Blogging Vacation

I will be out of town and away from blogging until the Tuesday after Memorial Day. I had thought I might post some concise yet flashy words of wisdom before heading out, but I spent much of the day dealing with my new computer. Some people might find this a joyful activity, but I am not one of those people.

My current computer—yes, the one that contains the whole manuscript of my BOOK—was purchased in, oh, 2000 or so, so basically it’s an antique. Seriously, I can’t even write on CDs. DVDs—fuggaboutit. Luckily, I discovered that yes, even in 2000 there were slots for zip drives, so that’s how I’ve been nervously transferring data. (Please don’t now tell me about the much easier way to achieve this transfer.)

I did have a magical moment of achievement when I plugged in my cable modem to the new computer and was cheerfully informed by some "wizard" that I needed some software…huh? “Cable guys” installed the modem in the first place. And yet…what’s in this untouched pile of crud they left behind? A CD that seemed to be the software that got me hooked up!

Yes, my old computer has a monitor the size of a mini-fridge.

Yes, I managed to buy a new computer with good old reliable XP instead of switching over to scary Vista.

No, I didn’t know that somehow Word has changed into some unrecognizable format that I’m sure is called “easier”...I just bet.

No, I will not miss the increasingly scary groaning and grinding my old computer has been making.

I’m still on the old computer for the moment…but next week I should make the full switch. Expect cursing.

Master Artists-in-Residence Program

I’ve always been intrigued by this residency program because it combines time to work with a focused workshop setting. Usually, the times I’m available to apply do not coordinate with artists-in-residence who are writers instead of visual artists (drawing: NOT part of my skill set).

Now’s the time to apply if you’d like to work with one of these writers. (Be sure to investigate the website carefully; each writer has a different focus and different application requirements.)

Atlantic Center: 2008 MASTER ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM

KELLY CHERRY, fiction/poetry
EAMON GRENNAN, poetry
HONOR MOORE, non-fiction/poetry

October 13 – November 2
Application Deadline: May 23, 2008 (postmark)
(RESIDENCY #131)

Since 1982, Atlantic Center's residency program has provided artists from all artistic disciplines with spaces to live, work, and collaborate during three-week residencies. Located just four miles from the east coast beaches of central Florida, the pine and palmetto wooded environment contains award-winning studios that include a resource library, painting studio, sculpture studio, music studio, dance studio, black box theater, writers' studio, and digital computer lab. Each residency session includes three master artists of different disciplines. The master artists each personally select a group of associates - talented, emerging and midcareer artists - through an application process administered by ACA. During the residency, artists participate in informal sessions with their group, collaborate on projects, and work independently on their own projects. The relaxed atmosphere and unstructured program provide considerable time for artistic regeneration and creation. Atlantic Center for the Arts provides housing (private room/bath with work desk), weekday meals (provided by ACA chef) and 24 hour access to shared studio space. Financial Aid is available to qualified applicants.

For more information on how to apply, please telephone (386) 427-6975 or (800) 393-6975 (domestic US only) or visit www.atlanticcenterforthearts.org or email us at program@atlanticcenterforthearts.org.

* All applications must be postmarked by the application deadline date.

In Our Own Backyard

Poet Kim Roberts sends this along:

Beltway Poetry Quarterly and Split This Rock present: "GLBT Poets of Washington," a guided walking tour of the Dupont Circle neighborhood, June 21, 10:30 am to Noon. Led by Dan Vera, the tour costs $5 and advance reservations are required.

Celebrate Gay Pride Month and learn how gay literary culture has flourished from the 1970s to the present in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, with the influence of such writers as Essex Hemphill, Ed Cox, Tim Dlugos, Michael Lally, Lee Lally, Richard McCann, Andrew Holleran, and many others. Stops include Dupont Park, Lambda Rising Bookstore, the site of the Community Bookshop, and writer's homes. This is an expanded version of the tour first developed for the Split This Rock Poetry Festival in March 2008.

The tour takes approximately 1.5 hours and will run rain or shine. Limited to 25 participants. Please wear comfortable walking shoes and carry water. The tour starts outside the Starbucks Coffee where Connecticut Avenue and New Hampshire Avenue intersect with the northern part of Dupont Circle.

Dan Vera is Managing Editor of White Crane, a gay men's quarterly magazine, and co-publisher of Vrzhu Press, which publishes books of fine poetry. He co-curates two monthly public reading series, the Brookland Reading Series, and the OutWrite Series. He blogs at "Wondermachine": http://wondermachine.org.

To register, please send your name, email, and phone to beltway@mac.com.

Three Ways to Procrastinate

Not that I would ever procrastinate what with this novel to finish….

1. Check out Slate magazine’s special "procrastination week" articles. I especially enjoyed the articles about why computer solitaire is so popular (not that I know anything about this personally)—Solitaire-y Confinement—and an exploration of whether Ralph Ellison and Truman Capote, two literary geniuses, left behind unfinished masterworks because they were blocked or because they were procrastinating: "It's All in My Head."

2. Brevity magazine is always fun and evocative: quick snippets of creative nonfiction.

3. Beltway magazine will give you a wonderful poetry fix; here's the new spring issue.

So Sorry To Miss This Reading

Unfortunately, I'll be out-of-town, but do think about checking out this reading:

Mark Sarvas, author of the newly released novel Harry, Revised, and one of my favorite literary bloggers (The Elegant Variation) will be reading in Washington on Wednesday, May 21 at Olsson’s Books & Records.

Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: Olsson's Books & Records
1307 19th St NW
Washington, DC 20036

Additional details are here.

Here’s a description of the novel: “Harry, Revised is the story of Harry Rent, a guilt-ridden, down-on-his-luck widower, who tries to reinvent himself following his wife's untimely death. His emotional journey takes him from his own solipsistic and outrageously misdirected fantasies about an obsidian-haired, twenty-two-year-old waitress at his local greasy spoon, to the tenuous beginnings of an actual, personal transformation.” And you can read more about the book here.

Writers Over 50: Send Your Work Here!

I’ve recently posted a number of calls for submissions for younger writers, so here’s equal opportunity for the more mature writer:

Passager OPEN ISSUE for Writers over 50

Submit work: June 1 - September 15 (postmarked date)
Results announced (projected date): November, 2008
No reading fee for Open Issue submissions
--3-5 poems, 50 lines max. per poem, or
--Short fiction, all stories totaling no more than 4,000 words or,
--one Memoir, or a series, 4,000 words max. in total

Include cover letter and brief bio. Include name and address on all pages. All work must be accompanied by a Self-Addressed, Stamped Envelope (SASE) with sufficient postage for reply/work return. No previously published work. Simultaneous submissions to other journals are okay, but please notify us if the work is accepted elsewhere. No email submissions, inquiries only.

If you need more information, email: passenger@saysomethingloudly.com or call: 410.837.6047 or check the website.

Send all submissions to:
Passager
1420 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21201-5779

Guest in Progress: Maribeth Fischer

One of my favorite writing events is the annual Writers at the Beach conference, held in the early spring at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been invited to teach there since its inception four years ago, and have been awed at how the conference has expanded in terms of scope, attendance, and ambition. Originally a single day of workshops and readings, writers now flock to the beach for a full Friday-through-Sunday experience of music, socializing, panel discussions, workshops, classes, meetings with agents, readings, and more.

Undoubtedly she would deny this, but most would agree with me: this vision and transformation is the result of one amazing woman, writer Maribeth Fischer. She’s an inspiring teacher; the author of two powerful and mesmerizing novels; an award-winning essayist; and an aunt. This last fact is the one that has spurred Maribeth to take on the mammoth undertaking of organizing a conference like this one: two of her young nephews died of genetic mitochondrial disease, and all of the proceeds from the conference go to help fund the research of those looking for a cure for this terrible disease.

As you can see from the opening conference remarks that Maribeth has graciously allowed me to reprint (okay, after my incessant begging her to let me!), she is quick to offer thanks to others. But she is the one who deserves our thanks: for creating the heartfelt community and lovely vibe that swirls around every Writers at the Beach conference; for involving so many people in her battle and helping us feel as if we’re playing an important role; for raising our awareness of a tragic genetic disease; for never shying away from the darker shadows that haunt everyone’s lives; and, most importantly, for reminding us that while individually we may not be able to change the whole world, with some small bit of effort, surely we can all make it a better place. I hope you enjoy this lovely piece about the power of words:

Opening Remarks
by Maribeth Fischer

In her poem, “Not Only the Eskimo’s” the poet, Lisel Mueller writes, “we have only one noun but as many different kinds” and she goes on to list the different types of snow…"snow that blows in like the lone ranger, riding hard out of the west,” and “paper snow, cut and taped to the inside of windows.” Elsewhere I read that in the Russian language there are different words for the different permutations of love, so for example, there is a specific word for the feeling one has for someone that she once loved but no longer does in the same way.

More than ever, when I stand up here each year, I want it to be like this for the word thank you. I want there to be hundreds of different words to denote the hundreds of different kindnesses and acts of generosity for which I feel an enormous debt of gratitude.

I actually found a website that listed how thank you is said in 465 different languages. I learned that in Mali, the word men use for “thank you” is different from the word women use, that in Cantonese the word you use to thank someone for a gift is different from the word you use to thank them for a service. In Japanese, there is one word used when the act of thanking the person has ended, and another word when the feeling of gratitude continues on and on (as my own feelings of gratitude will long long after this conference is over). In Lithuanian there is a “thank you” that is very sincere and one that is...not sincere? In the Mongolian language there is a word to thank someone for hospitality and a whole different word to thank someone for help. There are many languages that have both formal and informal ways to say thank you, many languages that have one word for “thank you” and another for “thank you very much,” many languages that distinguish between saying thank you to one person and thank you to a group.

For me, in regards to this event, there truly are as many kinds of ”thank yous” as there are kinds of snow-there is the “thank you” to the strangers, people I’ve never met, who are at this conference for the first time, who added ten and twenty and fifty dollars to their registration fee to be donated to mitochondrial disease research . There is the “thank you” to the woman who has come to the conference twice before and who wrote in an email to me when she first looked at this year’s website… “When I saw that we lost Zachary.”

We.

I wrote her back and I told her how much that “we” meant to me and she wrote again to say, Maribeth, the "we" was intentional indeed--from the first time I heard you speak, I knew I was right then and there "joining" your family.”

Another woman wrote to tell me, “I firmly believe that Sam and Zachary are zipping all over heaven in Angel Man outfits--” I pass these emails on to my sister and I cannot tell you what it means to her, to know that her boys, whom none of you have ever met, are mourned and remembered.

There is another kind of “thank you” for the authors who were at the first conference three years ago, and have been to every one since. I needed you all here at this one. Thank you.

There is also the “thank you” for the writers who are here for the first time, many of whom, before I could finish explaining what the conference was about and that I couldn’t pay them, stopped me, mid-sentence, and said, “Don’t say another word. I’m there.” There is the thank you to the writer, who when I apologized to him because the amount of time for each author to read is so small, responded: “I’m happy to read for just a few minutes. This isn’t about me,” But of course it is about these writers. They are why we are here, why you are here.

There is the thank you to the participants who are here for the first time, who want to write but perhaps haven’t in a years, and are hoping that maybe this conference can be the push they need. There are so many conferences, and I am grateful that they’ve come to this to get the inspiration and motivation that I know they will. There is the “thank you” to the woman, again, whom I barely know, who spent hours making copies of the different handouts, a “thank you” to the members of the Rehoboth Beach Writers guild an to my friends and my family. And of course, there is a “thank you” to Sam and Zachary, who are the reason behind all of this.

When my nephew Sam was 3 or 4, he couldn’t say my name. He called me Me BETH. And for a while his different teachers and therapists and nurses that I got to know called me Me beth as well. I loved MeBeth. MeBeth had nothing to do with being a writer or teacher or anything except being Sam’s aunt. As the poet Linda Hogan writes, “In so many ways, we are creations of language, the things people have said to us, the they things they tell us we are.” I became someone different and it’s almost, I used to think, as if Sam named the new person I became into being.

Eventually, Sam learned to call me MAURY BETH. The first few times, it made me ache a little. I missed being Me Beth, but it was okay, because Maury Beth was still Sam’s. Of course this changed too. Sam realized at some point that he said my name differently than his brother and sisters did and so for awhile I became HER. “Who do you want to wake you from your nap?” my sister would ask, and Sam would look at me and say “Her.” “Who?” my sister would press, and he’d just say it louder. “HER.”

The last time I saw Sam, the Thanksgiving before he died, he greeted me as soon as I walked into his house, “Hi Aunt Maribeth,” he said, and then, “I can say your name just like the big kids." And he did. He said it all weekend, over and over and over again. Aunt Maribeth.

I think of that, of how important it was for him to get my name exactly right and what a gift he was giving me, and how proud he was, and I think that this is what both love and writing are all about. That care, that absolute care with the words we use and the names we give to things.

One more story, this one also about words, and about my nephew Zachary….and I’m actually going to read a paragraph from an essay I wrote a few years ago called “Words.”

I think of my seven-year-old nephew, Zachary, who grows increasingly weak from a prolonged and incurable disease. He can no longer eat by mouth, but is fed intravenously each night. In the mornings, he shuffles through the kitchen, pulling the metal I.V. pole, tubes and plastic bags dangling beneath his pajama shirt. On the kitchen counter, the syringes, five of them, are filled with the medications my sister will inject into his central line. I think of him because the last time I visited my sister and her family, someone—Zach’s dad probably—asked the kids: If you were an animal—not the animal you like the best, but the one most like you—what would you be? Without hesitation, Zach shouted, “I’m a cheetah!” His sisters laughed at him, told him no way, he was a goldfish, a robin, something delicate and small, but he became indignant and bellowed, “I AM A CHEETAH!” and I thought then, as I do now, that nothing is more wonderful, more amazing than this: the magic of a single word and the story it tells—about hope and belief and who we are versus who we long to be.

This is what I want for all of you, to come away from this weekend, believing more fully in the magic and truth and necessity of your own words. I want you to remember that a single word, chosen carefully, used exactly, truly is a gift. This conference, which is in many ways, just another story that you are helping me to write, has truly taught me that as the poet Inez Peterson writes in “Missing you,” Miracles do happen in language. ~~Maribeth Fischer

About: Maribeth Fischer founded the annual “Writers at the Beach: Pure Sea Glass” writing conference in 2005 to raise awareness of mitochondrial disease, which took the lives of her nephews (Sam, age 7, and Zachary, age 15). 100% of the net proceeds from this event are donated to the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation in her nephews' memories. Fischer is also the author of two novels, The Language of Good-bye (Dutton 2002) which won Virginia Commonwealth University’s award for first novel of 2002, and The Life You Longed For (Simon & Schuster 2007), which has been translated into five languages and was named a BookSense Notable Book in April 2007. Currently Fischer lives in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where she serves as president of the Rehoboth Beach Writers’ Guild and Executive Director of “Writers at the Beach.” She teaches fiction and memoir writing and is currently writing her third novel. Please visit her website for more information.