I’m thrilled to share that the audiobook for Dreams Under Glass will release Fall 2024, and you’ll be able to purchase a copy through all major platforms or borrow one through your public library. Sound was a very important part of the composition of this book, both because I wanted it to sound “New York-y” in a way that felt homey to me and because I worked on it as a Jack Straw Writing Fellow in 2015, a program that trains writers for performance and voice recording. (You’ll see via the Jack Straw link that back then the work-in-progress was simply titled Paralegal. Titles are hard!) I am not the narrator of this audiobook—a professional narrator is—and I can’t wait to listen to their interpretation of my novel. Huzzah!
I am so very delighted to share that I've just signed a contract with Lanternfish Press for my second novel, to be published sometime in 2022. Some of you following this blog may be familiar with bits and bobs from the book, which for many years had the working title Paralegal, and which tells the story of a diorama artist working as a paralegal during the economic crisis of 2008, in the same building in which the Bernie Madoff scandal explodes. (Binnie, the protagonist, is influenced by the surrealist artist Joseph Cornell, hence the choice in art for this post. This particular collage also been my laptop wallpaper for ages...) The project received early support from 4Culture and the Jack Straw Writing Program, and it's so exciting to shepherd it on toward existence in the world!
ETA: Here is the official announcement from Lanternfish Press!
Yesterday, I got a sneak peek at a song Sean Morse is writing in response to Daughters of the Air for Word Play: Original Music inspired by Seattle7Writers. The theme of the concert (happening on March 2 at Hugo House) is "Transformations," which is certainly fitting for the metamorphoses in my novel. But it's also super cool to experience a transformation of one art form to another. And what a honor to have one's own work transformed!
I've long used visual art as inspiration for my writing. I've also reflected upon writing in response to music and dance. Whenever I'm stuck in my writing taking in another form helps. (Long walks also help, almost always.) Hearing Sean's concepts and interpretations gave a whole other dimension to the difficult mother-daughter relationship in my book, and the larger societal problem of looking away from atrocity. I'm looking forward to sharing a link to all the songs once they're recorded—Sean's has been looping in my head all day today!
And, I'm excited to hear songs from the rest of the Bushwick Book Club, which is such a neat organization that has put on numerous concerts launching from classics, new releases, the Jack Straw Writers Program, and the like. Several years ago, The Furnace partnered with BBC and Bradford Loomis wrote a beautiful song in response to my short story "More Like Home Than Home" which is now on his album Banner Days.
So, on March 2, Sean Morse, Alex Guy and Joy Mills will perform music inspired by Daughters of the Air. Wes Weddell, Simon Kornelis, and Reggie Garrett will perform music inspired by Michael Schmelter's book of poetry Blood Song. And, Amanda Winterhalter, Nottingham/Wicks, and Nessa Grasing will perform music inspired by Laurie Frankel's novel This is How it Always Is.
Hearing all of these transformations live will be a real treat. If you're in Seattle, I hope you can make it! Proceeds from ticket sales will benefit STYLE: Songwriting Through Youth Literature Education.
Dang it. Despite world affairs being horrendous, I'm going to relish some good things that happened in 2016. First, I achieved my goal of obtaining 100 rejections (106!). If you're not getting rejecting 90% of the time, you're not aiming high enough--so goes the wisdom from Creative Capital. The fruits of this labor paid off with eight publications. Here they are, plus other goodness. (Find the zoetrope!)
- Artist Trust and Gar LaSalle threw a party to celebrate my winning the inaugural Gar LaSalle Storyteller Award. With delicious homemade pizza! Pictures here. Thank you, forever, Gar and Artist Trust. The door this award opened is tremendous. And congrats to the 2016 winner, Peter Mountford! I can't wait to read his next novel, In The Rush of Everything.
- Jewish in Seattle published my personal essay "Threads of Memory" and my first feature article "Art After Auschwitz."
- Steve Barker interviewed me for his podcast Ordinary Madness. Check out his debut essay collection Now For The Disappointing Part.
- Pacifica Literary Review published "How Do I Fit This Ghost In My Mouth," my first poem.
- The Rumpus published my personal essay "Used To Be Schwartz," featuring a very sad ham sandwich.
- M & I traveled to the Netherlands so I could research Novel #3.
- The anthology Airplane Reading included my essay "Mapping Imagination," about travelling to Argentina to research Novel #1, Dirty.
- The Jack Straw Cultural Center released a podcast from my 2015 fellowship, in which I discussed with Kevin Craft Novel #2, Paralegal, and read an excerpt. It's got cabbage and spite in it.
- The Los Angeles Review of Books published my essay "Dark Fruit: A Cultural and Personal History of the Plum." Hooray for plums! This essay was a loooooong time in the making.
- Syntax & Salt published two micro-fairy tales.
- For their 30th Anniversary celebration, Artist Trust included my story "Cauliflower Tells You" in the window of V2, a temporary collaborative arts space that used to be a Value Village. The party was super fun; I especially enjoyed Cathy McClure's installation in the elevator, "Such a Nasty Woman." It's similar to her piece "Carnival of Life" except with female figurines.
- Moss published my story "Don't Worry," inspired by something disturbing I overheard at Anne Frank Huis.
- Though I am sad Corinne and I brought The Furnace to a close, our farewell evening was just beautiful. Lisa Nicholas-Ritscher closed out the night by leading a sing along to "Dance Me To The End of Love" with the help of the klezmer group The Schtick Figures. Ah, Leonard Cohen! RIP.
My plans for the holidays including gorging myself on kreplach, cholent, pizza, and rainbow cookies and devouring Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Paula Fox's Desperate Characters. Happy winter solstice!
The podcast from my 2015 Jack Straw fellowship is now up on their blog. Curator Kevin Craft spoke with me about my novel-in-progress PARALEGAL and the creative process. Then I read an excerpt, featuring, among other things, cabbage and spite. (Per Levi Fuller's recommendation, I might retitle it CABBAGE AND SPITE.)Here's how the podcast begins:
Sometimes she wondered if part of her motivation to pursue art was simply spite.
ListenYou can pick up an anthology with this excerpt and those of all the 2015 fellows here. Many thanks to Kevin Craft, Levi Fuller, Joan Rabinowitz, and everyone at Jack Straw Cultural Center!
Yesterday I had the pleasure of chatting with Steve Barker for the 76th edition of Ordinary Madness, his Arts & Entertainment podcast. We talked about novel writing, rejection, The Furnace, the effects of winning awards, and a bit about my time at McGill University in Montreal. I also read two short-short stories, one of which is quite new. Fun!
Many thanks to Samudre Media for documenting Pay Dirt, the event culminating a year + of work on my novel PARALEGAL, thanks to an Art Project grant from 4Culture and a Jack Straw Fellowship. The Samudres do beautiful work in the Seattle arts community.
On December 3 at 7 pm, I'm reading from my novel PARALEGAL at the Jewelbox Theater in Belltown. This performance culminates a year+ of work on a project whirred forward by support from 4Culture and Jack Straw Cultural Center, for which I am very grateful. I'll be joined by four fantastic Jack Straw Fellows whose work intersects with mine, on the topics of art, money, and desire: Bernard Grant, Emily Bedard, Matthew Schnirman, and Martha Kreiner. Please come!
Autumn, that busy literary season, starts a bit early for me, with three readings coming up this month, and more to follow September through December. As I promised on King 5's New Day Northwest (!!!), I will channel a young Jack Nicholson in at least one reading this year. 
AUGUST
- Wednesday August 19, 7:30 pm: Family Affair is a family-themed cabaret at the Rendezvous in Belltown. Jack Straw fellows Clare Johnson, Matthew Schnirman, Bernard Grant, Ross McMeekin, Jeanine Walker, and I will regale you with all things family.
- Thursday, August 27, 7 pm: Dock Street Salon at Phinney Books in Phinney Ridge/Greenwood. I'm reading alongside Angela Fountas. Prepare for a dark fairy tale.
- Friday, August 28, 7 pm: Jack Straw at the University Bookstore. Ross, Matthew, and I take on the U-District. After party on frat house row not included.
SEPTEMBER
- Thursday, September 10, 6 pm: An extra special Jack Straw event at the It's About Time Reading Series in Ballard, themed around Jack Straw, a leader of the English Peasant Revolt of 1381. These insurgent peasants traveled throughout southern England, gathering followers, opening prisons, killing lawyers and telling stories. As I'll be reading an excerpt from my novel-in-progress Paralegal, I've been tasked with covering the "killing lawyers" portion of the evening. Martha Kreiner will give a craft talk on opening prisons. L.J. Morin and Clare Johnson will gather all the followers and tell all the stories.
OCTOBER
- Thursday, October 22: Lit Crawl Seattle. Bazillions of writers take over the city. I'm excited to read at Alice Blue Books' Shotgun Wedding event. Details TBA.
NOVEMBER
- Saturday, November 2, 2 pm: Jack Straw at the Central Library downtown. All 12 Jack Straw Super Stars read poetry and fiction nuggets of gold.
DECEMBER
- Thursday, December 3, 7 pm: Pay Dirt at the Rendezvous in Belltown. To celebrate my 4Culture grant, I'll be reading from my novel Paralegal alongside fellow Jack Straws Emily Bedard, Matthew Schnirman, Bernard Grant, and Martha Kreiner. We'll dig up the dirt on art, money, desire, and making a living.
(No, I didn't shamelessly tag a zillion things in this post...Okay, yes I did.)
Erin Malone and I were on King 5's New Day Northwest yesterday morning talking about the Jack Straw Writing Program. I'm still all happy-flustered from having been on TV for the first time! You can watch the segment right over here.
Friday's reading at Jack Straw was utterly lovely. Matthew Schnirman read poems brimming with desire and loss, such as "American Shot" :"When I remove my clothes, I want the wood floor to blush." L.J. Morin read from her fascinating series about the lost language of the Atures, discovered by Alexander von Humboldt on his journey to Venezuela in 1800, his desire to catalogue and measure characterized as "a mine shaft down the middle of him, an inexhaustible need." Linda Andrews, who won the Washington State Book Award for Escape of the Bird Women, read a fabulous story about a strutting hen: "Any female with that authority would feel ready for the world. Go on. Fold your wings back and see if the body doesn't tell you something. CUTO an old friend called it. C-U-T-O. Chin up, tits out." And I read an excerpt from my novel-in-progress, Paralegal, introducing the protagonist Binnie Greenson's parents, Albert and Arlene, in their Ocean Parkway co-op in Kensington, Brooklyn. I took particular pleasure enunciating the phrase "glops of rummy yam" and the word "trapezoidal." We, along with the rest of the Jack Straw fellows, all have work in the 2015 anthology, available at our readings all year, which will be at Folk Life on May 24, and at the the University Bookstore, the Seattle Public Library, and elsewhere in the fall. Kevin Craft, the 2015 curator, did such a fantastic job grouping each of the readings and introducing each of the readers.I was really happy with how my reading and its recording turned out. The voice coaching from Christine Brown and performance coaching from Elizabeth Austen were both excellent and super helpful. I've uploaded my reading to soundcloud. Podcasts from everyone's author interviews (conducted by Kevin Craft) with excerpts from our readings will be released in the fall here.Without further ado, an excerpt from my novel-in-progress, Paralegal:[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/205960491" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]
I haven't posted story snippets to this blog in a long time, but I had such a wonderful time this morning at a generative workshop for the Jack Straw fellows, I wanted to share one here. We discussed our writing concerns and what we're dwelling on now, and the general theme among us all had to do with connecting dots and making leaps. Kevin Craft, our curator, then offered this concept he learned from Heather McHugh about hypotaxis and parataxis--the causal-oriented and the free associating, waking logic and dream logic.Then he pitched the Story Spine exercise, which originates from improv. It's a basic exercise offering a rigid structure for a story that is then written quickly, using free association. The stakes are low. I used the basic plot of the novel I'm working on now, which made the exercise feel somewhat mechanical, though the final step seemed to open up for me a more expansive way of seeing the ending--something I will continue to ruminate.Then Kevin asked us to do the exercise in reverse. I decided not to write from my novel and just let myself go. This version of the exercise was very fun. And I can see why you need to go forward first, to feel the mechanics of an unfolding story, and why thinking backwards can allow the writing to get wilder. Here's that backward story I wrote:
And ever since that day, she held that stone in her mouth before bed, as a reminder. Finally, she chose a slick green stone on a rocky beach strewn with sea vegetables. And because of that, she went to the coast, to look at something wild and open and to fill her lungs with salt. Because of that, she felt all tied up in a box, a sensory deprivation tank. Until one day she crouched in on herself into the tightest ball. And every day she tried to be smaller and smaller. Once upon a time, she didn't want to be seen.
One month into this program, and it is already so helpful and generative and amazing.
I'm very happy to have been chosen for the 2015 Jack Straw Writers Program by curator Kevin Craft. This is a great program in Seattle (though folks from Portland; Vancouver, B.C.; Olympia; Walla Walla and elsewhere in the region have participated) giving writers training and experience with recording, presentation, and author interviews as well as encouraging the development of new work and providing new venues for sharing their work with the public.I'll be using the program to continue developing my second novel, which I'm calling Paralegal for now, though that might change. We had a very nice orientation last night, and it was really lovely to hear snippets of poetry and fiction from each of the eleven other fellows! Stay tuned for the public readings (starting in May and continuing through the end of 2015) and a podcast featuring excerpts from my reading and author interview.