AWP Conference 2011

I will be in D.C. next week at The Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference. The district just got hit with another snowstorm so travelling that way should be interesting. If you're there, come check out these panels where I'll be contributing:

Friday, Feb. 4th 3:00 - 4:15:

Empire Ballroom Omni Shoreham Hotel, West Lobby

F204. African American Writers on Obama. (Lita Hooper, Renee Simms, Tara Betts, Antoinette Brim, Demetrice Worley) 44 on 44: Forty-Four African American Writers on the 44th President of the United States is an anthology of poetry, essay, and creative nonfiction based on the election of the first African American president of the U.S. The anthology includes contributors’ reflections of the historic election of Barack Obama. Several contributors will read from the anthology and engage in a discussion with one another and the audience.

Saturday, Feb. 5th 1:30 - 2:45:

Virginia C Room Marriott Wardman Park, Lobby Level

S180. [WITS Alliance]—We Were All Poets in the 3rd Grade: What Happened? (Jack McBride, Janine Joseph, Mary Rechner, Renee Simms, Giuseppe Taurino, Jeanine Walker) WITS Writers will discuss their paths as writers and teachers, from when they fell in love with writing, how they were discouraged or made to feel anxious about the process, and how they subsequently came back to it. Investigating why K-12 students go from a willingness to engage creative writing (and all it entails: vulnerability, creativity, risk) to being afraid or indifferent, panelists will explore best teaching practices for re-engaging students and collaborating with classroom teachers.

Arizona Writers for Justice

On Monday, January 17th, I will join a group of writers to read poems, essays and stories that speak to the true legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. There is a range of writers and styles involved and the readings promise to be funny, inspired, and just plain good. The writers are:

Venita Blackburn

Myrlin Hepworth

Ryan Holden

Michelle J. Martinez

Rae Paris

Fernando Perez

Annette Sexton-Ruiz

Renee Simms

Please come out and support the reading. It's free, and it starts at 7 pm at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe.

New Blog!

Check out a new blog I've started, The So-Called Middle. It will document middle class life using mostly photos, videos, and quotes.

Writers in the Schools

Over the weekend I was in Houston for the inaugural Writers in the Schools (WITS) national conference, and it was all kinds of amazing!

WITS is a nonprofit organization now in its 26th year that is headed by Executive Director Robin Reagler and Associate Director Long Chu. WITS sends writers into underresourced communities to provide young people with a chance to work with professional writers. Among the WITS alliance are organizations like Community Word Project in New York, Inside Out Literary Arts Project in Detroit, Badger Dog Literary Publishing in Austin, Wick Poetry Center at Kent State, and Arizona State's Young Writers Program where I work.

The whole conclave was great from the hotel service to the pedagogical training that was shared. Debra and Jeanette were two Houston area teaching artists that talked about their first years of teaching in the program. These women were young but confident, knowledgeable and funny before a crowd.

The most emotional moment for me was listening to Michele Kotler, founding director of Community Word Project. She spoke to a crowd of about 100 teaching artists and alliance members. I could not give Michele's speech justice with a summary but it was a clear-eyed argument (wrapped in a personal story) about privilege, class, art, and literature. I wanted to shout like you do in church. Listening to her, I remembered the importance of literary activism especially in poorer communities where folks are often voiceless.

I'm usually anxious when I think about writing especially about my own writing ambitions. It was nice to focus instead on how to help more young people make their voices heard.

For more information about WITS go to witshouston.org and witsalliance.org

Emerging Voices + Strange Cargo

Now, in its 15th year, PEN's Emerging Voices Program is a wonderful opportunity for writers from diverse communities to be mentored, to learn more about the craft of writing, and to present their work to a larger audience in Los Angeles. Here's a description of the program from the penusa.org website:

Emerging Voices

Emerging Voices is a literary fellowship program that aims to provide new writers, who lack access, with the tools they will need to launch a professional writing career. Over the course of the year, each Emerging Voices fellow participates in: a professional mentorship; hosted Q & A evenings with prominent local authors; a series of Master classes focused on genre; and two public readings. The fellowship includes a $1,000 stipend.

The Mentorship Project grew out of PEN USA’s forum “Writing the Immigrant Experience,” held at the Los Angeles Central Library in March 1994, which explored the issues, problems and challenges faced by first and second generation immigrant writers. It was evident from the forum that many of the culturally diverse communities of writers in Southern California have special needs and are often isolated from the literary establishment. In the fall of 1995, PEN USA initiated Emerging Voices as a literary mentorship designed to launch potential professional writers from minority, immigrant and other underserved communities.

Participants need not be published, but the program is directed toward poets and writers of fiction and creative nonfiction with clear ideas of what they hope to accomplish through their writing. There are no age restrictions.

This project is supported in part by grants from the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, The James Irvine Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

And finally, thankfully, the Emerging Voices anthology, Strange Cargo, has arrived with a forward by Janet Fitch. My story, "At Four Thousand Feet and Rising," is featured in the anthology; so is the work of Stephanie Han, Shonda Buchanan, and Denise Uyehara who were fellows in the program with me in 1999.

A reading from the anthology takes place at Skylight Books in L.A. on September 12th, 5 pm.

Inspirational Shorts

*Buddhafun has a great post on the life of historian and ethnic studies pioneer Ronald Takaki.

*Tayari Jones is doing profiles of authors with first books being published this year. Her third profile, of novelist Marie Mutsuki Mockett, gives hope to those of us writing in mid-life.

*Friend and writer Rae Paris had her story, "The Girl Who Ate Her Own Skin," selected as recommended reading in the prestigious PEN/O.Henry Prize Stories 2009. The story was published in the Indiana Review. Bravo Rae!

*Marilynne Robinson won the Orange Prize for fiction for her novel Home. Agence France Presse reports that when "asked about the value of a woman-only prize, the author said it could act as 'a corrective to a tendency to treat books written by men more seriously than books written by women'."

*Stumbled across this blog, Color Online, which describes itself as "a community committed to the promotion, empowerment, and political awakening of young women. It is our mission to cultivate self-development through literary study, educational programs, cultural events, and community service." Color Online is doing great work and has a great blog. Please check them out and support.

Writing Communities and The First Draft

I have written a lot in the past week. I've finished a draft of the story I mentioned earlier, the one where my protagonist changed genders on me. I wouldn't have worked so hard on it had it not been for my friend, Rae, who gave me a firm deadline of when she wanted to see the story. I owe her one. I don't know how any writer makes it without a community to cheer her on and help her sort through ideas. I'm so very grateful for my community in AZ. We're losing our punk novelist to Chicago but that' okay. We'll be in touch with her through the internet.

The last time I met with this group, we talked briefly about writing sex scenes. I've done it when I was assigned to do so in a class, and I feel pretty lame making that admission. The question is why not write more about sex? Anyway, I pushed myself to explore sexuality in this story more than I have in the past. Here's an excerpt of the draft:

It must be, DeAnn thought, that her sister was not a sexy thirteen. Not like she'd been the year before. She gathered this by the way the boys in gold chains paused to look up and down at Crystal then turned hugely away. DeAnn had warned Crystal about her little girl hairdos. That day, her sister wore her hair in an afro puff, which sat like a geranium on the crown of her head. "Not cute," DeAnn had told her. Crystal said that DeAnn's straightened flip, which swept down over one of DeAnn's eyes, made her look, quote, "extra cheap."

DeAnn was not insulted, was never insulted, by Crystal's assessment of her especially when the boys in chains were turning to glance at DeAnn again. DeAnn was cute. Boys liked her because she was cute. Boys wanted to have sex with her. She liked sex. She'd had sex at least a dozen times, maybe two dozen times. These encounters happened in basements, swimming pools, in wooded fields, at the mall, or in cars if the boys could drive. She couldn't explain how amazing it felt to be with a boy in an unlikely place then go home to eat dinner with her mother and sister. It felt the way Christmas felt before you knew. It felt like someone outh there thought you were special. Sometimes, before she did it, DeAnn thought she migh explode into a cloud of atomes from anticipation. But afterwards, as she'd pull on her jeans, she never felt special. She felt nothing. Mostly she felt alone.

The boys were still checking her out when DeAnn looked over at them. They stood near the school staircase, a huddle of backpacks, chains, sneakers. DeAnn and Crystal had not gone to public school in years, since Crystal was in second grade and DeAnn in third, so when they walked through the doors of Edward Bigley High that morning, DeAnn was holding her breath trying to feel how her body was different from the jangle of sounds and rhythms she would join. This was her father's idea that the girls attend a "regular" high school.