On Reading Lit Journals

Does anyone read lit journals? (Admission: I'm reposting this slightly revised version of a post I wrote a long time ago on a different blog ( http://santafewritersproject.blogspot.com/)

I've been thinking a lot about this today, because I've been thinking about Poet Lore--the Writer's Center's own literary journal (the nation's oldest continuously published poetry journal).

You see them on bookstore shelves, usually with fine, glossy covers with really cool images. They're attractive things to look at, for the most part, but typically you have to wander around a bit among the forest of magazines to find the dark little region where they languish. (Note: I mean “young” here to include any unpublished or up-and-coming writer of all ages.)When I go into bookstores these days the first thing I do is check out the lit journals.

In a way, some of the most dynamic writing published today can be found in these journals, by writers living in near monk-like obscurity. Yet it seems a dwindling number of people are recognizing these journals. Why is that?

Let's make a test. Ask yourself this question: How many lit journals do I subscribe to? If you answer one, congratulations. If you answer more than one, terrific. But if you answer none, then you're probably in the majority. You could even ask yourself this question: How many journals do I subscribe to that I didn't also submit a contest submission to (and therefore get a year's subscription as part of your entry fee). Or even: How many lit journals do I subscribe to and read? It's an odd business, this lit journal business. I mean, here you have an outlet for and by (generally) new, publishing-contractless writers. And, according to those editors I've talked to, who struggle to keep their journals alive and well, it's languishing. Why is that? Isn't there a market out there for these journals? Of course there is. It's you.

"There are more writers out there than readers."

This is a common thought, and it would seem to be true. I used to be an editor for a journal that would receive scads of submissions from writers who thought their stories were "perfect" or "just right" for our journal, though a quick glance at page 1 suggested otherwise. True, many journals undergo structural overhauls from year to year, as editorial hands (and tastes) change. That makes it difficult for writers to know with certainty what a journal might publish from year to year. Nevertheless, even a quick glance at a lit journal can tell you what kind of things they are interested in publishing—and, more than likely, journal standards won't change that dramatically. There are web resources that will give you a rundown of the many journals that are out there and what they're looking for. My favorite is http://www.newpages.com/.

But while knowing what a journal likes to publish may help you get editors to take longer looks at your stories/poems, it doesn't change the fundamental dynamic of the disappearing lit journal reader. Without readers and, especially, subscribers, can these journals survive? Like Pindledyboz, they might go to online publishing only, where the costs of printing and distributing are weighted in their favor. What will happen to aspiring writers if lit journals disappear from print and go online? Will they have a print venue to send their stories to? A sympathetic ear? A greater than "impossible" chance to get their stories published and noticed? It's hard enough getting your stories/poems published now. How much more difficult would it be if the number of print lit journals was scrunched to only those that were big enough to survive? (If this is starting to sound like the fate of the dying newspaper business, and I think it is, then writers should be concerned.)

This is NOT to say that online lit journals aren’t cool. They are. CHeck out WC director Charlie Jensen's LocusPoint, or Kyle Dargan's Post No Ills. And Kim Robert's Beltway Quarterly. Increasingly, they’re becoming the best forum for young writers to gain exposure. What can be done to get more people reading print journals? Well, for one you can subscribe to some journals (and encourage a couple friends to subscribe). Start there. Pick two or three journals that you'd like to really get to know and subscribe to them. I do that each year. Most journals don't cost that much for a yearly subscription. Maybe you'll be out $40-60, but you'll be supporting the industry you'd like to be part of someday. Besides, with the cost of books rising to as much as $25 for a hardback original, it wouldn't cost that much more to subscribe to two or three journals than it would to buy two new hardcover books—and at least here you'd be supporting a noble cause.You lead a busy life, sure.

No one is expecting you to sit down with a journal and read it from end to end. But you can read what appeals to you, and in my experience, there's usually much more good than bad in lit journals. Young writers are honest writers, and in fits and starts they do their damnedest to find that voice that is authentic to them, to write that story that is within them. That's a commendable service to humanity. Trust me. Writing is hard, and anyone who tries it is brave.

Which is all the more reason to support lit journals. It’s a brave enterprise to offer short literary work by generally unknown authors to a reading public that mostly ignores lit journals. After spending months reading through stacks of submissions to find those rare gems that leap out and convince them to take a risk and dedicate page-space to these authors, editors hope, hope, hope there will be an audience out there who’ll read their journal.

Open Mic Night

Last Friday, I hosted our first open mic for the fall season. I'm still recovering from all of that heat, raw energy, and all of those stirring poems. Each of them moved me in different ways.

Truth be told, I haven’t had much time to attend any of the open mic venues in the District where I live and claim my literary allegiance. Hosting the open mic at the Writer’s Center, however, took me back to why writing matters so much.

Just sitting in the audience and occasionally introducing poets, I got entered a dozen people's lives. Suddenly, I cared about what pressed on their chests. I listened to pastoral poems. Poems about loss, war, heartbreak. There was a beautiful woman who performed a song “in the language of the deaf.” There were whimsical poems, sound poetry whose words would riff right off the page.

It was quite a spectacle, something that I look forward to doing again, and I hope to see you there next time.

Did any of you attend out open mic event? What did you think? Don't be shy.

Guest Interview with author Solveig Eggerz

I'm going to take a slight break from my interview series with poets for National Poetry Month. I'm going to re-post this interview with longtime Center member and novelist Solveig Eggerz, who'll be reading with poet Wendell Hawken at The Writer's Center on Sunday, May 3 at 2:00 P.M. right here in Bethesda.
***

I was excited to pose a few questions to Solveig Eggerz regarding her first novel, Seal Woman. It's a fascinating first book, and in many ways a very ambitious one. Yet it's a novel that's firmly--and grittily--grounded in the harsh realities of life during and following WWII. Please visit Ghost Road's website, at the bottom of this page, for a complete description of the book. I did not--and do not--wish to give away too much with these questions. A special thanks goes out to Solveig for graciously spending time answering my questions.

Seal Woman is a novelization of German "refugees" in Iceland during WWII. For those who aren't familiar with the story, can you tell us a little about why Germans went to Iceland?


In the late 1940's Icelanders, especially women, were leaving the farms to find work and more comforts in Reykjavik. At the same time, employment conditions were dreadful in Germany. The Icelandic Agricultural Association decided to advertise for farm workers in German newspapers. About 314 Germans sailed to Iceland, most of them women.

What was the genesis of the story for you?


During the years 1988-96 I told folk and fairy tales to children in the library of my son's school. Among the stories I told was one about a lonely farmer who falls in love with a creature sitting on a rock by the ocean. It's not clear whether the creature is a seal or a woman. He marries her and they have children. All goes well until she hears the call from her past or from her other world and she returns to the sea. This is a Celtic and a Scandinavian story. I was moved by this story and felt it applied to particular human situations--especially to the immigrant experience when much is gained in the new place but much is also left behind.

The other stimulant for writing the story was a German/Icelandic film I saw in Iceland, Maria. It was about one of these German women. She is contracted to work on a very primitive farm where she is greeted with a profound silence. It was the silence more than anything that impressed me about this film. I imagined that a woman coming from the huge trauma that the Nazis inflicted on the world and on their own citizens might arrive in this new land with a need to talk, a need to process that trauma. I wanted to solve the riddle of how such a woman in those circumstances might respond or develop.

How long did it take you to write the novel?


I drafted the novel in ten days in 2001 when I was attending a writers' conference at Sewanee. After that I revised it for a couple of years. And after that I changed it some more.

Did you write any of the book while in a workshop at the Center?


No, but I was concurrently working on another novel, which I workshopped at the center. Much of what I learned in those workshops undoubtedly carried over to the writing of Seal Woman.

Charlotte, the novel's main character, is an artist shorn from her life & family in Germany. In Iceland she finds a new life. Can you tell us a little about the complications of writing a novel set in two different times and places?


The complication lies primarily in needing to research the details of life in two different places and two different times. The nature of the research was also entirely different for the two parts: for the sections set in Iceland, I researched plants and their uses, foods, and work methods; for the German sections I researched the historic details of the Weimar Republic, the Nazi years, and the Holocaust.

And how did you come to the technique you use--shifting back and forth between post-war Iceland and Hitler's Germany?


I adopted this technique because I wanted to show what Charlotte might be thinking. The entire flashback to Germany might be contained in her memory and in her heart. Chang Rae Lee's novel A Gesture Life made a strong impression on me.

The passage of time is a unique feature of your book. It's compressed into small units, and months--even years--pass in a single page (Erik's marriage and life with Lena, for example). Can you talk about the difficulty of writing about the passage of time in fiction?

Passage of time is for me a matter of focus. If you are coming in real close and focusing on a single moment in a character's life, you will describe it second by second. But then if you pull away and focus from a distance, you can can allow several years to pass on a page. Readers will usually stay with you if they realize what you're doing. I think, however, we as readers get resentful when the writer combines both forms of focus and pushes them together into one sentence: The newly married couple spent an hour picking out a lampshade that would match the beige decor of their bedroom, and then the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union.

What, if anything, do you think this novel says about today?


This novel says the same thing about today as it said about yesterday---that humans, brave as they are about pulling up roots and "moving on," often must struggle to regain their balance and to integrate any kind of trauma that they have experienced. It tells us also that silence and the suppression of memory is often not the best way to move forward from the past.

Can you tell us how your book has been received, if at all, in Iceland?

I was interviewed last May and received a full page display in the main newspaper. This generated considerable interest. However, I can't really say much about reception in Iceland until it is published in Icelandic.

Will you be reading there?

Because the book is published in English, I won't be actually reading from it, but I hope to talk about it in some forum during my next visit.


Seal Woman a novel by Solveig Eggerz
Publication date: 5/15/2008
Ghostroad Press: http://www.ghostroadpress.com/

Richard Currey, James Grady, and Roach Brown DC Noir at The Writer's Center Sept. 21

"Writing for Veterans" instructor Richard Currey (Fatal Light, The Wars of Heaven) will join James Grady (Six Days of the Condor, Mad Dogs) and Roach Brown ("Christmas in Prison") in a reading from the Akashic Press collection DC Noir 2: The Classics. The event is from 2-4p.m. in the reading room at the Center.

This event is part of the Fall for the Book Festival sponsored by George Mason University.

Born in the small town of Parkersburg, West Virginia, Richard Currey is the author of Crossing Over: The Vietnam Stories, Fatal Light, The Wars of Heaven, and Lost Highway. A writer of exceptional range and versatility, Currey has published short fiction, poetry, essays, and investigative journalism. His fiction has been adapted for theatre, most recently in a new staging of Crossing Over: The Vietnam Stories now in workshop productions. The recipient of many awards, prizes, and fellowships, Currey's books have appeared in 11 languages, receiving critical comparisons to Joseph Conrad, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Kerouac along the way. http://www.richardcurrey.com/index.html

James Grady is an Edgar nominee and winner of France's prestigious Grand Priz Du Roman Noir. He is the author of Six Days of the Condor (made into a film starring Robert Redford) and the recent Mad Dogs. Praise for Mad Dogs:"What a pleasure to be in the hands of a master storyteller. James Grady's MAD DOGS starts off with one of the best first sentences I've read in a long time and goes full-throttle, pedal-to-the-floor right up until the final page. A great, great read."Dennis Lehane, MYSTIC RIVER"MAD DOGS is the literary equivalent of a supercharged Hemi, a rock-and-roll road novel that roars out of the gate and never slows pace. James Grady, the king of the modern espionage thriller, is back with a vengeance."George Pelecanos, novelist and producer for THE WIRE

Rhozier “Roach” Brown, while serving a life sentence for murder, founded the Inner Voices, a drama troupe that was allowed out of prison more than eight hundred times to perform their brand of social drama. Largely as a result of the group’s success, President Gerald Ford commuted Brown’s sentence to immediate parole. The play Group Work was nominated for three television Emmy Awards and won Best Social Film at the New York Film Festival. A television documentary titled Roach was created about his life story. Later, he worked as a special assistant to Mayor Marion Barry for offender affairs and has been active in endeavors dealing with prisoners and former prisoners, both as the director of community-based programs and as a political activist. Brown played a key role in getting legislation passed that gave ex-offenders the right to vote in D.C. elections. He has also worked as a television and film producer.

Book Blogger Appreciation Week Begins Sept. 15th!

This will be a short post. It's been a busy week. I'm tired and ready to go home. Don't forget that next week is "Book Blogger Appreciation Week." See some information about it here: http://www.myfriendamysblog.com/

Today I wanted to feature one of the blogs listed in the lower righthand corner of this page. A fairly new blog called Art & Literature. So far, I like what I see. It features a local poet today, Brian Brodeur, who will be reading at the Writer's Center on Nov. 23rd (together with poet Eric Pankey of George Mason University). Brodeur's book, Other Latitudes, his first, won the Akron Prize.

You can click right here for quick transport: http://artandliterature.wordpress.com/

Embracing Technology (Slowly)

One of the hallmarks of being a writer is that it’s a solitary endeavor. Its probably the most democractic of the arts. Not everyone can paint, act, or play piano. But, with some imagination, pencil and paper--almost anyone can write. Also it requires little technology to do so, just an imagination and some elbow greese. My interaction with machines (e.g computers) is limited to dumping my thoughts from my brain onto the white screen, which happens relatively easy if you can type fast, and an occasional email check a few times a day (ok, I'm lying, a few times an hour.)

All the fun happens away from the computer: eavesdropping on juicy conversations, the pictures that creep inside your head, all of the poetry, the sounds, and colors that only writers can create with language. Writers do this all in our heads and in our notebooks. It’s only when we want to publish it or enter it into the market do we have to encounter the computer.

And yet, fate has it that I learn Adobe InDesign, a computer software that would enable me to do more things as an editor, such as laying out The Carousel which will replace our former Writer’s Carousel and Brochure. My uncle used to say to me “You’re way too young to be so rigid.” Alas!, I will now have to spend the next couple of weeks playing with this new system so that I can, join my peers and embrace this machine that continues to find ways to bring you in.

Is it old fashion of me to think that computers distract us from our work or is there some validity to my suspicion?

Guest Blogger Caitlin Hill on Poet Lore

Poet Lore has been alive and kicking out new issues of poetry continuously since 1889.

As we approach our 120th year of introducing new poets alongside established writers, we have developed a website exclusively focused on Poet Lore.

Visit www.poetlore.com to read samples from past issues, get information about submitting your own poetry, subscribe, read news on our poetry blog, learn more about our editors, and much more!

And keep your eyes peeled for information about our 119th Birthday Reading this November featuring DC's own A. B. Spellman, and introducing NYC's Gardner McFall. Gardner's poetry is highlighted in the Poets Introducing Poets section of our upcoming issue of Poet Lore. Be sure your subscription is all paid up, so you'll receive your copy hot off the press.

Happy Birthday, Sonia Sanchez

Many writers are asked what books matter to them the most. While this question may give me pause, on this day, September 9, I can easily say who’s one of my favorite writers and why.

I believe it was around this time, autumn, at the Library of Congress when I met Sonia Sanchez. There’s an organization named Visionary Project that allowed young people to interview and archive an elder over the age of 70. So there I was watching Jackie Robinson’s widow and other luminaries, when a little woman walks out, with a voice that filled the room. She charged us with living an examined life and even offered her phone number. We all laughed at this mighty little woman’s boldness.

Towards the end, I brought one of her books and asked her to sign it. So many people swarmed around her, making it difficult for me to say anything. About a year later, I spotted Ms. Sanchez at Union Station on New Year’s Day. I walked up to her and said “Happy New Years, Ms. Sanchez.” She gave me a hug with a quickness that caught me off guard. She invited me to call her. And ever since, I’d send her a postcard, see her in Washington D.C. I even got to honor her at the National Press Club reading from her work with three other poets.

Today, Ms. Sanchez turns 73, and I’m sure that she has no plans of slowing down. She is still as fierce as she was in her youth when she help found the Black Arts Movement with Amiri Baraka, and her work appears in many of the seminal texts of that exciting period.

Here's a poem I heard her read to a mixed crowd at SummerStage at Central Park, NYC last summer.


Ballad

by Sonia Sanchez
(after the spanish)

forgive me if i laugh
you are so sure of love
you are so young
and i too old to learn of love.

the rain exploding
in the air is love
the grass excreting her
green wax is love
and stones remembering
past steps is love,
but you. you are too young
for love
and i too old.

once. what does it matter
when or who, i knew
of love.
i fixed my body
under his and went
to sleep in love
all trace of me
was wiped away

forgive me if i smile
young heiress of a naked dream
you are so young
and i too old to learn of love.

Open House Pictures

Thank YOU members for making last weekend's open house a great event. Here are some photos, thanks to Carol Cissel, our Business & Operations Manager. Here's one of instructor Richard Currey (Writing for Veterans) posing with Kyle.

Instructors Khris Baxter (screenwriting) and Kathryn Johsnon(popular novel)

Abdul Ali & David Taylor (science writing)
Poet Lore turns 119 on Nov. 16th!
Caitlin & Janel teamed up to register guests.

Charlie and Janel giving away raffle prizes.

Guest Blogger Charlie Jensen: On Voice

I'm eager to get out to Leesburg tonight to attend my very first First Friday event at the Leesburg Town Hall. Author Kate Blackwell will be on hand discussing voice in writing.

It's interesting, the synchronicity of the topic and my work this week. In the course of preparing for our Open House on Saturday, I was invited to select one book to recommend to readers as well as a 5-book package for our silent auction.



For my pick for readers, I chose Robert Olen Butler's Severance, a book I wish he hadn't written because I would have liked to write it. Butler writes in the voices of history's most famous severed heads. While the voices themselves are compelling and unique (and numerous!), what I really envy about this book is how Butler calculated the likely number of words the human brain can process from the moment of beheading until loss of consciousness--and then wrote these little pieces using that number of words. I love the constriction of form, and I also love obsession. This book hits all my buttons.

For my auction selections, I chose poets whose voices are also unique, distinctive, and important:

Sandra Beasley's Theories of Falling
Robin Becker's The Horse Fair
Richard Blanco's City of a Hundred Fires
Carolyn Forché's The Country Between Us
Belle Waring's Dark Blonde

Of these, consider Forché's poem "The Colonel," which details an event from El Salvador during its violent civil war:

The Colonel

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on
its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings
like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in
Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go f--- themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

The voice here is horrified, as we are reading of the event, yet the detachment, the attention to details, are lyric and scattered, the way we tend to remember traumatic or frightening events. Forché's austerity, her lack of judgment of both the speaker and the characters within the poem, allow her images to do the work another voice might do through rhetoric. This is truly a remarkable poem, one I return to again and again in my own reading.

Writer's Center Open House Saturday, Noon to 3p.m. (And Odds & Ends)

Busy week this week preparing for the Open House, which is...ahem...Sept. 6th from noon to 3p.m. You can register here: http://www.writer.org/. And don't forget the kids! We'll have an activities room set up where they can do fun things with three of our great children's instructors: Sally Canzoneri, Ellen Cole, and Adele Steiner. Here's a sampling of what we have in store for you:

-Every attendee gets a coupon for $50 off any multi-session workshop
-One on one conferences with our participating instructors.
-A raffle with a grand prize of one FREE multi-session workshop
-A silent auction, where participants can bid on one of the following:

Dinner for 2 at one of three fabulous restaurants on Wisconsin Ave.
A book basket
A one-hour consultation with a Writer's Center instructor

Caption contest DEADLINE!

Remember, the winner of our caption contest, here, gets one book from our selection of "new" titles. Contest closes at 5p.m. Friday. Good luck!

I discovered--thanks to Serena, one of our commentors--that Sept. 15th-19th is Book Blogger Appreciation Week. You can vote for which book blogs are best in many different categories. This is a fantastic idea. Check it out here:

http://www.myfriendamysblog.com/2008/08/book-blogger-appreciation-week.html

or perhaps here:

http://savvyverseandwit.blogspot.com/

or here:

http://www.geocities.com/pavcrawphan/

These are all great blogs. See you Saturday!

Summer Leaves

No matter how much you try to fight it, summer is fleeting. I learned this much as I waltzed out of the house this morning without a jacket. While the temperatures may be slowly dropping, our earnest to writing ought not. There is so much going on around town. September is bursting at the seams with readings, socials, and opportunities to revisit those unfinished poems, manuscripts, family stories, et cetera. Check out the following:

- Open House at the Writer’s Center, this Saturday, September 6, 2008. Meet our instructors; get a $50 discount on a workshop; participate in our raffle where the winner receives a free multi-workshop ticket; special activities for younger writers; and enjoy some lite refreshments sponsored by Trader Joe's.

- Visit the Folger’s Poetry Series as they celebrate their fortieth year. For a full listing of their readers, click here.

-Attend the Nation Book Festival on September 27. Nearly 70 authors will be in attendance.

And yet, I urge you to not forget to attend the most important event: that is your meeting with your desk and chair. There is no substitution for writing. I’m learning this the hard way. I’ve set out to write a poem each day for the month of September. I know it sounds corny but it’s so easy to talk about what you want to write about and how you want it to get done. But, without the doing; it becomes cliché, and we all know that clichés are the enemy. Check out my last blog for a list of telltale signs of being cliche.

Guest Blogger Charlie Jensen: Writing Communities

As our fall workshops are just about to launch, I've been remembering some of my first experiences in situating myself among other writers.

When I was in high school, my English teacher, who really served as my first writing mentor, took me on a field trip with some other students to a writing festival at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, a small satellite of the larger UW system near where I grew up. The campus that day was full of energy and students of all ages. As attendees of the festival, we attended a large assembly about the importance of writing and then each registrant was placed in a critique workshop--my first of this kind but certainly not the last--with an established resident or visiting writer.

Our poems had all been thoughtfully read, and other members of our critique groups were also invited to provide criticism. My poem that first year was typical of what you'd expect from a 14-year-old boy: an extended meditation on relationships and sports, wherein the rules of baseball stood in for the conceit of sexual tension.

While my instructor delicately handled both my adolescent hubris and borderline offensive content with grace and aplomb, it wasn't long before a girl in the audience spoke up to ridicule me and my work. "This is disgusting!" she shouted, a small group of her friends egging her on. "How can you write about sex this way?"

The three girls attending the event from my school were sitting in the workshop with me. They were the kind of kids you didn't mess with--the kinds of girls who knew what various car enginge parts were and what they did, who snuck out to smoke at lunch, whose faces had that teenage scowl--but they liked me. And when the drama started, they fired right back. "Leave him alone!"

The objectioning girl stood up, and then we saw that she was several months pregnant. Her argument made a little more sense then. But things didn't die down and the lobbed jabs from either side grew in intensity and irritation until finally, our workshop leader shut the discussion down and moved on to another piece. But even as we left the room, the girl and her friends shot me looks of death.

I suppose an early introduction to criticism like this steeled me for the years of workshops to come.... And rest assured, they're very rarely this eventful!

Hope to see you at the Center next week.

Cliche: To Be or Not to Be

Writers love using the word “cliché.” We’re all guilty of it. Even now as I’m writing: I sit in a fancy café with movie set lighting, laptop in arm. Truth be told, I feel ridiculous, a bit pretentious even, like I’m working on the great American story. I even wait for someone to interrupt me so I can give them the medusa stare.

So, I thought I’d share a short list of things that writers do that I find to be cliché. Feel free to disagree with me and drop me a line (aali@writer.org)

Now on with my list, what I hope to revisit in a future post.

It's so cliche for writers to:

-go to coffee shops, meet with other writers and pretend to write.

-cop witty one-liners from family and friends that you plan to use in a story as your own.

-dress in all black.

- bellyache about feeling uninspired.

-write about your family and go on & on as if you were uniquely placed in a dysfunctional family.

-attend a reading simply for the food.

What Should We Read in High School?

We'll get to the subject of this post in a sec. First, we've got a second entry in our caption contest (scroll down to see the caption, read the comments, and then post your entry!). Our last contest winner, Serena, thinks that Anna's got a great caption. And she does. Let's see how many more we can get. The deadline will be Sept 5th at 5p.m. Which is the night before our Open House. At the Open House, whoever wins the contest gets a free book. Feel free to pass this blog post to your friends.

This past Sunday, local English teacher Nancy Schnog published a terrific article in the Washington Post about how we teach literature to high school students--or, better, how we fail to get them motivated to read. If you haven't already read it, you should. You'll remember, as I did, all those books you were made to read in high school that you didn't want to read. What she advocates in the article is the common sense way of getting students to read.

Often, it's all too easy to lament that no one reads books anymore. This article may help you understand why. Her essay made me wonder: What contemporary books would I want to read if I were a 17-year-old senior? Books that would make me read more. Gateway books, we'll call them:

The list:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon (Youthful narrator with quirky appeal and, at the heart, its a family story with a mystery involved. At 17 I am all about quirky.)

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer. (Another quirky youthful narrator, this time set against the events of 9/11. This is sure to appeal to those who've come after.) Once you get this one in your system, you'll no doubt go back and read Everything is illuminated. Before you know it, you're sneaking around a fat paperback copy of The Stories of John Cheever!

The Namesake, Jumpa Lahari. (Hard not to love this one. After this, you might be inclined to go search out her other books, do an end around to Zadie Smith, back to Michael Ondaatjie, Philip Roth...)

Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi. (Get yourself started with graphic novels, as the librarian in Bob Thompson's excellent Post essay, right here, suggested, and you won't be able to quench your thirst for more.)

B, Jonathan Baumbach. (I'm going out on a limb with this one. Baumbach's older than these other writers. Mostly off whatever radar gets people reading books. He's truly someone to read, though, and B is a great place to start. Funny and smart. Narrator reflects on his life, and what a life! Told in a cool, ironic way that appeals to this 17-year old.)

(WILDCARD; or, the best book too few people have heard of)

The Wonder Book of The Air, Cynthia Shearer. I wish I had read this when I was 17.

Now let me ask you: What books do you think would be good reads for high schoolers?

Workshop Reflections

Yesterday evening marked the last meeting for my writing workshop that I attended for the past five weeks (basically the entire month of August.) All and all, I learned a good deal about poetry about myself. I learned how comfortable I was writing the same way about the same old things. I am aware of this fact now. It’s a liberating and a sanity-testing discovery.

So, here are a few things I have learned that I wanted to share:


-Take Risks! I know this sounds cliché to workshop-goers but there is something to be said about writing that is done from a place of anxiety or fear. Choose topics that you ordinarily wouldn’t write about. That writing tends to have something “added” that safer topics often lack.

-Occasionally, pick a writer and try to emulate some of the things they do in their piece (e.g use of language, sarcasm, personae, shape of the poem, theme, pacing, etc.) It might also be nice if this writer was a recommendation so you’re approaching this fresh.

-Choose writing partners for their skill as writers as that will give you an honest pair of eyes to depend on after the workshop.

-Save your notes from your workshop. The same comments that were made on your writing in the workshop is probably applicable to future writing.

Closed for Repair & Caption Contest #2

The Writer's Center may be closed for cleaning and slight repair this week, but staff is still hard at work preparing for the upcoming workshop and events season. If you haven't already looked at our workshop or event schedule, go ahead and do it now. Click me.

We'll still be posting on our blog this week, of course. But if you're looking to be in touch with the WC family, go on over to our Facebook page and see what's up.

Above is installment number 2 of our caption contest, compliments of this guy: http://www.flamingspinach.com/.

Serena won last time (and Serena, it occurs to me that we owe you a prize). Serena and the winner of this contest gets to choose a "new" book from our store at the center at our Open House on September 6th. Noon to 3 p.m.

Oh, and if you have trouble posting a comment or caption on this site, please send it to thewriterscenterATgmailDOTcom.

Okay. Ready, set, go.

Guest Blogger Charlie Jensen: LOCUSPOINT and internet publishing

Literary publishing has moved in new and interesting directions since the internet became a readily-available publishing tool. Much like the sudden advent of print publications in the 60s and again in the 90s when advances in printing made those efforts more cost-effective for small publishers, the internet has had a somewhat democracizing effect on the literary magazine biz. No longer beholden to prohibitive printing costs, writers and writing enthusiasts everywhere are putting on their editor/publisher hats and tossing their work into the ring.

One of the essential differences between online and print publishing is so simple, you may not have thought of it: binding.

Binding, as a concept, not only allows us to cohere items together, but it also dictates permanent sequencing and ordering of materials: while you can flip through the book any way you want, ultimately, the book itself will always be the same physical object.

The internet is not bound, or better to say it is infinitely bound--links can attach pages to each other in any number of ways. This is an opportunity to change the way we think about publishing.

While some people have enjoyed replicating the print journal model on the internet because it is more cost-effective, some editors are finding new ways to present work. No Tell Motel, for instance, uses a "residency" binding structure in publishing poets: five poems from a poet are published in a given week, with a new piece appearing each day so that the entire set are online on Friday. In this model, poets are "checking in" and "checking out" of No Tell Motel, but in the meantime, enriching the audience.

42opus "builds" its volumes and issues over time, posting a new piece every few days or so.

Born publishes multimedia collaborations between artists and writers, adapting literature with audio and visual elements to create entirely new works.

These are just a few examples of innovative publishing being done on the web--but more importantly, it could only be done on the web.

A few years ago, while attending the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in Austin, I had a big brainstorm. Since the internet is completely decentralized, but because poetry is so tied to communities, colleagues, and place, why not publish work on a place-by-place basis?

And so LOCUSPOINT was born. As "The place of poetry," it not only publishes work from a specific community or city, it also provides resources for people who want to get more involved in that place.

I hope you'll take some time to explore the innovative publishing happening on the internet and, better yet, embrace this new way or promoting writing!

As the Summer Winds Down: A Special Tribute

First, I want to start off by referring back to our earlier Name that Caption contest post. Remember that one? Well, after a couple weeks we now have a winner. That winner, it turns out, didn't have a lot of competition (but that just makes judging easier!)

Drumroll please. And the winner is...a foregone conclusion: It's Serena with "The Great Hamburger Parachute Race." Congratulations, Serena. I hope you're reading this now!

Now, on to other matters....

As the summer winds down, we've definitely got to pay a big tribute to our fabulous group of interns and one full-time part-time staff member (who're now leaving us or have already left us). Each of them have helped give your Writer's Center a tremendous lift.

A big thank you goes out to...

Carrie. Some of you may have noticed how organized the Center's used book rooms are now. This is due 1000% to the hard work of Carrie. Working diligently every day, Carrie went to town on those books. If Carrie were on a reality TV show that pit her against a big mess, I'd put my money on Carrie to clean it up!

Elyse. Elyse was the publishing/communications intern par excellance (you may have read her blog post yesterday featuring instructor Sarah Blake). She did a lot for us here at the Center--and I mean a lot, especially in this office--and everything she did she did like a pro. You'll be missed!

Janel. At the risk of sounding redundant, I'm going to say that what Janel has done--and continues to do--for the Center is irreplaceable. Somehow, she manages to swerve between me and Sunil and understand what we're talking about. Not an easy task, that. Happily, Janel is NOT done here at the Center. An American U grad student, Janel has accepted a part-time position on staff. Yay!

Gonzalo. Gonzalo wasn't here every day, but his presence was a big plus. From delivering brochures to gathering data online, Gonzalo was a rock. But check this out: After leaving us, Gonzalo will be heading to Europe in the employ of Francis Ford Coppola. He'll be tasting wines and writing about them for some wine magazine. That's some kind of post-college dream job, eh?

Alexis. I most certainly didn't forget you (you thought I did, huh?). Well, Alexis was employed at the Center for a couple years, starting as an intern. But she stayed and we're glad she did. She was Sunil's assistant in programs and she did an awesome job. Now she's out in Columbia, MO starting her Ph.D program at U of Mizzou.

Thanks for a great summer everyone! Keep us posted!

Guest Blogger: Elyse on Sarah Blake's 'Grange House'

Hey everyone, this is Elyse, the Publishing Intern at the Writer’s Center. Fortunately for me, the Center has a great program for its interns- a flexible work schedule, a great work experience, and a free workshop! I took Sarah Blake’s Creative Writing: Getting Started and Sarah was kind enough to agree to an interview on her book Grange House.

I’m very much into historical fiction, so Grange House- set at the end of the Victorian era- was right up my alley. The novel takes place in 1896 Maine, in an old manor house-turned-hotel, the eponymous Grange House. The hotel is one of those buildings full of Gothic mystery, as great a fixture in the fictional landscape as Wuthering Heights, and the summer home to cast of intriguing characters. The main character is Maisie Thomas, 17, fanciful and desperately aching for more. Her summer begins ominously when one foggy morning she discovers a pair of ill-fated lovers, drowned in the bay by the Hotel. Add in a reclusive authoress with a mysterious past (Miss Grange), ghosts of all kinds, your usual Victorian love triangle, and more mysterious deaths and you are sucked into a world of gentle mystery culminating in a very unique coming-of-age story.

1. How long have you been working at the Writer's Center?
I started teaching at the Writer’s Center in April, 2008.

2. What classes have you taught?
I’ve taught two classes: What’s the Plot?, a reading workshop on plot—what it is, how to find one, how to write one, how you see it working in great novels; and Beginning Fiction.

3. Now, on to your fabulous book, Grange House. The novel resonates with overtones from Victorian literature- both in Maisie's reading material and in the novel itself, in a quite impressive metafictional layering. How difficult was it to keep this balance?
Writing Grange House was very much an act of literary ventriloquism for me—it sprang out of my love of long Victorian sentences, of Victorian plots, and the sense that characters inhabit a textual world: in novels of the period much is revealed in the guise of characters talking about what they are reading, what they are thinking in terms of life or art, etc. So the balance between Maisie’s reading and Maisie’s story is its own subplot—and one that was fun to play with.

4. Maisie's interest in reading and how the sorts of books she reads influences her character reminded me a lot of David Copperfield, when Dickens lists all the books he thinks every child ought to read to form a more perfect understanding of humanity in general. Why did you chose the books you did?
The novels and poems that Maisie is reading—Jane Eyre, The Mill on the Floss, Swinburne, Tennyson—all narrate the stories of mid/late 19th century girls becoming women—and much as a present day seventeen year old would hold her life up against a character’s in a movie or on TV, Maisie’s guides for behavior are these. But Grange House is also a novel about writing novels(and lives)—and Maisie is charged with finishing an older woman’s story, finding out the ending and then writing what happens. In so doing, Maisie reads and then writes her own life. She is writing her story then, very much mindful of not repeating the Bronte and the Eliot. It’s as much about how women become writers as it is about girls becoming women.

5. I believe you have a Ph.D in Victorian literature; what about the books of these period interests you the most?
I love the leisure with which the big old novels of the Victorians take on the world—and I love the capaciousness of that world. Middlemarch, for example, sets so many characters in motion, and then sets back and watches (for pages and pages) the many multiple arguments on race, class, politics, social expectation, art, beauty, immortality, banking—play out.

6. Grange House was a very different coming-of-age story wherein the heroine ostensibly looks for love but finds herself instead. Did you set out to write Grange House with this twist in mind, or did it develop during the writing process?
I didn’t know what Maisie comes to know until I was nearly at the end of the first draft and realized—oh! that’s who she is. It was very exciting in the writing.

7. Could you describe the particular process of writing Grange House?
Grange House sprang very much out of my doctoral work—I had come to the end of my orals exam preparation (which basically requires you to read every single relevant novel of the 19th century) and just wanted to read another Bronte novel. Meanwhile, I had begun writing little sketches of a family living in the 19th c. off the coast of Maine, a family that behaved as though it had a secret, though I didn’t know what that secret was. Then my grandmother died and my aunt gave me a leather box full of about 200 love letters exchanged between my great-grandparents, Maisie Thomas and Jonathan Lanman, written in the months before they were officially engaged. I began to transcribe them, and one day I was reading and transcribing the letter in which Maisie describes how her father fell through the floor of an old tower to his death. I had chills—reading and writing simultaneously—and I realized that that was the beginning of my novel, and that somehow Maisie’s story intersected with the Maine family’s secret. That letter of Maisie’s and the subsequent answer from Jonathan are both in Grange House, fully intact.

8. Do you have a particular process when you write, or does it differ from piece to piece?
I’m not sure I have a particular process other than to get up every day and try and figure out what on earth I am doing, based on what the writing is telling me. This second novel has taken a blisteringly long time—as I try and understand what my characters are up to, I have written two whole novels that will never see the light of day in service to this one that will, thankfully, appear.

9. I was lucky enough to take your beginning fiction class, but for those who didn't, what do you think is most important for a beginning writer to know before starting in on a project?
That what you have come to say is almost always a mystery, and that you have to have the patience of a blind man navigating around a new room, every single time you sit down to write.

10. And finally, you've got a book coming out in 2009. Can you tell us a little bit about it?
My second novel, The Postmistress, is set in the year before we enter World War II, and goes back and forth between the lives of a radio war correspondent who works for Murrow during the Blitz, and a postmaster in a small Cape Cod town until their lives intersect because the postmaster doesn’t deliver a letter to a woman in town saying that her husband has died. I am interested in the gap in time before we know the news—and in this case, the gap in time when we were almost at war, but not at war as a nation.