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In the studio to record the audio version of his lastest book, the story collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Nathan Englander discusses the impetus for essentially rewriting Raymond Carver's famous story with the Holocaust in mind.
Poet and presenter of literary events Cheryl Boyce Taylor, curator of the Calypso Muse reading series and the Glitter Pomegranate performance series, blogs about Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center's P&W-supported senior writing workshop.
Shortly after 9/11 I began teaching a senior writing workshop at Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center. The workshops were designed to create a safe and nurturing space for seniors to express the impact of the tragedy on their lives. Additionally, it offered an opportunity for seniors to recall, explore, and document their own amazing stories.
The workshop had a wonderful mix of seniors, which made for interesting and, sometimes, challenging sessions. Among our members were a retired school principal, a fashion designer, a WWII veteran, a fiction writer, a multi-lingual social worker, and a Caribbean heiress. Some of them were shy, while others had a more take charge attitude.
That first year we wrote stories, poems, and letters about childhood, parenting, health, and 9/11. We wrote to music, explored poetic forms like haikus, tankas, centos, and free verse, and invited emerging and established poets to read their work and discuss poetry. One of the invited poets was the late Rodlyn H. Douglas. The group fell instantly in love with her warmth, storytelling abilities, and poetry.
During that year, we collected poems and stories for an anthology and made art—the class painted and wrote text on rocks and made picture frames with poems and family pictures inside. The highlight was the P&W intergenerational reading held each summer. We joined other P&W-supported workshops comprised of young and older writers. Readers invited friends, family, and P&W staff. What a joy it was to see them rehearse, then dress up for their special reading. There were many wonderful parts of my teaching experience there, but I couldn't have been more proud than when I heard them read their own work with pride and confidence.
Photos: (top) Cheryl Boyce Taylor; credit: Artis Q. Wright. (Bottom) Rodlyn Douglas (standing) and workshop participant Mae Del Gilmore; credit: Cheryl Boyce Taylor.
Support for Readings/Workshops in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the A.K. Starr Charitable Trust, and Friends of Poets & Writers.
The 2025 Las Vegas Writers Conference, sponsored by the literary nonprofit Henderson Writers Group (HWG), will be held from April 3 to April 5 at the Orleans Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Programming includes presentations on craft, marketing, and publishing; workshops; pitch sessions; manuscript reviews; and a master class with the keynote speaker for fiction and nonfiction writers. The faculty includes fiction writer Amanda Skenandore.
Las Vegas Writers Conference, Henderson Writers Group, P.O. Box 92032, Henderson, NV 89009. (702) 475-2913. Jo Wilkins, Conference Coordinator.
Devoya Mayo is a poet, playwright, former radio personality, DJ, tastemaker, and events coordinator with P&W-sponsored The Soulflower Group. Based in Fresno, she dedicates her time to curating events that bridge the divide between the diverse communities residing within California’s Central Valley. From 2005–2006, Mayo was P&W’s Central Valley outreach consultant. Under the moniker Ms. Soulflower, you can find her spinning music in dimly lit establishments, organizing and hosting gatherings, and creating art via Etsy.
What makes the Soulflower Group unique?
We are a consortium of designers, DJs, musicians, photographers, poets, and organizers connected by the tenet that creativity and culture are essential in building community wellness.
What recent project have you been especially proud of?
The P&W-supported Soulflower Speakeasy featuring Sunni Patterson, along with Stephen Mayu, Connie Owens, and Joy Graves, was the easy standout of the year. Sharing space with someone who had appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, performed at major spoken-word venues, and worked with several well-known artists and performers—including Sonia Sanchez, Wanda Coleman, and Amiri Baraka—was spiritually motivating and an honest-to-goodness awakening. From the moment Sunni walked on stage with her son, she offered us a glimpse into her soul through poetry, reflecting the strife, angst, joy, and hope that many of us were feeling.
How do you find and invite readers?
I find writers via word-of-mouth, social networks, and the occasional open-mic night. You can’t walk down the street in a place like Fresno and not run into a writer of some kind. California’s Central Valley has always been home to a host of heavy hitters like Connie Hales, Tim Z. Hernandez, Juan Felipe Herrera, Lee Herrick, Philip Levine, and Gary Soto.
What’s the craziest thing that’s happened at an event you’ve hosted?
One night a crowd favorite walked on stage, placed a gym bag on a stool, and began to read from his chapbook. As he read about the abuse inflicted by various objects, he began to reach into his bag and toss out the offending objects. He threw boots, belts and, yes, even an iron into a crowd of poetry lovers. Needless to say, there were lots of near misses and, afterwards, we enacted a no-Gallagher-type-antics disclaimer for future events.
How has literary presenting informed your own writing and/or life?
When I’m part of an event, or in the process of curating one, my literary antennae are on high alert. I push myself harder and listen more than I speak, which is hard... let me tell ya. The elements that speak to me, or don't speak to me, inform what I want to provide.
What do you consider to be the value of literary programs for your community?
Very few have the power, resources, or authority to demand more programming. This is how we knew we had to do more than just daydream about what it would be like if we were really to invest in our artistic futures.
Photo: Devoya Mayo. Credit: Joe Osejo Photography.
Major support for Readings/Workshops in California is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.
Tin House Books rolls out the third installment of its fiction-prompt contest, "calling all writers who are obsessed with plot and obsessives who can write a mean story."
The weekly competition extracts a story-starter from William Wallace Cook's Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots, originally published in 1923 and rereleased by Tin House last December, and invites writers to take a stab at creating a five-hundred word piece of flash fiction based on the prompt.
Entries are due each Monday (there's no fee to enter), and the winning story will be published on Tin House's Open Bar blog. Last week's champion, for a story that builds off the dilemma of a locked hotel room door, is Richard Osgood, "whose wild take on the situation," according to the Tin Housers, "had us thinking of Becker, David Lynch, and highway obstructionists."
Here's a look at this week's challenge, where {A} is the male protagonist and {B} is the female: "{A’s} profession is a hazardous one—aviator, automobile racing driver, steeple jack, “human fly”—and {B} considers this fact an obstacle to their marriage." The complete contest guidelines are posted on the Plotto contest page.
Founded in 1987 by Philip Schultz, the Writers Studio is a nondegree granting, private school based in Greenwich Village in New York City that offers ten-week writing sessions to poets and fiction writers, plus a weekly craft class in which students study short stories, novels and poetry, learning how to “read as writers.” The school also hosts the Writers Studio Reading Series which features renowned American and international writers and poets and showcases the work of faculty and students.
Think about a time or incident from your past when you just barely averted disaster. Write a story about it, but change the circumstances so that the disaster actually happens.
Valentine's Day isn't until next Tuesday, but some particularly amorous books (and booksellers) at Skylight Books in Los Angeles are already in the mood. Enjoy!
The Pushcart Prizes, given annually since 1976 for poems, stories, and essays published by literary magazines and indie outfits, purport to highlight the "best of the small presses" in a yearly anthology.
Looking to apply some objective analysis to the results (and determine, by Pushcart standards, where his own fiction might be in the most distinguished company), one writer has taken to tracking winning venues over the years.
Since 2008 Clifford Garstang, author of the story collection In an Uncharted Country (Press 53, 2009) and editor of Prime Number Magazine, has looked back at the past ten years of Pushcart anthologies and calculated the most-honored magazines, using a system that awards points for Pushcart wins and honorable mentions. The results for 2012, broken out by genre, were reported last week his Perpetual Folly blog.
This year's tally saw Georgia Review, Ploughshares, and Southern Review taking top slots across all three genres, with Conjunctions ranking in the top five in both fiction and nonfiction. Poetry was the front-runner in its genre of specialization. Big movers in fiction, in relation to Garstang's 2011 rankings, were A Public Space and One Story. In nonfiction, Harvard Review and n+1 made jumps this year, tied for thirty-second place. (Small presses make a lesser showing, though BOA Editions holds the fifteenth spot in poetry.)
Garstang admits that ten-year retrospective he takes naturally favors older journals, as well as magazines that appear in print (only one online journal was highlighted in the 2012 award anthology). "Pushcart has for several years been criticized for discriminating against online magazines," Garstang writes on his blog. "Online magazines have made some inroads in the annual volume. I expect this will accelerate and the problem will correct itself. We shall see. In the meantime, for those of us who submit work to online journals—some of which are excellent—we have to look elsewhere for measures of quality."
For more information about the 2012 Pushcart Prize anthology, visit the prize website.
Incorporated in 1975, the Loft Literary Center offers creative writing courses and hosts readings and other literary events, as well as sponsors a series of awards for writers. Writers may also rent studios at Open Book, where the Loft is housed along with Milkweed Editions and Minnesota Center for Book Arts, where the Loft is housed.
