3/13/2016 0 Comments March 13, 2016As we slide into the Ides, Major League Baseball’s Spring Training is in full swing, and major league climate change’s premature spring is in full flower in Brooklyn, sending the Mercury into the mid-70s (23C for my overseas friends), and the heavy coats into the back of the closet. In Chicago, Trump crypto-fascists exchanged blows with Black Lives Matter activists. In Simi (or seamy) Valley at the deification of Nancy Reagan, Hilary Clinton invented a progressive HIV-Aids policy for the Reagan Administration, which, in actuality, callously ignored the epidemic. And glorious slam poet/novelist Omar Musa arrived in New York for a series of performances/readings. I had the honor and privilege of reading with Omar at the NYU Bookstore (a bit like Perry Como opening for James Brown). Later in the week, Omar visited my Creative Writing: Places workshop where he explained that he wrote 80,000 words of Here Come the Dogs before stopping to consider, cut, and revise, a process that took the word count down to 15,000, before it began its climb back to the current length of 80,000+. An important lesson in the reality of the writer’s work. Later that same day, poet-novelist-blues-harmonica-specialist Kim Addonizio visited my seminar on The Addict, where she read from the verse-novel Jimmy & Rita, and explained how important it is to consider the addict as a person, as a fully dimensional character, and not solely as a case study.
Spring Break from NYU gives me five “free” days, and Daylight Savings Time has already stolen an hour. I’m gearing up for a new round of submissions–new poems, new stories–as I finalize the manuscript of my collection Requiem for the Tree Fort I Set on Fire (which Winter Goose tells me could arrive as soon as August!). AWP in LA beckons. I’ll be on this panel, and I’ll be reading at this event. Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders #20 is at the printers, replete with my story “Trap,” and that should be available in April. Also due in April, the Crack the Spine Literary Magazine Anthology, which includes my story “No More Dancing.” Meantime, some of my most recent work can be found on these screens: Brooklyn Poets, Lime Hawk, Helen: A Literary Magazine, Softblow, Mulberry Fork Review, and a couple of interviews at Gyroscope Review and The Manifest-Station.
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2/21/2016 0 Comments February 20, 2016It’s been a busy month with all sorts of good things happening. New stories appeared in three venues: “Goer” in Brooklyn’s own Lime Hawk; “Græy Area” in Mulberry Fork Review; and “Reunion” in Helen: A Literary Magazine. The renowned Brooklyn Poets organization named me Poet of the Week, and featured a recent poem, “Eight Days a Week,” accompanied by an interview.
BronxNet television interviewed me at Lehman College for the program, Open2.0, in a discussion concerning New York Writers Workshop classes and conferences, both local and global. New York Writers Workshop launched a new reading series at Red Room, the swank art deco space one floor up from the legendary KGB Bar. We’ll host Red Room readings the third Thursday of every month. Joining me for the inaugural, at which I read from the just-published Yolanda: An Oral History in Verse, were the multi-talented, multi-genre writers Loren Kleinman, reading from Breakable Things, and Jacqueline Bishop, reading from The Gymnast and Other Positions. (Next month, March 19, we feature Emma Claire Sweeney, James Polchin, and Ifeona Fulani.) And we visited 2nd Saturdays, hosted by poet Jee Leong Koh and Paul Rozario Falcone. These guys know how to create, and sustain, (and feed!) a salon. Special guest reader was the Brooklyn Poet Laureate Tina Chang, whose work provided literary sustenance. I expect March will be quieter, but I expect another story to appear in Sin Fronteras. And end of the month, we’ll visit LA for the AWP 2016 conference. Life is good. 1/23/2016 0 Comments January 2016Welcome to the launch of this website, and special thanks to its designer, the talented, patient, and very reliable Edison Chee (a highly-recommended chap)!
You might detect a nautical fixation. I dive, and when I’m not diving (that is, when I’m home in Brooklyn), I long for the water. I think of it as a wife whom I miss terribly, but who’s detained elsewhere, indefinitely, entertaining friends, while I’m exiled at home. One of these days … I’ll be using the site for practical purposes: personal or New York Writers Workshop related announcements. And, on occasion, when I’m feeling foolish enough, I might offer a perception or two about this or that book, or film, or music, or issue. Regarding the personal: I’m happy to be doing readings from the recently published chapbook, Yolanda: An Oral History in Verse, even as I develop more poems from the oral histories I gathered from Super-typhoon Yolanda survivors (a fuller collection is in the works). Several new stories appear very soon: “Græy Area” (January, Mulberry Fork Review), “Reunion” (February, Helen Literary Magazine), and “Trap” (March, Sin Fronteras). I’ll post links when they go live. Regarding New York Writers Workshop: we’re thrilled to be launching a new reading series, third Thursday of every month, beginning Jan 21, at Red Room, the totally swank and tres chic space located at 85 East 4th Street, one floor above KGB Bar. We hope you’ll come see us there. And we’re adding a new component to our organization: Prison Writes, an organization devoted to bringing the craft of writing to those who have run into trouble with the law. |
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