Archive for the ‘Nonfiction Writing’ Category

February Workshop and Other News

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Boring post title, but exciting news: I sent out an email this morning about my February workshop and had a flood of emails — gratifying! As of 3.20 p.m., four people lined up already and some others who have expressed an interest in the remaining two spots. Yehaw!

And this seems like a good opportunity to include the other publishing news I sent out in the newsletter.

The first item was regarding the publication of Elyssa East’s fabulous book, Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town. Elyssa’s book is a true crime story, combined with the history of an abandoned colonial settlement and expanse of wilderness close to Gloucester, Mass. In a signature review for Publisher’s Weekly, Joyce Carol Oates called the book “…fascinating, richly detailed and remarkably evocative.”

I was lucky enough to get a sneak preview of the book when I read it and offered some feedback, pre-publication. It’s a real page turner, and takes the reader deep into a mysterious, intriguing historical world. At Elyssa’s launch party, at Word, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on December 1, I was awarded “Top Dog” honors (along with some other people who had helped Elyssa’s book along the way, including her agent Brettne Bloom and her fiancé, Yulun Wang, one half of Pi Recordings). Pic of the award below — ain’t it pretty?

Top Dog Award

I also announced — not that she needed me to, considering the great reviews and exposure the book has received — Jessica DuLong’s debut book, My River Chronicles: Rediscovering America On the Hudson, an account of Jessica’s transition from the dot-com world to engineer of the John J. Harvey, a classic fireboat. Jessica’s compelling story is interwoven with fascinating, narrative-driven industrial history, made personal by her deep investment in the preservation of the Hudson river.

Jessica was a member of one of my first ever workshops, back when I was teaching though the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshops. She was honing her sample chapters then, subsequently found an agent and sold the book, and is now busy promoting and reading and being fabulous!

I love hearing about the publishing success of friends, clients, and students. If you have some to share with me, I hope you’ll be in touch.

False Memories

Monday, February 16th, 2009

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine “…are closing in on the exact procedures for creating false memories in individuals in a wide variety of circumstances”

Scary! But fascinating! Read more here.

Update: Of course this idea is already at play in popular culture — hello, Dollhouse! Check out this excellent blog post about why this series is and yet isn’t and yet is worth watching.

Do Modern Memoirists Dream of Electric Memories?

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

Back in December ‘08 I visited an exhibition staged by the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. This is when all the ITP students showcase their work. My NYS (New York Sister), Amanda Bernsohn, is a student in the program. Just for background, the ITP website describes the course as “a living community of technologists, theorists, engineers, designers, and artists uniquely dedicated to pushing the boundaries of interactivity in the real and digital worlds.”

To which I can only say: Yay! Looking at all the exhibits was like walking around inside a bunch of intelligent, creative minds. Now, I’m not an overly technical person, so much of the programming part of what these people were doing was totally beyond me, but what I found so fascinating was that they were all making interesting connections. Taking a concept from one area of thought and applying it somewhere else. Twisting ideas around to get new, more interesting ideas. And, along the way, quite possibly coming up with products that will be part of our daily lives in the near future.

Take Amanda’s project for example: Urban Windchimes. It’s so awesome. Check out the website for more info, but the basic concept is that, in our urban environments, people don’t always want to listen to other people’s windchimes. With this invention, you can place a wind sensor on your window ledge or fire escape and pay the chimes through your computer. There’s the possibility of placing sensors all over the world — ever wanted to listen to the wind on Mount Fiji? Or in the Bahamas? How cool would that be?

Then there were a few projects that were dealing, in one way or another, with memory. And this got me thinking about the connection between memory and technology, and how the digital revolution means we might well remember things differently in the future. This, in turn, has some pretty interesting consequences for future memoirists.

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Exceptional Memoir

Friday, September 26th, 2008

By jove, I think I might have done it! Embedded a video! Huzzah!

This is Jim Levine, principal at the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency, talking at the Strand book store in New York, about what he’s looking for in a memoir. Those of you exclusively in the third category — the “exceptional writing” group — have the hardest sell, in my opinion, and the most work to do, because in that case, you are selling art, not ideas or experience. It can be done though — just look at Mary Karr.

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.1601333&w=425&h=350&fv=]

more about “Exceptional Memoir“, posted with vodpod

Video care of GalleyCat, at Media Bistro.

More Juicy Links. And Mashed Potatoes.

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

David Carr Will Save Memoir! Or so says Leon Neyfakh at the New York Observer. Apparently Carr, author of a new book about his drug experiences, was so loathe to trust his drugged out memories that he reported on his own life, interviewed his friends and family, and even hired a private investigator. This makes him, in Neyfakh’s eyes, memoir’s “…white knight, galloping in to show how a personal story can be engrossing, shocking and true.”

This hilarious collection of Carr’s mashed potato analogies suggests otherwise, though.

Stuart Jeffries on the non-reading epidemic. Pithy.

There is a thing called reader’s block. It is not the same as writer’s block. In fact, reader’s block is a phenomenon partly explained as a reader’s all-too-understandable response to so many writers not having writer’s block.

My man Salman might just win the Booker prize again.

And, care of Booksquare, Jennifer Epstein, author of the Painter From Shanghai, on moving from writing books to blogging and blogs:

These short, sharp little sites and pieces can be vastly engaging and informative, and I’ve found several that I truly love. That said, they feel like the very antithesis of the way I write; tight deadlines, immediate readerships.

For New York type writing folk, Guernica magazine is looking for a managing editor and benefit director.

The REAL New Kings — And Queens — of Nonfiction

Friday, July 18th, 2008

Kelly Nuxoll has written an informative and thoughtful article for Poets and Writers magazine about citizen journalism, making the case that what she and her fellow citizen journalists do is more akin to creative nonfiction than it is to traditional political commentary. The immediacy of it gives it power — one of Kelly’s colleagues, writing for the Huffington Post, was the woman who broke the “Obama thinks that voters are bitter” furor. I advise you to read the whole of Kelly’s article to see her argument in full.

The online version of the magazine includes Kelly’s “Postcard from the Campaign Trail” that expands on her thoughts, and includes this paragraph:

I have an MFA in creative nonfiction: Reported, first-person pieces are what I do. I disclose information and use language to reveal my bias, and I expect the reader to take my work for what it is—the perspective of a single individual. I also take my task very seriously. I’m the eyes and ears for all the people who aren’t in the room, and I try to convey both the substance of what happens and also the mood, the setting, my own reaction and those of the people around me. These, the devices of fiction, are important in making a scene come alive. But they are especially critical in describing a presidential campaign, which can be sanitized by sound bites or spun into unrecognizable fluff by a press office. As citizens in a democracy, we need all the information we can get about the candidates and the apparatus that surrounds them. Creative nonfiction offers a lens that is colored by voice, tone, and critical intelligence.

Kelly’s thoughts remind me that, after all this time, creative nonfiction is still a term that a lot of people have problems understanding. I’ve had to define it innumerable times, sometimes even to people who work in publishing. (more…)

Nonfiction Writing Awards

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

The winner of the UK based and BBC Radio Four sponsored Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction was announced a coupe of days ago: The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: or the Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale. The author receives £30,000, or $60,000 at today’s crapulous exchange rate. I think this makes it the richest purse for nonfiction in the world. Even the Pultizer prize winners only get a measly $10,000.

Being Brits, the organizers have to hyphenate nonfiction — something I choose not to do as I have been living in the States for nearly ten years now and besides, “non-fiction” just seems so…formal. Plus it puts more emphasis on the components of the word, which makes it seem like a reaction of a genre, defined in opposition to the “true art” of fiction. Am I the only one to hear the implied slur in that, or am I just being over sensitive?

I have actually been looking for an alternative to “nonfiction” for some time. Faction? Reality prose? Both gross — any better suggestions, anyone?