three women, three books

I take it as a very good sign that three women have given me three books already this summer.

One, a recommendation, and the other two: paperbacks placed in my hands with trust and pleas of safe return, as if these broken-spine books were something really special—and they are.

The set is stacked in a pyramid on my nightstand, arranged big to small. I’m reading them all together, flipping in and out a chapter or section at a time. It’s like diving into three distinct worlds, three different writers’, three unique women.

Mary Jane generously handed over Tinkers, by Paul Harding, a recent small press Pulitzer Prize winner which reads like poetry and air-conditioning—thanks to those New England winters.

And also, from KP, Drop City by T.C. Boyle—clever commune research for the screenplay I’m supposed to be drafting.

And finally, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl, which reads like an erudite Veronica Mars episode but with annotations. I would not have even picked this book up—it has the word ‘Physics’ in the title—but for librarian goddess Heather’s encouragement.

One book I’d like to lend to you is The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, by Heidi Durrows, which is gentle and brutal at once.
Take care of it. Pass it on.
Wonder what it says about me,
About you.
Enjoy.

What books would you like to pass on this summer?

Photo ( at top of post) by Billy

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people change

Like butterflies, like tadpoles, people change, William asserts.
I know, he says, I know what they change into….
People change into skeletons.

Photo by Billy

For a book group, I just read Jamaica Kincaid’s memoir, My brother, on the death of her brother from AIDS. When someone who means something to you dies, Kincaid ventures, it feels like you are the first person this has happened to. Even though everyone will die, is dying.

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beautiful blogs

Thanks to Crazytown for linking to Jocelyn’s Stories for the Beautiful Blogger Meme.

Check out these beautiful blogs if you are so inclined:

Powhatan Studios

Dee Dee’s Living Will

A Little Imagination…

and

One Star Watt

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being a black writer

President Obama speaking on Heath care at George Mason University and William scowling

During Festival of the Book, I attended an event on being an African American writer.

The moderator questioned her panel of authors:
Do you consider yourself an African American Writer, or just a writer who is African American, and why?

The panel was accomplished, well spoken, diverse, and each author answered this initial question and a set of others with intelligence and poise. One writer said, ‘This always feels like a trick question.’ Another said, ‘Race is a construct, but it is real.’ Some authors noted, they came to their blackness, their black identity, in part through literature. And I came home pondering it all.

Am I an African American writer?
Or a writer who is African American?
And what does the different mean?

I am
I guess
an African American writer,
a writer,
a black girl who writes about an Indian girl who feels out of place or a pale mohawked boy named Shadow, or an elderly black Janitor who is thinking about back in the day.

I almost always feel like an outsider. But when I am writing, placing words on a page, my outsider status is finally an asset. Maybe this is what makes it a hard question—black writer? Writer?

I’d rather not have to determine the difference.
I’d rather not have to choose.

Authors Carleen Brice and Heidi Durrow where among the authors on this panel.

Photoa by Papa Johnson (Obama) and Billy (William).
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fall of a western teenager

When I was sixteen, wearing worn flannels and wanna-be punk-rock pineapple-hair, I wrote a novel called ‘Shadow: Fall of a Western Teenager.’

My folks had ‘dragged’ me to California for a vacation, and I went with a teenagers version of kicking and screaming: headphones, crossed arms, and the silent treatment for two weeks. For whatever hell I put my folks through, they gave me the gift of San Francisco in the eighties: chilly and foggy and foreign to me. Images of that arty city started my overwrought teenage story, typed out a on my personal computer back in Northern Virginia, on one of those old, 80′s dot-matrix printers, the ones where the paper had perforated stripes you had to pull off.

Hastened by my favorite teenaged author, S.E. HInton, I worked on ‘Shadow’ for a few years before putting it away in its many versions, a patchwork of notes made in margins. I pulled it out again this winter, and poured over it. For all the symbolic character names—Diamond Dave, Dread, Rain, and my poor protagonist Shadow—I must have been studying ‘The Scarlot Letter’ in AP English at the time. To my grown up eyes, the manuscript was overwritten, overwrought, and in its own weird way beautiful. I couldn’t stop reading it, like finding a box of old photographs, half ruined and stuck together in which you look really bad, but it’s still you: a you you had almost forgotten existed.

So weekly since then, I’ve been pulling out this old, lost story self; excavating and uncovering and editing, to see if I might happen.
To see if I can make something new from the ashes.

Come summer, I may need some beta readers, who can be brutally honest about poor Shadow and his adventures..let me know if you might be interested

Author Josh Weil talked about re-purposing old stories at his reading at Charlottesville’s annual Festival of the Book. I’m just cracking open his debut collection of three Virginia Novellas, The New Valley.

Photo by Billy

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Festival of the Book

Photos by Billy

It was good to take part in Charlottesville’s annual Festival of the Book, connecting, if briefly, with other peeps who are really into reading and writing.

I was edified by Bella Stander’s workshop at WriterHouse: Book Promotion 101, replete with all the P’s and Q’s of finding an audience for your work. There I met a few semi local literary women: fun fantasy YA author: Maggie Stiefvater; savvy smarty: Jennifer Burns; and generous author Doreen Orion, who already seems to know the ins and outs of self promo from her adventures with her novel, Queen of the Road

Afterward, I was honored to be able to join the local group, Literary Ladies Luncheon, for…ahem…lunch, where I saw some familiar faces and even met YA author Fran Cannon Slayton, whose book, When The Whistle Blows, comes out in June.

There was also so much that I missed—most regrettable, the StorySlam— still, my few festival encounters illustrated to me that, like motherhood, being an author is a marathon, not a sprint.

By that I mean, there’s no end in sight,
just the putting of one foot in front of the other,
keeping one’s head up,
and hopefully, remembering to breathe.

Congratulations to Rachel Unkefer, Dave Ronka, and Christy Strick, winners of the Hook’s Annual Short Story Contest, announced during the festival.

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stories we know by heart

video by Billy

Will rotates favorites, kept in ample supply by Mimi, Grandma, Papa, Billy and me.
Currently, some books by his nightstand are:

A Treasure of Curious George,
Edwina, the Dinosaur who Didn’t know She was Extinct,
Baby Panda Learn ABC With Me
The story of Peter Rabbit,
Richard Scary’s Best Word Book Ever!
The Little Engine that Could,
& The Neighborhood Mother Goose.

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stories that break your heart

My son, William, in the light
Photo by Billy

I just reread the S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, and dear lord that story is compelling. Never mind that the first time I read it, I was twelve, and fell instantly in love with the protagonist, Ponyboy, and all of his greaser friends. Or that, when I was thirteen, my then best friend, Danielle and I watched the Francis Ford Coppola version over and over, until we could recite nearly every line.

Twenty plus years later, I am still so impressed by this story, how it’s archetypal and specific all at once. It’s amazing that Hinton—a teenager herself when she wrote it—was so crafty and compelling. Twenty plus years later, I found myself up late again, turning pages, wishing I could save them all.

What are your very favorite stories?

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book art

pen drawing by me

I am working on a new middle school story called Coconut. It chronicles one girl’s crisis of identity when a new girl turns up at school. The new girl has black hair to her waist, jangling silver bracelets, and a British accent. This story is an exploration of the complexity of culture and race.

I am already thinking about how I will share these stories, once the collection is completed. Traditional publishing seems like a long shot, and I’ve yet to explore self publishing much. I know I can find a place for these stories online, and I even want to create podcasts eventually. Still, there is a part of me that loves the artful quality of books, the prettiness of words on paper.

To that end, I pour over volumes by publishers like McSweeney’s,
with their unexpected textures and imagery. Looking at these books, I have started to fantasize about making my own (very) limited edition of art books to house these stories. I could work with a local bookmaker, and incorporate drawings of the characters. I could have a opening. Serve wine and cheese.

Why can’t my imperfect stories be pretty, too?

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the shape of fiction

Will and I, out front
Photo by Billy

I came across an excellent book for writers: “Making Shapely Fiction”, by Jerome Stern. This book arrived when I most needed it; like finding a flashlight at your fingertips just as the lights go out with a pop.

My darkness, so to speak, was puzzling out the structure of some of my Wakefield Middle School Stories. I’ve been working on them almost daily, vacillating between the excitement of creating and the frustration of not knowing how to fit everything together. For me, writing is a balance between radiating ideas, and the exacting craft of honing them down. I struggle to organize everything so that it might mean something to me, to a reader.

This is why “Shapely Fiction” is so elucidating. In the first section Stern describes 16 shapes a story can fill. These shapes have natural tension and immediacy, which pulls writer and reader along.

All of our creative endeavors are collaborations. As writers, cooks, musicians, parents even, we get inspiration, guidance from the world. This can come from a phrase overheard, community, art, or even an instructional book, it seems.

That said, I’m grateful to have found Mr. Stern’s book. And I’m excited to see how the Wakefield stories– the narcissistic principal, the bawdy new girl, the geeky boy who gets hot over the summer– shape up in this new light.

Note: The Festival of the Book starts today here in Charlottesville and John Grisham will announce the winner of the Hook Fiction contest at a kick off event. Sadly, it won’t be my short story: Social Studies, which was a finalist. Still I’m looking forward to popping in on a few Festival events, and maybe even introducing myself to Mr. Grisham, anyway ;)

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