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Fall Classes at Hugo House

15 Aug
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A fresh green chestnut

Sharpen your pencils: I’m teaching two classes at Hugo House this fall. Member registration opens today and general registration opens August 22. Scholarships are available: apply here by August 25!

  • Wall-to-Wall Writing Prompts will be a fun-for-everyone one-day writing bonanza. I’m bringing in all my favorite prompts. If you’re eager to kick start some new writing, this one’s for you. Come with some overheard lines of dialogue and leave with six story openings and a plan to finish at least one. Meets Saturday, September 30, 1-4 pm. Sliding scale pricing available for this class. Please call Hugo House at (206) 322-7030.
  • Fiction I  is a six-week intro to fiction, with a special focus on character, plot, and landscape. We’ll read short stories from James Joyce, Jamaica Kincaid, Flannery O’Connor, Sherman Alexie, and Louise Erdrich, among others. Writing prompts in and out of class will be geared toward writing a short story, though of course all the skills covered are applicable to novels. We’ll also learn the basics of the workshop model. Meets Saturdays from October 14 to November 18, 1-3 pm.

Hope to see you then!

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“Marital Rifts Three Ways” in Women’s Review of Books

31 Jul
WRB_34.4_cover__13062.1498484559.1280.1280

Eleanor Roosevelt in a très chic hat.

I’m happy to have a piece in the July/August issue of Women’s Review of Books, discussing Jade Sharma’s Problems (Coffee House Press), Julia Franks’ Over the Plain Houses (Hub City Press), and Angela Woodward’s Natural Wonders (FC2). You can purchase a digital copy here.

In other news, last week I had a lovely time chatting with fellow LaSalle Storyteller Award winner Peter Mountford and Scott James of Solipsis Publishing about the writing life and the impact the award has had on our work. You can watch the video here. The deadline for the 2017 award is August 28. If you’re a Washington State fiction writer, you should apply!

 

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Can a story ever be “done”?

22 May

 

Over on The Woodsy, I chatted about inspiration, long-term motivation, and whether one ever feels “done” when writing a novel. I was joined by Bonnie Rochman, author of The Gene Machine, and Candace Dempsey, author of Murder in Italy. Thanks for the fun opportunity, Dena Ogden!

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Bright Spots of 2016

21 Dec
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From Della tramutatione metallica sogni tre by Gio. Battista Nazari, 1571

Dang it. Despite world affairs being horrendous, I’m going to relish some good things that happened in 2016. First, I achieved my goal of obtaining 100 rejections (106!). If you’re not getting rejecting 90% of the time, you’re not aiming high enough–so goes the wisdom from Creative Capital. The fruits of this labor paid off with eight publications. Here they are, plus other goodness. (Find the zoetrope!)

 

My plans for the holidays including gorging myself on kreplach, cholent, pizza, and rainbow cookies and devouring Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Paula Fox’s Desperate Characters. Happy winter solstice!

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Winter Class: Writing About Place

14 Dec

pieter_bruegel_the_elder_-_hunters_in_the_snow_winter_-_google_art_projectPieter Bruegel the Elder – Hunters in the Snow (Winter) – 1565

This winter, I’m teaching Writing About Place at Hugo House. In this six-week class, we’ll read stories by Flannery O’Connor, Louise Erdrich, and Ursula LeGuin, among other illustrious authors. We’ll write about places we know, places we don’t know, and places that exist only in our imaginations. And, we’ll talk about memory, research, and world building.

 

Class meets Wednesdays 5-7 pm from 2/22-3/29. Hugo House is located in First Hill, an easy-peasy trip from downtown and right next to the always-free Frye Art Museum. Speaking of place, if you’ve not been to the Hugo House’s temporary home, you’re in for treat, with a light-filled atrium and mysterious winding hallways.  Registration is now open. The scholarship deadline is 12/16 and there’s an early bird discount until 12/19! Hope to see you there.

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Kingfishers, herons, news

9 Sep

photo-24I’m back from a family trip to Orcas Island. Waiting for the ferry in Anacortes, we spotted skittering kingfishers and a great blue heron in flight–its path strangely loping. Then, in Orcas, there were the requisite cows, sheep, and horses; a buck crunching on dead leaves; and sweet doe eating dandelions. We went to the old strawberry barreling plant in the hamlet of Olga, where there are no longer any strawberry fields. And M & I baked our bones in a sauna that may have been close to 200° F. How refreshing!photo-27

Now I’m in back-to-school mode. A few tidbits of note:

  • On Sunday, September 18, I’m teaching a free one-day class on contemporary fairy tales at the Capitol Hill branch of the Seattle Public Library.
  • On Saturday, October 22, I will be one of 40+ featured artists at Artist Trust’s 30th Birthday Party. Tickets are $25 and proceeds support this amazing organization and all the hard work it does in Washington State. I have felt their impact profoundly as a recipient of their inaugural Gar LaSalle Storyteller Award. But they have been a helpful resource for me long before that; I attended a number of their grant writing workshops and compiled some of my notes in a post here.
  • Finally, I’m pleased to be offering one-on-one writing coaching via Hugo House’s new manuscript consultation program. You can learn all about here.

In other news, I have a few pieces forthcoming–a collage essay about a fruit (in the meantime here’s a post I wrote about nectarines), a short story inspired by my recent trip to the Netherlands, and two short-short fairy tales. I’ll be sure to post links to these pieces as they become available.

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Women in Translation Month

26 Jul

Women in Translation Month is around the corner! Last year, I compiled a list of translated books by women that I enjoyed and created a Women in Translation Bingo game. I also wrote about novellas by Marguerite Duras and Eileen Chang and poetry collections from Rocío Cerón and Angélica Freitas.

This summer has been a bit more hectic as I’ve been teaching more, taking my second novel through an eighth draft, and researching my third novel. However! I’m excited for Women In Translation Month and wanted to share with you four books on my to-read pile.

What have you been reading? WITMonth2016

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Aside

Memory and Imagination at Hugo House

14 Jul

There are just five spots left in Memory and Imagination, my one-day generative class at Hugo House. Join me for a Saturday afternoon of writing from memory and the senses! Wisdom from Rikki Ducornet, Jorge Borges, and Vladimir Nabakov will offer insight in the process. And here’s Umberto Eco on the subject, in The Name of the Rose:

“This, in fact, is the power of imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain.”

Class meets Saturday, August 13, 1-4 pm. You can register here.

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Aside

Three Winning Stories

16 Dec

Some people have been asking what I submitted for the Artist Trust / Gar LaSalle Storytelling Award. They were three short stories:

  1. “The Zoo,” published in Washington City Paper
  2. “Old Boyfriends,” published in Propeller Magazine
  3. “Sugar,” published in Gastronomica

I didn’t submit a novel excerpt, following the general grant-writing advice to use a work sample that has a beginning, middle, and end. I also strived to show a range in styles and put the sample together in the order above to modulate tone, starting with the sad/happy, getting quite dark, and then ending on a lighter note. Just putting my process out there in case it’s helpful! NB: Artist Trust gathers an amazing list of funding resources here. And here’s a post on writing artist statements.

 

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Upcoming Classes

1 Dec
Strange trinkets and doo-dads on display in Astoria, Oregon.

Objects galore, courtesy a storefront in Astoria, Oregon. An image-based writing prompt for you.

There are still some spots in my 30-minute, $10 online class Powerful Objects, meeting December 9 at 7 pm.  This micro-class is via OneRoom, an online platform designed specifically for creative writing classes allowing real-time interaction via video. The format of the micro-class is a great way to sneak in some writing in this busy time of year, if I do say so myself. Here is the class description:
Italo Calvino wrote that “the moment an object appears in a narrative, it is charged with a special force and becomes like the pole of a magnetic field, a knot in the network of invisible relationships.” We’ll read Kate Bernheimer’s short-short story “Pink Horse” to see how she uses imagery and detail to bring out the psychic power of a particular object. Then we’ll do a writing exercise exploring a character’s relationship with an object. Register here.
In 2016, I’m teaching 1000 Words a Week, a six-week class in which–you guessed it–we will write 1000 words a week. It’s like NaNoWriMo but at a more merciful pace. Class meets Thursdays 7-9 pm, starting January 14. General registration opens December 8; if you’re a Hugo House member you can register today. Scholarships are available! Apply by December 14. Class description here:
Each week we’ll write 1000 words using big-picture and fine-grain prompts. In class, we’ll lightly workshop pieces, focusing on questions like “What creates energy in this story?” and “What do you want to know more about?” Stories may be part of a larger work or stand alone. We’ll also discuss writers’ thoughts on writing, from classics like Anne Lamott’s “Shitty First Drafts” to newer essays like Rikki Ducornet’s “The Deep Zoo.” Students will leave class with 5000 new words. Register here.
Finally, I am teaching a mini-lesson called The Priceless Detail at Hugo House’s Write-O-Rama, this Saturday at 12 pm & 1 pm.  Here is the class description:
Good liars know that selective detail, not a pile of facts, make a more convincing story. In discussing Chekhov’s exceptional use of detail, Francine Prose notes that we live in detail, remember in detail, identify, recognize, and recreate in detail. But finding the right detail in fiction takes a lot of sifting. We’ll look to excerpts from Chekhov for inspiration, then immerse ourselves in an exercise drawing on keen observations of our own experiences. Register here.
Wishing you a writing-full season & 2016!

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