Paula Rego, a favorite artist of mine.
My essay "Battles" was a finalist in Tupelo Quarterly's Open Prose Contest! The essay will be published in Tupelo Quarterly in February 2018.
For more news from 2017, see my end-of-year blog post here.
Approaching Mystery, an online flash memoir course
My next online Approaching Mystery course begins on March 16th, 2018.
In this online writing workshop, we’ll write short passages of prose that explore the mystery of the everyday. We will work in a mode that we could call flash memoir, vignette, or micro-essay. These short pieces could become the basis for a longer work (essay/memoir), or remain stand alone "flash" pieces. Alternately, you could see them as writing practice, as a way to loosen up and access your creativity. We will also explore the (blurry) lines between prose poem, flash fiction, and micro-essay, reading examples from each of these genres and dipping into them at will. Some of the writers we may read as models include Lydia Davis, Lynda Barry, Paul Auster, Malena Morling, Tomas Transtromer, Jessica Mesman Griffith, Sherman Alexie.
One of the aims of this course will be exploration of the element of the absurd, surreal, or wondrous that exists in our everyday experience. We will spend much of our time in a mode of play and discovery, even when writing on serious subjects. You’ll post some of your responses to writing exercises for the whole group to see. You will receive feedback from me along the way, and at the end of the course, I will read a portfolio of work or an essay based on your vignettes from each student.
To register, go to Eventbrite.
Sign up for Writing Spaces: A memoir-writing workshop
I'll be teaching a community writing workshop at Nido Durham on Saturday afternoons, March 11th to April 15th. Enrollment is limited to 8 participants. Join us if you'd like to jumpstart your writing practice! Enroll at bit.ly/jpcspaces
DESCRIPTION
In this community writing workshop, we'll do short readings and exercises in class designed to loosen us up, access our creativity and writing voices, and jumpstart a writing practice. Toward the end of the class, each participant will share a short personal essay that has emerged from our in-class exercises. Our theme will be"writing spaces," allowing us to examine the intersections among life stories, memory, the body, and place (home, rooms, towns, spaces dreamed or imagined). We will read excerpts by some of the following writers, and produce our own writing inspired by them: Abigail Thomas, James Agee, Sandra Cisneros, JoAnn Beard, David Sedaris, Jamaica Kincaid, Lynda Barry, Paul Auster, Luci Tapahonso.
The class will meet on Saturdays March 11-April 15, 3-5pm. Early bird tickets (purchased by March 1st) are $200 + Eventbrite fee. Regular tickets (after March 1st) are $250 + fee.
Recent publications
Here are links to my recent poems in Zocalo Public Square and Open Letters Monthly. The latter is a collaboration with Todd J. Colby. Thank you to the editors!
Thank you
Thanks to all who read my April poems! And thank you to Maureen Thorson for mentioning my poems on the NaPoWriMo site. I've taken the poems down to revise them.
In other news, I have poems forthcoming in Zocalo Public Square and The Virginia Normal. Thanks to the editors there!
Opening Day for NaPoWriMo
As I've done for the past several years, I'm participating in NaPoWriMo in April. Thirty poems (or drafts of poems) in thirty days! I find it helps get me writing and that I get at least some good drafts out of it. It's scary and fun and a challenge.
Over at the NaPoWriMo site, Maureen Thorson posts optional prompts and featured participants. If you'd like to play along, you can still register your blog on her website (or just write!). Either way, you're welcome to follow her prompts or not. I'll take my drafts down at the end of the month and choose some to revise. (Also, my definition of "poem" will be loose. Some will have lines. Some will be prose poems. I also tend to do some very short poems, some found poems, some prose "dispatches" from daily life.)
Here's a prose poem I still like that wrote for NaPoWriMo 2012:
Opening Day
OK. First of all, it's warmer out than I thought, and so I'm overdressed. Second of all, even with sunglasses on, I'm squinting. Thirdly, when a bird goes, poo-tee-weet, I direct my next thought toward it, thusly: "Petulance. We like the sound of the word petulance, don't we, birdie?" Then I pass three separate teenagers, still young, still forming, looking elastic in spirit like fourteen year-olds mostly do. I wish them the best. I begin to worry. They look so full of potential. As the third one passes, I sigh loudly in his direction, and he politely looks away, ensconced in his own hat like that. When I get on the subway, all the adults look vacant and spiritually sparse. At least there's one kid. At least he's scowling with his hands jammed into the pockets of his jacket and thinking what look like serious thoughts. At least he's swinging his little feet. His socks are black and white striped. His Adidas are the same ones my 25 year-old brother has. Welcome to opening day, little boy. Play ball, I guess.
Sign up for my next writing workshop
There is still space left in my next six-week "Reading and Writing from Life" workshop, which starts Saturday April 16th in Durham, NC. The workshop meets at Nido Durham, a beautiful, sunny new co-working space. Click here to register.