Summer '22 Announcements
~ From My Writerly World ~
Catalina Island: leaving Little Harbor campground
Kristen and I enjoyed an active 2-week trip including the Trans-Catalina Trail and a 4th of July cousins’ weekend on Santa Rosa island (Channel Islands National Park). We hiked nearly 70 miles, including in the Santa Ynez Mountains during a 5-night stay in Santa Barbara, where we celebrated queer joy and toasted our wedding anniversary: 9 years of legal marriage since the US Supreme Court overturned DOMA, which we can’t take for granted. It was a gift to detach from world news to watch ocean waves and observe wildlife, including endemic island foxes, nesting barn swallows, several dolphin species, and the release of a young rehabilitated elephant seal. 💓
yoga writing workshop
Please join me in person with yoga instructor Jean Grant-Sutton during an afternoon workshop at Blue Door Yoga & Wellness Studio in Penngrove, CA on Saturday, July 30th, 2022!
HOW THE BODY SPEAKS: YOGA & WRITING FOR WELLNESS
Writing, just like yoga, can be a path to healing, integration, and wholeness. In this workshop, we’ll use gentle yoga to prompt our writing. By tuning in to what our bodies and hearts have to say, we’ll invite the body to speak on the page. We will focus on gentle movement and the writing process as expressive and restorative practices, with the option to share our discoveries aloud. We’lll spend our time together in mindfulness and creativity, ending with guided relaxation. Come nurture and grow (or begin) your yoga and/or writing practice. All are welcome!
DATE: Saturday, July 30th, 2022
TIME: 1–4 PM Pacific
PRICE: $80 | $65 Blue Door Member
REGISTER: Blue Door Yoga & Wellness Studio (scroll down the page to sign up!)
awa around the world
Our yoga writing workshop was inspired by several offerings from Write Around the World, an annual May fundraiser for Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA). This year, instead of volunteering to lead a workshop, I joined several, including Using the Body to Write with Claire Sheridan and Kimberly Lee, who led us to “get in touch with how the body impacts our writing—and vice versa.” Each participant selected a line to contribute to a group poem or narrative. Here’s ours:
I've been with you since you came into the world, kicking, and I'll be with you when you're laid to rest in the earth, back to fetal position.
Because what this is about you see, is, "Everything must change. Nothing stays the same." And if Nina Simone said it, then you know it's true.
Your home is here, inside me. Home together.
You’ve smiled all the way through it, calming awaiting my acceptance.
Note: I plan to offer an AWA 8-week series of Writing From Memory or Imagination on Thursdays in September/October with priority given to participants from my prior Spring series, but if you’re interested (especially if we’ve written together in the past), please reach out!
sitting room redo
I’m writing part of this newsletter during a quiet afternoon at The Sitting Room, where my AWA workshops began in February 2020. Dedicated to writing and artworks by and about women, this community library was recently renovated, including what is affectionately known as the “Woolf Wall” (more like a sitting room of its own) with numerous works by — and about — Virginia Woolf. I had the pleasure of attending my first annual TSR birthday party in June with a small-group tour and cake enjoyed outdoors with co-founders J.J. Wilson (professor emeritus and Woolf scholar) and Karen Petersen (librarian extraordinaire). In addition to vast volumes of fiction and nonfiction to peruse (over 6,000 titles cataloged!) there’s a poetry room, a writing room, Women Writers Archive, Obituary Notebooks, and so much more to explore! I look forward to hosting workshops here again among the many treasures to prompt our writing. In the meantime, I’ll keep coming.
abortion storytellers: we testify
Micah Bazant created this painting for the 47th anniversary of Roe v Wade in 2020. With the help of the Abortion Care Network, hundreds of these posters were sent to clinics across the US. "Everyone Loves Someone Who Had An Abortion" is a phrase coined by Renee Bracey Sherman, the Founder and Executive Director of We Testify. The organization highlights a diverse array of intergenerational stories about abortion:
“We Testify invests in abortion storytellers to elevate their voices and expertise, particularly those of color, those from rural and conservative communities, those who are queer-identified, those with varying abilities and citizenship statuses, and those who needed support when navigating barriers while accessing abortion care."
Nearly one in four women in the United States will have an abortion by age 45, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health. I can think of at least half a dozen friends who chose abortions during our twenties when they weren’t ready to become parents (most of them now have 1–2 children.)
At The Guardian, leading US feminist writers, playwrights, poets, and artists such as Rebecca Solnit and Judy Chicago recently weighed in on the impact of overturning Roe v Wade. Bonnie Greer, who had an abortion in ‘69 before it was legal says: “Women now don’t know that world – and I really don’t want them to know it.” Mona Eltahawy, who had an illegal abortion in Egypt in ‘96 “can’t believe that my past is becoming the present in the United States.” V (formerly Eve Ensler): “It is absurd for this country – with one of the highest maternal mortality rates and no paid maternity leave – to be forcing childbirth on women." (Photo: display at The Sitting Room.)
“There’s nothing simple about the decisions anyone makes as to whether and when to have babies, and the idea that people shouldn’t be able to make these decisions for themselves—openly, and without government or other interference—is not only patronizing and belittling but incredibly dangerous,” says editor Hattie Fletcher in a recent newsletter from Creative Nonfiction. “Everything we do here at CNF is rooted in our belief that people’s stories matter—and can change the world…”
Share your own story at We Testify.
manuscript status
In mid-June I completed a second 30,000-word submission of my memoir entitled Just Some Things We Can’t Talk About, which includes the story of my mother’s premarital pregnancy in 1966. I’ve got another 15 weeks to shape new material before I submit the entirety of a solid book draft to More to the Story’s Nonfiction Bootcamp for my final round of editorial feedback. I’ve just begun exploring indie and university presses for possible publication.
From this manuscript I recently submitted an essay/chapter called “Love’s Victory” to Creative Nonfiction’s True Story and the Narratively Spring Memoir Prize. The latter’s submission form requires you to tell, in a few sentences, what the story is about. Here’s my synopsis:
After my brother was matched to a stranger in a mass wedding by a religious cult he was recruited into when he was 19, he struggled to accept my queer sexual identity. This 5,750-word personal narrative weaves my coming out story with my own challenges establishing a love partnership while reconciling my relationship with my brother.
I recently revised “Never Think About the Bad” for a nonfiction workshop at the 27th Annual Postgraduate Writers’ Conference at Vermont College of Fine Arts, which I’ll be attending in August (my first airplane flight since December 2019!). A previous draft with an experimental structure was declined by the Exposition Review, which generously included detailed feedback:
"… There's a real "choose your own adventure" feel to this story and how you decide to read each column and reveal the little asides… the slow unraveling of a family narrative rewriting itself the more you learn, however with the formatting, it can make it overly complicated at times. Something to consider!"
more lit submissions
I’ve submitted a flash essay, “At the Side of the Road,” inspired by a morning walk in spring. Currently under consideration at Sweet: A Literary Confection, it received an encouraging rejection from the Yellow Arrow Vignette at the eponymous journal: “We loved reading your story but wanted a more overt connection to the theme of AWAKEN."
I just sent a poem adapted from prose ("The Bachelors") to the Petaluma Arts Center, which is seeking poetry on food and memory in tandem with the upcoming exhibit Agri-CULTURED: Reflections on our Local Food Community by Land and by Hand. Writing submissions juried by Elizabeth Herron, Poet Laureate of Sonoma County. Deadline: August 1.
My essay, “Case Management,” received one of 15 Honorable Mentions in the 52nd New Millennium Writing Awards!
writing fellowships
Major thanks to Macy Chadwick and S. Isabel Choi for their excellent letters of recommendation to attend a 2-week fall residency at VCCA, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Unfortunately, I was not accepted for the Steven Petrow LGBTQ Fellowship:
“We receive applications from so many talented writers, visual artists, and composers, but we are only able to schedule a small percentage of applicants because of the limitations of space.”
I’m still awaiting news from the FSG Writer’s Fellowship, a yearlong program designed for an emerging writer from an underrepresented community. Thirty semifinalists should soon be selected for consideration by the judges who then select five finalists, with the Fellow to be chosen by FSG. As I wrote in my application in mid-April:
"It would be a considerable achievement to see my book showcased alongside compelling and courageous works of literary merit at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, such as Putsata Reang’s forthcoming Ma and Me."
Since then, her newly released book has received much attention, including a Ploughshares interview and inclusion in Book Riot’s curated queer spring list:
“Putsata Reang was only a baby when her family fled Cambodia and settled in the Philippines. Reang, who almost died on the boat, grew up striving to make her mother proud. In this intimate and vulnerable memoir, she writes about her childhood, her family’s history, coming out as queer, and her complicated relationship with her mother.”
post-pride
Also check out Book Riot’s list of 100 most influential queer books, from classics to contemporary (I’ve read about 20!) and Electric Literature’s Most Anticipated LGBTQ Books of 2022, which includes the 900-page graphic memoir The Third Person by Emma Grove, “chronicling the author’s arduous gender affirmation process and battles with mental health."
And… in June I joined the freelance roster at Dotdash Meredith with a roundup of best LGBTQ tour companies for TripSavvy, published for Pride Month among a collection of LGBTQ features “to celebrate the beauty and importance of inclusivity and representation within the travel space and beyond”:
“Follow along on a gay writer’s adventures at Pride around the world; read about a bisexual woman’s journey to The Gambia to visit her staunchly religious family; and hear from a non-gender-conforming traveler about unexpected challenges and triumphs on the road...”
clicks, likes & retweets, oh my!
The importance of social media in building an “author platform” is debatable. Over the years, I’ve connected with my writing community in various ways online: a blog, a web portfolio of published work, and this TinyLetter. During the seven years that I posted to Paper-Pencil-Pen, I reported on book readings and author talks given by acclaimed writers such as Anne Lamott, Isabel Allende, and Mary Karr. Pam Houston and Joyce Maynard even posted links to my recaps on their websites, and others like Michelle Tea thanked me via Twitter. But when I stopped blogging in 2016 my social media use, along with its distractions, went dormant.
Recently I took a look at book submission guidelines at Vine Leaves Press, which includes a detailed What the FAQ? page and the following advice:
TIP: MFAs in Creative Writing & essays in The Paris Review won't sell your book to us. In addition to an appealing book proposal, we want to see evidence of a healthy social media presence and an engaging public voice that's going to have readers worship you! Times have changed, folks. No more hiding. Get yourself out there.
Welp. I deleted a decade of history from FB, including photos and “friends,” opting only to maintain my professional page. For the past few years I’ve only occasionally posted to Facebook and Twitter, typically to promote my own events or announce publication, while the Instagram account I started in ‘13 remained private with 2 followers. With the support of Ashleigh Renard, whose monthly Platform Precision program is included in Nonfiction Bootcamp, I’m reconsidering the possibilities for enhancing my author visibility and engaging a potential readership in a way that feels authentic, even enjoyable. Rather than simply self-promote, it’s important to me to participate in public discourse as a respected “literary citizen.” No worship required.
So… I just revived my long-asleep Instagram and added a new bio to it and to Twitter, a platform that I’ve recently found useful for pitch call-outs by editors. I’m still learning the ropes. While I’d much prefer to interact with people in real time, preferably out in nature, I hope some of you will “connect” with me in these virtual spaces if you haven’t: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. As always, if you got this far, thanks so much for reading!
Channel Islands National Park, Cuz of July, 2022
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