Paper Fort

Literary Arts of Portland launched their new blog Paper Fort with an interview of Sid Miller, founder of Burnside Review, and some thoughts from Monica Drake (Clown Girl) about good writing days (the first in a series of posts about Oregon authors and good writing days). Go check out Paper Fort's amazing list of links to Oregon Authors Online, Presses and Magazines, and Oregon Literary Links.

New Poet Laureate

Kay Ryan

From Poets & Writers: Kay Ryan was born in California in 1945 and grew up in the small towns of the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. She received both a bachelor's and master's degree from UCLA.

Ryan has published several collections of poetry, including The Niagara River (Grove Press, 2005); Say Uncle (2000); Elephant Rocks (1996); Flamingo Watching (1994), which was a finalist for both the Lamont Poetry Selection and the Lenore Marshall Prize; Strangely Marked Metal (1985); and Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983).

Writers' Rooms

Viewed all these writers' rooms on the Guardian website. I can't get enough of this.

I work in a walk-in closet. It's . . . cozy. Thought I would post a couple pictures of it here and invite friends to reply with pictures of their writing space.


That's our cat Cora. She likes the computer, which would be endearing if it weren't for her tail whapping me in the face as I write.

Me and my buddy, the computer. My buddy and I.

Fly on the wall, to the right, is done by one of my favorite artists Renee French. Old photos are my great grandmother, my grandfather and a couple strangers I found at an antique shop. It sometimes gets warm in my closet, at least I have the little fan atop the tower of books I'm currently reading (check out that tangling mess of cords at the bottom, yeesh).

Silk Road : Vol 3, Issue 1

I am so proud to say that we just released our new issue of Silk Road, A Journal of Writings on Place Volume 3, Issue 1. I worked as fiction editor for this volume and will continue working on Silk Road for 2008-2009 as managing editor.

Silk Road Vol 3, Issue 1
Featuring work by Xu Xi and Pete Fromm as well as writers from Bangladesh to Escanaba, Michigan, the newest issue of Silk Road raises the stakes in the cross-cultural dialogue. “Where are you from?” has become a more complex question to answer. Works include poetry, fiction, nonfiction, international writing, translations, and visual artwork.

read excerpts
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buy Silk Road
read a review of Silk Road, Vol 2, Issue 1

Back Home : June Residency

Just returned from a 10-day residency at Pacific University in Forest Grove. The readings, craft talks, and workshops all went very smoothly . . . a nicely run residency. The new influx of writers/advisers created a refreshing diversity within the craft talks and readings. Brady Udall, Denise Duhamel and David St. John were wonderful. Nice to catch up with friends on their challenges and successes, and great to meet some amazing and motivated new students.

I'm excited to continue working with David Long for my thesis semester. It will be a busy six months. I am unemployed until August, so my schedule everyday in July looks like this: Get up, coffee, read for four hours, write for five hours, watch a movie, sleep. It's paradise for a month.

Here are a couple notes I took during the craft talks . . .

Presenter: Claire Davis Title/Topic: The Habit of Art

The residency began with Claire Davis's talk on creating a habit and habitat for writing, and her words stuck, surfacing within our conversations throughout the week. Davis discussed the daily ritual of writing: sitting down at the desk, setting goals for page/word counts, creating a space in which to enter into the unknown with a certain mindfulness, to not allow for email or other distractions . . . “the real business is to write,” she reminded us. But Davis warned us to not isolate ourselves from the world, “It's a solitary life,” Davis stated, “but that doesn't mean it has to be a hermitage.” Creating an environment in which you can work yourself back out keeps the writer connected to the world in a deeper sense. With the daily business of life, we are often deceived into thinking that we've accomplished something, constantly preparing for the next day, but as writers we must move our art into the moment. Throughout her talk, Davis weaved in lush descriptions of place, coupled with stories about friends who've influenced her to think more deeply about the craft. In short, we must create an external and internal space which will allow us to practice being aware, to look closely at our writing (“beyond the first, second, third, fourth detail, into the fifth or sixth detail”) and to, as Davis said, “imagine . . . now imagine more deeply.”

Presenter: David Long Title/Topic: Line Editing for Dummies

David Long outlined the many different components of line editing: cutting, substituting, adding, arranging, punctuating, correcting. I found Long's suggestions on substituting helpful—change a word/phrase for another when it is: too abstract, wrong in tone, exactly what we expect, dull, or a word/phrase you just used. Long noted that “Good writers often 'physicalize' abstractions so we will have something to see,” and then gave an example by Stefan Zweig from Beware of Pity: “You can't dispel illusions as easily as you shake down the quicksilver in a thermometer.” Long went on to say that a paragraph is not “a sack to throw things in” but a “designed assemblage of statements,” often beginning with a topic sentence, and ending with “your punch line, your final bullet, your saved-for-the-last thing,” and many times setting up the turn in the next paragraph. Long reminded us to correct: check spelling/grammer, be consistent, check your facts, watch for internal contradictions with characters.“The manuscript you turn loose on the world is your avatar,” Long stated, “a physical manifestation of your pride and authorship. Make sure it brushes its teeth and puts on a fresh shirt [oh, and clean underwear—you never know . . . ].”

Presenter: Judy Blunt Title/Topic: Truth and the Damned Lies—The Ethics of Life Writing

“Yes, I am wise, but it's wisdom born of pain,” Judy Blunt began her talk on the ethics of life writing. There were several questions that Blunt posed that kept me up all night:

1. Why are so many books being published as memoir, when they're clearly fictional? Why aren't publishers doing their research?

2. What does the public think of fraudulent memoirs? What is our responsibility as readers when we notice fraudulent memoirs?

3. Why can't we write stories as fiction which illicit the same response as nonfiction? When did readers stop trusting fictional characters?

There are lessons to be learned in all of this, as Blunt stated:

“It is wrong to appropriate the pain of others for personal benefit.”
“Write what you write and call it what it is. If you are questioning whether the book is fiction, than it's fiction.”
“What is true lies between you and the idea of you—a friction between the fact and the fiction.”

Blunt gave a handout of “The evolution (or not) of nonfiction disclaimers” which included very interesting, entertaining disclaimers from writers whose nonfiction work has been questioned . . . such writers as Booker T. Washington, Ernest Hemingway, Tobias Wolff, Michael Finkel, and David Eggers.

Presenter: Ellen Bass Title/Topic: Poem of the Moment

“The poem of the moment is rooted in one time and one place,” Ellen Bass began. The beauty about the poem of the moment, as Bass pointed out, is that it is harder to be vague and abstract; it is a “nudge to a clearer language.” To write a poem of the moment you have to stay in the moment, you must slow down to really enter the moment deeply. This, often times, will allow us to experience the world differently, on a smaller scope, or as William Blake said, “Infinity in a grain of sand.” Bass showed us how the poem of the moment has rising action which leads to a “surprising and inevitable” resolution. In using the examples of Sharon Olds's “Summer Solstice, New York City,” Dorianne Laux's “The Lovers,” among others, Bass reminded us to: slow down, go for accuracy over lyricism, and to be wary of abstractions.

Last day at Literary Arts

I concluded my 6-month marketing internship at Literary Arts last week. It was so nice, everyone wished me a fond farewell .

I learned a lot about marketing within an arts organization over the last couple months. I was given various projects, the most fun of which were recording/producing a pilot literary podcast and a creating a sample Oregon Book Awards blog.

This internship has been a hugely rewarding part of my graduate education. My time at Literary Arts has helped me feel more grounded, an inside look at ways I can support myself as a writer—from grants, fellowships, awards, and Writers-in-the-schools, to the important organizational work of administrative arts, event programming, marketing in nonprofit, and grant writing.

It's been a good experience for me. To have had this opportunity, to have seen how there are many different paths a writer can take when choosing a career, has been a profoundly rewarding.

Reading : Richard Bausch

A windy, stormy gray day in Portland. On the way to Powell's, a large tree limb fell on the hood of my Buick, but it did not deter me.

Richard Bausch read from his new novel Peace, which is about three WWII soldiers who are sent on a reconnaissance mission up the side of a mountain, during a terrible winter in Italy, 1944. Bausch dedicated his book and reading to George Garrett who, years ago, encouraged him to write Peace.
I just have say, it's been a while since I've been to a prose reading this good. I think there are several reasons for this (apparently, I not only have an opinion about writing, but about readings as well):

1.) The excerpts chosen were a perfect sampling of the book. Bausch read us a scene containing the central image of the story and then read scenes where the image reoccurs, he provided a bit of character background, startling details about the environmental surroundings, and the description at the end of chapter one is shocking and memorable and just incredible.

2.) The Q & A was actually informative. I loved that Bausch talked openly about writing craft. Surprisingly, I rarely hear writers (at readings) talk about craft . . . even when asked they tend to steer clear of the questions about craft and process. I can't say I blame them, but it sometimes makes the Q & A dry and uninteresting.

3.) Spontaneous poetry. After a person asked Bausch about his friendship with poet James Dickey, Bausch not only provided a great anecdote, but also spontaneously recited a Dickey poem by heart . . . and is there anything more wonderfully endearing than that? I think not.

4.) And speaking of great anecdotes . . . this guy was full of 'em. From James Dickey to Eudora Welty to late night bowlers who used to live in the apartment above him, all wonderfully amusing. I let out a little chuckle in the car on the way home, they guy in the pickup next to me thought he'd made a friend.

"Trust in what the story tells you."
"Books are written a little bit at a time, over time."
"When someone asks if you're a writer, you say 'you're goddamn right I am!'"