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The Writing Salon https://www.writingsalons.com/ Mon, 18 Mar 2024 18:37:57 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 Featured Teacher: Kerry Muir [Winter 2024] https://www.writingsalons.com/featured-teacher-kerry-muir/ Mon, 18 Mar 2024 17:52:06 +0000 https://www.writingsalons.com/?p=1286048 The post Featured Teacher: Kerry Muir [Winter 2024] appeared first on The Writing Salon.

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Your current short film, Madame, is an official selection of the San Francisco Independent Film Festival — congratulations! Can you tell us a little bit about the process of writing and making the film?

Sure! The idea for the film came to me in the Spring of 2018. I was listening to Freya Cellista’s sound collage “St. James Park” (from her brilliant album Finding San Jose) and suddenly saw—very clearly, in my mind’s eye—a young girl, small suitcase in hand, waiting for a train. She was alone in the world, en route to an interim foster home where a shady woman awaited her arrival. I began to write these two figures down, the girl and the woman… and word by word, scene by scene, the script for “Madame” emerged.

At the time I was enrolled in a beginning filmmaking course at City College of San Francisco and had access to the department’s vast stores of equipment, so I plunged in and filmed the script with my aunt and young niece over Spring break. It was a family affair, chaotic and frenzied, shot in my mother’s house, with my sister helping me MacGyver small, impromptu soundstages out of blankets and curtains. We shot late into the wee hours of the night, and then got up early in the mornings to shoot scenes on the train, harvesting over a terabyte of footage in a very short but intense span of time.

During the pandemic and the subsequent advent of Zoom in all our lives, I happened to cross paths in cyberspace with Vermont-based filmmaker and editor Sean Temple (Water Horse, The Thaw, Thorns). I’d been struggling for over a year with an overly-long edit of my own making, and it was clear to me I didn’t have the editing chops to bring my vision to fruition. After connecting with Sean, I handed him the editing reins, and he became my co-producer, distilling the story down to its essence, paring the edit back radically in length, and pushing the piece further into the dreamlike, subconscious realm from whence it first sprang.

It took years, but I’m very pleased with the result. Filmmaking requires tenacity, because the process depends on so many moving parts coming together–which is very different from the act of writing, where it’s just you and the page.

Your class, Jumpstart Your Memoir Writing!, starts February 21 at The Writing Salon. What do you like most about memoir and creative nonfiction and what do you hope to share with students in that class?

Funny you should ask. We’re living through an immensely chaotic, unsettled and fast-paced time. Many of us are running on empty from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed, checking social media and the phone way too much. I honestly think that writing memoir serves as a perfect antidote to this kind of numbing-out. Every minute we spend working on something creative, tuning in, is a victory. I love that writing class offers a creative container, a kind of structured environment where students can consciously dedicate time to creative process, and carve out a world unto themselves.

This morning I was actually thinking about the first CNF/memoir class I ever took back in the late-90s with a treasure of a woman, Claudette Sutherland, in Los Angeles. The class had a seismic effect on my life; I actually shudder now to think how my life might have turned out had I not taken her class. She taught me to put words to events that had been floating around in my subconscious, driving me to act in ways that simply weren’t great. Once I put things on the page, I was able to see the past more clearly, get perspective, and view the overall narrative shape of my life thus far. I found writing not only incredibly satisfying (it’s so exciting to have a finished piece in hand!), but also quite therapeutic in that it enabled me to integrate certain unconscious parts of my psyche that had been hijacking my sanity and my life. So I found writing memoir and CNF to be therapeutic, yes–but it was more than that. Writing enabled me to take certain primal energies and funnel them into acts of creation, rather than destruction. It’s very powerful that way, writing. There’s a psychologist, James Pennebaker, at the University of Austin, who’s actually done studies on this; he’s documented the life-changing power of writing to heal trauma in his work.

And of course, on the flip side, reading the work of others builds bridges; when we enter the lives of others by reading their stories, we push past tribal differences and feel empathy, compassion for people who might be very different from us. The world is in short supply of both those things, empathy and compassion; we can always use more. I think that’s the miracle of CNF: writing helps us build compassion not only for our flawed selves, but for others.

What drew you to teaching at The Writing Salon, and what is your favorite thing about teaching here?

The students are my absolute favorite thing about teaching. I’m not sure why, but it seems to me that The Writing Salon draws the most incredible students into its orbit. On the whole, I’ve found them to be sensitive, thoughtful, brilliant, well-read, courteous and just plain hilarious. The students never cease to amaze me, and I’ve been doing this a while! It’s been a privilege to cross paths with the students, to hear their stories, and to bear witness to their stories taking shape. Honestly, the creative process never fails to strike me as nothing less than miraculous.

What are you working on now? Are there any projects you’re especially excited about?

Yes! I’m working on two things simultaneously: a screenplay for two actors whose work I absolutely love and with whom I’ve wanted to make a film for years, and also a novella-length piece of auto-fiction about a non-fiction writer whose quiet life is upended by a rogue novelist! Good times. 😉

Kerry Muir‘s plays include Running on Moontime, The Night Buster Keaton Dreamed Me, and Befriending Bertha/Conociendo a Bertha (a one-act for children), which were published in dual language (Spanish-English) editions by NoPassport Press as part of their Dreaming the Americas series, curated by Lifetime Achievement Obie Award-winning playwright, Caridad Svich. Her plays have garnered awards and productions at the Nantucket Short Play Festival, Great Platte River Playwrights Festival, Gibraltar International Drama Festival, and elsewhere. Her prose has appeared in Kenyon Review OnlineCrazyhorseRiverteethWest BranchWillow SpringsFourth Genre and more. Two of her essays, “The Bridge” and “BLUR,” were named as notable in Best American Essays of 2011 and 2018, edited by Edwidge Danticat and Hilton Als, respectively. Her short film “Madame” (an official selection of San Francisco Independent Film Festival 2024, Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival 2024, AHITH Film Festival 2023) is currently making the rounds on the film festival circuit. Visit her online at: https://kerry-muir-5gnx.squarespace.com.

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Student Feature: Anne Breedlove [Fall 2023] https://www.writingsalons.com/student-feature-anne-breedlove/ Mon, 18 Mar 2024 17:44:36 +0000 https://www.writingsalons.com/?p=1286044 The post Student Feature: Anne Breedlove [Fall 2023] appeared first on The Writing Salon.

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Congratulations on the publication of your book Part-Time Nomads! What inspired you to bike the world, and how did you end up writing about it?

Friends and relatives who followed our adventures kept telling me I should write a book. I finally started writing in 2019, after signing up for your courses. While reading my pieces in the various classes many listeners were confused, bombarding me with questions – “What’s a pannier?” “What do you mean by free camping?” “Just the two of you, not really, what about a tour guide?” Finally in June of 2020, in Katharine Harer’s travel writing class, I had an “ah-ha” moment. I realized I needed to write the back story, of how Jim and I evolved from just two grownups riding bikes for fun and exercise, to independent world travel cyclists. I wrote the first six chapters in Kathy Garlick’s class, my fingertips were on fire! Too busy to write a book as well as send emails while traveling on the bike, Covid lockdown was the perfect time. I pulled out my old writing and sketch journals, my old maps, brochures and photos, and the rest of the 24 chapters followed. And I had a blast doing it, not having looked at a lot of the stuff since the trips. Here I was in lockdown but I was traveling anew!

What advice would you give to other writers interested in publishing a memoir?

Nose to the grindstone, pull out all the resources and materials for inspiration, commit, sit down, focus, and write!

You’ve taken quite a few classes at The Writing Salon, and worked one-on-one with Katherine Harer through our Services Program. How have these experiences helped you grow as a writer?

Absolutely. Katharine and Erin Van Rheenen, who I also worked with, are both mentioned in the Acknowledgements section of my book. Buy a copy and read it 🙂 If memory serves, I took 9 classes from May 2019 to July 2020, and then I just took off. I think your classes were essential to me and my path to writing. Besides Katharine, Kathy and Erin, I also benefited greatly from classes with Kerry Muir and Kathleen McClung. It was a wonderful experience. FYI, I am now about 34,000 words into my next book.

In addition to writing, you’re a fine art printmaker. How do the two practices support (or distract from!) each other?

It’s the best of both worlds. I had a teacher in 4th grade who supported my art and I fell in love with social studies in 5th. Art and history are my two fields and they complement one another. My book is more expensive than a mere “armchair travel” book because it has 80 color photos and 23 hand drawn-maps, making it kind of a coffee table book. For my first solo art show (at Bazaar Cafe at California and 21st Ave), September 2022, I went back to my bicycle sketch books and printed a new series, 10 prints. They sold better than anything else at the show. My art feeds my writing and my writing feeds my art. I definitely plan to have sketches as well as photos in book #2 – recounting our first post-retirement trip in 2008, six months crossing the US and 2/3s of the way back.

Anne M. Breedlove is the sixth of ten children born and raised in Albany, New York. Visiting San Francisco during a 1972 cross-country road trip, she decided to stay, spending the next 30 years juggling two careers, graphic arts and academia, teaching American and European history in East Bay community colleges. After retiring in 2008 she spent eight years traveling the world with her husband by loaded bicycle, 21 countries, approximately 30,000 miles. She now happily juggles her time between art, bicycling, all things French, gardening, grandchildren, hot yoga, lap-swimming, printmaking, sewing, walking, and writing, but not necessarily in that order.

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Featured Teacher: Lisa Moore Ramée [Summer 2023] https://www.writingsalons.com/featured-teacher-lisa-moore-ramee/ Mon, 18 Mar 2024 17:37:09 +0000 https://www.writingsalons.com/?p=1286042 The post Featured Teacher: Lisa Moore Ramée [Summer 2023] appeared first on The Writing Salon.

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You’ve published three middle grade novels: A Good Kind of TroubleSomething to Say, and MapMaker. What initially drew you to writing for kids and what do you like most about it?

I originally imagined writing for adults honestly, but then I had kids and both were voracious readers. When my daughter started reading the same books that I had read as a young girl, it really bothered me that there weren’t books for her that featured Black girls like her. I wanted her to have books with characters that looked like her and had families that looked like hers so I started writing A Good Kind of Trouble. As soon as I started writing that book I realized that writing for that age was so satisfying! I enjoy bringing characters to life that have things going on in their lives that are so relatable–it is always something about change and getting older and starting to see the world around you in new and often unexpected ways. And everyone goes through that! I enjoy looking at friendship and all the ways it can go a bit off the rails, perhaps because I had a lot of complicated friendships growing up, but I am also someone who treasures my friendships dearly. But the primary connection for me with writing for young people is that I’m always learning something as I write and my characters are too and that makes for a good combination.

Can you tell us about the process of finding and working with your publisher and editor?

I am traditionally published so finding an editor meant first finding an agent. And that process was extremely long and difficult for me. I queried (wrote to agents letting them know a little about me and my book and provided sample pages) over 100 agents before finally receiving an offer of representation. Most of those agents never wrote me back, or I received a form letter saying “no thanks.” But I started getting requests for fulls (that’s when an agent wants to read the entire manuscript) once I started doing a better job researching what agents were looking for and identifying the ones that seemed to want exactly what I was writing. I received a few offers from really wonderful agents and picked one (Brenda Bowen) that more than anything I simply got along with well on our introductory call. Brenda then provided some small revision suggestions and created a list of editors to submit the book to. Alessandra Balzer from Balzer and Bray was one of the top choices and she got back to Brenda a few days after receiving A Good Kind of Trouble to let her know she was really liking the book so far. So exciting! A few days after that, she made an offer. I was thrilled of course, but the best part was finally working with an editor, because getting input from someone that you know is going to actually publish the book is such a different experience than working with notes from a critique group or partner. (Although I highly recommend those!) Alessandra had a strong vision of what she wanted and how to make the book stronger. What was surprising was after doing that work, your book then goes to copy edits and I thought that just meant someone fixing grammatical mistakes. But in reality copy editors are incredible and catch EVERYTHING. (Like pointing out that Ralph Waldo Emerson actually may not have originated a quote I had attributed to him.) All this to say the journey was long and hard but ultimately the fulfillment of a dream.

You’re teaching your first class at The Writing Salon this summer, Kidlit 101. What drew you to teaching, and what do you hope to offer the writers in your class?

I’m so looking forward to my class at The Writing Salon! I started teaching creative writing many years ago, well before I was published and I have always loved working with other writers. Probably because I have taken quite a few classes myself and I have learned so much. I have seen how the lessons I have learned from those classes have helped my writing and I want to provide the same sort of guidance to others. I hope that students in my class will have the opportunity to get answers to questions about publishing, but also learn skills that can help them be successful in whatever kidlit genre they choose to write in. And to also understand that genre fully. A lot of writers struggle to get a handle on what category/genre their project fits into. Is it Young Adult? Is it Middle Grade? Does it matter? It can be so difficult to put the puzzle pieces of publishing together. And writing for kids can be challenging because we have to find a way of finding a true kid voice without sounding like we’re trying or talking down to young people. You want readers to believe in the characters you create. So hopefully my students will walk away feeling they know what they are writing, and what the market is for that type of book and how to best polish their words.

Your most recent book, MapMaker, came out last September. What’s on the horizon next?

I’m leaving fantasy and going back to contemporary middle grade for my next novel. It will be out summer of 2024. It is about a girl who is about to start middle school but is a self-described crybaby. She knows she has to dry up the waterworks in order to prove to her friends and her parents and herself that she is mature enough for middle school and can handle the annual seventh grade trip. There is my usual friendship drama and hopefully humor and heart. It’s a lighter book in some ways but one I think will resonate with quite a few readers who have similar questions about what it means to be “grown.”

Lisa Moore Ramée still calls Los Angeles home even though she now lives in the Bay Area. She counts coffee as one of her best friends and is a devout believer in dreams coming true. Her debut novel, A Good Kind of Trouble, is a Walter Dean Meyers Honor book and an Indie bestseller. She is also the author of Something to Say and MapMaker. Her books have received multiple starred reviews. Visit her website at lisamooreramee.com.

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Student Feature: Jing Li [Spring 2023] https://www.writingsalons.com/student-feature-jing-lee/ Mon, 18 Mar 2024 17:29:34 +0000 https://www.writingsalons.com/?p=1286038 The post Student Feature: Jing Li [Spring 2023] appeared first on The Writing Salon.

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You met The Writing Salon founder, Jane Underwood, in 1999. In your memoir, The Red Sandals, you write so beautifully about the moment you met her. Can you tell us about that first meeting and how it led you to start writing in your second language, English?

1999. It was a weekend. I went to the SF Book Fair at Fort Mason, looking for some much needed intellectual “brain food” for myself, a professionally unfulfilled public high school teacher. What a fascinating sight it was inside the vast, high-ceilinged warehouse. A book paradise! So many books. Such great variety. Growing up in communist China, I loved school and learning but was starved for books. Anything that wasn’t about praising the “glorious” Chinese communist ruling party (1949 -) was banned and burned by the government. Then I saw something inspiring that stirred a desire inside my heart: A banner of The Writing Salon: We Teach You How to Write about Your Life. Sitting in a chair under the banner was elegantly dressed, beautiful Jane Underwood. “Do you accept someone whose first language isn’t English?” I timidly asked in my Chinglish accent. “Why, yes, of course!” Jane’s heart-warming smile brought grateful tears into my eyes. I had a story to tell. I needed to learn to write about my life: from a born-unwanted peasant girl to becoming the top winner competing against hundreds to come to America as an exchange teacher, then study for my master’s degree.

How did your experience in The Writing Salon’s classes help you grow as a writer?

The Writing Salon helped embark my writing journey in my second language, English. It laid the cornerstone for my memoir, The Red Sandals. The very first class I took at The Writing Salon was Jane’s Round Robin. I loved the way she taught her class to use as detailed words as possible. I still remember chuckling about the hilarious examples in one of her handouts: “928 elephants flying across the sky” is much more vivid and memorable than “there were hundreds of elephants flying …” As The Writing Salon expanded, I took several inspiring memoir classes. One question from a young woman in one of the classes helped me solve my painful lifelong mystery: “Why did your mother never smile at you?” Finally, at age fifty-one, I became emboldened enough to get my mother to tell me: At age 20, she had pushed a heavy pinewood washboard hard and repeatedly against her pregnant belly trying to abort me. Birth of my life devastated her and ended her dream to stay in school and become a journalist/writer, and worse, stuck her in a lifelong miserable marriage with my father.

How long did it take you to write your book, The Red Sandals? Can you tell us a little bit about the process of getting it published?

On and off, it took me 20 years. For the first twelve years, I didn’t put much effort, teaching high school full time. Weekends writing classes only. I was also trying to find romantic love in America after my 20-year touchless, loveless, and parental obligation only marriage that I lugged all the way from China. 2013. I started writing full time, as I officially retired from teaching. I completed the first draft in 2019. Besides hiring one developmental editor and one copy editor, I enjoyed the editing process by myself, too. It gives me a joy of satisfaction to see the improved version of my bumpy writing in my second language. I need double, triple times more effort than English native writers. 2019 I attended SF Writers’ Conference again, aiming to find an agent. Instead, I directly found a publisher who asked to see the first three chapters of my book, told me that I “have a way with words,” and, yes, they would publish my memoir. But small publisher, no advance. After another dozen rounds of detailed editing back and forth between me and my publisher/editor, my debut book, The Red Sandals: A Memoir, was published on May 18, 2022.

What are you up to now? Are you working on any new writing or projects?

I’ve been working on my second book, America Through My Chinese Eyes, an essay collection based on my 30+ years of experiences living and teaching in America. It’s about language, culture and education. I’ve also written a 400-page m.s. of Mental Math for Kids, aiming to teach American young kids to do math in their heads and calculate everyday money without using an electronic calculator, so they’ll at least know how to balance their checkbooks when they grow up! I’ve also so far handmade several children’s picture books on mental math. But all in all, I want to teach again, or tutoring. I miss teaching kids, of all ages. I can teach/tutor any age groups Mandarin Chinese and ESL; I can teach little kids basic mental math skills – start them young and start them right! And I can teach school age groups or adults common sense health living and a simple, healthy way of cooking. My handmade macaroni with fresh tomatoes and fresh garlic is the best. My homemade pot stickers are much tastier with high quality of health value than the bland and greasy kind in most SF Chinese restaurants. I’m not kidding!

A born-unwanted peasant girl in a remote Chinese village, Jing Li grew up neglected and abused, surviving female-infanticide, famine, starvation, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and escaping death. Her irrepressible desire to learn made her a top ranked high school English teacher in Taiyuan city. After academically competing her way to America, she earned her MA, her California teaching credentials and taught elementary, high school and college for another 20 years. Her writings have been published in anthologies and literary reviews and have won numerous awards including the Grand Prize from San Francisco Writers’ Conference. The Red Sandals, her debut memoir, is an Eric Hoffer Award/Montaigne Medal Finalist.

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Featured Teacher: Addie Tsai [Winter 2023] https://www.writingsalons.com/featured-teacher-addie-tsai/ Mon, 18 Mar 2024 17:21:32 +0000 https://www.writingsalons.com/?p=1286036 The post Featured Teacher: Addie Tsai [Winter 2023] appeared first on The Writing Salon.

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You’re busy! How do you balance your teaching, writing and other creative and editorial projects?

For those who enjoy astrology, my many Earth placements (I’m a Virgo sun, and I have five total Virgo placements, which isn’t even all my Earth!) keep me grounded and well organized, which is both a blessing and a challenge. But I’d just say that I have a clear idea of what days I need to prepare for teaching, and what days I need to work on my editorial projects. I work best on different types of tasks on different days. Of course, sometimes, due to deadlines, these worlds feed into another. I always make time for rest.

You’re developing a new class at The Writing Salon focused on re-imagining and retelling classic tales. Can you tell us something about the class and what brought you to it?

Although I’ve always loved retellings and reimaginings, my particular connection to it is through my love of the novel, Frankenstein, which I’ve been obsessed with since I first read it as a teenager. I’ve been so excited about this resurgence of retellings in current contemporary fiction, especially retellings being used to tell the story through lenses of diversity, such as race, gender, queerness, disability, and other frameworks, opening up our ideas of those stories only being “for” a select audience and community. In our class at The Writing Salon, we’ll work through how we can retell a story in similar ways, and my hope is that students will bring an interest in at least one classic story that they can work on throughout our time together!

Do you have an underlying teaching philosophy that informs all of your teaching?

Yes! My underlying teaching philosophy is positive reinforcement. I was raised using negative reinforcement – both in my home life and in terms of the pedagogical trends of the time, and it’s been my belief since I was a child that you can reach students in more substantial and connected ways through flexibility, generosity, and openness. No matter where or what I’m teaching, it has always been a student-centered environment. I actively attempt to de-hierarchize my classroom, to strip away some of the white supremacist borders that we’ve been raised with and under.

Your new book, a contemporary retelling of Frankenstein called Unwieldy Creatures, came out last August — congratulations! What can you tell us about the process of writing the novel and getting it published?

Thank you! This is such a different book for me because it comes out of a love and interest in the original novel over half my life. I started writing the novel in 2019, from an observation of the rise of access in reproductive technologies at the same time that reproductive rights were being legally challenged. That tension felt like an interesting landscape for a contemporary Frankenstein retelling. I began the first draft in Santa Cruz at a writers’ retreat called Mary Shelley Month! And I finished the novel as COVID bloomed across the planet and in the aftermath of a heinous divorce. I’m honestly so stunned I was able to get it into the world, and I’m so grateful for those that have connected to it along the way. Lisa Pegram, who I met through online spaces, reached out to me as the Acquisitions Editor for Jaded Ibis Press, and working with her on this book has been such a dream. I feel so fortunate to have her love and understanding of what I wanted to do with this novel, on such an intimate level.

Addie Tsai (any/all) is a queer nonbinary artist and writer of color. They collaborated with Dominic Walsh Dance Theater on Victor Frankenstein and Camille Claudel, among others. Addie has an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College and a PhD in Dance from Texas Woman’s University. She is the author of the queer Asian young adult novel, Dear Twin, and Unwieldy Creatures, their adult queer biracial retelling of Frankenstein. They are the Fiction Co-Editor and Editor of Features & Reviews at Anomaly, Staff Writer at Spectrum South, and Founding Editor & Editor in Chief at just femme & dandy.

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Student Feature: Emily Knight [Fall 2022] https://www.writingsalons.com/student-feature-emily-knight/ Mon, 18 Mar 2024 17:12:02 +0000 https://www.writingsalons.com/?p=1286030 The post Student Feature: Emily Knight [Fall 2022] appeared first on The Writing Salon.

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How has your training as a marine scientist influenced your writing?

The language of our oceans, lands, and air has long informed my writing. Marine science unlocked the world – gave names to the array of life and its building blocks, revealed new words I had never heard, like “nudibranch,” “tardigrade,” and “epifauna.” It was a pathway, one constantly meandering while forging forward, to learn about life on its own terms. In poems, I seek to better grasp life, my place in it and responsibility to it, even if I can only hold it for a second or watch it closely as it flashes by.

How has your experience in our classes and services program helped you grow as a writer?

Over the years, I have taken a wide variety of workshops and classes. What was special about The Writing Salon is I also felt part of a community. I took a number of classes and workshops there with different teachers on everything from craft elements to ways to improve one’s writing practice to feedback workshops. The number of options kept me coming back, and I got to know those teachers and other writers also taking classes. That provided me feedback and advice I could never hope for from one-off classes here or there, and allowed me to form writing relationships with others. That is important in a person’s writing life, especially given the fact that writing is such a solitary activity.

Based on your own experience applying to MFA programs, what advice would you give to writers who are interested in pursuing an MFA?

I say write down what you consider important before even applying. For me I felt I needed to achieve a level of self-awareness about my own writing, a strong sense of my own creative powers. It was at that point I knew I had hit the limits of where individual classes and workshops could push me. And I’m much better at fielding feedback. I’ve never been thin-skinned, it’s more I didn’t always know how to use it. Then I would say grant yourself the time and space to find the right program for you. There are many great options – but they differ in curricula, mentors, and in culture. You owe yourself the chance to get a sense of those aspects.

Congratulations on enrolling in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College! What are you looking forward to most in the MFA Program?

All of it. Two things stood out about Warren Wilson for me. First, the rigorous course of study that equally balances analysis and working on my own writing. I really want that because I think strengthening my knowledge of craft and poetic histories will enhance and challenge my creativity. Second, Warren Wilson has a strong sense of community, both among current students and alumni. I am so excited to join that. This sounds a little dramatic, but I know my life is about to change drastically in that for whatever ups and downs I inevitably experience in the program, I know it is going to open a whole new writing world to me. I can’t wait.

Emily Knight is a marine scientist and manager for the Lenfest Ocean Program, a grant-making program with the Pew Charitable Trusts that links ocean and coastal science with management and policy. She holds a master’s degree in oceanography from the University of Maine. Emily has been writing and reading poetry for over twenty years and was most recently published in Thimble Literary Magazine. You can find her deep in Shenandoah National Park, on Mono Pass in the Sierra, or Point Reyes National Seashore… one of those three.

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Featured Teacher: Jeff Chon [Summer 2022] https://www.writingsalons.com/featured-teacher-jeff-chon/ Mon, 18 Mar 2024 17:03:45 +0000 https://www.writingsalons.com/?p=1286026 The post Featured Teacher: Jeff Chon [Summer 2022] appeared first on The Writing Salon.

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What was your process for developing your novel, Hashtag Good Guy with a Gun?

I’ve always had a morbid fascination with conspiracy theories. That people believed these silly ideas seemed to me a conspiracy in and of itself. The 2016 election was a reminder of the kind of damage these ideas can inflict when weaponized by racists and misogynists, and the seeds for this novel were planted during the Inauguration, when he uttered the phrase “this American carnage” (which was the working title of the manuscript). That’s where it started—well, that and being stubborn enough to push forward when everyone else said it was “too soon.”

It then occurred to me the draft was a bit flat. It was mostly me raging against these two-dimensional things that were supposed to be people. And the manuscript really opened up when I started playing with the idea that these were people who wanted the world to make sense. Of course, they achieved this by believing nonsense, but there really is something tragic there—both for them and for us. I don’t necessarily believe these people deserve our consideration in any way–they’ve definitely earned everyone’s scorn. But forcing myself into their horrible little heads was the key to turning this from an idea into an actual story about people.

What inspired you to create your upcoming class at The Writing Salon?

There’s a concept in the world of pro wrestling known as the “Five Moves of Doom,” which is this idea that most successful performers don’t have to know a bunch of different moves, just five signature ones that you can do extremely well. I feel this is something that applies to writing as well. This doesn’t mean you don’t push yourself, or add new tricks to your bag, just that you find variations of the things you’re already good at.

Creating unsympathetic characters happens to be one of the things I’m 100% confident I know how to do well—very well, to be honest. Imbuing unsympathetic characters with pathos is definitely one of my ‘Five Moves of Doom’. I happen to also love unsympathetic characters—purity is boring—and wanted the opportunity to sit with a group of writers and really stew in everything that motivates their very complicated characters.

How do you balance your time between writing and teaching?

I think there’s a real pressure to find balance and to give both equal time, and I always try my best—but sometimes I fall short, and I think that’s important to acknowledge and accept. I don’t really have a great answer, other than you have to give yourself the time to write when you have to write. I’ve very much taken a “pay now or pay later” attitude when it comes to work and writing. If I get on a roll writing, I’m going to keep on writing and then put in the long hours to ensure I don’t fall behind on teaching work.

One of the things I had to come to terms with was the fact that I write slowly, which has made me a lot more patient in terms of output. I have friends who tell me they spent the morning writing 3,000 words, and for me 300 words is a pretty good day. I try to keep in mind that I’m writing even when I’m not writing.

Essays, a novel, and now a short story collection — are there any other projects in the pipeline?

I do have a short story collection, titled This Is the Afterlife, coming out in December of 2022. Other than that, there are lots of things in various states of disarray—a few short stories that aren’t anywhere near being anything worth talking about, a novella I set aside because I need to rethink what it’s actually about—that I’ll get back to when I’m good and ready.

As I said, I tend to write fairly slowly, so a lot of my process is just thinking things through over and over again. But I’m finally making some progress on the next novel (which, at my pace, means it’s probably about two years away). By my count, there are two sympathetic characters so far—one is a young woman who kills in cold blood, and the other is a Napoleon Hill-quoting real estate grifter. Other than that, everyone is awful.

Jeff Chon is the author of the short story collection, This Is the Afterlife, and the novel, Hashtag Good Guy with a Gun, which New York Magazine called “sick and nasty and funny until page 247, which is the last one,” and praised in The New York TimesThe Irish TimesThe Scotland Herald, and The Times of London. His stories and essays have appeared in The Seneca ReviewThe North American ReviewBarrelhouseBest Small Fictions 2021, and many others.

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Featured Teacher: Preeti Vangani [Summer 2021] https://www.writingsalons.com/featured-teacher-preeti-vangani/ Mon, 18 Mar 2024 16:43:09 +0000 https://www.writingsalons.com/?p=1286021 The post Featured Teacher: Preeti Vangani [Summer 2021] appeared first on The Writing Salon.

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How would you describe your teaching style?

I used to be a brand manager in a previous life, before I moved to the US from Mumbai to study creative writing. Because I came to writing much later in life than a lot of my classmates, and hadn’t taken a more conventional route of studying creative writing in college, I wanted to find a way to pass on what I’d learned to those who didn’t have direct access to an arts/writing education. So, I started teaching in spaces where folks don’t have resources—for example, to get an expensive MFA—and also to folks for whom writing isn’t necessarily a career, but a way to express their stories, even if only for themselves. I try to design my teaching as much as possible to debunk the mentality of “It’s too late for me to be a writer.”

Your upcoming Writing Salon class is “Let the Body Sing: A Poetry Class.” When it comes to designing and creating classes, where do you get your inspiration? What in particular moved you to create this class?

Last summer, I read Leila Chatti’s book of poems titled Deluge in which Chatti writes about a painful medical condition in which she started bleeding and did not stop. Physicians defined this bleeding as “flooding.” In the Bible, the Flood was sent as punishment. The book’s deep dive into the intersections of shame, illness, grief and gender really resonated with me. Growing up, I was never allowed to openly speak about my body, even to my mother. In fact, we had coded names to refer to our genitals. Today, I live with chronic rheumatoid arthritis and often catch myself under-stating how much pain I am in. In poetry, the way we can unabashedly sing about and hold the body that endures so much, led me to building this generative workshop. Desire, sex, sexuality, trauma: how do we hold these in a world where not all bodies are considered equal is what I hope folks will write into through these sessions.

What’s the energy or atmosphere you are hoping to establish in the classroom? What takeaways do you want your students to have upon completing a class with you?

An atmosphere of care and generosity. Writing our bodies means being vulnerable, so I want to create a space where we uphold and celebrate our diverse selves. The key takeaway is that of possibility: at the end of three sessions I want folks to be able to have multiple new ways to start a poem rooted in the body. Lots of messy first drafts that are waiting to be carved and polished. I am bringing in lots of contemporary, new poets as examples and hope that folks take away at least one new poet they’re excited to read more of. Through the materials we read, the exercises we do, I want folks to be able to realize that they have permission to write into something they otherwise thought was forbidden, or not-quite-okay.

You’re heading into your first writing residency! What are your intentions for this time away?

I am excited to see what this spatial change, especially after a year of working from home, will do to my practice. I’ve always lived in busy cities, so I am really looking forward to a slowdown, and the extended hours of silence– that’s always precious.

Preeti Vangani is a poet and personal essayist. Born and raised in Mumbai, she is the author of Mother Tongue Apologize (RLFPA Editions), her first book of poems (selected as the winner of RL India Poetry Prize.) Her work has been published in BOAAT, Gulf Coast, Threepenny Review, among other journals. She is the Assistant Poetry Editor for Glass Journal, a Poet Mentor at Youth Speaks, and holds an MFA (Writing) from University of San Francisco.

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Student Feature: Wendy A. Warren [Spring 2022] https://www.writingsalons.com/student-feature-wendy-a-warren/ Mon, 18 Mar 2024 16:21:55 +0000 https://www.writingsalons.com/?p=1286012 The post Student Feature: Wendy A. Warren [Spring 2022] appeared first on The Writing Salon.

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What inspired you to write your novel?

The Butcher’s Apprentice began as a short story for a 2019 writing workshop. I grew up in a rural area near a butcher who slaughtered and processed the local beef and pigs. I was fascinated about what went on in his barn because my family raised and ate our own small livestock. In the original short story, I explored an unlikely relationship between a hungry girl and a German butcher, and how they save one another, in a way, from both the literal and metaphorical starvation of the boxed and canned foods, and the two-working-parent trends of the 1970s. I expanded and outlined it to novel-form and completed the first draft while helping my children home-school during the first year of the pandemic. The story was a needed escape. In late 2021, I finished the second draft and the initial chapters began winning local and international recognition. This year, I’m at work on the third draft. I’m proud that portions of this story were written and workshopped at The Writing Salon.

How has growing up on a farm shaped your creative life?

My family and I ate from grocery stores, but we also raised, grew and preserved much of our own homegrown food. The thriftiness and pragmatism of my parents—the children of farmers and laborers who lived through the Depression and World War II—was passed on to me. When you have animals and plants that require tending and harvesting, there aren’t many vacations. Farm life gave me the ability to push through discomfort and get a job done. I’m not easily disgusted. I think showing up for my livestock and spending time in a garden at a young age helps me show up for my writing in a uniquely disciplined and focused way. I paid attention to, not only the cute animals and wildlife found in a rural area, but the ones many people find repugnant, that co-exist with livestock and gardens: slugs, reptiles, bugs, fungi. Many of my childhood photos include animals. They were my friends, food, education, and pets, so non-human characters almost always appear in my stories. Just like a farm, my writing needs tending.

How have your classes at The Writing Salon helped you grow as a writer?

The generous instructors at The Writing Salon encouraged my imperfect, early work. They fueled my confidence and motivation to write almost every day. From Junse Kim’s “Intro to Fiction”, where I got my first big ideas about the elements and structure of story, to Kathy Garlick’s “Round Robin” daily writes and workshops, to Jessica Litwak’s holistic dialogue class, I’ve learned and applied new concepts for almost six years. I can see and articulate how my writing has changed over time. I’d say my most significant growth has been in the area of character, and coming to trust and rely on them to help me tell the story. I’ve also progressed thanks to reading the first draft work of other writers in various multi-week workshops, and through giving and receiving feedback in numerous sessions of “Round Robin”. The availability and flexibility of The Writing Salon’s classes have allowed me to pick and choose specific areas of craft on which to focus right when I’m in need of them. As a new writer, I needed intro classes; now, as a more experienced writer, I seek advanced opportunities. The Writing Salon offers the full range.

What writing projects are you looking forward to in the coming months?

While writing The Butcher’s Apprentice, I’ve also written short stories and essays. One of these has developed into something that suspiciously resembles another novel. Most of my fiction is set in the 1960s and 70s, and germinated as a result of the extensive historical research I’ve done for The Butcher’s Apprentice and prior work. Visiting these other eras has been a welcome break from the realities of the modern world. It’s been fun to reacquaint with rotary dial phones, phone books, record players, muscle cars, and the music of 1978. And, no cell phones back then! I’m eager to continue writing those times.

I’ve also stumbled upon an intriguing historical figure from WWII and the Manhattan Project. I’d love to reimagine his story. I’d like to publish the growing collection of grotesque stories that await my revision. But, for now, I’m trying to stay focused on the novel-at-hand. Revising and submitting other work has taken second priority to completing the current draft of The Butcher’s Apprentice.

Wendy A. Warren’s short fiction and essays have appeared in HerStryHare’s Paw Literary JournalBirdland Journal, and elsewhere. Her novel-in-progress, The Butcher’s Apprentice, won the 2021 Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association Literary Contest, and was longlisted for the 2021 Grindstone International Novel Prize. Wendy is the founder of WriteGuide.online for new and emerging fiction writers, and a local writers’ critique group. She volunteers her time at writing conferences, and is a Young Author’s Week instructor. She took her first creative writing class at The Writing Salon in 2016. Wendy lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband and two children.

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Featured Teacher: Erin Rodoni [Winter 2022] https://www.writingsalons.com/featured-teacher-erin-rodoni/ Mon, 18 Mar 2024 16:16:35 +0000 https://www.writingsalons.com/?p=1286007 The post Featured Teacher: Erin Rodoni [Winter 2022] appeared first on The Writing Salon.

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Congratulations, Erin! What can you tell us about your just-published 3rd poetry collection, And If the Woods Carry You?

And If the Woods Carry You is my third poetry collection. It won the 2020 Southern Indiana Review Michael Waters Poetry Prize and was published on 12/1/21. The collection explores motherhood and childhood in a frightening and uncertain world much like ours, but maybe a hairbreadth closer to the worst of the impending climate catastrophes. As the title suggests, the fairy tale woods, with its innate magics and dangers, appears as setting, metaphor, and theme in different ways throughout the book. I worked on this collection for about 2 years, but I think it truly began shortly after the 2016 presidential election, when I, foolishly or fortuitously, decided to watch Leonardo DiCaprio’s Before the Flood with my 2-month-old daughter deep in a milk-drunk sleep on my lap. I’ve been worried about climate change for as long as I can remember, but right then I felt it as real visceral fear in my body. Though I know many parents have felt this way before and since, it suddenly seemed like I’d chosen the worst time in history to bring a new life into this world. And yet I didn’t, couldn’t, regret it. So I began exploring the tension between these feelings through poetry. The book grew and changed since that initial impulse/existential crisis, but it remains a central obsession.

What have you enjoyed most about teaching at The Writing Salon?

One of my favorite things about The Writing Salon community is learning about the variety of career paths and personal journeys my students have been on before finding their way to, or back to, writing. Many of my students have recently retired from, or are still very much in the midst of, intense careers that they believe have nothing to do with creative writing. One of my favorite things about working with these students at The Writing Salon is giving them permission to bring their life experience, expertise, and personality to the page. Often, people get the idea that a background in something more physical or technical is something to be overcome, rather than a potential source of creative material and inspiration. I love that I get to tell them that their background as a chemist or lawyer or physical therapist or construction worker, and relative lack of experience as a creative writer, can actually be a gift. An unconventional path to creative writing can grant someone access to a whole lexicon of terms and metaphors and images. What might be dull and ordinary language in the context of a legal document or research paper can become fresh and exciting in the context of a poem or short story. I love it when I see students becoming more fully themselves on the page and their writing becoming more memorable and alive because of it.

How has the pandemic impacted your writing and teaching?

I was 3 weeks into a 5-week class when the Bay Area went into lockdown in March of 2020. I didn’t even have Zoom then; one of my students who worked at Google set our class up with a Google Meet session and we all just muddled through. But I was moved and pleasantly surprised by the level of connection that still seemed possible in virtual spaces. Though some in-person traditions were less appealing, for example reading out loud in a circle didn’t really translate to Zoom. So I began using the screen share option to show videos of writers reading their own work, and I’ve found that adds another layer of meaning for us to discuss and ruminate on. I’ve also deeply appreciated the opportunity to work one-on-one with poets through the poetry mentorship classes. I love exchanging emails about poetry with my mentees, it evokes the old-fashioned art of letter writing.

My own writing has mostly slowed to a trickle. It’s not so much about a lack of time to write, though that is always a challenge, but a lack of quiet in which to hear and follow my own thoughts. My kids are back in school now, but for almost a year my entire family of 4 was at home together in our 2-bedroom condo. My husband took one room as his office during the week and I took it as my classroom on the weekends. I spent a lot of time running back and forth between helping my older daughter with her school work and helping my preschooler find something, anything, to entertain her for a while. I think I only managed to write one new poem during that first year. Since the kids returned to school, I’ve been more productive. But I’ve pretty much let go of the idea of ever getting a complete draft down in one sitting. I have to allow my fragments of language to accumulate over days or weeks, until I feel I have all the material I need. Then I begin shaping something recognizable as a poem. In some ways I feel like I’m already revising a poem before I’ve even written it.

Any upcoming projects you’re excited about?

Since my last big project, my latest book, just came out last month, I’m only at the beginning of whatever my next project will become. Each poem I write feels very much like its own intricate little world, and I’m enjoying that. I do have some inkling of how the poems I’m writing might fit together, a glimmer of where they might go, but it is too vague to describe at this point. I’ve also been branching out into creative nonfiction. I tend to do a lot of braiding of narrative threads in my poems, so the braided essay feels like a natural fit for me. But so far I have a lot more ideas for essays than actual essays.

Erin Rodoni is the author of two poetry collections: Body, in Good Light (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2017) and A Landscape for Loss (NFSPS Press, 2017), winner of the Stevens Award sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Her third poetry collection won the 2020 Southern Indiana Review Michael Waters Poetry Prize and was published in fall 2021. Her poems, stories, and reviews have been published in such places as Best New PoetsPoetry NorthwestWorld Literature Today, and Sixfold, among others. She has been the recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Award, a Ninth Letter Literary Award, and the 2017 Montreal International Poetry Prize. When not writing, she enjoys travel and spending time outdoors with her daughters.

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