Inching Towards Summer

April came in like a lion.

I know that's not the correct saying, but this year, April is behaved a little March-like if you know what I mean.

Snow. Freezing winds. Drastic temperature drop. Did I mention snow? It felt like some kind of cruel trick, an April Fool's Day joke taken a step to far. I think I only care because I'm not longer of the driving class and my subway walk is ten minutes long.

April. My birthday month. My step closer to 40 years old. Here we are and all I can do is look towards August.

At the end of March, I went down to Atlanta to speak to a class of undergraduates from Spelman and Morehouse Colleges. I spoke about writing Fiction, the African American literary community, publishing, etc. It was a fantastic experience for me and I think the students got something out of it as well.

Now we near the end of May.

I've made a public declaration to finish my novel by the end of August in this lovely (though a bit inaccurate at times) profile written of me at What Weekly.

I'm finishing my 6th (gasp) year as a high school college counselor and I've never felt more confident in the work I do (sometimes you just have to get away). And I'm hoping that this confidence leads me to more fiction writing.

Other big things:

I'll be reading at Atomic Books on June 9th at 7PM. I'll be sharing the stage with the fantastic Thea Brown and Connie Scozzaro!

I've been using my subway time wisely by knitting and reading and reading some more.

Books I've loved so far this year:

The Sellout, Paul Beatty
The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Ngyuen
The Nest, Cynthis D'Aprix Sweeney (liked more than loved)
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante
The Story of a Lost Child, Elena Ferrante
We Love you Charlie Freeman, Kaitlyn Greenidge

Ever So Slowly

I'm writing again.

Not a lot.

Just a little.

And things are coming along.

Ever so slowly.

I like it this way.

I also hate it this way.

Two weeks ago I dusted off some novel pages and read them to a crowd. A few things happened that surprised me. First, I wasn't nervous. I am always nervous when I have to get up in front of an audience and say anything. My nervousness reaches its pinnacle when I have to read my own work. Last summer, when I was invited to read at Politics and Prose for Kimbilio, terror was the only thing on my mind. Family came in from Philly and Virginia to hear me. My cousin videotaped (is that a thing or do we just say recorded now?) it, Dolen Perkins Valdez was the main attraction. It was both one of the best experiences I've had as a writer but also one of the most stress-inducing. It went fine. I read. People clapped. My parents looked proud. My hands would not be still the entire time. I clutched the sides of my dress the same way I'd done when I delivered my grandfather's Eulogy, which was the last time I read something I'd written in public.

While I cannot say for sure why I wasn't nervous. I have a suspicion that it has more to do with the work than anything else.  I am, I realized, confident in the project that I've been working on for so long. Far more confident than I should be considering how long it's taking/how little time I've had to devote to it.

Starting this week--maybe tomorrow--I haven't picked a day, I'm going to attempt to write 2 pages a day for forty days. Consider this my religion.
Usually teaching Fiction inspires me to write more but that's not happening with the same kind of east as it used to.


Book Update:

Just finished reading: The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson (I cried on the subway reading this. That seems like endorsement enough.)
Currently reading: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Listening to: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante

Knitting Update:

Honey Cowl--Unfinished
Fetching Gloves--Unfinished

Summer 2015 Wrap-Up Part. I

I had a dream that I had written a blog post in the last six months.

It must have been a dream because when I signed in I was surprised to find that I'd written nothing.

Hmm.

The post I thought I had written was all about the books I planned to read this summer. You know, the requisite "I'm gonna read all these books this summer!" post, which inevitably becomes a source of intense shame when, at the end of the summer, I've read less than half those books.

So, I guess I saved myself some good, old-fashioned, Catholic school shaming.

I actually did read some books this summer.

Loving Day, Mat Johnson
Balm, Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Sula, Toni Morrison
The Stranger, Albert Camus ( I don't think I'd read it since my freshman year of college.)
Snow, Bird, Boy, Helen Oyeymi (Let's pretend she's not 30 years old, okay?)
'Till The Well Runs Dry, Lauren Francis Sharma

Note: This summer I became obsessed with the idea of "twinned books". I re-read The Stranger in the hopes that I'd also read "The Mersault Investigation". I have a whole list of classic works and their modern counterparts.

 This leads me to "Books I started and have yet to finish."

The Meursault Investivagion, Kamel Daoud
My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante (I'm going to blame not finishing this one one something really annoying and pretentious: I want to read it in Italian and I have not been able to connect with my friend who brought me a copy back from Italy. There. Super pretentious.)


Ask me about it.

Basically what this list has taught me is that I didn't read nearly enough books and probably watched way too many episodes of "Criminal Minds" this summer. 

Current life reading plan: I now live in New York City and will have a 50 minute commute to work every day and a 2 hour and 40 minute commute to Baltimore every weekend to see the husband and the cat, I can read on the subway, train, or bus, which should greatly increase my capacity to read books.

Oh, right, I got married and now have a husband and a cat. We got the cat first.

More on that later.

Writers, Writers, Everywhere

On Saturday I saw a friend who told me how much she liked the blog. The blog I hardly ever think about or publish on.  On this icy, wet, but oddly warm, day, I feel inspired to write. I also just finished teaching my Fiction Writing class and that always inspires me to write.

Last week was an incredibly busy one. The reading series I host at work had its kickoff event last Thursday. We hosted three poets: Dora Malech, Will Schutt, and James Arthur. Our incredibly talented librarian Jessica, wrote the event up on our school's library blog. You can read all about the reading here. 

In my introduction that evening, I spoke about how I've had to learn to enjoy poetry. It's quite lovely to be able to say that I like it and mean it, this is largely in thanks to the talented poets who shared their work with us last Thursday.  

Thursday also was also made special by LaShonda Katrice Barnett, who visited my class to read from her new novel, Jam on the Vine, and talk about the writing life. The kids were inspired and I made a new friend. She also recorded me telling Amy Bloom how much I love her. So you know what, EVERYONE WON on Thursday.

What's next? Well, Asali Solomon will be reading at FriendsLit next Tuesday, March 10th. Her new novel, Disgruntled, was released back in February. I first learned of Asali back in 2007 when I was headed to Iowa. I devoured her collection of short stories, Get Down. Those stories did many things for as a human but as a writer, they gave me confidence.

I love writers. I love books.

Books! Glorious Books!

The truth is, I don't read as much as I would like to. I mean, I don't read for pleasure as much as I would like to. Even when I have the time to read, I don't. I knit (sometimes). I watch tv (too much really). I bake. January 2015 has been rather good to me as far as finding time to read is concerned. I finsished two books: Team Seven, by Marcus Burke and All the Light You Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. Both were so good I couldn't put them down. I started and finished the Doerr in one day, yesterday in fact. I took it with me on my train ride down to DC and between the round trip train ride (about two hours), and being home alone with the cat, I finished just before midnight.

It felt good to binge read rather than binge watch episodes of a television series.

Up next: A Tale for the Time Being  by Ruth Ozeki. A friend is moderating a discussion between her and Claire Vaye Watkins in a little over a week and both my student and grown folks books club are reading it for February and March respectively. 

2014 was kind of a big year for me.

I stopped blogging. (Though I'm not really sure why.)

I got engaged.

I found purpose through Writers in Baltimore Schools.

I knit an Elizabeth Zimmerman Pi Shawl. Really.

My short story, La Sepoltura was published by Amazon's weekly literary journal, Day One.

I started a reading series called FriendsLit and Porochista Khakpour and Julia Fierro were my first visitors.

I helped organize and lead a Write-In on Ferguson for high school and middle school students. Their poetry was published in both the Washington Post and at www.blackwordsmatter.org.

My friend circle expanded and now feels really, really, complete.

I took two road trips. The first to Iowa City, Iowa in March. The second was to St. Louis, MO in August.

La Sepoltura was anthologized by Day One Year One, Best New Stories and Poems 2014.

It was a pretty good year but I expect 2015 to be even better.

Hiatus

I had to take a little work related break from the blog. I should be back in action later this week with reviews of Goodebox, Birchbox, Yuzen.

Until then....