writerly world: news & tidbits
April 2024
In this issue: write around the world with awa in may; lit crawl recap; writing workshops; flash essays; memoir high stakes; small presses; writing prompts; solar eclipses!
write around the world
Write Around the World features a monthlong marathon of writing sessions that raise funds for Amherst Writers & Artists scholarship programs and introduce you to AWA facilitators—like me—with up to 7 options each day in May! I’m offering:
Treasured Objects: Weds., May 8, 10am–12 noon PDT
Nearly everyone has faced the conundrum of whether (and when) to let go of a cherished object—a favorite piece of clothing, an heirloom, a book—or save it to possibly pass along as a keepsake. Maybe you’ve amassed a collection of treasures that provide sentimental, aesthetic, functional, or monetary value. Or maybe, like me, you’ve moved multiple times and downsized several generations, pushing you to reconsider the meaning of all that stuff once beloved.
During this 2-hour writing session we’ll write from prompts (images, poetic forms, and physical objects) to consider our belongings and the meaning they hold.
Lit Mags & Publication: Fri., May 10, 1pm–3pm PDT
Are you lit mag curious, but not sure where to start? Getting published in a literary journal is a wonderful way to “go public” with your writing, but the submissions process can be daunting—whether or not you've ever sent your poetry or prose for consideration. This writing workshop will introduce you to several literary outlets, either as a possible home for your work or simply for your reading pleasure.
During this 2-hour session we’ll generate writing from prompts provided by several literary magazines seeking new pieces. We might write on a suggested theme (such as The Sun magazine’s Readers Write), try out unique forms (as in Complete Sentence), and/or practice ekphrastic—i.e. responding to an image (like Broadsided Press).
While we won’t have time to cover all the nuts & bolts of submissions, this session is designed to inspire your writing with short-form publication in mind, with absolutely no pressure to push “send”!
Sliding scale from $20-40 for each session, or bulk discount ($15 each if you purchase 5 sessions, or $14 each for a batch of 10). Sign up to become an AWA Writer Member for as low as $5/month and use one of your eight free writes per year on WAW!
lit crawl recap
In mid-April, six writers shared poems and prose generated in Writing From Memory or Imagination for Lit Crawl Sebastopol, a project of the Sebastopol Center for the Arts and Litquake. What a joy to showcase their talents with our local community!
You can watch Basha Hirschfeld, Cynthi Stefenoni and Rebecca Webb read their work (including prompts that inspired their writing) on Silk Moon’s Instagram feed.
I introduced each reader with a tidbit they shared about being in our writing circle:
“I loved creative writing as a kid but the joy got squeezed out of it for me in adulthood, and I hadn't written in decades until joining Nicole’s AWA group three years ago. Nicole's expert guidance and gentle enthusiasm allowed me to tiptoe back into the world of writing, and I've rediscovered my joy in creativity.” — Carolyn M.
Special thanks to Carolyn Moore, who stepped up in another’s absence to read, including a piece titled “The Patience of Ordinary People,” prompted by “The Patience of Ordinary Things” by Pat Schneider, founder of Amherst Writers & Artists:
summer writing workshops
From Memory or Imagination: 10am–12 noon PDT
Wednesdays: June 12, 19, 26 + July 3, 10, 17, 24, 31
Thursdays: June 13, 20, 27 / SKIP July 4 / + July 11, 18, 25 + August 1, 8
Cost is $240 for the 8-week series (no drop-ins).
Women and nonbinary writers with any experience are welcome.
Please use the Contact Form on my website to inquire.
Each session follows the AWA method, which allows for uninhibited experimentation without causing damage to a writer’s distinct voice and artistic self-esteem:
Everyone’s writing, including the group leader’s, is treated equally.
Participants are invited, but not required, to share their creations aloud.
Rather than critique just-written work, the group practices deep listening and offers reflections on what is strong and memorable in the craft.
Prior participants have been adding their testimonials to my listing in the AWA Affiliate Directory. If you’ve taken my workshops and would like to add one, please click on the blue “Recommend” button at the bottom of my AWA page. Thank you!
in a flash
My flash (under 1,000 words) experimental essay “There Was A Man Who” was published online at The Palisades Review in the New Stories section, where I was excited to read another piece by Bethany Jarmul, author of two poetry chapbooks and a poetry collection plus the forthcoming nonfiction prose chapbook Take Me Home.
Jarmul, who published more than 100 poems and flash pieces in literary journals within her first two years of submitting work, described her “snowball strategy” in
last year. Find out more in her 2-hour Zoom webinars on writing Micro Memoirs (June 2) and Prose Poems (June 18), each only $20 ($40 w/ critique).For another flash of inspiration read “True Love” by my writer pal Angela Lam, published in Five Minutes, which “features micro-memoirs, hundred-word pieces about five minutes in a life.” When I told her about the pub where I’d first submitted “How to Repair,” she’d already sent a piece to the NYT’s Tiny Love Stories column.
On a whim I sent them mine, and it was accepted immediately: a first for me! Angela, in turn, followed my rec for Five Minutes. Plus, her painting “Abstract Woman” was recently the Featured Art that accompanied someone’s essay in Memoir Magazine!
memoir high stakes
Last weekend I went to learn How They Did It: High Stakes Memoirs at Page Street, LitCamp's co-working space for writers (in San Francisco and Berkeley):
In these How They Do It sessions, produced in collaboration with Litquake, published authors share their insights about writing, publishing, and the writers life with emerging writers.
Moderated by Rachel Howard, a 2024 NEA literature fellow (alongside my writer pal S. Isabel Choi—from my MFA cohort who attended LitCamp with me in 2014), a panel of authors spoke eloquently about their recently published or forthcoming memoirs:
Carvell Wallace (Another Word For Love)
Eddie Ahn (Advocate: A Graphic Memoir)
Magaret Juhae Lee (Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History)
Susan Lieu (The Manicurist’s Daughter)
Sylvia Brownrigg (The Whole Staggering Mystery: A Story of Fathers Lost and Found).
planetary (& literary) survival
“Can a walk in nature become a prayer, a meditation, a place for our planet to survive?” — Diane Frank, Bay Area poet and novelist
Frank, who is Chief Editor of Blue Light Press, asked this question on a Sonoma Community Writers Festival panel about publishing with small presses, which I attended at SSU on April 4, just a week after SPD (Small Press Distribution) closed:
“Effective immediately, the 55-year-old distribution house—which served over three hundred small and independent presses, helping get their books to retailers across the world—has ceased operations.” — Lit Hub, March 29, 2024
Learn about “What the Closure of Small Press Distribution means for readers”.
“The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover. The hatch in the brain slammed. Abruptly it was dark night, on the land and in the sky. In the night sky was a tiny ring of light. The hole where the sun belongs is very small. A thin ring of light marked its place. There was no sound.” – Annie Dillard, from “Total Eclipse,” 1982
If you missed the April eclipse, you can watch a recording of the NASA live cam (as I did, evidenced by my screenshot) while it passed over Mexico, the US, and Canada!
Try this: Can you capture the experience in words as vividly as Annie Dillard did?