But beauty is still important, isn’t it? It seems to me and other fairly intelligent people in America, that we are living in a time when the failure to describe the time we are living in is truly mystifying. So, please bear with me—I will get to today’s reason for all of us being here, but I don’t know what to say to you today that somehow hasn’t come out of outrage and disbelief—outrage and disbelief at the fact that one of the last bastions of seemingly liberal thought—the fourth estate—has normalized an aberration.
Category: Thoughts and Musings
Writing By the Seat of Your Pants
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about thrillers. About why recently I’ve been reading them compulsively at all hours of the day and night. Maybe the subject for a new book? I’m thinking about that. In the meantime I devour them at a great rate.
Between Yearning and Dread
Because Yearning and Dread is the theme of our upcoming Goddard residency, I’ve been thinking lately about the role these emotions play in my own writing, and as I look back over my fiction, particularly my novels, it seems pretty clear that the yearning and dread that fuel my work revolve around my parents.
In the Contemplative Realms
Here in the contemplative realms of the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon, I’ve lost track of time. I wander among timepieces and pendulums, spheres that chart the stars, and Earth globes with halos of hours at their poles, each artifact a survivor from its Renaissance birth through the firebombing of Dresden in World War II. Having lain undisturbed during the Iron Curtain years, these relics have arrived intact at the Age of Digitalia…
On Mastery
2018 marks two milestones in my life.
This past March, I turned 40, which everyone assures me is the new 30. (It’s also, unsurprisingly, the old 60, but no one wants to talk about that.) To celebrate my fortieth birthday, my husband attempted to coerce me into having a celebration worthy of the occasion, a lavish gathering of family and friends and colleagues, crammed into a modestly priced rental hall to eat finger foods we didn’t cook set to music we only vaguely remembered selecting. I refused. Does anybody really need to see me drunk and dancing awkwardly to another Macklemore song about inclusion? I don’t think so.
A Farewell to Rebecca Brown–From Rebecca Brown
After almost twenty years of teaching in the MFA in Creative Writing program at Goddard, I am going to retire. When I first started working at Goddard, there was one campus only, in Vermont. I went to Plainfield, where I’d never been, and started to work with a bunch of people I’d never met before. … Continue reading A Farewell to Rebecca Brown–From Rebecca Brown
Wanderer in the Dark (an excerpt)
Wanderer was one of the last documented ships to carry an illegal cargo of slaves from Africa to the United States, landing at Jekyll Island, Georgia on November 28, 1858, arriving with some 400 slaves who survived the voyage from Angola.
The Thriller in the Shadows
After almost twenty years in the making, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto reflects on the many influences and the long process of bring a novel into the world. On Friday, this essay appeared on Lit Hub’s Crime Reads. “My novel was sparked by a true crime, but it refused to become a thriller. Nearly two decades ago, a friend of mine was raped…”
Deadlines
One of the many reasons I envy Goddard students is that they have deadlines.
On Writing, Politics, and the Tarot
What do writing, politics and the Tarot have in common? On November 7th, 2017, I was elected Town Supervisor of Pine Plains, New York.
Doing Laundry with Hannibal Lecter
Do you suppose Hannibal Lecter does his own laundry? It’s easy to see a white collar criminal doctor sending his whites out to be dry cleaned and pressed by an efficiently outsourced place with pink boxes. But I imagine, what with the blood stains and all, doing it himself is a better plan. So there he is in the basement—or, I guess he has one of those fancy laundry rooms on an upper floor with sunny yellow walls and a sign that says “Wash. Dry. Fold. Repeat.”— sorting whites and red and pulling out the bleach and hoping it doesn’t ruin his favorite sweater…
Disability Representation in Literature: Beyond “The Fries Test”
As a disabled writer, for over two decades I’ve looked at how disability is represented in our literature. This interest has taken me across the globe, with a special focus in disability representation in Japan, and more recently in Germany. I’ve taught classes and given talks on disability representation at many universities and conferences in North America, Japan, and Europe.
Notes from the Future by Deborah Brevoort
Get out your pens! Head for the future by writing big!
My Mom Died and All I Got Was a Wet T-Shirt
My mom died three years ago and long before then, I knew I’d be writing about how it would all go down. Somehow, so did she. I was barely a teen, when after a particularly disturbing episode in our family’s constant chaos, my mother jerked my elbow towards her oversized chest and through her teeth spat, “Don’t you EVER write about this!!”
these words can’t wait for spell check
Sassafras Lowrey: these words can’t wait for spell check
(Word Count: 478)
Dear Books,
Dear Books,
From the moment my father gave me Go Tell It on the Mountain and told me,
“Read this and you’ll know more about who I am,”
I knew one thing was inescapable:
I would need to read that book, get back to him about it, and keep on reading and reading—
I Don’t Know Why You Write
I don’t know why you write, he said (in a text). You don’t believe in anything. But is that true?
The Pursuit of Mastery
I am a would-be artist, for now content in the sadistic pursuit of mastery.
Snap! Crackle! Pow! [better word??]
I once met a newly-retired cereal executive who asked me what I did for a living. I said I was a writer. He said, hey, what a coincidence, he was thinking of becoming a writer. “Hey, what a coincidence,” I didn’t say, “I was thinking of becoming a cereal executive.” I’m sure he didn’t mean… Continue reading Snap! Crackle! Pow! [better word??]
Lust & Fun
Goddard College MFAW alum John Schmidtke:
“Okay,” I said. “But just in case, what’s the residency’s theme?”
“Lust and fun,” Elena said.
My foot came off the gas a bit.
“Lust and fun?” I asked.
“Yes,” Elena said.
Let me pause right here to confess that while I attended Goddard, lust took over my life.
I cheated on my wife Mary almost every night for two years.