30th Anniversary Reading & Lecture Series — July 25–30, 2010

The Napa Valley Writers’ Conference presents:

In honor of the conference’s 30th year, we’re planning a party! Join us Tuesday, July 27, at 6 pm, at the new Educational Center for the Performing Arts at Napa Valley College for a literary celebration.

Hors d’oeuvres and wine will be served, and the evening program will include reflections on the conference’s 30-year history. In addition, a tribute will be offered to the late Dr. Chris McCarthy, who was president of Napa Valley College and a major supporter of the conference. The evening will conclude with readings by 2010 conference faculty members Curtis Sittenfeld, best-selling author of Prep and American Wife, and poet C.D. Wright.

The full schedule of faculty lectures and readings for the 2010 Napa Valley Writers’ Conference is as follows:

Sunday, July 25

*   7:30 pm Wine reception and reading with poet Arthur Sze and fiction writer Michael Byers, Napa Valley College Upper Valley Campus, St. Helena

Monday, July 26

*   9 am: Poetry lecture by C.D. Wright, Upper Valley Campus
*   1:30 pm: Fiction lecture by Lan Samantha Chang, Upper Valley Campus
*   7:30 pm: Wine reception and reading with poet Major Jackson and fiction writer Ron Carlson, Robert Mondavi Winery, Oakville

Tuesday, July 27

*   9 am — Poetry lecture by Brenda Hillman, Upper Valley Campus
*   1:30 pm — Fiction lecture by Michael Byers, Upper Valley Campus
*   6 pm — 30th anniversary gala reception, Educational Center for the Performing Arts, Napa Valley College, Napa
*   7:30 pm — 30th anniversary program and reading by poet C.D. Wright and fiction writer Curtis Sittenfeld, Educational Center for the Performing Arts, Napa Valley College

Wednesday, July 28

*   9 am – Poetry lecture by Arthur Sze, Upper Valley Campus
*   1:30 pm – Fiction lecture by Ron Carlson, Upper Valley Campus

Thursday, July 29

*   9 am – Poetry lecture by Major Jackson
*   1:30 pm – Fiction lecture by Curtis Sittenfeld
*   7:30 pm – Wine reception and reading with poet Brenda Hillman and fiction writer Lan Samantha Chang, Beringer Vineyards, St. Helena

Tickets

Admission to the July 27 gala costs $25 for the reception and reading; make reservations prior to July 20 by calling (707) 967-2900 x1611 or emailing writecon@napavalley.edu<mailto:writecon@napavalley.edu>. Tickets for the reading only will be sold at the door after 7 pm and cost $10.

Admission to all other evening readings costs $10, payable at the door. Admission to the daytime lectures may be purchased at the door and costs $25 apiece, $90 for the four-lecture series in either poetry or fiction, or $175 for all eight lectures. Students with valid student IDs will be admitted free of charge to all lectures and evening readings.

About the Faculty

Michael Byers is the author of the novels Long for this World and the forthcoming Percival’s Planet, as well as the story collection The Coast of Good Intentions. His books were named New York Times Notable Books, and his stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories and the O. Henry Awards. He has won a Whiting Award and the Sue Kauffman Prize. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, he currently teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Ron Carlson is the author of ten books of fiction, most recently the novel, The Signal. Previous work includes Five Skies, At the Jim Bridger, and The Hotel Eden. His work is included in many anthologies, including the O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Short Stories. In 2006, GQ Magazine called him “one of the great things about America.” Carlson is currently director of the graduate writing program at UC Irvine.

Lan Samantha Chang is the author of the novels Inheritance and the forthcoming All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost, as well as the story collection Hunger, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award. Her fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, The Atlantic and Best American Short Stories. She is currently director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa.

Brenda Hillman’s eighth book of poems, Practical Water, won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry. Named by Poets and Writers to a list of the 50 most inspiring authors in the world, she is the Olivia Filippi Professor of Poetry at Saint Mary’s College and an activist with Code Pink.

Major Jackson is the author of three collections of poetry: Holding Company, forthcoming in August; Leaving Saturn; and Hoops, which was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Literature: Poetry. He is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at the University of Vermont and the Poetry Editor of the Harvard Review.

Curtis Sittenfeld is the author of the bestselling novels American Wife, Prep and The Man of My Dreams. Prep was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2005 by the the New York Times, nominated for the UK’s Orange Prize, and optioned by Paramount Pictures. Her work has appeared in many publications including Salon, The Atlantic and on public radio’s “This American Life.”

Arthur Sze’s acclaimed collections of poetry include Quipu and The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998. He won the Western States Book Award in Translation for The Silk Dragon: Translations of Chinese Poetry. For over twenty years, he has taught as a professor of creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

C.D. Wright’s poetry collections include Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil and Deepstep Come Shining. Her other works include One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana (2003), with photographer Deborah Luster. A poetry professor at Brown and co-editor of Lost Roads Press, she won the 2009 International Griffin Poetry Prize for her collection Rising, Falling, Hovering.


Napa Valley Writers’ Conference
Napa Valley College · 1088 College Avenue · St. Helena, CA 94574
Phone 707-967-2900 x1611 · Fax 707-967-2909 · writecon@napavalley.edu

Napa Conference, go go!

I was in St Helena today for conference prep; very pleasant, in the mid - 80s, buffered by fog in the morning that didn't burn off until mid-morning. Forecast, for what it's worth, calls for more of the same, with Sunday the 25th, being the coolest, maybe not even 80. The nights will go down to the 50's!  So layers, folks, layers.

Hot Week, Full Moon.

A week to go til conference-time: yep! yep!

Pulled up the extended weather report for St Helena for conference week.
Looks like temps will run from the mid- to high 90's. Hot, but not too hot.


But hey, it cools down at night.
Unlike some places in the country.

Plus the full moon on Sunday, July 25th.
Perfect for the plein-air reading that first night on the lawn.

Looks to be a grand week.

Of course the forecast could be off by several degrees in either direction.
But the moon will still be full.

Will I still be talking in couplets on Sunday?
Bets are being taken.

Winner treats at Ana's Cantina.

Curtis Sittenfeld

I can't help myself, I'm addicted, I'm cruising all around the InterSchnitzels looking for tidbits about or by our NVWC crew of writers. But hey, research pays, check out this piece in the New York Magazine by Curtis Sittenfeld. A lively and sassy interview of two other authors, Meghan Daum and Emily Gould.

I was so completely impressed by "American Wife," Sittenfeld's latest novel. She has managed to create a book that is irrefutably fiction, yet offers insight into one of the most puzzling marriages in recent history, that of George and Laura Bush. It is a remarkable feat, this blend of imagining and inventing that brings understanding. There's plenty of discussion around and about it, too -  as you might imagine. See what they say, starting here.

This is for the poets and those who love them

...for those interested in a sneak preview to the NVWC, Brenda Hillman, one of our distinguished faculty at NVWC this summer, will be reading in SF this Friday, July 16th at a benefit for our friendly competitor, (cough, cough),The Squaw Valley Writers Conference.  Of course, you have to be pretty local to make this one, but still. The reading is in honor of the great Lucille Clifton, the money goes to benefit The Poets Scholarship Fund and she's in great company: Forrest Gander (previous faculty at NVWC, also!), Kazim Ali, Evie Shockley and Dean Young.

Busy, busy summer.

Byers Breakdown

Endless research on Michael Byers while avoiding actual productive work has gifted me with these two gems:

Hot Metal Bridge - an interview with Michael in this literary journal of University of Pittsburgh, where he taught for three years.  Solid interview, which I will quote from, I swear, in my introduction at the conference.  Also an awesome list of lit journals, ripe for the submitting. Go! - take your pick.

5Chapters - Holy Dickens, Batman....the daily serial is making a comeback. Check this out: one five chapter story per week, a chapter posted each week day. Brilliant! M. Byers has a story here, too, that involves a man plotting to kill his wife, one kangaroo and a pair of elderly lions. I know there are readers out there who have material to submit. So do it!

One Ron Carlson, One Story

Don't know how many folks out there are One Story fans.... but I love 'em. It's like getting the New Yorker without all the ads or the extraneous non-fiction stuff. Just the story, ma'am, every three weeks. Check it out.

But wait, there's more.

For the 99th and100th issue (a few years back) they published one of Ron Carlson's stories, Beanball, as a deluxe, hand-press issue.  Yes, our Ron Carlson, who's on faculty with the Napa Valley Writers Conference.  Pretty darn cool, eh?

Napa Valley Writers Conference

The workshops for Napa Valley Writers Conference have been created, the manuscripts are being uploaded (for the most part); let the games begin!  Anyone who hasn't logged into their workshops's Google Group, time to get cracking--you've got reading to do!

And as a tidbit for all you workshoppers, here's a link to Kathy Stevenson's post about her first residency at Bennington. It's is just about too funny... and sooo true. Enjoy!

More constructing...

...going on. A new look for a new month. Not a terribly edgy, just a somewhat eggy, look.

Voice of the River Reading! July 1st!

Did you know that Petaluma has  a river that runs through it? Come by the  Petaluma Arts Center Thursday, July 1st for an evening of poetry and prose about said river.Starts at 7 p.m. Readers are contributors to the The Voice of the River Book created by Patti Trimble and Susan Starbird as part of an ongoing P. River consciousness-raising project. Yours truly, among many others, is one of those readers. Free to the public.

Summer is for Bloggin'

Hotter than a pistol today. Yesterday too.  Summer's arrived, skipping right over spring, which wasn't much of anything anyway. By hotter than a pistol I mean one that was recently discharged, like at least mid-90's, probably hotter. My working-studio faces west and I can feel the air heating up in the room right now, expanding, pressing on my eyeballs, fuzzing up my brain.  I've penciled in a siesta starting in 20 minutes, so I hope to snooze through the worst of it. It's the only way to survive. Now if I could only get work to agree to this most sensible of plans.

I've been collecting the blogs of Napa Valley Writers Conference attendees past and present, faculty, staff and workshoppers. (see sidebar) I just added links for Michael Byers (Finding Pluto), Janet Miller (Persistent Unwanted Thoughts), Sandra Vahtel (The Sweet and the Sour). If any of you readers are NVWC attendee of any stripe and want to be included, let me know in the comments and I'll load you up. I'd love to get this to be about 50 blogs long.

Time to peace out; I'm breaking a sweat just typing. Catch you all on the flip side.

Under Construction....

yes. I've been messing around with the template!    please bear with me....I'll find something a little less busy, bland, neophyte, whatever...soon. I think.

Napa Valley Writers Conference Link

A very nice article about the Napa Valley Writers Conference, which is celebrating it's 30-Year Anniversary.  Includes some history and famous names.
Napa Valley Register

Aram's Last Supper

(more photos)

Our favorite cafe and restaurant , Aram's, closed Friday night. We knew it was going to happen, just not when. Armenian to the core, it was my favorite place to hang out  and not just because I loved William Saroyan's work or the Armenian Coffee that arrived at the table, steaming hot, in long-handled coffee pots, waiting to be knocked down ( 3 x 3 knocks, I had been taught once) and the slightly sweetened brew poured off, leaving the ubiquitous sludge at the bottom. The food was delicious, yes, absolutely. But the atmosphere was, too. The staff (Jenny, Stephanie, Carol, Kelsey and several others whose names have escaped my rattle-trap brain) tended to stick around, the sign of good treatment by management and customers alike. It was a community affair; customers were loyal and local. We were a type, the Aram's Krew. If we weren't friends already, we'd become so over the years; we could recognize others of our ilk in any crowd. 


We changed our plans to be there Friday night for our last opportunity for Armenian Pomegranate Chicken, Shawarma and the particularly fine feta in their Greek Salad. More photos here of the place and people.  


The staff will stay on for the new restaurant, Avatar's Punjabi Burrito; as long as I can commandeer my favorite table by the windows and Pomegranate Chicken stays on the menu, I'll be there. 

A Random Plank

A week ago Saturday was a bright day, hot for the first time this spring (or so it seems), the sky as blue as could be, endlessly blue. A day of de-clutttering and arranging, of uprooting crap from the basement and planting tender starts into welcoming soil. I even got around to clearing a bunch of stuff out of the studio -- it's become another collecting point again, an eddy in the river of crap that runs through our house, garage, yard.

Remember that Get Rid of 100 Things a Week project? That diet plan for my Inner Hoarder? The good news is that Saturday I managed to get rid of almost 100 things, if you count  each hanger I took to Saks Thrift Avenue, that is.

But my reward for clearing out the crap was a trip with my sis to Heritage Salvage in Petaluma for garden supplies. This is like going out for chocolate cake and ice cream to celebrate losing two pounds. But we had a list and we'd stick to it, dammit: cinder blocks, a metal structure (bedframe, wire fencing) as a trellis for the clematis clinging desperately to the back deck, border-edging for the garden path. Didn't find any affordable metal trellis work, but we scored on cinder blocks and cadged a deal on edging rocks, red stone cut into long, roughly rectangular blocks.

Then a 7-foot long, 16-inch wide crappy looking plank called to me. It was splintery, weathered-grey, with surface splits and thin patches of ancient white paint here and there. The edges and corners practically ate our hands.  But to me it had charm and character; it deserved to be rescued. With a bit of scraping, sanding and filing, I figured, it would be a fine, if very rustic, bench for my backyard.

And so it is becoming. The WP* was impressed with the plank's dimensions and suspected it might be old redwood; using the full complement of power tools at his disposal, he spent a good part of the weekend sanding, smoothing, patching and and then sanding that plank again. After three coats of spar varnish this week, the old, splintered, cracked piece of redwood (which is what it revealed itself to be) will be installed as a handsome garden bench, no splinters for the unwary behind or careless hand.

So. I dumped 100 things, purchased 24, ended up with a net loss of 76 things. And if the items I brought home have an immediate purpose and are a delight to behold, they don't count as clutter, right? right?

"Why take pictures of a plain plank when such a handsome, debonair cat-about-town is close by?"

*Wonderful Partner

Bird Walking with Becky Olsen

One of the long-lasting effects from the last Staff Appreciation Day were the extra lunch-hour workshop sessions held over the year. One such was the Bird Walk led by Becky Olsen from Financial Services about two weeks ago. She's an experienced, excellent and enthusiastic birder who has been keeping an eagle (sorry) eye on birds in, around or flying over campus for fifteen years or so. She told us, as we gathered on the north patio of the commons, that she's seen over 100 different species of birds on campus during those years including resident birds, temporarily resident (wintering over or here for the breeding season) and migratory birds, aka "fly-overs." She's also been a long-time volunteer at the Bird Rescue Center for Sonoma County.

Becky led our merry (though shhh! quiet!) band of five from the commons along the paved path toward the creek. We stopped by the palm trees near the pond, looking for a hooded oriole, a bright yellow bird that I'd never seen before and didn't then either. (But I did on the walk back, thanks, Becky!) Just before the walking bridge, we took a jog to the west to watch a family of chickadees flit around some low bushes -- actually, the parents flitted around while the three or four kids (they all moved too fast to be counted) clutched skinny twigs and begged: dee, dee, dee, dee!

Chestnut-backed chickadees (Poecile rufescens) are plucky year round residents, living, breeding and raising their kids in the heart of Wine Country and on our campus. They are active, inquisitive, chattery, amusing little critters, about 4.5 inches long on a good day, feeding on insects when they can get them and seeds when they can't. In the fall, they'll cache seeds, storing them against the meager fare of winter. It's been estimated that one chickadee can hide and remember up to a hundred thousand seeds in a season. Bird brain indeed! I can barely remember where my 10 keys are at any given time and they're all on the same ring.

During the fall and winter, when chickadees cache and retrieve seeds, the hippocampus of their little birdy-brains expands; in spring and summer, when they no longer need that info, it shrinks down to normal. Certainly gives credance to the motto "use it or lose it," as it applies to brains. Time to break out the crossword and jigsaw puzzles, folks, take up a new language, find that guitar in the back of the closet and take lessons again.

There are seven species of chickadees in North America: Black-capped, Carolina, Mountain, Boreal, Mexican, Grey-headed and our Chestnut-backed, with little overlap in territories. Most are various arrangements of grey, black, buff, russet-red and white. Ours sports a dapper chestnut-colored back and flanks, appearing at times to wear a very dashing suit coat with grey sleeves, or perhaps a tasteful russet-hued vest for the holidays. With strong legs and feet, chickadees often hang upside down as they forage, which is somehow quite endearing. They are perching birds (passerines) and quite social in nature, existing in loose flocks of several chickadee families, as well as in mixed foraging flocks composed of warblers or bushtits. They often share territory with downy woodpeckers and nuthatches. But for all their tiny size, they are spunky and not easily intimidated; they've been known to mob predators such as owls or hawks.

Chickadees are cavity-nesters, often commandeering old woodpecker holes in trees. As our small birding band backtracked east and wandered along the creek toward the butterfly garden, Becky pointed out a snag -- an old, mostly leafless, tree trunk leaning over the creek. Near the top was a nice-sized round hole and within moments, a chickadee had flown into it and then after a bit popped out, flying off immediately. "Babies are still in there," Becky said, "hungry babies." Within the hole, there might be a nest similar to the photo below (courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology), moss and strips of bark providing structural support on the outside, soft animal fur, hair and even feathers, providing coziness on the inside.

Fascinating to think that while we're busy in our offices and class rooms, contemplating numbers and philosophies, examining theories and texts, balancing budgets and signing contracts, these little chickadee families are thriving in the bushes and trees along our fringes, hatching and raising their youngsters, teaching them how to find tasty bugs and save seeds, how to evade predators, how to sing, find a mate and thrive.

Everywhere you look, brains are working, critters are learning.


More links for thought:

Madrone Audubon Society
Hiding seeds, Black-capped Chickadees
Hippocampus and the Chickadee
Cornell Lab of Ornithology

We tried a new  method of gardening this weekend, one designed to spare the backs and knees of the boomer generation. It's a variation of the Lasagna Lawn, though I call it Compost Layer Cake Gardening, or alternatively, Compost Cookie gardening. The best part? No digging involved. The next best part? Water thrifty. I heard about it from my Garden Maven friend whose mom emailed her this article from the LA Times. It sounded easy ... and it was. Really, really, really, no digging, just hoisting a few bales and hauling some sacks of amendments around.

So, for the Compost Layer Cake. First we laid down interleaved newspaper and cardboard (the plate) as a basic barrier against weeds, then plopped down the first layer of alfalfa flakes, added bone and blood meal (filling), slapped on a thicker layer of straw, tossed in a few soupcons of blood and bone meal (for flavor) and then iced it with a thick, choclately layer of compost.

Ours, being rather freeform,  ended up looking like a tasty layer cake, or a gi-normous chocolate-drop cookie.

After it sat for a few days, I planted three Early Girl tomato starters in it late this afternoon, to take advantage of the predicted, though highly unusual, rain.  Steam rose as I dug down into the hay, it was like a little furnace down in there. Man, that pile is busy!

I might give it another layer of icing this weekend. It's looking a bit naked there.

When you get a new camera, ya just gotta play with it. 

An Erratic Week in an Aberrant Spring

After a weekend of stunningly perfect weather (bright blue skies, mild wind, brilliant sun), last Monday arrived cold and rainy, a thick sky of grim nimbus clouds and a wind too full of itself. Cloudburst, downpour, sprinkle, drizzle, rinse, repeat. The view out the office window was grey, grey, grey, all day. Still, not much daunts the intrepid Amateur Campus Naturalist and so, jamming the hat down to my ears and cinching tight all openings of the raincoat, out I went. Sticking to a route under overhangs and close to trees, I avoided becoming completely drenched while freshening my lungs with oxygen-rich air. Win, win, win. At least for me.

We're not used to this sort of wet and variable spring in Sonoma County. All this cold rain and dreary grey feels more like epileptic relapses into winter. April showers bring May flowers in other parts of the country. Here, the ultra-pleasant and dry weeks of April merely launch us full-tilt into summer; by mid-May, telltale patches of brown will line the crests of the hills as the winter rains recede into the water table. This spring though, with rains every other week, the hills are staying green, and with rainfall totals above normal, the three-year drought has been conquered. (Fingers crossed on that one.)

Walking just inside a silvery curtain of rain under the Salazar overhang, I wondered where the cliff swallows hide in all this wet. The birds had arrived per usual in mid-April, with their radio-static buzzy clicks, swinging freely over the quad in waves, then winging over the playing fields, scooping up their bug lunches. Certainly nest building has suffered from rain delays; under the eaves high above, I could see only the most rudimentary lines of daubed mud sketching in the nest foundations. How will this affect raising and fledging the next brood?

From Salazar, I hopped, skipped and skidded around the gym and up into the Kenneth Stocking Native Botanical Garden. Under the tree-canopy, the rain was but a minor nuisance. I wandered along the spongy floor of dense leaf-litter and needles, breathing deep, the air fragrant and damp, and stopped to watch through crossed tree branches as the lessening rain dimpled the pond. Suddenly I heard dee! dee dee dee! dee! shockingly close to my head. I spotted the commotion right away:  two spry chestnut-backed chickadees bouncing around the branches and twigs just above me, gleaning insects and bugs as fast as they could to feed their fluffy, demanding, just-fledged progeny, three lumps-on-a-branch, barely moving, except to open their beaks for food or to dee! deee! deee! for more.

Obviously, this aberrant spring has had little effect on these adorable (admit it, they are) little busybodies.   And it probably won't do more than slow down the swallows as they follow the inevitable course of actions leading to the next generation. Nor will it interfere with our own about-to-fledge graduates who, in about two weeks, will fling up their black caps, tassels and all, and come rain or come shine, fly on.

Settler's Chase

My friend Doris Eraldi's second book, Settler's Chase, will be released in July 2010 by Berkeley. This is a sequel to her book, Settler's Law, also published by Berkeley in 1998. Now, it seems like a long time between books, and it is, but I happen to know that she's written at least one whole novel in between,while training a slew of horses, teaching horsemanship, coaching young riders and in general gallivanting around. No moss grows under her hooves. Anyway, as a first reader of her first book, I am now an eager awaiter of her second.