April 4th, 2011

Grub Street News

Welcome to the latest installment of the Grub Street Rag, a newsletter of the Boston literary scene brought to you this week by the number six. As always, if you are receiving this e-mail in horror, please advance to the bottom of the page to unsubscribe yourself.

Take a Six-Week Class This Spring

We've gotten a lot of feedback from students who are interested in taking six-week classes this spring, so we've changed some of our workshops into six-weekers, starting in May. Newly lean-and-mean classes include Writing Children's Literature, The Art of the Scene, Finding Your Book, Jumpstart Your Writing, How to Write a Lot and Master Poetry. Most begin the first week in May; see full details on our website and register online.

Six Spots Left: Deadline is April 6th

There are six, count them six spots left in the Manuscript Mart at the Muse and the Marketplace. Snag one now, or if you're already signed up, don't forget you have to get us your manuscript by April 6th at 5pm. No exceptions!

Six Steps to Great Poetry

1. Mark April 8th at 6:30 on your calendar for a reading with Debra Allberry, the winner of Grub Street's 2010 National Book Prize in Poetry.
2. Invite friends!
3. Come to Grub Headquarters that night to hang out with other cool people who love poetry.
4. Think of some good questions to ask Debra during the Q&A (for example, see if her answer to "how do you know a poem is finished?" is different than Allison Adair's on the Daily last Friday).
5. Don't eat dinner! We'll have a (free) feast from Maggiano's after the reading.
6. Return home, filled with inspiration—perhaps to write some poetry of your own?
   

Department of Congratulations, Sextuplet Edition

This month, we've got enough good news for a whole family to enjoy--and a big one, at that! First up, a Grub teacher writes a paean to teachers: Check out Marie Myung-Ok Lee's op-ed in the New York Times last week: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/opinion/31lee.html?hp (the last sentence slayed us).

Next, we bring you a bunch of Grubbies with multiples (acceptances, that is). Nicholas Lepre had one story accepted by The Threepenny Review and another accepted by APIARY. Nicholas wrote both stories in a 10 Weeks, 10 Stories workshop last summer, and they will be his first published stories. The good news keeps coming for Alexa Kontes, who has THREE stories forthcoming, in Flywheel Magazine, Used Furniture Review and The Literary Burlesque. Two of the stories were written in Sue Williams’ 10 Weeks, 10 Stories class, and the third in Chip Cheek's Fiction workshop, and these three publications get her up to seven acceptances since December! Grub street member Sandra Kohler's third book of poems, Improbable Music, will be out in May from Word Press, and her poem, "Winter Mix," was a winner in the online magazine Persimmon Tree's East Coast States competition. Atinuke Diver had her piece "Jesus is Not Post-Racial" picked up by Racialicious,
featured on Beyond Black & White, and selected as an Editor's Pick on OpenSalon.com.

A few Grubbies have books coming out: Grub member Melissa Coleman's book, This Life Is in Your Hands, will be out from HarperCollins on April 12th and has been selected as an Indie Next List pick for the month. It's about growing up during the 1970s back-to-the-land movement and the joys and challenges her family faced during that time. For a sneak peek, check out the April issue of O, The Oprah Magazine. Maria Termini's memoir, The Artist and the Spy, was just published by Winter Garden. It's a story of love, passion, art, lost
hopes, and new life in the author's unsettling six-year relationship with a mysterious military officer who tries to leave the world of dangerous covert operations and spirals into depression and poverty. Aine Greaney's second novel, Dance Lessons, a contemporary story set in greater Boston and the west of Ireland, was released on April 1st by Syracuse University Press.  

Humble Grubbie Barbara Bielinski Hermansen is celebrating the anniversary of her first lit mag rejection with her first lit mag acceptance, "Going Out of Business Sale" in Boston Literary Magazine. Grubbie David Kingsbury's fake non-fiction essay, "Living in a Cave," was published last month in Defenestration, an online humor magazine.

We've been wowed by all the great news coming out of Grub Instructor Ethan Gilsdorf's classes. Robin Shoenthaler took Writing Personal Essays for Publication with him last fall, and just got an
essay published. She says that, "of the eleven of us in the workshop, she's the third one to be published since the class ended." Amy Powell Faeskorn just finished Ethan's Narrative Non-Fiction II class, and one of her essays is up on The Rumpus. Jennifer Campaniola was a student of Ethan's in Fall 2010, and she got an essay published in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine on March 6th. Ethan will be teaching two fantastic classes this spring, Into the Wild: Writing the Travel/Nature Narrative and Finding Your Memoir, and though he's not guaranteeing you publication success, it seems like you'll have a pretty good shot.

Lastly, these two Grubbies are going places: Debbie Sosin was accepted into this year's Kenyon Review Writers Workshop in Literary Nonfiction in Gambier, Ohio, in June. Grubbie Dawn Dorland has been accepted and offered full funding at the University of Maryland's MFA program, which takes in about ten fiction students per year.  She says, "This news feels as momentous in my writing career as the day I first took the elevator up to Grub Street and enrolled in my first course five years ago.  If not for Grub Street I never would have taken the professional risks that I have to move writing to the center of my life.  If not for the inspiration of my Grub Street teachers and fellow classmates, I might not have soldiered on.  A Grub Street success story for sure!"

Congratulations to all!

Do you have writing news and want to be featured in the DoC? The first Monday of every month, we feature Grub Street members who have sent their good news to whitney@grubstreet.org. To be included, please send Whitney an email with information about your publication, award or fellowship. Limit your announcement to 60 words or less. Extra credit if the announcement is written in the third person, which is good practice for your writing anyway.

Six Reasons To Read The Grub Street Daily

1. You'll find out if your writing is done (really done) or not
2. You'll remember how much you loved storytime
3. You'll decide if old-fashioned print magazines or evanescent online journals are right for you
4. You'll pick sides as Barry Eisler and Amanda Hocking duke it out about self-publishing
5. You'll hear an amazing memoir in only 12 minutes
6. You'll learn what the kids are writing about these days
   . . . and much more!

Cheers,
Whitney, Sonya, Chris, Chip, and Eve

The P.S. Congratulations to @JasonRuback, the random winner of our first-ever Twitter contest. Jason won $100 off the spring writing workshop of his choice. Thanks to everyone who entered--we loved your responses. Be on the lookout for more Twitter contests soon!

Muse Spotlight

For the next six weeks, The Rag will be spotlighting a “Muse” (craft) session and a “Marketplace” (publishing) session that will be offered at our annual conference, The Muse and the Marketplace. We hope you’ll be able to enjoy these sessions in person the weekend of April 30-May 1st and the Park Plaza Hotel. For all details, including registration info, go to www.museandthemarketplace.com.

Muse Spotlight: Marie Myung-Ok Lee's Mining Your Fiction for Nonfiction & Vice Versa (& Get Paid to Research Your Novel) (Sunday Session 5G)
This session is for those interested in or already working in both fiction and nonfiction. You’ll learn how to enlarge and sharpen fiction by doing serious nonfiction research to create authentic backgrounds and characters. Conversely, Marie Myung-Ok Lee will reveal how interesting finds “too good to throw away” can be transformed into a compelling nonfiction narrative. This will help keep your fiction free of unnecessary and distracting clutter while also helping you develop your nonfiction craft. Marie Myung-Ok Lee’s novel, Somebody’s Daughter, was a Booklist Best Book of the Year, and its research was generously funded by a Fulbright Fellowship. Her novel-in-progress, about the changing fortunes of an obstetrician, has had various aspects of it turned into articles and first-person essays for Slate, The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic (forthcoming).

Marketplace Spotlight: "How To Self-Publish Well: A Primer” Did you know that one-fifth of all books published in the U.S. in 2009 were ‘self-published,’? This session examines the distinctions between self-publishing and commercial publishing as a means to illuminating some of the non-obvious factors that can contribute to success in self-publishing, whether solo or with an author services company. David Lamb is president of Vantage Press, America’s oldest self-publishing corporation. Vantage has published more than 20,000 books in its 62-year history, and has been busily reinventing itself in the mobbed self-publishing space since Lamb’s acquisition of the company in late 2009.

Grub Events

In addition to our ongoing workshops, Grub Street offers numerous writing-related events around town. See our website for a long-term view of all we do.

READING AND RECEPTION: Friday, April 8th, 6:30-8:30pm, Debra Allbery, Grub Street National Book Prize Winner
We are proud to welcome acclaimed poet Debra Allbery, visiting from Asheville, NC, who will read from her most recent collection, Fimbul-Winter (Four Way Books, 2010) winner of the 2010 Grub Street National Book Prize in Poetry. Allbery is the author of one previous book of poems, Walking Distance (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991) and the director of the MFA program at Warren Wilson College. The reading and Q&A will begin at 6:30PM and be followed by dinner.
FREE, Grub Street HQ.

WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday, April 9th, 10:00am-5:00pm, Memoir and Metaphor
With metaphor we bring our stories into clearer focus and discover deeper levels of meaning. In this workshop you will look at how metaphor has been used throughout the centuries, from Plato's Dialogues to CG Jung's Red Book. Then we will look at the specific genre of memoire, reading excerpts from contemporary authors including Annie Dillard, Orhan Pamuk, and Terry Tempest Williams, to see how they used metaphors to illuminate their work. There will be guided writing exercise, including a short piece of memoir.
Instructor: Susan Tiberghien
$115/$95.00 members, Grub Street HQ.

SEMINAR: Saturday, April 9th, 10:00am-12:00pm, Members-Only Seminar: Casting a Line: Homage, Answer, and Imitation in Poetry
A rare and exciting opportunity to work in a small group with Debra Allbery, who will lead this FREE craft class for Grub Street members. Sign up in advance to reserve your place. Limited to 15 members.
Sorry, this class is sold out. Please click here to be put on a waiting list.

WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday, April 9th, 10:00am-1:00pm, 3 Hours, 3 Stories: A Flash Fiction Workshop
Tracing its origins back to early fables and parables, flash fiction is emerging as one of the most desirable and influential writing forms in the new publishing marketplace. Join authors Stace Budzko and Sue Williams for three hours of inspiring discussion and imaginative exercises designed to take you from original story ideas through the revision process.
Instructor: Stace Budzko and Sue Williams
Sorry, this class is sold out. Please click here to be put on a waiting list.

WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Saturday, April 9th from 10:00am-5:00pm, Skill of the Interview
The return of this sold-out seminar from 2010! In non-fiction writing, including memoir, the richest material often comes from the people who lived the event. But how do you get them to open up to you? Whether you're trying to get your mom to recall her childhood or to get a complete stranger to describe a crime they witnessed, the key is building a relationship of trust -- and honoring that. We'll learn practical tips for finding sources, getting them to agree to talk, establishing the rules of the interview (on the record? background only?), and helping them tell their stories in their own voices. We will also touch on how to place interviews and profiles in journals and magazines. We will also do exercises to practice the skills we learn. A useful seminar for any writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry or screenwriting who needs to conduct this type of research.
Instructor: Elaine McArdle
$115/$95.00 members, Grub Street HQ.

WEEKEND WORKSHOP: Sunday, April 10th, 10:00am-5:00pm, Perfecting Your Memoir Proposal
The great thing about nonfiction is that it typically sells on proposal. The challenge is writing a proposal that will keep agents and editors turning the pages, excited to discover what happens next. In this class, we'll go through each element of a selling proposal, including overview, market analysis, and the annotated table of contents. We'll consider questions of tone and narrative arc, choices about character development, and positioning your work within the marketplace. Participants will leave with a structured plan to complete, polish, and submit their nonfiction book proposals.
Instructor: Trish Ryan
$115/$95.00 members, Grub Street HQ.

FEATURED DAYTIME WORKSHOP: 6 Tuesdays, 2:30-5:30pm, begins April 19th, Into the Wild: Writing the Travel/Nature Narrative
If you're looking to take travel or nature writing out for a spin, seasoned freelance writer Ethan Gilsdorf, who contributes to the Boston Globe, New York Times, wired.com and Salon.com, is offering a new class to show you the ropes: "Into the Wild: Writing the Travel/Nature Narrative." In this experiential class, we'll workshop at least one essay you may be working on, and we'll look at the some of the masters -- Bill Bryson, Alain de Botton, Wendell Berry, Thoreau, etc -- as well as new works published in magazines like Outside, Tin House and worldhum.com for inspiration (We'll also discuss how to publish your travelogues and meditations). Here's the cool part: We'll get you out in the field. Because this class is held in the daytime, you'll be sent on reporting exercises to give you travel writing skills that take advantage of Grub's wonderful no-man's location amidst Chinatown, Freedom Trail and CollegeLand. Plus, at least one essay you do must be written about an adventure taken during the term. Bring your hiking boots.
$305/$280 members, Grub Street HQ.

Be sure to check out our website for a comprehensive view of upcoming events.

Spreading the Love

Grub Street wants to promote YOU! Please send events for consideration to whitney@grubstreet.org. Bonus points and undying gratitude for submitting your event info in the same format as the events below. Our apologies in advance if we cannot fit you in. Please note that we do the best we can to evaluate requests, and do privilege requests from members, but cannot be held responsible for the quality of these events and programs or the legitimacy of contests. We expect that readers will do their own due diligence before sending their work or their money to any individual or organization.

--READING AND CONVERSATION: Thursday, April 7th, 4pm Q&A & 6pm reading, Ploughshares Reading Series featuring Colm Tóibín
Ploughshares and Emerson College invite you to the Ploughshares Reading Series featuring celebrated Irish novelist and critic Colm Tóibín, guest editor of the Spring 2011 issue of Ploughshares. Grub's own Christopher Castellani will conduct a Q&A with Colm Tóibín at 4 p.m. followed by a reading of Tóibín’s own work at 6 p.m. in the Bright Family Screening Room at the Paramount Theatre. Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy, Ireland and is the author six novels, and most recently, a collection of short stories entitled The Empty Family and a collection of essays on Henry James called All a Novelist Needs. He has won the Irish PEN Award for Literature, the Dublin IMPAC Prize, and the LA Times Novel of the Year, and many more. For more information, visit pshares.org or call 617-824-3757.
Paramount Theatre, 559 Washington Street, Boston.

--ONLINE CHAT: Tuesday, April 12th, 12:30 pm (EST), The Jewish Book Council Twitter Book Club Presents Quiet Americans: Stories, by Erika Dreifus
The Jewish Book Council's April Twitter Book Club selection is Quiet Americans, a short-story collection by Erika Dreifus. Inspired largely by the histories and experiences of the author's paternal grandparents - German Jews who immigrated to the United States in the late 1930s - Quiet Americans is now available both in trade paperback and for Kindle. Erika Dreifus will be online for the club's "meeting" on Twitter to answer readers' questions.
FREE, online. Visit www.jewishbookcouncil.org/page.php?520 for details on the Twitter Book Club and archives of past chats.

--READING: Thursday, April 14th, 7pm, Daphne Kalotay
Muse presenter, author, and recent Daily blogger Daphne Kalotay reads from her wonderful novel, Russian Winter.
Andover Bookstore, 89R Main Street, Andover, MA

--MEET AND GREET, Friday, April 15th, 5:30-7:30pm, Blogging While Brown Meetup
The purpose of Blogging While Brown is to give Bloggers of Color an opportunity to meet each other for the first time, discuss current issues affecting Bloggers of Color, and learn about the latest technology that will assist them with publishing their work. The Blogging While Brown Boston Meetup will provide an opportunity for local bloggers in the Greater Boston Area to meet, connect, and further the development of their respective blogs. This event is open to everyone and FREE to attend! http://microsoftcambridge.com/Events/
FREE Microsoft New England R&D Center, One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142.

--BOOK LAUNCH AND PARTY: Saturday, April 16th, 2-4pm, David Foster Wallace's The Pale King
Join Grub and our friends at Newtonville Books for a book party to celebrate the release of THE PALE KING by David Foster Wallace. Books may be purchased at 20% off up until the official publication date of April 15. Each purchase includes a free drink ticket for the event. Purchases the day of the event will be at full price, but will also include a free drink ticket. Harvard creative writing professor and author Bret Anthony Johnston will read an excerpt from The Pale King. Also in attendance: our favorite literary magazines. AGNI, The Normal School, Post Road, Redivider, Salamander, and a new magazine, The Common, from David Foster Wallace's alma mater, Amherst College. Be sure not to miss this one-of-a-kind event to celebrate one of the most anticipated novels of the year. Co-sponsored by Grub Street. Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St., Newton.
FREE, Union Street Restaurant in Newton Centre (Subway: Green Line to Newton Centre) more info at www.newtonvillebooks.com.