***
From Maureen Murdock (From Memory to Memoir):
I recently read David Sheff’s memoir "Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey through his Son’s Addiction" which is a brilliant and heartfelt account by a father of a meth addict. I found it especially poignant because for the last four years I have been writing a memoir about madness and addiction in the family entitled "Hooked on Hope: A Mother’s Tale" and I am happy to relate that I have just found an agent enthusiastic about representing the book.
***
From Dominica Kriz (Writing the Surreal):
I’m looking for a publisher — I re-wrote the Book of Revelation as a contemporary road trip/hallucinogenic love story, complete with dragons, coyotes, angelic helpers, twenty-four geezers, the esoteric meaning of 666, drinks at the Bar Code with a mysterious woman in red velvet and the fall of the Great City. It’s called "The Apocalypse of Leila Alleluia Jones."
Last week I went to the finals of the Youth Speaks Poetry Slam at the sold-out Opera House and I highly recommend nobody miss it next year!
***
From Jamey Genna (Fiction Workshop; Flash Fiction)
Hi Jane,
In my writing life, The Iowa Review recently contacted me and asked if they could put a small little patch of writing that I had posted on their Daily Palette online zine into their magazine. It was a story based on a dream I had.
I am currently working on a collection of stories involving Iowa, where I grew up in a family of ten kids. I often make lists of the stories I have finished around this particular topic and ask myself what piece of the puzzle is missing. I have stories about tough packing plant workers, couples getting stoned and playing strip poker, a dog attack, a young girl trying out alcohol for the first time.
Coming up–I’ve got a story out in a new SF magazine, The Farallons Review, titled "A Good Swim." The magazine will be having a reading in the city some time in early June. Stay tuned.
***
From Kathleen McClung (Into to Memoir Writing):
Hi Jane,
–My short memoir "Ano Nuevo" appeared in the Jan/Feb issue of The Rambler.
–I served as ambassador and workshop host for "A Primer on Publishing" at the Women on Writing (WOW) Conference at Skyline College on March 1.
–I’m currently a reviewer for the 2008 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, a competition sponsored by Stanford University Libraries to recognize newly published books. Prizes will be awarded at the Saroyan Centennial Celebration at Stanford in September.
–Here’s a quote I like a lot. It touches on why I love teaching writing classes:
"So here again we find the constantly paradoxical nature of creativity, for as we internalize the work of others–our mentors, colleagues, friends, and enemies–creative persons are also developing our individual view of the world. We must! Yet the more unique and autonomous we become, the more dependent we become on our ecology. By alternating immersion and isolation, openness and closure, creative persons and creative environments co-evolve." (from Creators on Creating: Awakening and Cultivating the Imaginative Mind)
***
From Lisa Alpine (Travel Writing):
Hi Jane,
This relates to my travel writing hat:
I’ve been hold up in Berkeley and Napa with the other
members of my writer’s group, The Wild Writing Women,
writing and creating our new online magazine, Ireland:
The Sacred and The Profane. This baby’s going to be
big (around 150 pages). It has certainly taken a lot
of pushing and deep breathing to write, edit, and
design—not to mention creating the numerous multimedia
links—but soon we’ll pop it out and start blowing our
trumpets. You can guess by the title that it covers
the light and dark aspects of our trip together last
summer to the land of green. To get a launch
announcement, send me an email @
writing@lisaalpine.com
***
From Terrel Seltzer (Screenwriting):
My latest script Rule #1, currently being cast in LA, is based on the novel Little Beauties by Kim Addonizio, a former Writing Salon teacher. I have also optioned another script, FoolProof, to a joint American/European production company.
Note from Jane: When I pressed Terrel to give me a few more details, she added this:
I met Kim after a mutual friend gave me her book to read and I immediately saw a movie in it, since it had two great female characters. It’s a comedy about a woman with OCD whose husband has left her because he can’t live by her list of sixty rules. She’ll do anything to get better so he’ll come back. When her therapist tells her she must allow contamination into her life, it comes in the form of a 17-year-old, unwed mother.
It took me over a year to write since my teaching schedule is pretty full, and also because I discovered after starting that there was NO SECOND ACT! Or what works as a second act in a movie. But working with Kim has been a perfect writing experience, because she immediately gave me permission to add, subtract, or change anything I needed to make the adaptation from novel to film.
I talk to my students about "calling card" scripts, and in some ways Rule #1 has been that for me. When I finished, I sent it to an agent in Los Angeles who I really wanted to represent me, and she took me on, based on this script. And now it is in the hands of Brad Epstein, the producer for ABOUT A BOY (one of my favorite movies and a script I teach in class) and, more recently, DAN IN REAL LIFE. Currently, it is out to actresses.
***
From Dianne Jacob (Food Writing; Book Proposals):
My latest book. Grilled Pizza and Piadinas, is a cookbook written with Chef Craig Priebe. It will be released by publisher Dorling-Kindersley at the end of April, just in time for barbeque season, and sold in England and Germany. I wrote the book proposal, tested the recipes, and wrote the book’s text.
And last month I received this email, which I thought was pretty cool!
Dear Ms. Jacobs,
I teach food writing in China at Shantou University’s English language journalism program and thought you might be interested to know we use "Will Write for Food" as our primary reference book.
Your book has been extremely helpful teaching students to write about food. We now have a class blog, http://media.stu.edu.cn/jou4390/ and we’ve been written up in China Daily, China’s national English language newspaper.
I read in your book that your parents lived in China and the class would love to know more about that. Have you written about your parents’ experience at all?
All best,
Diane Mooney
***
From Eric Maisel (Beating the Writer’s Blues):
I have three new books coming out in 2008. In May, A Writer’s Space appears from Adams; in October, Creative Recovery appears from Shambhala (it describes the first addiction recovery program expressly geared to creative people); and in December The Atheist’s Way appears from New World Library.
I’m also actively involved in the Creative Cities movement (a UNESCO enterprise) and will be giving a plenary talk at the next Creative Cities conference in Santa Fe. If you want to learn more about what I do, you can visit my website at http://www.ericmaisel.com.
***
From Chris DeLorenzo (Exploring Your Writer’s Voice):
I am just about to finish a revision of my second novel, What Remains. I’m also crazy enough to have begun work on a new novel (presently untitled) that is a gay love story (with a little S & M thrown in!). This new novel has led me to Amsterdam this summer, where I will begin to do research for it.
I am also planning two writing retreats for 2009: one in Puerto Vallarta and one in the South of France.
***
From David Booth (Fiction Workshop; Real Life to Fiction):
An excerpt from my novel-in-progress, The History of Adoption, appears in the current issue of Washington Square. I’ll be reading from this at the Washington Square Benefit on Saturday, April 12th, 2008. It will be held at the Lillian Vernon Writer’s House, 58 W 10th St. in Manhattan, at 7 p.m. There will also be an art exhibit by Aphrodite Desiree Nevab, whose artwork appears on the cover and interior of the issue.
***
From Linda Watanabe McFerrin (Freelance Magazine Writing; Intro to Creative Writing)
Hi Jane,
Here’s what I’m up to:
Monday, April 7th, 7pm
Linda Watanabe McFerrin hosts the Left Coast Writers Literary Salon at Book Passage in Corte Madera. Guest Speaker is Wendy Merrill, author of "Falling into Manholes."
For a free pass to this by invitation only event, write to leftcoastwriters@aol.com.
Monday, April 14th, 7pm
Linda Watanabe McFerrin hosts an evening with Left Coast poets at Book Passage in the San Francisco Ferry Plaza featuring past student Rebecca Foust whose new poetry book, "Dark Card," winner of the Robert Phillis Chapbook Prize 2007, is forthcoming from Texas A&M University Press Consortium. Also reading are Marianne Betterly Kohn, Elaine Bond and Gail Strickland.Â
Linda Watanabe McFerrin with WritersCorps
Tuesday April 29, 7:30pm
Linda Watanabe McFerrin with Melissa Lozano, Karla Robinson & WritersCorps youth poets
$5-$15/sliding scale, general admission
Intersection & WritersCorps celebrate their 5th consecutive year collaborating on a multigenerational reading series. In the third and final reading this season, WritersCorps writer-teachers and youth poets from Ida B. Wells High School and Downtown High School share the stage with award-winning poet, columnist, novelist, travel writer, and teacherLinda Watanabe McFerrin (Namako: Sea Cucumber, The Hand of Buddha, The Impossibility of Redemption is Something We Hadn’t Figured On).
This summer Linda heads to England on assignment, then she and the folks at Writers Workshops International take twelve writers on the road to Puglia, Italy for a 10-day, on-the-road, travel writing adventure that culminates in publication in the fourth volume in a well-loved, nationally distributed travel anthology series from Travelers’ Tales.
***
From Erin Blackwell (Playwriting):
I’m taking a break from playwriting to write some lesbian porn —– er, I mean erotica. I actually had a story publised in Herotica 2004, from which I still, unbelievably, receive royalties, on the order of $6 a year. The impetus for this more recent attempt was my girlfriend’s ultimatum to produce some publishable material if I wanted to have sex with her again. And I met my girlfriend through Writing Salon, so it all fits together into some sublime kind of interlocking puzzle.
Tristan Taormino, who edited On Our Backs while I edited Girlfriends, two now-defunct dyke magazines, is editing Best Lesbian Erotica 2009 and graciously granted me an extension on the deadline, originally April Fool’s. So I’m overcoming my deep-seated reticence about writing about sex and my aversion to the genre of the one-handed book by: (1) keeping my eyes on the prize, (2) dipping into an elegant new Penguin edition of de Sade’s "Philosophy in the Boudoir," (3) consulting with an old pal who’s a queer porn writer with a fabulous aesthetic and sense of humor, and (4) watching a library copy of "The L Word" Season One dvd to remind myself this stuff is already out there. After the constraints of theatrical form, writing erotic fiction feels like removing a corset. In more ways than one.
***
From Julie Bruck (Fearless Poetry)
I’m writing a third book of poems, the working title of which is “The
Mandrill’s Gaze.” I recently got a grant from the Canada Council for the
Arts (the Canadian equivalent of the NEA), which will mean a year of
extra time and focus for writing. I’m working harder than I ever did
before.
Meanwhile, some of my basic assumptions are up for grabs. I’ve always
believed strongly, and preached the idea, that the only thing that
begets writing is writing, and that no amount of outside affirmation, or
rituals with fire or newts, or compulsive pencil-sharpening, can
approach the engagement with language that happens when you simply
weld your bottom to the chair and begin. Or, as Colette wrote, “Who
said you should be happy? Do your work.”
I’ve had grants and recognition before—they’re nice, but they come and
go. Recognition for one’s work never lessens the challenge of the next
piece of writing, or the one after that. Now, this particular “yes”
alights on my shoulder like an unexpected angel of permission, pushing
the work that much further every day. Whazzup with that?
As a young writer, I had some great teachers. Today, I find mentors in
what I read. But I’ve been teaching for longer than I was taught, and
it’s been some time since I felt that surge of confidence that comes
when someone you respect tells you your work is on track. In this case,
I don’t even know who that grant jury was, but I feel like a student at
Hogwart’s School of Wizardry on a particularly good day. Someone’s just
tapped me with a wand and I am crazed with gratitude.
Saturday, July 12th, 3 to 5 pm