Lighthouse, multi-media like

Did y’all ever see this?

In February of this year, we were honored with a Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. The great folks at milkhaus productions put this together — not too shabby! (Though it should be noted, Marcelina Rivera is a workshopper and former board member, not an instructor. Maybe she should be! But then it sounds like she’s complimenting herself, and she don’t go that way.) 

Showing that I can move beyond vanity, I post this despite my shiny forehead and bloodshot eyes.  What was I, crying? As my 6-year-old would say, “It’s only your job! You don’t have to cry about it…”

Thanks, all! We’re off to Grand Lake and will post more later.

–aed

 

Intern’s Report: Writing Voodoo

Lighthouse is fortunate to have as a summer intern Sara Aboulafia from Smith College–enough to give you hope for the next generations. Here’s her take on last night’s Writing Voodoo Lit Fest Salon.

The Voodoo That They Do:

A Brass-Tacks Conversation with Writers at Forest Room 5

by Sara Aboulafia, Lighthouse Summer Intern 

 

            Earlier this year my school spotted me a few hundred bucks to go to the Nieman Conference of Narrative Journalism, a large get-together of industry hot-shots and hopefuls over a March weekend at The Sheraton Hotel in Boston. After a strange stint writing for a volunteer organization in New Orleans, I thought the conference would give me some idea of what the field was really all about. I would love to say I walked away from the conference with inspiration clicking at my heels as I strode headfirst into a new reporting assignment for my local newspaper. Alas, I instead left with songs of industry-lagging despair ringing in my ears: “This is a miserable field,” one famous, published-in-every-magazine-on-the-block writer told me. But after Lighthouse’s first Lit-Fest salon, “Writing Voodoo” at hip LoHi spot Forest Room 5–where guests settled into a rustic parlor-like back-room with cocktails and beer in hand–I felt a little quickening in my step.

            Rather than scribbling without coming up for a breath as I did at the Nieman Conference, I listened to the panel of writers taking nary a note. The impression that I got from the panel–journalist Shari Caudron and fiction writers William Haywood Henderson and Karen Palmer–was that it was the writers’ attitude and energy that, despite the occupation’s many pitfalls and pratfalls, kept them writing. When a few members of the audience offered questions which verged on the pessimistic and glum (“What do you do when your friend tells you have to write your whole damn book again? Tell me, how do you get one of those agent-things?) all three panelists responded with good-humor, humility, and enough self-deprecation that the gathering felt less like a staged success-story performance and more like the honest, open conversation it was.

            Though the salon was called “Writing Voodoo,” the writers admitted that there were, ultimately, no tried-and-true spells or tricks to writing, and that its satisfactions and tortures tended to trade hands. To demonstrate this truism, writer Shari Caudron jumped up to provide a visual aid which plotted her emotional trajectory every single time she must tackle a new story. Her poster-sized graph depicted a massive reverse-check-mark whose

 

Capsule review for those who missed

episode one of the Third-Annual Lit Fest. The kickoff party?  Rocked.  Thanks to a combination of the funky stylings of The Alltunators, the donated backyard furniture from Jay Kenney, and the Red Rock Ale compliments of Rock Bottom Brewery. Here’s a pic from the Alltunator’s first set. (Just as a flash-forward, lighting not being our forte, everyone who came out to enjoy the music was plunged into darkness by the end of the second set, which could have been dangerous and even awkward, but maybe we all played it off okay. And we do have insurance.)

Was there food? you might wonder. Yes, Virginia, there was food from the delicious and nutritious Parisi’s deli, some of which still resides in the Lighthouse refrigerator (note to selves: we might donate that to the Lighthouse dog).  Much as I tried, I could not get the coveted “bald guys by the beer keg” photo — the aesthetics weren’t right. But rest assured, there was a congregation of guys (who shave their heads for purely stylistic reasons) by the keg.  It was like college in that sense.  Here was my attempt at getting a candid shot of people by the keg.  Act natural! I said.

Smarty pantses.  Anyway, Episode One only worked out thanks to goddess Jennie Dorris (pictured above, middle) our illustrious volunteers Patricia Harris, Rosemary L’Esprit, Jillian Polasky, Scotty and Joy Sawyer, and Meghan Wilson, who I implicitly thanked already by helping her to a generous dose of wine down the front of her shirt. Here she is, left, the Voice of Lighthouse (see our podcasts), before the offending elbow sent the offending wine down the very nice and snazzy shirt.

Is it too late to get caught up in the wreckless literary theatrics of the Lit Fest season?  Indeed it is not. Monday night, June 9, 8 PM, we get Shari Caudron, William Haywood Henderson, and Karen Palmer sharing their “Writing Voodoo” secrets. (Tix are $10 for members.) Come to Forest Room 5, stake out your territory, order some food and wine, and sit back and enjoy the show. See you all there! See a full list of free and cheap events here.

 

Economist’s Tip Sheet

Maybe, because you squandered your stimulus check on a mountain bike or, say, fuel for your voraciously hungry car, you thought you’d sit out the Lit Fest this year, sliding through the next couple of weeks without really dressing, brushing your hair, or joining in the shenanigans. Sorry. No can do! There are free-to-near-free ways to get involved with Lit Fest–all the community goodness at half (or none of) the price. 

 

We consulted a Lighthouse team of economists and various consumer agencies, and they prepared the following tip sheet. These events and happenings are free or $10*. We just want to see your happy mug at Lighthouse! Can you really afford not to show it?

 

The Kickoff Party: Fri, 6/6, 6 to 9 PM (Ferril)……………………..$10
What if we threw a Lit Fest and everyone gathered to toast it? Personally, we think it would be really stunning. Music by the Alltunators, food by Parisi’s, wine by Above the Rim Fine Wine, water compliments of Mother Nature, and beer from Rock Bottom Brewery. You’re not going to find a more economical way to enjoy yourself, or better people to do it with.  Tix here.

 

Faculty Reading: Sat, 6/7, 7 PM (Mercury Cafe)…………………..$0
Opera tickets are $28.  Live theatre is at least $20. And you just spent $9.75 to see Indiana Jones without any popcorn. The Lit Fest offers a night of literary entertainment for absolutely nothing. And our faculty ain’t no scrubs.  Between them, they’ve published twenty-three books, and their work has graced the pages of everything from the Threepenny Review to the New Yorker. We won’t even start tallying the awards. Plus, they’re a hoot to hang out with. It’s like that dream you had where the guy who won the Colorado Book Award was reading you a bedtime story, only it’s not bedtime, and he really is.  (Featuring Robert Root, Nick Arvin, Rebecca Berg, Mike Henry, and Jessica Roeder).

 

Salon: Writing Voodoo. Mon, 6/9, 8 PM (FR5)…………………………$10
Some things are invaluable. Love. Health. Wisdom. And the answers to certain questions, such as: How do you write a book?  What’s the deal with this nightmarish first draft? How do you revise it? How do you know when to, gulp, abandon it? How do you navigate relationships with editors and agents? These questions and many more will be addressed by multi-book veterans William Haywood Henderson, Shari Caudron and Karen Palmer.  We also look forward to your thoughts on the matter. (Note the location: Forest Room 2532 15th St. Come early, order drinks, enjoy an appetizer.) Tix here.

 

Faculty Reading Deux: Tue, 6/10, 8 PM (Mercury Cafe)………….$0
Another fun reading from writers on our faculty–one of whom is currently topping the local bestseller list, and others who have been there or might be soon.  (Featuring Janis Hallowell, Matt Kailey, William Henderson, David Rothman, Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, and Jake Adam York).

 

Salon: Mixed Up Arts. Thur, 6/12, 8 PM (FR5)………………………….$10
During lean economic times, we’re often encouraged to scrimp and save. Pinch and moderate. So it’s nice to go hog wild once in a while. In this salon, we’ll celebrate, ponder, and maybe even worry over what we have in abundance: Talent. Musical and visual artists Mario Acevedo, Jennie Dorris, and Rebecca Berg (who also happen to be writers) will discuss and demonstrate the intersection between their many creative modes. Think of it as a mini concert/art show where writers make movies. And argue. And have a heck of a good time. (Note the location: Forest Room 2532 15th St. Come early, order drinks, enjoy an appetizer.) Tix here.

 

Salon: DNC Special: Writing & Politics. Mon, 6/16, 8 PM (FR5)….$10
They always say the pen is mightier than the sword. But does that mean you should write an Ode to Exxon Mobil? Or a story about a superdelegate who falls in love with a regular delegate to the dismay of all involved?  We don’t know.  But after this salon, we might. The esteemed Janis Hallowell (She Was), Nick Arvin (Articles of War), Valerie Ann Leff (Better Homes and Husbands) and David J. Rothman (The Elephant’s Chiropractor) will join you in tackling the sticky subject of politics in writing: can you do it? Should you do it? How? Note: due to possible adverse reactions to partisan clichés, we have banned the following verbal constructions: throwing anything or anyone “under the bus,” “the math,” and “reading from [insert odious name or entity's] playbook.”  Tix here. 

 

Lit Fest Participant Reading: Tue, 6/17, 8 PM (Mercury Cafe)……..$0
Often touted as “the most inspiring night of the entire Festival,” the participant reading features writers who are taking workshops and enjoying the two-week binge that is Lit Fest. This year we feature two writers who signed book deals at (or, more accurately, quickly after) previous Lit Fests, including the PEN/Hemingway award honorable mention Gary Schanbacher (Migration Patterns) and author of the soon-to-be-released Umbrellas or Else, J. Diego Frey. There are 10 slots open for other Lit Festers to read short, 3-minute pieces. Will you be one of them? This opportunity’s pure gold: contact sara@lighthousewriters.org to get on the list, and show up at the Merc to listen and enjoy. (Oh, and arrive early to order food/drink!)

 

Closing Reception: A Gourmand’s Tale: Fri, 6/20, 6-9 PM………..$40
Oh, food. How we love it. We love it just about as much as we love wine and beautiful gardens. So we’ve decided to bring all of these things together in the final Lit Fest shindig, where we’ll toast our visiting agents (including local agents Kate Schafer and Sandra Bond, as well as New Yorker Betsy Lerner of  Dunow, Carlson, and Lerner) and editors (from Fulcrum and Ghost Road), and each other! We’ll hang out with old friends, make new friends, and listen to an appetizing salon talk on writing and food from Denver Poet Laureate Chris Ransick and Lighthouse members Carleen Brice and Tiffany Tyson. If all of this sounds pretty swanky, it is. If it sounds like something you can’t afford, it isn’t. Directions to this private garden party near 9th & Gaylord will be e-mailed to registrants. Please order tix by 6/12 at the latest. (Caterers need the stats!)

 

*Except for one event that’s a farewell kind of fundraiser that we’ve buried at the bottom of the tip sheet (an old trick). It’s still an economical choice!

 

Count up to Lit Fest: 11 Days (Also, an Invite to Meet Your Brood)

Over a decade ago, leaving the cozy, inspiring, crazy-making, inbred culture of our graduate MFA program, Mike Henry and I ventured west to see what we could see. Were there eight writers to every ten strangers you met, as there were in Boston? Would they be interested in finding each other? Really, we all know that writing, per se, cannot be taught—though learning the craft can be accelerated, the learning curve shortened—so why start a nonprofit, independent writing center?  As our brilliant volunteer copywriter J. Chris Rock so eloquently put it: “Sometimes, what a writer needs most is other writers.”

We’re a strange and diverse enough crowd, everyone from apprentices to full-timers working on their fourth novels, ages 10 to 85, all walks of life, probably all political persuasions. So what do we have in common?  A tendency to see things in terms of the story, the poetic line, the image, the scene. We try to be, as someone famous said, people upon whom nothing is lost. That might not go over so well with some of our family and friends. In that way, Lit Fest becomes a time to let it all hang out there—every writerly impulse, every bad draft, every I-love-it-but-I-hate-it attitude toward our strange, shared compulsion. People here will understand… even without your “treatise on why I do this” that you send out every year to your e-mail list.  

So begins the count up to the Third Annual Lighthouse Lit Fest.  Over the last two years, we’ve seen writers immerse themselves in weekend-intensive writing courses like Writing Through Character, Navigating Your Book, Environmental Writing, and Emotion On & Off the Page (not to mention the already waitlisted Novel Bootcamp). Some have gone on to their own wonderful writing careers outside of Colorado, like our friend Sarah Ockler, whose Twenty Boy Summer catapulted her to a 2-book deal with Little, Brown, freedom from a day job, and a return to the city she loves, New York. Others, like Gary Schanbacher (author of Migration Patterns, winner of an honorable mention for the 2008 PEN/Hemingway Award for first fiction) and J. Diego Frey (author of the forthcoming Umbrellas or Else, from Ghost Road), continue to take part in Lighthouse events and will make a featured appearance at the Lit Fest participant reading on Tuesday, June 17.  Both Schanbacher and Frey received book deals after meetings at our first- and second-annual Lit Fests. Hear them read (for free, of course) on June 17, 8PM, Forest Room 5, [OOPS! Edited: it's at the Mercury Cafe] along with other scribblers who sign up for the Participant Reading. If you’re participating in Lit Fest and you’d like a 3-to-5 minute slot to read, contact moi: andrea@lighthousewriters.org.

See ya’ll there!

 

From Mark Strand’s Lips to…

150+ lucky ears this weekend. In advance of posting our new-and-improved Lighthouse podcast (with jingle*) of this weekend’s incredible Inside the Writer’s Studio with Mark Strand and Eli Gottlieb, I thought I’d tantalize with a little bit of what’s what. First, on Saturday, 100-plus packed into the Jones Theater and learned that a young Mark Strand shared a glass of gin with W.H. Auden, each of them rotating the glass with each sip so that their lips never touched the same spot on the glass. (CORRECTION: Eli points out that Auden turned the glass so that their lips did touch the same part of the glass, where Mark gamely turned the glass for a clean spot. Thanks, Eli!) Second, Strand’s good friend Brodsky could bring thousands of screaming fans out to venues across the world–like a veritable Mick Jagger of poetry. Third, when Strand gets together with the literati in New York, it’s always for dinner or a dinner party (no more than 8 people), the topic of conversation: gossip or politics, and the meal?  Well, let’s just say those of us in the audience on Sunday’s Tattered Cover event got recipes from the former Poet Laureate of the United States.  One of them involved a raw egg yolk nestled in a bed of steaming pasta.  Enough said.

Here’s a tasty vittle from Herr Eli Gottlieb, who was our uberdexterous interviewer on Saturday at the Jones (and don’t forget–podcast plus jingle* forthcoming!):

Mark Strand is that rarest of things, a great poet who’s contitnued to get better over time.  Everybody with a set of eyes and ears remembers his early books of poems: the stab of their ironies, their uncanny off-kilter relationship to the authorial self.  They performed a kind of emotional chiropractry on readers, and were like the mysterious galleries in the paintings of Giorgio di Chirico in that they obeyed no known laws of physics and yet felt entirely actual and real.  Their terseness hid a world of implication.   And differently from the so-called “confessional poets” who were in vogue when Mark first began publishing, they seemed to take a more jaunty, European or Continental approach to worldly anxiety.  If Wallace Stevens had been baked in the hard American daylight of Robert Frost, they might have produced the wry, sly confection that is Mark Strand.

 

Diligently, over 50 years, he’s continued to write, while—no easy feat—expanding steadily as a poet.   Talent is one thing.   Ongoing creative growth through a life of art is another thing entirely, and far rarer.   I’ve seen his work process, with its scribbled notebook pages, its endless revisions.  The

 

Mark Strand. Denver. May 3 and 4.

Picture this: a relatively handsome, bored, long-haired undergraduate boy slouches in a classroom, sometime in 1987 (or so). Contemporary American Poetry, four credits, Tues/Thurs 10 to 11:50 am.

The professor drones on about Adrienne Rich, W.S. Merwin, Elizabeth Bishop. The boy likes these poets. They are interesting. They make him think, and he likes to think. But not too much.

They turn the page to a new decade, a new group of poets. In his red-jacketed anthology, there is a black-and-white photo of a handsome poet-dude, resembling a bit of Chris Reeve, the Superman years.

They begin reading poetry from this guy out loud, this guy whose name is Mark Strand.

The boy in the classroom feels a charge, and his mind begins to awaken, somehow.  Something in these poems seeps its way into his unconscious, and the poems, while they have meaning on their face, underneath lies a seething mass of emotion, idea, phobia, desire. For example:

SLEEPING WITH ONE EYE OPEN
  
Unmoved by what the wind does,
The windows
Are not rattled, nor do the various
Areas
Of the house make their usual racket–
Creak at
The joints, trusses, and studs.
Instead,
They are still. And the maples,
Able
At times to raise havoc,
Evoke
Not a sound from their branches
Clutches.
It’s my night to be rattled,
Saddled
With spooks. Even the half-moon
(Half-man,
Half half dark), on the horizon,
Lies on
Its side casting a fishy light
Which alights
On my Floor, lavishly lording
Its morbid
Look over me. Oh I feel dead,
Folded
Away in my blankets for good,
and
Forgotten.
My room is clammy and cold,
Moonhandled
And weird. The shivers
Wash over
Me, shaking my bones, my looses ends
Loosen,
And I lie sleeping with one eye open,
Hoping
That nothing, nothing will happen.

 

This sounds hokey, but when the boy first heard that poem, the hair on his arms stood on end. Really. (Or as the young kids say nowadays, For Reals.) And Strand’s poems still have that effect. (Okay, so the boy was me, when I had hair. When I was a bored, low B-average college student, blah, blah, blah….)

Come get your hair stood up at the Lighthouse Writer’s Studio weekend. May 3 and 4.

Oh, and check back daily as I will be violating copyrights and posting more of Mark’s poems here.

Cheers,
–MJH

 

 

 

Good things afoot

Lighthouse instructor Janis Hallowell’s new novel, She Was, comes out later this month. 

Guess who’s already read it? He kind of likes it.

I read this beautiful and compelling novel straight through in one sitting. Janis Hallowell writes with great compassion about the heart of the heart of our country and of our culture. She Was brings back the Vietnam era and elucidates our current wars and tribulations. The story is a family novel that touches all of us. Amazingly, it is also a shocking thriller that is impossible to put down. The writing is clean and honest; the message moved me. It is one of the best novels I have read in years.”
—John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War

 

Big get for the Lighthouse Lit Fest 2008

Exciting times for the Lighthouse Lit Fest.  We just confirmed that agent Betsy Lerner will be attending, offering workshops and guidance to our writing community.  Here are the details about Betsy.  Save the date, everyone!  June 6-21.

Betsy Lerner worked as an editor for 16 years at major trade publishers including Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin and finally as Executive Editor at Doubleday. She joined Dunow, Carlson & Lerner as a partner in 2005 after agenting at The Gernert Company for five years. She mostly works with non-fiction writers in the areas of psychology, history, cultural studies, biography, current events, business and the hard to categorize. She also represents fiction; her taste is eclectic, literary, dark, funny, voice driven. Lerner was the recipient of the Tony Godwin Publishing Prize. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and is the author of Food & Loathing and The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers.

 

Novelists Strike: time to support our people…

For my part, I’m going to “set aside” writing the novel I quit three years ago. 

From The Onion:  

Novelists Strike Fails To Affect Nation Whatsoever

LOS ANGELES—The Novelists Guild of America strike, now entering its fourth month, has had no impact on the nation at all, sources reported Tuesday.

The strike, which scholars say could be the longest since 1951, when American novelists may or may not have voluntarily committed to a six-month work stoppage, has brought an immediate halt to all new novels, novellas, and novelettes from coast to coast, affecting no one. 

Nor has America’s economy seen any adverse effects whatsoever, as consumers easily adjust to the sudden cessation of any bold new sprawling works of fiction or taut psychological character studies.

“There’s a novelists strike?” Ames, IA consumer Carl Hailes said. “That’s terrible. When is it scheduled to begin?”

The strike kicked off last fall when the NGA announced it had hit a roadblock in negotiations with the Alliance of Printed Fiction and Literature Producers, failing to resolve certain key issues concerning online distribution, digital media rights, and readers just not getting what writers were trying to do with a number of important allegorical devices.  Read article here.