Dear “Hermana Ann” by Maria Vazquez-Smith
Maria is taking a class with me based on The Book of Mev. One of the weekly themes was Direct Address, and Maria wrote the following and gave me permission to share it. Dear “Hermana…
Category: Writing
Share the Wealth with Jason Makansi: Painting by Numbers at Left Bank Books
For this week’s Share the Wealth, I invite you to learn from my friend Jason Makansi this Thursday! Left Bank Books welcomes author and independent consultant Jason Makansi, who will sign and discuss his new…
“Be in Love with Yr Life” — A Online Summer Writing Course with The Book of Mev*
From time to time I’ve learned how some readers of The Book of Mev recognize themselves in Mev Puleo’s words, say, from her letters and journals. They remind of the French novelist Marcel Proust, who…
Take Heart
Samuel Beckett’s novel, Murphy, sold exactly six copies in its first year of publication. adapted, Eliot Weinberger, Written Reaction
The Best Minds of My Generation: For Rob Trousdale and Lindsey Trout Hughes
Re: Allen Ginsberg, The Best Minds of My Generation:A Literary History of the Beats, edited by Bill Morgan Dear Rob and Lindsey, I’m grateful to you both for sharing your writing with me and through…
“Reds and Yellows” by Parvuna Sulaiman
Jennifer Lowe invited me to be on the collective of readers to decide the winner of SLU’s Library Associates Undergraduate Writing Award this spring. I encourage you to read “Reds and Yellows,” the creative nonfiction…
At Home in the World: A Summer Writing Class 2017
Thich Nhat Hanh is regarded by many as one of the most skillful and pragmatic of spiritual teachers. In 2016 he published At Home in the World, a succinct autobiography of his ninety years of…
Thanks, Jack
I first read this in August 2005, a seed Dear Layla came out in 2015, fruit That is why I want to use short chapters, each with verselike heading, and very many such chapters; slowly,…
Reading Leads to Writing
1. Yesterday I was rereading Chilean poet Nicanor Parra’s After-Dinner Declarations, which I first read in 2013, and came across this page with my scribbles: 2. In Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine, these scribbles became…
The Good News of Publishing a Novel, 4.19.2017
At Amazon.com, I see that my friend Jason Makansi’s novel, The Moment Before, will be out in November. It’s about “a woman and her beloved Syrian father, separated forty years earlier when he is swept…