Empathy

Congratulations to Kathrine Erskine- winner of the National Book Award for Young People's Literature for the book Mockingbird. I reviewed this book last year and knew it was destined to be a big success!

Having worked with high school students for the last 12 years, I can say that, Asperger's or not, empathy is sorely missing from so many young people in our schools today. Lately, bullying amongst kids and teens has been in the news and I think that books like Mockingbird can go a long way toward helping young people feel empathy for those around them. Yes, there needs to be policy and consequences for threatening or teasing in schools, but we also need to focus our resources on building communities that value empathy, kindness, praise, and love. And literature is an effective way to start doing just that.

Shump, shump, shump it up!

Check out the fabulous fashion blog Zannazine!
Read the newest post, "My Lovely Lady Shumps" and see if you can find the A Lil' Sumpin' Sumpin' shout out!
Boom! I'm coining words like I was Abe Lincoln!
Get it? He's on the penny. It's a coin.
Nevermind.

Quote of the Day

"Language and magic. Where is the connection? Think about it this way: when we form letters to write words, we create something out of nothing, so that the still air or the empty space on the page fills with meaning, as if a wizard created a blizzard from a clear blue sky."

-Roy Peter Clark, The Glamour of Grammar

I Have a Stomachache!

And it is no wonder! Yesterday I spent my day hanging out with good friends having good times, which meant eating lots of junk food. And now I'm paying the price!

For breakfast, okay it was 2:00, but it was my first waking meal, so it still counts as breakfast, I met my girls at Spot for some delicious Thai coffee and cupcakes. You can read all about the experience, and see which cupcake won the taste-test challenge here. (Lemon Yuzu was by far my personal favorite- and I would gladly accept a Lemon Yuzu birthday cake from Spot- hint, hint.)

Then I travelled to The Wing Bar in Carroll Gardens for some Sam Adams seasonal brew, Buffalo wings, and brussels sprouts... fried brussells sprouts.

Dinner consisted of pineapple pizza, brownies, and wine. Yum. And they gave me the strength to dominate at Scattergories and Cranium. Boom.

A Creative Eden

Just read a great guest post

by Jeremy C. Shipp

on the blog Not Enough Words

about embracing one's own creativity.

A simple lesson, but one that is surprisingly hard to enact.

He starts off by saying, "Early on, I didn’t think about the creative process. I simply enjoyed it. I wrote what I felt like writing. I didn’t hold anything back. I didn’t edit myself. In a manner of speaking, I was living in a creative Eden."

This is a place I would like to get back to sometime soon. Having made the decision to declare myself a capital W- Writer has increased the pressure I put on myself. What was once fun and the thing I did to relieve stress is now the cause of most of my stress! I am easily overwhelmed and paralyzed when I have complete creative freedom.

Recently I had the opportunity to write a chapter following an outline laid out by someone else. It was so liberating. Since I was not responsible for the character arc or plot, and therefore did not feel the same sense of vulnerability, I was free to relax and enjoy the simple act of playing with language. I think I have always thrived when there was some sense of structure; creating a theatrical adaptation of a classic, writing "in the style of" another author, or responding to an assignment. I feel like within limitations I can be at my most creative, perhaps because I love pushing against boundaries and breaking rules.

For me, it is about learning how to set my own structures and honor them as I would those set by another. That will be my path back to the verdant landscape of creativity.

How about you? Are you in your creative Eden now?

Or have you also eaten the apple?

A David & Goliath Fail

I understand that advertisers need to get our attention and that in the past some rather quirky ads have done just that, but I am so disgusted by the recent Kia campaign that I just had to blog about it. Especially because lots of other bloggers seem to think something along the lines of this: "... our collective heads heads have officially exploded due to the sheer awesomeness of this effort from Kia and its marketing firm." What!?!?! Are they being paid to say that? They must be, but I'm not.

First of all it's called the Kia Soul Rapping Hamsters. That alone should let you know this is traveling down a dangerous road. I wish I could have been at the meeting when a bunch of guys in rumpled hipster suits first tried to pitch this to the car company elders who probably just assumed that the fact that they didn't get it meant that it would appeal to the youth of this nation, when the truth is that it is just lame and borderline offensive. Why hamsters? They look like rats, which is not a compliment. It is not complimentary, nor funny, to compare people in the hip hop culture to rodents. They look so much like rats that the commercial even makes a point of saying they are hamsters with all sorts of bad hamster puns. It's like they knew they were treading a fine line and crossed it anyways. The song the characters are using is a classic rap by the Black Sheep, so again I ask, why hamsters? Why not sheep? Or people for fucks sake. Don't you remember your mother ever saying enough is enough; the point being, just because it was funny once doesn't mean it will be funny again.

Trendhunter magazine said, "The Kia Soul ‘Rapping Hamsters’ commercial is the perfect remedy for boring commercial breaks." USA Today says, "OK, this new Kia Soul commercial is summertime happiness on your screen." I say, no. No, it is not. How about just play the song with the company's logo displayed on the screen? That would be more appealing. And make more sense. But, let's say I am willing to suspend my disbelief and play along with the logic that hamsters have disposable income and the need for a vehicle... you lose me completely when you have the other hamsters driving down the street in a toaster. A toaster! In no logically coinsitent world does that make any sense! A hamster wheel, okay. But a toaster or a dryer, no. Just no, people. No.

The Gettin' Was Good

Get Your Read On: VP Style was a success!

Check out the Verbal Pyrotechnics blog

to read all about it and see some awesome pictures.

VP Reading Series

GET YOUR READ ON: VP STYLE

July 14th, 2010

8:00- 9:30pm

Bowery Poetry Club

$5.00 cover

Be there or be square!

And submissions open on July 1st, 2010

My Month Off

Greetings and salutations.

It has been one dramatic month for little old me. I finished my thesis, graduated from the New School, hosted my 9 year old niece on her first visit to NYC, went to a beautiful wedding for one of my oldest and dearest friends in Carmel-By-The Sea, and celebrated my mother's birthday with a day at the beach. While I was relaxing in the Bay Area I attended my niece's fourth grade poetry reading, my nephew's fifth grade graduation ceremony, and a fabulous fundraiser for The Retro Dome. There was also quite a bit of time spent laying on the hammock in the backyard, picking lemons form my mom's tree, and generally enjoying the California sun. I also enjoyed driving to the Safeway for groceries- compared to the overpriced disgustingness that is your average NYC grocery store, Safeway is like paradise And you don't have to carry your groceries home! I swear, fulfilling your basic human needs in this town is so freaking difficult.

But, alas, I am back in NYC in my tiny, humid concrete box of a home.

You Know?

A poem by Taylor Mali turned into a video by Ronnie Bruce

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

Today's Lists

Things That Annoy Me More

Than They Probably Should

1. Doing laundry [specifically- folding and storing fitted sheets, trying to stuff my fluffy down comforter into the comforter cover, and when people take your not yet dry clothes out of the machine (especially when other machine are empty!)]

2. This super creepy Excedrin Migraine Medication commercial.

3. When I get something stuck in between my teeth and I don't have any dental floss.

4. When someone puts sugar in my coffee even though I say, "light, no sugar."

Things That Make Me Happier

Than They Probably Should

1. This commercial! Not only am I a huge fan of the product, but the song makes me laugh!

2. Caramel sauce

3. When you think you have lost an earring but it turns out to be stuck to your scarf.

4. Receiving a good old fashioned letter in the mail.

Hey batter batter batter...

The literary agent Nathan Bransford has some good advice about the author's pitch up on his blog.

"My feeling: get it all out of the way at once. Save yourself the headache and come up with a one sentence, one paragraph, and two paragraph pitch before you even start to query. Then: practice and memorize your pitches. You never know when you're going to need them."

He then proceeds to give an example of the one sentence, one paragraph and two paragraph pitch for his own novel. Check it out!

Worthless-Online

Today I turned a corner in the 4th floor computer lab and ran right into my dear friend Benjamin Andrew Moore. And yes folks, he is indeed someone who should always be called by his full name, because he is most certainly three names worth of awesome. So, said awesome friend of three names worth of awesome took some time out of his busy day to show me his supremely awesome website which is called Worthless Online. I figured I would pass this gem along to the rest of you so you could be supremely jealous that I am friends with my awesome friend of three names worth of awesome and so you could read his comics and reviews and articles and short stories and watch his great videos and try and figure out what the hell is up with that creepy Jorge Jackson guy!

Book Reviews

The Sky is Everywhere

by Jandy Nelson

(5 scoops)

Man, oh man. This book is good. So good.

This book should be required reading.

Not required for any particular class, just required for life.

Out of the Pocket

by Bill Konisberg

(3.5 scoops)

An honest, heart warming presentation of a unique coming out story. The author made me really care about Bobby and his friends and family and many of the book's passages moved me deeply. The sports writing and the titular "out of the pocket" metaphor were also handled well. Unfortunately, there were some very glaring errors, which should have been caught by an editor, that momentarily stalled my reading and made it hard to fall head over heals in love with this book. In the first chapter the senior boys on the football team all shave their heads, but in chapter five, only a few weeks later, there is mention of someone's dirty blond hair falling in wisps over his forehead. There is no way his hair would have grown back. Then there is the scene where Bobby and his best friend Austin are outside and Austin puts chew in his mouth, which Bobby is disgusted and seems shocked by. They then walk indoors and sit on the couch in the living room and have a very important conversation, but at no point is there any mention of Austin spitting or negotiating the chew. Another time Bobby is in a restaurant looking at his menu, and a few lines later he is wondering where his food is and then it arrives- but he never ordered! You can't include some of these details and not others or your reader will stop trusting you. I kept feeling like I had skipped a page or something! It's a shame that these easily fixable errors weren't caught before the book went to print because Konisberg is clearly a talented and heartfelt writer.

Pure Talent

This kid is amazing!

So talented!

So calm and confident.

He's only 12 years old! 12!

At 12 I was just trying to color inside the lines!

SUMMER TRAVEL

The good part about having gone through graduate school is the obligatory, soul-searching adventure that one must go on the summer after receiving one's degree! I am currently trying to plan some sort of an adventure with a fried of mine and it got me thinking about all the other adventures I have had the good fortune of going on.

In high school I spent each academic year working at the golf course and doing odd jobs in order to save up enough money so that I could go on a two week summer volunteer retreat with my youth group. The summer after 9th grade I went to Tijuana to work at a day care center in the city and make and distribute food to those people who were living in the local garbage dump- most significant experience in my entire life. The following summer I rode the train from California through Nevada and Utah to get to Denver, where we did some volunteer work, and then went to Colorado Springs for some relaxation and white water rafting. The next summer we spent a few weeks on the White River Apache Reservation in Arizona learning about Apache traditions and helping to build a community center. We also got to see the Grand Canyon and hike the Canyon de Chelly. The following summer I found myself in Juneau and then taking a small plane and then a boat to get to Sitka, Alaska where we helped to maintain a college campus and I ran through the woods like a speckled sprite! So many amazing memories!

While in high school I went on other trips too. I spent time in both Eugene and Portland, Oregon with my sister, hiked in Yosemite, went to Lake Tahoe and the surrounding areas for countless camping and ski trips with friends, and to Kansas City for a wedding. I took a road trip with my parents through Nevada and Idaho to get to a family reunion in Montana and then we explored Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Oh, and of course I spent several weekends running around Disneyland!

In college there were various road trips and bizarro adventures: a Route 66 cross-country drive with two of the loudest, craziest dudes I know (complete with a near death experience involving an overturned semi and icy roads); drives from the Bay Area to Arcata to hang out with friends; Fung Wah bus rides to Boston; a bus trip to Washington DC for the final exhibition of the AIDS quilt in its entirety and my one and only march on Washington to date; an epic Greyhound ride down to New Orleans, so I could hang out with friends, drink on the street, stay in a youth hostel, and rent a car to drive to Florida to get fake nails and eat a seafood supper; the foolhardy trip to Graceland for the 20th anniversary of Elvis's death that entailed our car/hotel being stolen and the four of us never actually getting to see the inside of Graceland because we were too busy drowning our sorrows in free alcohol at a casino in a nearby town!

After graduating from college I started teaching high school in the South Bronx and had the opportunity to spend the summer in North Carolina with a group of my students at the Outward Bound school. We went hiking, rock climbing, and white water rafting and wrote a lot of poems.

Two summers after graduating college I took the backpack-through-Europe trip of my dreams. I started in Barcelona with my best friend, and then we traveled to Madrid, Bilbao, and San Sebastian before we parted ways- her to meet up with her brother, and me to join my cousin in Switzerland where I windsurfed over the Alps and almost killed myself and a cute elderly couple when I was riding a bicycle a million miles an hour straight down a dusty, gravelly path. Then I went solo, took a train to Paris and spent a week not talking, napping in museums, writing in my journal, and eating bread with lots of butter. After that I found myself in Brussels for a few days before I headed off to Amsterdam. I had a friend who was house sitting in a small town outside the city, so I spent the last few days of my two month trip hanging out with him in a fully hooked up mansion surrounded by tulip fields.

After my Europe trip I went back to teaching, which meant I had winter breaks, spring breaks, mid-winter recesses and summers free for more exploring! On one such break I spent a ridiculous week at Club Med Cancun but luckily managed to escape for a day to go to Chichen Itza and climb the Pyramid of Kukulkan.

Somewhere in there I spent a weekend in Chicago with a friend who was interviewing for graduate schools. Later, I went to Philadelphia to visit that same friend when she was in graduate school. And later still made the trip to see her in Iowa City where she was actually teaching graduate students!

Once I took a ten day trip to Rome with a colleague. There were lots of cats.

My best friend from high school and I spent a week in Athens and then we met up with my parents and explored the surrounding areas for another week or so. Another time she and I rented a truck and took a road trip from NYC to Tennessee to whoop it up at Dollywood, a Dolly Parton themed amusement park. Perhaps I should say "the" because I can't imagine there ever being another one.

I spent a month one summer, supported by an NEH grant, studying Shakespeare in Ashland Oregon, drinking unprecedented amounts of Pinot Gris and singing songs about dead birds. For about a year after that I dated a guy who lived in Seattle and so I went to visit him in that fine city several times. We went on a road trip up to Vancouver.

I've been on short trips to various cities between NYC and Manchester, New Hampshire such as Cairo and Hyde Park in The Hudson Valley, and Cape Cod and North Hampton in Massachusetts.

Another time I went exploring Austria and Hungary with four fabulous friends. We drank a lot of wine. Ferf!

And one of those fine ladies even decided that she wanted to travel with me again. And Again! We spent two weeks touring China. We started in Beijing and walked The Great Wall, went to Xi'an and hung out with the Terra Cotta Warriors, ventured to gorgeousness that is Lhasa, Tibet, and then on to Chongqing for a cruise down the Yangtze River which brought us to Shanghai. After two weeks of eating the same four or five vegetarian options the tour provided me I was never so happy to eat Pizza Hut as I was in the hotel in Shanghai! I think it took us less than two minutes to eat an entire large pizza!

The following year that same lovely lady and I hiked the pristine mountains of Peru along the Lares Trek and explored Macchu Picchu. Apparently some sort of Peruvian bacteria was also on vacation that week, exploring my gastrointestinal tract. I have never been so sick in my entire life! But it was still an amazing trip.

Wow, that's a lot of adventures! No wonder I feel so old! But, I wouldn't trade a single one of them! So, I'm taking suggestions; anyone been anywhere they'd recommend?

Lights up on Washington Heights!

Those of you who know me know that I am always complaining about my apartment- it's loud and dark, the sink clogs, the boiler always needs repairs, and a couple weeks ago the ceiling opened up and a hot, steamy, bleachy waterfall poured through from the upstairs neighbor's washing machine- but what you might not know is that, despite my apartment agita, sometimes I really do love this hood. Like today. I left the house looking for a cup of coffee and a place to read my new book and wound up shopping up a storm! I spent less than $40 dollars and made out like a bandit! No wonder my closets can barely contain all of my crap. Here's the breakdown:

1 fedora ($1)
1 NY Giants t-shirt ($4)
1 fabulous swing coat ($12)
1 pair pink sneakers ($5)
1 pair of rock n roll print sneakers ($5)
1 pair gray and white canvas flats ($4)
1 black maxi dress ($10)

Keep an eye out for...

the first round of A Lil Sumpin' Sumpin' Interviews!

Yes, thats right, in the next few weeks I am going to be interviewing my fellow MFAers. Together we just went through an amazing, overwhelming experience and I am curious about what sort of insights about writing and living the life of a writer that each of us has walked away with.

There is a lot out there on the world wide web about the horrors of the MFA program, but all in all, I had an extremely positive experience. (Look at that verb tense! So weird! Technically I don't have my diploma in hand, but it still feels over. Aaaack!) I was nurtured, challenged, pushed, poked, and prodded, and most of all, encouraged. And I am grateful for it.

Wooo-hoooooo!

I'm Back

In case you've been wondering where I am, I've been toiling away on my grad school thesis! It is close to done and I am slowly starting to rejoin the real world. That means fun things like going to movies and talking to my friends, but it also means mundane things like doing a million loads of laundry and cleaning the fridge. This semester has been very difficult but in the end I am grateful for all of the struggle. I feel prepared to live the life of the writer.

Lust List

Since I am sick I am giving myself permission to be useless.

Uselessness is boring though.

So, I decided to share with you my current Lust List.

You know, the Hollywood Five a la that Friends episode. Here goes...

1. Justin Kirk

2. Gael Garcia Bernal

3. Paul Rudd

4. Adrian Grenier

5. Jon Stewart

Wow, I hadn't realized I have such a clear type

until I lined up all these pictures!

Apparently blondes need not apply! Swarthy comes to mind.

Swarthy, stubbly, and smirky!

So, who is on your Lust List?

Teen Author Reading

Went to a wonderful reading at the Jefferson Market Library tonight featuring:

David Levithan - Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus - Dedication
Adrienne Maria Vrettos - The Exile of Gigi Lane

Marie Rutkoski - The Celestial Globe
Elizabeth Scott - The Unwritten Rule
Sarah Mlynowski - Gimme a Call

Rachel Vail - Brilliant

All of the panelists were witty and gave thoughtful answers to the (surprisingly) awesome audience questions. The two best questions (Do your characters ever help you through real life situations? Do you ever feel bad for your characters when you have to write them into a bad situation) by Rachel Vail's son, a 5th grader. After the reading I complimented him on asking such smart questions and Rachel Vail gave me an ARC of her newest book Brilliant and she even autographed it: To Elizabeth- clearly a BRILLIANT girl. Yay! I'm excited to read it. The short section that she read was very engaging and the character was concerned with grammar and word play!

Big Scale Book Swap

Last Saturday I went to an event at The Center for Fiction for the organization ReadThis which donates books to under-filled libraries in New York CIty high schools. I got to hear Jamaica Kincaid talk about her childhood and how it led to her being a writer and read from Jane Eyre. She was the most delightful woman and I could have listened to her all day, but there were other events to attend. Like a writing workshop on voice in YA literature led by Natalie Standiford and Bennett Madison! And a reading given by Sam Lipsyte from his new novel The Ask that had me cracking up. It was a good day and they collected over 5,000 books for New York City schools. Yay!

One of these things is not like the other...

Catch Light

a poetry collection by Sarah O'Brien

(3 scoops)

This collection plays with white space as it relates to the idea of light and capturing an image on film. The last series was the most compelling- O'Brien used textbook chapter titles as inspiration.

[Sarah O'Brien the poet does not have a website, but there is another Sarah O'Brien all over the web; she is a musician and she just got back from a tour with Yanni. That's funny.]

A Necklace of Bees

a poetry collection by Dannye Romine Powell

(2.5 scoops)

Some nice moments, but overall the poems felt overly sentimental and I did not connect with the subject matter. One of the best poems in this collection is Everyone is Afraid of Something.

Splintering

a poetry novel by Eireann Corrigan

(3 Scoops)

Told in a series of poems, this book explores the impact of a violent crime. The two speakers, 15 year old Paulie and her older brother Jeremy, describe the struggles they endure dealing with the aftermath of the attack. I never believed these speakers were real people, instead they read like containers for the author to present emotions and observations about the world. One moment when this was obvious was when Jeremy commented on Evan's dorm room- it read like a 30-something reflecting on her college experience instead of a teenage boy who has never been to college reacting to his environment. There are many powerful poems in this book and it is full of fresh metaphors and similes, but the sequencing feels off. Details are introduced and then forgotten, like when Paulie decides to cultivate dreadlocks and then a few poems later her sister is running her fingers through Paulie's hair with ease. Overall I believe there are too many poems- too many words in each poem-(there are even a couple of typos!) and the plot, especially at the end, seems forced; what could have been a beautiful and evocative collection of thematically linked poems devolves into a silly action sequence, thus rendering the lyrical ending completely unsatisfying. This books feels like one book was layered on top of another book and the finished product is confused as to what it is, but, despite the failure to be a cohesive work, there are poems or lines of poems in these pages that I want to frame and read everyday.

Realm of Possibility

a collection of interrelated monologues written in free verse by David Levithan

(5 scoops)

What can I say, I Iove this book.

I Don't Want to Be Crazy

a poetry memoir by Samantha Schutz

(2.5 scoops)

Most of the time I felt like this was an honest portrayal of having anxiety and confronting the reality of mental illness, but other moments felt like they just skimmed the surface, particularly in regards to the actual work of recovery. Perhaps if the author had waited a few more years to write the book there might have been a more satisfying conclusion for the reader

TTYL

an instant message novel by Lauren Myracle

(4 scoops)

I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would. The characters seemed a bit cliche at first, but as it moved on I felt the characterization was quite rich. The story definitely went in directions I didn't expect and I appreciated that. The instant message format was fun and it read quickly, like a reading a theatre script.

Paranoid Park

a novel in journal entries by Blake Nelson

(3.5 scoops)

Borrowing from Fyodor Dostoevsky, this novel takes a look at guilt and the effect it has on the human psyche. Alex, the protagonist, is a skateboarder and on the edge of a reckless street scene. I believed the voice and empathized with the character.

Don't read Twilight...

...watch this instead!

He's hilarious.

All Reviews- All The Time!

Let The Great World Spin

by Colum McCann

(5 Scoops)

[I was given a photocopy of the first five pages to read for a class and was so compelled by the writing that I went out and bought the book. It did not disappoint. The writing is gorgeous. Sentences so well crafted and emotionally rich that I would have to close the book momentarily and just let the words settle in me. This is not generally how I read. I usually read to get to the end; to follow a character arc through to that moment of transformation. This book wouldn't let me plow through it- there was no easy catharsis. It slowed me down- made me look at the little things, the moments that make up a life. And I am grateful for it. The writing is amazing, the characters intriguing, the setting details so specific, and the structure (multiple point of view characters whose lives intersect because of one man walking a tightrope betwixt the Twin Towers) works perfectly for the content and theme of the book.]

Destroy All Cars

by Blake Nelson

(3.5 scoops)

(I heard Blake Nelson speak at the NYC Teen Author Festival hosted by David Levithan. The panel was about taking a work though from first draft to final. I love works that experiment with structure, so I was intrigued when he said his first draft was a long, rambling 1st person manifesto and he turned it into a multiform book complete with school assignments, online questionnaires, and scenes written entirely in dialogue, as if in a play. The novel worked because the protagonist, through his interactions with women and an AP English teacher, grows and changes,he learns to be a more open and less cynical person. Because that is such a straightforward and expected plot-line, I think there was more room to play with the format. All in all, although I liked the specific character that Blake created, the book felt safe and familiar and I had really been hoping for something more original.)

Rock Star Superstar

by Blake Nelson

(3 Scoops)

(After having read Destroy All Cars I was curious to see what else Nelson had written. Rock Star Superstar started out a little slow, with a lot of the beginning of the book really feeling like it could have been back story- mentioned later as a memory if it was necessary at all. The book did seem concerned with painting a realistic life and moving us through it at a realistic speed. It reminded me of seeing a play where there are long blocks of silence while the actor's on stage make a pot of coffee or sweep the floor in an effort to show the audience that they are real people living real lives. I think this choice worked extremely well in the relationship between the protagonist and his alcoholic, present-but-emotionally-absent father, but less well in other parts of the book.)

No More Us For You

by David Hernandez

(3 scoops)

(This book initially felt like it was set in the 90's but then as it went on it had pop culture references sprinkled in it to make it seem more contemporary. It was not as dynamic as Suckerpunch, but it was still quite charming. I liked how Hernandez incorporated the Long Beach Contemporary Art Museum into his plot. There were some scenes that felt very honest, like how Carlos acted out when he was grieving, and the relationship between the two point of view characters, Carlos and Isabel, was complicated and endearing. What I appreciated the most, however, was the ending. I won't spoil it for you, but I will say that it shows that he trusts the foundation he has created and his reader.)