Books and Authors
It’s “Please-Look-at-Me” Time Again
My third book of fiction Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories comes out this fall from Jaded Ibis Press and the please-look-at-me part of being a writer has begun. It started with my publisher asking for blurbs on my behalf. It’s a big thing to ask, given that it’s a request for someone’s time. It’s also…
Read MoreWhere resolution meets writing even when my resolution isn’t about writing
I have one firmly defined and achievable resolution, and I have one that is maybe not a resolution after all, but some vague hope. But I’m making a connection between that resolution and that hope, because I’m making a connection between that resolution and everything in my life. My resolution: To be able to have…
Read MoreSome Things I Read and Did in 2019 – A Mash-up
This past year I read good books and experienced good things. Here are a few of each of them matched up in a semi-random, teeny bit calculated way, introduced by a few lines from the featured book. From “1989” in How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, a deeply perceptive and intelligent collection of essays by…
Read MoreDonna’s Excellent 24-Hour Literary Adventure
Jane Hodges picked me up at 1:30 last Thursday afternoon at my North Seattle apartment to drive me to Mineral, a small community in the foothills of Mount Rainier. In its Wikipedia entry, Mineral’s amenities are listed as “a post office, two churches, one general store, one tavern, a log lodge (in the National Register…
Read MoreAuthor Photos: The Blue Series
Before I ever needed an author photo, I thought that if the day came that circumstances demanded one, I would use the drawing my daughter did of me when she was in third grade. The likeness was undeniable, the colors vivid, and the vibe cool. Those blue glasses were seriously daring, and not all reflective…
Read MoreA conversation about power, community, and art with CMarie Fuhrman and Bryan Fry
For years now, I’ve been going to the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference at Centrum. It’s a ferry ride and a scenic drive 60 miles from Seattle. Located on a peninsula on a larger peninsula, the surroundings are beautiful, the faculty stellar, and the participants fun to be around. Every year, I meet remarkable people. Though…
Read MoreCoincidence, Luck, Magic (and My Mother) at Hedgebrook
Recently, on the third anniversary of my mother’s death, I went to Hedgebrook to have some writing time as well as to teach at the Summer Salon, a day of small-group writing workshops given in the Hedgebrook cottages. Three years earlier, I had been scheduled to do the same, but the week before my departure…
Read MoreLiterary April (and the tail end of March)
Every month is literary for readers and writers, but it seemed like April has been especially full of events for me, both as participant and audience. Here’s a brief rundown: AWP I’m going to cheat and start with AWP, which was at the end of March, so practically April, right? I went to a lot…
Read MoreArt and Nonfiction and Books I Want to Read: Finding Inspiration at the NonfictioNOW Conference
“We are essayists. We can make a difference,” Stephanie Elizondo Griest said in her electrifying keynote talk that capped the three-day NonfictioNOW Conference in Phoenix recently. I’m a fiction writer. But I went – an interloper, a mole – to glean what I could about writing essays. Not to forsake fiction. I’ll always wants to…
Read MoreWhen a poem takes the stage
Claudia Castro Luna’s book Killing Marias is subtitled A Poem for Multiple Voices. Each page addresses the lost life of one of the women or girls disappeared and murdered in Juárez, Mexico on the other side of the border from El Paso, Texas. Claudia invited me, writer Catalina Cantú, and dancer Milvia Pacheco to share…
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