Random

Emerging Voices Fellowship – PEN

Posted on by elemonated

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/337765805/emerging-voices-fellowship?ref=HappeningNewsletterAug1114

Time for another Kickstarter push!

I had the opportunity to go to a PEN World Voices Festival event in NoHo a few months ago and learn about writing about superheroes and the power of mythology in modern literature, and it was probably the most pleasing lecture I’ve been able to attend in a while (and certainly one where I didn’t have to worry about elbowing my way into an opportunity; always a thankful reprieve.) Chris Farley and Sarwat Chadda had excellent chemistry, one warm and calm and the other brasher and hilarious, and it was interesting to hear Chadda’s take on racism in Britain as the issue of race encompasses so much in the US, not to mention I missed missed missed informed discussion about mythology. Absolutely missed it.

I believe the PEN organization is one that deserves to be bolstered by the public, and the fellowship program is a fantastic opportunity that would be amazing to provide to someone talented and passionate.

PEN Center USA initiated Emerging Voices as a literary mentorship program designed to launch potential professional writers from minority, immigrant, and other underrepresented communities. The program has now evolved into an eight-month writing fellowship for writers who lack access to a traditional writing education for those who seek financial and creative support.

I think the only loyalty I’ve never wavered in was my loyalty to the literary community and I hope this project goes through!

Dreams are for losers

Posted on by elemonated

https://medium.com/theli-st-medium/shonda-rhimes-real-talk-for-dartmouth-grads-dreams-are-for-losers-afd77eaea5d9

You know what I wanted to be? I wanted to be Nobel Prize Winning Author Toni Morrison. That was my dream. I blue sky-ed it like crazy. I dreamed and dreamed. And while I was dreaming, I was living in my sister’s basement. Dreamers often end up living in the basements of relatives, fyi. Anyway, there I was in that basement, I was dreaming of being Nobel Prize Winning Author Toni Morrison. Guess what? I couldn’t be Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison. Because Toni Morrison already had that job and she wasn’t interested in giving it up.

So I’m doing. Kind of. More or less. More, hopefully.

(Speech starts at 1:41:20)

We are not heroes

Posted on by elemonated

https://medium.com/human-parts/my-cousin-is-not-a-hero-262c7fc12f36

It’s been a little bit since I updated, but I thought this would be a good night cap. I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow.

It’s just the kind of stuff I need to get through to my own mind. Life doesn’t tie ends neatly and fit in a beautiful little short story or a novel with conflicts that resolve or a poem with the moral stark at the end.

Sometimes life just sucks. Sometimes it takes and takes and takes and the only way we get through it is to convince ourselves that we’ll get through it better people somehow, even though most of us who do get through it come out the other side more broken than mended. I think that while it’s okay to admit you have broken parts, that we should also acknowledge that that narrative we tell ourselves helps keep us put together.

Just Unlike Me

Posted on by elemonated

http://www.themillions.com/2014/02/just-unlike-me-on-our-favorite-characters.html

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When an older, continuing-ed student, so shy she typically blushes when she has to talk, says that she really liked the parts of Persepolis where Marjane was a confident loudmouth who spoke out against the post-war Iranian regime. When a Floridian frat guy says he likes “ghetto-nerd” Oscar Wao and understands how hard it is to not be the person everyone expects you to be. When the orthodox Jewish boy who hadn’t participated all semester was the only one who didn’t think “For Esmé With Love and Squalor” was about a pedophile and defended it to the class by saying: “They’re trying to save each others’ lives.” When the young African-American guy in the nursing school who was only in my class because it was required came to life during our unit on August: Osage County and demanded to read the part of Violet, the cruel Okie-mother. When a kid named Frankie performed the greatest Lear I’ve ever seen in the trailer under the West Side highway that was our classroom with an umbrella for a scepter because it was raining that day…these are the times that I remember why I write and why I teach.

And this is why I want to become a teacher. Unfortunately, I don’t believe I have quite the temperament for it, at least for now. (I sorely lack patience, and as one personality test put it “hypocritically intolerant of those who don’t manage a task the first time, or the second time after guidance.”)

But I digress; the article is about the characters that resonate with us that do not reflect our own images back at us. Mine include one Mr. Holden Caulfield, a young man who frustrated the crap out of me for never considering the consequences of his self-centered actions, the money he wastes failing out of school after school, the impact of his decisions on his little sister, the pointless social discomfort he places on many of the people throughout the book. Bumbling, I thought, annoying; he seriously needs to grow up. But he’s also allowed me to understand that the wishes of one person and the wishes of another do not always tie up succinctly, and that seeking comfort even for something as important as the victimization of a child is difficult, incredibly difficult, when it’s difficult to tell who is or isn’t a “phony.”