Had fun author-stalking at the National Book Festival on the Mall Saturday. It was a soggy day, so I didn’t get to stay for everyone I wanted to see (sorry, Tim O’brien and Judy Blume!) but I did catch DC novelist/Wire writer George Pelecanos, who gave an inspiring talk, mostly plugging other peoples’ books. The one that captured my interest was A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival and Coming of Age in Prison, by R. Dwayne Betts. I haven’t read it yet but his story made me miss teaching at the juvenile day treatement center in North Carolina. Convincing kids with nothing who’ve been kicked out of school that a low-paying journalism job is the best thing that ever happened to me was almost impossible, but knowing them and encouraging their infinite creativity was worthwhile (even when angrily storming out, on the worst days). Pelecanos also reminded me of my itch for local journalism, which I had the opportunity to do lots of while living in NC. Hopefully DC has a space for me.
Archive for September, 2009
National Book Festival
Feminist Sex
New reading just confirmed! I’m so excited to be on a panel with my friend Shira Tarrant, author of Men and Feminism (that’s just her latest) with friend and fellow author Cara Bruce, discussing what it means to be both anti-sexist and sex-positive…all in Baltimore at Red Emma’s Bookstore & Cafe–the hometown of John Waters, the “Pope of Trash.” It all happens on Moday October 20th. Can’t wait to see what happens!
new issue of Crossing Borders
The new issue of Crossing Borders magazine (#39) is available for download. Since being invited to Denmark as a Language Editor last year, I have continued to work with CB from afar. They are a Denmark-based NGO focused on creating dialogue space and offering media skills to youth and educators living in conflict zones. In 1991 I took a Journalism 101 class at the University of Maryland. One of my classmates was a Danish nanny, living in the States for a year. We bonded over our love of words, leading to a beautiful friendship as well as this unexpected opportunity with Crossing Borders, years later. CB’s director is an African guy living in Denmark, our editor is a Dane living in Turkey, the designer lives in North Carolina, we’ve got the Language Editor (me), in Washington, DC, almost all of the contributors live in Africa and the Middle East, and the magazine is printed in Israel. How’s that for globalization?
I was never much of a dater. I’ve always had lots of friends and easily found boyfriends within my music scene. I’m 40 and met my husband when I was 26, narrowly missing the whole internet-dating thing. Admittedly, I am one of those people who made fun of people who sought human contact in this way. So it’s a little funny to me that I have been teaching online for two years now. Of course teaching is not the same as looking for a soul mate, but it is still communicating over the transom of the Internet. Though I do love looking at human faces, making dramatic gestures and using humor and innuendo in “on-ground” classes (as they’re known in some circles), I enjoy teaching online a lot more than I expected to. Real human connections are made–especially in creative nonfiction classes, where students are sharing so much of their lives and themselves on the page.
The online classroom may be advantageous to memoirists and shy writers, allowing them anonymity that’d be unimaginable in a traditional class. It has also opened me up to students worldwide, offering a more diverse classroom than usual. (One of my childhood dreams was to “know someone in every country.”) But what a joy it was to recently learn that one of our Life’s a Bitch Books students actually lives nearby in Arlington! I met her for lunch, where we joked that we felt like it was a match.com date but were both happy that we “actually looked like our pictures.” Whew. She was lovely and brainy and full of ambition–all that I could ever want in a student and fellow writer-in-the-trenches! I hope to meet more of my online cohorts, some day, some way. It seems totally possible as this big world just keeps getting smaller and smaller.
