Meredith Sue Willis's Blog, page 10

Rainy day with neighbors at MAM

     We were at the Montclair Art Museum yesterday to celebrate the life of a neighbor and a scholarship being established in her name: Kathryn Marie Juliano.  She was a student for many years at the Montclair Art Museum, and that's where the scholarship will be. Part of the afternoon was a tour of the current exhibit "Constructing Identity in America (1766-2017)." 
    Then, before joining the Juliano party downstairs for a reception, we saw the Kara Walker installation, which closes next week.  It is pretty amazing as her work always is--in your face and horrifying with its lynchings and rapes and big black silhouettes so sharply set off from the white backgrounds, but you can't stop looking.  What impresses me increasingly, though, is how her work is also delicate and so carefully executed.  The big one was the Virginia lynching  (see right) but also a huge triptych drawing that gave a different view of how she sees the world.

Reading at the Jefferson Market Public Library in New York City

Last night’s reading at the Jefferson Market Library in New York City marks the official end of my fall promotion tour for Their Houses .  I have another couple of events planned and potential, and I have some further ideas, but I’m closing it down for now.  It has been a wonderful three months of readings, workshops, interviews and visiting with old friends and making new ones.  Honestly, I’m going to glow for a long time.
Last night Diane Simmons and I presented “Beyond the Hudson: New York Writers Who Still
Go Home” to more than thirty people.  Many of them were old friends (some of mine from forty and more years ago and continuing), but others came because they had a connection to West Virginia or were simply interested in the topic.  One older woman said she was a native New Yorker and always admired the courage of those of us who came from elsewhere!  We had audience members from Brooklyn and New York, and at least one New Jersey friend.  My writers group, to whom I dedicated Their Houses, was there, and a couple of present and former students, and our nephew and his wife!  But others came because the topic interested them, and Diane and I included a good period of discussion after I read the Mountain Militia Chapter from Their Houses and she read her essay about explaining the results of the 2016 election in her home region of Eastern Oregon, the high desert, to northeastern intellectuals  This essay was published earlier this year in Czech in a major Czech Republic magazine.  She read it in its English version, and talked about how there is a gap in many countries, including the Czech Republic, between urban and rural people.
We had a lovely warm discussion after the readings, and I sold a few books and feel all warm and fuzzy this morning.

Next Year's Words in New Paltz, New York

   



   Last night, November 14, 2018, I was part of a reading series in New Paltz, New York, called Next Year's Words.  It is curated by poet Susan Chute, who prepares excellent, entertaining introductions for her writers.  Three people read, and people who sign up for the open mic are interspersed with the scheduled readers.  It's an excellent format, and it was a lovely, warm atmosphere--including an intermission with homemade snacks! I was honored to share the stage with poets David Appelbaum and Anne Richey. Earlier this year, my friend West Virginia poet laureate Marc Harshman read on the same stage.
   Also part of the fun was visiting my old friend Ingrid Hughes, author of Losing Aaron: A Memoir.

Reading Wednesday November 14 in New Paltz!

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

 Reading at   Next Year's Words: A New Paltz Reading Forum , Jewish Congregation of New Paltz Community Center, 30 North Chestnut St. (on Route 32) from 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm. New Paltz, New York. See flyer here.

New Issue of Books for Readers #199

Take a look at  Books for Readers #199 Reviews by Ed Davis & Phyllis Moore; reviews of books by Richard Powers, Rachel Kushner, Craig Johnson, Elizabeth Strout, Thomas Mann, Eliot Parker and many more!

Workshop on Making Your Novel the Best It Can Be...

... at the West Virginia Book Festival.  I had at least 40 people (I'm the little yellow and black bumble-bee person in the front).  Talked about, and did exercises for, jump-starting your novel (or other prose narrative like memoir); getting a grip on the shape of the "loose, large, baggy monster:  (Henry James); and then various types of revision specific to novels; and finally  structural revision.  Attendees were eager to share and laugh, and I had a great time.



Afterward, I hung out in the "Marketplace" with all the book sellers and presses and had lovely reunions with George Brosi of Appalachian Mountain Books as well as Carter Seaton and Eliot Parker, and Derek Krissoff, the director of my publisher WVU Press as well as Susanna Holstein AKA storyteller Granny Sue and many more.  Really a pleasure to see old and new friends.  In the evening, I went over to Taylor Books to hear my friend and WV Poet Laureate Marc Harshman read, and there saw Anna Smucker and Valerie Nieman and Nancy Adams.  Such fun!       And, for random occurrences of special weirdness:  in the coffee shop at Taylor Books along with customer and a a pack of neatly suited Special Service Operatives, was Ivanka Trump.  What was she doing there?  Lord knows.     

In Charleston WV for the West Virginia Book Festival!

                                                                                       10-25-18

A long drive to Charleston, West Virginia, today, but I was listening to lectures about the Italian Renaissance and looking out at lovely low-key-color, rusty tipped deciduous trees with flashes of orange maples and yellow oaks.  Here's a view from Sideling Hill in Maryland on Route 68:


I'm staying in an airbnb in an old hill neighborhood in Charleston with lots of lovely stately houses and charming cottages.  Everything is on a slope with tall trees and flowers and ivy and, oh yes, political election signs! 




The Book Festival with my workshop starts tomorrow.

Words Bookstore, Maplewood NJ 10-16-18

  I had a wonderful experience last night (10-16-18) at Words bookstore in Maplewood, NJ.  Carrie  Harmon and the rest of the staff there run a terrific series of programs, bringing in writers from northern New Jersey but also from nearby New York City.     For me, it was all about friends!! Linda Cameron and Lisa and Zia, Irene Dunsavage and dear  former neighbor Mary Sciaino-- writer friends and Ethical Culture friends-- a gentleman who studied novel writing with me at NYU in the early 1990's.  It was a solid crowd of around twenty people with lots of good questions and comments.  I read for twenty minutes and then we had discussion for half an hour.  It was a privilege to have so many good people take such a big chunk of their Tuesday evening to come out and be with me. 

The Book Tour Continues: Montclair New Jersey

    The book tour continues:  On Saturday I was in Rockville Centre, New York, at Turn of the Corkscrew bookstore, and tonight, Thursday October 11, 2018, I was in Montclair, New Jersey at the redoubtable and inimitable Write Group that has its 30 or more sessions a month at the Montclair Library.
    Montclair is not a particularly small town, but it is definitely a town rather than a city, but I doubt there is any other community in the country with a more dedicated and active community of writers.  Did you note that I said 30 or more sessions for support and learning a month?  These are critique groups and talks and workshops and sessions for group writing to prompts-- they are really amazing, with a large and enthusiastic membership, organized by many, but especially Carl Selinger, who emails out their schedule and is the liaison to the library.
    I've visited them before, but this was an especially tight and lively group, many of them already published, and we talked mostly about structuring our books, and I shared some of the critiques of Their Houses that led me to make major and fruitful changes.
 
 

Shepherdstown and the Four Seasons Bookstore

My final event of the week before heading home was  a reading and discussion at Four Seasons Books in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, where I'd never been before! What a lovely town, and a bookstore just chock full of old and new books.  The new owner is Kendra Goldsborough, who was so welcoming, and a full participant in the small group of old and new friends.  We had a great discussion that included politics and religion and Appalachian culture and literature.  And after that, it was up I-81 and back to the Northeast, full of images and voices, looking forward to going back in October for the West Virginia Book Festival--so good to have been home for a whole week.