October Announcements
~ From My Writerly World ~
R.I.P The Notorious R.B.G.
A TRIBUTE
Oh, noble Justice Barrett,
How very brave of you
To close those same doors
Opened to you
By the woman you now replace.
— poem by Icarus Blackmore published at the Young Writers Project
mentoring young writers
For the past three months I have had the pleasure of working with several young writers. When a friend asked how I could support her 8th-grade daughter and a couple of her peers, I developed a weekly creative writing club. What fun it is to read, write, and offer reflective feedback together. In addition, I’ve met bimonthly with her older sister, a high school junior, to develop and revise a personal essay, and I just began tutoring a sophomore boy by referral.
Here’s what a parent of one of my students said:
“Nicole’s teaching reminds her of her Hebrew tutor who we loved so much and who spent a year at our dining room table once a week making learning fun. Highest praise possible.”
In October I volunteered as a professional writing mentor for the 6th Annual College Application Essay Workshop offered by the Santa Cruz County Office of Education. The program provides one-on-one guidance for either the Common App or the UC PIQ Prompts to help students develop essays capturing their strengths and experiences using their own unique voice.
My student, an aspiring RN who wrote about some of the challenges she has faced as a daughter of migrant farmworkers, met with me four times on Zoom as I helped her to revise and polish four 350-word Personal Interest Questions (PIQs). I learned so much from our collaboration! She worked diligently, wrote powerfully, and was so appreciative, texting the following:
“I just want to thank you again for all your help, which is probably what everyone says but I MEAN it! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I had an amazing time working with you. I appreciate ALL your help and kindness!!!”
trick or treat (a spook & a sweet)
“A demon lurks by the gates, tall as a man with bat-like ears and glowing eyes.” Congrats to Kathy Guthormsen, one of my workshop participants, for her short story “Run,” which won a Judge’s Choice award in the Halloween Fiction Competition, published yesterday in the Petaluma Argus-Courier. Filmmaker Mitchell Altieri judged among nearly two dozen entries.
My ‘writer-wife’ S. Isabel Choi, a friend and fellow MFA alumna with whom I exchange work for critical feedback, published her flash essay “A Near Miss” at Sweet: A Literary Confection. This piece (spoiler alert: more spooky than sweet) was also selected for The Sunday Short Reads, a weekly email series that features a short work nominated by editors of Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, Sweet Lit, or River Teeth and sent to some 7,000 readers!
publication news
“The Nature of Beginnings” was one of seven creative nonfiction stories featured this month in Issue 37 of Under the Gum Tree, celebrating its 9th anniversary with a total of 325 voices. I last workshopped this travel essay in 2014 at Lit Camp, a juried writer’s conference held at Esalen (previously at Mayacamas Ranch, which burned in the 2017 fires). The essay is still being considered for a ‘Road’ themed anthology at Hippocampus. Here’s the opener:
“During the summer of 1999, despite an impending world economic crisis and the speculative doom of Y2K, I quit my job to hit the open road. Whatever contents of my Humboldt County cottage weren’t sold at a yard sale were transferred to storage. I even gave away the cat.”
You can purchase a digital or print copy of the independent quarterly literary arts micro-magazine or treat yourself to a subscription (four copies).
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My poem "California Poppies” will appear online November 4 at the Tiny Seed Literary Journal. While it didn’t place among the 72 submissions to their contest, ‘Through the Eyes of Nature,’ the journal noted: “This poem is so creative and rich in imagery, and we would be honored to share it with our community.” The piece was generated during one of my AWA workshops, following the prompt: go outside and notice the tiniest of tiny things.
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You can still find the Sept/Oct issue of Made Local Magazine, in which I published “All Hands on Deck,” an article about the maker program my wife initiated at The Spring Hill School. Pick up a free copy at a local market or bookstore, or read it online.
accolades
“Romantic Getaway” was awarded 2nd place in the Redwood Writers 2020 travel writing contest, ‘Wish You Were Here.’ An earlier version of the story, entitled “One Little Kiss,” previously placed silver in the love and romance category of the 2007 Solas Awards by Travelers’ Tales.
I sent “The Nature of Beginnings” and “Please Don’t Climb: Controversy at the Heart of Australia” to this year’s SOLAS Awards; the latter piece was also submitted to Nowhere’s Spring 2020 Travel Writing Prize, which received an “overwhelming number of entrants”—winners and finalists to be announced soon! Deadline for the annual Fall prize is November 20, 2020.
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“Fallen,” which appeared in September at The Rumpus: Voices on Addiction, was selected by the editors as ‘the best of the week’ and included in Memoir Monday—a weekly newsletter and quarterly reading series, brought to you by Narratively, The Rumpus, Catapult, Granta, Guernica, and Literary Hub.
The piece got plenty of press, including a mention at ‘This Week in Essays’:
“At The Rumpus, Nicole R. Zimmerman deals with the toll her brother’s drinking takes on his children, and on her. #VoicesOnAddiction”
Here’s the excerpt featured as the teaser for Memoir Monday:
Our father is the one who purchased their two-bedroom home. He pays the property taxes and HOA fees along with their health insurance premiums. He’s even set up college funds for the kids. If he hadn’t moved my brother’s family to this condominium complex north of Washington, DC, near excellent public schools and playgrounds, it’s likely they would have become homeless.
I was struck by the accompanying artwork, as Lauren Kaelin’s depiction bore a close resemblance to my brother. I emailed a note of thanks: “The three portraits really spoke to what was, what is, and what might have been,” to which she replied: “It was my pleasure and privilege to illustrate your thoughtful and beautifully written piece.”
in the works
Last month I submitted a newly revised essay, “Never Think About The Bad Things,” to several publications: Rice University’s T E X L A N D I A Magazine; Boulevard’s Nonfiction Contest for Emerging Writers; and Iron Horse Literary Review’s Long Story, which turns lengthy manuscripts (20–40 pages) into e-singles with accompanying graphics.
The 5,200-word piece was initially conceptualized as Part 1 of a triptych, but I am still in the process of structuring Part 3 (with Part 2 is a one-act play). I then happened upon Corporeal Writing’s WRITE NOW intensives: 4-week online courses (or ‘collaborations’), including The Narrative Triptych. This intriguing form “draws from the concept of the three-paneled image creating a 3-section sequence with language.” Yesterday I posted my first assignment: a 600-word triptych divided into 200-word prose fragments about an important place, written from three different times or ages. Next, I’ll offer and receive “micro feedback” to support “generative revisions.” I’m excited to see where it all goes.
amherst writers & artists
After becoming certified last summer as a workshop leader in the Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) method, I have offered ten 6-week series since February. Enrollment filled Tuesdays for newcomers as well as Wednesdays and Thursdays for returning participants. I’m now past the midway point of my final series of 2020. With a dozen more people who have expressed interest, I plan to offer new workshop sessions starting in early 2021. Stay tuned!
This month I attended a professional development and weekend writing retreat via Zoom for some 100 AWA-certified leaders. Interactive sessions included topics such as:
Pronouns 101: Creating Safer Space for Trans and Non-Binary Participants
The AWA Model through a Social Justice Lens
The Wilderness of Grief: Writing with Metaphor in the Age of COVID
Prompts from the Body: Uncovering an Untapped Resource
I also joined AWA Launchpad, designed to help AWA affiliates make progress on writing- or workshop-related goals. My group, led by Marian Calabro—a longtime workshop leader and author of The Perilous Journey of the Donner Party—meets online four times through November to discuss topics like building a business, from getting workshops off the ground to expanding offerings. I created and shared a list of the past year’s accomplishments, including creating my website and starting this monthly newsletter, and set my professional and literary goals for 2021.
AWA just announced their 2021 training schedule. If you’re interested in becoming a workshop leader, there are four different online options and one in-person in Canada. Two spots are reserved in each training for workshop leaders of color, with financial assistance available.
call to black poets
The deadline to submit work to Black Poets Speak To America has been extended to November 15. The anthology is a project of Peregrine Journal, a publication of Amherst Writers & Artists.
“We recognize the importance of Black voices and literature. The anthology will reflect the spirit of AWA — artistic excellence with a social conscience.”
Find details at Submittable.
writing as spiritual practice
I recently joined ordained interfaith minister and AWA affiliate, Reverend Patricia Philippe, for a drop-in online writing workshop that included breathing exercises, meditation, and prompt-based writing. She’s now offering a 4-week journey of self-reflection and spiritual exploration, using writing as a tool to tap into your own inner wisdom and connect more deeply with yourself: Nov 8 to Nov 29, 5:30 PM to 7 PM EST. Register here.
Here’s a poem I wrote during a 2-minute freewrite, based on a music prompt she provided:
Wash away all that no longer serves you,
Throw lentils and birdseed and breadcrumbs
To the wind, carefree.
Listen to the hummingbird play its violin
Song that belies its small stature,
Sitting on a branch, ruby-red throat trilling.
See your reflection in these wild waters,
Joined by the deer and her fawn,
Ears fluttering above the meadow grasses.
In addition, Find Your Hidden Light is her writing circle for any self-identified woman of color who wants to learn how to listen inside and awaken their creativity and imagination: Nov. 5 to Dec. 3, 7 PM to 8:30 PM EST. Register here.
noname book club
Join Chicago hip-hop artist Noname (Fatimah Nyeema Warner) in an online/irl community dedicated to uplifting POC voices. The Noname Book Club highlights two books each month written by authors of color. Currently they have 12 local chapters with plans for continuous growth. In 2020 they launched a Prison Program, which allows them to send the monthly book picks to incarcerated folks around the country.
“We believe reading is a critical part of liberation and developing solidarity. The Prison Industrial Complex is working incredibly hard to erase members of our community and we feel we have to work even harder counter this effort.”
I recently read The Inner Work of Racial Justice by Rhonda V. MaGee; Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall; and Mindful of Race by Ruth King. The book that most struck me, however, is Notes From No Man’s Land: American Essays by Eula Biss—winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Starting with “Time and Distance Overcome,” a braided essay on the history of telephone poles and the horrors of black men hung from them, the book historically situates white supremacy and powerfully illuminates our legacy of racism.
VOTE ~ VOTE ~ VOTE ~ VOTE ~ VOTE ~ VOTE ~ VOTE!