Caroline Leavitt's Blog, page 66

November 8, 2014

Clea Simon talks about her gripping new novel, STAGES OF GREY, subtext, how meaning matters, and so much more

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margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; <span aria-haspopup="true" role="menuitem" tabindex="-1" id=":10.92" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-header-margin:.5in; <span aria-haspopup="true" role="menuitem" tabindex="-1" id=":10.93" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-footer-margin:.5in; <span aria-haspopup="true" role="menuitem" tabindex="-1" id=":10.94" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H8dTf-zpUbg..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H8dTf-zpUbg..." height="320" width="277" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i> I first met <a href="http://www.cleasimon.com/" style="font-style: normal;">Clea Simon</a> on a now-defunct writers' forum many years ago, and we soon became friends. She's not only a prolific and talented author, she's the kind of friend you email every day for advice, support, or just to say hello. She's the author of three nonfiction books and the Theda Krakow and Dulcie Schwartz mystery series. The Theda books include Mew is For Murder, Cattery Row, Cries and Whiskers, and Probably Claws,<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> <i>all published by </i><a href="http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/books... Pen Press</a>. <i>Her Dulcie Schwartz series, featuring Dulcie and the ghost of her late, great cat Mr. Grey (</i></span>from <i><a href="http://www.severnhouse.com/default.as..." style="font-style: normal;">Severn House</a>)</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i> are: Shades of Grey, Grey Matters, Grey Zone, Grey Expectations, </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i><span style="font-style: normal;">True Grey</span>, </i><span style="font-style: normal;"><i>Grey Dawn,</i> </span>and Grey Howl. And, finally, her  Pru Marlowe </span><a href="http://cleasimon.blogspot.com/2008/06..." style="font-style: normal;">pet noir</a> <i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> <i>series began with</i> <i>Dogs Don't Lie, Cats Can't Shoot</i>, </span></i>Parrots Prove Deadly, <i><span style="font-style: normal;"><i>and continues this spring with </i></span>Panthers Play for Keeps<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">. </span></i></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i>Here, she talks about her latest Dulcie Schwartz mystery, Stages of Grey, writing, and so much more. I'm delighted to have her here. Thank you, Clea!</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZJNayBGj9Vo..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZJNayBGj9Vo..." height="320" width="204" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Steal Away</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">When writing a novel, we tend to start with a story. Character and plot. For a mystery writer, that usually means a murder. But as I work on a book – and I think this is common to all of us writers – I often come to realize that there’s something else going on. A subtext. And as I read through my latest mystery, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stages of Grey</i>, I realized that I wasn’t writing about a murder as much as I was really writing about stealing – specifically about how art steals – or, perhaps I should say, how art appropriates.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Central to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stages of Grey</i> is a theatrical production based on a real-life theatrical experience – a musical, a disco interpretation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Midsummer Night’s Dream</i>that was launched in New York and has since spread nationwide, proving hugely popular. Called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Donkey Show</i>, I saw it when it opened in Cambridge, and, well, I hated it. I felt robbed<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>of the two hours I spent watching it. I came of age in the disco era – Nile Rodgers still gets me dancing – but I thought <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Donkey Show</i> was crap. Worthless as an interpretation of the original Shakespeare But not perhaps useless…</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Allow me to step back for a moment and explain. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stages of Grey</i> is the eighth in a series featuring my amateur sleuth Dulcie Schwartz, graduate student doing her dissertation at Harvard on the Gothic novels of the late 18<sup>th</sup> Century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>These books – like the contemporary spin-offs of the same name – are wild adventures, replete with ghosts and romance, vampires, sex and violence. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Now, although she is quite taken by these books, Dulcie sees herself as a highly rational person. Although readers will I hope see how her bookishness may in fact blind her to reality, she thinks of herself as an intellectual, a realist. Clear headed. This despite the fact that there are the elements of the Gothic – in particular, a certain feline ghost – that creep into her well-ordered scholarly life.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Dulcie’s life is in her books, and therefore she must be dragged by her friends to her local theater – in her case to see a disco version of Ovid’s Metamorphosis – a production that I’ve called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Changes, the Musical</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">To give <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Changes </i>a believable, if laughable, life on the page, I borrowed bits and pieces from everywhere. From <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Donkey Show, </i>of course, but from other productions as well. And because my readers have come to expect a certain feline presence in my books – more important to my mysteries than any particular dance numbers – from Spiegelworld, the adult-themed tented circus, I stole one particular star turn} a cat who walks on a tight rope. All of this went into imagining a production that hides betrayal and results in a gruesome murder, because these, of course are not only the basics of Gothic fiction, they are essential to crime fiction. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">When Dulcie sees the play, she is unaware of the nasty backstage goings on. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is, however, totally unimpressed by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Changes</i>, In particular, she feels it misappropriates. That it steals to no purpose. And at some point, while working on this book, I realized that the entire Dulcie series is a study on appropriation</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Some of this was intentional: The Gothic novels that Dulcie loves were popular fiction – hugely popular – They were written largely by and for women – and largely disparaged by critics. And so, yes, for me, they have served as a stand-in for crime fiction and the debate over genre fiction going on today.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It may be important to note that when I started the series, I couldn’t find one Gothic novel that served my purposes – one book that my heroine could attach herself to. So I patched together tropes and clichés, endangered ladies and nefarious lords to create <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ravages of Umbria</i>, the fictional fiction that is subject of Dulcie’s dissertation. After all, I told myself, there is nothing new under the sun – or under the blood-red wolfish moon that shines over the Mountains of Umbria, where Hermetria – the heroine of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ravages, </i>battles a fiendish power. Yes, mountains in Umbria. The original Goths weren’t big on authenticity either</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">We writers are all carrion crows – feasting on the scraps. Not just in the Gothic or crime fiction genres but also in so-called high art literary fiction. (We all know literary fiction is just another genre, right?) We all do it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Shakespeare did it, too. One source of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Midsummer Night’s Dream</i> was Ovid’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Metamorphosis</i>. And Ovid’s masterwork was itself a composite of hundreds of earlier myths.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But we crime writers are a moral lot, and so I feel the need to justify.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>If there is nothing new, and it is all appropriation – what Richard Posner in his “little book of plagiarism” calls “Creative imitation” – the issue, then, isn’t of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">originality</i>, but as I realized when I was first trying to understand my own reaction to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Donkey Show </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stages of Grey</i>. The question is of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">utility</i>. And once I had arrived at this, I began to realize how many other things I had stolen – and how complicated this process is.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">How do we use what we’ve stolen? Do we transform it? Do we find new meaning in old forms – using them to shed light on something eternal, like Ovid and Shakespeare did, to study the different facets of love? Or can we put them to use to illustrate and explain something current, like perhaps an ongoing contemporary literary debate about genre? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Maybe, ultimately, meaning doesn’t matter. Maybe all that matters is that the appropriation updates something of value. That it entertains. In other words, Does it have a beat and can we dance to it? In the case of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Donkey Show</i>, excuse me – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Changes, the Musical</i> – I think not. For <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stages of Grey</i> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and for Dulcie Schwartz in general, well I hope so.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m not saying I’m Shakespeare, far from it – though he too was a commercial writer churning them out for an audience just like so many of us are. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I am saying he stole with the best of them and is – in turn – stolen from. So maybe I have to forgive <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Donkey Show</i>. Without that, I wouldn’t have <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Changes</i>, and without that, I wouldn’t have <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stages of Grey.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Clea Simon writes the Dulcie Schwartz and Pru Marlowe mysteries, the next of which will be <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kittens Can Kill</span>, to be published by Poisoned Pen Press in March 2015. <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stages of Grey</span> was published by Severn House in October. She can be reached at </span><a href="http://www.cleasimon.com/">&l... style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">www.cleasimon.com</span></a&... style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> or on Twitter at @Clea_Simon</span></i></div><i> </i><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>
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Published on November 08, 2014 14:45

November 6, 2014

Andrea Miles writes about how her rivetting debut, TRESPASSERS came to be










What happens to a family in the aftermath of abuse? That's the stunning story of Andrea Miles' debut, Trespassers. Susan Straight calls it "A wild ride through one family's tough road to redemption.' Julia Fierro praises its "Gripping portrait of characters struggling with their darkest fears and regrets," and  Amy Koppelman calls it "brave and powerful." Trespassers. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of Trespassers is being donated to Big Oak Ranch, a home for children needing a chance.

Thank you so much, Andrea for being on the blog.
How Trespassers Came To BeBy Andrea Miles
Some writers have a plan when they sit down to write. They know where they will end up and often know most (if not all) of the path that will take them to the end.  Currently, I’m trying to be less of a “by the seat of my pants” kind of writer, but with my first novel it took me awhile to find my story. In fact, the published Trespassers is quite different from the Trespassers I set out to write.
When Trespassersbegan with a few pages and no title, it was about siblings. Siblings who didn’t get along, who preferred to never see each other, who avoided family dinners and made excuses to skip holiday celebrations. I was incredibly naïve when I left for college and so I was astounded when I met people who hated their siblings. I loved my brother. All my friends loved their siblings.  How could you hate the person you grew up with, someone as close as a sibling could be? I didn’t understand it and it intrigued me.
Then, when I moved to Chicago, I was confronted with almost daily news stories of children who were abused by their parents, or other close relatives. I couldn’t understand how a person who was supposed to love a child more than anything in the world could neglect them, hurt them, possibly even kill them.
I put my story about siblings aside and I started again, writing about a little girl who was abused. Pages filled up with scenes, but not with a full storyline. And then I began to wonder about the kids who managed to survive childhood. How were they as adults?  What if the little girl I was writing about survived her tragic childhood? What would her life look like as an adult? So my story changed again, the pages I’d written became backstory, the little girl became an adult woman and guess what? She had a brother she once loved, but now sought revenge against. And Trespasserswas born.
Despite Chicago being the place of inspiration, I did not set the story in Chicago. I mention New Jersey and Florida, but that’s about it. I could’ve written about the Florida palm trees and the orange-scented air, but I wanted Trespassers to be a story that could happen anywhere. This family could be your neighbor in California or Maine; Melanie could be the woman refilling your coffee in Iowa or New Mexico.
Abuse, whether physical, emotional, or sexual, happens everywhere, in big cities and small towns. As I delved deeper into the subject, I knew I needed to do something bigger than just writing a book. I knew if I ever got Trespassers published, I would donate a portion of the proceeds to a charity that helps abused kids.  Because I live in Birmingham I chose Big Oak Ranch (www.bigoakranch.org), a charity here in Alabama that helps kids who are abused or neglected. I can’t write a book that everyone in the world will love, but I can write a book that allows people, whether they like the book or not, to feel good for helping a deserving charity.
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Published on November 06, 2014 10:10

The amazing Sonia Taitz talks about her wild and wonderful new novel, DOWN UNDER, Mel Gibson, lost love, women's capacity for grace and so much more

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mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-.25in;} @list l0:level6 {mso-level-number-format:roman-lower; mso-level-tab-stop:none; mso-level-number-position:right; text-indent:-9.0pt;} @list l0:level7 {mso-level-tab-stop:none; mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-.25in;} @list l0:level8 {mso-level-number-format:alpha-lower; mso-level-tab-stop:none; mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-.25in;} @list l0:level9 {mso-level-number-format:roman-lower; mso-level-tab-stop:none; mso-level-number-position:right; text-indent:-9.0pt;} ol {margin-bottom:0in;} ul {margin-bottom:0in;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="background: white; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="background: white; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="background: white; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H4dr2x4_LBg..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H4dr2x4_LBg..." /></a></b></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3z3DKZuazek..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3z3DKZuazek..." height="320" width="213" /></a></b></div><br /><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="background: white; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="background: white; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="background: white; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><br /></div><i> Confession: I know and adore <a href="http://www.soniataitz.com/">S... Taitz.</a> I loved her novels first, and then I met her, and a bond of friendship was cemented. Not only is she a truly great writer, (and I'm not the only one to think so. All you have to do is read her reviews and take note of her prizes to see I'm right), she's the kind of person you could call at four in the morning and she'd wake up and sit by the phone and talk to you and, most importantly of all, not be the one to hang up first. I have loved all her novels, all lavishly praised from the New Yorker to The New York Times, including The Watchmaker's Daughter, Mothering Heights, In the King's Arms (nominated for the $100,000 grant from the Jewish Book Council) for the Sami Rohr Prize in Fiction. <br /><br />Down Under, her new novel, is about a famous actor's fall from grace and the long-lost love he pines for. Sonia has also written for The New York Times, the New York Observer, Psychology Today, and The Huffington Post.</i><br /><i>I can't tell you how thrilled I am to host Sonia here.  Thank you, thank you, Sonia, for this and for so many other graces.</i><b><br /><br /> I always want to know what sparks a particular book.  What’s the question this book is asking that has been haunting you? And did you get the answer you expected?</b> I’m always wondering about which is better – wild, passionate love (the kind that can burn in both good and bad senses), or long-term, reliable commitment. I explore these options in Down Under, seeing each possibility through to its conclusion. And no, I didn’t get the answer I expected! As a matter of fact, I was surprised nearly all the way through. Even after writing the last page of the novel, I got up and added another ending – a surprise one that I’ve kept.<br /><b><br /> You’ve described Down Under as seriocomic—which is very much is!—and I’d like to know how difficult it was to sustain the tone. Was there ever a moment when you felt yourself veering more towards serious or comic?<br /><br /> </b>The writers I like best (and the people I like best) can be both poignant and playful. Usually not at the same time. But there are moments when a bit of each ingredient, shaken together, combine to make the best cocktail. I grew up in a fairly dramatic household (my parents were war-tossed immigrants, Holocaust survivors), so the ability to see the humor in even the most serious conversations saved us all from gloom. Humor gave us a perspective and a say – even as my family and I stumbled through our growing years together.  We all stumble. I agree with Shakespeare, who has Puck blurt, in the middle of Midsummer Night’s Dream, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” We poor mortals can’t help being foolish – especially in matters of love and family -- and it’s OK to revel in that fact. So in the case of Down Under, there are several scenes that are deeply serious – such as when the main characters, Judy and Collum, meet at teenagers and fall deeply in love, or when they eventually face each other, decades later. But at the same time, their Quixotic journey (like Quixote himself) is often quite comical.<b><br /> </b><br /><b> You’ve also said that a character in the book, Collum, is loosely based on Mel Gibson, which I find fascinating.  (How does a beloved movie star hide his anti-Semitism for so long?) Since writing characters involves so much psychological understanding, did you discover that any of your feelings about Gibson, or people like him, changed as you were writing?<br /><br /> </b>I have always loved Mel Gibson, and there even was a span of a few years where he made not one but two movies on my very block. Yes, the “Sexiest Man Alive” and I were breathing the same air, sort of. Naturally, as a child of Holocaust survivors, I was hurt when my idol seemed to spout concepts I’d heard mentioned in the most fearful ways by my parents. But I believe that to understand is to forgive. When you write a book, you not only come to understand your characters, but you forgive their foibles -- and end up loving them all the more. Believe it or not, I developed a sense of kinship with Mel while writing fictionally about Collum – a boy raised by a frightening, autocratic father. In my book, Collum’s heart is broken by a Jewish girl, just before he’s whisked off to Australia. It’s broken in so many pieces that even stardom can’t save him, and that’s why, years later, he feels driven to find her again. Who wouldn’t love a braveheart like that?<b><br /><br /> Down Under is so much about the persistence of love. Why do you think young love is so often dismissed, and yet it can (as it is here), one of the most powerful forces in our lives?  Why does the past impact us so much?</b> Young hearts are true. I adore the innocent faith of children, and there is a lot of the child, still, in the young adult. They feel everything intensely; they love with all their souls; their trust in life’s wisdom is complete, so they take heady chances. Furthermore, their emotional “clay” in some sense, is not only blank but wet, unset – so imprints made on them are lasting. Writers, at best, try to keep that susceptible part of themselves alive. When I write, I feel like a beginner with a pure, untrammeled heart. I lay out the wet clay and let events impact me. I wander, I explore, I take chances, and I learn – right along with the most foolish of my characters. Each book I write leaves an imprint on me, and I hope it does the same for the reader.<b><br /><br /> I think the title, Down Under, is really a great one because it operates   on a few levels. Can you talk about that, please?<br /><br /> </b>The first level, of course, is that Collum is born in upstate New York, and is taken to Australia – the land “down under” -- in his teens. But the better meaning of the title is “what lies beneath.” Down under, below our daily routines, what do we actually yearn for? What do we hunger for? Who is it we’re looking for? On another level, of course, “down under” suggests a sexy sense of secrets that are concealed and revealed.  <b><br /> </b><br /><b>What’s obsessing you now and why?</b>Now that Down Under is coming out, I’m beginning to be obsessed about writing a sequel to it. I hate absolute endings in life and in books, and always feel that characters keep growing, even after the final acts or pages. How I’d love to read a truly rendered sequel to “Cinderella!” Is there one? Maybe I ought to write it. There would be lots of opportunity there for the “seriocomic” after that whirlwind romance. (How long did they know each other? A few hours?) On the other hand, to write about their romance growing – instead of growing stale -- would be the most wonderful challenge. I’m a romantic, and I want love to last.<b><br /></b> I’m also consumed by the notion that women get old. We don’t “get” old; we “grow” older. Like that lifelong romance (that no one’s written), a woman’s life is a process, an experiential pact, growing richer by the years. Ideally, we develop, we ripen, we deepen, unfurl. It’s hard to keep this in mind when the Western ideal (bombarding us day and night) is that we stay young, tinny-voiced and untouched forever. The older I become – the more years I attain -- the more I see enormous potential in time. We women have a lifelong capacity for the kind of beauty and grace that cannot fade. (It comes to the foreground as illusions fall away.) I also see a growing potential in our society to recognize that kind of beauty.<b><br /><br /><br />What question didn’t I ask that I should have?<br /><br /> </b>Caroline Leavitt, why didn’t you ask what makes a writer great? I have the answer. Two things – the ability to write, and a heart as big as the Sequoia National Forest. Can you think of anyone who satisfies both these requirements? Can you think of someone, anyone, who writes best-sellers AND invites other authors to answer great questions on her blog? I can.
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Published on November 06, 2014 10:00

A reading to Raise Funds for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza and Palestine

Please come!    

A reading to raise funds for          Doctors Without Borders                         in Gaza and Palestine
         We are all familiar with the heroic work of Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres) working with Ebola patients in West Africa. However it is not the only area in which these amazing men and women work to better the health of millions.  The recent destruction in Gaza and nearby territories is also an area where Doctors Without Borders are healing the minds and bodies of the trauma victims of recent battles in that region. Doctors Without Borders have a motto: “Compassion Knows NO Boundaries.”

         It is in their spirit that we are giving a reading to raise funds for this group’s indefatigable work.

WHERE:        Book Culture                           536 W. 112 St, NY, NY 10025                           212 865 1588
WHEN:           December 4th 2014 7PM
The following writers have generously agreed to participate they are:
CARA HOFFMANis the author of the critically acclaimed novels Be Safe I Love You (Simon and Schuster 2014) and So Much Pretty (Simon and Schuster 2011). She has lectured at Oxford, Columbia and St. John's Universities. Her essays appear in The New York Times, Salon, NPR, and Marie Claire

CAROLINE LEAVITT is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow, Pictures of You, Girls In Trouble, Coming Back To Me, Living Other Lives, Into Thin Air, Family, Jealousies, Lifelines, Meeting Rozzy Halfway. Various titles were optioned for film, translated into different languages, and condensed in magazines. Her ninth novel, Pictures of You, went into three printings months before publication and is now in its fourth printing. A New York Times bestseller.

LEORA SKOLKIN-SMITH was born in Manhattan in 1952 and spent her childhood between Pound Ridge, New York, and Israel, with regular visits to her mother’s birthplace in Jerusalem. She earned her BA, MFA, and a teaching fellowship from Sarah Lawrence College. As a writer, she has received numerous awards and honors, including a PEN/ Faulkner Grant, a Robert Gage Foundation Grant, and a PEN American Center Grant. In addition to her debut novel, Edges, she is the author of Hystera, winner of the 2012 USA Book Award and 2012 Global E-books Award, as well as an International Book Awards and National Indie Excellence Awards finalist. She has written essays for The Washington PostPsychology Today, and The National Book Critics Circle’s Critical Mass blog, and is currently a contributing editor to ReadySteadyBooks.com.

BEVERLY GOLOGORSKY is author of  the recent novel Stop Here , an Indie Pick and Reader’s Digest Pick, as well as of the acclaimed novel The Things We Do to Make It Home, a NY Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Best Fiction Book, and a finalist for the Barnes and Nobles Discover Great Writers Award, which the NY Times described as "stunning and completely persuasive." Her work has appeared in anthologies and magazines, including the NY Times, Newsweek, The Nation and the Los Angeles Times. Former editor of two political journals, Viet-Report and Leviathan, noted for her historical contribution to Feminists Who Changed America, Gologorsky's essays appear in Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides and The Friend Who Got Away, Twenty Women's True Life Tales of Friendships that Blew Up, Burned Out or Faded Away, among others.






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Published on November 06, 2014 09:47

November 4, 2014

Linda Gray Sexton talks about Bespotted: My Family's Love Affair with Thirty-Eight Dalmatians, writing, her mother Anne Sexton, and so much, much more

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mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-.25in;} @list l0:level8 {mso-level-number-format:alpha-lower; mso-level-tab-stop:none; mso-level-number-position:left; text-indent:-.25in;} @list l0:level9 {mso-level-number-format:roman-lower; mso-level-tab-stop:none; mso-level-number-position:right; text-indent:-9.0pt;} ol {margin-bottom:0in;} ul {margin-bottom:0in;} </style><br /><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-k7dW6bYHjWM..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-k7dW6bYHjWM..." height="320" width="213" /></a></i></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5Q_3U9NC0-A..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5Q_3U9NC0-A..." /></a></i></div><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Who doesn't love dogs, especially Dalmatians? Bespotted: My Family's Love Affair with Thirty-Eight Dalmations is Linda Gray Sexton's warm, witty, and deeply moving account of how dogs just might have saved her life, and made her a better person. She's also the author of Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters, and Between Two Worlds: Young Women in Crisis. Her novels include Rituals, Mirror Images, Points of Light, and Private Acts. Points of Light was both a Hallmark Hall of Fame Special and was translated into thirteen languages. Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to my Mother Anne Sexton, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was optioned by Miramax Films. Linda’s second memoir was Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide.<br /><br /> I'm so thrilled to have Linda here!  Thank you so, so much, Linda! i<br /> </i><b><br />What’s so wonderful about this book is that it’s not the usual dog book.  It’s a rich and haunting look at how another species can save our lives emotionally and get us through the darkest times.  What do you think the major things are that we can learn from dogs?</b><br /> Dogs of all sorts provide us with the special kind of love and companionship that we experience only some of the time with the humans in our lives—be they friend or family.  Dogs’ personalities are marked with a strong sense of character, and often I think they live the way we ought to.  As such, they provide us with a kind of role model.  If we are smart, we listen to them.<br /><br />Dogs are honest, compassionate and empathetic, with that “true blue” quality we are always seeking.  Because they never know what is coming, they have learned to live purely in the moment—a trait of which we are often envious—and they savor all that is good and do their best to endure, or ignore, the bad.  Unlike spouses who divorce you or friends who turn their backs on you, dogs never just get up and leave.  This is an example we could learn from.<br /><br />Sometimes dogs pull us through the hardest times of our lives just by the way they take care of us.  When I was suffering from a clinical depression and feeling suicidal in my forties, I relied on my Dalmatian, Gulliver, to guide me through each day and make me believe I could survive.  He is an inspiration to me now.<br /><br />Dogs also provide us with great antics at which we can laugh.  They lighten our days and our burdens and teach us that not everything has to be so serious.  Whether it is jumping high for a biscuit, running in circles for their supper, or just the simple shake of a paw, they delight us with their desire to learn and their smarts.  Even if you have a dog who is not the sharpest tack in the box, you appreciate all he or she tries to do for you, and this, too, gives us an inordinate amount of pleasure, just as does a toddler learning to walk.<br /><br />All in all, dogs enrich our lives and try—whether successfully or not—to teach us to be better human beings.  We could not live without them.<br /><br /><b> The book begins with a wonderful story of how Dalmatians gave birth to one of your mother’s (Anne Sexton’s) most famous poems, about life and survival.  Can you talk about that please</b>?<br /><br /> In 1967, my mother and father unintentionally allowed our Dalmatian girl to escape out of the backyard where she had been confined as soon as she came into heat.  She was immediately bred by the mixed breed dog of my best friend, and my parents were aghast.  They did not want to try and place puppies who did not have AKC papers, so they rebred Penny to the purebred Dal of one of my mother’s friends.  They told us their plan: to drown the puppies as they came if they were not Dalmatians.  My sister and I were crushed, but when the little ones arrived on a snowy morning at 6:00 a.m.—all fortunately snowy white with soon-to-be-black-spots—the four of us sat and watched the whelping with awe.  Penny knew what she was doing and shortly after we discovered what was going on in the basement, she gave birth to her last and eighth puppy.  My sister and I were thrilled at the spectacle before us.  My parents gave up on the idea of drowning the puppies in a pail of water, Joy and I danced around in pure delight, and my mother sat in a worn green armchair, musing.<br /><br />After a time she went upstairs to her study and soon the sound of the manual typewriter she used at that time came pounding down the stairs.  She was writing a poem that she would eventually call “Live,” a poem that would become the centerpiece of the book she was then writing, and which would win her a Pulitzer Prize and a national reputation.  That book was entitled Live or Die, and chronicled her mental illness, her depression, and her suicide attempts—as well as her newly discovered desire to survive, an emotion brought about by the emotionally moving scene we had all just witnessed.  As I say in Bespotted: “The Dalmatian puppies had cheated death.”<br /><b><br /> All of your dogs (all 38 of them!) have been Dalmatians.  What do you think the experience would be like if you got a bulldog or a terrier?  Are you ever tempted?</b><br /><br /> Sometimes I am tempted.  Those Border terriers are awfully cute and smart, with big dog personalities in little dog bodies, but then I remind myself how deeply they dig—all of the time.  I think everyone has the breed they identify with.  For me, it was Dalmatians because during my childhood they embodied life (life for my mother, and therefore the rest of us) and then as the years wore on, I became enraptured with their sense of humor, their joyful way of dealing with life, their smart attitudes, their trainability—well, I could go on and on.  After all, I am a Dalmatian aficionado.  Everyone has a liking for a particular breed and I don’t really think our experiences are that different dog to dog.  Dogs are all characterized by the traits I listed in the first question: physically affectionate, companionable, loving, joyful, and all the rest of it.  Some dogs are not as smart as others, some dogs shed, some dogs bark—and yet their owners put up with whatever it may be because they love the breed.  I could never, truly, imagine any other kind of dog for me, even thought I know many others who do switch breeds, or have one of each kind. The point is: they are all dogs.<br /><br /><b>Can you talk about the science of dog shows?  I’ve watched them choose a Best in Show, and I never quite understand what makes one dog better than another.  Do these standards change?</b><br /><br /> There is indeed a “standard” for every breed, and it is this standard upon which the dog is judged in the ring today, and against which it has always been judged.  The standard does not change and it elucidates what the physical and temperament characteristics of the breed should be, and is set up on a numerical scoring system.  The characteristics themselves are determined by what function the dog was initially intended to serve.<br /><br />As I describe in Bespotted, Dalmatians were originally “coaching dogs” in England in the days when passengers travelled from inn to inn.  The dogs ran behind the traces of the horses, and then guarded the coach, the passengers and the luggage when all arrived.<br /><br />It was important that they have capacious chests to help them breath deeply, tight and round feet, and strong toplines, (overall a very athletic body), all because they had to run over rough ground for many miles and not be the worse for wear.  Temperamentally, they are a guard dog as well, alerting the coachman to times when those who might threaten appeared.<br /><br />  Today, when a stranger comes down my driveway, my dogs alert with ferocious barking to let me know someone is coming.  I don’t need a house alarm!  But when that someone is welcome into the house and is obviously a friend, they stop barking and begin their happy dance, usually ending up in everyone’s laps before the visit is over.  So the standard decrees that they should both alert and be friendly.  It is all these attributes on which the judges bases his scores as he assesses the Dalmatians before him with his eyes.<br /><br />Likewise, the Border terrier was bred to have long enough legs to keep up with the horses and other foxhounds, which traveled with them, and small enough bodies to crawl into the burrows of foxes and chase them out so the hunters had a good shot. The foxhounds that traveled with them were not small enough to do the Border terrier's job.  Today Borders are judged according to the standard that was created long ago to keep these features intact.<br /><br /> Another example would be the Standard poodle: the breed was first known in France, where it was commonly used as a water Retriever.  Because its job required it to be in the water constantly, the coat was clipped so that the joints remained covered with the hair as an insulator, but the body had to remain sleek enough to move quickly through the water.  This cut, often demeaned by those who don’t understand it, served an integral purpose and thus is still the way the poodle is presented in the ring.  This dog had to be an agile swimmer with a love of the water, webbed feet, an athletic stamina, and a moisture resistant, curly coat.  And these are a few of the things it is judged for today—thus a “standard.”<br /><b><br />What’s obsessing you now and why?</b><i><br /></i><br /> I have what I call publication psychosis.  This happens to nearly all writers when their book is published.  I imagine some lucky few are able to concentrate on their current work (whatever they are working on once the previous book is in their readers’ hands), but I have only rarely been able to do this.  I get caught up in publicity, radio tours, writing newsletters and blogging on my website, as well as doing as many guest blogs as I can get fit in—and especially blogs such as this one, which is a true treat, because it has been created by a writer I deeply admire.<br /><b><br /> What question didn’t I ask that I should have?</b><br /><br /> Here is one that I am asked all the time: who is the cover dog on Bespotted.  The answer is a funny story.  When the book’s preliminary jacket was sent to me, I loved the format and the colors, but I hated the Dalmatian they had used.  It was truly ugly.  I told my editor they had to change the dog, that everyone I knew would make fun of me if that were the Dal on my book cover—and anyway, I wanted one of my own dogs featured.  His response was that I would never be able to reproduce the way the dog was looking up so adoringly at his master or mistress, and that they definitely had to have the dog wearing that red collar. “I promise you I can get the pose with no difficulty,” I answered, “and I have the same worn red collar already in my dog drawer.”  So, we put it on all three of my dogs, stood them against a blank beige wall in the bedroom and I stood in front of them, waving a hot dog.  My husband manned the camera.  It took no time at all.<br /><br />When we put the images up on the computer, we had gorgeous photos of all the dogs with their heads in exactly the right spot.  I sent the three best, one of each dog, to my editor and let him pick.  He chose Mac, named for Paul McCartney, who was a young boy from my last litter, which was in turned named for the Fab Four.  And thus it is Mac who graces the cover of Bespotted—even though he is not actually part of the book, having been born after the galleys were finalized.  And, in any case, then I would have had to redone the subtitle to read: My Family’s Love Affair with Forty-Two Dalmatians.  My editor said enough was enough.</span></span>
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Published on November 04, 2014 21:10

November 2, 2014

Meg Wolitzer talks about her astonishing YA novel Belzhar, why novels matter, why ZA is such a great Scrabble word, and so much more



 Let's start first with something that isn't hyperbole: Meg Wolitzer is one of our greatest living authors. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. Her last novel The Interestings was named a best book of the year by Entertainment Weekly, Time, and the Chicago Tribune, and was also named a notable book by The New York Times Book Review and the Washington Post. She comes from literary aristocracy (Her mother is the wonderful Hilma Wolitzer, author of An Available Man), and both she and Hilma are warm, thoughtful and especially generous to writers. 

Meg is the author of a novel for young readers, The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman, and her adult novels include The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten Year Nap, The Position, The Wife, Surrender, Dorothy,  This is Your Life, Hidden Pictures, and Sleepwalking. Her short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize. Her newest novel is a YA, Belzhar, and it is all about the profound power of reading and writing, and about healing and loss.  

One of my friends always says, "When in doubt about what to read, reach for anything by Meg Wolitzer."  And she's right. I'm honored to host Meg here. Thank you a million times, Meg!








What made you decide to write a YA? And if you had written this for adults, how would it have been different?  I ask because I loved the book and I’m wondering why there are lines between YA and adult literature? Is this a marketing decision, do you think?

I have often written about adolescents in my novels, so it wasn't that much of a stretch.  I also had a teenager living at home at the time, and I saw the way he was affected by certain books written for young people. And when I read one, I was struck by its depth; I felt that I understood my son more through seeing what had moved him as a reader.  When I sat down to write Belzhar, I was very aware of my own teenaged self, and I tried to write the book that would've affected me when I was young.  But of course, there's a lot of overlap now among readers--as has been widely reported, it's not just teenagers who are reading YA.  (I actually just wrote an essay about this in the New York Times.) When I wrote Belzhar, there were certainly some differences from how I wrote, say, The Interestings. I was less digressive and expositional in my YA book--it felt right for my character's voice, which needed a kind of immediacy.  As for marketing decisions, a lot of people feel that certain novels that are viewed as classics now and which feature young characters, would be considered YA if published today.


What I love so much about the book, among many other things, is the way you approach reading and writing. “Words matter,” Jam tells us. I know from experience that writing can transport and heal in ways you can’t imagine. I’m wondering, when you are working out things in a novel, the things that absorb you, do you ever go back and reread that novel years later, or like the kids in Belzhar, do you push forward because the need to be in that world is gone?


I rarely go back and read a novel I've written.  I just can't do it. I prefer to sort of push forward through my work and hope that I'm changing and growing with each novel.  But I leave it to other people to tell me if I am.

I’ve often thought that writing and reading have saved my life, mostly because they were escapes from a very unhappy childhood, and I was  enthralled to find that those were the prescriptions for these troubled  kids. it always bothers me when I see kids glued to their cell phones, because I feel that’s not the transcendent experience they could be having. Do you think there is a way to get kids to read more (or to get men to read women writers more)?

One thing that can help is if people were able to slow down in their lives sometimes and look at the ways they've been distracted.  Having an overview of that can really be jarring, but it can also allow you to make some corrections.  For me, reading is about intimacy; I love the connection I feel to a good novel, and whenever this happens, the world drops away.  As for reading women, I think in some ways it's definitely getting better out there.  Still, it's amazing that we are  having these conversations so long after the advent of second-wave feminism.



So, you’ve written screenplays, sung with Suzzy Roche, performed on public radio. Is there nothing you can’t do--and just to turn that question on  its head, what thing can’t you do, that you wish you could?

Well, we aren't speaking to my actual ability level in these different fields, of course, but I do like trying my hand at a lot of things; it keeps life fairly entertaining.  I particularly like the performing side--which is so different from sitting and writing.  I have enjoyed getting up on stages and doing something more than reading the words in front of me. As for what I really can't do:  I can't do math, and I can't figure out directions, and I am embarrassed by both of these weaknesses, but there you have it.  So you will not likely see a novel from me about a mathematician or mapmaker.

What’s obsessing you now and why?
Terrible stories from around the world.  It's hard to read the news, and
then say, Okay, time to write fiction.

And I have to ask, since I read you’re a voracious Scrabble player, do you
know all those tricky two letter words, like Aa and Ki?


Of course.  All them, even including ZA, which is short for PIZZA.
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Published on November 02, 2014 10:44

November 1, 2014

Lynn Kanter talks about Her Own Vietnam, the damage of war, injustice, writing, more

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Thank you, Lynn! <br /><br /><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">I always have to ask, what sparked this book? What was it about the subject matter that haunted you?</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I was a teenager during the Vietnam war era, and my youth was shaped by that war and the passionate movement to end it. The U.S. had a military draft back then, so the burden and terror of war were shared more widely than they are today. I can distinctly remember looking around my high school classroom at all the boys and feeling despair that the war would never end and it would swallow them too. At the time, I never gave a thought to the women who were serving in Vietnam, if I even realized there were any. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It wasn’t until decades later that I began to wonder what it would be like to be a regular, middle-aged woman going about your daily life, but to have that Vietnam war experience – that ball of flames – burning away inside you. I started to do some research, and one thing I learned fascinated me: many of the women who served in Vietnam never talked about it. To anyone. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m not a veteran or a nurse, but I do know what it’s like to be in the closet. I felt compelled to tell this story, to throw the light of fiction on this hidden corner of our American history. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">What is it about Vietnam that still haunts us today?</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Vietnam war brought home to America loss after loss. First, of course, were the casualties, the young men and women who returned from Vietnam so broken and altered. We also lost trust in our political leaders, in part because the Vietnam War was the first to be waged on television, and we could see that our leaders were lying to us. We lost the glow of righteousness and invincibility left over from World War II. And we lost a little bit of our soul when we turned against not only the war but the soldiers we had sent into battle. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Della Brown, your heroine, moves from army nurse to mother, sister, wife--still carrying the damage of the war. Do you think such damage can ever be undone completely?</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I think in many ways the impact of each war is lifelong for the participants and their families. This is not to say that every veteran is damaged, only that they are permanently changed by the experience of war, and those changes can ripple out to engulf the people around them. I recently read <u>We Are Called to Rise</u>, a novel by Laura McBride, which does a wonderful job of portraying how those ripples can affect a family and a community. Della’s war experience, like that of most of the nurses who served in Vietnam, was particularly intense and relentless, and therefore, I think, particularly damaging. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tell me about the title, Her Own Vietnam, and its deeper meaning.</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The title has a few layers for me. One is that although war is a collective effort, each person experiences it alone, in her own way. Once Della got home after her tour, she was terribly isolated, despite being surrounded by family. No one in the civilian world wanted to hear about what she had been through, even if she had been willing to talk about it. And the word “Vietnam” has come to mean a disaster, a dreadful situation you can’t escape.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s also true, of course, that Vietnam is a country, not a war. I’m always struck by the fact that the Vietnamese people call it the American war.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">What’s your writing life like? Do you have rituals? Do you map your stories out or just wait for the Muse?</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I am always fascinated by people’s writing rituals and I wish I had some, but I don’t. I have what you might call writing conditions. For instance, I can’t write in a space that is untidy. And a steaming cup of coffee helps. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I make my living as a writer for a social justice organization. It’s a full-time job (and then some) that engages my writing skills and my political passions. So my fiction writing, important as it is, has to fit itself around my job. I write in the early morning during the workweek, as well as on weekends and vacations. There are also long periods of time when I’m not writing fiction, when I just don’t have the mental space to think creatively. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">As for mapping out stories, I think you and I share the fact that we completely lack a sense of direction. For me, writing is all about exploration. What would it feel like if…? What would happen if…? I have to write my way into the story, and I never know exactly where it will end up. Sadly, this is also how I drive.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">What’s obsessing you now and why?</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m always obsessed with injustice – sexism, racism, the kind of cruel capitalism that makes many people suffer so a few can prosper. I know this is not exactly cocktail party chatter, but that’s what’s going on inside my head. I’m also perfectly capable of becoming obsessed about a TV show. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Orphan Black</i>, anyone?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">What question didn’t I ask that I should have?</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">You didn’t ask about my publisher, Shade Mountain Press, and why there’s still a need for a press devoted to women’s writing. It’s because even today, women’s voices fill only a small corner of the literary marketplace. Although women buy the majority of books in the U.S., the vast majority of the books published and reviewed are by men. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The writer Rosalie Morales Kearns decided to do something about it, so she founded Shade Mountain Press. It’s committed to publishing literature by women, particularly the voices you hear the least - women of color, women with disabilities, women from working-class backgrounds, and lesbian/bisexual/queer women. I’m really proud to be published by Shade Mountain Press.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>
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Published on November 01, 2014 11:42

October 22, 2014

Anne Lamott talks about Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace, failing, dating, and what the heck is she going to write next?












What can I possibly say about Anne Lamott? I carried Bird by Bird around when I was writing, I clutched Operating Instructions to me when I was pregnant, and I've read every word she's written. But it's not just her writing that's so wonderful. She's a treasured friend and you've never met anyone as warm and hilariously funny as Annie--or as generous. She interviewed me in California and though I knew the huge crowd was really there for her, she made me feel the people were there to hear me. And when I interviewed her at a bookstore, she made sure to mention my book and me, though the evening was all about her.  She's the author of the novels Hard Laughter, All New People, Blue Shoe , Rosie, Joe Jones, Crooked Little Heart and Imperfect Birds, as well as the nonfiction books, Operating Instructions, Bird by Bird, Help Thanks Wow, Traveling Mercies, Stitches, Grace Eventually, and Some Assembly Required.

As always, I'm delighted to host her here. Thank you, Annie!


Your writing is always so grounded in faith, and even when you write about the moments that derail you, you always find your center.  Do you have hints for the rest of us how to do that?

Well, it's like the title Grace, Eventually. I know a sense of center will come, but it often takes awhile. I flail around, usually trying to self-will resolution, b/c its so uncomfortable to be lost or in limbo. My center always turns out to be in my quiet heartcave, not in my crazy roiled-up mind.

And was there ever a moment when you could not find your center? A moment that was a harder than all the others?

Lots of times when I couldn't find my center. About a third of the stories in SV are about that--about how it takes the passage of time, whether an hour, a few, a week...some rest, lots of breath. There's no magic wand (which I hate.). Our breath can take us to our center, so we have to get quiet and settled and friendly w/ourselves to hook into that.

So much of this amazing book is about the value of community, how friends, and family, and even strangers can show us grace. How can we make ourselves more open to being vulnerable enough to accept their help?

I always say that the willingness comes from the pain. I become available to grace when I have finally driven myself totally crazy with forcing things, posturing, trying to "fix" people and messy situations. Surrender leads us to clearer vision.

For me, what you do with spirituality is to bring it back home, i.e. you make it relevant to everyday without being preachy or sounding like a sermon. Who lead you to this path?

I'm afraid I DO sound preachy, so thank you. One thing that helped was the dozens of books I've read over the years where the writer told me an amazing story, without driving home a message or point. I tell other writers to write what they'd love to come upon, and I hate beijg preached at. Whatever works in my stories is because of multiple drafts, and the willingness to do what Jessica Mitford said, to kill your little darlings--ie your favorite little moments that you just think make you seem so erudite or enlightened. I do a draft where I take out the boring parts, and then the lies. One of my best friends is a fierce but loving editor. And my Riverhead editor, Jake Morrissey, is perfect for me.

"Getting found always means being lost for a while." I love this sensibility, but while we are lost, are there signposts you should or could be looking for, or do you just stay in the moment and wait to see what happens?

This was the line that PW mentioned as being a cliche, in an otherwise great review! So thank you again. When we are lost, we can ask for help--from God, a friend, a partner, a child, Life. We can remember to breathe. We can practice radical self-care, and get ourselves a glass of water. We can look UP! We can pay attention. We can try things, and fail--fall on our butts, get up, try something else. Like Beckett said, "Fail again. Fail better."

I think your piece about your year of dating was one of the funniest pieces on the planet. As a yenta-ish sort of person who likes to see everyone coupled, I have to ask, would you do it again?

The problem with being semi-well-known is that a lot of men were hoping I would be a good muse or editor. That we would talk about writing a lot of the time, and I would read and edit their work. They'd send me links to thinks they had written. Very discouraging! I still log on now and then but have not made contact for months. And don't think I will again for awhile.

What's obsessing you now and why?

Caroline, you know that around one's pub date, we ALL get cuckoo in the cabesa (well, not you, of course....) I'm obsessing about whether the NYT will review me, and how I would ever survive if Michiko K or Janet Maslin trashed me, and what foreign city I would have to move to (Monaco? Ulan Bator?), and if I'll get one of those tiny tiny spaces in People, and if I'll get the flu or Ebola on one of the airplanes....

What question didn't I ask that I should have?

"Annie, what are you working on now?"

"I don't have a clue! Honest to God. It's the strangest feeling....and I love it. I don't have ANYTHING due. For the first time in years, I have no idea what I'll do next. I accidentally published 4 books in 4 years, with five book tours (hard cover and paperback for Some Assembly) so maybe it is time for a brief sabbatical.

I totally love Facebook and Twitter, so I'll writing my little pieces and posts, but as for a next book? All I know is that, More will be revealed; and to always always carry a pen.
Love you and thanks so much
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Published on October 22, 2014 09:27

October 17, 2014

Litsa Dremousis talks about ALTITUDE SICKNESS, the culture of mountain climbing, grief, resilience, and so much more










 I'm not sure when I met Litsa, but I fell in love with her work before I fell in love with her--which is really easy to do on both counts. Profound, funny, and warm, she's one of my go-to people when I need to talk something out. And what a writer! "Altitude Sickness", about losing her lover to rock and ice climbing and the mainstream culture that venerates them, is mind-bendingly great. (Future Tense Books). But so are her other works. Her essay, After the Fire" was selected as one of the "Most Notable Essays of 2011" by Best American Essays 2012. She's a Contributing Editor at the literary site The Weeklings, which partners with Salon and has received praise from The New Yorker, The Daily Beast, Slate, and others. Her work appears in The Believer, BlackBook, Esquire, Jezebel, McSweeney's, Men's Health, Monkeybicycle, MSN, New York Magazine, Nerve, Nylon, The Onion's A.V. Club, Paste, Poets & Writers, Salon, Slate, The Weeklings, on NPR, KUOW, and additional venues, and The Seattle Weekly named her as one of "50 Women Who Rock Seattle".
Plus, frankly, she's very, very cool. I can't thank Litsa enough for being here!
This is, perhaps, one of the most profound, real, haunting,  (and also flashed with wit) books about loss that I’ve ever read. But it’s also about mountain climbing, and the price climbers and their loved ones pay for risking death to “live life to the fullest.” You’ve written about Neal’s death before, but never before in such depth. What was the writing like for you? Did anything surprise you or reveal itself to you as you were writing?

First off, thanks so much because you know how much I admire your work and think you're wonderful. And because you've written about a similar loss, you know what it's like to live it and to write about it. So, really, thank you.

"Altitude Sickness" has an unusual back story. Future Tense Books approached me and said that to commemorate their twentieth year anniversary, they were launching their first ebook line, Instant Future. They asked if I had a 10,000 to 12,000 word memoir or essay that would fit because they wanted me to launch the series. I'd been taking notes on "Altitude Sickness" for two years, so I wrote back, "Yes, I have an idea and here it is." They accepted it immediately.

Then I thought, "Oh, shit. I'm about to immerse myself in his death again. This is about to hurt like hell."

I knew what I wanted to write and why, so writing this one from a technical standpoint wasn't particularly hard. From an emotional one, though, I had many, many days where I wanted to throw up. I've been prone to nightmares my whole life, but returning to his death and its immediate aftermath really unloosed my subconscious and the nightmares were pretty fucking bonkers. Neal died mountain climbing. He was missing four and a half days before his body was found. He fell one thousand feet and died instantly. He was a highly experienced climber. But loose rock gave way. No amount of experience trumps loose rock.

I should note I got engaged shortly after I started the book and am the happiest I've been in my life. So, it says something that in the midst of such enormous joy, when I'd sit down to write, it still felt like getting flayed then dipped in rubbing alcohol.

The biggest surprise was that writing about Neal's funeral wasn't the hard part. But writing about him while he was alive was devastating. We were intertwined almost our entire adult lives. He's been dead five years now, but it's really easy to conjure him, both as a person and as a writer. As the former, I very much live in the present. His death is as much a part of me as my curly hair and most of the time, I am used to his death. But when I wrote about him alive, oh god, each time I stopped and came up for air, my subconscious was like, "Ha! Ha! Ha! You can hear him and you can see him and you want to go to a matinee´with him now but you can't because he's dead. Ha! Ha! Sucker!" The following nightmares were among the worst.

That said, thanks for taking note of the book's wit. Neal and I were often funny together. There was no honest way to write this book without being funny sometimes. Most lives have some humor in them and Neal was deeply funny. Also, his death, like many, was laden with gallows humor. Making absurd jokes was one way I kept from killing myself those first two years after he died.

 I’ve often thought that part of grief healing is being able to tell the story, especially if your loved ones death is a shock. First, you tell it in hopes of a different ending. Then you tell it to let it sink in. Or maybe you tell it to keep the loved one alive in some way.  Was it this way for you, or was it different?

Oh, god, that's the greatest point: how in the beginning, each time you tell the story in print or out loud, you desperately want to change the ending and there's a tiny part of your brain convinced this is possible.

In my case, the first time I wrote about him was a few months after he died. It was a fictional short story about his funeral. I wrote about it because I couldn't *not* write about it. The essay I wrote later that year won Most Notable Essays of 2011 from Best American Essays. He'd been dead fourteen months when I wrote it, the shock had worn off and I was in hell. But I didn't write it thinking, "Wow, this will be a great essay." I just wanted to distill the loss and pain into something. Like, "Here is this pool of blood. See if anything will grow in it."

With "Altitude Sickness", like I said, I'd been taking notes for two years. I live in Seattle and climbers die in the Pacific Northwest fairly often because we're surrounded by mountains. I started noticing how similar many of the deaths were and how the climbers' loved ones almost always said, "He died doing what he loved." I wanted to explore what causes someone to enjoy life most when they're risking death. That's how I discovered there was already a considerable amount of study on the neurological similarities between climbers and addicts. "Altitude Sickness" examines Neal's death in this context, and in the context of a mainstream culture that venerates climbing, despite its massive and pointless danger.

I also wanted to talk about bravery. Is it brave that Neal climbed mountains, or is the real bravery that, knowing the risks, you went ahead and loved him anyway? Isn’t that the kind of bravery we should be celebrating instead?

Neal demonstrated incredible physical and emotional bravery again and again in the mountains. And like I write in the book, he was mauled by a bear in Yellowstone Park in 1999. A year to the day after the mauling, he returned to Yellowstone and hiked and camped there. He refused to live in fear. I'll always admire him for prevailing over an attack that would have psychologically crippled most of us. What's hard to reconcile, though, is that there was no purpose to his death. Climbers tend to attribute a military-like heroism to what is an extreme activity undertaken with free will. He didn't die rescuing children in a war zone. He didn't die because he was fighting a fire and saved the elderly person trapped in the bedroom. He died at forty-two because he chose to climb and loose rock gave way. Climbers hate it when I say this, and I don't care, but his life was amazing and I'm forever grateful he was here, but his death was a waste.

As for my loving him despite knowing the risk, I wouldn't say I was brave at all. Yes, I knew he could die climbing and I chose to keep loving him. I don't regret loving him, ever, ever, ever. At his core, he grew to identify as a climber, the way I identify as a writer. But when he and I met, he was acting much more often. We first met in a Creative Writing Class at the University of Washington. We always loved each other, but five years after his death, it's clear how different from each other we were becoming. I loved him deeply and completely. I have no regrets. But I don't think I was brave. I just loved him.

You write that no one can return from the high peaks with their brain in the same condition that they left. But our culture venerates climbing, even as families are campaigning against high school football, which has been racking up its share of brain injuries. What can the public do to change this mindset?  I’m thinking of how cigarettes were glamorized and then there was this ad featuring a woman putting on her wig, speaking from an artificial voice box, and talking about the ravages of cancer from smoking—and that ad supposedly worked. Are there any climbers who have changed their mind about climbing and spoken out against it?

That is a great question because, in my experience, debating this with a climber is exactly like telling you're active alcoholic friend, "Hey, you're drunk again. You need help." They have to figure it out on their own, and in the meantime, they'll concoct every excuse they can to explain how they're not really harming themselves. I'm sure some climbers have reconsidered climbing and given it up, whether because of a near brush with death, an injury, the urging a of a loved one, or through their own belated common sense. I haven't met such a climber, but given the sport's growing popularity, I'm sure at least a few of them exist.

Mostly, though, when you read or watch interviews with climbers who've nearly died, they proudly state that as soon as they're recovered, they're going to climb again. To use your comparison to smokers, it'd be like someone recovering from lung cancer and proudly declaring on camera, "I'm gonna get me some Marlboros!" It's not brave; it's idiotic. And I'm comfortable being judgmental here.

As for what might prompt a climber to change his or her mind, I don't know what would work. I remember the anti-tobacco commercial you''re referencing. I don't know what the climbing equivalent would be. Maybe your loved one identifying your partially decomposed and shattered body in the morgue? Would even *that* work? I don't know.

Many people think that when you grieve a loved one, you move on, you find love again, if you're lucky, your life goes on. But you very astutely show that that isn't the whole story. You're engaged to a peach of a guy who you adore--but like a layer beneath that, is your love and grief over Neal. Can you talk about that please?

I'm extremely fortunate. I'm in love again and the happiest I've been. My fiance´is the greatest man I've known and I just feel so fucking lucky. I hate mornings and, with him, we laugh over breakfast each morning. I've never done that with anyone in my life. He understands parts of me that Neal never did.

But, as you wisely note, I still love Neal dearly, of course. Death didn't change that. I will always love him. But even immediately after he died, I refused to canonize him. As everyone who has lost someone, particularly someone young, will recall, you miss your dead loved one so much, you miss even the things that annoyed the hell out of you when he or she was alive. So, even while I was missing what I found to be Neal's most annoying traits--and he knew all of mine intimately, so that's not a one-sided assessment--I didn't make him a plaster saint. I hate it when people do that. It robs the dead of all their complexity.

You wrote something really wise, though, and I'm sorry I can't remember which essay or book it was in, but it has stuck with me for years, that the dead become different in death, take on a different incarnation from who they were alive. And that is *so* true. Despite my being able to recollect Neal in great detail, I think of him now in sweeter, softer ways. It doesn't matter that he didn't get a cell phone 'til six months before he died, for instance. When he was alive, that drove me nuts. Now it's a funny quirk that was part of what made him unique.

Some friends don't quite understand how I spent so much time missing Neal and then fell in love again. Some didn't understand why I didn't fall in love again much sooner. The best friends, of course, just understand your loss and help you get through the early hell years and are thrilled when you're happy again.

One of my friends describes it best: most new parents worry they won't love their second child as much as their first. But their hearts expand. So, as with birth, it is with death. Our hearts expand. I love Neal. I love my fiance´. it's not a competition and it's not contradictory.

What’s obsessing you now and why?

My fiance´is a professor. He's lived in Seattle over a decade, but he grew up in the South. He's an amazing cook--I found a genius who loves to cook--and for the first time in years, I'm eating butter again. BUTTER IS AWESOME. Dear god, butter, how could I have turned on you? Also, I was caffeine-free for five years, and because he makes coffee first thing in the morning, I started sipping it again. Now I have one to two cups a day and it is electric brain nectar and I thank it so.

In terms of pop culture, I'm becoming obsessed with Bill Hicks. I'm really, really late to that party, particularly given every comedian I've interviewed or known has cited his genius. And he was a genius. He died young of pancreatic cancer two decades ago, but his humor and observations are as relevant now as they were then. I also love Key and Peele. So damned brilliant and hilarious!

As for what's obsessing me as a writer, I have an answer to that. But I hate discussing my writing obsessions while I'm writing about them because I am super-neurotic about that. It's not pretension; it's me being a bit tightly wound sometimes.

What  question didn’t I ask that I should have?

What curly hair care products work in humidity? You and I have similar hair. You're on the East Coast and I'm on the West. With climate change, Seattle is becoming increasingly humid. We just had our warmest summer in forty-seven years. You're more acclimated to the heat and humidity. If I'm going to face a global catastrophe, I'd like to do it with my hair not resembling kudzu.

 Litsa, I swear by Deva! Wash with One Condition. Then, when your hair is soaking wet, put in some B-Leave-in, and scrunch the extra water out with a t-shirt. Never dry your hair with a bath towel, just with paper towels or t-shirts!

Caroline, again, you are my inspiration! Your questions were deeply thought-provoking.
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Published on October 17, 2014 12:59

Kerry Howley talks about THROWN, cage fighting, fighters, writing, and so much more


Ever hear of cage fighting? I hadn't either, until I read Kerry Howley's electrifying book THROWN, an account of the three years she spent in the company of mixed martial artists. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, Slate, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Gulf Coast, Vice.com, and frequently in Bookforum.  Howley teaches creative writing at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where she resides with a husband, son, and vizsla. I'm thrilled to have her here. Thank you, Kerry!






 What made you interested in the bloody, strange, violent, obsessive world of cage fighting? As you learned more and more about it, and the two cage fighters you followed, did any of your opinions change? Why and how?
People who have never seen a fight often assume that they’re just lumbering brawls transplanted from the street to an arena. I think part of what fascinated me, the first time I saw a fight on television, was how clearly this was not the case. This was the marriage of a refined sense of bodily movement with absolute abandonment of the self, a delicate, precise practice that makes possible a moment of savagery. I wouldn’t have put it this way at the time, but I’ve always been drawn to the way the fighter takes years perfecting his art—steeped in civilization and discipline—to find that precious moment away from civilized life.  And as I got deeper and deeper into this world, I came to see fighting as a practice of shedding one’s identity, searching for that fluid place beyond selfhood. Civilization is interested in stability and therefore in stagnation. I think it means something that the verb for practicing Brazilian Ju-Jitsu is “roll.”
So much of the book is about violence, what it really means, how we approach it, and what to do about it. Can you talk about this please? 
There is something fretful and sad about our current obsession with self-preservation that I think obviates the possibility of certain kinds of experiences. No one smokes anymore. I certainly don’t. And maybe a society that can’t smoke also can’t whip itself into the kind of ecstatic self-abandonment I saw in the fighters. I’m interested in consensual violence as a portal, a conduit, to a place I think is harder and harder for us to get to. What Artaud called “a theater that wakes us up: nerves and heart.” It was the poet Joe Wenderoth who first suggested to me that there was a confluence between MMA and the Theater of Cruelty. This is not a stretch. But it’s also not a comparison you can make in anything other than a comic work.
Your relationship with these two men is electrifyingly real.  What surprised you about it?
I don’t know that I was particularly surprised by this, but something about Erik, Sean, and Keoni made me feel desperate to be liked by them. They each exuded a kind of confident, gentle calm that I assume comes from knowing you’ve got nothing to fear from other men.
I will say that more than a few times, people who have read the manuscript have praised me for “not condescending” to the fighters. This is bizarre, like congratulating me for not being a sociopath. By what right would I condescend them? They’re living the kind of life I don’t have the courage to live.
There is such a sense of place in the book that sometimes the air seems electrified. How did you come down from writing such a powerhouse of a book? Do you ever go to cage fights anymore? 
Well, that’s a very generous question. I felt a kind of disturbed nothingness when the book was finished. The last time I’d felt that way, in 2008, was when I’d just returned to DC from two stimulating years working for a newspaper in Myanmar. I responded to this by going on the market and selling 18 of my ova; if I had to stay put, I was going to do something strange to my body. It got me through.
Thrown was such an outward-looking project; I spent years forcing myself into strangers’ lives, pushing myself into situations where I looked conspicuous and felt uncomfortable. At some point, when I finished, it seemed like the craziest thing I could do was a harbor a person in my own body, which sounds, I know, like the most mundane move I could make. And yet perhaps the closest I have ever been to the kind of experience I write about in Thrown was the moment when my son was descending through my hips and I was in the depths of a pain spiral beyond what I’ve ever known or will ever know again. There was no room for thought inside that moment.
What’s your writing life like? Do you have rituals? Do you map your stories out or just wait for the Muse?
I map out my fiction, writing the first and last thirds before tackling the middle. With a long narrative essay like this, you can’t see to the end; I had no idea what would happen to Erik and Sean, and it was important to me that their stories remain in the realm of the factual. It was in part for that reason I shifted so much emphasis on the narrator, which is to say my crazed narrative persona, Kit; here was an element I could shape and control as Erik and Sean’s stories spun out into the strange narratives that they are. Here was a way I could tease meaning from a string of events.
What’s obsessing you now and why?

In an interview about his first three novels, Ishiguro once said that he published the same book three times and “somehow got away with it.” Can I get away with it? I don’t think I’m done with the motivating force behind Thrown, which I take to be an articulation of wildness.


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Published on October 17, 2014 12:46