Sandra Gail Lambert

I know it's cheesy, but it makes me feel good.

Lists, Glorious Lists

This year there's been an up-tick in noticing that women writers get overlooked, left out, dismissed, diminished by the literary powers that be.  

A lovely result of this year's hullabaloo, are the lists - great women writers of 2009,  2009 works in translation by women, the hundred best works by women, an add your own favorite list.  She Writes, an online networking site for women writers, is calling for a buy-a-book-by-a-women day on December 18th.   

I love lists and I've been gleaning.  So far Herta Muller, Achy Obejas, Maggie Estep, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie are on hold at the library, and Marie NDiaye is ordered from Goerings Bookstore.

For me, every time I go in a bookstore, it's buy-a-book-by-a-woman day. 

  

Double Take: A Memoir by Kevin Michael Connolly

 
It's a difficult concept to write, but I keep trying.  Being on view, watching the viewer watch me, ignoring it but not really but sometimes really, moving through the world being seen but not seen, what I watch in return. Connolly's photography, The Rolling Exhibition, was all about this. 

His new memoir explores it further.  And tells stories of wild travels throughout the world, wilder rides down ski slopes, and the risk of an open heart.  And the book trailer is very, very funny. 

Double Take Trailer from Kevin Michael Connolly on Vimeo.

Post Sarah Manguso writing

I know that if get myself out of the house to show up at writing events I'll learn things and get out of stuck places.  This is true even if I don't like the writing or if the author is snooty.  So when I do and they're not it's a lovely bonus.  

Sarah Manguso has charged up my current writing life.  Here I was writing yellow page after yellow page with snippets of memoir and struggling to make them longer, denser, fit into a plot - like chapters of a novel.  That night I paged through Sarah's just-bought memoir while I waited for her to begin.  Its structure flipped under my fingertips - short piece after short piece.

Now, I know all of this is obvious, but it was as if I was struck in the head and cartoon stars rang.  The very next day I started typing the little yellow pad stories into the computer, each in their own, separate file, and I haven't stopped.  I'm all loosey-goosey and easy with it.  I don't worry.  I don't try to make anything fit or flow. (Or I don't try much - I've not had a complete change of personality.) 

Back to the Sarah Manguso evening.  The segments she read from her memoir were good.  And the short, short fiction stories she read blew me away.  There's a collection of them in McSweeney's One Hundred Forty Five Stories in a Small Box. (Available at Goerings.)  I wish that she'd stayed another hour and talked more about "the sentence."   

Ferron: Girl on a Road

 
For all of us Ferron Fans, there's a documentary just out about her life and music.  I ordered a copy as a birthday present for a friend and barely managed not to rip the plastic off and watch it first.  That wouldn't have been right, right? That woman (and her music) give me the shivers all over.  Here's a snippet.   

Sarah Manguso at the Library

Poet, memoirist, and fiction writer Sarah Manguso will be speaking at our downtown Gainesville library on this Monday, November 16th at 6:30pm.

Her most recent book is Two Kinds of Decay, a memoir of "illness and healing."  Now, this sort of accounting can go either way for me, especially since the word "healing" gets used in so many creepy, creepy ways.  Some of these memoirs annoy the crap out of me, and I end up muttering things at the pages such as "oh, poor you, your body has changed - deal with it" or "stop whining and go live your life and have some fun."  But other times the author's recounting of her life makes me, in both meanings of the word, tender. 

Come Monday to the Downtown Library, and we'll see which way it goes. 

 

Connie May Fowler - Writing the Novel

 
Connie May Fowler is offering a year long one-on-one novel manuscript consultation!  If I actually had a draft ready (I don't even have one started), this is the way I'd go. 

The week I spent in a workshop with her is why I have a completed manuscript right now and a much better one than I could have imagined.  I sort of swoon thinking of what it would have been like to have that sort of help not just for a chapter, but for an entire novel.  It's a chunk of money, but if you add up all the costs of about three group conferences, it comes out pretty close.    

So if you have a draft ready to be delved into, check this out.

And Connie is also offering a series of Writing Below Sea Level weekend workshops at Cedar Key - one of my favorite places in Florida.      

Alice Tyler Has Died

Twice a year she'd call me (until the leap to e-mail last year).  Would I cashier at the Native Plant Sale?  Of course I would.  I'd have done anything Alice asked of me - I had a little crush. And I wasn't alone. 

Alice was active in our local Audubon Society, Sierra Club, Friends of Nature Parks, and the Native Plant Society.  She was a woman who loved her bluebird boxes.  She made people happy to volunteer alongside her.  I miss her and wish I'd saved the sweet thank you notes she always mailed out after the sales.    

Alice Tyler's "Celebration of Life" memorial service will be at Kanapaha Botanical Gardens on Sunday, November 15 from 2:30-5:30 p.m.    

The Hard Work Part of Creativity

Sexism at Work

 
Margaret Atwood, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jayne Anne Phillips, Amanda C. Gable, Mary Gaitskill, Lauren Groff, Paula J. Giddings, Barbara Kingsolver, Laura Van den Berg, and Rita Dove are all authors with books out in 2009.  However, none of them made the "top ten books of 2009" from Publishers Weekly.  Actually, no women at all made the list. Hmmmm. 

WILLA (Women and Letters in Literary Arts), among others, noticed this problematic oversight, and they've set up a Wikipedia page that will accept any of our choices for a "best of" list.  Check it out. Some I've read, some I'm adding to my list.      

Gainesville, FL - Chock Full of Literary Events

 
The Florida Writer's Festival offers Chris Tusa (author of Dirty Little Secrets) on November 12th, Chris Bachelder and C.D. Wright on the 13th, and Chris Adrian on the 14th.  Everything is free.  Check out the links for times and venues. 

And the very next week, on Monday, November 16th, Sarah Manguso, memoirist and poet, will be at the downtown library.  I'll post more about this event later. 

Dear Ursula Le Guin, A Belated Happy Birthday

Last month was Ursula Le Guin's eightieth birthday (and the fortieth anniversary of the publication of The Left Hand of Darkness).  I've read science fiction ever since I was a little girl.  From the heart-breaking tenderness of Rocannon's World, to the gender-bending Left Hand of Darkness, through the personally politically transforming The Dispossessed (the part where she pees on the statue still inspires me), all the way up to just last year with Lavinia - one of the best books I've ever read - Le Guin has been with me most of my reading life.  

Happy birthday, Ms. Le Guin, and thank you.