news & other tidbits
for August (sent in mid-July!) 2023
In this issue: writing workshops, prompts & responses, writing residency/fellowship; book launches; memoir-in-progress (manuscript mapping); virtual write-ins; photos of Japan!
Fall Writing Workshops: Wednesdays
The next 8-week series for women & nonbinary writers begins Wednesday, Sept. 13, 3–5 p.m. PT (6–8 p.m. ET). $240. All genres and experience levels are welcome!
[NOTE: I changed the dates of this workshop to begin 1 week earlier: Sept 13, 2023. Wednesday & Thursday morning workshops are FULL (or reserved for returnees).]
"Nicole is gifted at what she does. She is an amazing listener, at many levels. She hears the words and recalls them with extraordinary skill, and hears the emotion underneath them. She is a very caring, capable participant and leader." ~ Anne F.
Each 2-hour Zoom session of From Memory or Imagination uses the AWA method, with prompts and positive, reflective group feedback to support our creative practice.
Here’s what previous participants have to say:
“The workshops were self-affirming and I gained more confidence in my craft.”
“I appreciate writers who respond meaningfully to each other’s work.”
“Provocative prompts stimulate our writer’s brain.
“The writing takes on a life of its own.”
Prior participants may register via Eventbrite. Apologies for duplicates recently sent!
Newcomers: see Amherst Writers & Artists or fill out a Workshop Inquiry Form.
Prompt of the Month
I first offered this image in an LGBTQ+ affinity group online write I facilitated, sponsored by Amherst Writers & Artists for Pride month. An owner of Clever Pets asked if she & her wife could take an Insta pic at the front steps to the house my wife & I rented. I later used the prompt in my own workshops. See my new section Writing Prompts & Responses to read freshly written samples by workshop participants: “Dogs in a Row” by Leigh Jordan & “A Quirky Rainbow Day” by Barbara Sapienza.
Reader Responses
I continue to marvel at the positive reactions and the level of reader engagement on my recent Lit Mag News post, Accepting Editorial Suggestions as a Path to Success:
“As both a writer with my own string of plentiful rejections sprinkled with a few scant acceptances *and* as a professional editor, can I just say, hear, hear?! Well said!” “This is a great piece about all the hands that carry a piece from draft to published—even the ones that ultimately give the writing back to the writer with a "No, thanks." They're part of the hidden publishing ecosystem, too. I admire your persistence and flexibility to work with editors!”
Last week’s newsletter shared the behind-the-scenes editing process w/
!Fellowship of the Pen
I’ve faced rejection from numerous residencies, grants and fellowships. This year I applied for the Lori White Non-Fiction Fellowship at Porches Writing Retreat, located in a 19th-century farmhouse on the James River in Norwood, Virginia. The committee made their decision today and… drum roll… my application was denied. However:
“The committee was impressed with your strong personal statement as well as your craft and suspenseful chronicling of California wildfires in “Autumn Inferno.”
Trudy Hale, creator of The Porches and Editor-in-Chief of Streetlight Magazine, noted that they received “a number of excellent applications for the fellowship, making this a particularly tough choice.” (Side note: Unbeknownst to Trudy, I recommended her essay “A Plague Tale” as further reading in “Stories of Quarantine and Upheaval: A Reading List on the Power of Personal Narrative,” published in Longreads in March.)
I’ve got another application scheduled to send to the Spruceton Inn Artist Residency, a Catskills “bed & bar” that in 2022 hosted Chanel Miller, author of the riveting memoir Know My Name, which I recently read and loved (with increased heart-rate). They provide a no-cost, 5-night stay in one of the Kitchenette rooms each fall for an impressive stable of writers and visual artists, with criteria based on a short sample and explaining in less than 200 words what you plan to work on during the residency.
Applications are open August 1st through 14th.
Success Stories (on teen girlhood)
Barbara Sapienza, an ongoing participant in my Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) workshops, has published her third novel with She Writes Press:
Blending a fresh adaptation of the Russian fairy tale “Vasilisa the Wise” with the practical concerns of everyday life, The Girl in the White Cape follows Elena, a sheltered teenager, and Frank, a kindhearted young cabbie, as they navigate transformative, magic-infused experiences in modern-day San Francisco.
I had the pleasure of attending Barbara’s recent book event on intuition: Three Women Authors Explore the Mystery, Magic, and Meaning of Transformation. Check out Barbara's book launch event with a presentation and book signing at Book Passage (San Francisco Ferry Building store) on Saturday, July 29th, 2023 at 3:00pm PT!
Cassandra (Sandy) Langer, a prior participant returning to my writing workshop series in September, wrote the first volume of her memoir, Erase Her: A Survivor’s Story: How the Best Years of My Life Were Stolen by Conversion Therapy, available on Amazon:
As a nice Jewish girl raised in an upwardly mobile, status-seeking family, Cassandra Langer never conformed to her mother's gender expectations. When her mother fell prey to a cult leader representing himself as a child behavior expert, Langer was incarcerated for two years as a teenager and barely escaped a lobotomy. Her story of surviving 20th-century conversion therapy is set in 1950s Miami and upstate New York. She aims to put secular conversion torture in a historical context to understand the development of homophobic policies and systems active now in red states such as Florida with its "Don't Say Gay" laws.
Things We [Should] Talk About
My own memoir, Just Some Things We Can’t Talk About, also addresses the vulnerability of adolescence. After my 16th birthday, my older brother was recruited into a religious cult. My story begins with this inciting incident, followed by a failed rescue attempt.
In 1985, cult leaders like the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his commune stirred controversy, sensationalized by talk shows and television exposés. It had only been seven years since the Peoples Temple massacre when more than 900 followers of Jim Jones swallowed cyanide-laced drinks at a compound in Jonestown, Guyana. But I had never heard of the Unification Church, started in Korea in 1954 by Sun Myung Moon, a man who crowned himself the second coming of the messiah. A man whom my brother now called True Father.
I submitted book proposals three months ago to the University of Georgia CRUX Series in Literary Nonfiction and the Machete series at The Ohio State University Press, with no responses. After feedback from a beta reader who got a bit lost in leaping timelines, another fellow writer suggested I map the manuscript. I spent nearly 30 hours noting dates/setting, characters, plot, and theme for each chapter, plus cut-and-paste directions, providing me with a clearer road map for restructuring my manuscript in progress, which I look forward to revising and (re)submitting in the fall.
FREE Virtual Write-Ins
Want to write quietly in the company of others without sitting in a cafe? Writers Haven, by memoir and writing coach Christine Wolf, offers free, silent, 2-hour drop-in virtual writing sessions. Writing Table has FreeWrite Fridays with Eileen Campbell Reed, who also leads #MeTooReckoning Workshops. Join free Morning Write-Ins M-W-F with AWA facilitator Alexis M. Collazo, who also leads a Tarot Tuesdays workshop and Journaling Jumpstarts. Or join Ana McCracken, founder of the Ames Writers Collective, and write for 90 uninterrupted minutes with Open Writes.
Thanks for the heads up. We need all the help we can get as survivors. We have a skill set for these times when the GLBTQ+ communities are under attack. We must come together and support each other against the over 500 bill barage that has been launched at us by the GOP and their AK 15 brigades
Thanks for sharing your process so honestly. Enjoyed this post.