Autumn '22 Announcements
~ From My Writerly World ~
another awa workshop series
“Grow unicorn horns, wear a pirate eye patch, or hang out on the slopes in aerospace goggles to level up your team calls, happy hours, or game nights,” as described on the Zoom blog.
Well, we certainly “leveled up” our last writing workshop series, which ended soon after Halloween. Seriously, while the writing went deep and often moved us to tears, we enjoyed lots of laughs as people played around with filters. (Some of us, ahem, had to don real hats since their old computer couldn’t support fancy virtual elements.)
I plan to offer my 20th 8-week workshop series starting mid-January. Priority registration is for returning participants, so reach out to let me know if you’re interested! Each workshop follows the Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) method. Timed writing using a variety of prompts with immediate, positive feedback supports the development of each writer.
Self-identified women & genderqueer/non-binary writers with any level of experience are welcome.
manuscript status
Last week I turned in the third submission of my memoir-in-essays, Just Some Things We Can’t Talk About, to More to the Story’s Nonfiction Bootcamp. In the past four months I wrote eight new essays, reshaping material based on primary sources such as parental letters and diaries as well as video and audiotapes—from my father’s “feelings diary” during their divorce(s) to the impassioned speeches he and I gave at an annual conference of the Cult Awareness Network after my older brother became a lifelong “Moonie.”
In addition, I restructured a prior essay based on the revision feedback I received this summer at VCFA’s Annual Postgraduate Writers’ Conference. I also removed two pieces after my developmental editor noted they were “beautifully written, but I wasn’t sure how it serves your overall narrative arc.” (I’ll look into revising them as one standalone essay to publish as such.) After I receive a final round of feedback on the current 26-chapter compilation, I'll continue revising (including cutting) the 285-page book to ensure continuity with its “through-line.” And what is mine? Jericho Parms, a VCFA workshop participant and the author of the essay collection Lost Wax (University of Georgia Press) wrote this description of an essay, which applies to the entire book:
“An interrogation of family, memory, estrangement, truth—or, perhaps, a certain denial of the truth?—and the tensions that result, and are perpetuated, from one generation to the next.”
I’m still researching indie and university presses to query for publication. Think it’s as “simple” as sending out the manuscript? Oh, no. Each press has separate requirements: send a cover letter with a description of the work and a brief author bio; send a synopsis; send a book proposal; send several chapters; send 20–40 pages; send a complete, full-length manuscript between 150-250 pages. Some are open to unsolicited submissions, some not. Some look for work from literary agents, some from authors directly. Some offer contests. Others have submission windows.
I recently signed up for a workshop called Conquer the Dreaded Synopsis: How to Finish Your Book Pitch, offered through Creative Nonfiction’s Wednesday Webinar series by Jane Friedman, who makes a good argument for publication with university presses. Her useful website also includes a post on How to Write a Book Proposal. So, after a winter break (hello, Hawaii!) back to the keyboard I go.
reading live
I was invited on November 12, along with local poet Ernesto Garay, to participate as a special guest by C.K. Itamura, a fellow Creative Sonoma Discovered Award recipient, in an afternoon of live readings, visual art, and live music at The Imaginists' Guest House in the SofA district of Santa Rosa. Featured writers included five contributors to the anthology Uncommon Ground: BIPOC Journeys to Creative Activism—Avotcja, Lorraine Bonner, C.K. Itamura, Shizue Seigel, and Kimi Sugioka—published in collaboration with Write Now! SF Bay, a project to support writing and art by people of color.
This gorgeous anthology, edited by Shizue Seigel, “traces the creative trajectories of 22 of Bay Area’s leading writers and artists of color through prose, poetry and visual art”:
"Contributors with roots in Native America, Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Muslim world wrote from lived experience as teachers, journalists, poets, muralists, physicians, culture bearers, survivors of cancer, sexual abuse, and multi-generational trauma, and more. The breadth and depth of their experience brings authenticity and humanity to issues of equity and engagement."
It was an honor to read alongside such powerful voices, and I felt the audience’s rapt attention as I read in the intimate setting. Kristen and I returned home with a few books, including one by Lifetime Achievement Award–winning poet-playwright-percussionist Avotcja and Wile & Wing by Alameda Poet Laureate Kimi Sugioka.
outside reportage
Check out the Best Tour Companies for LGBTQ Travelers, a roundup I wrote for TripSavvy, published this summer among a collection of features “to celebrate the beauty and importance of inclusivity and representation within the travel space and beyond”:
“LGBTQ travelers span the rainbow when it comes to exploring the globe. No matter what you’re searching for—destination wedding, tailor-made culture tour, or festival-filled gay cruise—your personal safety is paramount.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Marty McDonnell, founder of Sierra Mac River Trips, and his daughter-in-law Liza Dadiomov, for Hipcamp Journal’s Host Spotlight: Yosemite Camping and Rafting at Colfax Spring:
“‘Lately we’ve had a lot of female solo travelers—women trying out camping by themselves. They feel more secure knowing there’s a Host and some amenities rather than camping by the side of the road or somewhere less established.’”
Last month I reported on the nonprofit organization LandPaths and its Vamos Afuera (Let’s Go Outside) program for The Press Democrat. I interviewed Lesly Caballero Garcia, a senior bilingual education field specialist, for my article Helping Latino families reconnect with nature:
“‘There's no specific word for hiking in Spanish; caminando —walking — that’s just a way of life. To be in nature, to be in relationship with the land. But it’s something often erased, or taken away with immigration, working in the fields or essential workers simply trying to survive. Vamos Afuera just exposes people to different ways of interacting and the importance of reconnection.’” — Lesly Caballero Garcia
poetry shout-out
Congrats to fellow AWA workshop leader extraordinaire, Emily Stoddard, whose debut poetry collection, Divination with a Human Heart Attached, is forthcoming February 2023 (available for preorder!) from Game Over Books:
Divination “takes on a god who ‘kicks us from the inside.’ These poems challenge the space between the divine and the stories we invent—or inherit—about what to believe and why. Jenn Givhan, author of River Woman, River Demon, calls the collection ‘wise, witchy, and mystical.’”
Emily, founder of Voice & Vessel and coordinator of the poetry bulletin, also spearheads a “grassroots, poet-to-poet effort” of supporters who donate funds to cover submission fees to help poets in need submit their chapbooks or full-length manuscripts.
And congrats to the equally amazing Abby Templeton Greene, whose third collection of poetry, A Blue House to Sleep In, was recently published by Finishing Line Press (which also published her Prayer from a Magdalena Jail Cell). A Blue House, her first full-length book:
“embraces and questions all things motherly: femme bodies, birth, bleeding, parenting, ‘the domestic,’ dreams, nightmares, life and death—and gives all of these themes the value and import they deserve.”
Abby conducts AWA workshops in Spanish and English in Los Angeles, where she founded the nonprofit Sidewalk Poets to support historically underserved communities find power, voice and community through healing-based storytelling and writing workshops. I made a donation that pays for two teen mothers from Florence Crittenton High School to attend a weekend writing and healing retreat. Please help Sidewalk Poets reach their $100,000 campaign goal!
dream debut: 5 over 50
Last month I attended my first live bookstore event since the pandemic began, arriving late with a friend after driving through two hours of Friday rush-hour traffic to hear Sari Botton read from her debut memoir, And You May Find Yourself…Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo.
In her Substack newsletter, Adventures in “Journalism,” Sari says she’s “thrilled to have been chosen as one of Poets & Writers’ ‘5 Over 50’ this year.” Ever since it was clear I’d passed a certain age before my book would even be finished, it has been my dream to have my work selected in P&W’s column, too. I find the topic of Sari’s memoir-in-essays, “about coming ‘of age’ to feminism and self-actualization as an older person,” relatable too. I bought a signed copy, which I’ll bring along to read on my vacation.
Sari is the founding editor of Oldster Magazine, which Cheryl Strayed just recommended and which Deborah Copaken recently discussed in this interview. She’s also curator of the First Person Singular original essay series that’s part of the Memoir Monday newsletter in which my published essays "Fallen" (Sept. ‘20) and "Autumn Inferno" (Nov. ‘21) appeared.
In the P&W article Sari discusses obstacles on her path to publication, including personal ones like self-doubt. I love her transparency about the writing process, the publishing industry, and the balancing act of being a writer vs. editor and basically devour everything she has to say about these topics. You can subscribe free to the newsletters linked above, or become a paid subscriber and support her good work championing the voices of other writers.
storyteller successes
Creative Nonfiction just wished me “the best success in finding the right home” (unfortunately, not True Story) for “Love’s Victory.” The essay was also declined for the Narratively Spring Memoir Prize, but I received positive feedback: “We received 500+ submissions for this opportunity; unfortunately, while your story was unique and moving, it didn’t quite make the cut.” Check out these prizewinners: Laura Green-Russell, Mai Serhan, and Anna Grundström — “three amazing women from around the globe whose stories have taken our collective breath away”!
The FSG Writer’s Fellowship, a yearlong program designed for an emerging writer from an underrepresented community, was awarded to the New Orleans–based writer Addie Citchens, whose writing examines themes such as Black womanhood, the blues, and the South. My application was also not selected for the 2022 Granum Foundation Prize (nor its longlist of 41 writers out of 1,250 applicants), with first place of $5,000 awarded to Kima Jones:
“Jones describes her memoir, Butch, as a ‘liturgical survival text for black women.’ This powerful book details her life as a foster child growing up in the 1980s, while also exploring the cultural history of Harlem and the history of prisons on America. Butch is forthcoming from Knopf in fall 2023."
Kudos to Janine Kovac, an Oakland-based writer (& AWA-trained workshop leader) for her essay, “Dancing on the Blade,” which received the $1,000 New Millennium Award for Nonfiction:
“Kovac's luminous essay highlights the healing power of taking up space, of acknowledging the pain and misuse of others, of reaching out and proclaiming to those who need to hear it most: ‘You are Beloved.’”
still awaiting sweet news
My Submittable account shows that Sweet: A Literary Confection changed the status of my flash essay “At the Side of the Road” from Received (6/10) to In-Progress (9/16), but it appears that they’ve published all 20 selections of poetry and creative nonfiction in their current issue, Volume 15, which began rolling out pieces in September with two shorts by Sue William Silverman. (Side note: I met Sweet’s Founding Editor, Ira Sukrungruang, as well as Sue William Silverman at the VCFA Postgraduate Writers’ Conference. Sue also led a workshop for Nonfiction Bootcamp on “the voice of innocence vs. experience,” which she addresses in Fearless Confessions: A Writer's Guide to Memoir.)
affinity journals
Interested in submitting work? Women Who Submit recorded an excellent panel on “Building Community with Affinity Journals,” especially focused on intersectional and marginalized writers:
"Giving a start to emerging authors can really produce amazing things," says Brenna Crotty, Senior Editor with CALYX, which first published Barbara Kingsolver and Sharon Olds. Also featuring Luiza Flynn-Goodlett, Editor-in-Chief with Foglifter; Grace Jahng Lee, Nonfiction Editor with Hyphen Magazine; and Monica Prince, Managing Editor at SFWP Quarterly. Moderated by Noriko Nakada, WWS Blog Managing Editor, who published my piece, “A Writer’s Work Begins Again and Again” last January. Check out their YouTube channel for this video and more!
lit mag giveaway!
Since 2013 I’ve amassed a collection of literary magazines, some of them via subscription (often included with submission fees) and some of which I brought home from the AWP Conference I attended in Chicago a decade ago. Reply with your mailing address and tell me which issues you’re interested in—Zyzzyva, Crazyhorse, Creative Nonfiction, Ploughshares, Memoir, and more!—and I’ll send them free via media rate around Thanksgiving. All I ask is that you reimburse me for the postage (roughly $1 per mag) via Venmo.
home sweet home
Since my last newsletter, monsoon flooding has displaced millions of people in Pakistan; residents of Puerto Rico and Florida have dealt with the destruction of hurricanes; thousands evacuated Washington state wildfires; and Ukranians continue to suffer under Putin’s assault. The dismaying news of so many fleeing their homes offers perspective as Kristen and I prepare to move from Feather Knoll after Thanksgiving.
It’s bittersweet leaving behind the place her grandparents bought in 1941, an egg ranch and sheep farm where Kristen grew up and where we’ve lived almost the entirety of our 15 years together. It's where we married and where we buried the ashes of my late parents-in-law under a coast live oak with seedlings dispersed in Sonoma County.
During this pandemic we’ve had the pleasure of helping to raise up a little one born in the blue cottage down the hill where we previously resided. Last week, while our 3-year-old friend and I picked hachiya persimmons, we waved goodbye to the empty house from which she just moved. When I suggested she give thanks, she offered a heartfelt: “Thank you for letting me live in you!”
We’re excited to rent a furnished home (another blue house, this one with rainbow steps) in Petaluma from January–June.
Wishing all a happy harvest season and a sweet new year!
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