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In this book, Phillip Lopate, director of the nonfiction graduate program at Columbia University, explores topics as diverse as "On the Ethics of Writing About Others," and "The Personal Essay in the Age of Facebook.” Lopate also examines master essayists, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and James Baldwin, to demonstrate how concepts of nonfiction writing have been put into practice.
Penelope Lively says, "History is in fact not so much memory as it is an examination of conflicting evidences. And this is the same for a fictional purpose: in any scene there can be as many accounts of a scene as there were people present." This week, write two separate accounts of a scene in which a crime is unfolding, witnessed by two people who are standing side by side looking out the same window. How might two individuals be compelled to notice different details? What might this reveal about their personalities and emotional states?
The language of grief; David Foster Wallace’s entertainment anxiety; an interview with the late E. L. Doctorow; and other news.
This poem by Frank Stanford is featured in Hidden Water: From the Frank Stanford Archives, published by Third Man Books this month. The book is a collection of unpublished poems, drafts, photos, and correspondence between Stanford and fellow American poets Allen Ginsberg and Alan Dugan.
The "dog days" of summer typically refer to the hottest days around July and August. The term originates with the ancient Romans who associated this time of year with the brightest star Sirius—also known as the Dog Star—rising and setting in sync with the sun, supposedly making the days hotter. Explore other natural occurrences that coincide with summer—fire rainbows, foxfire, midnight sun—and write a poem in tribute to the hottest days of the year.
Authors, Publishers and Readers of Independent Literature (APRIL) is a Seattle-based literary nonprofit working to connect readers with independent literature, authors, and publishers. APRIL hosts a regular book club, bookstore bike tours, and an annual festival during one week in March. Frances Chiem, deputy director of APRIL, blogs about two events from this year’s festival which were supported in part by Poets & Writers. Chiem works in environmental advocacy, and her writing has appeared in Fanzine, Two Serious Ladies, and Washington Trails, among other places. She tweets at @f_e_chiem.
APRIL has built more than one hundred events in four years with the idea that not all readings should consist of an author standing behind a podium. Sometimes you need a gimmick to draw in new audiences.
During March each year, APRIL celebrates authors and their works that are published outside of the Big Five for a week of goofy, fun, and intimate events meant to honor the vitality of great literature and the attention spans of audience members. APRIL has hosted storytelling competitions pitting poets, playwrights, novelists, and drag queens against each other; collaborations pairing theatre troupes with writers of short fiction; a literary séance for Gertrude Stein’s lover, Alice B. Toklas; readings with cheap food pairings, and more.
The 2015 festival marked the third year APRIL has collaborated with Vignettes, a Seattle visual art series debuting new work in homes turned galleries for a night, to invite a dozen artists to respond to a poetry collection. This year, P&W-supported poet Wendy Xu’s You Are Not Dead (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2013) spawned works like cast iron potatoes, a temporal sculpture of shattered china and sod, soft watercolors, and more.
This year also saw more visiting authors than ever before. Xu, along with other P&W-supported writers Shya Scanlon, author of Forecast (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2012) and The Guild of Saint Cooper (Dzanc Books, 2015), and Mary Miller, author of Big World (Short Flight/Long Drive Books, 2009) and The Last Days of California (Liveright, 2014), were brought to Seattle to join more than twenty authors from the Pacific Northwest for the week of performances.
The themed reading is, at its essence, a nerdy party hosted at the Hugo House—a Seattle literary establishment—with a full bar, a snack pairing, and decorations to evoke the mood of the occasion. So how to do that when there’s more than one visiting author? After the high point of the art show for Xu’s work, it was a tall order to deliver, but the apocalyptic scenes in both Scanlon and Miller’s novels provided a comically ominous inspiration for the reading. Fecund with rhododendrons to create a sort of funeral-like pulpit with backing music from band Youryoungbody covering David Lynch’s Twin Peaks soundtrack, the group sought to honor the metafictional science fiction of Scanlon’s newest novel and Miller’s evangelical tragicomedy.
"We want people to see readings as something more than hushed sit-down events for the literati. They can be fun and unintimidating ways to find new and relevant work you might not have connected with otherwise," says APRIL cofounder and managing director Tara Atkinson.
More than one hundred people served as witnesses to the speculations about the end of the world, dozens of them buying the small press books by the featured authors.
Photo 1: Wendy Xu; Photo 2: Cast iron potatoes inspired by Wendy Xu's poetry collection; Photo 3: Shattered china sculpture inspired by Wendy Xu's poetry collection. Credit: Tara Atkinson.
Support for Readings & Workshops events in Seattle 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.
Percival Everett interviewed at Virginia Quarterly Review; Roxane Gay on the death of Sandra Bland; retracing Ralph Waldo Emerson’s journey through the Adirondacks; and other news.
"To me, books came from another planet. I didn't know anyone who wrote them." J. Ryan Stradal recounts seeing an author read for the first time, and discusses the regional food and family relationships that informed his debut novel, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, released this week by Pamela Dorman Books.
E. L. Doctorow's masterful manipulation of history; a new bookstore hostel opens in Tokyo; the key to rereading complex novels; and other news.
“In the realm of the poem, we can feel our full feelings and it doesn't have to present as nonpartisan or distant in any way.” In this conversation moderated by Eric Liu, executive director of the Aspen Institute Citizenship and American Identity Program, poets Elizabeth Alexander and Claudia Rankine discuss recent events and poetry's role in history.
