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"It's not the duty, but it's certainly the pleasure of a novelist to recreate their imagination and the stories that are lost." Kate Atkinson speaks about her latest novel, A God in Ruins (Little, Brown, 2015), which tells the story of a Royal Air Force pilot in World War II and his postwar family life.
In this debut novel by Helen Phillips, a young wife's new job, which consists of entering numbers into something only known as the Database, is linked to a larger mystery.The Beautiful Bureaucrat is forthcoming from Henry Holt in August.
This week, have a character stumble upon an abandoned object that is oddly out of place. Perhaps a wedding ring is spotted dangling from a tree branch on an afternoon hike, or a stack of family photographs is found stuffed in a handbag for sale at a thrift store. Write this scene into one of your stories. Does your character recognize this item? Does he or she keep it, or try to find the owner? Consider how this scene might help develop your character or unexpectedly affect the main plot of your story.
Beth Gorrie volunteers her time as Executive Director of Staten Island OutLOUD. She spearheads the organization’s program planning and has adapted over twenty-five global classics for OutLOUD’s spoken-word performances. As an actor during the first few years of her working life, she performed with the Chicago Theatre of the Deaf and served as an Adjunct Instructor at the University of Chicago. In New York City, she appeared in a variety of Off-Off Broadway productions and in a series of film installations by award-winning filmmaker William Lundberg, a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship. Gorrie attended Columbia University Law School where she was an editor of the Journal of Law & Social Problems, and spent a summer in rural India on a human rights fellowship. She is a former partner in a leading New York law firm and has participated in community service in Harlem.
What makes your programs unique?
Staten Island OutLOUD gathers neighbors to explore global literature together, and to share ideas. Our first event took place shortly after September 11, 2001 when we had a deep need to gather together.
Since then, Staten Island OutLOUD has grown and has continued that spirit with a varied series of grassroots gatherings. Throughout the year, we host free events to explore global literature, our diverse backgrounds, our history, and our mutual concerns. OutLOUD is entirely volunteer-driven.
We operate on a small budget, but we’re very productive. Since our establishment in September 2001, we’ve served over 23,000 participants with over six hundred free events, in twenty-one languages.
What recent project have you been especially proud of, and why?
From September 2014 through March 2015, Staten Island OutLOUD hosted a series of forty community events about Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. When we started planning our series a year earlier, we never guessed how timely it would be, following the July 2014 death of Eric Garner, an African-American neighbor of ours who died in police custody.
Our “Mockingbird” series explored national and local civil rights history, together with music and poems from the Civil Rights Movement, and from the Depression years in which the novel is set.
Tensions ran high during the months after Garner’s death, but our series fostered thoughtful discussions. Staten Islanders talked, listened, and considered the many facets of the crisis.
What’s the most memorable thing that’s happened at an event you’ve hosted?
Adults with special needs sometimes attend Staten Island OutLOUD programs. At one event when we discussed a variety of twentieth-century poems, a woman with mental disabilities gathered her courage to comment on a poem by Dylan Thomas. She had never spoken in public before, and she knew that the audience included teachers, attorneys, and other professionals. Everyone encouraged her, and as she spoke, she began to hold herself more confidently, and her voice grew stronger. Everyone was moved when she read, “Do not go gentle into that good night.”
What are the benefits of writing workshops for special groups?
Staten Island OutLOUD’s work proves that when people have a forum and a stimulating entrée for conversation, they respond thoughtfully. Stereotypes can fade and real communication can begin. Our work with teens and with elders underscores the value of writing workshops for those members of our community. Our writing workshops have enabled people to find their unique voices. For teens who may have manifested behavior problems before they began our workshops, some of those problems began to ebb as they focused their energy on writing and as they gained confidence in their work. Elders who had never done any creative writing before participating in our memoir and poetry workshops have drawn real satisfaction in exploring their writing talent, in reflecting on their life experiences, and in recognizing how powerful their pens can be.
Photo: (top) Beth Gorrie at Huckleberry Finn at High Rock workshop. Photo: (bottom) Cast of Moby Dick marathon reading. Photo Credit: Staten Island OutLOUD.
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 New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the A.K. Starr Charitable Trust, and the Friends of Poets & Writers.
This week, think about what types of stories you write most often and the elements you tend to use when building your story. Then, write a story in a genre you've never tried before being sure not to employ any of your usual techniques. If your stories don't often include romantic themes, make romance a main plot point. Instead of always writing in the first person, try third person omniscient. Even if you've already discovered your favorite style of writing, it's good to dust off other instruments in your literary arsenal every now and then.
Submissions are currently open for the Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction, given biennially for a short story by a writer who has not yet published a full-length work of fiction. The winner will receive $1,000 Canadian (approximately $830) and publication in the Malahat Review. Elyse Friedman will judge.
Submit a story of up to 3,500 words with a $30 entry fee, which includes a subscription to the Malahat Review, by May 1 via e-mail to horizons@uvic.ca or via postal mail to the Malahat Review, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 1700, Station CSC, Victoria, B.C. V82 2Y2, Canada.
Judge Elyse Friedman has written three novels, a short story collection, and a poetry collection. In an interview with the Malahat Review, Friedman says, “I don’t think writers should ever aim for a place on any spectrum. Real writers don’t aim. They open and spill. And their words find the place where they’re supposed to be. My writing tends to be accessible and there’s usually a plot involved, often a high-concept premise, but I like to read all kinds of writing. I don’t care if there’s plot, or if the writing is difficult or the narrative is disjointed—as long as there’s truth and rhythm and talent.” Friedman cites Tobias Wolff’s “Bullet in the Brain,” J. D. Salinger’s “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut,” Vladimir Nabokov’s “Symbols and Signs,” and Steven Millhauser’s “In the Reign of Harad IV” as amongst her favorite short stories.
Established in 1967, the Malahat Review is one of Canada’s oldest literary journals. Housed at the University of Victoria, the journal publishes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and administers several annual and biennial contests. Recent winners of the Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction include Kerry-Lee Powell for her story “Palace of Brine,” and Zoey Peterson for her story “Next Year, For Sure.” The prize was first awarded in 2007.
Photo: Elyse Friedman (George Gooderham)
Alanna Lin Ramage is a writer, songwriter, and artist-in-residence at the Los Angeles Little Tokyo Branch Library, where she hosts innovative, community-building events and workshops at the Los Angeles Department of Writing and Power (LADWP!*). She has studied poetry with Thomas Sayers Ellis and poetics and performance theory with Jon Wagner and Mady Schutzman at California Institute of the Arts. Ramage composes original lyrics and music for film and television. This year sees the release of a cover album inspired by the Beatles in tandem with publishing her first collection of poems about monastery wildlife in Northern California.
A few years ago, in a fit by candlelight, I came up with a syllabus for a workshop called Alters/Altars. It was designed to help a person write and explore their way into an alter ego—the poetic self that feels its own voice and power while feeling all, but not revealing all.
In February of this year, thanks to support from Poets & Writers and the Little Tokyo Branch Public Library, I was able to teach a five-week version of the workshop in downtown Los Angeles.
One premise I was working with included the physical effect of writing as a physical act. For each class, participants would read their pieces aloud and receive positive feedback from the group. In some cases the reading would be formal, at the front of the room. On other days, I had readers stand in the middle of a group circle that echoed words or phrases as the story unfolded. One writer noticed that she read to a mostly quiet circle. She later commented that she realized she had to read "painfully slowly" to give listeners a chance to register her words more fully. She reread her piece to us and we happily listened to every word.
In another exercise, we gave alternate names to one another. The unspoken invitation was: “What name suits me in your opinion? What is my sonic incarnation? Do you really think it’s ‘Bubby?’”
The first workshop started with participants reading personal biographies or ads, and then writing fictional personal ads for someone other than themselves. The exercise allowed us to get to know each other while ascertaining each person’s unique writing style. Week two’s life stories were especially intense, offering glimpses into epic quests for love and destiny. Week three featured hypothetical after-life sequences from each person—revealing visions of beautiful, earthy, sublime, and often hilarious realities to come.
We had a dynamic, talented, and punctual group. It was a pleasure to discuss personal creative journeys, hear the mix of angst, frustration, wisdom, confidence, and steady determination that characterized each person. The group had great discussions about what makes a “healthy writer” versus what makes a “happy writer.”
My favorite session of the workshop included an assignment that asked participants to write about a sublime or transcendent moment. The results were diverse and fantastic. There was a great relationship-ending-epiphany story, an excellent dim-sum-as-travel-as-exploration-of-life story, a profound unity-with-wild-crustaceans story, and a stirring overcoming-self-while-overcoming-mountain story.
The session made me think about how creative anxiety can sometimes blind us to the larger themes we've experienced in life. It may keep us from sharing the stories we’ve already lived or from inventing stories that might express what we know.
So how do we move past this anxiety? Decide what themes are important to you based on your life experience. Once you have: Write on! (OK, that was a bad pun. I’m a workshop leader—it’s allowed.)
Writing alters you. Be brave and do the work; you just might tell a riveting story as you sacrifice your fears.
Photo 1: Alanna Lin Ramage; photo 2: Alters/Altars workshop. Credit: Alanna Lin Ramage and Anne Rieman.
Major support for Readings & Workshops in California is provided by the James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.
Nominations are currently open for the 2015 American Literary Translators Association’s National Translation Awards (NTA) in poetry and prose, and the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize. Individual prizes of $5,000 are awarded annually to book-length works of translation published during the previous year.
For the National Translation Awards, publishers and translators are invited to nominate translations from any language into English. The Lucien Stryk prize accepts nominations of book-length translations of Asian poetry or Zen Buddhist texts into English. The NTA and Lucien Stryk prizes are sponsored by the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) to support the organization’s goal of advancing the quality and art of literary translation.
For both the NTA and Lucien Stryk awards, PDF files of translated books should be uploaded using the online submission manager by May 1. Submissions are judged according to the “literary significance of the original and the success of the translation in recreating the artistry of the original.” For complete guidelines and eligibility requirements, visit the ALTA website.
This year’s award-winning translators and finalists will be honored at the thirty-eighth annual conference of the American Literary Translators Association in Tucson, Arizona. Judges for the 2015 NTA in prose are Pamela Carmell, Jason Grunebaum, and Anne Magnan-Park. The judges in poetry are Lisa Rose Bradford, Stephen Kessler, and Diana Throw. The 2015 Lucien Stryk prize judges are Lucas Klein, Janet Poole, and Stephen Snyder.
Now in its seventeenth year, the National Translation Award is the oldest prize for a work of literary translation. This year marks the first time the prize will be given in both the poetry and prose categories. Last year, Eugene Ostashevsky and Matvei Yankelevich won for their translation of Russian poet Alexander Vvedensky’s An Invitation For Me to Think (New York Review Books, 2013).
The Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize was established in 2009 to “recognize the importance of Asian translation for international literature,” and is named for acclaimed translator of Asian poetry and Zen Buddhist Lucien Stryk. The 2014 winner was Jonathan Chaves for his book Every Rock a Universe: The Yellow Mountains and Chinese Travel Writing (Floating World Editions, 2013), which includes the first complete translation of Chinese poet Wang Hongdu’s Comprehending the Essentials of the Yellow Mountains.
ATLA will also award four to six travel fellowships of $1,000 each to emerging translators to attend the ATLA conference in Tuscon on October 28. Submissions are open until June 1. Fellowship eligibility requirements and application guidelines are available online.
For inquiries, e-mail ALTA managing director Erica Mena at erica@literarytranslators.org.
Sometimes we pick up a book or read an article at the exact moment it's so needed. This week, write a story in which one of your characters is going through a difficult time and picks up a book that changes his outlook. Have your character become so connected with the book that he feels like it was written for him. Who knows, maybe it was?
The Pulitzer Prize board announced the winners of the 2015 Pulitzer Prizes today in New York City. Of the twenty-one categories, the awards in letters are given annually for works published in the previous year by American authors.
The winner in fiction is Anthony Doerr for All the Light we Cannot See (Scribner). The finalists were Richard Ford’s Let Me Be Frank With You (Ecco), Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account (Pantheon), and Joyce Carol Oates’s Lovely, Dark, Deep (Ecco). The winner in poetry is Gregory Pardlo for Digest (Four Way Books). The finalists were Alan Shapiro’s Reel to Reel (University of Chicago), and Arthur Sze’s Compass Rose (Copper Canyon Press).
Mike Pride, who replaced Sig Gissler as prize administrator in July, announced the winners and finalists at Columbia University. Each winner will receive an award of $10,000 at a ceremony on May 28. For a complete list of winners in each category, visit the Pulitzer Prize website.
Last year, Donna Tartt won in the fiction category for The Goldfinch (Little, Brown), and Vijay Seshadri won the poetry prize for 3 Sections (Graywolf Press).
Administered by the Columbia University School of Journalism, the Pulitzer Prizes were established in 1911 by Hungarian-American journalist and newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer. The first prizes were awarded in 1917.
To celebrate the approaching centennial of the Pulitzer Prize, the board announced a new project called the Pulitzer Prize Centennial Campfires Initiative. The project, which aims to “ignite broad engagement with the journalistic, literary and artistic values they represent,” will fund a wide range of nationwide literary events throughout 2016 that showcase Pulitzer Prize works. For inquiries about the Campfires Initiative, contact Mike Pride at cmp2208@columbia.edu.
Photos from left to right: Anthony Doerr (credit Isabelle Selby Hires), Gregordy Pardlo (credit Rachel Eliza Griffiths)
