Blog hop, bog hlop for Richelle Hawkes

Now in pre-order
Available via Mercer, online shops,
and your favorite indie bookstore

Richelle Hawks of Shipwreck Dandy asked me to participate in her blog hop, and so here goes--

What am I working on?

Right now I have finished up a week at the Antioch Writing Workshops in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where I ran a poetry workshop and also met one-on-one with various people to discuss both poetry and fiction manuscripts. It was great fun, and I met lots of wonderful people, and stayed with writers Robert Wexler and Rebecca Kuder. Now I’m staying with friends-in-the-arts Lynn and Paul Digby, and Paul is taping and filming me reading poems and some fiction. Later on he’ll make some videos (and there will be podcasts) with his own music.

When I go home, I need to finish up some manuscripts that have been lying around, waiting for attention.  I have a poetry manuscript and a novel for children that are in need of some final polish or tweaks here and there. I have a novel forthcoming next year that I mean to revise one more time—occurred to me that I really ought to change the order of a few things, long after it arrived at the publisher's office.

More here

I won’t start a large, new project until those things are done, though I’ll be writing poems and small stories. I’ll be doing some traveling on behalf of my  novel, Glimmerglass, beginning with SIBA in Norfolk in September. I really need to arrange more events at the moment. And I’m still doing some work to help out recent poetry and fiction books—The Throne of Psyche, A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Thaliad, and The Foliate Head. (See tabs above for information.)

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

I write lyric poetry, long narrative poetry, short stories, novels of various sorts, and even a few Southern fantasies for young adults, so I find that one a daunting question. Think I’ll leave it for readers to answer!

Ferrol Sams Award,
Silver Award, ForeWord BOTYA
More here

Why do I create what I do?

One of the most beautiful, good, and true acts human beings can perform on planet Earth is to rejoice in the greater Creation by making things. To create art is to live a larger life, one with greater energy and joy and scope.  

I make things in order to speak to and give back to the created world—to make shapeliness and to seek power and truth in words that, once pushed into the right order, may become an experience for another human being. I love the thought that somewhere, someone may be reading one of my books and feel something of what I felt when I was making it.

How does my creative process work?

More here

I might as well say that it falls as a golden waterfall from a distant star. The more I go on, the less I know and the more I feel about the mystery of art. If my writing is moving in its most natural and most potent way (as opposed to my simply doodling with words because, say, I haven't written a poem in a while and want to do so), it simply pours through me like a wave of energy that becomes embodied in words. Words and stories and poems swoop in, and later on I polish them and play with them until they are right. 

All work falls short of the fire that burns in the mind, but approaching that original fever is a constant lure. I love that fay call from within (or perhaps from without?) and the attempt to answer back.

More here.

And who to tag for the Gob Holp, Ogh Bolp, Blog Hop?

Scott G. F. Bailey
Scott's blog hop response here

More to come...

Word frolics / Glimmerglass

Word frolics at Yellow Springs 

Surfacing in Yellow Springs (iron, not sulphur) at week's end . . . I've had a splendid time at the Antioch Writing Workshops, where I taught the afternoon poetry workshop and also had 1-on-1 sessions with both poets and fiction writers. It was lovely to talk to other writers at all stages on the unending path. I'll go home . . . some time soon, with a brief stop to collaborate and visit with friends in the arts--Paul Digby, making of my videos, and Lynn Digby, painter. Thanks to writers Rebecca Kuder and Robert Wexler for hosting me. And thanks to director Sharon Short for making all things easy along the way. And thanks to my workshop members and 1-on-1 writers for being smart, entertaining, funny, and great lovers of words. 

More Glimmerglass confetti 

Glimmerglass is a series of mirrors and panes that splinter and soften to let you fall deeper into the heart of myth and artistic desire. A resonant, beautiful exploration of fragile hopes and the courage that comes from resisting their trampling by others.

--Margo Lanagan, author of Sea Hearts, Black Juice, and others; winner of World Fantasy and Printz awards

You might not even know what you are seeking, but once inside the pages of Glimmerglass, you’ll find exactly what you need: “a cup of music, a hill of sea.” In the Republic of Letters, Marly Youmans is our Magician in Chief.

--John Wilson, Editor, Books and Culture

Travels + Glimmerglass

Chapter decoration for Glimmerglass.
Art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins.

Posts may be a bit slim for a while, so please ramble around on the site, or click on the tabs above to go to book pages. Bookwise, next up is Glimmerglass on September 1st, now in pre-order. Click on the image below for a closer look. See prior posts for more commentary.

Glimmerglass is a series of mirrors and panes that splinter and soften to let you fall deeper into the heart of myth and artistic desire. A resonant, beautiful exploration of fragile hopes and the courage that comes from resisting their trampling by others. --Margo Lanagan, author of Sea Hearts, Black Juice, and other novels, winner of World Fantasy and Printz awards 

You might not even know what you are seeking, but once inside the pages of Glimmerglass, you'll find exactly what you need: 'a cup of music, a hill of sea.' In the Republic of Letters, Marly Youmans is our Magician in Chief. --John Wilson, editor of Books and Culture

CLICK the image for a readable version

I'm heading off to the Antioch Workshops to meet with poetry and fiction writers, and leaving family members to fend for themselves... I expect they'll do just fine, and the calico bites ankles if pet dinners are forgotten, so that's convenient. On the way I'll have the fun of seeing painter Lynn Digby and her husband, the inimitable Paul Digby, who has written music and made videos for my poems but seems quite capable of doing anything he likes in the way of the arts. I expect he'll dance next. And in Yellow Springs, I shall have the pleasure of staying with the family of writers Rebecca Kuder and Robert Wexler, so a good time should be had.

Little minotaur...

Antioch Writers' Workshop, Yellow Springs

Registration for the Full Week Program and A La Carte is now open online. The deadline to register is June 22, 2014. A program description and schedule are available on the Antioch website.

29th Annual Summer Workshop: July 12-18, 2014

The 2014 AWW Afternoon Seminars are filling up! But, there may still be time for you to make it into one of these excellent seminar opportunities:

Afternoon Fiction Seminar--Short Fiction Focus-Erin Flanagan

Erin Flanagan

Erin Flanagan is the author of two short story collections-The Usual Mistakes and It's Not Going to Kill You and Other Stories-both published by The University of Nebraska Press. Her stories have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, The Missouri Review, The Connecticut Review, and elsewhere. She had held fellowships to Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, The Sewanee Writers' Conference, The Breadloaf Writers' Conference, UCross, and The Vermont Studio Center. She is a professor of Creative Writing at Wright State University and serves on the Antioch Writers' Workshop Board of Directors.

Afternoon Poetry Seminar-Marly Youmans

Marly Youmans  photo credit: Rebecca Beatrice Miller

Marly Youmans is the author of five novels: Little Jordan (David R. Godine, Publisher, 1995);Catherwood (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996); The Wolf Pit (FSG, 2001, The Michael Shaara Award); and Val/Orson (UK: P. S. Publishing, 2009); and A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage (Mercer University Press, 2012, The Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction.) In addition, she has published two Appalachian fantasies for young adults, The Curse of the Raven Mocker (FSG, 2003) and Ingledove (FSG, 2005). Her poetry collections are: Thaliad, an epic adventure in verse from Phoenicia Publishing of Montreal, 2012; The Foliate Head, from Stanza Press (UK, 2012); The Throne of Psyche (Mercer University Press, 2011); and Claire ( Louisiana State University, 2003). She also has several novels due out in the near future:Glimmerglass and Maze of Blood from Mercer. A reprint of Catherwood will appear soon as well. She is a native of the Carolinas currently living in a snowbank in Cooperstown, New York with her husband and three children. Learn more about Marly at thepalaceat2.blogspot.com.

Getting Started with Fiction or Creative Nonfiction (No Manuscript Required) Instructor-Gayle Brandeis

Gayle Brandeis

Gayle is the author of Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperOne), Dictionary Poems (Pudding House Publications), the novels The Book of Dead Birds(HarperCollins), which won Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for Fiction in Support of a Literature of Social Change,Self Storage (Ballantine) and Delta Girls (Ballantine), and her first novel for young readers, My Life with the Lincolns (Holt). She released The Book of Live Wires, the sequel to The Book of Dead Birds, as an e-book in 2011. Gayle's poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies (such as Salon.com, The Nation, and The Mississippi Review) and have received several awards, including the QPB/Story Magazine Short Story Award, a Barbara Mandigo Kelley Peace Poetry Award, and a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. In 2004, the Writer Magazine honored Gayle with a Writer Who Makes a Difference Award. Gayle holds a BA in "Poetry and Movement: Arts of Expression, Meditation and Healing" from the University of Redlands, and an MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction from Antioch University. Learn more about Gayle at www.gaylebrandeis.com

At Antioch this summer--

Photographs courtesy of sxc.hu
and Ivan Prole of Zemun, Serbia

ANTIOCH WRITERS' WORKSHOP

July 12-18 

Antioch University at Yellow Springs
Sharon Short, Director

The week's schedule here

Summer program faculty here

Andre Dubus, keynote speaker

Eileen Cronin

Chris DeWeese

Matthew Goodman

Hallie Ephron

Erin Flanagan

Tara Ison

Katrina Kittle

Marly Youmans

and more...