Dreams Under Glass at Elliott Bay Book Company; Daughters of the Air, a staff pick at Left Bank Books,; practicing my smize; the traditional book haul on hotel bed picture; signing books at the Lanternfish Press table.

Coming back to Seattle for AWP after having moved away nearly four years ago stirred up all kinds of feelings. I’m glad I decided to make a very specific plan to keep feelings of overwhelm in check. Bright and early on Thursday morning, I started with a panel on medical memoir as I think ahead to expanding my pieces in Newsweek, Healthline, and Catapult into a book (though to be clear, that book would be far in the future).

Health and Illness Narratives: Harnessing Medical Memoir to Impact a Broken System

Featuring: Mary Pan, Emily Maloney, Rana Awdish, Emily Silverman, Suzanne Koven

Each of the panelists at this discussion are both writers and health care practitioners, and each read briefly before the discussion began. Emily Silverman, who runs The Nocturnists, a storytelling community for healthcare workers, read an uplifiting piece from JAMA titled “Comic Relief,” about meeting her idol Kate McKinnon. Emily Maloney read a tense excerpt from her essay collection The Cost of Living, about being a 23-year-old ER tech working at a hospital under the cloud of an enormous debt while carrying her own medical debt from an attempted suicide at age 19. Rana Awdish read a troubling excerpt from her memoir In Shock, about a terrible abdominal surgery done partly without anesthesia and being accused of being a drug addict. Suzanne Koven, author of Letter to a Young Female Physician read “The Doctor’s New Dilemma,” about struggling to ration out her time and emotional energy. Mary Pan read a harrowing memoir of her husband trying to get psychiatric help for paranoia and suicidal ideation and being told he’d have to wait at least a week—until she got on the phone and used her knowledge of the healthcare system to get him an appointment the next day—I still remember the image of him drawing the tip of a pair of scissors on his arm after she returned from nursing their eight-month-old child. What an image.

The panelists talked about the importance of storytelling. Awdish said that during the pandemic, the disbelief in science would have made her less compassionate toward patients who didn’t mask or get vaccinated, if she hadn’t also maintained a practice of storytelling and writing. Koven said the healthcare system dehumanizes patients, caretakers, and families but storytelling rehumanizes them; Easy Beauty is a memoir that helped show physicians they had no training for caring for patients with disabilities. Maloney said that helping healthcare workers tell their stories will help them advocate for improving the healthcare system. Awdish added that flipping between the point of view of patient and physician helped show her systemic problems in the healthcare system. I loved this quote from Suzanne Koven, who wasn’t sure if she read it somewhere or just came up with it: A doctor’s account of illness is a Victorian novel spanning many years but a patient’s account is a Virginia Woolf novel where every moment matters.

They also talked about voices that need to be included in the canon of illness narratives, which seem to be dominated by male physicians. We need to hear more from female physicians, patients, care givers, family members, cafeteria workers, medical helicopter pilots, and so on. An audience member asked about the ethics of patient memoir and whether that is self-exploitative. Maloney, who has a background in bioethics, said there really isn’t the same restriction as with a healthcare practitioner writing about patients; just write something honest and true that supports your experience, and don’t think about whether it is “too much” until after you’ve written. Suzanne Koven quoted Anne Lamott: “Tell the story, we’ll call the lawyers later.” A comment from the audience also brought up medical apartheid; the audience member said she’d been writing poetry but was considering switching to essays to find a broader audience; the panelists recommended Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on Health in America and Take My Hand a novel by Dolen Perkins-Valdez about the forced sterilization of African-American women. I hope that member of the audience gets their stories out.

This was an excellent panel and I’m glad it was early on in the conference before I got too tired!

The Lyric Essay as Resistance: A Reading and Celebration

Featuring Chloe Garcia Roberts, Chelsea Biondolillo, Molly McCully Brown, Hea-Ream Lee, Michael Torres

This reading celebrated the anthology The Lyric Essay as Resistance from Wayne State University Press. As I could have anticipated, I was already tired and did not take as many notes though it was very lovely to listen to each of the readers. I appreciated the panelists defining “resistance” in a number of ways. Lee called it resisting against forms, focusing on images and moving fluidly among timelines. Torres talked about arranging memories non-linearly. Brown asked: what shapes, architectures, bodies are you not seeing on the page—keep the lyric essay wild. Lee mentioned that expansiveness of form allows for invention. This was all reassuring as I bumble around in my lyric essay collection figuring out what feels right for each piece. Onward!

A Very Important Karaoke Party

During the day on Friday, I had a lovely time signing books at the Lanternfish Press table (some pictures above) and it was so nice to meet people who’d read the book or were eager to. Then that night I went to A Very Important Karaoke Party, a night of parody songs around the theme of the writing life at Hugo House. Paulette Perhach organized the event and I was delighted to help write a song based on “Under Pressure” called “Little Green Monster,” all about envy (and forgiving yourself and trying to overcome it). It was fun to see someone else belt it out with a fake Freddie Mercury mustache and very cathartic to sing along with all the songs in the back of the room where no one could hear my individual voice (the only way I will do karaoke!).

I am sure there are many more things I could have mentioned here about trip, but dang if I go on & on. It was great to reconnect with so many folks from my life in Seattle and I hope we can get back sooner than in four years. And I can’t wait to dive into the delicious books we acquired at the book fair (pictured above). If you went to the conference, feel free to share some highlights in the comments!

I am pleased with how fitting it is to have an essay called "How to Finish a Novel in Only 15 Years" in The Nervous Breakdown today. Here's how it begins:

1.  Choose a horrific moment in history you know little about, in a country, Argentina, you know little about, but which seems to have troubling similarities to the here and now. Research for years. Images from the Dirty War sear into your mind.continue reading

In other news, I made a handy-dandy card with all of my upcoming out-of-Seattle readings (as always everything is on my appearances page).Huzzah!

 Hello, hello! I have three readings this month:

• Saturday, June 10, 5-7 pm: I'm reading with Vancouver, B.C.-based novelist and musician Leanne Dunic and my fellow 2015 Jack Straw fellow Bernard Grant at Chin Music Press's Pike Place Market showroom. It's a lovely bookshop with views of the water. Michael will host! Facebook event here.  Update 6.7.17: The Seattle Review of Books literary event of the week!
• Saturday, June 24, 10 am-12 pm: June Write-In at Hugo House Co-Presented with Write Democracy.  I'm going to read a new essay in this series supporting free speech and the value of arts in our democracy. I'll be joined by afrose fatima ahmed and Catherine Bull. The event will include writing prompts!
• Tuesday, June 27, 5-7 pm: Capitol Cider Literary Happy Hour. This series mixes happy hour with readings and craft talks. Fun!

This post is extra linky! I'm looking forward to reading at the second annual Seattle Lit Crawl as a part of Dark Coast Press: Works in Progress. I'll be reading during Phase Two of the crawl (7-7:45 pm) at Sam's Tavern (1024 E Pike St.) with Jarret Middleton and John Hamilton.  As the name of the event implies, I'll be reading new/unpublished work.There will be tons of readings that night (about 60+ authors in 19 venues all about town). Before my reading, during Phase One of the crawl (6-6:45 pm), I plan to be at Three Jennys Walk into a Bar, also at Sam's Tavern, and featuring Jennifer D. Munro, Jenny Hayes, and Jenny Forester, with host Jenny Neill; they'll be telling tales of lust, loneliness, and the American West. After my reading, I'll saunter down the street for Phase Three (8-8:45 pm) to Lobby Bar (916 E Pike St.) to see my Furnace reading series co-conspirator Corinne Manning and my fellow Made at Hugo House fellow Irene Keliher read alongside Cole Arden Peake and Jeremy Halinen, with host Jaimee Garbacik in A Big Ol’-Fashioned Queer Bash.Then it's off to the mother ship--Richard Hugo House-- for the after party!

The 2012-13 Made at Hugo House Fellowship is coming to an end (sad day!), and the first of our three final readings is this very Tuesday.Come see what we've been toiling away at all year:

• Poetry! September 10. Katie Ogle will read from THE SMALLEST GUN I COULD FIND  which follows a conversation between a speaker and her homonculus (Latin for "little man").  Bill Carty will read from YOU TROUBLER (Ahab to Elijah: "Is it you, you troubler of Israel?" Taylor Swift: "I knew you were trouble.")
• Fiction! September 25.Irene Keliher will read from her dystopian novel THE VISIONARIES, Eric McMillan will read from CLEAR, his novel about the Iraq war, and I will read from my story collection MORE LIKE HOME THAN HOME.
• Nonfiction! November 21.  Elissa Washuta will read from her second memoir, STARVATION MODE, along with Claire Jackson and Catherine Slaton.

These readings will be amazing! Come, come, come!It's been a wonderful year meeting with these talented writers, hearing guest speakers on topics such as grants and first book publications, taking free Hugo House classes, and snatching up surprise opportunities along the way, like Hedgebrook's Spring Salon. This year, I started to feel much more integrated in Seattle's literary community. And the fellowship encouraged me to roll up my sleeves, get more writing done, and get my writing out into the world more aggressively than I have ever done before. "The Zoo," the first story I wrote with the fellowship in mind (while nervously waiting to hear back about the fellowship, actually), was published in January, and two stories I've revised this year will be coming out later this fall (details to come).  I workshopped what I believe will be the last story in MORE LIKE HOME THAN HOME at the Tin House conference, and I'm excited to read it on the 25th. Many thanks to Brian McGuigan for coming up with this program and to Hugo House for making it happen!And check out the 2013-14 fellows!(Whew. I think I exhausted my monthly allotment of exclamation points.)

October in Seattle will be brimming with literary events. Between Arts Crush, City Arts Fest and a whole slew of other goodies, I'll be glad I went back to drinking coffee and taking my multivitamins! Here are a few events I'm involved with, one way or another:

• Wed. Oct. 3, 6-7 pm. The Furnace Reading Series Presents "The Last Night at Manuela's" .What happens when a stage play is adapted for radio? That's what Buffy Aakaash has done with his award-winning play, which is set in Mexico on the Day of the Dead. Come watch it live as it's broadcast on Hollow Earth Radio! We'll have hot chocolate on hand (just sayin'). This is a free and featured Arts Crush event made possible with support from the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. Hosted by Corinne Manning. (Nb: I kicked off this free quarterly series in August and now help to coordinate it.) Facebook Twitter

• Sun. Oct. 6, 6-7 pm. Sunset Reading on the Melrose Promenade. An evening of poetry and sunset-gazing featuring the fabulously talented poets Brian McGuigan, Elizabeth Cooperman, and Katherine Ogle, plus one of the best views in Seattle.  One of a string of events promoting the Melrose Promenade project, which is working toward making Melrose Avenue Seattle's next great open space.

• Sat. Oct. 27, 1-5 pm. Found Stories at Richard Hugo House. I'm teaching a one-day class using found objects as generative material for new fiction. Fun! And then, right afterwards...

• Sat. Oct. 27, 6 pm. Long Talking Bad Conditions Blues reading series at Liberty Bar in Capitol Hill. I'm thrilled to be reading with Eugene Cross, Jane Wong, Katherine DeBlassie, Matthew Nienow, and Suzanne Morrison. Hosted by Zachary Watterson.

Then of course, there's the marathon Seattle Lit Crawl on Thursday, October 18, meandering from First Hill to Capitol Hill from 5 to 10 pm at which many of my talented writer friends will be reading.Whew! I think in November I might need a nap.