Portlandia: Did You Read It?
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Did you read the latest issue of Poets & Writers Magazine? Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein star in Portlandia, currently in its second season on the Independent Film Channel.
Genre: Creative Nonfiction
Natalie Goldberg in Taos, New Mexico
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"The first thing that comes to mind when I think about the writing life: space. I just think of space. Time to daydream. Time to notice things," says Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (Shambhala, 1986), Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life (Bantam, 1990), and other books on writing.
The Inverted Pyramid
Take an episode from a piece you've already written—the more personal the better—and rewrite it as a third-person news story, faithfully following the inverted-pyramid and who-what-when-where-why structure of normative journalism.
This week's creative nonfiction prompt comes from Vijay Seshadri, director of the nonfiction program at Sarah Lawrence College and author, most recently, of The Disappearances (Harper Collins, 2007).
Type Books Gets Animated
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The owners of Type Books in Toronto spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books to produce this amazing video featuring music by Grayson Matthews.
Transforming Tragedy Into Art
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Vaddey Ratner discusses In the Shadow of Banyan, a debut novel depicting her family's experience during the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s. "I didn't want to write a memoir," she says. "What I wanted was to honor the lives lost, those who perished, and I wanted to do so through my endeavor to transorm personal pain with art." In the Shadow of Banyan will be published by Simon & Schuster in July.
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Pacific Northwest Authors Honored by Booksellers
The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association has announced the winners of its 2012 book awards, honoring authors from Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, and Washington. Among the winning titles are a semiautobiographical novel by a Bosnian expat, a memoir by an Olympic hopeful swimmer, and a contender for last year's Booker and Giller prizes.
Patrick deWitt, born in Canada and now living in Oregon, won for his second novel, The Sisters Brothers (Ecco), which was shortlisted for last year's Man Booker Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Ismet Prcic, who fled war-torn former Yugoslavia in the nineties and now lives in Portland, Oregon, won for his semiautobiographical debut novel, Shards (Black Cat). Prcic's novel was also shortlisted for a major award last year, the Center for Fiction's Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Award.
Washington author Jonathan Evison, whose first novel, All About Lulu (Soft Skull Press, 2008), received the Washington State Book Award, won for his second novel, West of Here (Algonquin Books). Portland-based graphic novelist Craig Thompson, author of Blankets (Top Shelf, 2003) and Goodbye, Chunky Rice (Top Shelf, 1999), won for Habibi (Pantheon Books).
In nonfiction, memoirist and lifelong swimmer Lidia Yuknavitch of Portland was honored for The Chronology of Water, published by Portland indie press Hawthorne Books. Washington State biologist Thor Hanson won for Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle (Basic Books).
The book awards have been given annually since 1984 and judged by representatives from regional booksellers. For the 2012 award, the nine-person jury considered more than two hundred ninety nominated titles.
The video below is a book trailer for Yuknavitch's winning memoir.
Adopt a Typewriter
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From the founders of Ashland Creek Press comes this public service announcement about the writer's most cherished yet endangered object: the typewriter.
Anatomy of a Book
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This helpful video from AbeBooks demystifies the terms used to describe the physical parts of a book, including boards, hinge and joint, leaf, endpapers, book block, and plates.
The Meta-Narrative
Using John Ashbery's poem "And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name" from Houseboat Days as a model, tell a story by telling us how to tell a story. Scaffold the narrative by meditating on the nature of storytelling.
This week's creative nonfiction prompt comes from Vijay Seshadri, director of the nonfiction program at Sarah Lawrence College and author, most recently, of The Disappearances (Harper Collins, 2007).
Catalogue of Curiosities
Immerse yourself in the music, films, art, and other points of inspiration that set off the spark for our twelve debut poets of 2011.
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