Fred Rogers, host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, once said, “I like to compare the holiday season with the way a child listens to a favorite story. The pleasures in the familiar way the story begins, the anticipation of familiar turns it takes, the familiar moments of suspense, and the familiar climax and ending.” What would you compare the holiday season to? This week, write a personal essay on the momentum of the winter holidays and how they carry you through to the new year. 

This week, pick a character and write a passage describing the childhood bedroom he or she grew up in. Consider the smells, the angle of sunlight through the blinds, the faint murmer of the television in the living room. What secrets are hidden under the floorboards, or etched in the closets? If the house still stands, and his or her family still lives there, have your character return for a visit.

Year after year, we receive gifts from family members that we only see on holidays. These gifts are sometimes inappropriate. Perhaps you’re vegan and someone gives you a leather wallet, or you keep getting sugar-scented soaps and lotions and you don’t have the heart to say that you’d prefer something else. This week, pick a gift and write a poem about how you felt after receiving it. Here is your opportunity to be honest, so let it all out. 

Leilani Squire's poetry and short shorts have been published in magazines including the Sun, Eclipse, and Gentle Strength Quarterly. She has been a featured poet with the Valley Contemporary Poets, Alex Frankel’s Second Sunday Series, and at Beyond Baroque, and is at work on her first novel. Squire facilitates creative writing workshops for veterans at the Greater Los Angeles Veteran’s Hospital, Wellness Works in Glendale, California, and online for bookscover2cover. She is the senior editor of Returning Soldiers Speak: An Anthology of Prose and Poetry by Soldiers and Veterans (Bettie Youngs Books, 2013) and is the founder and director of the annual event Returning Soldiers Speak: An Evening of Prose and Poetry, a venue for veterans and soldiers from different wars and conflicts to read their poetry and prose to the community. 

I began working with veterans four-and-a-half years ago, with the goal of helping them write about their experiences so that they can heal from the wounds of war; and for those who haven’t been on the battlefield, to begin the process of integrating back into society after their military experience. I facilitate creative writing workshops and work with veterans from the Korean War through Operation Enduring Freedom.

On November 8th, the fifth annual Returning Soldiers Speak: An Evening of Prose and Poetry reading was held at Beyond Baroque in Venice, California. People from all sectors of society and from Los Angeles, San Diego, and Riverside counties, came to hear the veterans read. Veterans from Arkansas, Oceanside, the Mojave Desert, and Los Angeles read their prose and poetry.

The reading began with a letter written during the Korean War by a Navy Seaman deployed on an aircraft carrier telling about the birth of his daughter. Then, stories of the Vietnam War were told: how photos were not taken out of respect for the dead, how a corpsman was embedded with the Marines doing humanitarian work in Vietnamese villages, the gritty reality check of a soldier humping through treacherous Ashau Valley, and of another soldier loading bombs into an airplane. As I listened to the Vietnam veterans read, I sensed I was witnessing something extraordinary. I was in the presence of combat soldiers, who lived in and through war. And their stories touched something primordial within. It was an honor.

The audience was grateful for the breadth of humor that followed, with stories about how to survive in the jungle, the benefits of boot camp, and the lighter, satirical side of being a woman in the military. Others spoke about more recent events. Two combat veterans read about their experiences during the Gulf War. A woman veteran read an excerpt from her memoir about how her superior officer repeatedly raped her and how she kept silent for fear of being dishonorably discharged. The Operation Iraqi Freedom generation read about the challenges of posttraumatic stress disorder, suicide, and what it means to come home and integrate back into society.

One of our favorite readers from Returning Soldiers Speak, James Mathers, passed away this summer. A conscientious objector during the Vietnam War read a short piece called “Poet Time” written by Mathers. The last sentence goes: “If we’ve got any poets out there, now’s the time to step up.” These words were an inspiration and validated the evening’s event by giving the veterans and the audience, permission to write and tell their stories. It was a perfect way to end the reading.

For the first time, because of the generosity of Poets & Writers, Returning Soldiers Speak was able to give the veteran-writers a stipend for reading. We gathered on the staircase in Beyond Baroque’s foyer. I announced their names like roll call and distributed their checks. They were so grateful and proud. And so was I.

Photo: Leilani Squire (at left) with P&W–supported readers from Returning Soldiers Speak. Credit: Chuck Smallwood.

Major support for Readings & Workshops in California is provided by the James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

An old song goes: “Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.” Does making new friends come naturally to you, or is it easier said than done? Do you use social media sites like Facebook to make new connections, or do you prefer to meet new people at social events? This week, write a personal essay reflecting on how you get to know people, and how they become a part of your life. 

Jorge Luis Borges once said, “I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” Libraries are fascinating places, full of knowledge and mystery. Think of a library you’ve been to in the past. It could be the local library you went to as a kid to look at picture books, or a library you visited once to kill time. Take this library and use it as the setting for the beginning of a new story. Consider the librarian on duty, the regulars, the dark corners, and old books with strange, scribbled notes. What brings people to this library? What are they trying to find?

As the weather turns colder and the days grow shorter, it may be a nice time to gather some friends and write together. This week, try writing a renga, or “linked poem.” The first poet begins by writing a stanza that is three lines long and contains seventeen syllables. The next poet adds the second stanza, a couplet with seven syllables per line. The third stanza repeats the structure of the first, and the fourth mimics the second, and so on, until the poem comes to an end. To make sure the poem has a narrative arc, each poet writes his or her new stanza by referring to the stanza immediately preceding it. 

Rose Mary Salum (Mexico) is the founder and director of the award-winning bilingual magazine Literal, Latin American Voices. She is the author of Delta de las arenas, cuentos arabes, cuentos judíos (Literal Publishing, 2013), Spaces in Between (Literal Publishing, 2006), a book of short stories, and co-author of Vitrales (Edamex/Mexico, 1994). Her poems and short stories have been included in anthologies in the United States, Argentina, Mexico, India, Australia, and Spain. She has published fiction and essays in many periodicals. Salum has received international awards for her literary and editorial work including the 2014 International Latino Book Award, the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) Best New Journal for 2006, and four Lone Star Awards, among others.

What makes your press and its programs unique?
Well, for some reason the word unique feels a bit ambitious. However, what we have tried to accomplish all these years at Literal is to try and bring the most established authors from Latin America into the consciousness of American readers.

What recent project and/or program have you been especially proud of and why?
I’m happy about a few of them. We recently invited David Miklos, a very well-established writer in Mexico, for an event. People fell in love with him because he unveiled very intimate family situations that engaged the audience. These powerful themes run through much of his work. Another excellent author and thinker who has joined us is Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez. People wrote us afterwards asking for more writers like him. The thing is that when we bring these authors to Houston, Texas, we create not only awareness, but also a liaison that connects people to their roots.

What’s the craziest (or funniest or most moving or most memorable) thing that’s happened at an event you’ve hosted?
When David Miklos was speaking about both his adoptive mother and his biological mother, the latter was there in the audience, not understanding what he was talking about. She didn’t know him well (this was the second time she saw him after more than forty years) and yet, her eyes were sparkling with joy. It was touching, but at the same time mind-blowing. Did she feel regret? Was she happy that he became such a successful person? All these questions were on everyone’s minds, and yet, the audience received her presence with such welcoming warmth.

How do you cultivate an audience?
With the magazine, the books we produce, the cultural events, social media… with everything that we can think of!!!  In a world that is bombarded with so much information, invitations, activities, reminders, and so on, it’s hard to cultivate a faithful audience, but we try.

How has running a press impacted your own writing and/or life?
I’ve learned so many things on so many levels that it would take me weeks to explain. In fact, I’m tempted to write a memoir only related to what I’ve learned, who I have met, and the funny stories that accompany the kind of work I do.

What do you consider to be the value of small presses in your community?
In my opinion, they are the ones that bring the jewels of the world of literature to readers. The larger publishing houses are more concentrated on what they will sell to pay every month’s commitments. Sometimes the quality they offer is not as great as what the small presses bring to the public. Small presses are the ones that take more risks to open spaces for new and talented authors.

Photo: Rose Mary Salum

Support for Readings & Workshops events in Houston is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

This week, look at a day in your life through the eyes of an ancestor. How would your grandmother react to the e-mails you get at work? How would your great-great-grandfather navigate modern public transportation? Write a diary entry in the voice of someone from an earlier generation. Consider the cultural norms of the time period your ancestor grew up in as well as his or her personality. Focus on the surprising similarities in your daily lives for a challenge.

At their annual benefit and awards dinner held last night in New York City, the Center for Fiction announced Tiphanie Yanique as the winner of the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. Yanique, who won for her debut novel, Land of Love and Drowning (Riverhead Books, 2014), will receive $10,000. The annual prize is given for a debut novel published in the previous year.

Yanique was chosen from a shortlist of seven debut novelists. The shortlisted finalists, who each received $1,000, were Rene Denfeld for The Enchanted (Harper), Smith Henderson for Fourth of July Creek (Ecco), Josh Weil for The Great Glass Sea (Grove Press), Vanessa Manko for The Invention of Exile (The Penguin Press), Ted Thompson for The Land of Steady Habits (Little, Brown), and Matthew Thomas for We Are Not Ourselves (Simon & Schuster). In July the Center for Fiction announced the longlist for the prize, which included twenty-six novelists. David Gilbert, Tayari Jones, and Margaret Wrinkle judged.

Yanique is the author of a short story collection, How to Escape From a Leper Colony (Graywolf Press, 2010), and a picture book, I Am the Virgin Islands (Little Bell Caribbean, 2012). Land of Love and Drowning tells the story of two sisters and their half-brother orphaned after their parents die in a shipwreck. The novel takes place during the early 1900s in the Virgin Islands. In a video from our Poets & Writers Live event in New York City last June, Yanique—along with four other authors— discusses her work, her process, and what inspires her to write.

Established in 2006, the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize honors reporter and writer Ray Flaherty, the father of late writer Nancy Dunnan. Dunnan, who sponsored the award, passed away in August. Previous winners of the prize include Junot Díaz, Ben Fountain, Hannah Tinti, and Margaret Wrinkle.

Photo Credit: Debbie Grossman