Luis Alberto Urrea's Blog, page 15

BT: Washington DC

Event Description: 

Event at Politics & Prose. Details to come.

Location: Politics & Prose, Washington DCEvent Date: Saturday, January 12, 2013

BT: Casa Azul

Event Description: 

La vida loca at La Casa Azul in New York. Details to come.

Location: La Casa Azul, New York CityEvent Date: Friday, January 11, 2013

BT: New York City

Event Description: 

At the Center for Fiction. Details to come.

Location: Center for Fiction, New York NYEvent Date: Thursday, January 10, 2013

Dia de los Muertos in Tucson

Dia de los Muertos

University of Arizona students have built Day of the Dead altars for the Nov. 1 celebration. We'll be talking poetry, eating pan del muerto, dancing to mariachis, and I'll even read a bit. Details here. See you there!

Writers Railroad

I am so excited to finally announce that the project Cindy and I have been talking about for a couple of years is finally taking shape.

Thanks to the enthusiasm and support of Becky Anderson, owner of Anderson's Bookshop in our hometown of Naperville, on Monday I will be hosting the first ever event for the Writers Railroad: A Salon at Anderson's featuring my friend Debra Dean, author of The Madonnas of Leningrad and her new book, The Mirrored World.

We had the idea for Writers Railroad after seeing book tour budgets being slashed or eliminated and realizing how many writer pals we know that we want to introduce to readers we know. I'm looking at this as a pay-it-forward type of thing: I want this to be a way for more established writers to help out up-and-coming (or under-appreciated) writers. In theory, we'd be creating an "underground network" of writers passing on other writers to different cities and different readers. No co-op, no reading fees, no PR blitz. My promise to attendees is I will bring you incredible writers and you should trust me. My promise to the participating author is dinner, a fun event and a chance to introduce yourself to new readers.

We talked about doing this a couple of years ago and were overwhelmed with the enthusiastic response. We've been wrestling ever since with how to put it all in place. But with Becky's encouragement, I'm going to take the plunge now and we'll work on details as the Writers Railroad gets established. Anderson's graphic designer Larry Law came up with a dynamite logo and when Debra said she was going to be in the area and was looking for a reading opportunity, I thought she was the perfect author to showcase for our first time out.

My plan in Naperville is to hold a Salon at Anderson's every couple of months. I know we have an incredibly vibrant and active book club and literary community here and I feel confident we can get a nice crowd. But from here, I want to expand the Writer Railroad. Not exactly sure how just yet, but I'm working on it. My dream would be to have a "station master" in as many cities as possible. If the station master has a close relationship with an independent bookstore and could host there, that is perfect! But maybe a station master would prefer a more intimate environment and wants to host a book party at home. That would be OK, too.

We'll print up buttons and t-shirts.  Bookmarks. Stickers. I don't know! It'll be awesome, though.

So plans are afoot and if you are interested, you know how to reach me. We'll be launching a facebook page and twitter account this weekend.

I think this will be so much fun. I hope you do, too!

 

Tags: Writers RailroadAnderson'sDebra Dean

Wanderers in a World of Wonders

(At the Chihuly Museum in Seattle)

I try to keep up with my blogging duties, but I am not as good at it as I was.  Used to be, this blog and website were my only digital responsibility and my main conduit for contact with you.  Then my publisher urged me to enter the Twitterverse.  NO! I cried.  But I went, and I loved it.  I have been very happy with the sense of community there, and the instant-gratification of Tweets (or, in Spanish: tuiteos).  Though Twitter makes for Instant Writer Neurosis:  what do you mean I only have 4,700 followers?  Neil Gaiman has a million!  Boo-hoooooo.  I’m a HACK.

Then the publisher nudged me onto Facebook, something I was never going to do.  My kids absolutely forbade it:  FB is for kids, Daddy!  That’s like WRONG for parents to be on FB.  What are you, a creeper?  This made me feel like there must be awful pictures of my little blossoms of youth drinking and puking or scampering about in weird outfits.  But it was OK once I got to FB.  Well, maybe Eric and his pals dressed up in my gorilla suit and ran around college a little.  And, again, I enjoyed the contact and the immediate community. 

And with both Twitter and FB, I have been amazed how people I have never heard of follow/add/friend whatever they do.  New friends!  All over the world!  All right, yes—and some haters.  Flamers and trolls and white supremacists and compulsive masturbators who pause in their fantasies of licking SS boots to fire off some badly-written diatribes about why I’m an un-American idiot.  (“Don’t wanna be an Un American idiot!” Green Day should have sung if they weren’t America haters, Beaner-lovers and liberal scum.)

Well, anyway—went through a tumult of road warrior travel.  It started out in D.C. at the PEN organization gala banquet.  I love wearing a tux.  That vest works like a man-girdle and makes you feel all James Bondy. I’ll avoid the name-drop bombing run, though I will say that being with people way beyond me who agree to let me be their peer is always moving, and even hilarious. Big love to those colleagues.  Cinderella sat at the dinner table with a billionaire who wants to know if I was illegal or not.  Other millionaires say he was kidding.  Wasn’t the first time.

(Ben Fountain, Major Jackson & friend, Ron Charles, me)

We rushed home and did laundry and collected our li’l one, the fabulous Chayo, and went to Washington State.  Oh yes.  Love me some Puget Sound.  I had an event at PLU in Tacoma.  They were lovely—they put us up in the Hotel Murano, where you should stay.  Every flood is dedicated to a different visual artist, and is a gallery of his or her work.  Nice, right?  Nearby is the Chihuly bridge where his giant glass pieces tower.  Hilarious awkward moment # 1,001:  a young woman in the signing line said, “Everyone trashed this book” while handing me her Into the Beautiful North for an autograph.  Me:  “Really?  Who trashed it?”  Her:  “Like, everybody!  Everybody who had to read it!”  Me:  “Why?”  Her:  “You’re so political!”  I signed.  Smiled.  “Cool,” I said.

 

(At Pacific Lutheran University)

On to Seattle for family hang-time with Cinderella’s siblings.  Space Needle, museums, Indy Jones in Imax, and another dose of Chihuly—the astounding glass museum.  Wow!  Squared.  And King Tut!  We also trudged down to Pike Place Market and made our nerd pilgrimage to the comix shop to buy Dr. Who crap.  I mean, priceless objects.  Who can possibly live without a TARDIS lunch box?  Surely, not I!

(Chayo and me, getting our Tut on)

Home.  More laundry.  I was off to Amarillo.  The nicest people in the world live in Amarillo, and it was a thrill to be the speaker at the Wesley Center’s fund-raiser banquet.  I flew out to NYC and met Cinderella and Chayo at LaGuardia.  Feeling so freakin’ jet-set.

Well, it was Ellis Island, natch.  You know me and those America-hating immigrants!  We were hanging out in Battery Park when Fat Spiderman went by in his full suit and gave me the wazzup nod.  I love New York.  We were there for the Brooklyn Book Festival, but I had started the visit at the lovely and important Casa Azul Books in Spanish Harlem.  That crazy Librotraficante Tony Diaz was there doing an anti-book-banning event with Martin Espada and Sergio Troncoso and a full army of New York Latino writers.  (No, AZ, don’t write to me—NO BOOKS WERE BANNED, WE KNOW—THE BOOKS WERE BOXED!  Boxed, I tell you!  It was the people who were banned.)  I was a last-minute addition to the hoedown, and we sped there from the airport with our luggage.  Frankly, they did me a great honor by acting like I was some godfather.  That was really sweet—it pays to get really old and decrepit.

But here’s the thing.  We have these dear friends from The Aspen Writers who are trying to change the world.  Colum McCann lives in NY, and Lisa our mentor and guiding light was visiting.  She texted us in Battery Park that Colum wanted to take us on a picnic in Central Park.  Can you imagine this?  We went to his apartment and hooked up with them all, and Mona Eltahawy was there.  She has awesome Egyptian goddess tattoos on the arms where the Egyptian goons broke her bones.  Chayo knew nothing of this—she only knows she loves Egyptian mythology.  (Remember Tut.)  Chayo saw the tattoo on one arm and said, “That’s Sekhmet!”  They became fast friends.  And Colum made me shake on a Dad’s pact to have an arranged marriage between Chayo and his oldest boy.  And we went to the park and ate pizza and fruit as the sun set over the city.

I don’t know what is happening in our lives, but it is all about love and family and friendship and art, and I am grateful and trying to live my days as if they were prayers.  Most days, all I can really say is “Thank you.”

So, thank you.

XXX, L

Tags: road tripSeattleColumMonaNew York

No sleep 'til Brooklyn

Caught an early morning flight from Amarillo, aiming to meet up with Cindy and Chayo at Laguardia and we'll make our way to the Brooklyn Book Festival this weekend.

Hopefully, I will get in town in time to make the Librotraficantes 50 State of Freedom of Speech reading tonight at La Casa de Azul bookstore in New York City. The reading, which will also feature poet Martin Espada and Librotraficantes founder Tony Diaz, is supposed to start at 6. Wait for me!

On Sunday, I will help open the Brooklyn Book Festival with my 10 a.m. panel called Home is Not a Place with Patricia Engel (Vida), Jose Manuel Prieto (Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire), graphic novelist Leela Corman and the amazing Tiphanie Yanique. I will also be appearing at La Casa de Azul's tent from 2-3:30 during a session that will also feature a few other incredible Latino authors. You should come and say hello.

Then home.

Phew.

Tags: BrooklynLibrotraficantes

How ya like me now?

Lots to write about, not much time to do the writing. I will post a nice, long blog this weekend (it is a holiday, right?). Until then, I wanted to show you this cool piece of art done by Eric Nishimoto, a grad student at the Mayborn School of Journalism at North Texas University. He did a feature story on me for their magazine and also did the artwork. I was stunned when we went down for the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference last month to see this amazing piece of art. No link to the story yet, but I'll get it to you when I have it.

Tags: Eric NishimotoartMayborn

How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Part Two

As the first week of workshops wound down, several things happened in Aspen that were quite magical.  Of course, that magnificent bastard Colum McCann arrived.  It doesn't get much better than that--though everyone knew if Colum is here, we are not getting much sleep.

 And there was the usual awesome partiness, where we gathered at wonderful places to drink and eat and be faux Aspen billionaires of an evening.  Our dear pals Daniel and Isa opened their home to the Aspen Writers, and we went up early and took the Bourques to visit.  It's snuggled up close to heaven, where those kids live, and we took it all in like big draughts of mountain air.

Unexpectedly,  the great treat for me was that they had brought in The Three Louies.  THREE LOUIES!  Luis Rodriguez and Luis Torres, on the literary front.  And Louie Freakin Perez of Los Lobos!  They kindly and quickly dubbed me "The Fourth Louie."  YES.  The gents did their talk/comedy/history/musical thing for the possibly baffled guests.  Peeps stood there in the dusk with cocktails and eats, then a Brazilian jazz duo took the mikes and sang for us.  But a later, greater,  triumph was in store for Los Louies back at the Aspen Institute.

Me and Luis Rodriguez

Now, Isa and Daniel have this infamous bowl.  Everybody who goes there hears the whisper--"Look in The Bowl."  I found the Three Louies staring into it with awe and even fear.  This mysterious bowl seems to be full of milk, but if you watch the milk, it starts to ripple, and you hear it going "gloop gloop" and "splish splish" and then a naked woman appears in the milk, bathing and sighing.  It's BLACK MAGIC, I tell you.  It's something from Disney's Haunted Mansion ride...if the ride were rated R.

Isa and Daniel's little boy took the mike from the singers and announced to the crowd that his big sister was a criminal and not to talk to her as she ran around.

#

Back at the Institute, my writers were excellent--we had a joyous workshop.  Ben Percy saw a bear.  Mona Simpson was smarter than anybody around her.  Gioconda Belli...goddess.  We drank weird pink cocktails at the Bar Jerome.  I was lucky enough to do an onstage chat with Chip Blake, of ORION magazine.  (Why have you not subscribed yet?  I have a column in there called "The Wastelander."  Every other month.  I want to share it with you. Besides, I think it's the most beautiful mag in America right now.)  And The Three Louies did their show in the Aspen Institute's auditorium.

I cannot tell you how brilliant this was, for Aspen Writers to bring my homies into Aspen, into the seat of power.  Into the place where my people--me, if I had been lucky--were working hard cleaning their toilets and making their beds for them.  Lisa and the women of the Foundation knew it.  And they brought in the Louies to talk about the barrio.  About us.  About our humanity.  Talk about speaking Truth to Power!

They even gave a lesson in calo (Chicano slang) and read a poem by Jose Montoya, one of the grand-daddies and OG veteranos of the Chicano movement.  I sat there and cried.  I cried.  Like a bopper at a Beatles show in 1964.  I cried.

They had brought our disparaged and battered barrio cultura here, to this powerful place, and they gave it back to the audience as high art.  Art!  I never saw an alchemical process as powerful.  It ushered in all kinds of miracles.

At the end of my workshop, my students gave me a hand-carved boomerang that they all signed.

# 

Did I tell you I destroyed my back?  The really big crunch didn't happen till later--my first Old Man Injury in Oregon.  But I had already thrown my back out somehow at our friends' ranch--every time I visit Tony and Pam, I end up lame.  Too many donkeys or something.  So I was hurting and stiff before we even got to Aspen.  And I got some kind of infection in my left eyelid that came and went and raged until, by the time I fell on my ass in Oregon and slaughtered my hip, looked like I had a black eye.  And I caught a cold.  Uh-huh.  I still had about 6,000 miles to drive.  Wanted to scream.  But my JOB was to be cheerful and try to offer inspiration.  Never let 'em see you sweat.  Or hear you shriek in pain.

#

Aspen Week Two saw a changing of the guard, as the teachers and students left, and new authors arrived, and we moved from the Institute to the Hotel Jerome for the Global Story Summit.  Colum, of course, presided.  But zowie, what a crowd descended.  CNN handsome man Reza Aslan came; Andy Greer stayed; Terry Tempest Williams joined us; Ishmael Beah; Israeli novelist Assaf Gavron; our skipper at TIN HOUSE Rob Spillman joined; the brilliant Ron Rash; Randall Keenan stuck around; oh, you know, Tobias Wolff.  Peeps like that.  I was staggering around like I'd been hit with a bat.  I kept confessing to Darrell Bourque that I was sure I'd be found out and sent home.  But I wasn't.

Ghost fans:  although you have to pay a small fortune a night to stay there, they do have ghosts, including a drowned boy who shows up on the third floor. He often leaves puddles on the floor.  Oh--go in the off season.  During ski season, it's even more.  Good thing it wasn't our tab.  Otherwise, we'd have been down at a Motel 6 in Glenwood Springs.

It was stunning.  And there was homework. I will write about this experience when I get it figured out.  But at night, we gathered outside and sang and tippled.  Chayo joined us after a while.  Can you imagine a mom and dad's joy at seeing The Kid singing Johnny Cash songs with Toby Wolff and Colum while Andy Greer plays ukelele?

Chayo and me, singing along with Tobias Wolf, Andy Greer & Colum McCann

Or Colum, gifting her with hardcover notebooks--one lined for writing and one blank for drawing.  And, while we gobbled Mexican food at Woody Creek Tavern (Chayo didn't know who Hunter Thompson was, but she flipped when she heard that Johnny Depp had hung out there), Colum told her to get the famous people in the room to write in her book.  "I don't know the famous people," she said.  He jumped up.  "But I do," he replied, and he forced the authors present to write her paragraphs in her book.

I told her that one day, when she's about 25, she will open that book and say Holy Crap.

"Your English teacher isn't going to believe this," I told her.

She and Colum sat in the back of the bus and talked all the way back up the mountain.

And remind me to tell you how Cinderella shamed Ron Rash and me when we tried to go trout fishing.

--Here Endeth the Section--

(More soon)

Tags: Aspenroad tripChayo