Clifford Garstang's Blog, page 47

2016 Reading: Faith Ed. by Linda K. Wertheimer

Faith Ed: Teaching About Religion in an Age of Intolerance by Linda K. Wertheimer

I was acquainted with the author through a Facebook group, so I knew that she had published this book. I had no plans to read it, however, until a controversy erupted here in Augusta County, Virginia, over world religions class in a local high school. Having spent time on other religions, the course turned its attention to Islam, and one of the exercises including copying a bit of Arabic Islamic calligraphic art. The mother of one of the students went ballistic–she didn’t like it when she saw that it was Arabic and she really didn’t like it when she learned the words were from the Quran–and created a stir, calling meetings of other parents (held in a church, of course), complaining to the superintendent, demanding that the teacher be fired, etc. Some people in the area thought the mother went overboard but that the teacher had used poor judgment. My personal view is that the assignment was a good thing. The content–about Allah–was harmless and beside the point. We need to do everything we can to open the minds of kids in this area. They are so sheltered, and it is obvious that they and their parents are ignorant about the world beyond the county. One wonders–but can easily guess–where they get their information.

The incident brought Wertheimer’s book to mind, and in fact when it became national news she was asked by several news outlets to comment. So I got a copy, and am very glad that I read it. The book is a series of case studies, including the author’s own experience, about the teaching of religion in schools. The first one in the book, in a chapter called “Burkagate,” occurred in Lumberton, Texas, but is very similar to what happened right here. Other cases also involved teaching about Islam, but Wertheimer also addresses the issue of teaching Christianity in public schools.

It is a beautifully written, well-researched book that reinforces for me the need to expand the minds of Americans. We need more education about world religions and cultures, not less. I highly recommend this book.

So long, 2015! Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

It has been awhile since my last newsletter, but the end of the year seems like a good time to bring everyone up to date.

The biggest thing that happened to me this year was that I was named an Emerging Author finalist for the Indiana Authors Award sponsored by the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Foundation and the Indianapolis Public Library. I went to Indianapolis for the awards banquet in early October and was thrilled when my name was announced as the winner. This was a great honor. I had a great time at the event, saw some of my family, and made many new friends.

And then, confirming my status as an emerging author, I won the Emerging Writer fellowship from the Writer’s Center, a Washington DC area organization that supports writers. At some point in 2016 I’ll be going to the Center to give a reading.

I was also honored to receive the first Alumni Fellowship to the Tinker Mountain Writers’ Workshop this year. I spent a wonderful week at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, working with other writers, attending craft lectures, and giving a reading. I was also invited to Charlotte, North Carolina to give a reading at the Queens University MFA Program Alumni Weekend.

There were other readings, too. I gathered some of the contributors to my anthology, Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet, to read at George Mason University’s Fall for the Book Festival. I also presented the book at the Virginia Festival of the Book and at a reading at Writer House, a community writing center in Charlottesville, Virginia. (The book was named a finalist for the International Book Award, I’m proud to say.) And I read from my own work at a special literary event right here at home.

In the midst of all of that, I continued writing. I had wonderful residencies at both Rivendell Writers’ Colony in Tennessee and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. I spent most of the year working on a quirky new novel. I’m hopeful that early in the New Year my agent will be sending that out on submission to publishers. Keep your fingers crossed! And somehow I also managed to finish a very rough draft of yet another novel. That one still needs lots of work and research (including some international travel), so that’s my project for 2016. I’m also putting together a second volume of my anthology, Everywhere Stories, which is expected to be published by Press 53 in the fall.

And while I’m always writing and promoting my work, I never stop reading. It was a great year in reading for me, including a book by one of my favorite writers like Colum McCann. If you’re interested in learning about some of the books I read, check out my reading journal: 2015 Reading.

That wraps up 2015 for me. I hope 2016 is as productive.

Wishing you a healthy and happy New Year!

“What are you working on now?”

One question I hear over and over again–from friends, other writers, and even strangers who learn that I’m a writer–is “What are you working on now?”

My usual answer is “a novel,” and I hope that’s enough to satisfy, because truthfully I’m working on lots of things at once.

First, I still spend a fair amount of time marketing my published books. I set up readings, I spread the word on social media, etc. Just this week a review of my second book appeared in a literary magazine and I did a blog post about that as well as Twitter and Facebook comments. Marketing never ends.

Second, there’s the novel I finished last year. That’s in my agent’s hands and he has been submitting that to publishers. We’ve had some near misses and very complimentary responses, and we’re still moving forward because we believe in the book. So, while I’m not actively writing or revising that manuscript at the moment, it does draw some of my attention periodically, and if/when a publisher acquires it, more work will be needed–revisions, publicity, etc.

Third, I finished a new novel recently, and now have in hand comments from my agent to help guide my revisions, which I think are proceeding well. You could say this is the novel I’m currently working on, and at the moment it occupies most of my time and creative energy. The revisions are mostly about judicious cutting, which is harder than it sounds. But it’s exciting work.

Fourth, while I was waiting for my agent to comment on the new novel, I was working on yet another manuscript, another novel. I had the good fortune to have a four-week residency at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts this fall and managed to finish a first draft while I was there. This project takes up a small part of my brain at the moment and is on hold while I do the other revisions, but I still feel like I’m working on it currently. (And I need to do some travel to research that book, so I need to put those plans together soon, also.)

Fifth, there’s my anthology, Everywhere Stories. The first volume (we didn’t call it that because we didn’t know for sure there would be others, although we hoped it would be a series) came out in 2014. Earlier this year the publisher gave the green light for a second volume to come out in late 2016, so I’m now assembling the stories for that book. Volume I was a huge amount of work, but this one is a bit easier because the first round of submissions gave me a head start on this one. (Submissions are open until December 31.)

Sixth, I’ve got a short story I’m sending out. Somehow, between other projects, I managed to finish a story, the first one I’d written in several years. I’m not being aggressive about submissions, but it’s available and being considered here and there. I probably should send it to some more places.

I think that’s it in terms of writing. There’s also volunteer work and various other activities. Managing to keep to busy.

Review of What the Zhang Boys Know in The Florida Review

My novel in stories, What the Zhang Boys Know, came out a little over three years ago. Since then, it has received a few editorial reviews, all favorable, and also won the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction. I’m very proud of the book and grateful that it found a home with Press 53.

Despite the accolades, however, the book didn’t receive as much attention (or readership) as I would have liked. It is therefore gratifying to see a review of the book appear at this late date, in the new issue of The Florida Review. The review is not online, so let me quote liberally from it.

Reviewer Søren G. Palmer describes the book’s setup in this way:

The book opens in the building’s cavernous hallway, also a makeshift “gallery” where the residents are allowed to display their art.  Zhang Feng-qi – a recent widower and the father of the two boys in the book’s title – is trying to sort out the chaos that his wife’s sudden death has created.

As this is a novel in stories, Palmer rightly focuses on the ending of the first chapter, which is also the ending of the first story in the book.

The story moves in and out of the present moment, and ends with one wondering if Fenq-qi is going to be able to keep his boys, Simon and Wesley. The moment celebrates one of Garstang’s greatest skills, the ending of a story on a beat that is both period and question mark.

Yes. Exactly. This is my preferred approach to endings. On the one hand, there needs to be a certain amount of resolution, but on the other hand the reader and characters know that life goes on, and we’re all wondering what comes next.

Palmer also gets the next story right.

The book’s second story, “A Hole in the Wall,” begins with Aloysius, a black lawyer, cathartically taking a sledgehammer to his wall: “He pulls the drywall away, expecting to find insulation underneath, and exposes bare brick instead.” This is one of the book’s central metaphors, and the reader watches as the emotional bare brick of all who live in the Nanking Mansion is exposed.

It’s such a pleasure to see readers who peel back the layers and see what lies beneath the surface of the work.  I was also happy to note that the presence of art in the book was recognized: “Garstang adroitly extends negative space to art, the blank canvasses and empty pages that torment artists in their drive to create.”

Not every reader sees the collection as a novel in stories, and I accept that. The stories are, after all, meant to work independently in addition to their part in the whole. But it’s also nice to know that some readers understand how they work together. Palmer says:

While Garstang writes insightfully about the transformative and healing power of community, he is not immune to its ephemeral quality and internal risks, and he ends the book on a bittersweet note, one that is, again, both period and question mark.

The stories, told from the points of view of the many residents of the condo building, are the community. The review ends with some very kind words:

What the Zhang Boys Know is a beautifully rendered novel in stories, and Garstang clearly has his finger on the pulse of an evolving American cultural identity, making him a talent to watch for in the future.

Thank you to the reviewer and to The Florida Review for publishing the piece.

2015 Reading: Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann

Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann

Without question, Colum McCann is one of my favorite writers. His novel Let the Great World Spin blew me away and made me question whether there was any point in continuing my own writing if I could never approach that level of greatness. I’ve also loved his other books, including Transatlantic, which in its way was equally impressive. (I also had the good fortune of meeting McCann and spending time with him at Washington & Lee University’s Tom Wolfe Seminar a couple of years ago; that experience only made me admire him more.)

So I was excited at the prospect of a new book, and Thirteen Ways of Looking does not disappoint. The book consists of four short stories, although the first one, “Thirteen Ways of Looking,” is novella length. That story has thirteen sections, incorporating each stanza of Wallace Stevens’s poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” as an epigraph. It is, essentially, a murder mystery, as detectives examine all the evidence surrounding the death of a retired judge, Peter Mendelssohn. The various points of view, like the surveillance cameras that provide clues, give the reader many ways of looking at the incident, enough perhaps to solve the crime, and yet not enough to see everything. There are, it seems, more than thirteen ways of looking.

The second story, “What Time is it Now, Where You Are?” is wonderful, but a bit more ordinary. It begins in the mind of a writer on deadline who is struggling to write a short story for a New Year’s Eve themed publication. He settles on the story of a marine posted to Afghanistan, but as he writes, and as the character evolves and becomes more complicated, the writer has more and more questions. There are thirteen sections to this story as well, and in the last section the questions pour out. Writers will relate.

The third story is “Sh’khol,” a Hebrew word that means a parent who has lost a child. Rebecca and her son are at a cottage in Galway. Tomas is adopted–Rebecca’s marriage then ended–and he has developmental problems. Where does the thirteen come in? “Thirteen years old and there was already a whole history written in him.” The word “sh’khol” is in her mind when Tomas goes missing.

The final story, “Treaty,” is perhaps the most compelling (although I haven’t yet discovered its “thirteen”). Here a nun who was kidnapped and raped at the hands of a rightwing militiaman spots her torturer on a televised report of a peace conference being held in London. But there’s something wrong — he’s now representing the other side of conflict. Has he changed? She goes to London to find out.

These are remarkable stories of intense conflict that share something universal–a search for grace. How do we live in this world?

In an Author’s Note at the end of the book, McCann makes reference to a severe beating he endured in June of 2014 in the midst of working on these stories. It’s hard not to read the stories in light of that incident and his own reaction to it, which you can and should read about here in his Victim Impact Statement.

Call for Submissions: Everywhere Stories Volume II

In the fall of 2014, Press 53 published the anthology Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet. The book included 20 stories by 20 authors set in 20 countries. It was challenging and fun to edit this book, and I’m excited to announce that we’re doing it again. We have just sent out the Call for Submissions for Everywhere Stories Volume II. Submissions will close on December 31, 2015 and contributors will be notified by March 31, 2016. Volume II will be published in the Fall of 2016.

What I discovered in selecting stories for the book was that I didn’t find tourists very interesting. There were some very good stories about tourists, but I’m more interested in characters who dig beneath the surface of a culture–natives or long-term expats. If you’ve read Volume I, I hope you recognized that. (And if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend that you do. It’s currently on sale for a mere $8.43 at Amazon: Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet)

I don’t plan to duplicate any countries from Volume I in the new Volume II, so be sure you check out the Table of Contents. Also, I plan to do rolling acceptances, so I’ll be posting a list of countries that are already “taken” in the Call for Submissions and on the Everywhere Stories page on this website. Check back often!

 

Thanksgiving away from home

It’s Thanksgiving Day and I am grateful to be spending the holiday at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where I’ve been in residence for the past three weeks. I will have the pleasure of enjoying a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with the other artists currently in residence. For someone who lives alone, this is definitely a great way to spend the holiday.

I remember the first time I spent Thanksgiving away from home. It was 1976 and I was just 22, living in South Korea as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the city of Jeonju. Korea doesn’t celebrate our Thanksgiving, of course, although there is a similar fall harvest festival that comes close. There were only a couple of volunteers who lived in my city, but there were other foreigners, mostly missionaries and others working at the Presbyterian Medical Center and I had been invited to the home of one of the missionaries for a traditional dinner. It was very kind of them to invite me and after almost 11 months of kimchi and bulgogi and jiajiangmyon, it was wonderful to have a home-cooked American meal.

I’m afraid I don’t remember much about the event. I’m sure there was a prayer, but I don’t recall the occasion being overly religious otherwise. I think the house was Western style, complete with real sit-down toilets (as opposed to the squat toilet in the outhouse that I’d become accustomed to). The one thing I do remember, however, is that we did not have turkey. I’ve always loved roast turkey, so I’m sure I was disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that turkey was not readily available. Koreans do eat chicken, though, so my hosts had roasted a couple of chickens for the feast. Close enough!

Today I’m anticipating turkey and dressing, assorted other traditional menu items, and pie. And, as always, I’m grateful for the opportunity to be at VCCA to work on my writing.

Crazy Low Price for Everywhere Stories

Buy this book now at Amazon: Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet

Now, I say. They’ve got it listed for $7.64 for new copies, which is less than half what they normally sell it for and way below the list price of $19.95. It’s even below MY cost for the thing from the publisher, so I’m thinking of buying some copies myself.

Amazon may be evil, but it would just be silly to pass up this deal. With my blessing, please buy this book from Amazon right now.

And, by the way, it’s a fine, fine book, if I do say so myself. Twenty stories, Twenty authors, Twenty countries, demonstrating that it’s a dangerous world. Which we knew, but these are beautiful pieces of literature.

In Residence

I’m currently in residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, one of my favorite places. Having come to VCCA many times over the past decade or so, I know the drill, most of the staff, and many of the returning Fellows. This time, there are people here I’ve met in various ways: one I know from previous residencies, one I know from Sewanee, a couple I know from WriterHouse in Charlottesville, one I met at a conference I taught at years ago, one I met recently at the Queens MFA Alumni Weekend. And of course lots of other folks I’ve enjoyed meeting and getting to know in the past week.

My work experience this time has been unusual. I arrived with a 70,000 word novel manuscript that has been out of mind for two years. That’s because I had been working on this book and another book more or less in parallel, until I decided in early 2014 to focus on the other project. So I put this one aside and gave full attention to the other. That other book is now “finished” (pending comments from my agent), and I’m now returning to the one I put aside.

How strange and exciting to be reading through a novel I wrote and have basically forgotten! As one of the other Fellows put it, I’m “reloading the book into my memory” at this stage and not really doing revisions. I’m getting a sense first of what’s there and an inkling of what needs to be done and then, beginning soon, I’ll enter that phase.

When I’m here, I don’t usually go “off campus” in the evenings, but last night I drove down to Randolph College in Lynchburg to attend a reading. It’s only about 20 minutes away, so another Fellow and I went after dinner to hear Sue William Silverman read from her new book, The Pat Boone Fan Club. She’s the current Pearl S. Buck Writer in Residence there, a position I held two years ago, so it was fun to see some old friends–Bunny Goodjohn and Gary Dop–who are the faculty there. (Terrific reading. I look forward to reading the book.)

I’m here at VCCA for three more weeks. I haven’t given myself any kind of a deadline. Let’s just see how far we can get on this project in the time left.

2016 Pushcart Prize Literary Magazine Rankings — Nonfiction

Below you will find the 2016 Pushcart Prize Literary Magazine Rankings for Nonfiction. To read about my methodology for the rankings, go here.

If you find the list useful, please consider making a donation or buying one of my books.

 

 

2016
Magazine
2015
2016 Score


1
Orion
2
74


2
Georgia Review
1
70


3
Sun
3
64


4
New Letters
4
45


5
Gettysburg Review
11
38


6
Conjunctions
11
35


7
Agni
5
34


8
Ploughshares
9
33


9
Tin House
7
30


10
Missouri Review
13
29


11
Iowa Review
7
28


12
American Scholar
6
27


12
Threepenny Review
9
27


14
n+1
19
25


15
Fourth Genre
14
23


16
River Teeth
16
22


17
Salmagundi
22
21


17
Southern Review
15
21


19
Boulevard
16
20


20
Ecotone
22
19


20
Kenyon Review
19
19


20
Paris Review
18
19


23
Antioch Review
22
17


23
Image
22
17


23
Virginia Quarterly Review
19
17


26
Creative Nonfiction
28
16


26
Shenandoah
22
16


28
Colorado Review
27
12


28
Granta
51
12


30
Raritan
28
11


30
Third Coast
30
11


32
Harvard Review
30
10


32
Ninth Letter
35
10


32
Point, The
72
10


32
Republic of Letters (?)
33
10


36
Brain, Child
35
9


36
Five Points
35
9


36
Hudson Review
43
9


36
Michigan Quarterly Review
35
9


40
Pinch
51
8


40
Southwest Review
35
8


40
TriQuarterly
35
8


40
Yale Review
35
8


44
American Poetry Review
46
7


44
Blackbird
46
7


44
Hunger Mountain
43
7


47
Believer
58
6


47
New England Review
58
6


47
North Dakota Quarterly
51
6


47
Oregon Humanities
51
6


47
Passages North
51
6


47
Poetry
30
6


47
Sweet
51
6


47
The Journal
46
6


47
The Point
51
6


47
Water-Stone Review
46
6


47
World Literature Today
72
6


58
American Circus
58
5


58
Fugue
58
5


58
Great River Review
33
5


58
In Character ©
58
5


58
Narrative
72
5


58
New Orleans Review
58
5


58
Pleiades
58
5


58
Radio Silence
58
5


58
Ruminate
58
5


58
Seattle Review
58
5


58
Sewanee Review
58
5


58
Tusculum
58
5


58
Witness
58
5


58
Fourth River

5


58
Gigantic

5


73
Alaska Quarterly Review
72
4


73
Arts & Letters
58
4


73
Brick
81
4


73
Broad Street
90
4


73
Normal School
72
4


73
North American Review
72
4


73
Parnassus
72
4


80
Alimentum
81
3


80
Bellevue Literary Review
43
3


80
Boston Review
81
3


80
Cimarron Review
81
3


80
Florida Review
81
3


80
Gulf Coast
81
3


80
Lapham’s Quarterly
81
3


80
Los Angeles Review
81
3


80
Massachusetts Review
72
3


80
Prism
114
3


80
Provincetown Arts
90
3


91
A Public Space
90
2


91
American Athenaeum
90
2


91
Asian American Writers Workshop
90
2


91
Bellevue Literary Press
90
2


91
Bellingham Review
90
2


91
Chautauqua
90
2


91
Columbia Review
90
2


91
Connecticut Review (?)
90
2


91
Hotel Amerika
90
2


91
Kyoto Journal
81
2


91
Malahat Review
90
2


91
Manoa
90
2


91
McSweeney’s
90
2


91
Memoir ©
90
2


91
Milkweed Editions – Press
90
2


91
New Ohio Review
90
2


91
Northwest Review ©
46
2


91
Oxford American
90
2


91
PMS
90
2


91
Post Road
90
2


91
Santa Monica Review
90
2


91
Southampton Review
114
2


91
Speakeasy ©
35
2


91
Subtropics
90
2


91
Under the Sun
114
2


91
Willow Springs
114
2


91
Writers Chronicle
90
2


91
ZYZZYVA
72
2


91
Brevity

2


120
American Interest
114
1


120
American Short Fiction
114
1


120
Another Chicago Magazine
114
1


120
Arts Fuse
114
1


120
Asia Literary Review
114
1


120
Baffler
114
1


120
Bat City
114
1


120
Black Pearls
114
1


120
Blood Orange Review
114
1


120
Bomb

1


120
Bookforum
114
1


120
Callaloo
114
1


120
Camera Obscura
114
1


120
Canteen
114
1


120
Chicago Review
114
1


120
Dart Society
114
1


120
Delmarva Review
114
1


120
Diagram
114
1


120
Divide ?
114
1


120
Epoch

1


120
Europa Editions
114
1


120
Event
114
1


120
Fiction
114
1


120
Fiction International
90
1


120
Fifth Wednesday
114
1


120
Five Chapters
114
1


120
Free Inquiry
114
1


120
Haystack Mountain
114
1


120
Healing Muse
114
1


120
High Country News
114
1


120
High Desert Journal
114
1


120
Hollins Critic
114
1


120
Hub City Press
114
1


120
Idaho Review
114
1


120
Iron Horse Literary Review
114
1


120
Literary Review
114
1


120
Make ?
114
1


120
Marginalia ©
114
1


120
Meridian
114
1


120
Minnesota Review
114
1


120
Mount Hope
114
1


120
Natural Bridge
114
1


120
New Haven Review
114
1


120
Noon
114
1


120
On the Page
114
1


120
Ontario Review ©
114
1


120
Open City
114
1


120
Open Spaces
114
1


120
Oregon Quarterly
114
1


120
Other Voices ©
114
1


120
Packinghouse Review
114
1


120
Palo Alto Review ?
114
1


120
Portland Magazine
114
1


120
Prairie Schooner

1


120
Relief
114
1


120
River City Publishing
114
1


120
River Styx
114
1


120
Rosebud
114
1


120
Rumpus
114
1


120
Seneca Review
114
1


120
SN Review
114
1


120
Stone Canoe
114
1


120
Stranger
114
1


120
Tavern Books
114
1


120
Tupelo Press
114
1


120
University of Michigan Press
114
1


120
Vocabula Bound
114
1


120
Wag’s Revue
114
1


120
Western Humanities Review
114
1


120
Wilson Quarterly
114
1


120
Zone 3

1


120
Big Roundtable

1


120
Tikkun

1


120
O-Dark-Thirty

1


120
Catamaran

1


120
Hedgehog Rev

1