Was just communicating with a friend of mine this morning and was reminded that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Sadly, there are more and more people who know someone or are related to someone who has had breast cancer. For me, my mother, two of my aunts, and many friends have had breast cancer (one of my aunts died from it but my mother lived for 30+ years after her mastectomy).
Early detection is key in saving lives, but unfortunately many women cannot afford mammograms or don’t have insurance. What can you do? Help them out by simply clicking the button(every day) at The Breast Cancer Site.
got this email and am passing on this info:
The Writers’ Room of Boston is now accepting applications for our 2006 Fellowship Program. Fellowships provide free workspace, accessible 24/7 in downtown Boston, for a one-year period beginning in January, 2006. Awards are based upon the quality of the submitted writing sample and the project description and on the basis of financial need. (Dues are currently $185 per quarter. If you do not have financial need, please consider applying for regular membership.)
Available fellowships include:
The Wendy Kaminer Fellowship, awarded to a talented non-fiction writer.
The Ivan Gold Fellowship, awarded to an outstanding fiction writer. This fellowship is named in honor of novelist Ivan Gold, who was the founding president and is a current member of The Writers’ Room.
The Morris S. Smith Foundation Fellowship, awarded to a talented writer in any genre.
The Nadya Aisenberg Poetry Fellowship, awarded to a poet. This fellowship honors the late poet and scholar Nadya Aisenberg, who was a founder and longtime member of The Writers’ Room.
The Emerging Writer Fellowships, awarded to writers in the Greater Boston area who are not yet widely published, but who are working on literary projects that demonstrate talent and seriousness of purpose.
Submissions must be postmarked by November 15, 2005, but early applications are encouraged. Awards will be announced in December. Residencies will begin on January 1, 2006.
The fellowship application is available at: http://writersroomofboston.org/fellowship_app_letter.htm
If you have any questions, email info@writersroomofboston.org.
Laila Lalami’s debut Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits is an exquisitely written linked collection. I know Laila from her blog MoorishGirl. So I know this is her first book and I know the steps she has taken to get here, but even so, as I read this book, it was difficult to believe that it was a debut. The writing, to me, seems incredibly seasoned–clean, efficient, evocative. Essentially, I forgot that this was Laila writing within the first few words and, instead, fell into the world as it was written.
The protagonists of these stories are Moroccans looking for a different (I would say better life but I’m not sure that’s true–many of them, though anxious to get across the Strait of Gibraltar, are fearful of what life on the other side will hold) life in Spain. Ironically, the one person who actually makes it without being deported back to Morocco, does so at great personal expense. She makes her living as a protitute, leaving behind her morals and beliefs. She is, essentially, lost.
My favorite character is Halima, who tries to leave Morocco in order to save herself and her children from her husband. Instead, she almost loses everything, except that her young son saves the family from drowning in the frigid waters. It is because of this that she believes he may be special, but the truth is that it is she and her enduring hope which make her the special one–the survivor, the saint.
The book ends with another favorite character, Murad, the scholar, the writer. It is from him, the storyteller, that we learn the essence of this book:
His father started every story with “Kan, ya ma kan,” “Once there was and there was not.” The timeless opening line was fitting, it seemed to him, to the state he found himself in now, unable to ascertain whether the tales he remembered were real or figments of his imagination.
It is that sense of rebirth, creation, crawling from the water into a new world that proves itself unreal, only to be sent back and to begin again–to forget and to remember, but to always be present and to always hope, no matter what the consequences. And what we learn is that this book is not only about Moroccans looking to escape to a different life, but about all of us who have hopes, who wish to overcome. It is universal.
A beautiful debut. Read it.
Read Laila Lalami’s (aka moorishgirl) fascinating interview of Salaman Rushdie:
When he was younger, Rushdie told the audience at a Portland appearance last week, he wanted to have some power because he believed a writer should be able to use it to speak out on the big issues of the day. He could never have imagined how he would come about his own power. “Be careful what you wish for,” he joked.
Oh dear. This is sad news, indeed–August Wilson, 60:
Wilson died Sunday at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, less than two months after he announced he had inoperable liver cancer. He was 60.
Among his plays were “Fences,” the writer’s biggest Broadway hit, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “The Piano Lesson.” At the time of his death, Wilson was still working on the last play in the cycle, “Radio Golf,” which recently closed in Los Angeles and will have productions next year in Seattle, Baltimore and several other cities.
Jim Ruland’s debut story collection, Big Lonesome, is not a book you will breeze through. After each story, you’ll need time to think, to reflect, and most likely to catch your breath. It is, in short, quite dark and yet astonishing.
The world the characters of Big Lonesome inhabit is one that is unfamiliar in its bleakness and yet familiar in its honesty and humor. These are people who say and do things that live only in our dark hearts and to see them under a microscope is a bit like seeing ourselves, or that self we believe does not exist.
What I liked most about this collection is that these are stories that take chances–that push through form and content and explore a new world. For me, there’s nothing better than when I learn something–and from this book, I learned something of craft, of art, and of human nature. Well worth a read.
Check out this great story by one of my favorite people in the world, Ray Collins: Smell of Rain
The final issue of Ink Pot (#7) is available. While I’m sad that this is the final issue, I’m delighted that thanks to the doggedness of Bev Jackson, Publisher and EIC, and the donations of many generous individuals, that this issue exists at all. And I’m proud to have played a part in it.
For a sample of work found in this issue, please read Beverly Carol Lucey’s excellent story Black and White.
I’m delighted to announce that the brilliant Jordan Rosenfeld and her team at Word by Word have started a blog for their excellent radio show, Word by Word. Book mark it, link to it, and check back often because you will not want to miss what they have going on.
Read this awesome article by my pal, Stepanie Anagnoson–Zion National Park – In the Off Season:
The first time I visited Zion National Park, outside of Springdale, Utah, I was sixteen and it was July. My family was on a car trip to see the national parks of the west over three weeks with my grandmother wedged in between my brother and I in the back seat.
read the article in its entirety here
Tobacco Road, an essay written by me, is featured at AGNI this week:
Their kitchen was scrupulously clean, all white metal cabinets and red-checked curtains. And upstairs there were three or four bedrooms where the children had slept, now guestrooms. Few people came to Tobacco Road on holiday, though, so it is unlikely they had overnight visitors until I ended up as a guest in their house.
read the essay in its entirety here
myfanwy collins 