Sandra Beasley's Blog, page 18

Introducing: Modern Alice @ TRIP CITY

A funny thing happened in Miami at the Book Fair. In addition to all the hijinks reported in an earlier post, I found myself thinking what has been missing from my professional life. (Damn poets! Never satisfied.) 


401K contributions, paid vacation, free office supplies? Sure. But not just that. While I love thinking in terms of assembling collections and pitching freelance, I'm like every writer--I came to this craft in stolen moments, drafting with the freedom of never expecting an audience. I've missed writing in some unlikely genre, untamed in theme, utterly un-monetizable. Writing as indulgence.


I also thrived on the camaraderie of the Book Fair, and thought about the need to rebuild my community. Everyone needs a home base. Though I have great friendships with writers in DC and Oxford, a recent spate of marriages and moves--not to mention my own tour schedule--set me a little adrift. If I were a journalist, I'd know which watering halls to haunt; if I taught in an MFA program, I'd share tired nods & chat by the coffeemaker. Hard to know where to steer without that kind of compass. 


Enter TRIP CITY: an old-school art circle in a new-school format. This Brooklyn-curated online journal offers a treasure trove of free, exclusive content ranging from comix to prose to interviews to podcasts to video. I've become particularly addicted to Seth Kushner's pop-as-personal essays (such as the great "Patrick Stewart and My Father") and the luminous, oddly gentle visual style of Nick Abadzis (as in "Perfect Imperfect").  The site launched in November of this year and has already garnered buzz in the comic world, the Los Angeles Times, and beyond. 


When I met several TC contributors through Literary Death Match (Dean Haspiel, Jeff Newelt, Jennifer Hayden), I recognized the glow of people who have a deep respect for one another's work--and also truly, deep down, like each other. It helps that a lot of them share a physical space via the HANG DAI studios in Brooklyn's Cobble Hill neighborhood (next to famed indie store BookCourt). So when Dean asked if I might be interested in contributing a monthly feature, I thought, Hell yeah. 


But what to write for them? Ever since I first began tried my hand at the Washington Post Magazine's "XX Files," I have loved the musculature of the 700-900 word essay. What if I used that same length to explore...(deep breath)...fictions? And that's how MODERN ALICE was born. It's a space devoted to capturing both the realities and fantasies of the 21st Century Alice–a woman who is independent, curious, and ready to step through the looking glass.


So check out today's debut: HOT FOR SANTA. Yes, you read that title correctly. I hope it's fun to read; it sure was fun to write. 


While you're at it, check out TRIP CITY's Podcast #4, which features me alongside author/filmmaker Miranda July (!), sound artist Krista Dragomer, & Williamsburg music project Edison Woods. I had a great time being interviewed by Dean Haspiel, author/artist of the Billy Dogma series (e.g. "The Last Romantic Antihero") and Emmy-winning contributor to Bored to Death. You can stream the podcast or download it to iTunes. 

Catching Breath

What's happened since we last spoke? 
Food Allergy Ball at the Waldorf Astoria. Meetings with my editorial teams at Crown and W. W. Norton. A few hours spent wandering the Museum of Modern Art. A night watching Hugh Jackman sing his way through some Broadway tunes. (I accidentally walked in besides Donald Trump and Melania...I kinda wanted to reach out and touch his hair, but resisted.) A photo shoot at HANG DAI studio--more on that soon--then a delightful BookCourt reading by Joe Infurnari/Glenn Eichler (Mush! Sled Dogs with Issues), Nick Abadzis (Laika), and Dean Haspiel ("Billy Dogma: The Last Romantic Antihero").


I caught a 7 AM train from New York City back to DC. A slow taxi home from Union Station meant I barely had time to bring bags up to my apartment--and only seconds to register that my refrigerator has begun making suspicious noises--before hopping into my car and driving an hour to Mt Hebron High School in Ellicott City, where I had a 12:30 classroom visit (part of a series as the Poet-in-Residence for the Howard County Poetry & Literature Society). The "visit" turned out to be a full-out reading in the library for over 50 kids. I dashed in as the bell was ringing to start the period, and an uncharacteristic coughing spell racked its fingernails across the opening delivery of "Another Failed Poem about the Greeks." But I pushed through, and afterwards a girl who had sat in the front row introduced herself as a budding writer. She'd spent the night before looking up my work and YouTube clips; she had me sign her program; we took a photo. And in that moment I knew the hustle had been worth it.


Now I'm back in my noisy apartment (maybe the fridge's fan belt is the problem?), innards of my suitcase still spread on the floor, adjusting to the thought of being home for an entire month. Good music helps. At the moment, I'm listening to CEREMONIALS by Florence + The Machine; before that, it was the Beastie Boys.


Next up is the Brother Ali album US, which I bought after listening to it at Mother Fool's Coffeehouse in Madison, Wisconsin, the afternoon before my memoir reading. Hard to believe that is already one week (and two cities) back, but it was a wonderful day spent reading, wandering Williamson Street's co-op and art galleries, and getting to meet Christi Craig, a fellow blogger and mother to an allergic child.




Head over to Christi's WRITING UP AN APPETITE blog for my guest-post on the travails of eating on the road--and a chance to win a giveaway copy of Don't Kill the Birthday Girl. 


I'm grateful to be back in my DC community, and I won't be able to risk the siren call of hearing Matthea Harvey read from Of Lamb at 826DC this Tuesday, or seeing Much Ado About Nothing with my friend at the Shakespeare Theater later this week, or visiting my beloved holiday train display at the Botanical Gardens. But overall, this is going to be a working month. I have edits to turnaround for a major Washington Post piece, a new series I'll be launching with the good folks at TRIP CITY, notes toward several short craft essays and personal essays that I've been dying to turn into a reality, and a sestina simmering in the back of my mind. 2011's ridiculous amount of travel has been fun, but there's no way around it: if you want to make a living as a full-time writer, you need to write and write some more. Time to see if I can make that happen. 

A Monstrous Sigh of Relief

I just turned in a freelance piece that's been hanging over me for months. Months! The completion of this means more than I can bear to admit. Even if they don't run it, it won't be because I didn't *write* it. So here, now, on a Friday afternoon in Wisconsin, I share my all-time favorite happy dance song: "Shout" by the Isley Brothers.





Now?

I'm going to go for a walk down State Street and some celebratory sushi.

And tonight?

Tonight I'll be at this shindig.

It's gonna be incendiary. 



Pack your pitchforks, ye villagers of Madison.


See you there.

Miami Moments (2011 Book Fair Int'l)

Home. After a 17-hour drive from Florida to DC, which was broken up via an overnight with a friend's mother, a chips & salsa-fest at South of the Border during which I workshopped a friend's latest poetry manuscript, and listening to the memoirs of Roger Ebert as an audiobook read by George Herrmann (Grandpa Gilmore) that includes all you never needed to know about Ebert's sexual awakening. After the 1 AM Wednesday morning arrival when I hauled my suitcase out of the car, fell asleep for four hours, woke to take my shoes off, slept another five hours. After the shopping/cooking spree to prepare for Thanksgiving at my grandmother's house. Now I'm enjoying my post-turkey coma in my satin robe. Home.




Miami Book Fair International was all I could have dreamed of--and that's coming from a girl who has done every conceivable variety of reading, fest, and conference in these past few years. The atmosphere was energized without being frantic. The caliber of presenters was SO high. (I met Susan Orlean! And Chuck Palahniuk! And we actually talked like real people!) I signed books. I did a couple interviews. Here are some glimpses, some memories. They are not comprehensive. But they're all mine. 

I stayed at "Spa Ortega," my friends' house in Coral Gables. They are a family artists and the whole place has an overgrown beauty. I sat on this balcony outside my bedroom each day to eat a quiet lunch before plunging into the Fair maelstrom. 

My first event was Friday's Literary Death Match at Bardot. Here I am as host Todd Zuniga introduces me to my opponent: Jennifer Hayden, author/illustrator of Underwire. Jennifer rocks--great sense of humor--and Todd is a fellow relentless traveler with invaluable energy. (Photo credit Neil de la Flor) 

There are wonderful play-by-plays of the action up at the LDM website, the Knight Arts blog, and New Times Miami, so I won't belabor the point beyond saying three things... 

One: I was giddy to share a stage with T.M. Shine. I have been a fan since reading his essays in the Washington Post Magazine, where we were brought in by the editor (the legendary Tom Shroder or, as Gene Weingarten calls him, Tom the Butcher).

Two: The judges were excellent. Their job isn't an easy; it's delicate to come up with instant critiques--across the categories of "literary merit," "performance," and "intangibles"--that entertain the crowd, hold a smidgen of truth, and don't sacrifice the author. You can only see the tip of Justin Torres's (very expressive) fingers in this shot. The other judges are Jeff Newelt (left), and Dean Haspiel (right, dreaming of puppies). 

Three: If I'd made it to the Spelling Bee round, I'd have kicked Mat Johnson's ass. He gave the most electrifying reading of the night. But the man can't spell for beans.(Photo credit x 4 Todd Zuniga)

On Saturday four blocks of NE Second Avenue filled with families out to enjoy the readings, the sunshine, numerous open-air events for kids, the sheer spectacle. I kept pinching myself, thinking, "This is taking place in November? Really?"

I was bummed that my own signing kept me from the Rock Bottom Remainders, so I made up for it by catching Chuck Palahniuk. What you see here did, in fact, feel more like a 9:30 Club show than a reading. A woman in a deviled-egg costume threw inflatable brains at the audience. CP read a story that first appeared in Playboy. And then a second story, the infamous "Guts," that caused not one but -two- people to pass out in the audience. (Not staged; I was sitting by them.) 

Later that night, I got to talk with CP at the Author's Party. He admitted he dreads being on display for hours in front of an audience, and I realized the histrionics--from the inflatables to candy bars to dancing eggs--is a buffer for a man who is genuinely overwhelmed by crowds, but at this point in his career cannot avoid them. He is sweet and frighteningly talented. The party at Cafeina was fun once you abandoned the front room for the outdoor patio. I was thrilled to reunite with Tom Franklin, Beth Ann Fennelly, and Tayari Jones, and to talk more with Todd and Jennifer. We were in Wynwood, so like all the venues in that neighborhood there was art on display. At one point we feared a bucket o' gilded Kentucky Fried Chicken had gone missing via some drunk writer, but it turns out the owner just had the good sense to hide it. 

Some of us went around the corner to a late-night opening, complete with band and communal graffiti flats. And dancing! Dancing was a highlight. The DJ, Otto Von Schirach, is the fiance of Monica Lopez de Victoria, one-half of the TM Sisters, and a mini LegalArt reunion with Monica, Tasha, Jiae and Juan ensued. And later on...this. This is what happens when you run around with the comics & graphic artist crew. (Photo credit Jeff Newelt, which was his smart way of staying out of the picture)




Best craft services table ever. Look at those melons! Not to mention the red velvet cake. 
Sunday I was honored to share "The Poet's Voice" stage with Denise Duhamel (introducing), Michael Hettich (who I'd met when I read at Books & Books last year), Pablo Medina (I'm awed by his Neruda scholarship) and the incomparable Beth Ann, my Oxford guardian/host/goddess/inspiration/fellow Nortoneer/favorite. (Photo credit Neil de la Flor)

So glad I stuck around to catch Ravi Shankar, a Connecticut friend who I only get to see when we cross paths at conferences & such. One poem, "Oyster," he revealed is dedicated to me in his new book! I'd seen an earlier version in a chapbook and loved it. 

The one reading I was 100% determined to make this weekend was Neil de la Flor and Maureen Seaton sharing from their collaborative book, Sinéad O'Connor and Her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds. (So glad to finally meet and hear Emma Trelles, too.) Though I know from having bumped into them shortly beforehand that their prep time was minimal, you'd have never known it from the reading: funny, smart, unexpectedly poignant. 

Comic book break! I slipped away from "The Poet's Voice" to see some of my new LDM friends in a panel on Harvey Pekar's work and legacy. The rockstar panel consisted of Dean, Joyce Brabner (Pekar's widow), Joseph Remnant, and Jeff. A lot of substantive things discussed, including future publications and the Pekar Project, and some fun trivia too: the origin of American Splendor, Leonardo DiCaprio's onetime hope to play Robert Crumb and a (thankfully) failed attempt to recruit Pekar to write the script for Howard the Duck. 

(Photo credit Neil de la Flor)
I rejoined the poets and we escaped downtown, heading to Soyka for dinner. I had ceviche while others had Matzoh ball soup. That's Miami for you. I sat next to Maureen; we've tried to cross paths in Florida before, always failing, so this was our first chance in years to actually catch up. She was the first teacher I workshopped with after finishing my MFA when I went to the 2005 Indiana Writer's Conference on the Vesle Fenstermaker Scholarship. Time has flown! She said she was proud of me.

Later a few of the hardiest souls drove to Key Biscayne, where we pulled off to look black at the glittering downtown we'd called home for three days. We passed around the flask of scotch. How I have missed this city, its people, my sense of self when held within its arms. In this moment, standing on the shore, I knew: I will be back again and again. 

Miami, We Meet Again

Hey! This week's story up at REDUX ("Work Worth a Second Run") is "Driving in Snow" by Joseph M. Schuster. You can read it here.
Hey! (Part 2) We are now in the Seminfinals round at the Goodreads Choice Awards, so those who voted can vote all over again. Please, please support Don't Kill the Birthday Girl in the "Food and Cooking" category. Write-in votes from the first round determined that my competition now includes not only Gwyneth Paltrow and El Bulli but Paula Dean and Alton Brown. I don't know that I or anyone can take down the Fabulous Paula Deen, Butter Queen...but it would be really amazing if a girl who has never used butter in her life got to share the Finalist round with her. Voting it super-easy and fast; and after November 2o they'll tally votes to determine the Top 5 in each of the 18 categories. There have been over 320,000 votes cast! If you're interested in the slate of SheWriters, I've posted a round-up here. I'm rooting for Tayari Jones's Silver Sparrow in the "Fiction" category.
This week I am really excited to return to Miami, where I spent five weeks in the early part of the year as the inaugural writer-in-residence for LegalArt. I didn't fully appreciate the gift of that opportunity at the time: to step into an unfamiliar city (in a raw downtown neighborhood) and plunge into a community of eight visual artists, complete with avant garde sculpture installations in the sinks and 2 AM ping-pong matches in the shared kitchen. It was completely random and awesome but, of course, I was too damn worn out from my travels to enjoy that. I was missing home, missing a boy in Mississippi, and on deadline for a long reported piece. It had been a while since I'd enjoyed the night-owl rhythms of my 20s and I struggled to get work done. 
Here's a photo that the funny, acerbic, wonderful Miami poet Neil de la Flor took of me one night, when we went out so I could take notes on the Wynwood Art Walk...

I'd made the mistake of turning a gift into a job, thinking that was the Responsible thing to do. But since then, I've realized my time there broadened my understanding of being a working artist in the world. Though sometimes moody (and at one point suffering a beyond-bad allergy attack), I did get to know the real town and the people who make it special. There were great nights. I hope I get to catch a few songs at Luna Star Cafe, treat myself to the beet & heirloom tomato salad at Michael's Genuine and the chickpea panisse at Michy, see what new letterpress posters are up at Sweat Records. I hope I get to walk along the jetty and boardwalk at the south tip of the beach. 
I'm honored to have THREE events in conjunction with Miami Book Fair International. I'll be in the audience, too; on Saturday I hope to catch Gabrielle Hamilton (Blood, Bones and Butter), Karen Russell (Swamplandia!)--I missed her when we were both at the Decatur Book Festival--and I want to hear the Rock Bottom Remainders play (Dave Barry, Scott Turow...a whole lotta writers making a whole lotta noise). On Sunday I'll dash from my reading to hear Oxford friend Tom Franklin (Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter), and then there's an amazing afternoon panel on memoir featuring Bill Clegg, Jill Bialosky, and Kelle Groom. This is one of the biggest literary festivals in the country, and I urge you to come by: a gift to yourself pre-Thanksgiving hassle.  
Where I'll be reading, November 18-20~
LITERARY DEATH MATCH Friday, November 18 - 8 PM - $10 at doorBardot (3456 North Miami Avenue)
"All-star judges--Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club), artist Dean Haspiel (the mastermind behind the Bored to Death intro), and novelist Justin Torres (We the Animals)--will pass judgment on a fierce foursome of diverse combatants, including Mat Johnson (Pym), T.M. Shine (Nothing Happens Until It Happens to You), comics mastermind Jennifer Hayden (the brain behind Underwire), and poet/non-fictionist Sandra Beasley (I Was the Jukebox)."
THREE MEMOIRISTS
Saturday, November 19 - 5 PM - FreeRoom 3410 (Building 3, 4th Floor)at Miami Dade College (300 NE Second Ave.)
"Sandra Beasley on tales from an allergic life, Peter Selgin on his life as an artist, Mireya Mayor on her journey from NFL cheerleader to National Geographic explorer."
THE POET'S VOICE Sunday, November 20 - 12:30 PM - FreeCentre Gallery (Building 1, 3rd Fl, Rm 1365)at Miami Dade College
"Readings by Michael Hettich, Beth Ann Fennelly, Sandra Beasley and Pablo Medina."
See you there. Yes, I'll have my flask. 

If You Don't Ask

The more I tour, the better I get at speaking up. No capricious demands; no all-red M&Ms in the green room or bottles of Fiji water. Sometimes it's a matter of asking for quiet moment to plan my book talk, or dinner at the Sandra-friendly restaurant instead of the pizza party. Sometimes it is a matter of wrestling over copyedits with editors--No, you can't cut that for fit--which I've also been doing from the road, for a freelance piece that will be out later this year. You haven't know frustration until you've tried to proof a PDF layout using an iPhone.


Sometimes it's a matter of saying Hey, I wrote that. Yesterday, walking down a sidewalk in Bronxville the morning after a Sarah Lawrence visit, I saw the local bookstore--Womrath Bookshop. I decided to stop in. 


Would they have Don't Kill the Birthday Girl? Yep, there it was (next to Molly Birnbaum's Season to Taste, one of my favorite and most frequent shelf-neighbors). 

 A year ago this would have been the part where I smiled and walked out quietly. But now I say Hey, I wrote that. Would you like me to sign it?

And that's how you get to leap above Saul Bellow. 
I'm typing this from Fuel, a Great Barrington coffeeshop, after reading at The Bookstore in Lenox last night. A year ago I'd have paid for a hotel room, cursing myself for again losing money on the road. This time I said to the bookstore owner Hey, can you help me? So he let me crash on his couch in Housatonic (and also, borrow his daughter's slippers--the floors of the Berkshires are freezing). We stayed up drinking whiskey, talking books.


I almost moved to Great Barrington once. Feels like a lifetime ago; my first big job search after grad school. I had a chance to become an editorial assistant at Orion: a glossy, creative, beautifully designed nature magazine that even runs poetry. I choked. I backed out. I'd never been to the Berkshires, I'd never even been to New York on my own, and I was scared. It would be a few more years before I'd come up here for the first time--to the Millay Colony--and discover the quirky, vibrant multi-town community that would have embraced me if I'd made the leap. Sometimes, on drives like this one, I feel a little twinge of regret for the adventure not taken. 


I wasn't ready. I didn't recognize my needs, nor did I know how to ask the world to honor them. So often we focus on cultivating voice on the page. We draft. We edit. We proof. Yet you haven't really found your voice until you use it to speak up for yourself. 


Someone told me the other day, You're so good at the self-promotion stuff. It wasn't clear to either one of us whether that was meant as a compliment. The thing is, you have to be ready to be your own best advocate. There's a world of people ready to be excited for you & your work. There's a world of people ready to lend a hand or a couch. But you have to ask. 

A Food-loving Night in Philly (& Goodreads!)

I signed on for some extensive touring in the latter half of October. But it didn't fully hit me until I drove back from Mississippi on Halloween Day, fell asleep fully clothed beside a still-packed suitcase, and woke up Tuesday morning needing to with only an hour to unpack, repack, and get to the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition by 9 AM. 


(FYI, their College Park facility isn't listed in the public directory if you happen to be stuck in Beltway traffic and trying to call. "It better exist," I told the 411 operator.)


What followed was a dozen meetings with scientists, regulatory experts, and high-ranking CFSAN officials, as well as an opportunity to read from Don't Kill the Birthday Girl as part of a talk simulcast to two other FDA facilities. We talked about peanut proteins, FALCPA labeling, the difficulty of determining allergen contamination thresholds, the need for more food challenge data. My favorite moment was when one director started to talk about the challenges his office faced, paused and said "Well, I don't need to tell you--[gesturing at my memoir]--you've got it all in there." 


I came away understanding of the scope of their powers; what they do, what they could do better, what they can't be held responsible for. Those folks are working so hard. I hope my visit put a face on the people they serve and protect. 


What's this got to do with a food-loving night in Philly? Well, I drove directly from the FDA to Union Station, and boarded a train north. On Wednesday I would speak at the Union League for an annual medical conference sponsored by Philadelphia's Children's Hospital. I was excited to see the city--a new one to me. My host, Dr. Joel Fiedler (who contacted me out of the blue after reading the book) picked me up at the station--greeting me with a glittery-wrapped gift. 


"I read your blog and saw you mention this," he said. 


We went to a restaurant called POD that features tables for two set into the walls and red vinyl couches that evoke The Jetsons. Dr. Fiedler is the best of the best allergists--experienced, reasonable, with a sense of humor and compassion. We talked over a meal that included silken Japanese eggplant with niku chicken miso and rich chicken with "Tokyo scallion," both cooked over the 1000-degree robata grill.


"That should kill any offending allergen proteins," Joel joked. 


I remembered my pathetic penny-pinched dinner in the Copley Square Hotel after the Boston Book Festival: sardines out of a tin over rice crackers left over from my Hockessin Book Shelf reading in Delaware. None of that, I decided. This was my final stop before coming home to invariably crash in DC after 22 days on the road. I was going to enjoy. This seemed to be a town friendly to writers, after all. How often do you pass public street art that serves to paint the concrete around it in light-language?




Over a later scotch at the Union League's bar, a tablemate recommended a gastropub called Dandelion housed in a townhouse down Sansom. (This was one of those random, magical conversations that happens when two strangers order the same pour of single malt...we also talked chess.) After the next day of conversations with research doctors, pediatricians, and nurses, I called my mother from beside the Liberty Bell to tell her I was going out for a great meal before coming home to an empty fridge.


"Just be sure it is safe," she said. She was nervous. The gods of irony had surely noted a morning spent talking about anaphylaxis. My book includes an account a bad biphasic reaction on Amtrak while coming back from a "great meal" in New York City. I promised her I'd be careful. 


Hmmm. The best way to be both indulgent and safe is sometimes to cherry-pick courses from multiple places. I had my reading: the Arkansas music edition of the Oxford American. I had my route: slowly working back from Independence Hall toward where my luggage waited at the Union League. I had my timeline: 3 hours to kill. 


Walking past Washington Square I spotted Talula's Garden. Local, organic, and quirky. Don't let this stock shot fool you; though it has only been open since April, the bar was packed. I went for cocktails--The Butcher (vodka, horseradish, tomato, and a dash of brown ale that added balance) and The Loner (rye, muddled apple and cranberry, and bitters). The Loner is usually made with Black Walnut bitters, but I explained to the bartender that I was worried about other nut extracts amidst the "natural flavors" (see, Mom? being cautious). He was happy to take up the challenge. Two potential bitter options, several exploratory licks--his, not mine--of his fingers and three dashes later, my Loner had a pleasing orange edge. 


Then I made my way along Jeweler's Row until Fat Salmon's neon blue wave decor lured me in. I ordered the Unabara roll (eel, tamago, avocado). It's usually pretty hard for me to find complex rolls; invariably there is random egg, shrimp, or cucumber amidst the hodgepodge. But this was perfectly designed as-is. The eel was sweet, skin crisped. Heaven. I ordered salmon sashimi. I was tempted to keep ordering. But my three hours was rapidly dwindling, and Dandelion waited. 


Picking up my bags took a bit longer than expected, and when I walked into the pub it was, again, packed. I said to the hostess "I'm from out of town, I've heard you all have a great scotch cocktail--but I have a train to catch." What followed was a welcome that had an almost comic urgency. I was going to get the best 25 minutes of service in town, damn it.  Within five minutes I was in a corner seat by a fireplace on the second floor. Within eight minutes I had the "Scotch Honeysuckle": a surprisingly delicate blend of Dewar's, dry vermouth, honey, lemon, and rosewater. Within ten minutes I had a half-dozen beautiful oysters served with a red wine mignonette. 



Some nights are naturally welcoming to the belly and soul. You click with a new city. Spying my family name emblazoned randomly on a building, I knew this was one of those nights. 




This is the same week that I found out my memoir is an official nominee for the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards. The category? "Food & Cooking," which means I am up against paeans to veganism, a year in the life of El Bulli, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Compare the beautiful cover art of fresh tomato bruschetta to...my skull-topped cupcake. I'm a dark horse to say the least. 


But if Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life does climb in the polls, what a great reinforcement that would be of what I've been saying all along: having food allergies doesn't mean you hate food. It shouldn't even mean you fear food. More than most you appreciate food in all of its spectrums, from nuances of taste to history to its power as social currency. I know I do. I travel with a need to eat, not in spite of it. Meals are part of how I explore the world. 


You can go to the Goodreads website to check out the other nominees & cast votes. Every vote counts! They'll narrow it to 10 finalists in each category on November 21. 

Chatting & Touring for DKTBG

On Tuesday I had the pleasure of participating in an online chat hosted at THE MOTHERHOOD on the topic of navigating food allergies around the holidays, particularly Halloween. My co-hosts included Lori Sandler, founder of Divvies Bakery (whose awesome ghost-chocolate is pictured here), Barbara Rosenstein from the Food Allergy Initiative, and Huffington Post writer/"Peanuts in Eden" blogger Susan Weissman. On the archive page you can view a transcript of the complete talk, but the folks at the site also put together a helpful summary that articulates seven primary tips:


-Take the Focus Off of Food i.e. emphasize costumes, house decorations, and games.
-Practice Allergy-Friendly Treating i.e. host parties or create treat routes entirely free of certain allergens.
-Empower Your Kids i.e. let kids be the ones to pick out of the basket, versus handing them candy.
-Think of New Uses for Candy i.e. focus on candy variety in terms of a scavenger hunt or Bingo card, instead of as food; or use as currency to trade in for safe prizes or even money, Tooth-Fairy style.
-Safety First i.e. guard against cross-contamination and unexpected sources of exposure, such as via masks and haunted houses.
-Be Available at Your Children's Halloween Parties i.e. give the visual assurance that the party host is in on the food-allergy plan, from seeing them speak with parents to using color-coded serving ware.
-Take Care of Kids' Emotional Needs i.e. pay attention to making kids feel not only secure, but included.

As venues go, I love The Motherhood. Everyone shares such a positive attitude--it is all about constructive volunteering of ideas--and the technical mode of chiming in couldn't have been easier or more user-friendly. I'll definitely return in the future. 


I logged in from a hotel room outside Birmingham, where the night before I had served as the inaugural guest of the Visiting Writer Series at Indian Springs School. So within 24 hours I connected with two very different audiences--the moms and the kids. It meant a lot to me to see teenagers buy Don't Kill the Birthday Girl not because they have allergies themselves, but because they were intrigued by the voice. Maybe it'll be the science that they remember, or maybe it'll be my goofy stories. Either way, maybe reading the book will foster a bit of compassion, too, even if they don't realize it...a serving of green vegetables hidden under the mashed potatoes.


These past few weeks have worn me out. Yesterday I woke up in Jackson; today in Greenwood; tomorrow, Oxford. Day 18 of life in a suitcase. Still, the conversations make it worthwhile. I never knew there were so many different kinds of readers in the world until I began touring for this book. 

Sidetrips

My crazy drive from the Kripalu Yoga Center to Boston on Friday was a little crazier than I let on--or rather, crazy by choice. When I had arrived in the Berkshires on Wednesday, I'd experienced an incredible rush of nostalgia for my days at the Millay Colony in upstate New York--the September 2006 residency where I wrote many of the poems that would appear in Theories of Falling. Though I remembered daytripping to Great Barrington during my stay in Austerlitz, I hadn't put 2 + 2 together that Lenox, Lee, and all the other little Massachusetts towns are just minutes down the road.


I miss those days of blind energy. I wasn't on book tour, back then; I didn't have a book to tour with. I was just a girl getting lost in the mountains by day, writing poems by night, not sure where it was all going. So I decided to drive out to see MASS MoCA, one trip I'd never made in my Millay days (though some of the other artists had gone and loved it). And I promised myself that if I saw anywhere I wanted to stop along the way, I would. 


Random lake surrounded by fire-crowned trees? Yep. 


Random roadside truck full of fall produce? Yep. 
[image error] I talked with this guy for a bit; he happily elaborated on which gourds were for decoration, which for eating. I thought back to the pumpkins I've had over the years, from fat generic guys we'd pick out as a family--I'd hunt for perfect symmetry--to an albino "ghost" pumpkin I carved on the floor of my Brown College dorm (which smelled of pumpkin guts for the rest of the fall), to the mini guys my mother gave me when I had my first DC apartment and no doorstep to set a pumpkin out upon. One bright orange kind I would have gotten had he not told me it was actually a squash. He'd heard people who kept that particular variety on display for three, four weeks, then went ahead and cooked them. That sounded weird to him. 
The one thing he doesn't do, he told me, is travel. 

While the pumpkin farmer may not travel, his pumpkin got to ride with me all the way over to Boston, then back to DC. I'll be on the road on October 31 proper this year: making my back from Mississippi in time for a visit to the FDA on November 1, then hopping on a train to speak at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia on November 2. So when I saw my sister last night (she got us front & center tickets to hear David Sedaris read! he was funny! she is awesome!) I entrusted this guy to her care and safekeeping. 
When I got to MASS MoCa I discovered it was a quirky complex of 19th-century mill buildings. It opened in 1986 after having operated for 40 years as the home of the Sprague Electric Company, which did everything from design some of the early at-home music players to contribute technology to building the atom bomb in World War II. They've has done a nice job juxtaposing the original materials--exposed brick and iron--with surreal contemporary pieces such as this black-blob structure by Federico Diaz that crawls along the exterior. This is "Geometric Death Frequency-141." I suspect the changing exhibitions are chosen in part for their ability to occupy the museum's vast spaces. This installation by German artist Katharina Grosse, "One Floor Up More Highly," fills a room the length of a football stadium. Since the piece comes down at the end of the month, I was lucky to catch it--it has been widely celebrated, and holds the distinction of having been pictured on the cover of both ArtForum and Sculpture Magazine. The porcelain surface glow of the carved styrofoam was great--as if icebergs, or a scene from the set of Superman. I thought the mixing in of cloth swathes among the rubble was intriguing. I'd be lying if I said I had an emotional response to the work. Still, I appreciated the spectacle. In contrast, I loved a series by Nari Ward exhibited as "Sub Mirage Lignum." "Sub," as in both "underneath" and "in substitution for"; "mirage," as in false or fleeting images produced by desire, refraction, a trick of the light; "lignum," which MASS MoCA pointed out is a shorthand for Lignum Vitae, "a tree whose bloom is the national flower of Jamaica." To put it another way: Ward is an alchemist of discarded objects.


Approached from the mouth, "Nu Collossus"--which takes its form from a traditional woven fishtrap--is a gaping maw, swallowing up bits of weathered furniture and farm equipment. It feels like a mid-turn tornado, laid upon its side. But from the other end you can appreciate the grace and even delicacy of the shape; in this way I found myself thinking of Martin Puryear, one of my favorite sculptors to work with wood. 

The other piece I connected with was in the "Memery" exhibit on "Imitation, Memory, and Internet Culture," which was housed in a space often given to up-and-coming artists. Penelope Umbrico, a Brooklyn artist, first assembled a matrix of photographs she calls "Suns From Flickr (2006-2007)." The piece quickly spawned a secondary phenomenon: people taking snapshots with the wall of irresistible sunsets, then posting those images on the web. So here you have it: "People with Suns From Flickr."


And, since the inspiring piece (I was going to write "original piece" but that isn't quite right) was on the adjacent wall, here is my contribution.

It wasn't until I was leaving that I registered that the blaze of orange leaves I'd taken for granted on my way in were not growing up from the ground but rather, suspended from the air. This is called "Tree Logic" by Natalie Jeremijenko.


I got back on the road and discovered Route 2, which I needed to connect to Boston, was closed. I'd have to go back the way I came. It started to rain. It started to rain harder. It had gotten late enough in the day that the mountain roads began to be crowded with school buses, which then stopped every 100 feet. That's the thing about sidetrips: you can turn the handle on the jack-in-the-box but you never know just how high he's gonna leap when the lid comes off. You just have to go with it. And I did.

Kicking Off the Boston Book Festival

Last night I made a drive from the Berkshires to Boston in the pouring rain, arriving just in time to grab a seat at "The Art of The Wire: A Discussion with the Cast and Creators."  The panel featured fellow DC writer George Pelecanos,  Donnie Andrews (the real "Omar"), Fran Boyd (Andrews's wife and the inspiration for The Corner, which in some ways was the prequel to The Wire), Tray Chaney (who played "Poot"), Robert Chew ("Prop Joe"), and Jamie Hector ("Marlo Stanfield").

That's them, seated left to right--I surreptitiously snapped a shot of the stage from Row D. Sorry about the quality but I was nervous the director of the festival, who happened to be sitting in the seat behind me, would tell me to put my damn phone away.

As someone who watched and loved all five seasons of The Wire, it was great to hear their insights. Three highlights:

-George Pelecanos's brave admission (in response to an audience question) that The Wire, though it did have women writers on staff, "could have done better" by its women characters in terms of complicating and/or illuminating their motivations.

-The "real Omar," in response to the suggestion that the show reinforced stereotypes, said "How can you stereotype reality? ... Back in the day, I'd be walking down the sidewalk with someone--just two of us--and a white woman coming up the other way would clutch her pocketbook to her chest. I don't snatch pocketbooks! I might put a gun in your face, but I won't snatch your pocketbook."

-Finding out Robert Chew, who had previously worked for years as a theater teacher, had been assigned to coach the kid actors featured in Season 4 (the one that focused on the schools). I love the mental image of Prop Joe running lines. Several people on stage said Season 4 was their favorite.

I feel really, really lucky to be here. Today, I get to read from I Was the Jukebox and speak with Stephen Burt and Jessica Bozek on persona poetry at 10:30 AM; then I join Ben Ryder Howe, Carlos Eire, and Maisie Houghton for a panel on the art of memoir at 4:15 PM. You can find the full schedule here.