Facing the College Application

What I remember most about applying to college was the endless hours agonizing over the essay portion of the application. Whether my words put me in the right light? And what exactly was the right light? I knew a few people who went temporarily insane as they believed their entire life depended on wowing the admissions committee. It was all very funny in retrospect but painful to live through, in that transient period.

I’m sure the game hasn’t changed that much since I was a senior in high school. People are still procrastinating and fearful. To help with this, I’m leading the workshop, Write Yourself into College. It’s a one-day intensive. And I wanted it to be a kind of antidote to procrastination, worrying, and those given to anxiety-induced panic attacks.

This workshop is intended to help all of those applying to a four-year university who waited to the last minute and need a little push.

Here’s what you can expect:

come to the workshop ready with the essay prompts from your school of choice;
critique a sample essay with your peers, finding out what makes the essay strong and not so strong (noting some alternative choices the author could have made);
work on your first draft, read it out loud, and receive feedback from peers and myself;
then work on your rewrite

By the end of the day, you should be well on your way to completing your first essay for one of your colleges. You also have the option of sending me the final draft before you send it off.

Write Yourself into College will be offered on Saturday, October 10 at The Writer’s Center. For information about this workshop, please drop me a line at abdul.ali@writer.org

Flashback: Remembering Hakuna Matata

As far as Disney films go, The Lion King is my favorite, all hands down. And, apparently, I’m not alone in liking this film. In 1994, it was the top grossing film of the year, earning more than $173 million dollars; Forrest Gump came in second. It’s been recorded as the highest-grossing animated film up until that year.

What made this film such a sensation?

Perhaps it was the universal themes of betrayal, legacy, and coming-of-age that resonated with its audience. Or that it appealed to lovers of Shakespeare (think Hamlet). Or that it had an all-star cast lending their voice to the cartoons (Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Mathew Broderic, James Earl Jones, and Whoopi Goldberg) and its music created by the inimitable Sir Elton John.

Now that I think of it. . . there was something else that made this film exciting, new, and different. It wasn’t set in the deserts of Arabia where we meet Aladdin or an enchanted fortress where we meet Snow White. Rather, it was set in Africa, a place where Disney or any pop culture medium hadn’t gone until then.

It was really something. For the duration of the film at least, I forgot all of the negative hype about Africa. It was no longer a “Dark Continent” where nightmares swirled like a Van Gough painting. I would imagine myself there—dancing, singing hakuna matata, growing up to join the nobility. And how I loved to say "Mufasa, ooo say it again" that memorable line from one of the hyena’s that Whoopi Goldberg voiced for. To think my world could be shook by one little Disney film about Africa. And that was almost sixteen years ago.

Flashback: Remember Grease?

Save for the film Grease, it seemed fated that I would shy away from all musicals. Though Grease is set in the 1950s, a number of its musical numbers and dance movements are stylized after disco which exploded on the scene in the 1970s. Grease was and still is a enticing opening into an era that I could only ask my parents and grandparents about. And while the film was very much dated by the time I had seen it, not a lot had changed in terms of being in high school. Weren’t we all doing the same things? Doing what youths do: coming-of-age, being concerned with all things sexy, working it out on the dance floor?

Yet still, even after the cultural meltdown of the 1970s and 1980s, there are leftovers: like how so many of us youngsters sported the coveted black leather jacket to show just how “cool” we are (An aside: Michael Jackson also contributed to the “coolness” of the leather jacket.)

Grease, both the musical and film, has made an indelible imprint on our cultural narrative. It’s one of the longest running shows in Broadway history, racking up 3,388 performances before closing in 1980 and two years before becoming a hit film in 1978, starring the John Travolta and the gorgeous Australian recording artist Olivia Newton-John who made her American film debut with Grease which grossed $96,300,000, making it the top film at the box office in 1978.

A Preview to the Fall Carousel

With almost two years of coming up with different ways of presenting The Carousel, I'm quite pleased with our Fall issue which will focus on the ways film and theater has shaped us. Like many of you, I'm an die-heart film buff. As a prelude to the fall issue, I will post trivia about movies that may mean little to moviegoers today but for those of us who remember them, we can all share a moment of nostalgia or a sigh of relief (depending how you feel about the film in question.)

Ghostbusters came out in 1984. It captured the curiosity of our nation with the supernatural as other films came out around this time that dealt with this subject (think Ghost starring Whoopi Goldberg and Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore and later Spielberg's E.T.), this was a major film for its time. The sheer otherworldness of it was gripping and quite comical as I recall. It was the top-grossing film for the year, coming in at $132 Million, beating Indiana Jones, Beverly Hills Cop, Gremlins, and Karate Kid.

Did you see Ghostbusters? What were your impressions?

Helicopters and Vultures: An Ensemble Performance

This Friday evening at 7pm, Henry Mills and Stephen Fleg (aka DJ Fleg) will deliver their stirring performance Helicopters & Vultures with a special guest appearance by poet Tala Rehmeh. This is a free event. This event has gotten a good deal of buzz around town. Check out this recent article about this eclectic performance piece in the Gazette.

Can you describe your performance Helicopters & Vultures? I understand it’s an ensemble performance and you also employ different creative forms.

Henry Mills: Helicopters and Vultures is the culmination of the last six years of my exploration of poetry and performance, and Stephen Fleg's exploration of DJing, piano and production. It’s not quite a play, a poetry reading, or a concert. It’s somewhere between those forms. I take what I like best from each form and each element complements the other.

Stephen Fleg: Helicopters and Vultures is a poetry and music performance where the music intertwines with the poetry, with the overall goal of taking readers inside the world the poems create.

All forms of art are the same thing, each containing a foundation through which creativity can be channeled for the purpose of expression. Each individual form appeals to a certain sense. By combining art forms, we are, in essence, combining senses. Thus, the result, this show strives to emulate the human experience through appeal to the different senses. The goal is not only to project our combination of arts onto others, but to infuse it into others so that it becomes just as much a part of the audience as it is a part of the poet’s. Having worked on this show with Henry for sometime, I feel that our performance has transcended either poetry or music and I often get chills during our rehearsals. I know the audience will leave our show with the same feeling.

After you came up with the idea for Helicopters and Vultures, what came next? How did it evolve into this fascinating performance?

Henry Mills: Although as a whole it is not a narrative it does have the “lets go on a journey” quality. I explore the tradition of survival in the bloodline of both my El Salvadorian as well as my Jewish side. In both cases, there is a history of displacement and rebellion.One of the things I discovered in reaching into both sides of my family lineage is the universality of struggle and love.

Stephen Fleg: The music behind the poetry is created using a piano, electronic samplers, turntables and a synthesizer. As a musician and producer I had all of these devices at my disposal and as we went through the process of creating these music-poem pieces, I tried different methods and different instruments to achieve the feeling of that particular poem. Some are simple and use only the piano, others have nothing at all and still others are multifaceted, using sampling machines, and the Moog synthesizer at the same time.

What if anything would you like for your audience to take away from your work?

Henry Mills: I hope people walk away haunted by the same ghosts that haunt me.

Stephen Fleg: I would like the audience to come to our show and be transported to our world for 45 minutes and then return to their own, taking with them, not just notes or words, but the understanding of the other lives explored in this process. It is through this type of understanding that we as people can transform our sympathy into empathy in relations to those around us, ultimately making the world more peaceful place.

A free performance of Helicopters and Vultures will take place at The Writer's Center on Friday, June 12th at 7pm.

On Summer Vacations

I’d like to talk about vacations as this is the time for many of us to plan summer things with family, spouses, et cetera. Here's a question: does one have to leave home for it to be a vacation?

I recall as a freshmen one of my professors talked about all of this stuff he got done during his summer "vacation." I recall challenging his use of the word “vacation” reasoning that the root of vacation is “vacate” and if you haven’t vacated your life of the everyday mundane, you haven’t really taken a vacation, you simply had time off. (Yes, I know I was a bit snotty back then.) And now here I am revisiting this notion.

Last week I took a week off to celebrate my birthday and take a very much needed respite in order to begin a longer writing project and a few other things. There wasn’t any packing or rushed attempt to book a flight or a train. No special shopping or suntan lotion or fancies of getting a tan on my embarrassingly beige legs. I did, however, make a pit stop at my neighborhood library.

Now that I think about it, calling my week off a vacation is a misnomer, right? When I think of a vacation, I think of hopping on a plane, maybe watching the ocean waves from atop a Cruise ship, or changing space of some kind.

The biggest gift anyone can give themselves is time to do the thing they most enjoy. For me that thing was having a quiet conversation with myself and the page (or computer screen.) Don’t get me wrong: I do want to see ocean waves and pack for a voyage. I want to mail postcards to my friends from exotic places with foreign smells and foods I can’t quite pronounce. But for now, I’m content with getting a head start on something I’ve been preparing to do for some time. That is, challenging myself to write in a longer form, that is a book.

Do you have any vacation or time-off stories to share with us on First Person Plural? If so, send them to me with pictures, if you have.

Contact: thecarousel@writer.org

Shaping New Words: An Interview with Brandon D. Johnson

D.C.-based poet Brandon D. Johnson shared with Abdul Ali his thoughts on poetry and some insights he picked up along the way. His recent collection of poems is Love Skin.

What makes good poetry (to you)?

I want the contemporary work that I read to feel new. It must be something that doesn’t remind me of someone else’s poems directly. It is something that makes me want to write. I love work that causes me to go ‘I wish I’d thought of that,’ or that makes me say, ‘I wish that I could do that.’ I like poets with distinctive voices and work from which I learn. I’ve learned a great deal from these poets’ work: Yusef Komunyakaa; Henry Taylor; Philip Levine; Ai; Patricia Smith; Gwendolyn Brooks; Sterling Brown; Cornelius Eady. I have to stop there. I go back to their work over, and over, again.

Can you talk about the ideas that went into your recent book Love Skin?

What did you set out to do with that manuscript?I always work to tell stories. I want to get a reader involved in a person’s character. I want to tell tales. I love movies, so my mind works from images, like stills. The greatest compliments I’ve gotten are that someone liked my images; that they knew someone like ‘that’; or, that a piece sounded like a movie.

What was the greatest word of criticism you received, and how did it make you a better poet?

"What you cut out of a poem is as important as what you leave in.” But notice that I said cut out, from editing. The first thing is to write down everything, then later concern yourself with what can come out. That was advice given me, that I’ve used. I can’t remember the greatest word of criticism, but I can remember the first day someone critiqued one of my poems. It was Joel Dias-Porter (DJ Renegade). He looked at a poem of mine and he said, “Can I write on this?” That’s when I first started learning about poetry. That continued among the larger group of poets I’ve workshopped with over a span of time. They are now the ‘workshop’ I carry around in my head. I’ve often said that I can’t figure out what I like most, the initial writing of the poem, or the subsequent editing. I think it is more the editing, because that’s when I really figure out what my ‘mission’ is with the piece. There is no such thing as a couple of edits. It is something that goes on even after the piece is lucky enough to be published.

Any advice to all the emerging poets who will read this in blog-o-sphere?

Read everything; everything and everyone. Maintain a writing thought process, even when you’re not writing something. I always wonder what something I hear, or see, would look like on paper. Read more poetry. If you read, or hear, someone you like, ask the writer who they read. Anything that you do write must be edited; even email.

On Dylan: Culture Swap, Part II

So much has happened since I first shook hands with my colleague, Kyle Semmel, and agreed to do this Culture Swap on Bob Dylan.

The most eye-opening revelation was how different and not so different Dylan turned out to be. Though he's a Mid-westerner by birth (Duluth, Minnesota, 1941), he moved to New York City and began performing in the folksy clubs in Greenwich village in the early 1960s.

This fact struck me because as a native New Yorker it was in Greenwich Village that I felt very much in my element. So on this fact, there's an affinity with Dylan, on the identity of place.

Since my last post on Bob Dylan, I’ve put a few songs of his on my MP3 player, spent several hours reading and listening about his impressive body of work than spans more than fifty years. And it's impact on the music, literary, film, and art world. And that he's still creating, breathing, building bridges, sharing new ways of spreading his "humanist" philosophy.

Something else I discovered: many of my favorite folks singers—Nina Simone, Odetta—they each covered some of Dylan’s songs. (I'm sure several others have...) It’s hard not to be moved by some of his stirrings lyrics. I currently have his song “Hurricane” on repeat in my MP3 player, which was, of course, about the famed boxer, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. I believe actor Denzel Washington played him some years back. Take a visual listen“Hurricane,”

All of rubins cards were marked in advance
The trial was a pig-circus, he never had a chance.
The judge made rubins witnesses drunkards from the slums
To the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum
And to the black folks he was just a crazy nigger.
No one doubted that he pulled the trigger.
And though they could not produce the gun,
The d.a. said he was the one who did the deed
And the all-white jury agreed.

His obvious concern for justice and sensitivity for the underdog is affecting. And to learn that this came from a twenty-something-year-old from Minnesota is remarkable. I have found that georgraphy plays such a big role in one's identity politic. And so much of the "tumult" of the 1960's seems to have taken place in the urban cities and the South. But, no one talks about the Mid-west where Dylan is from. Add to that, so many artists steer clear of being “political.” It’s too costly for show business.

His accolades are unrivaled: best selling recordinga artist of all time. He's done thousands of shows. Written untold scores of songs. In 2008, Bob Dylan was awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for his “profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."

Dylan's a "Renaissance" man, as he is also an accomplished painter. Check some of his work out here.

So, what was the point of all of this cultural swaping. And, what will become of our collective cultural enlightment, now that I've listened to Dylan and I believe Kyle is listening to a couple of my beloved artists. Does it all end once I click on the "publish post" button?

I think the real value of this exercise is to wake up the humanist in us all. In my first post, I raised the question, can someone who loves Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, and Prince also enjoy Bob Dylan...My answer is a resounding "yes."

Drop me a line if you have a culture swap story you'd like to share with us here in Blog-o-sphere and at the Writer's Center.

Signing off,
Abdul Ali
thecarousel@writer.org

Discovering Dylan: A Culture Swap. Part I

So, my officemate Kyle and I decided to do a culture swap. He’ll suggest a musician I ordinarily wouldn’t listen to, and I’ll do the same. This has become a fascinating experiment because so often we—artists, regular people—don’t work outside our comfort zones. I was born at what some would consider the cultural peak of Hip Hop, the 1980s. And so my awareness about what I think to be culturally my own or even accessible has been negotiated and re-negotiated with this assignment. Can a someone who loves Nina Simone and Stevie Wonder and Prince appreciate a Bob Dylan? Why, of course.

Kyle often references Bob Dylan as a poet. And this naturally made me curious since I consider myself a poet. Armed with three very different Bob Dylan albums, I’m still undecided about whether I dig this musician, this man, who seems larger than life just listening to my officemate's frequent references.

Once you get past his scratchy, off-putting voice, a poet does appear. The pauses and cadences in the lyrics all remind me of some of my favorite beatnik poets of the 1950s. There’s a sweet melancholy in Dylan. A tortured artist. A rare breed of musician. Only there’s something distant about this sound. I’m fascinated by this “different” sound and want to learn more about the life and times of Dylan.

Signed,
Abdul Ali

If you have a Dylan story to share, or a song of his to recommend, please drop me a line at thecarousel@writer.org

Behind the Scenes with Michael Kinghorn

Michael Kinghorn has spent the bulk of his thirty-year career writing, directing, and developing new plays. He has led the literary departments of three major regional theaters: The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, The Alliance Theater in Atlanta and Arena Stage in Washington, D.C, where he served as script consultant on dozens of new plays by distinguished and emerging playwrights.

He will lead the workshop “Acting For Playwrights” on April 1st,at The Writer’s Center here in Bethesda. Acting for Playwrights is a sampler for writers interested in acting. The Carousel editor, Abdul Ali, caught-up with Michael Kinghorn via email about the upcoming workshop.

How will "Acting for Playwrights" benefit playwrights or those writers who have yet to experiment with acting?

Playwrights and writers will leave the workshop with a concrete experience of several techniques we use for training actors. In short, I will give participants an opportunity to "sense" how actors learn to approach their craft--from impulse to action.


You've worked in professional theater for over 30 years. In your experience, what is the single most important characteristic for a successful actor and playwright to have?

I would say that the single most important characteristic for an actor or playwright to have is a curious and open mind. This allows one to see past one's own assumptions while developing a set of artistic values.


What specifically can participants expect when they take your course?

Participants can expect to be engaged in a series of exercises and improvisations that will allow them to glimpse the world of acting from an intuitive and non-intellectual perspective, yet in a safe, creative environment.


Will you be in attendance at our Open House on March 14 12 noon?

I can't commit to the open house event at this time, but I will try to make it after checking schedule and other commitments.

To register for this course, you may call the Writer’s Center at 301.654.8664. For more information about this course, you may email me at thecarousel@writer.org

Signing off,

Abdul Ali

We're Back!

Regular Blog posts and e-blasts will resume today.

The past two weeks have been frenzied, to put it mildly, particularly this week with all of the insanity that goes with publishing our hybrid brochure and magazine better than we did last time. Kyle and I of course made sure all of the minutia was not forgotten. There were moments when I didn’t think I’d make it. My eyes often would play tricks on me, casting a red tint on everything. And I’d look over at Kyle only to hear unintelligible mumbling from across the room.

Triumphantly! The Carousel is finished, has been sent to the printer, and will be mailed out next week. While I look forward to emails about what went wrong—as with anything involving humans things sometime do get missed—I will also look for those emails that recognize the progress we’re making. As contributor Greg McBride says “It’s been a long trip” and we’re still moving strong.

Expect a blog post from member Kathleen Pugh, tomorrow.

Wednesday through Friday of next week Kyle will be blogging from The Writer’s Center/Poet Lore booth from AWP in Chicago.

Finally, note the following literary events happening this month:

Toni Morrison will be at Howard University (my alma mater) on February 13, 2009. Contact: Tanya Hardy at thardy@howard.edu

Poet Laureate of Washington D.C, Dolores Kendrick, will be at the International Student House on February 22, 2009. (I will be reading at this event.)

Board member, E. Ethelbert Miller will read at the Library of Congress on February 23 at noon.

Contributed by Abdul Ali, thecarousel@writer.org

Pensive about New Years

Something happened to me the between Christmas and New Years. I felt a lot like John Coltrane must have felt in the photo above. Like many “good” writers I planned to get some work done making my spiked egg nog all the merrier. The truth is I couldn’t muster one word in my journal. And, I didn’t feel not one iota guilty. I think I may have sighed once at my green notebook staring at me from across the room.

I’ve never been a New Year’s resolutions type. They tend to fade as quick as you make them which begs the question are they really resolutions? Surely, if something is important enough to resolve to do, why wait until New Years? One thing, I’ve decided to do is stop writing so much. Yes, I know this sounds counterintuitive but hear me out. There’s a very seductive lifestyle that writers build around themselves. After a while, all of the readings, book signings, book club meetings, and open mics start to substitute for actual writing and more important reading. There’s about a thousand reading series in the D.C area. With all of the many contests, deadlines and whatnot, after a while you start down this path of writing for the industry of writing and not so much for why you started writing in the first place.

I don’t know about you but writing for me happened first as a reader. I absolutely could not imagine not having something to read on my way to school or between classes or even just a companion to brave the quiet with. Then, one day I realized that I was consumed with the things I read, the ideas, the new ways of viewing the self and the world that this new self inhabited. Writing was about learning about myself and the world. It was about trying to create a beautiful creature that others could play with inside their minds. It was about secret ecstasies that only other readers and writers knew about. Yes, it was about participating into a world that seemed exclusive.

That place seems so far away these days. Writing should happen because it must exist. The novelist Toni Morrison talks about how the story she wanted to read didn’t exist so she wrote it. I like this thinking. In a world of billions, it takes a single person to give validity to a reality that billions know about. Don’t get me wrong. Recognition is really nice. But, I feel like I need to do much more reading. Make sure that my work is growing. Am I taking risks? It’s kind of like the actor who plays himself in every film. I don’t want to be that writer that simply talks about the same subject in every poem, every essay, every story.

Until then, I’m slowing my pen.

The 2008 A-List

2008 came and went. With just under 72 hours remaining to '08, I thought I'd enumerate a few memorables (in random order, of course.) Won't you take a walk down memory lane with me? [Trumpet playing] I humbly present to you my the "A-List." This list represents significant happenings that I haven't been able to recount until now.

1. Kay Ryan is selected Poet Laureate of the U.S.
2. Carol Cissel and Kyle Semmel join the managment team here at the Writer's Center.
3. Charlie Jensen becomes our new director.
4. I attend my first Lucille Clifton reading.
5. Barack Obama becomes our President-Elect.
6. Celebrated author David Foster Wallace commits suicide.
7. The movie The Great Debators brings the life and times of poet Melvin Tolson to a new generation.
8. Elizabeth Alexander is selected as the inaugural poet.
9. Eartha Kit dies.
10. Poet Patricia Smith becomes a National Book Award Finalist for her recent collection of poems, Blood Dazzler, a meditation on the aftermath of Katrina.

What I'm Writing

I have a confession to make—I’m a lazy writer. Remember when you were a kid riding bikes, and you’d eagerly charge up a hill only to give up mid-hump? That’s me. I ride flights of fancy only to burn out before the plane lands safely. My plane usually ends in an almost wreck. And the thing that frustrates me is that I have only the best intentions of finishing my work. But, no, it never goes down like that. Hours, days, occasionally weeks will past before I get this ache that I must finish that draft in order for me to make it to the next day. It gets to be a heavy load that needs doing away with.

It’s deceptively simple, the business of rewriting. Tuck a little here, add a comma there. It ain’t necessarily so. It’s like surgery. Break a vein here, move quick before clotting, scar tissue, fractures, mending heat. In a word, it’s a mess. Rewriting is a lot like this. What sane person wants to relive those moments that you’ve buried years ago? Only writers are crazy enough to do this again and again without the promise of fame and fortune.

There used to be this quiet that came over me whenever I scribbled something in my notebook. It could be an image, something simple like apple core turning brown that sits in the margin of my page looking beautiful and this voice will come out of nowhere saying well aren’t you going to finish that? And what are you really trying to say?

These days I try to quiet those voices some. I’m learning that each of us have our own personality, our own rhythm, and thus, our own way of rewriting. Some of us cannot sleep until they’ve gotten their story almost completely out of their system. I belong more or less to the intuitive lot. I don’t know where the piece is going; I just rock back and forth enjoying the ride, tasting the river. Of course, my breed of writer is the most frustrating for publishers, editors, and agents because it’s hard for us to follow deadlines.

Right now I’m trying to fulfill an end-of-year freelance writing assignment, and whip some of my poems into shape in hopes of putting together a chapbook that would be done if I could just finish a few poems and put them together!!! It had the potential to be a real masterpiece (chuckle.) If I’m steadfast, I’ll have it ready to read at the staff reading next month, Sunday, January 11th .

Behind the Scenes: Abdul Ali

As part of its makeover, this blog is going to be doing a semi-regular feature called "Behind the Scenes." In this feature, Writer's Center staff will discuss what they do at the Center and what it's like to work for a small nonprofit. Hint: it's deeply rewarding, but it's also challenging. Not to mention humbling.

Abdul Ali, Managing Editor of The Carousel, seems like the perfect way to begin. After all, our new and improved Carousel was published last month. We're pleased with how it turned out--though we know there are some things we missed (yes, there are typos, and we deeply regret those) and things we'd like to do better next time. But overall, this is what we wanted: a consolidated brochure/newsletter that brings you interesting content plus the workshops. One neat, tidy package. Abdul is a big part of the process that brought the publication to life, and here he is to talk about it:


It all starts with an idea. Let’s take travel, our next issue’s theme, for an example. The floodgates open and I think of all the ways the notion of Travel can connect with The Carousel, The Writer’s Center, and the writing life. It becomes an overnight obsession. That’s right, sweaty rashes, no showers, just brainstorming until the balloon pops. As writers, we tend to see things in layers. Of course, I do. When I think of travel, there’s the physical act of traveling and there’s the mental flight our minds make when we engage a work of literature.

Most of what I do is quite routine until it quietly builds into a supernova, a crescendo. As the deadline looms, emotions erupt, hair falls out, my eyes turn colors (not from alcohol, I promise.) Most of the routine comes in the form of following-up with authors, lots of back and forth e-mails, tracking down potential advertisers. It can sometimes be mind-numbing.

But then there are those moments—twilight ones--when an idea you have for an article or column pops out of the ether, flows through your mouth at a staff meeting, and everyone is on your bandwagon. You immediately e-mail a writer who you know is perfect for this assignment. And, they say “of course, I’d be happy to do it for free” and the rest is a wrap.

Aside from the hours that go into making The Carousel happen. A lot of it is collaborative, such as the design portions, or the conversations that make certain decisions definitive, the editing, the proofing, etc. Or the interns who make great pains to help me with this publication. It’s heartening to see members with a Carousel rolled up under their arm. Or, letting me know what they thought about a particular article. Because so much of what I do is in a vacuum, it’s lovely to hear outside voices. I’ve even created an e-mail account for this reason. It all begins with an idea so if you have any or would like to see yours into print, drop me a line, thecarousel@writer.org