#i now go to a literary workshop and work out at home three days a week

[scarecrowgoat]

man i really am putting my life back together ain't i? poggers

[sa7abnews]

I'm a Yale graduate but can't afford to live on my own, so I share an apartment with my mom. I have no plans to move out.

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/11/im-a-yale-graduate-but-cant-afford-to-live-on-my-own-so-i-share-an-apartment-with-my-mom-i-have-no-plans-to-move-out-2/

I'm a Yale graduate but can't afford to live on my own, so I share an apartment with my mom. I have no plans to move out.

The author, left, loves living with her mom, right.Courtesy of Mia TsangAfter graduating college, I couldn't find a full-time job, so I moved into my mother's apartment.Multigenerational living is heavily stigmatized in American culture but valued in my family.My mother's support has allowed me to thrive, and our relationship has never been stronger.In May 2021, I prepared to graduate from Yale University with a degree in molecular biology. Instead of pride in my accomplishment or excitement to finally enter adulthood, I was filled with dread.I had applied to over 60 job openings throughout my senior year but could not secure a full-time position in any field — let alone the highly specialized field for which I'd been trained. I had no job or plan, so two days after my graduation ceremony, I moved into my mother's rent-stabilized two-bedroom apartment in Queens.For the first summer I lived in New York, I worked odd jobs like babysitting, teaching short-term writing workshops, and editing high schoolers' college essays. I revised my résumé and sent out a job application every day. I've always been passionate about writing, so I expanded my range to include literary and publishing jobs. No bites.The salary ranges for every entry-level position I applied for were well below what I would need to live in New York City without my parents' help. Even with a full-time job, I wouldn't be able to afford to move out. But I ended up right where I needed to be.My mom welcomed me back home after graduationMy mother immigrated to the US from Ecuador when she was 8 years old, and my father from Mexico when he was 9. The three of us are incredibly close. I was raised in Rhinebeck, a small town in the Hudson Valley, which is predominantly white.Our family's cultural values constantly clashed with those of my peers' families, especially regarding multigenerational living. My friends' parents constantly emphasized to them that "the minute you turn 18, you're out."Those families seem to represent the norm around the US. In 2022, the Pew Research Center found that only 13% of non-Hispanic white Americans live in multigenerational households, compared to 26% of Hispanic and Black Americans.In contrast, throughout my life, my parents made it clear that if I ever needed to live with them again after college, no matter the reason, they would welcome me with open arms. My father has always said, "We're not just a family. We're a team. Whatever you want to do, we will support you in any way we can."My family's culture normalizes multigenerational living, so I felt comfortable moving in with my mother.I love living with my mother and have no plans to leaveSix months after graduating, I finally got a 15-hour-a-week position as a marketing assistant at a literary nonprofit. My mother was thrilled I had found a job I was passionate about and over the moon that I would have to keep living with her.Overall, it's been better than I could've imagined. We eat dinner together most weeknights and then watch an episode or two of whatever TV show we're binging together. On weekends, we go to the beach or concerts in the East Village. We even went to Queens Pride together for the first time.This time together has only brought us closer together, and our relationship has never been stronger than it is now. I am grateful for this time we have together.I still work for the same nonprofit. Though my hours and pay rate have increased, I am still not full-time, but I'm fine with that. I love the work I do and the people I do it with. That means I will be living with my mother for the foreseeable future, and I am OK with that. Not having to worry about making New York City rent allows me to save most of my income.I use the extra hours in my day to write. It's paid off: My first book will come out next February, and I couldn't have done any of it without my mother's support.

[rpgsandbox]

Introducing the Teacher-Gamer Handbook

The Teacher-Gamer Handbook is a resource for educators to lead Role Playing Games (such as Dungeons and Dragons) in the classroom, in homeschool and online. It contains a full semester of robust lesson plans and the pedagogical infrastructure to last years that teach 36 life-skills to players with pre-created adventure suggestions, narrative arcs and prompts.

The main premise is: you can’t learn something unless you notice it. The purpose of the RPG Skillset is to generate multitudes of continuous opportunities to notice things within at least 36 major domains of self-development. The possibilities are endless.

My name is Zach.

Here is a brief history of how the Teacher-Gamer Handbook came to be:

1982 played Dungeons and Dragons for the first time - my character died in the first 10 minutes, it was so fascinating and unlike anything I had ever experienced... I was hooked! I have been playing RPGs for thousands of hours and almost 4 decades. Some would call me an O.G. (Original Gamer).

1990’s adventuring in life, school, work, music production, becoming Canadian and starting a family steered me in new directions.

2002+ raising two boys with my wife Sophie, I was teaching and studying by day, hangin' with the family and playing RPGs when I could on weekends.

2006 enrolled in an MA program in Education to better understand the “how” of teaching and learning.

2010 finished my Masters in Education focused on authentic learning and life-skills curriculum development.

2012 realized that role-playing games (RPGs) in Schools was an untapped resource. I began working on the Teacher-Gamer as an extension of my Distinct Self well-being program.

2014-2016 brought RPGs in Schools curriculum into the classroom at Green School Bali

2015-present Wild Mind Training workshops blending RPGs in Schools with mindfulness ramps into wilderness trips with Wildlife Conservation Society.

2020 Teacher-Gamer Revolution! - happening offscreen on tabletops everywhere! Let’s get radical about balancing EdTech and AI coming into schools by bringing our teacher’s hobbies into life-skills classes that enrich youth with socio-emotional and literary skills while maintaining the distinctly human teacher-student relationships that cannot be replaced by computers.

What We Need & What You Get

I started this campaign for three main reasons:

It is time to put the Teacher-Gamer Revolution on the timeline, now, globally. It is so important to take what you have inside you and put it into the civic sphere. I urge all educators to make the world a better place by combining their passions with their pedagogical skills and make them available to the public.

Self-publishing the Teacher-Gamer Handbook (TGHB) will launch this new step of my career with all the support of my colleagues, friends and anyone who likes the idea that robust off-screen game-system-learning (engaging face-to-face life-skills development) is a viable initiative to balance the influx of technology into schools.

The TGHB is my calling card, a beacon, an organized methodology that I can put into the hands of people I meet at conferences, conventions and school boards wherever I go.  

I took a calculated risk and have already borrowed the money to:

finish the book

have it typeset in the style of a role-playing game handbook

make videos to explain how teaching RPGs in schools works

build a website with a private interactive forum.

I also plan to use the momentum and connections I make with so many people around the world to take the curriculum to the next level.

My ultimate goal is to hit at least $60,000 so that I can spread the methodology online and hit the road when the world opens up again to safe conferences and in-person education.

Here's the Teacher-Gamer Revolution plan for the funds raised on IndieGoGo:

Hard Copy prints of the book for everyone!

Hit our stretch goals and produce additional resources for Teacher-Gamers to accompany the Handbook.

Finish the next three handbooks full of additional lesson plans, classroom activities and teaching strategies.

Newsletters with practical activities

Instructional videos

Teacher-gamer website features celebrating educator success around the world  

Weekly Webinars for online outreach and support

Teacher training workshop deployment to implement new full-scale RPGs in the classroom programs.

Head to Conferences and speaking events to grow the community and gain traction.

Continued customization of RPGs in Schools curriculum in community centers, school boards, correctional facilities and homeschools far and wide.

Finish the next three handbooks full of additional lesson plans, classroom activities and teaching strategies.

Benefits for the Educators

help schools transition into more life-skills programs that prepare youth for adulthood

build progressive opportunities for face-to-face off-screen courses in schools

maintain positive attitudes about the future of schools

work to make life-skills more prominent in schools for the subject teacher who is getting pushed out by tech

Strengthen relationships with students through gameplay

The last thing a teacher wants to feel like is “obsolete”. There is some hustle each teacher must do to remain fresh, viable and relevant in their community, but if teachers are trying to battle incoming tech or are being asked to do more tech type roles, they will have to find ways to shift the consciousness of the institutes they work in or be moved around or pushed out.

This is a call to teachers to take their passions- or at least an opportunity to pick up this methodology to teach games- and deploy life-skills into their learning environment.  

The Impact

By contributing to the Teacher-Gamer Handbook, you are doing more than just buying a book or helping it get printed, you help:

establish the printing, distribution and sale of the book

the off-screen Teacher-Gamer Revolution gain traction and take flight

bring viability to the TEACHER-GAMER profession

subject teachers to collaborate with their peers to build robust game systems into learning opportunities

wilderness survival teachers establish classroom simulations of safety and role-playing through authentic learning narratives

bring a whole new piece of curriculum to holistic education

make in-roads for RPGs in Schools to become a discipline unto itself that helps youth process the multiverse of systems, franchises, worlds and cultures that are coming at them at high-speed through the internet and media.

The Story

The Teacher-Gamer Handbook has been over 8 years in the making!

The RPGs in Schools program was originally developed as an extension to a Personal and Social Development Local Programme course cycle in Canadian public school – a well-being curriculum program of life-skills electives at The English Montreal School Board in Quebec. Since then, the RPGs in Schools program has been adapted into the Wild Mind Training resiliency program for youth, 10 years old and older in schools and camps in Indonesia and the UK where I have been working over the last 6 years.

Starting in 2014, Green School Bali was an early adopter of the RPGs in Schools Program where I ran Introduction to Dungeons and Dragons as an English literacy course (creative writing) in high school and as an English literacy course (communication thematic) in middle school.

Every child surveyed in Green School reported that they liked the RPGs class and over half of them considered it their favorite class!

As I went along, I started realizing that all the life skills (21 basic and 15 advanced) that I was teaching could be dialed in to meet various curriculum goals and that if I put learners on a narrative cycle such as the Hero’s Journey, they would begin to recognize so many more thematics, symbols, motifs and literary forms as they relate to so many of the stories, books, films, TV series, mangas and other sagas that they follow.

Re-branded as Wild Mind Training, over the last 4 years. I have been experimenting with more mindfulness, wilderness conservation and improvisational theatre elements. As a home school aggregate on the weekdays and a weekend workshop for day school children, I have ironed out the kinks of three different levels of Introduction to Life-Skills through 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons courses.

As with any pedagogy delivery system, the context and content (ie. role-playing game being used) can be adjusted into the area of study or subject. What matters most is that the learning system is authentically motivating and delivers opportunity after opportunity to acquire literacy, socio-emotional and life skills.  

Risks & Challenges

Getting the book printed is only the first step. I’m taking a huge financial risk of my own even if the project does not get funded. In order for it to succeed, I have to get out there and hit the road to show people how the methodology really improves the learning experience for the students and teachers.

I’ve got to hit trade shows, book speaking events, and still create workshops to help teacher-gamers really kickstart this program.

Let’s keep it real: this is an alternative learning method that requires adaptation. There may be backlash as conventional school systems are entrenched in “standardization”. I have to keep pushing this body of work as a complement to curricula by expanding the resources for teachers.

Gamification has brought games into education, but have also made the teachers gatekeepers to the computer. The negative result is that kids will be on their best behavior just to be allowed to get on screen. We need to bring value back to the teacher-student relationship, also making the teacher-gamer an exciting part of education - off-screen!

The Teacher-Gamer Revolution is on!

And I am ready. The time is NOW. If not us, then who?

As a network of early adopters it is YOU that will help me carry this forward and YOU that by belief in this project, will help extend the reach of the Teacher-Gamer Revolution.

We have some goals to hit, and time is of the essence. There has been so much learned by going for it and I am so excited to turn this guerilla-style launch of getting the first Handbook off the ground and into teachers hands everywhere.

We will try to get questions answered as soon as possible, just know we are also trying to get the book to print BEFORE the end of the campaign and have a lot going on.

That being said, we are GOING TO PRINT and get your copies to you as SOON as possible. Depending on your location this could take some time as we are a GLOBAL movement with community around the world, but can only afford to print in ONE location at this time.

Print and delivery is scheduled for June 15th and getting copies in your hands by July 1st. But again, your patience is much appreciated and we will update you every step of the way!

Thanks to you for all your patience and getting involved.

Indiegogo campaign ends: 24 April 2020

Website: [Teacher Gamer] [facebook] [twitter] [instagram]

[subtextures]

Narcissus Talks to Echo

The Interview apologies to The Paris Review

Context:  Why poetry?

Subtext: (Laughs) What else is there? No, really I don’t know.  It is what has come to me.  I have tried to write fiction and I don’t seem to have the attention span for a sustained narrative.  Not that poetry doesn’t require precise attention, because it does.  But it requires a different type of attention: attention to the moment.  Fiction requires attention to the end, the resolution.  Everything is focused on how the story will end.  Poetry’s focus is in the word by word movement; the unfolding of the moment, which is what makes it so hard to read and write well. It requires one to attend to everything, all the possibilities in a very intense focus, knowing all the while that one is missing most of what is happening: kind of like life.  That kind of attention is hard to maintain in fiction: maybe a Proust, or Melville, could pull it off.  I think one almost has to be ADHD to follow the leaps and psychic shifts when writing poetry.  You know:  Look! A chicken!

C:  But you also write essays.

S: Yes, but essays are as Virginia Wolfe said, “the mind tracking itself.” Much like poetry. I find myself leaping along after my thoughts in both poetry and the essay.  Neither, initially requires plotting out what I am going to say.  I can rely more on the moment to moment flow of my thinking.  In both forms discovering what I have to say as I write and focus on the play of words and ideas is part of what makes writing exciting to me.  Not to sound Romantic, but it is as if I am possessed by something greater than me that is leading me toward some revelation.  Eratos, I guess.

C: You just said you don’t have to plot out what you are going to say, yet in several of your long series you have fairly complex writing structures.  I am thinking here of  “My Book of Changes,” “115 Missing Days,” “Primogenitive Folly,” and in your most recent, “Sonnet.”

S: True, but in all of those poems, I used a number system to either create a limitation, either small or large, to help me, or maybe better to say, force me to either write very tightly in the case of  “Book of Changes,” and “Sonnet” or to expand on my thinking as in “115 Missing Days.”  I did not have a direction, or even some kind of idea in regards to what I was going to say, I simply wrote.  Again it is more of a chasing after an idea, or image that is just out of reach constantly.  Kind of like Robert Browning’s pursuit of love, in “Life in Love:” where the speaker is always, like a hunter, in pursuit of his love, but never quite capturing his prey.  Browning is more interested in the pursuit than the capture, it seems to me, and I see that now as analogous to how I write when I first sit down to write a poem. As I said earlier, I am much more interested in where the poem will take me as I am writing it, rather than having a set idea of what I want to say and then figuring out how to say it.

C:  So, if you don’t know what you are going to write about, how do you start?S: I start with a phrase, a word sometimes, or an image, then go from there.  I don’t mean to sound so willy-nilly.  I write all the time.  Or I, at least, get out my notebook and stare at the page.  Sometimes I will re-read snatches of writing which led nowhere at the time they were written and find something there to salvage or something to prod me on in another direction.  Somedays, I just write badly, but other days I can re-read the bad writing I abandoned weeks or months before and find something, some fragment of an idea, which leads me into a larger world. Last year I even found several partial poems in notebooks I abandonded at least ten years ago.  I have learned over time that anything can start a poem; so I have tried to enable that by making a conscience effort to pay attention to everything: the short arc of a bird from one branch to another, trash caught in a whirl of wind, the beauty in the everyday occurrence.  Of course, for the most part that is a failure, but I do try.

C:  Do you write everyday? Do you have a routine?

S:  I try to write everyday, but I rarely ever do.  Even when I was writing “My Book of Changes,” I didn’t write everyday, although that was the intention when I started it, to cast the I Ching then write a six line poem using the hexagram I cast as a palimpsest through which to read my life in that day, and to do that every day for a year.  But that fell apart quickly because of work and having three children under the age of 5 in the house.  However, it made sense to try to write one everyday but to let chance operate allowing for some days where I just didn’t have time to write.  I wound up with 250 poems over the course of the year, and that led to the next series of poems, “115 Missing Days.”  But I am not really answering your question, am I?  There goes that chicken again; one thought distracts me from my original intention.            No I don’t have a routine. No I don’t write everyday. There, that is the short answer.  I used to worry about not writing, the actual putting pen to paper kind of writing, but over time, I guess as I’ve gotten older I don’t worry so much about that anymore.  I think that as I go through my day, trying to pay attention to stuff, I am writing.  I am filtering out the ephemera, collecting images and thoughts, which I will later use.  Not necessarily consciously, but I find when I finally find time to write that often these thoughts and ideas flow back into my thinking sometimes from a few days before, other times from years in the past, in a non-temporal flood of memories.              I do carry a notebook with me at all times. I have done that for more than twenty years.  I like unlined sketchbooks.  I write in the book whenever I can catch a few minutes, or if I have an idea all of a sudden. Once on the way home from dropping my oldest off at college, I wrote an entire sonnet as I made the eight hour drive.  I stopped finally at a truck stop and wrote it down. So I guess my routine is to write whenever I can, but not on a schedule. Does that still qualify as a routine, if it is not in a routine manner?

C: Yes, I think that would qualify.  Let’s talk about your “training,” as it were, how important do you think poetry classes are, or MFA programs?

S: I don’t really have anything to say about MFA programs, since I have not been in one.  The two people I know who went through a MFA program, one at Iowa and the other at the New School in New York, seemed to get a lot out of the programs.  How much they learned to write in the programs, I am unsure.  At least one of them was a fine writer before he went through his MFA program.  I think like any school, a person gets as much as she puts into the program. I found the poetry workshops I took as an undergraduate and in graduate school allowed me a unique environment to write and talk about poetry with a very diverse group of people with different aesthetic visions.  It is rare, at least for me, to have that kind of environment after school.  I have written and thought about poetry on my own since I finished at Bread Loaf almost twenty years ago. I was lucky from the very beginning to have several people who took the time to read and talk about my work with a kind attentive eye.  It helped me learn to write on my own.

C:  Talk about these people.

S: Well, in high school when I first started thinking of myself as a poet, I had the good fortune to come into contact with two teachers, one a writer, the other a visual artist, Cliff Berkman and Ann Lockstedt, who took my poems seriously, or at least pretended to well enough to make me believe they took me seriously.  Berkman gave me books of poetry to read, probably the best thing any young poet can do; read voraciously, as Dylan Thomas said, “until my eyes fell out.”  Lockstedt introduced me to Art with a big A.  Something that was out of the realm of the milieu of small town south Texas, she took a bus load of kids to see the Cezanne exhibit in Houston, as well as several buses to Dallas and Ft. Worth to see the Kimball and several other art museums.  That kind of trip with today’s lack of funding for the arts in the public school system would be unheard of now.As an undergraduate at the University of Texas, I was lucky to be in several workshops run by Albert Goldbarth.  In the late 70’s and early 80’s, he taught there before moving to Kansas.  Again he talked to us as if we were poets, not as dumb-ass students, which we were.  He was sarcastic and cutting, but he also found something good to say about everybody’s poems.  What Katherine Bomer calls the hidden gems in students writing.  It takes a very patient mind to do this well, and Goldbarth made us want to write better, or at least made me want to write better.As a graduate student in English literature at the Bread Loaf School of English, I had one poetry workshop with Carol Oles, but just being at Bread Loaf was a writing workshop. The conversations about literature and writing with the professors and students that I had over the course of the four summers I was in Vermont were life altering, as far as my thinking about poetry was concerned.  Lunch conversations with David Huddle, Robert Pack, Ken Macrorie and others over everything from the weather to literature, to politics is indescribable in its influence on my literary life.

C: What about your own teaching, how does that affect your poetry?

S: I would say in an indirect manner.  When talking to my students about the “great” works of English literature I have come to see it in deeper more meaningful ways, not just because I have to explain the poem in ways the students can understand, but also because of the ways of knowing a poem the students bring to the work.  Also as I try to teach my students how to write, I garner insights into my own writing processes.  Teaching has deepened the initial training I had through the university, and taken my understanding of poetry further, I believe, than if I had gone off to sell insurance.  But that is because I am able to think about poetry on an ongoing basis, and have discussions with fellow teachers about writing and poetry.  

C: How important is having a community of writers?

S: Very important.  Writing is such a solitary activity. So much of the time is spent in your own head, wrestling with your own demons, caught up in self-evisceration that just being able to talk to others who have some common understanding of what it means to write becomes a balm to the doubt and insecurity that comes with being a writer. Even if all you talk about most of the is how the local sports team is doing, or how crappy your job is.  You also have the love of words and writing, which brought you together in the first place.  

C: Do you think about your readers when you write?

S: Yes, in the very real sense that I am one of my readers.  That makes me think of a line from Tom Raworth when he said he started to write because he liked reading what wrote. But as for making it easy for my readers, not really.  I write what I write.  I like it when someone says they have read and liked what I wrote.  I often wish they would be more specific about what they liked, but any kind of  positive response is welcome.  I think any writer who tells you she doesn’t care what people think of her writing is lying to you. As human beings we all want to belong, and writer’s want people to read what they write.  I think that is why so many writers seek out workshops, so they can have someone read their work.  The danger becomes that you change your vision to better conform to others’ view of the world.  That is also the horror of writing that no one can see the way you do, and you wind up screaming into the wind.  I haven’t sent out anything for more than 20 years, but I post on my blog in hopes that someone will read my poems, and maybe even respond.  

(March 2012)

[acyborgkitty]

I just finished watching Jennifer Brea’s incredible documentary Unrest on Netflix. Watch it now. Everyone should. 

My story.

I became ill suddenly, and severely, in September (I think) of 2016. I had just moved to Providence in August from San Francisco, without my partner of 10+ years, to take a teaching job at Brown University. I was teaching a poetry workshop for Frequency Writers, a community writing group, as well as a class I developed for Brown’s Literary Arts department, Experimental Poets of Color. Providence is a city I love, and even though the gig was adjunct (i.e. no job security, no health insurance, etc.) I wanted to be in Providence, and I wanted to be teaching in my fiend. I had health insurance through the ACA at the time, and though I had been diagnosed with several mental illnesses many years before (major depression and general and social anxiety disorders) I felt that my hearth was well managed with the medication I was on. 

I was so happy to be back in Providence, I would walk for hours around the city, sometimes 7 miles in one stretch, listening to music and books. I was thrilled to be teaching the class I desperately wish I had been able to take at any point in my education (which includes three masters degrees), and to be nearer to my friends and family who live in Boston and the surrounding areas. I missed my partner, but we’ve been long distance for much of our relationship (the price of being an artist in academia), and it seemed like he was getting ready to leave San Francisco and head back east himself. 

It was the second meeting, I think, of the Frequency open poetry workshop. It was Wednesday night. I walked to the community gallery space on Carpenter St. where we held our meetings early, unlocked the doors, and made myself some tea. It was a normal night. At some point during the workshop I started to feel exhausted, sick, like I was getting a cold. I pushed through, but took a Lyft home. I woke up the next day and still felt bad. Worse, even. I cancelled that day’s class and stayed in bed. By the next week I still wasn’t feeling any better. I went to the CVS clinic to see if I had the flu, which was going around and apparently quite bad that year. I didn’t, I was told it was just a bad cold, and to take some cough suppressant for the bad cough. 

I thought maybe I wasn’t sleeping well - I was tired all the time - and maybe that was making the cold last longer than normal. I had had (undiagnosed) chronic pain for years which had started in 2007 in my first year in grad school. It was especially bad in my neck and lower back, so I had spent years and a lot of money finding a really good mattress. But I had housemates that were young, noisy, up late, so I invested in an eye mask, noise-cancelling headphones that I slept in, and a white noise machine. I had to teach my classes, but I would show up, teach, and come immediately back home and stay in bed until I had to teach the next class. I spent several weeks like this, thinking it was just a cold, until someone pointed out that colds, even very bad ones, don’t last for several weeks. 

I made an appointment with my primary care doctor in Boston. I’ve struggled finding doctors that take me seriously, like most women and non binary people I imagine, especially with chronic and challenging illnesses. This doctor listened to me, and was gentle, and that was pretty much all I could hope for. He examined me, and tested me for mono, strep, walking pneumonia (which I’d had before, and which was basically the closest comparable experience I had). I had none of them. Then we tested my thyroid, my B12 levels, and my immune functions. He found nothing wrong with me. 

A digression on chronic pain, including a digression on trauma.

I had gone down a diagnostic wormhole several years ago when I’d first started getting tests to see if we could find an underlying cause for my chronic pain. It started in Iowa City, where I did my second graduate degree, and included MRIs, x-rays, testing for immunological disorders, cancers, and basically anything they could think of. Eventually I was referred to a psychologist, because they determined my pain might be a physical manifestation of trauma. And I’d had my share of trauma.

A digression on trauma. I grew up with an emotionally abusive mother who, though never diagnosed, meets all of the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. I ran away from home as a teenager, living on the streets for most of a year, before re-establishing a relationship with my family, primarily my father who helped me get an apartment, back into school, and eventually into college. At that point my mother re-entered the picture, and my father stopped helping me pay for college, so I worked sometimes as many as 5 jobs while completing my undergraduate degree. I met my partner in undergrad, and he has been an immense help for me in recovering from my trauma, but like so many who were experienced long-term abuse as children, I probably will never be un-affected by my experiences. 

So the trauma angle seemed at least plausible to me, and I went to a year’s worth of sessions with two different people, one a psychologist who specialized in and studied the manifestation of trauma as physical pain, and another who practiced CBT and meditative mindfulness therapy. Both helped immensely with my emotional state, but my pain persisted. So when I moved away for my third graduate degree (my first move to Providence) I transferred care and we started the diagnostics all over again. This time I saved all my records - I have my MRIs and my X-rays still in some box somewhere. We did CAT scans and I went to scores of specialists including  an orthopedic surgeon who recommended surgery; a chiropractor who works with the Boston Ballet Company who diagnosed me as hyper-flexible and gave me strengthening exercises to do that actually seemed to help somewhat; and a neurologist who found nothing wrong with me at all. After four years of referrals and diagnostics, I found a integrative care physician who listened to me break down in her office, prescribed an anti-depressant that is also a sedative to help me fall asleep, and helped me come up with a plan to manage the pain. Massage, chiropractor, walking and stretching, the anti-depressants, 800mg Ibuprofen when I needed it, and Vicodin when nothing else helped. 

After all of this, I wasn’t eager to go down another diagnostic chase. 

Back to 2016.

By this point it was the middle of November. I was so sick that I couldn’t feed myself, I couldn’t do laundry, I couldn’t leave the house except for to teach, and then I spent the next 24-48 hours recovering mostly in bed from the fatigue it caused me. I was experiencing sever cognitive deficiencies, most notably my ability to process and retain information, and my ability to speak. It felt like I had dementia, or what I imagine dementia to feel like. I would read the same sentence over and over again and not understand it, or not remember it when I started the next one. I would fight to get up to go into the kitchen, only to forget what I was there for. Did I need water? Had I fed the cat? Did I need to use the bathroom? My father and brother were taking turns coming down to my house to prepare food for me for the week, and to get my groceries, and to do my laundry. I needed help with everything. I could do one, maybe two things in a given day. Those things included brushing my teeth and feeding the cat. 

I couldn’t even research my condition, given my cognitive symptoms. I was angry, and many days I felt like it would be better to die. I couldn’t read or write, so I took up embroidery as a way to try to keep my life worth living, a way to keep making art. 

In January, 2017 when my partner came to visit for his winter break, we went to my doctor together. I couldn’t remember the questions he wanted me to ask, and I couldn’t have remembered the answers anyway, and I certainly couldn’t get myself there and back without help, so him coming was the only way I was going to get there. I don’t remember much of the appointment, but I do remember my doctor suggested that I might be experiencing a severe prolonged depressive episode. Based on my previous diagnosis of depression. Based on the fact that there seemed to be nothing wrong with me, physically. 

My partner didn’t buy it. I sort of did, or at least I didn’t have the energy to dispute it. My partner started researching, aggressively, and a few months later he came up with something. Maybe, he said, it was my copper IUD. Maybe I had copper toxicity. My doctor said that was impossible, that the IUD can’t cause copper toxicity, but my symptoms aligned, and there are thousands of women on the internet who have experienced copper poisoning from their IUD. So one day in April, my best friend took me to the hospital and I had mine removed. The next day, I felt better. Not 100% better, but maybe 40% better. The next day my partner and I went for a walk, the first time in almost a year I had felt able to do that. 

I kept feeling better. Not getting better, but I stayed feeling about 40% better. A few days I felt almost entirely myself, but then the next day I would be exhausted again. I could do things, but if I pushed too hard, I would collapse and pay for it for days. I learned about spoons, and disability culture and activism. I learned about setting my limits, and prioritizing. I said no to almost everything, because almost nothing was worth the risk of incapacitation for me. 

My brain started to recover too - I could read. I started writing in my journal, not poetry but at least writing of some sort. I felt hopeful that I was recovering. We bought a house, a big old Victorian that needs TLC, and I moved in there with 4 other queer artist friends. I didn’t get the tenure-track job at Brown, but I did get another adjunct offer to teach Book Arts, and I accepted - something I definitely couldn’t have done at my sickest, given that it’s a 15-hr a week studio course. 

But now, a year post-removal, my memory is still a problem. And I still get exhausted a lot. A lot more than I used to, before I got sick. But the anecdotal evidence on the copper IUD detox forums says that it could take years to fully process the toxicity out of your system. The most severe days might be attributed to “dumps” - when the body releases stored copper all at once - and those days feel like my worst ones did when I was at my sickest. I had thought that when I felt better, I would start to do things again, go to poetry readings, have dinner with friends, go for walks, be part of the community I’d moved here because I loved. But I still say no to most things, or write them down in my calendar and don’t go. I know that if I push too hard, I’ll pay for it for days. And “too hard” is a moving target - it changes seemingly randomly, and I don’t know when I’m approaching it until it’s too late. Then I’m in bed for days. 

I’ve been having an especially bad few days. Maybe a week. Maybe more. My memory, my brain isn’t good at sequence anymore, or keeping track of time. It’s frustrating, because I can’t keep track of my own symptoms. Sometimes I remember to write them down, and sometimes I forget, or am too tired. And there’s no one here to watch me, or help me - my partner doesn’t move here until June. Today, for example, I got up at 11 and I fed the cats. And I was so tired that I lay down, and just...passed out. I don’t remember falling back asleep, but then I woke up at 6 pm. I fed the cats again, and then had to go back to bed. The last week has been similar: do just what is necessary, then back to bed. It feels like I’m sick all over again. 

I have had my period, which can be associated with copper dumps. I’m not saying it’s not copper “dumps,” or that it’s isn’t related to copper poisoning. But I watched Unrest and thought: “maybe this is what I have, too?” So many of those scenes were heartbreakingly familiar. I wept through most of it, because Jennifer was saying the things that I’d been feeling. About feeling like it was a good day when all I had done was survived it. About feeling like my life had ended, and that I had a new one now, one that sometimes didn’t feel like a life at all, but one that I still didn’t want to give up. About not being listened to, about not being believed. I wept at the thought of having a diagnosis, after all this time. Of maybe finally at least knowing what is wrong with me. Maybe.

But I don’t know how to find out. I don’t currently have health insurance, because the premium on my ACA policy from last year went up by 50% and I couldn’t afford it anymore, and adjuncts at Brown who teach fewer than 4 classes a year don’t get health insurance, and I’m only teaching 3, and I am barely able to do that; this semester teaching 2 classes took every bit of energy I had. I will get health insurance starting in September when my partner starts his new job in Providence, and maybe then I can get some answers. If I have the energy for it.

My story doesn’t have an ending yet. I’m in bed, as I have been all day. Writing this was the most writing I’ve done since I got sick. I’m grateful for that. It feels like, thanks to the work that Jennifer has done, an important story is at least starting to be told. Not just mine, but one that is shared by millions. 

[earaercircular]

The Micro Factory, a workshop where they share more than tools

In Anderlecht –one of the municipalities of the region of Brussels-Capital-, the Micro Factory offers a space for inspiration and co-creation to professional craftsmen or Sunday DIYers. The opportunity to share equipment, wishes and skills. And to relocate the production of objects in cities.

A little bit of sandpaper here, a final adjustment there. Against a backdrop of jazzy music, Olivier is putting the finishing touches to the assembly of the Victor Fund[1] book boxes which are about to be placed in two Brussels restaurants. In the metal workshop, a few meters away, Sébastien for his part is finishing the welding of elements for the manufacture of bookshelves for a literary café which will soon open its doors in the centre of the capital. In another room, right next to the common table where we spend as much time "designing on the computer as eating pretzels", Rima shapes table accessories using techniques from the jewellery store.

We are in Anderlecht, a stone's throw from the Brussels-Charleroi canal, where the Micro Factory[2] has established its quarters in an old building of Bruxelles-Propreté[3]. A vast space of 650 square meters where both experienced craftsmen and Sunday handymen and artists come together.

"Here, we are in the soft zone. This partition made with salvaged glass separates what is noisier and dustier from what is less. There is a corner dedicated to textile work. Overthere, these are the screen printing and printing equipment. There, a table for the electronics. There again, a booth for painting and stuff that smells bad ... ", explains Gilles Pinault, taking us around, punctuated by an impressive list of tools that can be found there: 3D printer, thermoforming machine, laser cutting machine, digital milling machine for metal, wood lathe… There are many.

"We could point the finger in any direction, I could tell you a story about the machine," he smiles.

A place to go from idea to realization

While some of this equipment belongs to the Micro Factory, most of it is the property of its users who leave them at the disposal of the community. “The deal is that people can leave their tools in their personal space or in the common. If they're in the common, it's for common use. It works a lot on trust. But people meet there because it is a free hosting of their machines. This saves them having to rent a clean place ", continues Gilles.

Born in the bubbling spirit of our guide, this shared workshop project took a few years to build. "I am an architect by training, I did a little virtual reality and I am rather a handyman in everything", he summarizes. Entrepreneur too, since he was one of the co-founders of Softkinetic,[4] this small Belgian company specializing in 3D imaging and motion analysis software, sold to the giant Sony in 2016. "The archetype of the start-up who has grown up and who is doing the rounds of investors. I saw that what the company needed now was more management and processes, than developing new ideas. “,says Gilles. His thing is to do things. And, obviously, he's rarely lacking in imagination.

Three years earlier, he had set up with his wife and a few friends regular meetings to materialize "lots of ideas that we have always had in mind without taking the time to realize them". DIY workshops, therefore, organized in each other's salons. The embryo of the Micro Factory was born.

But the participants quickly felt cramped. Inspired by American "makerspaces", they therefore set out to find a place where they could more widely express their creativity while sharing their tools. Together, they will thus occupy "a somewhat rotten squat of artists" in Saint-Gilles, then a building on temporary rental in the city centre.

In 2016, the day of Softkinetic's sale, he decided to take the plunge and devote himself completely to the Micro Factory project. He then sets out in search of a "real" building where it could develop and structure itself over time. Renovated as part of projects supported by the European EFRD fund[5], the Bruxelles-Propreté building offers it an ideal base. "We got a reduced rent and a ten-year lease. It is important because we could not cope with the market price. This allowed us to make somewhat ambitious arrangements."

Switch to a cooperative and gain impact

If it functions a bit like a de facto association, the Micro Factory has in practice been created on the basis of an Limited company (Ltd) linked to the former activities of Gilles Pinault. "It was easier to start. Technically, I am the manager, but in practice not at all", explains the person who now has the wish to switch the project under the status of cooperative. A status which corresponds more to the spirit of sharing that he wants to encourage. "This will make it possible in particular to carry out the purchase of machines in common and to involve everyone in the decisions. Today, I still have a limiting effect. People do not dare to do certain things without 'asking Gilles '. It will help them feel at home. "

The project, which he financed largely on his own funds with a few other contributors, must also evolve to achieve economic equilibrium, which is not the case as it stands. "Our break-even point is 9000 euros per month, which means about 200 users. The cooperative will collectively take new directions. Do we want to limit ourselves to 30 hyper professional members who pay € 300 per month or 200 members who pay 45 €? Should we not operate other than by subscription mode and try to remunerate the Micro Factory on the basis of the projects that are carried out there, by highlighting the diversity of skills that are offered? We can take these decisions together, ” he argues.

Pass the series threshold

Currently, most of the creations that come out of these workshops are prototypes or unique pieces. The goal is to move towards a professional production of objects in small series, adds Gilles Pinault. "How to make twenty tables a month rather than three? To have a local impact beyond ideas, we must achieve a more affordable economic dimension. If we want to bring back work and the production of products to the cities, transmit skills, this involves production accessible to as many people as possible without switching to the Ikea model. "

A workshop subscription rather than fitness

Two years later, the Micro Factory has 100 to 150 users, who have subscribed to its subscription system. "It's a bit like in a fitness room. We offer a monthly subscription system that offers flexible access ranges for 50 to 150 euros per month", continues Gilles Pinault, who insists on the continued group dynamic.

"Someone who comes for just an hour to use the machines doesn't really fit into the intended philosophy," which consists of facilitating links and collaboration between participants. It is, for example, the regulars who welcome new visitors and accompany their first steps. The "pros" also advise the "amateurs" and generally speaking, each other's creativity and skills feed on each other.

It is this spirit that excited Olivier who, alongside his work in the field of opinion polls, chose to embark on an activity of craftsman-cabinetmaker. "Rather than settling in my small basement or renting a workshop alone, it was obvious to come here on my first visit", he says, emphasizing the conviviality and the atmosphere that reigns. at the Micro Factory.

"Everyone works on their projects, but there is an exchange of ideas which takes place during the discussions and even in the practical realization. Multidisciplinarity is another interesting aspect that attracted me: being able to move from one area to the next. I am particularly in the process of training myself in metalwork, which will allow me, for example, to offer a table combining two materials. It is really a breath of fresh air to come and work here. "

Source

Gilles Toussaint, La Micro Factory, un atelier où on partage plus que des outils, in La Libre Belgique, 11-02-21, https://stories.lalibre.be/inspire/numero80/index.html

[1] The Victor Fund was created in memory of Victor Van de Woestyne who died accidentally in Brussels on November 4, 2016. In memory of Victor and to give sense to what does not have, his parents decided to create a Fund whose objective is to encourage young people between the ages of 12 and 15 to read. At this age, adolescents discover a new school environment, new friends, new activities. And even good readers often reduce the time they spend exploring books. Through its concrete and targeted actions, the Victor Fund wants to participate in an active, fun and radiant approach in favor of reading. https://www.lefondsvictor.be/ [2] The Micro Factory is a shared manufacturing workshop, based on participation and pooling. It's like a co-working space, but for makers. http://microfactory.be/ [3] Bruxelles-Propreté is a para-regional entity. It acts under the direct authority of the Minister of the Government of the Region of Brussels-Capital in charge of Climate Transition, Environment, of Energy and Participatory Democracy. Bruxelles-Propreté employs about 2,400 people. https://www.arp-gan.be/en/who-whe-are.html [4] https://www.sony-depthsensing.com/ [5] https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/funding/erdf/

[moodboardinthecloud]

Amanda Gorman 2018

https://nyti.ms/2F1bs82

A Young Poet’s Inspiration

By Adeel Hassan

Feb. 28, 2018

How did Amanda Gorman, 19, become the first person to be named national youth poet laureate? She shares her story with the Race/Related newsletter below. Ms. Gorman also wrote original poems, which we animated. Watch them here. For more coverage of race, sign up to have our newsletter delivered weekly to your inbox.

It’s impossible not to think of your having been a precocious child. Tell me whether there was anything early that pointed you in the direction of writing.

I grew up at this incredibly odd intersection in Los Angeles, where it felt like the black ’hood met black elegance met white gentrification met Latin culture met wetlands. Traversing between these worlds, either to go to a private school in Malibu, or then come back home to my family’s two-bedroom apartment, gave me an appreciation for different cultures and realities, but also made me feel like an outsider. I’m sure my single mother, Joan Wicks, might describe me as a precocious child, but looking back in elementary school I often self-described myself as a plain “weird” child. I spent most of elementary school convinced that I was an alien. Literally.

The worlds I mentioned, traveled between for school and home — of blackness and whiteness — seemed so foreign to me. While other students were on the jungle gym, I was writing in my journal on a park bench, or trying to write my own dictionary. I was obsessed with everything and anything; I wanted to learn everything, to read everything, to do everything. I was constantly on sensory overload. I’d hoard dozens of books in my second-grade cubby, and literally try to read two at a time, side by side.

What contributed to my writing early on is how my mom encouraged it. She kept the TV off because she wanted my siblings and I to be engaged and active. So we made forts, put on plays, musicals, and I wrote like crazy.

Who were the writers who made you first want to write? When did you decide to be a poet?

I’ll never forget being in third grade, and my teacher, Shelly Fredman, a writer in her own right, was reading Ray Bradbury’s novel “Dandelion Wine” to our class. I don’t remember what the metaphor was exactly — something about candy — but I lost my mind. It was the best thing I’d ever heard. Pure magic!

How did you discover your own voice? How did it feel to discover your own voice? Did it happen gradually? When did you get more serious about writing?

In eighth grade, I picked up Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” because I’d never seen a book with a dark-skinned, nappy- haired girl on the cover. I was enthralled, not just by Morrison’s craftsmanship, but also the content of her stories — her characters, which I’ve always called fourth dimensional. What’s more, I realized that all of the stories I read, and wrote, featured white or light-skinned characters. I’d been reading books without black heroines, which nearly stripped me of the

ability to write in my own voice, blackness and all. Reading Morrison was almost like reteaching myself how to write unapologetically in a black and feminist aesthetic that was my own. After that I made a promise to myself: To never stop writing, and to always represent marginalized figures in my work.

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And from that sprouted my own voice — the voice of an unashamed black woman who also by way of a speech impediment understood what it was like to be silenced, and didn’t wish this fate on any other soul. To hone my voice, I read everything, from books to cereal boxes, three times: once for fun, the second time to learn something new about the writing craft, and the third time was to improve that piece. I woke up early every day and basically did “literary dress up,” where I’d wear another writer’s voice like clothing and move onto the next one, until I’d gone through a stack of 10 different books. I wore ephemeral versions, copying their sentence constructions, verbiage, and tones. Then I’d step out of them and choose the best characteristics of those styles, until I created a voice that was mine.

This was before I started thinking about publishing, which came in early high school when I started attending free poetry workshops at Beyond Baroque and the nonprofit WriteGirl.

What is it that gets you started on a poem? Is it an idea, an image, a rhythm, or something else? Do you rely more on your ears or your eyes?

Both the external and the internal trigger me. If I’m writing about something internal, say past experiences, I’m writing about it in relation to an external reality, like the ocean. When that connection happens in my mind, I grab a pen and find the closest excuse for sunlight. I usually begin with a word cloud, where I write down the best words I’ve heard that week — like plum, stone, spoon — I don’t know why but I love words like that.

I then take those words and begin to write. I think about the content of what I’m writing first, just getting the lines out and choosing the most necessary ones. Only then do I think about a shape that comes out of that meaning. Where do I want this line to break? Do I want the stanzas to be shaped like a girl, or a house? Maybe it’s because of an auditory processing disorder, but I depend a lot on sight. But that also means I’m hypersensitive to sound — I just see it, rather than hear it, if that makes sense. For example, in order to write, I must have music. Without. Music. I. Can. Not. Write. I’ll play an instrumental track that speaks to my mood, usually something by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ludwig Göransson or Michael Giacchino, and then my poem becomes a visualization of that sound.

"It’s always difficult to describe my own poetry, it’s like trying to paint my own face without a photo." Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Do you have a writing routine? Do you have a favorite place to write? Do you tend to revise?

When I was in school and commuting at least an hour each way, I had to write on the bus or anywhere I could. Now I spend a lot of time writing by the Charles River, when it’s not cold enough to freeze my hair. The revision muscle has been the most difficult for me to build. I used to treat my poetry like hiccups — it came out and that was it. I’d sit for an hour and write something, edit it a few times in that same sitting, and that was it. At Harvard I’m working on the ability to go back to a piece after a few weeks and carve out a better version.

Revelation is a fact of your poems. Do you feel “visceral” is an accurate description of your poetry?

It’s always difficult to describe my own poetry, it’s like trying to paint my own face without a photo. I guess visceral is accurate in that I attempt to bring the reader or listener on an emotional journey, but it’s also a visceral inquiry. I want my poetry to ask questions, even without answers. I want my poetry to interrogate myself and the audience so deeply you can feel it ringing in your gut afterward.

Do you agree with Czeslaw Milosz that poems should be written “under unbearable duress and only with the hope/that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument?”

Often my poems are written under duress — I probably lose eight strands of hair every time I write — but I’m not sure if they should be. Meaning that I believe poems can be written in casual moments and still be great — which is a challenge if you’re a writer of color and compelled to write about something concerning the physical and sociopolitical trauma and endurance of your people.

Do you feel any ethical responsibility as a poet? Do you have a reader in your mind when you write?

I will always feel an ethical responsibility as a poet because I will always feel an ethical responsibility as a person, as we all should; the truck driver, the engineer, the painter, the prince, the writer, the biologists, all have a responsibility just by being. So I write to them when I write, a myriad people with their own dreams and duties. I write a lot for that bucktoothed, kinky- haired, speech-garbled 7-year-old still inside myself who didn’t see herself reflected in literature.

Why have you chosen poetry as a medium of artistic creation?

In all honesty, in the beginning I chose writing out of a socioeconomic and human necessity. With a speech impediment I was always looking for ways to express myself. Dance classes became too expensive, and I used 99 Cents Store paint for my art, which got frustrating. To write I just needed a pen and a page.

How do you understand this moment when it comes to race?

Ah. I’m not sure if I can say I understand a lot about this moment when it comes to race; a lot is still frustrating and complex. In many ways it feels like we are in the fog of war.

I firmly believe that this moment, when it comes to race, is a moment of redefinition and revolution. I believe that the fact that this moment at times is so painful and terrifying might actually be a source of hope — because usually the things that matter, the things that make change, and the things that last for generations to come are painful and terrifying for the generations that initiated them.

Follow Adeel Hassan on Twitter @adeelnyt.

[abatkatblogging]

7 Things About Writing I Learned in 2017

I rang in the new year with a head cold and laryngitis, so setting goals and looking back on all the things I’ve learned over the past year have been on hold for the first week of ‘18. But here we are today!

It’s Monday, I’m 7 for 7 on my daily writing goals (more on that in another post) and in spite of 2017 being a slow, lackluster mess, I really did learn a bunch of important things I hope to carry with me into the new year! In no particular order:

1. I Can’t Do This Alone

Maybe this is a no-brainer for some people, but I spent almost all of 2016 and the early parts of ‘17 trying to be the most independent writer who ever independently writer’d. And then it was time to fill out my MFA applications, and guess what I needed? Three letters of recommendation. From people who were not that one friend I begged to read my second draft. And as I descended into my eyeballs in panic and frustration, I realized: of course, you goof! Even if it’s just you and your word processor at the desk day in and day out, your writing isn’t a one woman job. You needed people to learn from. Even if it was all books, advice posts, and trial and error, you needed the people who made those things. And now you need to share your work with some people for perspective. You’re going to need people to edit, challenge, and cheer you if you want your work to find a published home. 

Let me tell you, friends, it was a terrifying realization. I struggle with being vulnerable, and I fall into the trap of feeling terrible about not being able to handle things on my own more often than not. But here’s the thing. We all depend on each other for something. Life is less of a struggle when we work together. And making a connection with another human who knows the feeling of ‘it’s 2am and I’m paralyzed by all the narrative choices I could possibly make’ and actually thinks my niche gay story ideas are cool is a beautiful soul-lifting feeling that I never want to deprive myself of again. 

2. I can write short stories!

I don’t think the full extent of my angst for short fiction has ever made it to this blog, but it is deep. I had nightmares about having to cram my sprawling narrative arcs into six pages for class during college. Four expensive years in workshops and I managed to churn out O N E respectable story with a healthy dose of help from my instructor. It’s been a real ordeal. But this past fall, I put myself to the task again. Was ‘Robot Story’ an undergrad fluke, or did I have the chops to make this A Thing? To find out, I took a generative writing course, I followed some of the process tips @shaelinwrites gave in one of her videos, I set myself a deadline, and...I did it. I am a writer who can write short stories.

Is this a weird silly thing to be fixated on? Kinda. But we don’t always get to pick our complexes, folks. And now I have a new literary skill to hone.

3. Writing will never not be hard

Speaking of hard work, between chugging through my latest novel manuscript revisions and churning out an honest-to-god short story, I came to the acceptance we all have to face sooner or later: there is no such thing as ‘when this gets easier.’ It’s work. It’s fun, thrilling work that saves my sanity, but it’s work. It will always be work. And that’s okay.

4. Turn rejection into a game

I’ve seen this one peppered throughout several writeblrs, and with the completion of my short story last fall, I decided to put it into practice to see if it would take some of the sting out of rejection letters. And it did! Because of the way SFF publishing market is structured, I can only send out my story to one magazine at a time. Currently I’m up to 3, but you better believe I’m going to collect on the 20 rejection letters I promised myself. 

5. Education will always be important

As you might have noticed from my other points, I figured some of this stuff out because of awesome people who share their awesome knowledge on the internet, who teach classes open to local communities, who are generous with their exercises, and their time. Because when there is no ‘done’-ness to writing, the journey of learning is constant. There will always be something new to try, or something old to revisit because there’s only so much one brain can keep track of at a time. So whether it’s keeping a drawer full of exercises, an always-growing masterlist of tips, or finding a few affordable classes to take near by, it’s best to always be ready to learn.

6. Persist

At the end of the day when you look back on your WIP, you’re not going to be able to tell when the words were flowing like magic and when you were plucking out your sentences one key at a time. In the end, there’s just going to be stuff that works and stuff that doesn’t and it’s all going to have to be revised anyway. So for me, the takeaway is to stick to my regimen even when I’m not feeling it. Little steps add up, and sometimes you can get through your sprawling gothic adventure novel twice in one year without realizing it.  

7. Be open

Because of course! How is a girl supposed to find a kindred spirit if she keeps everything to herself all the time? If we are all in this together, and I do believe we are, then I have to speak up too. About my bad days, my good days, my random confessions and my idling ideas. About the things that matter, about myself, and everything in between. Sometimes it can lead to a better understanding. And even when it doesn’t, it’s always better to be seen than to render myself invisible.

So a belated three cheers to the new year. Let’s make this count and get writing. 

[lepus-arcticus]

how did you begin writing as a career? like what are the steps you took?

I’m gonna put this under a cut, because it turned out to be long as hell. Sorry to everyone on mobile! 

1. Pursue an absolutely useless, albeit interesting, post-secondary education

2. Watch as all your friends get their lives together while you’re still studying ancient literary Tibetan to round out your religious studies minor

3. Graduate, and instead of pursuing your masters degree, as was the original plan, get hired to host community groups at your local orchestra4. Fight with musicians and colleagues. Cry all the time at work. Dream about burning the concert hall down every day. Dream about jumping out of the window. Take up smoking in secret. Gain a really unhealthy amount of weight. Do this for around three years5. Begin writing a blog during this time, because you want to be admired from a distance without having to emotionally engage with anyone on an interpersonal level and blogging is a Great Way to Do That6. Become really obsessed with the image you project to the world and obsessively curate your instagram feed and your tumblr blog. Which will kind of work for a while7. Take a few writing classes and actually begin to fall in love with authentic storytelling instead of just aping popular bloggers. Somehow convince your writing instructor to actively mentor you in exchange for headshots and other photography services. Accidentally become really good friends8. Actually begin to start being vulnerable and honest and trusting your own voice. Be surprised when people really respond to that. Grow your blog readership past anything you felt you were capable of. 9. Get an upwork account and start blogging for other people, even though upwork is terrible. 10. But hey now you have a bit of a portfolio and relationships with employers! Pitch a few stories to magazines and blogs. Annoy an editor you like for almost a year until they finally cave and let you write an article for their popular publication. This is supposed to be your ‘big break’, and you will spend weeks utterly disappointed and pissy and petulant when money and fame and consistent work don’t fall into your lap once the initial thrill of it is over11. Work and write for free a lot of the time, even though you know you shouldn’t, because if you have to work in that windowless, ghost-ridden concert hall for very much longer you’re going to Lose It. Work all day and then come home and work all night. Try to soothe pissed-off friends who miss you12. Get married to someone who is generous and kind and self-sacrificing and offers to financially support you while you get your shit together because they want to see you happy and thriving and doing something that fulfills you13. Save every penny for six months. Quit your arts job. Quit smoking. Endure countless eyerolls and concerned messages from friends and family. Endure poorly-veiled ridicule from former colleagues. Get called a housewife a lot14. Make only enough money in the first year of freelancing to cover your cell phone bill and your student loan payments. Rely on your partner for rent and groceries. Don’t go on vacation, don’t go out with friends, don’t buy any clothing or books or non-essentials for a very long time. No more 7 dollar bath bombs from Lush. Constantly second-guess yourself. Watch your friends and siblings buy houses and have babies while you get paid $0.43 to figure out 10 ways to eat almond butter15. Say yes to things even though you’re scared shitless and constantly battling impostor syndrome. Fail a lot. Win sometimes. Pretend you’re a functioning adult in your professional emails. Get really nice business cards (I mean it). Start to make enough money to begin to contribute to the household expenses again. Build relationships with editors, do your best work always, keep regular office hours, guard your down time, write fanfic and teach workshops to keep yourself sane. Take the boring and scary and mundane assignments along with the fun and easy and exciting ones. I’m still figuring things out, obviously. Writing for a living is anything but glamorous or cool - people think it’s easy, and they underestimate how hard I work, how punishing it can be. They think I sit at home on my ass eating bonbons while my husband goes out and works all day. They attribute what success I do have to talent, instead of hard work and perseverance. I just spent probably around 15 hours researching and writing an article I’m getting paid $50 for. My carpal tunnel syndrome is brutal. But it’s all totally worth it to do something that I actually enjoy doing, and to do it on my own terms. If you wanna DM me, I’d be happy to answer any specific questions or just chat about writing in general! 

[oliverphisher]

Prue Mason

Camel Rider By Prue Mason

Prue Mason lived for many years in the Middle East and draws on her own many exciting life experiences to write her children's adventure novels that have been particularly successful with boy readers. She has also written many articles and short stories for children's magazines in Australia and internationally.

After growing up in Australia, Prue Mason travelled Australia and the world as a flight attendant on a private airplane with her husband, a professional pilot. They lived in Canada for three years then the Gulf region of the Middle East for 12 years.

Besides writing, Prue does workshops and gives presentations at schools and writing festivals. In 2005, her first book Camel Rider won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award and was a Notable Book at the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards. Prue has received several grants towards research for her books, including a May Gibbs fellowship for Amazing Australians in Their Flying Machines.

What are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life? 

This question got me thinking because I’ve been surrounded by books all my life as my mother was a librarian and she had all her father’s collection of books and he was a journalist. In our house now, there are books in almost every room because I like having books around me. For me it’s like living with all those dear friends - the main characters in the stories I’ve read and loved.

When I think of the fact that I started reading when I was six years old and I’ve probably read one book a week since then that adds up about 3,000 books. (Please don’t do the maths!) Of course, I can’t remember them all and I sure I couldn’t say what is my favourite novel or who my favourite author is these days. There are just too many brilliant books out there that I’ve loved reading and learned so much from.

But …there was one book many, many years ago that I believe did change my life because it asked a question about who I was deep down and it challenged me to make a decision about how I would try and live the rest of my life.

I was probably about 13 years old when I read this book. It was by a brilliant Australian author of the 1960s and 1970s- Ivan Southall. His book is To the Wild Sky.

To The Wild Sky (Text Classics) By Ivan Southall

The plot to this story is fairly simple - there were six passengers on board a small plane over the outback heading to a remote cattle station and the pilot has a heart attack and dies. All the passengers are under the age of 15 years old and no one has a pilot’s license. They react differently. One boyknows a small amount about flying so he takes over the controls but he doesn’t know where he is and can’t speak to any one on the radio and certainly doesn’t know how to land an aeroplane. The six children are in the air for over 7 hours going through the most harrowing experience because they know that no one can rescue them.  They don’t know if they’re going to die or survive. One of the boys in the back seat is so scared he throws up most of the time. The rest aren’t much better. I’d recommend you read this book but just a word of warning the ending is unsettling. But then so is life. This book was the first one I’d read where everything didn’t end up in a happy-ever-after type situation. But the question in this book for me was if I ever found myself in a situation like that or any life-threatening situation would I be the kid who took over and flew the plane safely or would I be the one in the back seat throwing up??

To be honest, I’m still not sure because thankfully I’ve never found myself in such a scary and life-threatening situation but I think it’s the reason I challenged myself to leave home and my safe places to travel the world and even get my pilot’s licence. I believe also it’s why I became a writer. That to me, takes true courage because the risk of failure is so high.

What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?      

A shoulder massager. Love it after sitting at a desk for a few hours.

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? 

Having been the Queen of Rejection Letters in my early daysI learned the hard way to work on my writing skills. To do this I read and read and read and took all sorts of correspondence coursesthat were available at the time. As well as this I made writing a daily habituntil I knew I must be a much better writer because I started getting rejection letters with personal comments on them from the publisher. This encouraged me enough to keep going and somewhere along the way I finally learned to stop taking rejections and constructive criticism as a personal failure. That was a major turning point from being an amateur to a professional writer.

Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?

‘Read a Story, Write a Story, Be a story. ‘

Everything in life for me comes back to the narrative and how the story is told. Sometimes Iwish I had the chance to do some editing in my own life story though. Oh well. Seriously, I think that if we can see our own lives as stories and make them as fascinating as possible then our own experiences, good, bad and painful will be able inform what we write about and help us create great stories that other people will love to read.

What is one of the best investment in a writing resource you’ve ever made.

Besides a laptop computer the best investment I’ve made for my writing career has been buying books and giving myself time to read them.

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love? 

Since I was about 20 years old and working in a pub that was open until late I started taking nanna naps in the afternoon – only for about 20-30 minutes but it seemed to get me through to 3.00 am finishes and allowed me to get up at the reasonably respectable time of about 9.00 am the next day. Later when I lived in the Middle East I embraced the idea of the afternoon from between about 1- 4 pm as being sacrosanct when no one would dream of calling on you personally or by phone. Although I’ve been back in Australia for years now I still find it annoying when I get phone calls during this time and I definitely don’t encourage visitors in the afternoon. I can’t even say it’s because I’m writing because although I might be I’m more likely to be just settling down or coming out of a nanna nap.

In the last five years, what new belief, behaviour, or habit has most improved your life? 

Yoga. I’ve been practising yoga for many years because I love how it keeps me flexible in body and mind and the breathing exercises helped during the early days of doing talks at schools and festivals when I felt nervous about standing up and talking to audiences. Then, about five years ago I trained to be a yoga teacher. Although I’ve never taught more than a couple of yoga classes since ithas had a more profound influence on me than I expected because it gave me the confidence to create my own yoga routines that incorporate yoga asanas (exercises) withwords, thoughts and my own personal philosophies.As it turns out during these last few years I’ve faced some personal challenges that have made me re-evaluate my life and yoga has been a technique to help me through as I’ve createdroutines thatspecifically  dealwith grief, anxiety, self-worth and creativity. Practisingmy 20-minute yoga routines dailyI feel I’m emotionally stronger than I’ve ever been and more grounded. I approach life now day-by-day, breath-by-breath, word-by-word because what I’ve learned from my own experience is that what makes a successful life isn’t how much money we have or facebook friends or how many books we write or sell but how we cope with the challenges thrown at us. Because come what may, no matter who we are, challenges will be there in some form or another and it’s how we react to them that will define us.

What advice would you give to a smart, driven aspiring author? What advice should they ignore? 

Find about 3-4 other smart, driven aspiring authors and start a writers’ group. Through the constructive criticism you can give each other you can all improve your skills. But it’s more than this though. It’s the ongoing encouragement and support that is crucial during this phase of a writer’s career because it’s their belief in you that will keep you going and your belief in them that will help you all get the success you deserve. And to be honest the little bit of healthy competition can make you hone, hone and hone some more. Besides that, there is no one except another aspiring writer who can truly understand the pain of rejection or the joy of acceptance. Your group will become friends for life and that is definitely my best advice for any aspiring writer.

Ignore any advice about your own writing from anyone who doesn’t write themselves (except professional editors of course!)

What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession often? 

Know the market. When I started writing some time during the 1990s I wanted to write a big fantasybut the advice and recommendations I kept getting was that fantasy wasn’t selling. Well that was until J.K. Rowling came along. Even then her ms was rejected more than once and she was also told fantasy doesn’t sell. Writing isn’t easy and isn’t necessarily that well paid. You may as well write what you’re passionate about anddo it to the best of your ability. Who knows you may be the one, like J.K. Rowling, who createsthe next market trend.

In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)? 

I remember listening to a well-published writer speak a few years ago and she said writers have to be inherently selfish and learn to say no or a book would never get written. I was slightly troubled by this because I didn’t want to believe that what I do made me a selfish person. I thought about it and finally came to understand that no matter what you do from being a mother, a pilot, a lawyer, a teacher, shop assistant or whatever, to be good at what you do takes commitment and time. To get that you have to learn to say no to other demands and if that’s selfish well long live selfishness!

She also said that as a writer it also helps to keep a part of you separate and observe a situation no matter how painful because if you can later describe that pain it can be most useful for your own books.

What marketing tactics should authors avoid?

Marketing is an area I find most difficult to negotiate. I’m probably not on my own here. Beyond having a website and facebook presence as well as joining a few key book/writer groups and doing workshops and presentations at schools and festivalsplus obviously, answering interesting requests for interviews I have found that if I get too caught up with the many and various ways of marketing myself I don’t have time for what I consider important – writing.

What new realizations and/or approaches have helped you achieve your goals? 

Understanding my own motivation for wanting to write and then aligning that to my style of writing. For me that has turned out to be realistic adventure stories with children often in life and death situations and having to find a way through by being resourceful and brave enough to overcome their own fears.

When you feel overwhelmed or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? 

A yoga routine concentrating on my breath can always help to ground me and bring back focus. A great way to align your breath with time is to inhale for the count of four, hold your breath for count of seven and breathe out for the count of eight. Do this between three to nine times. If I have time but no motivation sometimes taking a break from the desk and spending my time on the couch reading a book helps me get out of my own world and gain some perspective. Best of all though is lying on my back on the floor with my legs up a walland an eye pillow over my eyes. This is probably one of the most relaxing poses that truly helps to calm me when I’m feeling really overwhelmed.Even five minutes is good.

Any other tips?

Writing and getting published isn’t easy and the chance of failure is high so I think it needs personal courage to begin a book because we always have a choice NOT to do something that’s difficult. For me, having chosen this writerly life it’s had ups and downs but it’s amazing that it’s led me to placesand experiences I didn’t expect such as up the Kokoda Track, on a woman’s protest march in Sanaa in Yemen and standing in front of cameras as the resident expert on Australian aviation history for a Foxtel history series for television. Something I’ve learned along the way is that every time I’ve chosen to be brave and survived, the experience has given me a bit more courage that’s helped me face whatever the next challenge will be…such as getting on with a structural edit after a rejection of the ms that was definitely going to be the next best seller.

________

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[sa7abnews]

I'm a Yale graduate but can't afford to live on my own, so I share an apartment with my mom. I have no plans to move out.

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/11/im-a-yale-graduate-but-cant-afford-to-live-on-my-own-so-i-share-an-apartment-with-my-mom-i-have-no-plans-to-move-out/

I'm a Yale graduate but can't afford to live on my own, so I share an apartment with my mom. I have no plans to move out.

The author, left, loves living with her mom, right.Courtesy of Mia TsangAfter graduating college, I couldn't find a full-time job, so I moved into my mother's apartment.Multigenerational living is heavily stigmatized in American culture but valued in my family.My mother's support has allowed me to thrive, and our relationship has never been stronger.In May 2021, I prepared to graduate from Yale University with a degree in molecular biology. Instead of pride in my accomplishment or excitement to finally enter adulthood, I was filled with dread.I had applied to over 60 job openings throughout my senior year but could not secure a full-time position in any field — let alone the highly specialized field for which I'd been trained. I had no job or plan, so two days after my graduation ceremony, I moved into my mother's rent-stabilized two-bedroom apartment in Queens.For the first summer I lived in New York, I worked odd jobs like babysitting, teaching short-term writing workshops, and editing high schoolers' college essays. I revised my résumé and sent out a job application every day. I've always been passionate about writing, so I expanded my range to include literary and publishing jobs. No bites.The salary ranges for every entry-level position I applied for were well below what I would need to live in New York City without my parents' help. Even with a full-time job, I wouldn't be able to afford to move out. But I ended up right where I needed to be.My mom welcomed me back home after graduationMy mother immigrated to the US from Ecuador when she was 8 years old, and my father from Mexico when he was 9. The three of us are incredibly close. I was raised in Rhinebeck, a small town in the Hudson Valley, which is predominantly white.Our family's cultural values constantly clashed with those of my peers' families, especially regarding multigenerational living. My friends' parents constantly emphasized to them that "the minute you turn 18, you're out."Those families seem to represent the norm around the US. In 2022, the Pew Research Center found that only 13% of non-Hispanic white Americans live in multigenerational households, compared to 26% of Hispanic and Black Americans.In contrast, throughout my life, my parents made it clear that if I ever needed to live with them again after college, no matter the reason, they would welcome me with open arms. My father has always said, "We're not just a family. We're a team. Whatever you want to do, we will support you in any way we can."My family's culture normalizes multigenerational living, so I felt comfortable moving in with my mother.I love living with my mother and have no plans to leaveSix months after graduating, I finally got a 15-hour-a-week position as a marketing assistant at a literary nonprofit. My mother was thrilled I had found a job I was passionate about and over the moon that I would have to keep living with her.Overall, it's been better than I could've imagined. We eat dinner together most weeknights and then watch an episode or two of whatever TV show we're binging together. On weekends, we go to the beach or concerts in the East Village. We even went to Queens Pride together for the first time.This time together has only brought us closer together, and our relationship has never been stronger than it is now. I am grateful for this time we have together.I still work for the same nonprofit. Though my hours and pay rate have increased, I am still not full-time, but I'm fine with that. I love the work I do and the people I do it with. That means I will be living with my mother for the foreseeable future, and I am OK with that. Not having to worry about making New York City rent allows me to save most of my income.I use the extra hours in my day to write. It's paid off: My first book will come out next February, and I couldn't have done any of it without my mother's support.

[tithenai]

I feel like if I don’t start writing about all the beautiful things I’ve experienced this year, they’ll just vanish and maybe have never been. I’ve had “Blog the Summer” on my to-do list since the first week of September, and now it’s the last day of October; I exist in a perpetual state of Catching Up on Email, and it’s all I can do to stay on top of important deadlines.

But today’s Samhain, the year’s hinge, and I have a space of time to sit and write before flipping the calendar page, so at the very least I want to talk about what an incredible month it’s been.

It began with a lovely visit: Stu’s parents came and stayed with us for the first ten days, celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving, during which we had unseasonably perfect weather, though this unfortunately meant the trees weren’t as spectacularly colourful as usual. Still, it wasn’t exactly shabby.

In spite of the fact that I was writing reviews, wrangling grant applications and revising research projects, we managed to do some neat stuff together: we visited Carleton’s annual butterfly show…

…and went on a boat trip through the Thousand Islands.

On top of that I was teaching weekly workshops at Glashan Public School under the auspices of the Ottawa International Writers’ Festival, having an absolutely wonderful time with Sharon Kuiper’s 8-8 class. I taught four different workshops — on character, fairy tales, poetry, and writing spontaneously from a taste of honey — and was always blown away by what the kids managed to come up with. I’m really looking forward to them sharing their favourite pieces at the showcase in November.

No sooner did my in-laws leave than it was time for Can*Con! Dominik Parisien and Kelsi Morris came over from the shadowy place Toronto for it and stayed with us while attending. I had such a blast with them — when I wasn’t on panels having great conversations, I was at their table in the dealers’ room, watching the stack of The Starlit Wood copies steadily diminishing over the course of the con.

  That last photo is of the final three copies, an appropriately fairy tale number with which to close out the con.

Immediately after THAT… I had a very special duty to perform.

I had to keep Nadine (left) distracted at a very nice dinner (which went WAY too long) while Jenn (right) prepared to propose to her via private flash mob dance in the place they first met. It all worked out, in spite of my anxiety-fuelled nightmares of making everything go wrong NEARLY coming true! But they didn’t! And now Jenn and Nadine are affianced and everything is amazing and best!

I was up at 6:00 the next morning for a flight to Chicago!

The fine folks at Writing Excuses invited Maurice Broaddus and me to be next year’s guest hosts, and we recorded a year’s worth of episodes over two days. This was intense and amazing: distilled, beautiful, challenging conversations about craft, where I felt myself learning as much as I was performing and thinking. After the first session, we repaired to Mary Robinette Kowal’s beautiful home, where she made us Boulevardiers and taught us to appreciate three different Vermouths.

It may have been how perfectly balanced were the cocktails, but whenever I tried to say how satisfying I found this work even when difficult, how much it felt like flexing muscles into new strength, how grateful I was for it, I mostly just teared up. I’d be thinking about it for the rest of the trip, though, as I went from host to host, conversation to conversation. I’m so excited for these episodes to air — partly because I’m looking forward to listening to them and reliving those two beautiful days over again.

(The following morning I would, in an attempt at helpfully doing the dishes, break one of those beautiful cocktail glasses. Mary forgave me. This will be Important Later.)

Also, dear gods but the Cards Against Humanity building is amazing. They have Global knives in the extensive kitchen! They have a shipping crate turned meditation space! This is the wallpaper in the BATHROOM.

And this is what’s on the outside!

After a lovely last evening with Mary spent in conversation I didn’t want to end, we got ready to part ways and reconvene at the Surrey International Writers’ Festival.

That was the view from my hotel window, which I periodically lost time to, sitting on the couch beneath it and just watching curtains of distant rain parting over the mountains.

Surrey really deserves its own post, because I want to go into more detail about how magical everything was, how wonderful the workshops and keynote speeches, how kind the attendees, organisers, and volunteers. For now, suffice it to say that I delivered two workshops, a Blue Pencil session (where writers come up to you with three pages of manuscript and you go over them in fifteen minutes) and a keynote, had an amazing time — and then, on the last morning, a ridiculous thing happened to Stu!

Not only did he find the only other ginger-bearded Scot in attendance at a literary conference in Surrey, British Columbia — he turned out to be his friend from highschool! Àdhamh Ó Broin is a Gaelic language consultant on Outlander, and had come from Glasgow to give workshops too. This is literally the second time this happens to Stu while we travel — Glaswegians clearly get around.

Then the conference was over, and after a weekend of solid rain, Surrey bid us a lovely farewell.

And we were off to Portland!

DongWon Song — AKA SFF Ron Swanson or, more colloquially, World’s Best Agent — had driven up to the conference, and offered Stu and me a lift down to Portland. Neither of us had ever been in the Pacific Northwest, and the drive was breathtaking; we stopped in Seattle for soup dumplings and chat with a newly local friend, and kept on our way.

Ostensibly I was going to give a talk to his students — who were all super smart, asked fantastic questions, and were generally a delight — but after that it was basically a holiday. Oregon is absurdly beautiful, and DongWon and Kristin gave us a fantastic foody tour of it, from food trucks to fancy restaurants to tastings of tea and honey and salt.

But better than any of that was the Bo Ssam he cooked for us on our last night there, with all the trimmings.

On top of everything else, he drove us to the coast, so that Stu could greet the Pacific.

The views were impossible.

The signs were … Adorable?

I basically felt like this the whole time.

Many, many sealfies were taken. I’ll spare you most of them.

While we flailed and sputtered at the ocean, DongWon was literally working.

An agent’s work is never done. I call this one “Negotiating the Horizon”:

To my abiding delight, we got to have a lovely breakfast with Kelly Sue DeConnick, followed by my first trip to Powell’s! Featured: Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Misfit’s Manifesto, which looks super cool.

I signed every copy of The Starlit Wood in Powell’s, heartened by how many there were and in how many sections, and definitely hope to go back sometime.

All too soon it was time to go — to take the train back up to Canada and visit with my cousin Rima and family!

We were pretty exhausted by this point, but Stu’s parents had insisted that we absolutely had to visit Stanley Park while in the vicinity, so we managed a glancing acquaintance with it.

Rima took me to a very local honey bee centre, where I tasted even more honey, and got to see the workings of a hive up close through slightly smudgy glass.

I held my hand against the glass and feeling how warm it was with the bees’ bodies.

And then it was time to go, again — but home this time, looking back over the expanse of a very thorough month. I couldn’t stop watching the colours change out the window, light draping over mountains and water like cloth under the moon.

We’d be arriving back in Ottawa around 1:00 AM, and I only had a day or so to recover before being back at work. The jet lag’s easing now, I’m beginning to surface up out of email — and look at that. That’s most of a month blogged. The highlights, anyway. The highlights I can talk about, anyway! So many good things happened during this whirlwind trip, and I’m excited to share them in the coming weeks.

But by then it’ll be November, and that’s a whole different month.

    In which I recap most of October, with copious photos! I feel like if I don't start writing about all the beautiful things I've experienced this year, they'll just vanish and maybe have never been.

[subtextures]

Narcissus Talks to Echo

The Interview apologies to The Paris Review Context:  Why poetry? Subtext: (Laughs) What else is there? No, really I don’t know.  It is what has come to me.  I have tried to write fiction and I don’t seem to have the attention span for a sustained narrative.  Not that poetry doesn’t require precise attention, because it does.  But it requires a different type of attention: attention to the moment.  Fiction requires attention to the end, the resolution.  Everything is focused on how the story will end.  Poetry’s focus is in the word by word movement; the unfolding of the moment, which is what makes it so hard to read and write well. It requires one to attend to everything, all the possibilities in a very intense focus, knowing all the while that one is missing most of what is happening: kind of like life.  That kind of attention is hard to maintain in fiction: maybe a Proust, or Melville, could pull it off.  I think one almost has to be ADHD to follow the leaps and psychic shifts when writing poetry.  You know:  Look! A chicken! C:  But you also write essays. S: Yes, but essays are as Virginia Wolfe said, “the mind tracking itself.” Much like poetry. I find myself leaping along after my thoughts in both poetry and the essay.  Neither, initially requires plotting out what I am going to say.  I can rely more on the moment to moment flow of my thinking.  In both forms discovering what I have to say as I write and focus on the play of words and ideas is part of what makes writing exciting to me.  Not to sound Romantic, but it is as if I am possessed by something greater than me that is leading me toward some revelation.  Eratos, I guess. C: You just said you don’t have to plot out what you are going to say, yet in several of your long series you have fairly complex writing structures.  I am thinking here of  “My Book of Changes,” “115 Missing Days,” “Primogenitive Folly,” and in your most recent, “Sonnet.” S: True, but in all of those poems, I used a number system to either create a limitation, either small or large, to help me, or maybe better to say, force me to either write very tightly in the case of  “Book of Changes,” and “Sonnet” or to expand on my thinking as in “115 Missing Days.”  I did not have a direction, or even some kind of idea in regards to what I was going to say, I simply wrote.  Again it is more of a chasing after an idea, or image that is just out of reach constantly.  Kind of like Robert Browning’s pursuit of love, in “Life in Love:” where the speaker is always, like a hunter, in pursuit of his love, but never quite capturing his prey.  Browning is more interested in the pursuit than the capture, it seems to me, and I see that now as analogous to how I write when I first sit down to write a poem. As I said earlier, I am much more interested in where the poem will take me as I am writing it, rather than having a set idea of what I want to say and then figuring out how to say it. C:  So, if you don’t know what you are going to write about, how do you start? S: I start with a phrase, a word sometimes, or an image, then go from there.  I don’t mean to sound so willy-nilly.  I write all the time.  Or I, at least, get out my notebook and stare at the page.  Sometimes I will re-read snatches of writing which led nowhere at the time they were written and find something there to salvage or something to prod me on in another direction.  Somedays, I just write badly, but other days I can re-read the bad writing I abandoned weeks or months before and find something, some fragment of an idea, which leads me into a larger world. Last year I even found several partial poems in notebooks I abandonded at least ten years ago.  I have learned over time that anything can start a poem; so I have tried to enable that by making a conscience effort to pay attention to everything: the short arc of a bird from one branch to another, trash caught in a whirl of wind, the beauty in the everyday occurrence.  Of course, for the most part that is a failure, but I do try. C:  Do you write everyday? Do you have a routine? S:  I try to write everyday, but I rarely ever do.  Even when I was writing “My Book of Changes,” I didn’t write everyday, although that was the intention when I started it, to cast the I Ching then write a six line poem using the hexagram I cast as a palimpsest through which to read my life in that day, and to do that every day for a year.  But that fell apart quickly because of work and having three children under the age of 5 in the house.  However, it made sense to try to write one everyday but to let chance operate allowing for some days where I just didn’t have time to write.  I wound up with 250 poems over the course of the year, and that led to the next series of poems, “115 Missing Days.”  But I am not really answering your question, am I?  There goes that chicken again; one thought distracts me from my original intention.            No I don’t have a routine. No I don’t write everyday. There, that is the short answer.  I used to worry about not writing, the actual putting pen to paper kind of writing, but over time, I guess as I’ve gotten older I don’t worry so much about that anymore.  I think that as I go through my day, trying to pay attention to stuff, I am writing.  I am filtering out the ephemera, collecting images and thoughts, which I will later use.  Not necessarily consciously, but I find when I finally find time to write that often these thoughts and ideas flow back into my thinking sometimes from a few days before, other times from years in the past, in a non-temporal flood of memories.              I do carry a notebook with me at all times. I have done that for more than twenty years.  I like unlined sketchbooks.  I write in the book whenever I can catch a few minutes, or if I have an idea all of a sudden. Once on the way home from dropping my oldest off at college, I wrote an entire sonnet as I made the eight hour drive.  I stopped finally at a truck stop and wrote it down. So I guess my routine is to write whenever I can, but not on a schedule. Does that still qualify as a routine, if it is not in a routine manner? C: Yes, I think that would qualify.  Let’s talk about your “training,” as it were, how important do you think poetry classes are, or MFA programs? S: I don’t really have anything to say about MFA programs, since I have not been in one.  The two people I know who went through a MFA program, one at Iowa and the other at the New School in New York, seemed to get a lot out of the programs.  How much they learned to write in the programs, I am unsure.  At least one of them was a fine writer before he went through his MFA program.  I think like any school, a person gets as much as she puts into the program. I found the poetry workshops I took as an undergraduate and in graduate school allowed me a unique environment to write and talk about poetry with a very diverse group of people with different aesthetic visions.  It is rare, at least for me, to have that kind of environment after school.  I have written and thought about poetry on my own since I finished at Bread Loaf almost twenty years ago. I was lucky from the very beginning to have several people who took the time to read and talk about my work with a kind attentive eye.  It helped me learn to write on my own. C:  Talk about these people. S: Well, in high school when I first started thinking of myself as a poet, I had the good fortune to come into contact with two teachers, one a writer, the other a visual artist, Cliff Berkman and Ann Lockstedt, who took my poems seriously, or at least pretended to well enough to make me believe they took me seriously.  Berkman gave me books of poetry to read, probably the best thing any young poet can do; read voraciously, as Dylan Thomas said, “until my eyes fell out.”  Lockstedt introduced me to Art with a big A.  Something that was out of the realm of the milieu of small town south Texas, she took a bus load of kids to see the Cezanne exhibit in Houston, as well as several buses to Dallas and Ft. Worth to see the Kimball and several other art museums.  That kind of trip with today’s lack of funding for the arts in the public school system would be unheard of now. As an undergraduate at the University of Texas, I was lucky to be in several workshops run by Albert Goldbarth.  In the late 70’s and early 80’s, he taught there before moving to Kansas.  Again he talked to us as if we were poets, not as dumb-ass students, which we were.  He was sarcastic and cutting, but he also found something good to say about everybody’s poems.  What Katherine Bomer calls the hidden gems in students writing.  It takes a very patient mind to do this well, and Goldbarth made us want to write better, or at least made me want to write better. As a graduate student in English literature at the Bread Loaf School of English, I had one poetry workshop with Carol Oles, but just being at Bread Loaf was a writing workshop. The conversations about literature and writing with the professors and students that I had over the course of the four summers I was in Vermont were life altering, as far as my thinking about poetry was concerned.  Lunch conversations with David Huddle, Robert Pack, Ken Macrorie and others over everything from the weather to literature, to politics is indescribable in its influence on my literary life. C: What about your own teaching, how does that affect your poetry? S: I would say in an indirect manner.  When talking to my students about the “great” works of English literature I have come to see it in deeper more meaningful ways, not just because I have to explain the poem in ways the students can understand, but also because of the ways of knowing a poem the students bring to the work.  Also as I try to teach my students how to write, I garner insights into my own writing processes.  Teaching has deepened the initial training I had through the university, and taken my understanding of poetry further, I believe, than if I had gone off to sell insurance.  But that is because I am able to think about poetry on an ongoing basis, and have discussions with fellow teachers about writing and poetry. C: How important is having a community of writers? S: Very important.  Writing is such a solitary activity. So much of the time is spent in your own head, wrestling with your own demons, caught up in self-evisceration that just being able to talk to others who have some common understanding of what it means to write becomes a balm to the doubt and insecurity that comes with being a writer. Even if all you talk about most of the is how the local sports team is doing, or how crappy your job is.  You also have the love of words and writing, which brought you together in the first place.   C: Do you think about your readers when you write? S: Yes, in the very real sense that I am one of my readers.  That makes me think of a line from Tom Raworth when he said he started to write because he liked reading what wrote. But as for making it easy for my readers, not really.  I write what I write.  I like it when someone says they have read and liked what I wrote.  I often wish they would be more specific about what they liked, but any kind of  positive response is welcome.  I think any writer who tells you she doesn’t care what people think of her writing is lying to you. As human beings we all want to belong, and writer’s want people to read what they write.  I think that is why so many writers seek out workshops, so they can have someone read their work.  The danger becomes that you change your vision to better conform to others’ view of the world.  That is also the horror of writing that no one can see the way you do, and you wind up screaming into the wind.  I haven’t sent out anything for more than 20 years, but I post on my blog in hopes that someone will read my poems, and maybe even respond.   (March 2012)

[femmesfollesnebraska]

Feature Interview with Adrian Koesters

Thrilled to present this q-and-a with writer Adrian Koesters, whose first novel,  Union Square, was published by Apprentice House Press in 2018. 

   Where are you from?

I was raised in Baltimore, MD and Bellingham, WA, and have spent most of my life in Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska. I currently live in Omaha.

How did you get into creative work and what is your impetus for creating?

I recall when my sister, who is a year older than me, was off to school--first grade or kindergarten, maybe. I was watching some television show that was teaching French, and when Nicky came home, I held up a pencil and said, "Nicky! Le crayon!" That moment made its way into the long poem, "Sign Language," in Many Parishes. I think that is where it started, but the moment I knew that writing poetry was the best thing I had ever encountered was in 6th grade, when our English teacher introduced haiku.  I had never had such fun in my life! The thrill of that few days has stayed with me, and when I feel that, I know I'm on to something.

Tell me about your current/upcoming show/exhibit/book/project and why it’s important to you. What do you hope people get out of your work?

My current book is a novel, Union Square. It's the first of a planned trilogy (the second volume, Miraculous Medal, is underway) that explores that neighborhood in Baltimore City, where I spent most of my childhood, off-and-on into my early teens. This novel is set in 1952, Many Parishes in 1964, and the final novel in 1968. I got started on the series because of the riots that happened after the assassination of Dr. King. I have a creative nonfiction piece titled, "Just After the Riots" that was published in 1966 Journal of Creative Nonfiction this past summer--clearly that moment and that time--I was still a little girl--have had just about the greatest impact on me and my view of the world. I came to see how pervasive the facts of poverty, race bigotry and racism, and sexual violence are, and that the family culture in which I was raised, Irish-American-Catholic, had many more layers to it than my "created family narrative" had taken into account. These are not fictionalized autobiography, but obviously greatly influenced by my memories of the time and place. I hope that people enjoy the work as a story and as literary fiction, but I also hope that it stands out as not a "Baltimore Gothic" work, not that I do not value those, but because I would like for outsiders to see the city through a different lens.

Does collaboration play a role in your work—whether with your community, artists or others? How so and how does this impact your work?

To date, I have not sought ways to collaborate with other artists on creative work with a view to publication, but I worked for a long time with a very good friend, now deceased, in a kind of poetry dialogue. I am saddened that we were never able to turn that work into something that could be published or shared in a wider setting. My hope is that opportunities for collaboration will come up in future.

Considering the political climate, how do you think the temperature is for the arts right now, what/how do you hope it may change or make a difference?

My belief is that for individual artists, not paying attention to those concerns is actually the best thing you can do for your own work. At the level of political engagement, I think however one normally acts as a political agent should extend to the arts. I tend not to pay attention to "the climate" as such--and that indeed might be a mistake, but it seems to work the best for me because I have a tendency to say, "Well, this is not the right climate for that piece," and it becomes a means of silencing myself. I already do plenty of that!

Artist Wanda Ewing, who curated and titled the original LFF exhibit, examined the perspective of femininity and race in her work, and spoke positively of feminism, saying “yes, it is still relevant” to have exhibits and forums for women in art; does feminism play a role in your work?

Absolutely. To say that we are somehow in a "post-feminist" culture or society to me is as ridiculous as to say we are in a "post-racial" society. From my perspective, it is still overwhelmingly the case that the masculine (however that is experienced personally) is valued over the feminine. It is ludicrous to believe that somehow asserting gender identity has made those concerns go away, or that if she merely tries hard enough (and I am a great advocate for the value of individual hard work and persistence), a woman has an equal chance of gaining the opportunities that men do. If you see who are getting published, whose work gains the largest audiences and wins the big prizes, and who get the jobs, women's clothes are still at the bottom of that costume box--and in my experience, it is men who tend to say that those things don't matter. Of course they matter! If they did not matter, the writing culture would not define success as it does by publications, monetary gain, and prizes--nor, I think, would the academy have effectively taken over that culture. You can tell by the hyperbole that I feel strongly about this! But I have had little reason to change my point of view over the years.

Ewing’s advice to aspiring artists was “you’ve got to develop the skill of when to listen and when not to;” and “Leave. Gain perspective.”  What is your favorite advice you have received or given?

Three poets I worked with have said something that has stayed with me. Peggy Shumaker once said to me, "There is room for all of the voices." Marvin Bell's probably most well-known advice is, "There is no one way to write, and there is no right way to write." And when I was working on my thesis, Fleda Brown, who was my MFA advisor, at one point said, "Ah, now you're cooking!" I know I have said all three of those things to every student or group of students I've ever had.

-

Adrian Koesters is a poet, novelist, and nonfiction writer. She received an MFA in poetry from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University and a Ph.D. in fiction and poetry writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her two books of poetry, Many Parishes and Three Days with the Long Moon, were published by BrickHouse Books in 2013 and 2017, and her first novel, Union Square, was published by Apprentice House Press in 2018. She lives in Omaha.

~

Les Femmes Folles is a volunteer organization founded in 2011 with the mission to support and promote women in all forms, styles and levels of art from around the world with the online journal, print annuals, exhibitions and events; originally inspired by artist Wanda Ewing and her curated exhibit by the name Les Femmes Folles (Wild Women). LFF was created and is curated by Sally Deskins.  LFF Booksis a micro-feminist press that publishes 1-2 books per year by the creators of Les Femmes Folles including the award-winning Intimates & Fools (Laura Madeline Wiseman, 2014) , The Hunger of the Cheeky Sisters: Ten Tales (Laura Madeline Wiseman/Lauren Rinaldi, 2015 and Mes Predices (catalog of art/writing by Marie Peter Toltz, 2017).Other titles include Les Femmes Folles: The Women 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 available on blurb.com, including art, poetry and interview excerpts from women artists. A portion of the proceeds from LFF books and products benefit the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Wanda Ewing Scholarship Fund.

Current call for collaborative art-writing: http://femmesfollesnebraska.tumblr.com/post/181376606692/lff-2019-artistpoet-collaborations

Current call: What does being a womxn mean to you? http://femmesfollesnebraska.tumblr.com/post/183697785757/what-does-being-a-womxn-today-mean-to-youyour

[yegarts]

Reflection & anticipation: Poet Laureate Pierrette Requier heads into the final stretch

Since Canada Day 2015, Pierrette Requier has been serving as the City of Edmonton’s sixth Poet Laureate. As we enter 2017, Requier prepares to usher in the last few months of her residency. From the moment that she was appointed Poet Laureate, Requier has hit the ground running, filling her calendar with readings, events, partnerships, and public engagements. From the outset Requier set out to get acquainted with as many literary facets of her city as is humanly possible! She muses, “If you go with the flow you don’t burn out. I also think that it’s not only going with the flow. If what you are involved in is right for you at this particular time of your life, you will have a lot of energy for it.” 

 “People often ask me, “Pierrette, you’re so busy! Do you ever have time to write?” and I’ve found that the answer is both yes and no,” says Requier. Since the beginning of her term, she has noticed that both her writing, and the way she sees her city, has shifted – she now sees things in a more intense, detailed, variegated, and astonishing way. “Having said yes, and continuing to say yes to so many invitations has forced me to dig deep, to pull things out, rework poems, and in this repeated openness to a spontaneity of writing, I have found myself assembling quite a high volume of reworked pieces that, written here, there, and everywhere, had been put on the backburner as I worked on the production of a play in French.”

 Operating from this position has provided a new lens for Requier to view her work and her city: that of astonishment at the number of ways poetry can be and is already engaged in and disseminated in Edmonton.  This infused “the work” with new life and a fresh perspective. “I have been writing for a long time, and I have only published one book of poetry. I have been published in a number of anthologies and magazines, but I do know now in my heart that there is potential for a collection of poetry,” discloses Requier. Sorting through her work, Requier noticed themes starting to emerge: themes of grief and loss, etc. “I have been steeped in literature and poetry every day for the last year and three quarters. It’s been very enriching.”

~ Left: New Years Eve reading at City Hall, Right: CAVA bilingual launch of Gisèle Villeneuve's two books

As a bilingual artist and advocate for multiculturalism in the arts, Requier also sees new pieces emerging that are a mix of different languages. Speaking to her newer works, (2 poems will appear in the first issue of The Polyglot Magazine) Requier adds that, “these pieces have more of a political edge. They do not speak with the immediate voice of the prairie girl, but from the voice of the city woman. In my newer work there’s something more global, more issues based.”

 According to Requier, the second year, as it progresses, brings a completely different tone than the first: “The first year was lived in a kind of awe where I really was able to dig in, show up, present, come home satisfied – tired, but with a worthy fatigue. In the second year, when it becomes evident that you’re over halfway done, there is a realization that there will be an end to this position – and with that, come an accounting of what you’ve been able to accomplish, and also the reality of all that won’t get done.” 

 Although not all of Requier’s initial plans in her mandate have come to full fruition – such as a multi-lingual/multi-cultural festival – when her time concludes as Poet Laureate, she can rest assured that she has helped plants the seeds. In approximately 90% of her presentations Requier has managed to bring up the fact of the immense untapped potential of the multi-lingual aspect of this city. “It goes back to the belief that the language of one’s heart, one’s mother tongue, must not disappear or be lost; that it is up to individuals and us as a society to cultivate that together,” attests Requier. With other bilingual and multi-lingual events such as the Metis Rubaboo Festival, and the Edmonton Poetry Festival, it is evident that Requier is not alone in her quest to unite cultures through the power of language: “I feel as if somewhere around 2014, something cracked open in this city. An energy cracked open, exploded, fermented. Things are opening up, and people are opening their eyes to what we have here. The right moment opened up and I just happened to cultivate a certain awareness and step in. I’m really proud and grateful to be part of the people who help call forth the beauty and the desire of wanting “to become as a people” through creating art and spaces for artists to be seen and heard.”

~  Pierrette Requier and Mayor Don Iveson at reading for City Council

Reflecting on her time as Poet Laureate, Requier shares that the experience has been incredibly humbling and has allowed her to discover aspects of herself that were unknown to her at the start of her term. “Paradoxically, following in the footsteps of wonderful poet laureates, it was both a humbling and a strengthening experience to have to continually show up as just myself, trusting in what I had promised and being very open to learning.”

 So, what does our Poet Laureate see on the horizon?

Before Requier passes the baton to the next Poet Laureate, she has a calendar full of projects and appearances. “I see perhaps more board work on the horizon,” states Requier, “and I have this big idea of sharing ways of making poetry writing doable that could easily be applied in classrooms, at all levels, and of perhaps creating a program that might be established with poets going from school to school.  Sometimes I feel a third career might be emerging out of this.” 

~ AJA Louden and Clay Lowe, two of the artists collaborating on the Make Something Edmonton mural project 

Additionally, our illustrious Poet Laureate has been invited to write a song for Vancouver’s Musica Intima (commissioned songs from Canadian writers from all across the country as part of a Canada Council project-pending on funding) that will be performed accapella. As well, francophone singer, actor, songwriter Mireille Moquin has put music to Requier’s poem “Mixed Blood” which will appear on her next CD.  Requier is in the early stages of dreaming up an event with the also very busy Youth Poet Laureate Nasra Adem, and will once again participate in a number of events during the Edmonton Poetry Festival. She may be heading to an international conference in Airdrie as a workshop facilitator for one of their Francophone schools. Requier has partnered with Make Something Edmonton for the creation of yet another mural with two visual artists, AJA Louden and Clay Lowe. The City Centre Mall ASSEMBLAGE PROJECT, will conduct a community involvement workshop consisting of inviting Edmontonians to match performed words with visual images. Her City/Notre ville/pêhonân poem will be presented in three languages, English and French and with Cree echoes provided by Naomi McIlwraith, both accompanied by musician Alison Grant-Préville.

“I live among piles of files, always organizing!” laughs Requier.  Even though her time as Poet Laureate might be coming to a close, it’s clear she’s going to go out with a bang.

[5questions]

JOE OKONKWO

Bio: Joe Okonkwo's novel Jazz Moon, set against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance and glittering Jazz Age Paris, was published by Kensington Books in 2016. David Ebershoff, author of The Danish Girl and The 19th Wife has called Jazz Moon "A passionate, alive, and original novel about love, race, and jazz in 1920s Harlem and Paris — a moving story of traveling far to find oneself." His short stories have appeared in Storychord, Cooper Street Penumbra, LGBTsr.org, Chelsea Station, Shotgun Honey, Best Gay Stories 2015, Best Gay Love Stories 2009, and Keep This Bag Away From Children. Upcoming work will appear in The New Engagement. His story "Cleo" received a Pushcart Prize nomination. Joe serves as Prose Editor for Newtown Literary and Editor of the forthcoming Best Gay Stories 2017. 

What writing, editing, and/or publishing projects are you working on currently?  

I found out a few weeks ago that my short story, “Picnic Street,” will be published by The New Engagement some time in 2017. It’s loosely based on an incident from my childhood in 1979. It touches on issues of race and division within the black community and what can happen when a member of a particular group does not adhere to the rules or beliefs or behavior sanctioned by that community. And I’m the Prose Editor for Newtown Literary, a journal devoted to publishing writers from Queens. Submissions for our tenth issue are open till January 10, so after that I’ll be busy reading and evaluating and helping to choose what we’ll publish. I’m also about to begin a gig as Editor of the 2017 edition of Best Gay Stories. It’s an annual anthology of gay male-oriented fiction and nonfiction. In addition to all of that, I’m planning new short stories and will begin researching my next novel very soon.

Your novel JAZZ MOON has a powerful and skillful element of historical detail. How did you conduct research for background? Did you start this while you were still a graduate student? 

I read a lot of books. Books about the Harlem Renaissance; about blacks in Paris during the 1920s; about gay men in Paris during that era; about ocean liners of the era. And I brought to the project a prior knowledge of jazz history and black entertainment that I had been cultivating for several years. I also did a lot of photo research online to learn about the era’s architecture, cars, and clothing. My goal with the research was to be able to weave vivid historical details into the narrative in order to make the story come alive for the reader, but do so in a way that was seamless. I didn’t want the research to come across as research. I hate it when I read historical fiction that feels like a history lesson instead of fiction. I did an MFA in Creative Writing, and in workshops I was particularly hard on fellow writers of historical fiction if their stories read like something lifted directly from a history book. You can’t just take each and every date and statistic and name and event your research uncovers and plug it into the story willy-nilly You have to find a creative, “novelistic” way of getting those historical details across. You have to be willing to leave some of that research out. As far as where JAZZ MOON started: it was born as a short story back in 2004, but it grew up in the MFA program at City College of New York.

What historical fiction books do you like the most? Why? 

I love David Ebershoff’s The Danish Girl, and not just because David endorsed JAZZ MOON! Also The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. All three of these authors imbue each paragraph with so much rich, vibrant historical detail and really do succeed in recreating the eras that they’re writing about. Each of these books intimidated me because they made me wonder if I was doing as good a job with recreating the 1920s in JAZZ MOON. Another favorite historical novel of mine is Toni Morrison’s Beloved because, not only does she accurately depict slavery, she makes you see how personally and emotionally destructive it was and how that destruction could be so deep that it lasts for and across generations.

How would you summarize a typical day in your life? When and where do you write? Do you teach? 

I don’t make my living writing. Yet. I work as a web production professional, I’ve been doing that since 2005. I write at home. I find it difficult to write anywhere else, although I do often take walks in my neighborhood in Astoria, Queens, so I can brainstorm and write in my head. I went through a dark period for several months this year and didn’t have the mental or emotional bandwidth to write, but I’m getting back to it now, thankfully. I write in the evenings and sometimes obscenely early in the mornings. 4am, 5am, although that’s when I usually go to the gym. By the way: I’ve found that the gym helps my writing. When I’m working out consistently, my writing is better, clearer, I’m more creative, and I have more mental energy for it. As far as teaching: I recently taught a writing workshop in The Bronx, and I’ll be teaching one at the Queens Library in May as part of an initiative from Newtown Literary. I would very much like to teach Creative Writing on a regular basis. Frankly, I think I’d be awesome at it.

How do you see the ramifications of the recent presidential election? I am asking everyone this question. How do you think your work will be affected by this new era we are in? 

I was on the train coming home from Brooklyn this past Saturday. I got off the train at Times Square/42nd Street to transfer. The train across the platform had been put out of service, apparently because someone had drawn swastikas on the interior of at least one train car. I saw the swastikas. That’s just a small sample of this election’s ramifications. We’re seeing bigger ramifications with the rolling-out of Trump’s cabinet nominations and White House staff appointments: people who are racist, islamaphobic, anti-immigrant, climate change deniers, and in favor of minority voter suppression. And our new vice president is one of the biggest homophobes in modern politics. But the deadliest and longest term ramifications will come with Trump’s Supreme Court appointments. How will my work be affected? I posted a Toni Morrison quote on my Facebook author page last week: "In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent." That’s how my work will be affected. I won’t be silent.