Spring Announcements
~ From My Writerly World ~
April is National Poetry Month! This year marks the 25th annual celebration of poets and poetry — including 30 Ways to Celebrate — launched by the Academy of American Poets “to remind the public that poets have an integral role to play in our culture and that poetry matters.” That message could not have been delivered more powerfully than when Amanda Gorman, the first ever National Youth Poet Laureate in the U.S., recited “The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country.” The induction of the 49th president and the nation's first female, Black, and Asian American vice president in January was followed by Black History Month in February and Women’s History Month in March.
Last week I wrapped up a weekly creative writing group with three diverse 8th grade girls I’ve worked with since August. As they return to in-person schooling and resume extracurricular activities, they cited the pleasures of writing creatively — so different from their expository writing assignments for school. Each one impressed me with their depth of insight, their bravery in taking risks, and their camaraderie and reflective support of one another's work as they developed their own writing styles and gained confidence in their important voices.
“Arts education has the power to emotionally and academically rebuild students — and the world around us,” confirms Arlene Campa, a Los Angeles High School senior and the founder of The Art Hour, a student-led arts education organization. Read her "Opinion: Arts Education Is a Student Right, Especially During a Pandemic," published by the California Health Report. (Thanks to Creative Sonoma for the link!)
April 4–10 also happens to be National Library Week. I’ve just dipped into the Sonoma County Library’s collection of titles recently purchased to honor and celebrate Black history and Black authors. Among them I read and recommend:
Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture by Emma Dabiri, an essay collection “exploring the ways in which black hair has been appropriated and stigmatized”
Say I’m Dead by E. Dolores Johnson, a memoir on interracial identity that traces “a compelling history of race relations in America"
Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha Trethewey, a Pulitzer Prize–winning poet with a beautifully rendered story of her mother’s murder by domestic violence
In this issue of my newsletter you’ll find poetry opportunities plus writing workshop testimonials, student successes, and more resources on antiracist literature — including these recs by Lois Kim, Executive Director of the Texas Book Festival, who last Friday wrote “Some Asian-American Authors I Read This Year And Reflections on Anti-Asian Hate”:
“A person who has the capacity to randomly and viciously attack another human on the street is, I would venture to guess, not reading literature… It’s yet another reason why it’s so important for children to be exposed to the perspectives and experiences of others through literature so they don’t grow up unable to see the humanity in people who look different from them. I’ve concluded that we—the readers and writers, the ones who care about and champion the inherent diversity within the human story—have the important job of even more loudly proclaiming our support for the AAPI community, for the Black community, for the Latinx community, and for all diverse communities—to show that there are more of us than there are of them.”
student spotlight: poetic achievements
In my last writing workshop series we were honored to hear one participant, Kim D. Hester Williams, read her incisive poem “Losing Count: A Re-Collection, by Numbers.” The poem will soon appear in The Goose: A Journal of Arts, Environment, and Culture in Canada, in a special issue 19.1 entitled “e-Race-sures,” guest edited by Rina Garcia Chua and Anita Girvan.
“The theme emerged out of a pressing need for academic and creative communities to proactively address systemic issues of racism within and outside of our institutions. The current moment of attention to issues of race that is born on the backs of the latest casualties of spectacular violence for audiences held captive during a global pandemic seems novel to many; however, we read this moment within a long history of systemic devaluation of bodies.”
A Professor of English and American Multicultural Studies at Sonoma State University and co-editor of Racial Ecologies, Kim developed her poem based on writing generated from several different prompts in my workshops, which include reflective group feedback using the Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) method. She attests: “Workshopping works!”
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Another workshop participant, LynneAnne Forest, will share a few poems this month for the Yellow Arrow Poetry Series. These live virtual poetry readings highlight contributors to Yellow Arrow Journal where her first poem, “The Ark,” was published in the Fall 2020 issue. LynneAnne has attended my workshops since we started at The Sitting Room over a year ago. She says:
“I was almost 80 years old and had written poems for years, but discounted my abilities. That step towards taking an AWA workshop led by Nicole Zimmerman was the beginning of being supported and encouraged to honor what can emerge.”
LynneAnne continues to hone her poetry skills, concurrently taking workshops with Ellen Bass, a multi-award-winning poet and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
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Adrienne Momi wrote the phrase, “Mama Earth cleans up after her dirty children,” based on a workshop prompt I offered about the natural world. She later adapted it for artwork submitted to an upcoming Petaluma Arts Center exhibition to address climate change, entitled ACT: Climate Action Now. Join an outdoor community celebration on Saturday April 17th, 3 – 6pm, which includes a poetry slam and sidewalk chalk art. See the unveiling of the eight commissioned artworks by local artists, including Adrienne, on the exterior of the Arts Center building and online from Earth Day, April 22, through the summer — also available as posters, lawn signs, tee shirts, and postcards.
publication news
My flash essay “Case Management” finally appeared in Sonora Review Online in January, with accompanying artwork by my friend, Yurika Chiba (aka “TaikoCat”), a visual artist and professional taiko performer. “Extinction” was created in collaboration with the University of Arizona Consortium on Gender-Based Violence. In the introduction, editor Amalia Clarice Mora writes:
"The pieces in this special issue explore the interrelatedness between gender-based violence, other forms of harm and destruction, and self-annihilation… Many of the works consider how sexual conquest has been used in the service of usurping power and profit at the expense of the well-being of the planet and its most vulnerable inhabitants.”
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“The Nature of Beginnings” — an essay published last October in the Those Who Wander section of Under The Gum Tree — received an Honorable Mention in the 15th Annual Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing sponsored by Travelers’ Tales. The editors choose winners in 20 categories ranging from adventure to humor, from destination to memoir, and everything in between. Deadline for the Sixteenth Annual Solas Awards is September 21, 2021.
Congrats to Martha Ezell, another workshop participant and fellow travel writer, who won a bronze in the Animal Encounter category for “Journey of a Golden Soul.” Published in the Spring 2020 issue of Hidden Compass, her story takes place in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains where she went to observe the multigenerational migration of monarch butterflies.
I recently revised an excerpt from my own essay for The Sitting Room’s annual anthology on the theme of Home. They’re accepting contributions until April 15.
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“Never Think About The Bad Things,” an experimental essay, was identified as a semi-finalist for Boulevard’s Emerging Writers Contest. The winner and runner-up will have their work published in the spring 2021 issue. Submissions for the next contest open on June 1, 2021
writing workshops
My place at the table is here.
We write of inner and outer worlds
ethereal, earthy, conjured, real.
Like a voyage, each prompt
swells beneath and pushes us along.
Each voice unwinds the hidden net
plunging the depths
glinting surface.
We are so much more than
our teacups and paper.
— Rebecca Webb (prompt: "Write about what you’ll take away from this workshop")
Writing From Memory or Imagination starts next week with two new workshops, Tuesdays & Thursdays, 10am – 12pm PDT. The cost is $200 for each 8-week series on Zoom.
Here are a few recent testimonials:
“Thank you for creating such an accepting, rich, fertile space in which to create.” — Basha
“Hearing others care about my characters and stories revitalized my writing.” — Margaret
“The workshops were self-affirming and I gained more confidence in my craft.” — Clarice
“The caring responses are so heartfelt: a source of female warmth during a time of isolation.” — Winnie
“I appreciate the talent, warmth, and generosity of writers who respond meaningfully to each other’s work.” — Susan
“Nicole is a wonderful, inspiring, and insightful guide who created a safe place to show up and reclaim my writing practice.” — Rebecca
Self-identified women (including cis, trans, genderqueer, and non-binary writers) with any level of experience are welcome. Registration officially ends today, but there might be one spot still available! Please contact me or use the Inquiry Form on my website if you’re interested.
upcoming events
Phyllis Meshulam, the current Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, will discuss writing techniques, share her approach to teaching with California Poets in the Schools, and share information about a county-wide anthology. Presented by the Redwood Branch of the California Writers Club, Saturday, April 17, from 1 – 2:45pm PDT. Register here.
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Emily Stoddard of Voice & Vessel is a wonderful AWA workshop leader with several offerings. Check out her free weekly Hummingbird Sessions for 15 minutes of guided writing. She also has an upcoming generative workshop “for poetry lovers and the poetry-curious”: A Pause for Poetry begins on April 22. Using four modules and two live/recorded sessions, you'll create new poems and learn poetic skills that bring life to any form of writing.
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The 2nd Annual National Antiracist Book Festival by Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research takes place Saturday, April 24, from 6am – 3pm PDT. Check out the author lineup, including Kiley Reid, who wrote Such a Fun Age, a novel that I’m reading right now.
a hopeful note
“Injustice is now at our door because we ignored it when it was knocking on someone else's door.” — "Cho," a 25-year-old Yangon-based worker for female empowerment, protesting atrocities in Myanmar
At least 550 civilians, including 40 children, have been killed by security forces in Myanmar (formerly Burma), following a military coup in February. These events followed the uplifting news I received just a few weeks prior from Big Brother Mouse, a children’s literacy project in neighboring Laos, on the success of their “book parties” and lunch-hour reading programs for minority ethnic groups in remote, mountainous northern provinces along the border with Myanmar.
When my wife and I visited the UNESCO town of Luang Prabang in 2007, we learned about Big Brother Mouse, a grassroots organization founded by Sasha Alyson, an American writer and publisher who came to Laos five years before. In a country where few children continued school after 5th grade, it was hard to find books published in the Lao language, and little way to distribute them. Most of the kids had never seen a picture book.
In 2006 they began delivering books to far-flung communities, introducing rural children to the art and joy of reading. They might travel three hours on the road, an hour by boat, and ninety minutes of hiking just to reach a village. Sometimes books were delivered by the staff elephant, Boom Boom (meaning: books), over mountains and streams. She even stars in her own book, The Little Elephant That Could. After book reading, art, games and songs, each child chose a book of their very own. At the end of each three-hour party, they left 80 books for a mini-library where kids could trade their book for another.
Today, Big Brother Mouse publishes their own titles, along with translations of classics, hiring and training local young people to write and illustrate them, providing hands-on experience as they learn new skills: writing, editing, translating, technology, and organizing events.
In 2016 they opened Big Sister Mouse, a school that provides interactive learning for young children with a strong focus on reading, including teacher training and a learning center for young adults. You can donate via the Laos Literacy Project to sponsor a book or a scholarship.
This newsletter is now delivered on a quarterly, rather than monthly, basis. Please share it, read the archive, or click “Unsubscribe” below. May Spring blooms bring this broken world more beauty!
First bearded iris bloom at Feather Knoll Farm