Unpacking the MFA Residency

It seems the harder I try to get ready for the VCFA July residency the more behind I get. Which makes sense--what could possibly get me ready for that 10-day wormhole experience that swallows us all up and spits us out at the end, exhausted and exhilarated and just about ex-breathing? Because residency has a way of validating your presence in the writing world while simultaneously pointing out at every turn how very little you know about this art around which you claim to have built your life. How very little you might know about anything, in fact. You spend six months looking forward to it and by mid-point you know that you are utterly crazy and all you want to do is go home and sleep for the next half-century.

In fact, it occurs to me that residency does the very things that writing itself can be relied upon to do. It puts your ego on the line daily. It's one endlessly looping emotional rollercoaster ride. And that is fine. Because at the end if it when I get on that plane, heading back to the rest of my life, I take memories with me. Of lectures that hold me riveted, faculty colleagues who fill my heart and mind, talk about books and writing, words and how they operate, workshop conversations and graduation moments that remind me why I love this program and the work we do together.

So instead of trying to get ready for any of that, I'm trying something else this year. I'm shedding loads. I'm packing light. I signed up for yoga ahead of time. I together put a playlist of soothing music. I'm taking along a bag of ginger chews and extra vitamins.

Clearing my desk. Making time to walk. Knitting. Reading for fun at least 10 minutes a day.

Bring on the time-warp. I'll never be ready, but maybe readiness is an overrated concept.

Hunger Mountain invites submissions

Hunger Mountain, the VCFA journal of the arts, invites submissions.

Check out Another Loose Sally, the Hunger Mountain blog about writing and writers. 

Cliff Swallows and Building Narratives

These cliff swallows nest just down the road. (At least I think they're cliff swallows--are they not the only kind to build those gourd-like nests out of river mud?) I've been watching them every summer for over a decade. 

All those years, I'd drive past, slow down to glance at the swarms of birds overhead, feel the smile breaking out on my face in the way that bird-swarms make a person smile. Then I'd go on my way. I'd think, I ought to stop and take pictures. Really. Someday I will.

For some reason it sank in at last that those somedays don't just stretch forever into my distance, so today I decided to put my Flipcam to work. 

The swallows came pouring out, perhaps in response to me and my blundering around at the foot of their cliff palace. Listen to the flapping of wings and the shrill, squeaky cries. Here's life just bursting out of that rock. In contrast to that extravagance of sound and motion, look at those nests. How perfect they are, a whole community on this rock face, built one little dollop of mud at a time, flown up from the riverbank a couple of miles away. 

They remind me of Nader Khalili's ceramic homes.

What can we learn from swallows about form and structure? A lot, I think. There's such a deep sense of the organic and whole about this little colony of homes, each little cavity containing a bobbing beak or two. Nothing wasted. Everything with a purpose. Who needs heaven? Perfection is right here. 

Think about building story that way, with that kind of care and concern for setting and context, space and sky, river and rock, that intensity and life force driving the whole endeavor. I'm quoting Annie Dillard these days: "...right now your job is to hold your breath." 

Writing From the Chakras: An Online Course with Minal Hajratwala

She calls it the "fastest, fiercest way" she knows to generate work quickly. Body-centered exercises grounded in the deeply personal. Inclusive. Fun. Inspires her students to connect with their own creative expression. That's how former students describe Minal Hajratwala's writing workshops.

Juice up your chakras. Write from your body. Why not now?

I have a novel that should be in progress but is currently in dormancy. It could use exactly this. If my June and July weren't spoken for already I'd be signing up, if only to tap some of Minal's energy, enthusiasm, and passion for this work of teaching and writing. 

Lyn Miller-Lachman on Humor and Disability

Somewhat related to my thinking on humor and cultural contexts, writer and VCFA graduate Lyn Miller-Lachmann muses about humor and disability.

Also tangentially related, an earlier post of mine about the fragility and robustness of humor.

And in these reviews of multicultural books in IRA's Reading Today Online, it's nice to see several that have funny elements.

South Asia Book Awards 2013

The South Asia National Outreach Consortium announces the South Asia Book Awards:

The winning books in 2013 are The Rumor by Anushka Ravishankar, illustrated by Kanyika Kini, and Kids of Kabul: Living Bravely Through a Never-Ending War by Deborah Ellis.

The Rumor (Tundra Books, 2012) is a charming, energetically-paced picture book, a North American edition of a 2009 publication from  Karadi Tales of Chennai, India. The people of the fictional village of Baddbaddpur like to tell tales "so tall that if you put them one on top of the other, they would reach the stars." When bad-tempered Pandurang coughs up a feather one day, the anecdote grows like wildfire--or perhaps like a forest! A neat twist at the end results in an altogether unexpected transformation, while the very last turn leaves the reader with an echoing aside from the storyteller whose narrative presence infuses these pages. The illustrations add color and movement in equal measure. One of Ravishankar's best, right up there with her Tiger On a Tree. (Grades PreK-4).

For Kids of Kabul (Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, 2012), author Deborah Ellis went to Kabul to find out what has happened to Afghanistan’s children since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. She spoke to children, who gave her often searingly honest accounts of their lives. Courage, optimism, and the power of endurance are reflected in this book, in which Ellis steps back in the role of listener, and gives agency to the young voices. (Grades 5 – 12).

Congratulations to the winners! The full list can be found on the SABA web site. 

"Did I Choose You, Or Did You Choose Me?"

Publishers Weekly reports: "Esteemed children’s author E.L. Konigsburg, a two-time winner of the Newbery Medal (From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, in 1968; The View from Saturday, in 1997) and the only writer to have received both the Newbery Medal and a Newbery Honor in the same year, died on Friday, April 19 at age 83."

My son read From the Mixed-up Files...when he was around 10. It made enough of an impression that I'm pretty sure he contemplated running away to a museum more than once, when his parents became too exasperating. For me, though, The View From Saturday was a defining book. The multiple voices. The interlinked, delicately crafted short stories. The way the book played with form and style. The Souls and their allies. And maybe especially quick-witted Julian Singh, a South Asian character, imperfect but in a time when there weren't many like him in children's books. And above all the teacher in a wheelchair. What an attitude she had--do we not need a Mrs. Olinski around today to face off against Core Standards and endless testfests?

Do books choose us or do we choose them? After reading The View From Saturday in 1996, I spent several weeks reading just about every book Elaine Konigsburg had written. Because this is what her books did, all of them. They drew me into their fictional worlds, but through the journey, whether it was to the Met or to Milan of da Vinci's time, they unmasked truths about here and now. They spoke to the odd, the eccentric, the unjust and the beautiful in ways that got under my skin and changed me. I returned to her books again and again as I struggled to find the hearts of my own stories.

Go in peace, Elaine Konigsburg. I never had the pleasure of meeting you, but I'm going to miss your voice.