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It can be found on Amazon or through my web site: </span><a href="http://www.nealpgillenbooks.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">www.nealpgillenbooks.com</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<br />The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193618020323267617.post-90283216826727501172017-10-21T10:38:00.000-04:002017-10-21T10:38:12.791-04:00“Tiny People in Epic Spaces”: Poet Lore’s Cover Photographer Shares her Process<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>“Tiny People in Epic Spaces”: Poet Lore’s Cover Photographer Shares her Process</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since 2002, executive editors Jody Bolz and E. Ethelbert Miller have curated the literary work of each book-length issue of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poet Lore, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">America’s oldest poetry journal. Once the poems, essays, and reviews are all in place, a critical facet of their work is finding the perfect cover image—a photograph that both suggests the discoveries that writers make between the journal’s covers and stands alone as a compelling piece of art: a photograph that asks its own questions and makes its own claims.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The breathtaking image on the cover of the journal’s latest issue (Fall/Winter 2017) was taken by photographer Ariel Body in an iconic location called “The Wave” in Coyote Buttes, Arizona. Each wave of canyonland is as uncanny and vivid as something painted by Salvador Dali’s hand. The photograph is a sublime portrayal of a desert setting—one that, on the one hand, humbles and energizes, and on the other hand, intimidates and threatens. As a point of entry to the new issue’s poems, it resonates with themes of place and displacement: border crossings both literal and figurative. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Curious to learn about the image’s back story, I asked Body to share her path through photography. Body, who is a climber and a self-described “adventurer” herself, said she has long been enthralled by the concept of “tiny people in epic spaces.” Photography, for her, serves “as an avenue to travel”—to “expose viewers to places and ideas they may have otherwise missed.” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Working as a self-employed visual communicator over the past decade,” she said in an email interview, “I have had the flexibility to work and shoot in over a dozen countries and experience some truly unique places (including shooting a sled-dog race in back-country Alaska, an adventure project in Chile, a real-estate project in Mongolia, a sports project in Australia, and recently, an adventure travel project in Kenya.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The cover photo on Poet Lore’s latest issue is one of her earliest works, taken when she had just obtained her first professional camera and was seeking a highly coveted permit to hike in The Wave. (She has been unable to obtain a permit since her visit a decade ago.)</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CbqM-Ex1tCk/WednEWPRPsI/AAAAAAAACHs/V9hy41_kYaoDnN9Rrgl9L2C-hWsc7ZSJwCLcBGAs/s1600/wave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CbqM-Ex1tCk/WednEWPRPsI/AAAAAAAACHs/V9hy41_kYaoDnN9Rrgl9L2C-hWsc7ZSJwCLcBGAs/s320/wave.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6hliOVXZ2HI/WednKj_rp8I/AAAAAAAACHw/91VGmNOvNcEvwWqJnZL7UIZL1ChOhqPYQCLcBGAs/s1600/unnamed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="861" data-original-width="574" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6hliOVXZ2HI/WednKj_rp8I/AAAAAAAACHw/91VGmNOvNcEvwWqJnZL7UIZL1ChOhqPYQCLcBGAs/s320/unnamed.jpg" width="213" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14.6667px; text-align: start; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Body took the above photos during the same trip to The Wave as part of her study.</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“This particular photo was part of a photographic study emphasizing place.... [T]he goal was to create a set of images that fully encompass the space.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Asked why the theme is important to her, Body said: “I think a lot of times places aren't as spectacular in photos as they are in real life, so I'm totally drawn to this method as a way to show that juxtaposition and really emphasis the relationship of people in these spaces.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To see more of Ariel Body’s work, visit her </span><a href="http://www.livelaughdesign.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">website</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ariel Body is a desert-dwelling photographer, graphic designer, and coffee drinker. With a goal of working, climbing, and skiing on every continent, she continues to design and shoot projects around the world. She is currently self-employed as a freelance visual communicator, exploring innovative ways of visual storytelling. Her photos have been featured in print magazines and online. </span></div>
The Writer's Centerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13865473150470492535noreply@blogger.com3