--the owner of a neighborhood convenience/liquor store --a woman I helped get situated in Austin, TX after Hurricane Katrina --2/3 of the men I’ve been in love with --at least two men whose names have been deleted and re-added multiple times --a guy named Gregory (?) --both a Lindsay, and a Lindsey (?) --New Years Guy 2009 --the Chicago History Museum --multiple taxi cab companies in Provincetown and Lake Forest, Illinois (Mercedes Cab, Cape Cab, a cab driver named Barber) --the Hudson Hotel in New York (I miss you; please call me) --a half dozen famous (or at least prize-winning) novelists --a woman I bought a couch from on Craigslist --the guy I paid $50 to move my couch, which had to be thrust into my apartment through the window (Jared the Piano Mover; I recommend him) --a woman named Deb I never met whose cat (Warren, I want to say?) I watched for a month in Highland Park (or was it Eagle Rock) in 2008 --two individuals I almost rented an apartment from, whose homes burned down during the Tea Fire and the Jesusita Fire (the latter, a very nice man who, as it happened, delivered sprouts to my father’s vegetarian co-op in Eugene, Oregon during the Seventies) --an acupuncturist I stopped going to because she had no boundaries --a hair salon that closed in 2009 or 2010 --a girl whose wallet I found at Paseo Nuevo (and returned) --an estranged relative --my dead ex-stepdad --men my mom has dated, married, or lived with --ex-coworkers, ex-bosses, one no longer living --if you are reading this, quite possibly, YOU
April is National Poetry Month and there are several exciting readings and events coming up this week. Santa Barbara’s new Poet Laureate, Chryss Yost, will be officially installed by the City Council on Tuesday, April 9 at 2pm. Chryss is an award-winning poet as well as the host of UCSB's Library Radio, which airs Monday morning at 8am on KCSB 91.9 FM. You can access Chryss's comprehensive poetry month calendar online. Congratulations, Chryss!
On Thursday, April 11, award-winning Irish-American poet Ethna McKiernan will read at UCSB's MultiCultural Center Lounge at 6pm. McKiernan will share her poetry and discuss “the largest leap of imagination there is in poetry, writing from the perspective of the 'other'.” Author of three collections of poetry, her most recent work, Sky Thick With Fireflies (Salmon Poetry, 2011), was nominated for the Minnesota Book Award. Directions and additional information can be found here.
On Saturday, April 13, Sojourner Kincaid Rolle will host a Poetry Zone Reading: "Triskaidepaphobia" featuring the Sunday Poets (Alison Bailey, Steve Beisner, Susan Chiavelli, Toni Lorien, Marcia Meier, and Melinda Palacio) at the Karpeles Manuscript Library at 2-3:30pm. Ever the community poetry organizer, Sojourner has started a Facebook group for those who want to keep track of poetry happenings on the Central Coast.
On Saturday, September 29 from 4-6pm the global poetry event “100 Thousand Poets for Change” will take place in downtown Santa Barbara at Coffee Cat. The reading is part of an international grassroots educational organization that was founded in 2011 to promote social, environmental, and political change through poetry. In 100T PC's inaugural year, poets around the world participated in over 650 poetry events in 95 countries.
Organized locally by poets Sojourner Kincaid Rolle and Michelle Detorie, this year's celebration will feature an Open Mic, The Poetry Booth (a super fun and creative poetry installation that’s not to be missed!) and a Group Photo at 5pm. Whether you are a seasoned poet or simply wake up feeling poetic on Saturday (or, perhaps like some of us, you’d be at Coffee Cat working on your laptop anyway), we hope to see you there.
You can bring a poem to read, whether your own work or a poem by another poet, and/or make a poem at The Poetry Booth.
For more information: www.facebook.com/100tpoetsforchangecantabarbaracA
Categories:
Tags: The Poetry Booth, 100 Thousand Poets for Change, Coffee Cat, Sojourner Kincaid Rolle, Michelle Detorie
I first met Tupac when I was fourteen, a freshman in high school, just a few days after my little sister was born, and about a year and a half before my step-brother, a year younger than me, would die of brain cancer.
It was May 1991. My step-brother’s dream was to meet Digital Underground, which was granted by the Make a Wish Foundation, so we flew to Oakland for the weekend and hung out with Tupac, Money B, Shock G (aka Humpty Hump) as they filmed something (was it a video?) at a Go-Kart racing rink in Oakland. That weekend we spent a few afternoons at the recording studio where they put the finishing touches on their album This is an EP Release. At one point, my family and I stood in the recording studio wearing headphones and clapping along to the track “Same Song” (which I am listening to on Youtube as I write this); who knows whether they ever used our clapping on the album, which would come out on July 1, or if it was just a nice gesture. For years I misremembered that Tupac was the one who had written “take care of those sexy blue eyes, Amy” on my page of autographs written on a piece of paper torn out from a tablet from LaQuinta Inn, but that was really Shock G; Tupac had signed off Love Always 2PAC.
When we arrived at the Go-Kart track in Oakland, Tupac told all the kids swarming around that my stepbrother, in his 49ers cap, Ray-Bans, and Simpsons T-shirt, was the kid from “Home Alone,” so suddenly there Frank was signing autographs, which Tupac seemed to get a kick out of. I got the sense that Tupac was fond of practical jokes. He was very funny and quick; he teased the way an older brother might.
At this point, in 1991, Tupac wasn’t yet 2Pac; he was just a kid, really, only five years older than me, who debuted his rapping in Digital Underground’s “Same Song” and who distinguished himself, to me, by his great laugh, his ridiculously long eyelashes, and by offering me a piece of Big Red (which I kept for years), by hamming it up for all the pictures I took, and by giving me a very sweet kiss on the cheek before we all left town. He also distinguished himself by continuing to call my step-brother to check in on him, from time to time, and sending him that new CD before it came out in July.
The next time I met Tupac, he had become 2Pac. It was the fall of 1994 at the premiere of a Keenen Ivory Wayans film, “A Low-down Dirty Shame,” in New York, and this time I was a freshman in college, my very first semester, covering the premiere for The Barnard Bulletin, my school newspaper. Security was lax, so before the movie started I worked up the nerve to make my way to the front of the theatre to interrupt Tupac and his date, Jada Pinkett (not yet Pinkett Smith), who was a star of the film, and none too pleased by the interruption.
I managed to get Tupac’s attention and asked if he remembered meeting my family in Oakland a few years before. I told him that my step-brother had died and thanked him for being so kind. He got up to give me a big hug. I was close enough to admire his long eyelashes once again. We met again in line at the concession stand later that night; more conversation, another hug, as a bunch of kids interrupted for autographs and I was reminded of the time when Tupac had my step-brother signing autographs back in Oakland. The film was released on November 23, 1994, and I remember it was cold enough to require several layers, so this second meeting with Tupac must have occured sometime that week. Just a week before he would be shot several times at a recording studio in Manhattan, on November 30, 1994, the day before the verdict of his sexual abuse trial would be announced.
We all know what happens after that; or, I suppose, we don't; but we do know that Tupac died on September 13, 1996. It's hard to believe that that was sixteen years ago today. I hope that Tupac and Frank have run into each other in the afterlife, that they are kicking it like they did back in '91, somewhere up in the sky...
Categories:
Tags: sbarts, Tupac Shakur, Digital Underground, 2Pac
A lobster lunch ordered in the spirit of the surrealist designer in my novel; a romantic walk through the Morgan Library in New York while looking at manuscript pages from Oscar Wilde and Samuel Coleridge and exchanging stories about ourselves…
Complimenting my jewelry, paying me lots of attention, sharing the same taste in books and movies and television shows, all leading me to think: this person totally gets me. Answering my emails right away. Responding to every point I bring up. Telling me, whatever is good for you…Leading me to think, this person is totally into me.
Plenty of time spent planning outfits to wear in both scenarios, yes, and the same butterflies in stomach before the date, a similar energy spent obsessively checking email and waiting to hear back before making final plans. A certain amount of time spent thinking, this person seems into me, but how into me? As into me as others in the past?
No making out to early-Nineties hip hop and steaming up car windows on a Saturday night, alas, but also: no endlessly decoding text messages, no time spent in consternation about the status of the relationship, no fretting about how to make a long-distance relationship work, and certainly no need to debate reaching for one’s purse when the check arrives…
Categories:
Tags: sbarts, sblifestyle, Morgan Library, writing, literary agents, new york
Okay, so I'm not really certain if "Pretty Little Liars" is making me a better novelist, but my immersive/obsessive experience of watching the first two seasons of the show (which a poet friend describes as "Twin Peaks" meets "The OC") has coincided with a very productive period of novel revision, so it's possible that there is some kind of a cause and effect relationship, and surely there is much to be learned about pace, foreshadowing, withholding information from the viewer which could be applied to fiction writing--although, in truth, I am too obsessed with figuring out who "A" is to spend too much time thinking about that. Watching the show does make me realize just how much I crave plot as a reader/viewer--as gauche as that might have sounded to me back in my plot-eschewing MFA days. Now I find myself defacing twenty-five-dollar hardcover novels with my edits when I find books to be too meandering for my taste (although that may be the subject of another as-yet-to-be-written post entirely).
Now, may I ask, is anyone else obsessed with "PLL" (as it's come to be known in the texts I send one of my friends as I'm getting caught up on the first two season)?
Two of the smartest people I know in Santa Barbara got me into the show (in my defense)--and I am looking forward to taking advantage of their on-demand cable to get caught up on Season 3 later this week!
Categories:
Tags: sblifestyle, sbarts, pretty little liars, television, novel writing
As someone obsessed with the creative process, I am looking forward to seeing a room full of artists making art (live! overnight!) this weekend at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum's third annual From Dusk 'Til Drawn. At the previous two 24-hour art making marathons, I was so inspired that I busted about my notebook and wrote on the spot, went home to make a collage and work on a drawing, and both times I left with a piece of affordable art. (Alas, both years I did not quite get the Jason Sober collages I coveted! I still remember the image of the pool on the piece entitled "Palm Springs" two years ago--sigh!)
To properly enjoy From Dusk 'Til Drawn, it's advisable to pop in at least twice over the weekend--sometime on Friday evening, when the artists begin working and hanging finished pieces on the wall so they can be purchased by the public (for the affordable price of $25, $75, $150, or $300 plus tax; proceeds are split between CAF and the artists), and then again on Saturday morning or afternoon (when everyone is thoroughly exhausted and delirious) so you can see the progress being made on pieces you admired the evening before. Then stop by again on Sunday for the reception from 4-6pm when the art that has yet to be claimed will be available for purchase.
When was the last time you got to crash an all-nighter? It's like a slumber party without the slumber but all the fun. And—like a slumber party—this year there will be treats: Pinkberry will be in the house on Saturday from 2-6pm (with 20% of the proceeds going to CAF). There will also be fun ways for visitors to participate, including a wall to draw on and an exquisite corpse.
For more information, or to see the list of artists participating, see the press release on CAF's website.
Friday, July 20, 2012 6 PM through Saturday, July 21, 2012 6 PM.
$5 to attend and purchase artworks hot off the presses for as low as $25. (Admission free for members with membership card)
Artist Reception: Sunday, July 22, 4-6 PM FREE to attend and purchase remaining artworks.
Categories:
Tags: Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, From Dusk 'Til Drawn, sbarts, sblifestyle, sbnews, jason sober
The Santa Barbara Writers Conference’s First Book Panel on Tuesday, June 12 featured several dynamic debut authors who shared their stories of why they started to write their first books and what their writing process entailed—from research to revision, to finally sharing their work with readers. Panelists included Ramona Ausubel (No One Is Here Except All Of Us), Melinda Palacio (Ocotillo Dreams), Toni Margarita Plummer (The Bolero of Andi Rowe), and Amy Franklin-Willis (The Lost Saints of Tennessee).
Palacio’s Ocotillo Dreams is set in Chandler, Arizona during the immigration sweeps of 1997. "It wasn't difficult to imagine myself caught up in those immigration sweeps," Palacio said. "My historical fiction suddenly became contemporary," she noted, after mentioning that her novel was released in the midst of a new immigration sweep.
"I'm a very intuitive writer," Palacio replied when asked about her writing process by moderator Barnaby Conrad III. Although she doesn’t outline, Palacio shared how she wrote down plot points on a piece of drawing paper in order to connect events in the narrative and said that she used different colored note cards to keep track of storylines. Palacio attended the SBWC as a student for the first time in 2001 and relied on several friends she made at the conference to read early drafts of her novel, which recently won First Prize in the Mariposa Award for First Book at the International Latino Book Awards in New York.
SBWC alum Amy Franklin-Willis was inspired to write The Lost Saints of Tennessee by the stories her father told her about growing up in rural Pocahontas, Tennessee during the Forties and Fifties. A few years after her grandmother passed away, the family home that Franklin-Willis visited during Christmas and summer vacations was sold, which prompted her to start writing about Pocahontas. "I really missed the anchor that town had provided me," she explained. Through the process of writing the novel, she learned how to "honor the fictional story that emerged" and edit out some of the stories that had come from her family.
The Lost Saints of Tennessee took eight years to write, as the author was raising three children and working a full-time job. As for Franklin-Willis’s process of keeping her story straight--which was no small task, as the novel spans over forty years--she found that creating a timeline on a white board was instrumental. "That kept me sane,” she said. “I wouldn't have been able to get through it" without the timeline, which still hangs in her office to this very day.
Ausubel spoke about the balance between research and imagination in writing No One Is Here Except All Of Us, which is set in the Romanian village of Zalischik during World War II. In the early stages of researching the novel, Ausubel flew to New York to interview her Romanian grandmother, sorted through ship logs and telegrams, and starting transcribing her family's stories, only to realize that “all that research was just a weight." After putting down the research for two years, she returned to the project with the new understanding that "if I was going to write this book...I would have to fold myself and my imagination into it." She allowed herself the freedom to write whatever she wanted as she drafted the novel, deciding to first invent her world and then to check for historical accuracy later in the revision process. "This is my family story from my own heart," Ausubel said. She wrote 17 drafts of the novel--"it was such a mess and required a million ways of cleaning," as she described it--and went through another two rounds of revision after the novel was sold to Riverhead (a division of Penguin).
As an editor at Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press as well as an author, Plummer spoke about the process of working on a short story collection and making the stories linked at the suggestion of her first editor at Curbside Press, which was later taken over by Northwestern University Press. Plummer said that as an editor, she finds that her authors are generally able to find their own solutions to problems she identifies in their work, and wanted to be sure to give her editors what they wanted since she's in the unusual position of moviing back and forth between roles. Since Plummer doesn’t like to sit for too long at the computer, she is in the habit of printing her drafts and making revisions longhand. Set in South El Monte, California, where Plummer grew up, the stories in The Bolero of Andi Rowe center on a young woman of Mexican and Irish heritage and explore themes including love, loss, identity, and the immigrant experience. As Conrad pointed out, all of the works by authors on the panel explore "family and borders...and villages as well."
"We write for someone to read it--we have to have readers," Ausubel said, after likening the act of sharing work with readers to having another voice on the other end of the telephone during a conversation. For the past forty years, the Santa Barbara Writers Conference has created opportunities for conversations to take place between authors and readers, for friendships and mentorships to flourish, and for stories, and even first books, to emerge.
Tags: Ramona Ausubel (No One Is Here Except All Of Us), Melinda Palacio (Ocotillo Dreams), Toni Margarita Plummer (The Bolero of Andi Rowe). Amy Franklin-Willis (The Lost Saints of Tennessee), Santa Barbara Writers Conference
Congratulations to Melinda Palacio, whose first novel Ocotillo Dreams recently won First Prize in the Mariposa Award for Best Book at the International Latino Book Awards in New York.
Palacio will appear on the First Book Panel at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference on Tuesday, June 12 with debut authors Ramona Ausubel (No One Is Here Except All Of Us), Amy Franklin-Willis (The Lost Saints of Tennessee), and Toni Margarita Plummer (The Bolero of Andi Rowe; Plummer is also an editor at Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press).
Here is a synopsis of Palacio's Ocotillo Dreams, which was published by Bilingual Review Press in 2011:
Set in Chandler, Arizona, during the city’s infamous 1997 migrant sweeps, Ocotillo Dreams is no run-of-the-mill border tale. In her captivating first novel, Melinda Palacio skillfully weaves a story of politics, intrigue, love, and trust. Isola, a young woman who inherits her mother’s Chandler home, relocates from California only to find that her mother had lived a secret life of helping undocumented immigrants. Isola must confront her own confusion and sense of loyalty in a strange and hostile environment. As she gets to know her mother from clues left behind, she grapples with questions of identity and belonging that eventually lead her to explore her life's meaning and to reconnect with her roots.
Melinda Palacio grew up in South Central Los Angeles and now lives in Santa Barbara and New Orleans. She holds an M.A. in comparative literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. A 2007 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow and a 2009 poetry alumna of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, she co-edits Ink ByteMagazine and writes a column for online journal La Bloga. Her work has appeared in the Squaw Valley Review, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, Buffalo Carp, Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature, Maple Leaf Rag III and IV: An Anthology of Poems, among many other publications. Melinda's poetry chapbook, Folsom Lockdown, won the 2009 Kulupi Press Sense of Place award. The author recently completed a full-length poetry manuscript, How Fire Is a Story, Waiting.
“A must read for those who seek the heart’s truth on both sides of the border.”
—Stella Pope Duarte, author of If I Die in Juárez and Fragile Night
“Ocotillo Dreams is an evocative and powerful statement about human life and the conditions of immigrants in the United States.”
—Denise Chávez, novelist and director of the Border Book Festival
Visit amazon to order the book or (better yet) pick up a copy at Chaucer's or The Book Den.
Congratluations, Melinda!
Categories:
Tags: Melinda Palacio, Ocotillo Dreams, First Prize in the Mariposa Award for Best Book at the International Latino Book Awards, Santa Barbara Writers Conference, Ramona Ausubel (No One Is Here Except All Of Us), Amy Franklin-Willis (The Lost Saints of Tennessee), Toni Margarita Plummer (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press).
Jonah Lehrer, best-selling author of Imagine: How Creativity Works, delighted a sold-out Campbell Hall on Thursday, May 17 with his stimulating talk on the creative process. Before his engagement at UCSB’s Arts & Lectures, we had the chance to interview Lehrer about his writing process at UCSB’s CLAS Writing Lab. The interview will be broadcast on Paul Rivas’s Real Gauchos on Thursday, May 24 at 7:00am on KCSB 91.9 FM. Lehrer's Arts & Lectures talk will be aired on KCSB in the coming weeks.
It’s Okay to Fail Lehrer spoke to an audience of writing tutors and staff about his evolution from a self-described "pretentious," black turtleneck-wearing undergraduate at Columbia University to a New York Times-best-selling author. Ultimately, Lehrer said that it was his “failure” to become a scientist that led him to become a writer. He explained that even as an undergraduate majoring in neuroscience, the process of writing about science was his way to fully understand the material. In Lehrer’s mind, writing and science are “not just in the same hallway, but in the same room.” This was particularly inspiring to hear at our department, Campus Learning Assistance Services, which offers tutoring in both writing and the sciences (as well as other in fields).
Refine Your Work “Writing is just editing,” Lehrer said during his candid discussion of the writing process. “Draft 70 is when it starts to click into place.” Self-editing is a vital part of Lehrer’s process; he finds that printing out early drafts and crossing out lines by hand, rather than simply editing on the computer screen, is much more effective. We couldn’t agree more.
Share Your Work “I’m not shy about sending out early drafts,” Lehrer said, then explained how he relies on a handful of early readers to give him feedback about his work-in-progress. Lehrer asks his readers to make a checkmark next to paragraphs where their attention starts to drag. He finds that there’s often remarkable consensus among his readers regarding where the work feels “boring.”
Kill Your Darlings Lehrer also praised his editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Amanda Cook, who “dramatically improved” Imagine with her red pen, as he wrote in the acknowledgements. He estimated that his editor cut his first book (Proust was a Neuroscientist) by fifty percent, his second book (How We Decide) by thirty percent, and Imagine by twenty-five percent. He said there’s truth to the Truman Capote quote about the importance of “killing your darlings”--those flourishes that ultimately don't belong in the work.
Talk About Your Work (And Hang Out With Weirdos) Lehrer finds that talking about his work-in-progress is just as important as sharing early drafts with readers. “The written word aspires to the spoken word,” as he described it. He said that discussing his work is a valuable way to gauge the interest of his listeners as he’s developing and refining his material. In Imagine, Lehrer makes a connection between success and the diversity of one’s social network. During his talk at the Writing Lab, he stressed the importance of talking about his work with strangers. (He also advised us to “hang out with a bunch of weirdos.”)
Fail Better Toward the end of his talk, Lehrer shared his struggles to break into journalism. He said that he spent the first few years after college writing for free for various websites, supported by his then-girlfriend and now-wife. The check bounced on his first paid assignment at a small magazine that later folded. Eventually he learned that his 2,000 word pitches to magazine editors were way too long; after countless rejections (or simply “silence”) he began to distill his pitches into 250 words. He urged the aspiring writers in the audience to keep their pitches short and to communicate to the editor what makes them qualified to write the piece.
Choose Easy, Work Hard In his lecture at Campbell Hall, Lehrer argued that in order to succeed, you need to choose the right dream, work hard, and have grit: the ability to persevere and stick with something. Apparently, single-mindedness about achieving a goal coupled with choosing the right goal predict the ability to succeed in any given field. If we choose the right goal, according to Lehrer, our frustrations won’t feel permanent. We’re thankful that Lehrer took his own advice—to “choose easy, and work hard”—as his decision to become a writer has enriched our university and our community.
As a side note, Jonah Lehrer is an incredibly nice, gracious, charming, funny, and self-deprecating individual. He even appreciated the Madeleines (a nod to Proust was a Neuroscientist) and complimented the Writing Lab's "Gallery of Revision," which features author photos and quotes and manuscript pages from early drafts of work by Joan Didion, Ralph Ellison, Virginia Woolf, and others. He particularly liked the quotation by Nabokov: "I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers."
We hope that Jonah stops by the Writing Lab to talk about his next book, which is apparently on the topic of love.
Jonah Lehrer, best-selling author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist, is giving a talk on his new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, at UCSB's Arts & Lectures on Thursday, May 17 at 8pm. His last talk at Arts & Lectures sold out--so get your tickets early!
In Malcom Gladwell's words: “Jonah Lehrer’s new book [Imagine] confirms what his fans have known all along – that he knows more about science than a lot of scientists and more about writing than a lot of writers.”
Tickets are $10 for the general public and free for UCSB students.The talk is part of the INNOVATION MATTERS series.
Thursday, May 17 8:00pm at Campbell Hall
For more information: https://artsandlectures.sa.ucsb.edu/Details.aspx?PerfNum=2339
UCSB's MultiCultural Center brought a super fun evening of spoken word, live music, and community-building to Coffee Cat for 1st Thursday this evening. Santa Barbara’s favorite coffee shop was jam packed full of people--poetry lovers, students, leaders in the community, folks out gallery hopping for 1st Thursday--and it was thrilling to see so many people there enjoying the energizing performance of internationally recognized spoken word poet Rudy Francisco. A talented poet with a mind for metaphors and a gift for connecting with the audience, Francisco is co-host of the largest poetry venue in San Diego and a frequent Poetry Slam Champion. (Specifically, the 2009 National Underground Poetry Slam Champion, the 2010 San Diego Grand Slam Champion, the 2010 San Francisco Grand Slam Champion, and the 2010 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion.)
For those of us who frequent Coffee Cat and secretly rock out behind our laptops to the imminently danceable soundtrack that certain baristas play (you know who you are), it was particularly exciting to see people start to actuallydance--out in the open—as a DJ played at the end of the evening.
The event was co-sponsored by Coffee Cat, 1st Thursday, and the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission. It's highly recommended that these great organizations team up to do it again.
Categories:
Tags: UCSB's MultiCultural Center, Rudy Francisco, Coffee Cat, 1st Thursday, and the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission
Okay, deep breaths--I see that my literary crush is on Facebook--and he just accepted my friend request yesterday morning, after we met a year and a half ago at a literary conference in New Orleans. I wasn't sure if he would accept my friend request, as he is a kind of a big deal editor at a big deal publishing house, or if I would have to "subscribe" to his public posts instead. So I am furiously "liking" things and commenting on friends' posts in hopes that this big deal editor hasn't hidden me yet, and that perhaps by seeing my name on his News Feed he will remember that I exist.
Why do I care that he remembers that I exist? There is no way that he would ever acquire my book--he edits big deal authors, vice presidents, social scientists, novelists who have been placed under a fatwa--but we had this amazing hour-long meeting at the Words & Music conference in New Orleans, me and this brilliant editor, and I was nervous because he was twenty minutes late, and I'd read some things on Gawker that led me to think that there was a chance he might stand me up--but then lo and behold he finally showed up that Saturday morning at 9:20 am in the lobby of the Hotel Monteloene, just as I was getting a little impatient and uptight, and we had THE BEST CONVERASATION ABOUT MY WRITING THAT I HAVE EVER HAD. Even after a three-year MFA program. And countless workshops in every genre known to man. Workshops led by famous writers, winners of the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize. This big deal editor totally got what I am trying to do with my novel--and articulated things I didn't even know I was trying to do, and pointed out things I could take further. And, reader, he liked it--he thought it was funny and smart, words he kept repeating throughout our conversation (I took copious notes) and found my narrator to have "a winning personality" and said that I write convincingly about an entire world (vintage fashion) and didn't write me off as chick lit (a term that has long since gone out of fashion in publishing) simply because my novel is set in the world of vintage fashion. He referred me to a few agents he thought would respond well to my work--and, although it's techinically a bit early for me to be querying agents, as I am not quite finished, I went ahead and sent out a query to one of these agents at lunch time the other day--with this big deal editor's name in the subject of the email--and got a response for me to send my manuscript within an hour and a half. Only problem is, I'm not quite finished, so I just sent my 60 page excerpt and hope they don't write me off for wasting their time when I'm still revising the remaining 200 pages. But anway. Now I see that green dot on Facebook--he is online!--and I suppose it is a reminder that I need to hurry up and finish this thing...And maybe go back to the conference in New Orleans in November and have a conversation with him again.
(Just to clarify: my crush is exclusively a literary crush--the big deal editor introduced me to his lovely girlfriend at the conference, also a big deal editor, who is also into vintage fashion...)
It's not too late to head to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books!
Whether you want to check out one of the many panels on literary fiction, poetry, memoir, food writing, crime writing, or biography, or whether you'd like to see an icon from your childhood interviewed about their new book (Florence Henderson, Julie Andrews, Betty White--unfortunately, you missed Judy Blume, who was interviewed on Saturday), or whether you want to walk around and visit the tents where small publishers, literary nonprofits, and LA book stores have set up shop for the weekend on the USC campus, the Festival of Books is a great opportunity to see your favorite authors in person and to discover new writers. (That was one long sentence, fitting for one long literary day! Highlights for me: seeing my former teacher and friend Aimee Bender on the Fairy Tale panel, chatting with Eleanor Henderson, a friend-of-a-friend and author of the fantastic Ten Thousand Saints, after the "At Loose Ends" panel, and contributing a couple unfettered lines to an exquisite corpse poem at the Smokin' Hot Indie Lit Lounge...)
Don't miss the Smokin' Hot Indie Lit Lounge, where Santa Barbara poet Michelle Detorie performed a version of The Poetry Booth on Saturday, and where SB poet and novelist Melinda Palacio can be found on Sunday from 11:45am to 1:30pm (Booth #391).
Speaking of Santa Barbara writers, novelist Ramona Ausubel, author of No One Is Here Except All of Us, will be on a panel at 3pm on Sunday. The panel is on "Writing Across the Globe."
The most difficult part of the festival--aside from finding parking, or remembering where you parked your car--is deciding between all the fantastic-sounding panels taking place at the same time.
It's not too late to head to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books!
Whether you want to check out one of the many panels on literary fiction, poetry, memoir, food writing, crime writing, or biography, or whether you'd like to see an icon from your childhood interviewed about their new book (Florence Henderson, Julie Andrews, Betty White--unfortunately, you missed Judy Blume, who was interviewed on Saturday), or whether you want to walk around and visit the tents where small publishers, literary nonprofits, and LA book stores have set up shop for the weekend on the USC campus, the Festival of Books is a great opportunity to see your favorite authors in person and to discover new writers. (That was one long sentence, fitting for one long literary day! Highlights for me: seeing my former teacher and friend Aimee Bender on the Fairy Tale panel, chatting with Eleanor Henderson, a friend-of-a-friend and author of the fantastic Ten Thousand Saints, after the "At Loose Ends" panel, and contributing a couple unfettered lines to an exquisite corpse poem at the Smokin' Hot Indie Lit Lounge...)
Don't miss the Smokin' Hot Indie Lit Lounge, where Santa Barbara poet Michelle Detorie performed a version of The Poetry Booth on Saturday, and where SB poet and novelist Melinda Palacio can be found on Sunday from 11:45am to 1:30pm (Booth #391).
Speaking of Santa Barbara writers, novelist Ramona Ausubel, author of No One Is Here Except All of Us, will be on a panel at 3pm on Sunday. The panel is on "Writing Across the Globe."
The most difficult part of the festival--aside from finding parking, or remembering where you parked your car--is deciding between all the fantastic-sounding panels taking place at the same time.
For a complete schedule:
http://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/
Tags: Melinda Palacio, sbarts, Michelle Detorie, The Poetry Booth, Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Ramona Ausubel, Aimee Bender, Eleanor Henderson
Amy Boutell has an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas and works as an instructor at UCSB's CLAS Writing Lab. Her short stories have been published or are forthcoming in Post Road, New Letters, Nimrod, and Other Voices. Her work has received recognition from the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, the Ragdale Foundation, and Summer Literary Seminars. She is currently revising her first novel, which is set in the world of vintage fashion and is a finalist for the 2012 Pirate's Alley/Faulkner Society Novel-in-Progress Competition.
