Zenyatta: All About the Heart

Zenyatta kickin' it.

And now we must consider Zenyatta, that magnificent filly, who inspired a loyal following even among folks not normally given to horse worship. Who raced her heart out for 19 races, socking all of them into the win column. Who, in going for her 20th straight win, made a claim for the ages. Who reads as a winner in everyone's heart, if not the record book - her final race a virtual tie, separated by six inches. For her glory was not just in winning, but in heart, in presence, in her ability to inspire others to stretch for the finish line, no matter how far away.

Her story is all over the internet; many of you might know it already.  But my friend Elizabeth Whitney has been following her quite closely; she flew to Churchill Downs for that race and posted this very thoughtful and rousing account of the race on her blog, Beyond the Horizon:  Into the Vortex

It's long, but so well-written and thoughtful and captures all of the threads feeding into this story. And she has great photos. Be sure to check out the photos.

Then, for more even info and pix, check out Steve Haskin's post (from Hangin' With Haskin):  Zenyatta Stirs the Emotions.

Be sure to go to the last picture there to see a connection between the two.

I'm baaaaack...as a Thief

...what better way to get back into the blogging saddle than sharing a most excellent blogpost:

The Thief and the Soloist: A Very Brief Taxonomy of Writers

In this fella's (Lev Grossman) taxonomy I have to declare myself a Thief. Whenever I find myself writing-blind, I'll open up a source text: Ron Carlson, say, or Yi Yun Li (The Vagrants, in particular), Michael Byers, Barry Lopez, etc and see how they do it. How they open a chapter, how they weave details and dialogue together, how they create echoes and harmonies with objects and places, how they construct such marvelous sentences, how they end the damn chapter. You'd think I'd end up with a clunky mish-mash of unrelated styles and disparate techniques, but what I find is that these out-sources just serve as a jumping-off place and through revision after revision, the bumps and lumps are smoothed out, the sight lines tightened and it all distills into my own approach.

However. I'll also use Tarot cards, throw the I Ching, sneak in a Chinese Fortune Cookie fortune, roll dice (those Dungeon and Dragons dice are great -so many sides, so many options!), steal plot lines from Dear Abby and otherwise grasp at straws. But whatever helps me survive the draft (as Ron Carlson says), right?

And if I can't write a blogpost myself, I'll piggyback off someone else's brilliant post.

No Direction at All

In the interest of seeming more professional, I've been updating my profile in all the Webby places: FB, Goodreads, Linked In, etc., etc., just in case some poor fool wandering the Web-o-sphere might be looking for a relatively un-published writer upon whom they can bestow, well, what I wonder? A contract, I guess, for the book I haven't yet written.

I've been pretty good with the submission bios, keeping them short and sweet, sticking to the basic facts with only a smattering of truthiness. I don't believe in tarting up my accomps any more than I have to. Not fond of being coy or cutsey-wootsy either, so I avoid statements like: "when not herding cats the size of watermelons on the far reaches of the Canadian Prairies, LK writes with gremlin-sharpened egret feathers dipped in ink of a giant squid the better to capture the pure essence of...well, whatever." or " LK waits for the dog of inspiration to drop the well-chewed bone of contention into her lap; then gets busy."  Even if it is true. Or, true-ish.

But my professional cv is rather slim, having been busy with other things. Too many other things.

So, to pad things up a bit,  I'm tempted to use this:

Lakin Khan has been, in no particular order,  a gymnast (though you wouldn't know that now), an atheist (until I had children), a violinist, a tool-and-die machine shop programmer back when we used punch-tape to code the instructions (believe it!), a waitress, a short-order cook, a restaurant owner, a swimmer, a tabla student of Allah Rakha and Zakir Hussein at the Ali Akbar College of Music, a freelance photographer with a wandering eye, a wedding photographer's assistant who never understood the old cake-in-the-face business, a photo-journalist, a wannabe-acolyte in the church of my own creation, an English major, a flute player, and for one year, a double-major in math and French; a half-assed wife, a worrier par excellance, a born-again agnostic and a Neo-pagan Evangelical Unitarian, one of those truly bad girlfriends, a good-enough mother, a Fictioneer and A Friend to Poets; a professor-wrangler, cat-handler, badger-worshipper; and every other Friday in June, a banjo-strumming nitpicker with misplaced mordant wit and a bad case of insomnia.

Just the usual writer resume, all over the place with no direction at all*.

 * with thanks to Bobby Zimmerman.

Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog. For realles.

If I was really, really goode Ich be riteing this all in Middle English, but since I ain't, that's just about all you're gonna get. However. Those of you who love Chaucer, Middle English and all things mashed-up will want to check out Brantley Bryant's Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog. Hysterically funny, sometimes punny and always Chaucer-referential, the blog makes Speak Like a Pirate Day look like kindergarden while sending up everything pop-cultureish; then and now.

The blog became so popular, it becameth a booke. 

For realles.

Molly Fisk's Kickstarter Essay Project

So have you heard about Kickstarter? It looks like a mighty cool way to get projects funded in a very interweb-tastic way.  The main premise is a person with a project figures out what financial support would be needed to get that project under way, like a play produced, a movie made a cd cut, a book published... then posts a description of the project,  with goals, prospects, benchmarks, etc. on the Kickstarter website. 

Also included: a plea for funds ... but not just any old plea. First of all, a goal is stated, $1,000, $149, $10,000...whatever the creator determines is needed to get the roll going. Secondly, a deadline. The money has to be raised by such-and-so date, otherwise it's a no-go, and the contributions are rescinded. Actually, your credit card isn't charged unless and until the goal is reached by deadline day. Thirdly, there are many sorts of enticements for contributors: a copy of the book, perhaps, or acknowledgement in the program, or a poem a day, or a personal signed copy of cd or dvd. The projects are multifarious and the enticements (rewards) all over the map. It's worth checking it out. Because it may give you hope, a good kick in the pants, to get that book finished, if there might be a way to fund its publication.

Molly's latest poetry book
pub: March, 2010

Here's a worthwhile project to start with: Molly Fisk's Kickstarter Essay Project. I first heard about Molly Fisk when friends of mine signed up for her Poetry Bootcamp and raved about it and her. It's just what it sounds like, too. Six days, six poems, get real. Like her poems, real.

But I'll let Molly tell you about  her Kickstarter project:

"I'm an award-winning poet and I write weekly four-minute radio essays called Observations from a Working Poet for my local community station. I've written 215 of them so far, gratis. People love them, and I love writing them. They're haphazardly funny, poignant, fierce and/or edifying, and always thoughtful. And I have a good voice for radio. You can listen to one here as a podcast and see what you think.  http://kvmr.org/programs/fisk/index.html "

Molly's Kickstarter is to match a $5,000 grant from Corporation for Public Broadcasting to market her book to radio stations, do readings, send out podcasts and CD's etc.  She has until Oct 22nd and she is oh, so close! No donation is too little (a cool thing about Kickstarter) as every little bit adds up. So, check out the website, check out the project, donate if you are inclined or spread the word to any and all who might be so inclined. Let's get the ball rolling!

September: The Write Month

September is always a busy literary month around here: The Petaluma Poetry Walk one weekend, the Sonoma County Book Festival another. It's loaded with literary birthdays, too: Euripides, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, Truman Capote -  and that's just in the final week.  Like any good writer, the month is unpredictable: tar-meltingly hot one week, cold as the proverbial witch's-whatever the next. 

Last Saturday, I squeezed in a quick visit to the Book Festival, hoping to hear Abraham Verghese and Yiyun Li at the Santa Rosa Library and Robin Ekiss and Molly Fisk at the Poetry Tent. It was a cooker of a day, though not the hottest it's ever been. Still, hot is hot. Fortunately, the library lecture room had air conditioning. Unfortunately, by the time my tardy self got there, the lecture room was packed and the overflow crowd crouched in every bit of the shade on the garden patio, where an excellent sound system was set up. Verghese's voice was clear and distinct in the baked air; even as I melted on a corner of a stone bench, I felt I was melting for a darn good cause. 

I'm in the middle of Verghese's novel "Cutting for Stone" now; I loved his two previous books, the memoirs/personal histories,  "My Own Country" and "The Tennis Partner." Between him and Atul Gawande, we are rich in doctor-writers with most excellent prose and great stories to tell. 

Yiyun Li

We should count Yiyun Li in that category as well; she was on her way to a PhD in Immunology before she made the (excellent, imo) switch to writing. I was third in line to get into the lecture room for her reading, you betcha. She read an excerpt from "Gold Boy, Emerald Girl," just published Sept 14th. It sounds like it might be a kinder-gentler world than that of her previous book "The Vagrants," which is a stunning work of art. Can't wait to read the new book (signed, of course!) 

A bit later on, I wandered around the square in a heat-induced daze trying to find the Poetry Tent and bumped into (yes, quite literally)  JJ Wilson (co-founder and leading spark of the festival) and we both agreed that Yiyun Li's work and writing is just brilliant. I confessed to her that when I'm stuck on a fiction piece, I'll pick up "The Vagrants," find a sentence and use it as a model for construction and inspiration; it gets me going again. 


To my regret, I missed both my poet-friends; guess the heat melted my synpases, particularly those relating to spacial orientation, and cooked whatever meager concept of time was left to me. Apologies to Molly and Robin!

JJ and I are not the only ones who think Yiyun Li is the bee's knees ~ she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (in September!) as announced here on the NewsHour.  

Links: 

from WWW
The Rumpus
MacArthur Fellow

Last Call from Wellspring?

Some of my best times over the past few years, whether writing or relaxing, have been at a unique, though not secret, location in Mendocino County, the Wellspring Renewal Center. Now I've received some sad news.  They are closing. I am bereft.

We all know the economy has been hitting everyone hard, particularly non-profits. Like many institutions, Wellspring has always had to work to keep their outgo covered by their income. It seems that it has at last become insurmountable and after 30 years of operation, their board made the difficult decision to fold up the tents and turn out the lights.

I imagine that letting go of the book-balancing struggle is a relief in itself. But the place will be sorely missed by so many people. Moi, especially. It was my own Writers Residency that I was always accepted to; it was a retreat to the soul-healing woods when I and the Captain (aka Nearly Normal Norm) needed a respite from work, family, suburban noise and strife.

It's where the cabin porch always beckoned.

Where the swimming hole had its own friendly beast. 

Where I found an abandoned car in the forest. 

It's also where the Captain and I shared our cabin with a bat, but that's another story, and sadly enough, I have no pictures of that. "What in flaming blazes was that?" and  "Shoo, bat, shoo!" plus a frantic, high-pitched discussion about whether lights would attract or scare away flying rodents figured largely in that story. Eventually the poor beast found it's way out the opened door, and the next morning the staff treated us with that dignity reserved for suburban folk not used to country life, while patching the hole right away.

Actually, these were, in general, nice bats, important in maintaining an acceptable level of insect life nearby.  The next night, the Capt. and I sat on the porch at twilight and watched them swing out and around the meadow scooping up all those annoying flying critters and we were content. Especially since the bats weren't using our cabin as home base.

There are more stories of course:  the nightly call of owls, the sight of rabbits and herons, the amusing activities of the acorn woodpeckers and stellar jays - some of which I have told already. There were moments of poetry and moments of quiet companionship; there were times of insight and contentment only possible when the frantic buzz of our electronically-mediated world has seeped away. It will be difficult to replace this retreat in my life.

Wellspring will stay open through the fall season, until October 30th. Which means, if anyone is interested, there might still be time for one more visit, one more writers retreat. I'm plotting and planning right now.

Attitudes Not Platitudes

The Goddess of Green Lights woke up on the wrong side of bed yesterday morning. So I had plenty of time to read all the bumper stickers on the dark green Mustang convertible in front of me, as we hit red light after red light on my way out of Petaluma to work.

I’d Tell You to Go to Hell But I Work There (and I don’t want to see you everyday)

How About a Big Cup of Shut The F**k Up

It’s been 365 Days Since I Gave a Sh*t.

I Used to be F**king Stupid But Then We Broke Up.

Who the f’ing hell drove this car? Tried as I did, I never got a good look at the driver and there wasn’t a passenger to give me any auxillary clues. The car didn’t pull into SSU as I assumed it would (had to be a student, right?), so I wasn’t able to park nearby to get a good look. Drat and dagnabbit!

I really wanted to know who drove that car. Would the persona created from the bumpersticker ‘tudes match the person who actually got out of the car? A fellow or gal as aggressive and rude as the stickers,  short hair with a confrontational stance perhaps, with loud, even cruel, laughter? Or reserved, with a small ever-present smirk and few, though pointed, comments? Would he/she be constipated? Why do I think this car belonged to a fella?

Or would the driver be against type?  Mild-mannered, the proverbial “nice, quiet, never any trouble” kind of guy yet seething on the inside, bones buried in the back yard, a secret room filled with the photos and trophies of a stalker. Were these bumper stickers meant in all irony? Perhaps it was an uncle’s car and they were somewhat embarrassed to be driving it. Maybe the bumperstickers were the only things available when rust spots began showing up. A soccer mom with a hidden message for the coach?

Near the key-lock for the trunk, sort of the center for all the wordy messages, was a sunbleached image of a Native American dreamcatcher with a superimposed wolf’s head in the middle and large feathers or long wooly tails hanging down. Now -- does this add depth and dimension to the character, create empathy? Does it blend with the messages or add a different, contradictory flavor? Or does it read as erroneous, something that came with the car (assuming it was second hand), or that someone stuck on as a joke? 

Who do you see driving this car?

Major Jackson

 Major Jackson and Vicki Zubovic

The best thing about conferences: getting to meet fabulous writers and poets. 

This conference, for me, it was the poet Major Jackson. 

(I love this picture, even if I did take it myself. The smiles say it all.)

There is no question that Major Jackson is a formidable poet and a master of form. He's also an engaging, personable speaker, both as a reader of his own work and as a lecturer during the craft-talk at the NVWC. His reading at Mondavi took us everywhere: The Frost House in New England, the b'ball  courts in his Philly neighborhood, a long chat with Gwendlyn Brooks. He read some poems from his  just -about-to-be-published book, "Holding Company," and some from "Hoops." While some of the poems in the latter book soar and bounce with the jump-shot rhythm of basketball (Hank Gathers, Moose),  the second half is a 70-page epistolary poem to Gwendolyn Brooks in rhyme royal.  Like I said, a master.

Other Links

  Blueflower

IdentityTheory

AND! see who's featured this month in  Poets & Writers 

Poetry of Place in Pt Reyes

Next weekend, Brenda and Bob will be in the house. Not the house, exactly, but nearby. In Pt Reyes, out in West County (Marin). So I'm going. How could I not? The coast, the town, the poets, Toby's Feed Barn. (there's a link to the local weather on the FeedBarn site. Very useful if you're planning a day out there.)  Cowgirl Creamery, too, but let's not get distracted by cheese. 


I'm planning take Brenda's book, Cascadia, with me....but when I went looking to see what I have of Bob Hass's, I realized that most of my poetry books are still packed up. In the basement! Gaaaaack!!! 


Though this does give me the excuse to pick up some more books. 

So check it out....Brenda Hillman, Bob Hass: Reading in Pt Reyes. See you there? In spirit, maybe?

Running Hot, Then Cold

It was so hot on Monday (100+ degrees),  all I could think about was winter. Not just the mamby-pamby winter of the West Coast either, but deep winter.  With refrigerant. 

From the freewrite that night:

Winter echoes

Eaves plip, drip into soft snowdrifts

gritty along the crest,

The creak of ice over black branches, the

tight squeak of snow compressed under red boots

portals to our discontents.

And now, four days later, it might not  break 80 degrees.  No wonder our tomatoes are going nutz. During the three day heat-blast, several of our green tomatoes were cooked right on the vine, squishy and soft and warm. Ruined and sorta gross. And many more were sunburnt, semi-circles of crisp skin along their shoulders stretched paper-thin over green pulp. Don’t know if those will ripen or are permanently wrecked. Maybe it’s time to find some green tomato recipes.

Sigh.

I should say though, that the tomatoes in the straw-and-compost sandwich bed are in the best shape. Slow, of course, just barely coming in, but tasty. Fortunately, they get some late afternoon shade, so they weren’t heat damaged. 

The Bookself

Some might notice, over to the right, a blogroll that is slowly increasing. It's my collection of blogs from Napa Valley Writer's Conference participants, faculty, staff....anyone, actually, with any sort of relationship to the conference. I try to introduce them as I add them, but don't always manage that.

I just discovered Joan's blog The Bookself ...with some great posts about the NVWC conference and a truly hysterical (I think, anyway) staff photo. Not sure they'd run it on the website, but it cracks me up just looking at it; we were all rather punchy by then - as you might be able to tell.

Joan published quite a few posts from the conference, with perceptive and astute notes from the craft talks and workshops and some really good photos. Seriously. And she has a nice collection of blogs from Agents and Publishers, worthy of cruising, if anyone is so inclined.

So, check it out.

Lady GaGa - Library Fan?

In honor of Lady Ga Ga being in town, I had to post this YouTube of the

Lady La La's

just check it out, if you love a librarian. Or a good library.

Held Breath

These are the dog-days of August, the lull between the high activities of summer proper and the fall semester looming ahead. Usually, these are hot and even sultry days, but this year we awaken to leaden, fog-cold mornings and wait impatiently, bundled in sweatshirts, wool socks and fleece, for the heat of short afternoons.

Slow, even listless days. The very air is still; the campus silent with quietness of a held breath. No students chattering in the courtyards or calling across the quad; no bustle as throngs troop down the hallways, no lines (savor that!) at Charlie’s or Toast; no bands blaring at noon.

Walking along Salazar Hall, I miss the squeaky, buzzy swallows, their mud nests for the most part empty except the few hardy couples double-clutching, raising a second brood. The rest of the swallows, oldsters and youngsters, have decamped to begin the long trek to South America for the winter. Midday, I take the path over the little knoll to sit on a wide bench at the top edge of the Alumni Amphitheater grove just as the fog thins to blue. I welcome this lull, this silence, this held breath. Even the poplar trees are merely whispering in the faint occasional lackluster stirrings of air.  

Juv. Cooper's hawk, photo: Becky Olsen

All last month, though, this small grove of poplar, pine and oak, was a noisy nursery for a clutch of Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperii) fledglings. Becky Olsen in Financial Services had been keeping an eagle (ooops) eye on the nest since mid-spring, when a pair of hawks had taken up residence the large oak. One day last May, on a bird walk about campus, she took several of us to the south side of Salazar.  “Stand right about here, “she said, directing our binoculars to the top of the majestic oak, “look into the middle of that dark section there.” And there it was, a very large collection of sticks and twigs, the work of several seasons. Truly, if you did not know the nest was there, it wasn’t.

After that, I planned my walk-about routes to pass by it.  Several times, I saw the swoop of a parent hawk, mostly brown from my viewpoint, bringing tidbits to the nest. And every so often, I would see one perched on the branches of nearby trees, as still as could be. And then, in early July, I saw a fuzzy, white something poking over the edge of the nest: hatchlings!

Juv. Cooper's Hawk. Photo: Becky Olsen

By mid-July, they were fledglings and were hopping around the branches of the oak (known as branching); then, as they got the hang of flight, in nearby trees. And not just one, three! Quel surprise! Each day, they flapped a bit further, all the while begging keee!kee!keee! for tasty morsels. The parents were having a time of it, reminding me of the endless grocery runs when there were teens in my house. The Cooper’s hawks certainly picked their nest-site well. Their market is right next door, under the eaves of Salazar,  for the main prey of Cooper’s hawks are small birds, though they are willing to vary their diet with little mammals and lizards if the opportunity presents itself, or if necessary.

The Cooper’s hawk is one of three species of Accipiters, the long-tailed, blunt winged, forest-dwelling group of hawks. They are swift, agile birds, designed to dodge through trees after their flying prey. Elegant and dignified in adulthood they are, with a slate-gray back (lending them the nickname big blue darter), ruddy-brown and white ribbing underneath and bright red eyes-though I have yet to see those with my own peepers. The young begin as those outrageous white puff balls that morph into yellow-eyed juvies, with barred brown-and-cream plumage

It’s thrilling to see these hawks on campus; they are every inch dignified and regal birds. And they have skirted the edge of extinction several times. They were once the bane of farmers, who thought they were drawn to chickens (thus dubbed “chicken hawk”) and thus hunted to dangerously low populations in the late 1800’s. In the mid-1900’s, they (along with so many other birds of prey), suffered from the ravages of DDT, which led to fragile-shelled eggs and the loss of several generations. Now they face loss of habitat as the wild woodlands are leveled or logged.

But they are doing their best to adapt. Once considered reclusive, to be found only it forests far from human habitation (gee, I don’t know why) Cooper’s hawks have been seen scouting and snacking at suburban bird feeders and even in urban parks.  So it’s not that surprising that they nest here, in this park-like setting, with a ready supply of swallows, and people who leave them alone.

And though the bird-parents are done for the season, resting on their laurels, enjoying the peace and quiet, we will be faced with all the human fledglings, due to arrive in a week. Maybe they'll bring some hot weather with them.

more details on Cooper's hawks:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Coopers_Hawk/id

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper's_Hawk

http://www.wbu.com/chipperwoods/photos/coophawk.htm

From Napa Hills to Pt Reyes Bookstore

Nothing quite like starting the day contemplating poetry and ending it with a reading. (Conferences are good for that!) Trying to do the former as often as possible, and always on the lookout for the latter.*

Here's a morning-kickstart poem from Brenda Hillman's "Cascadia."

The Rise of the Napa Hills

The sea has receded a little. Mild layers stack up

without panic, like e-mail.  Twin frenzied suns watch the ocean

sediments settle under Oakville Grocer. Flittery

strings tied to the tops of young vines shimmer two versions of 

the actual: red, white. The curfew vintner walks below,

tapping smooth metal vats with a spoon. He asks them the twelve

questions: Did you love your life? How 'bout now? Can you recite

the table of sunsets? Did the weather wait for you? Did

you wait back? When he shook before the world did you shake too?

Did you fall in the milky sunshine? Do you hear their

gritty theories still? Would you like a drink? Can you live in 

two directions with border guards? You're not answering. 

Why didn't you fight more? Didn't you love being bad?

Love the 12 Questions! and "flittery strings...shimmer two versions of the actual"

Talking as we were about Lab Lit, it's cool to note that  Brenda's work is rich with all aspects of science, primarily geology in this poem. Yet "two versions of the actual" lead us to contemplate what is beyond the tangible world. 

* as for an evening reading, Brenda Hillman and Bob Hass will be at Pt Reyes Bookstore on Sept 4th, at a benefit for West Marin Review.  So ... supporting the local arts, and hearing the great poets of our age.
What's not to like?
I'll be there, foursquare. 

Funny It Ain't

Wrote a limerick for the Martini House Gang...and then realized why it wasn't much good.  Just not funny. Can't be a limerick if there aren't any guffaws; the very structure of a limerick refuses any sort of seriousness. So this below might engender a quick smirk or two, but there's no real humor.

After 10 p.m. in the town of St Helena

no meal can be found, hi-fat or leana

      'cept at the gas station mini-mart

      there are bagel-dogs and apple-tarts

that we purchase from a counter-clerk named Tina.

Now, the task before me: funny this limerick up. 

Science in Literature

Apparently, it's a whole new genre, science in fiction -- as opposed to science fiction, that is. And here's a website devoted to it: Lab Lit.

Who knew?

This weekend, I've done little except nap and read and try to recover my good senses, such as they are. After such intense experiences (the conference, wedding, readings,etc.), it's as if I have to crouch under a blanket and block all incoming input for a day or two. Nothing new, please! my system demands, I'm not done with the old stuff.  No conversation, no hot discussions, sometimes not even music; I have to damper myself down.

So this weekend, I've bounced between reading a novel, taking 3 and 4 hour naps and lounging on the hammock with my new poetry books. And by bouncing, I mean dropping the book over my face as I fade into dreamland, or wavering down the back stairs to the hammock with a pillow, a blanket and a cup of tea.  It feels wickedly indulgent. Especially the not talking to anyone part.

I'm adoring "Percival's Planet", Michael Byer's latest novel. The four storylines seem so far apart at the start; it's fascinating to see the little ways they begin to connect, pulling the web of the novel together. Like seeing the stars that you know make a constellation; first they are just bright, unconnected stars in a loose array at some section of the sky; then you begin to see the faint lines - then the whole constellation pops into place.

The characters, the place, the time, all are so loving wrought and evoked; I just fall into it. But I'm also kind of a sucker for science in literature. It's a huge chunk of what we know, for one thing; it's fascinating for another. And even though most of the math is astronomically (not sorry) over my head in this book, I don't have to parse out the equations, there will be no test; I get the gist of it enough to follow the story. And I love just hearing about the math and physics, seeing how it's used. The language of it. The derivation of linear least squares, the residuals. the complex laws of orbital resonances. I love that Byers includes all the mechanics of grinding the glass lenses, the Carborundum, the iron sesquioxide and the structure of telescopes; that he has shows us the unrelenting grind of most scientific work and the politics that swirl around discoveries.

But it's not just about deep sky; there are also dinosaurs involved. Deep time.

Napa Recovery Week

As you might guess, I was way too busy and having far too much fun at the NVWC to post here. But other people not only worked hard, had fun, wrote a ton but posted, too. So here's a link to the fine blog of one of our fictioneers: Fog City Writer.

But I did take a few photos:

Brenda Hillman, Mary Shea and Andrea Bewick

Ron Carlson and workshoppees at Thursday's picnic

At the lobby table: considering plot, character or what's for lunch?

*Jiminey Cricket… I am my own 10,000th hit. Wanted to offer a prize to such a person, but of course had no way to figure out how to make that happen. Guess the universe responded...

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