Announcement – The Robot Scientist’s Daughter will be released March 2015 from Mayapple Press

OK, so here’s the official announcement I talked about a couple of posts ago: my fourth book, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, will be published by Mayapple Press in March 2015! Mayapple Press is pretty interesting in that they have published women’s speculative poetry in the past, which is a fairly unusual thing to find! Feminist AND with sci-fi leanings? It’s a pretty cool fit.

I’m excited about it. The editors are great, this is the first time I will have SPD distribution, which is cool. I’m working on getting blurbs but I already have one really nice one I’m excited to share soon, along with some possible cover art ideas!

This book is probably my most personal, as it’s about my father’s work as a contractor for Oak Ridge National Laboratories, my childhood growing up around robots (cool!) and nuclear waste (not quite as cool) and some of the environmental fallout from both Oak Ridge and Fukushima. There are persona poems, but this book is probably my most autobiographical work so far. I remember Ilya Kaminsky, when he read my first book, said “Now you must make your own fairy tales.” I feel like this book is my attempt to do that.

Kelli Russell Agodon’s debut Hourglass Museum reading and writer movies

Just back from Kelli’s lovely debut reading for her newest book, Hourglass Museum.

 

It was an absolutely perfect spring day, the cherry blossoms were blooming, the mountains were all out, and I spent a great day at one of my favorite places, Open Books, with some of my favorite people, including those pictured: Kelli, Martha Silano, Kelly Davio, Kathleen Flenniken, and Peter Pereira. After the party, Glenn and I went for a quick walk at Green Lake park, just in time to watch the sun go down.

I just watched the indie film “Authors Anonymous,” about a writer’s group gone bad when one member finds unexpected success. I was reminded that the writing group where Kelli and I met over ten years ago is a very special group. No one has really imploded – at least not yet! And I think we try to really support each other, in success and in rejection. (That’s like, the “in sickness and in health” of writer friend vows, I believe.) And a lot of the people at the reading today were people that embraced and supported me when I first came to Seattle (gulp) fourteen years ago, (can it really be that long?) excited to be in a big time “reading” city and make friends with real writers! I also loved that at this reading, there were people of every generation, from 80 to under 18, it gives me hope for humanity when I see stuff like that. “Authors Anonymous” was a little dark and had a lot of cliches (some, sadly, true, but still), I preferred the other indie writer film I watched recently, “Adult World,” about a young, straight-A fresh-out-of-undergrad poet who spends all her money on writing contests, gets cut off by her parents and has her car stolen, and takes a job at a porn shop while stalking an older, bitter poet (one of her heroes who teaches at a local college) demanding that he mentor her (John Cusack in what I thought was a very charming turn.)

 

Announcement soon, Flannery O’Connor quotes and writers with illness

I will have an announcement to make soon 🙂 Hopefully you will agree with me that it is good news. I am always happiest when there is a flurry of activity around beginning or completing something, I think.

I’ve been reading “Conversations with Flannery O’Connor,” which is now out of print and hard to find, even in libraries and used bookstores, but worth reading. Flannery reminds me a bit of Frida Kahlo in that she puts a bit of herself, her view of herself, into her work – her stories are full of disfigurements and ailments, women who are deaf, women who have wooden legs, people with strange grotesque appearances. Of course, because of her lupus, she herself walked with crutches and it affected her appearance, so she was highly aware of not fitting in, of not being “normal.” Her continual focus on the Southern grotesque is a bit like Frida’s self-portraits – full of her own distorted imagery of her own body. She is imperfect, cantankerous, the language she used sometimes frightening, a Catholic who nonetheless wasn’t impressed with Lourdes except by the germs, by a visit to the Vatican, and who thought most nuns and priests undereducated. (I got a real sense of her personality from her collected letters, easier to find and also worth reading.)
So, her lupus set upon her fairly severely after a trip to the writer’s residency at Yaddo, requiring multiple hospitalizations, experimental drugs, home injections, and later, the crutches. Nevertheless, she didn’t let this affect her work schedule, her work socializing, even. Flannery went and gave readings and taught classes as much as she could, and when she was not quite as able, she hosted writers at her house. (A young writer from Atlanta said of her: “She’s certainly not a hermit, though she’s not an extrovert, either.” Sound familiar?)

Flannery is a bit of a ghost of mine, she haunts me. Flannery was a good writer at a very young age, having a good deal of success in her early twenties, befriending important people, even at that age aware that her work was good and deserved to be treated that way. She turned down a book prize’s publishing contract because they wanted to change her work – that took guts. Despite getting as much treatment for her lupus as the time and technology and her money could allow, she was dead at 39, a year younger than I am now.

Here are a couple of quotes I particularly enjoyed from “Conversations.” Most of them I have never seen before, on the web or anywhere else.

“There has been no interesting or noble struggle,” she said of her life. She lived with her mother and helped raise peacocks and fancy chickens and ducks, which supplemented her income (which increased as she got older) not mostly made up of book royalties but fellowships, awards, and grants. She used a lot of the money on hospital trips. She complained frequently of the low sales of her books, about bad reviews or (what she felt were) ignorant or misguided reviews.

Her advice to new writers? “start reading and writing and looking and listening. Pay less attention to yourself than to what is outside you, and if you must write about yourself, get a good distance away and judge yourself with a stranger’s eyes and a stranger’s severity.” (Probably still good advice, esp. for young college kids.)
Here’s a saucy description of the “average reader.”
Flannery: “The average reader, however, is a good deal below average. People will say with considerable satisfaction, “Oh, I’m an average reader” when the fact is they never learned to read in the first place, and probably never will.”
On “the writer’s temperament:”
“People seem to surround being-a-writer with a kind of false mystique, as if what is required to be a writer is a writer’s temperament. Most of the people I know with writers’ temperaments aren’t doing any writing.” (And remember, she was friends with such famous writing temperaments as Robert Lowell!)

As for her disease, in an interview, she said “the disease is of no consequence to my writing, since for that I use my head and not my feet.”

Signs of Spring, a new Microreview, and More

Thought I would remind you that spring is around the corner. I’ve seen it! Pink hyacinths we planted last fall are blooming in a row in front of our house, jonquils in the back, and in downtown Seattle, where it is slightly warmer, I’ve seen the following in bloom: cherry blossoms, camellias, plum blossoms, rhododendrons, redbud, magnolias and crab apple.

Sorry I haven’t been here much, I caught some evil stomach flu at a wonderful reading I went to last Sunday, and I’m hoping to be almost done with it soon! I managed to get out and wobble in the sunshine on Thursday, which is when we got some photos to prove to you and to myself that yes, spring was on the way.

And to show that I haven’t been completely slacking off, here’s my microreview from Rattle of Evan J. Peterson’s The Midnight Channel, a chapbook on final girls and horror tropes.

And I was very happy with a poem acceptance from Mid-American Review, which, growing up in Cincinnati, was one of the few literary magazines that showed up in local bookstores. Hooray for the Midwest! After AWP, I also got the emotional energy to actually send out work again, which I hadn’t really done since last November, so that was good. I hadn’t realized what I had been feeling was discouragement – maybe just low-level, but enough to keep me from writing much or sending out much – until after AWP and I felt a surge of desire to do both again. It’s a good thing about these kinds of conferences, going out and looking at physical journals and talking to actual humans who work at journals and publishers, reminding you there are real people out there, not just a nameless, faceless rejection machine, as it sometimes seems.

A lot of my friends have mentioned being physically or emotionally down lately. Could be the time-change, or the stars, or just bad luck, but I know I was feeling kind of disgruntled over the whole “broken arm three weeks before AWP, pneumonia two weeks before AWP, head cold/stomach flu after AWP…” Seemed like a lot, but some of my friends are going through even worse health crises. How to have the faith or grace to push through? I read Conversations with Flannery O’Connor, who said something like “good thing I write with my head and not my feet” when asked if being on crutches for her severe lupus affected her work. We can’t get caught up in politics (The VIDA count still seemed sort of depressing to me, although I guess there’s been some improvements, the NYC versus MFA debate which mostly seemed like a resounding “it’s hard to make a living as a writer either way” answer) either. Sometimes we just have to put our heads down, read what inspires us, spend time writing and then sending your work out into the world. Something about spring, about rebirth and flowering in the face of cold and ice and mud.

The Unreal Issue, How Not to Hate Your Friends, and Two Friendly Announcements

It seems fitting that while floating through my post-AWP-cold-induced haze, Poemeleon’s Unreal Issue debuted. I have a couple of poems in there, one about post-apocalypse and one about consulting a medical intuitive, which I believe is one of the signs of apocalypse. It’s a great issue over all. I really like editor Cati Porter’s editorial vision.

And, in case you were in a haze of your own, in a perhaps post-AWP-induced jealousy haze (it happens), check out this excellent article on how not to hate your friends by Courtney Maum. It’s kind of funny, but also kind of true that in the writing world, that you need to you make sure you only make friends not with people you secretly hate, but with people who are good for you and whom you can genuinely encourage and be proud of.

And speaking of those kinds of friends…be sure to tune into ABC tomorrow 8 PM to watch the debut of the show based on Jason Mott’s The Returned, called Resurrection. And if you’re in Seattle, try to make it to Open Books to catch Martha Silano’s reading at 3 PM for her new book, Reckless Lovely. (Two friends I am very proud of, and whom I don’t hate at all.)

It’s International Women’s Day, so remember to tell someone you appreciate them, buy a piece of art by your favorite female artist, sign up for a subscription to a magazine run by and for women, or donate to a local women’s shelter (the closest one to our neighborhood is I think this one) or international aid charity for women (I like Heifer International.)

Afterburn – Reflections on AWP 2004-2014 (and a few more pics)

I’m recovering from a head cold I picked up at AWP, eating from a bowl of grilled watermelon salsa my husband made to help kill the cold, ruminating about the good and the bad about these kinds of conferences. I have to admit that this year’s AWP was probably my favorite since my first one – when I was still starry eyed and naive, interviewing for jobs, in a Chicago hotel four blocks from the conference, carrying a way-too-heavy bag through panels and the book fair, gawking at the crowds of (gasp) 4,000. (That was a record back then. That’s right, my first AWP was a decade ago!)

I wanted to say something about the hard workers in the poetry world who don’t necessarily get the credit they deserve. They do a lot – they review books, or set up web sites, or edit. People like Brian Spears, the Rumpus’ poetry editor, and Denise Hill, who runs New Pages. Editors of micropresses like Shanna Compton and Kristy Bowen. AWP board members and volunteers. They are a lot of typically really nice people who tend to stay out of the limelight – and hey, they put their own (inimitable) work on hold to shine the light on others. And they all deserve cupcakes.

An unusual aspect of this AWP was that it was in my hometown of Seattle, so. I saw a lot of my friends out doing their thing, being successful writers and editors and such. I mean, you realize, hey, my friends are pretty impressive, really! And you can sleep in your own bed and you know where the good restaurants are already. You don’t have to ship anything home. I recommend it. And I got to see the hard-working Northwest presses – like Two Sylvias, Concrete Wolf, Minor Arcana Press – get a little bit of glow from being in the limelight. Which they deserve. The Northwest is a pretty happening place for literary stuff, in case you didn’t know. MFA versus NYC? I don’t think so. Think LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland – all happen to be great hospitable homes for writers. (I happen to think San Diego is pretty great for writers too – it’s where I met Jericho Brown, got to hang out with Steve Kowit, Ilya Kaminsky and Sandra Alcosser, and got drunk-serenaded by Billy Collins. I mean, it’s no slouch.) Anyway, hooray for AWP being here and in LA in two years! Finally, the West Coast is getting some writerly love.

And then something about running into writers you admire. Now, a decade since my first AWP, I may not be quite as starry-eyed, but I’m still thrilled to run into people whose work I love. I used to be too nervous to introduce myself, now I just do it. I used to worry about impressing editors and publishers. I guess I worry a little less about that now than I used to, but it is nice to see the kids (is that bad to say? They all seem so young now! But so intimidating when I went to my first AWP!) who are running the lit mags, working the tables. All these people who love the same weird stuff you do. This year, I totally missed anything negative – gossip, rudeness, one-ups-man-ship – and saw only a bunch of people with whom I share a passion. At the Thursday night reading I literally teared up, I was so happy to be with a bunch of people who loved “geeky” poetry and who excelled at it. Because that’s what AWP really should be about – getting out of your safe-writer-introvert-shell and meeting other introvert-shell-hiders with whom you have an awfully lot in common. And maybe get a drink together and talk shop, or talk about which childhood cartoons you miss, or whatever. Talk about the dreams you have in common, go out and fill the sky with hope and good wishes. When else are you going to do this?

AWP 14 Report – Friday and Saturday, Drawn to Marvel, the haul, and other adventures

Friday and Saturday Reports from AWP, the haul, and other adventures

The last day of AWP was fun, though it went by in a blur. I did a quick book signing at Minor Arcana. I   didn’t get to see half the people I had planned to have coffee with, although I did run into a lot of great folks. I never found the tables for several of my favorite journals and publishers (the book fair was split into two football-field sized halls, and I swear I tried), but everyone at the tables the last day was friendly and chatty the last day as I went around buying and picking up books and lit mags. I wore sequins to keep myself awake! I ran into friends local and far-flung. And a very cute black Pomeranian whose owner let us cuddle him (the dog not the owner.)

The evening Drawn to Marvel launch event at Raygun Lounge was terrific, I kept hearing people saying “This was the best event at AWP” and “why doesn’t AWP have this kind of thing with their official panels and readings?” Yes, why indeed??? It was a great night to meet people I had been corresponding with for years and lots of new folks – including Tara Betts, whose poetry I knew so well I could have sworn I had met her before! I know they’ll have the complete video of the reading up at some point, but Glenn did a phone recording of my reading of “Female Comic Book Superheroes” if you’re interested – http://youtu.be/Wu5j7BjnorU. There are sequins and a Dalek involved. I would say, after briefly scanning the anthology, it would be a wonderful book to teach to college kids.

Friday after my book-signing at Two Sylvias I took some friends to Open Books and Café Zoka to get real Seattle coffee, and it was great to hang out outside AWP (I recommend an offsite trip with a local every AWP!)

Above is also a little pic of some of my haul from AWP, including friends’ new books and lit mags. I parted with probably a grand total of $85 for all this, which I think is pretty great indeed. I’m looking forward to reading everything when I have sanity and sleep again.

 

Wednesday/Thursday report at AWP – Speculative Poets and Old Friends

A quick report from the first 24 hours of AWP with a few pics: I have to say, so far this AWP I am feeling nothing but admiration and happiness to keep running into, reading with, and hanging out with so many fantastic writers. The best part of this kind of conference is running into old friends, and what’s odd nowadays is that some of these “old friends” are folks I’ve never physically met – sure, we’ve been Skyping or commenting on each other’s blogs for years, but it’s great to really give someone a hug or thank them in person for blurbing your book (or teaching it,) listening to them read poetry for the first time, grabbing dinner together, or even just saying hi on our ways to and from things.  I’m exhausted already but at the same time can’t wait to get back to seeing more lovely folks! Today I’ll be signing books at the Two Sylvias book table, right next to Tupelo at the book fair, from 1 PM – 2 PM. Come by! Tomorrow I’ll be signing 1 PM-2:30 PM at the Minor Arcana Press, and reading at the Ray Gun Lounge as part of the Drawn to Marvel book launch with a bunch of terrific poets, starting at 7 PM.

Last night’s Superheroes of Poetry reading was one of those magic offsite readings that went perfectly – everyone kept to their time, read fantastic poetry, and read it really well. I was so happy to be among poets I really liked, the crowd was really sweet, and Glenn said it was the first time I got emotional at a poetry reading in a long time. Because we held the reading at Jack Straw, they also had a professional sound engineer give each reader a CD of their reading – cool, right?

We also have the reading up on YouTube, so check it out when you get a chance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeT3iv4DjVM&feature=youtu.be&t=1m48s

Before that, I took a brief tour of the South Hall of the book fair (didn’t realize Wednesday there were actually two gigantic halls of book fair instead of just one) and ran into a bunch of friends, including San Diego poet Jeff Walt. Wednesday I thought I was just going to register, but I ended up meeting and talking with lots of friends who were setting up their booths. Publishers really do work hard at these conferences, and much of it is a labor of love rather than spectacular pay, so be sure to stop by and tell folks how much you love their efforts. I didn’t remember to 1. take enough pictures or 2. hand out enough business cards (possibly because being sort of one-good-armed for the conference makes this a teensy bit hard.)

Where I’ll Be at AWP plus gluten-free Seattle options

Hi! I’m Jeannine Hall Gailey, and this is the game “Where I’ll be at AWP:”

–Thursday – wondering around the book fair early in the afternoon, and in the evening you’ll find me hosting The Superheroes of Poetry spectacular speculative poets event at the Jack Straw Gallery (4261 Roosevelt Way NE) from 8 PM – 9:30 PM. (Readers include Jason Mott, Jason McCall, Bryan Dietrich, Evan Peterson, Lesley Wheeler, Sally Rosen Kindred, Lana Ayers, and more!)

–Friday – Signing books at the Two Sylvias Press table, 1-2 PM. South Hall, 611, neighboring the Tupelo Books talbe. You may also spot me at my friends’ White Pine book launch – Kelli Russell Agodon and Susan Rich – at 6:30 at the SAM’s Taste restaurant.

–Saturday: Signing books at the Minor Arcana Press Table 1 PM to at least 2:30 PM. South Hall, BB18 by the snack bar. Saturday night, appropriately enough, reading with the book launch of Drawn to Marvel at Ray Gun Lounge, reading and party starting at 7 PM. (A bunch of great speculative poets here too!)

If you want to buy one of my books, your best bet is to try the Two Sylvias table, or find me in the crowd – I’ll be the one guarding a broken elbow with a large blond man by my side carrying my very heavy tote of books!

By the way, if you’re a celiac or wheat-allergic AWP-attender looking for gluten-free options around Seattle, here are a couple of great options in the downtown Seattle area:

–Tango for tapas – Tango Restaurant and Lounge – 1100 Pike Street Seattle, WA 98101 – (206) 583-0382 (a good selection of gluten-free small plates, but no dedicated fryer) and it’s two blocks from the convention center, an easy walk!
–Upscale cider pub Capitol Cider in Capitol Hill – a dedicated gluten-free kitchen! – Capitol Cider –  818 East Pike Street, Seattle, Washington 98122 – 206-397-3564. Some driving involved, but a very hip part of town with lots going on.
–Cafe Flora (also great for vegetarians) – Cafe Flora – 2901 E Madison St, Seattle WA – (206) 325-9100

The Writing Process Blog Tour

Yes, I know everything right now is all AWP all the time, but the kind Kelli Russell Agodon included me in her blog tour and here are the results!

1) What am I working on?
I am currently working on two manuscripts – the one, almost finished, called “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter,” is one I’ve been working on for some five years or so, about growing up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with Oak Ridge National Labs next door. The other is called “The Field Guide to the End of the World,” which explores our current culture’s obsession with apocalypses (in pop culture, scientific research, etc.) and my own experiences with neural damage.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
I think my work is more likely to go explore scientific discoveries, pop culture, and mythology than my own autobiography, and for this reason, I’ve often been described as a “speculative” poet. I’ve always been more interested in other worlds than my own. My favorite fiction authors – Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, and Kelly Link, for starters – are also similarly writing about alternate realities, comic books, television, and science fiction.
I’d also say that I am probably slightly more likely to be funny – I’m not afraid of humor in poetry, even if it’s pretty dark humor, and that I’d probably be described as a feminist poet, given the subject matter of my first three books.

3) Why do I write what I do?
I passionately believe that 1. poetry can communicate things (ideas, moments, emotions, liminal spaces) in ways that other kinds of writing can’t and 2. writing is meant to change the world. I’m not content to write the kind of poetry that makes people feel more comfortable; I would be much happier writing something that made even one person decide to make a positive change in the world, or, at least, to reconsider the way that our pop culture depicts powerful women or the safety of nuclear energy. Call me optimistic, or idealistic, but that’s why I keep writing.

4) How does your writing process work?
I would say that I do most of my writing late at night, and mostly on a computer (my handwriting is illegible, even to me.) I usually write one or two poems at a time based on an idea, or something I come across in a movie, a magazine article, or in research of a particular subject. The best things for my writing are things like visiting art museums, going to concerts, reading about subjects I’m not familiar with, and even prosaic things like watching television. I read a lot of poetry (and do reviews of poetry books on a regular basis) but I’m more likely to be inspired to write new poems after reading fiction or non-fiction.

Thanks to Kelli Agodon for inviting me to this blog tour! Here’s her post!
And her bio: Kelli Russell Agodon is the author of Hourglass Museum and The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice, which she co-authored with Martha Silano. Her other books include Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room, Small Knots, Geography, and Fire On Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry which she edited with Annette Spaulding-Convy. She is the co-founder of Two Sylvias Press and when not writing, Kelli can be found in the Northwest mountain biking, paddleboarding, or walking her golden retriever, Buddy Holly. She blogs at: www.ofkells.blogspot.com or you can connect with her on Facebook: www.facebook.com/agodon or on her homepage: www.agodon.com

I’m inviting Kelly Davio and Lesley Wheeler to join me on this blog tour next on March 4! Stay tuned for their entries! Here are their bios:

Lesley Wheeler’s poetry collections include The Receptionist and Other Tales (Aqueduct Press, 2012), a Tiptree Award Honor Book. Heterotopia, 2010 winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize; and Heathen (C&R, 2009). Recent poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in The Gettysburg Review, Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, and other magazines. She teaches at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia and blogs about poetry’s possible worlds at http://lesleywheeler.org/.
Kelly Davio is the current editor of Tahoma Literary Review and the former Managing Editor for The Los Angeles Review and current Associate Poetry Editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal.  She is also a book reviewer for  Women’s Review of Books. Her debut collection is Burn This House, and her next collection, Jacob Wrestling, will be out from Pink Fish Press in 2015.

Jeannine Hall Gailey

Jeannine Hall GaileyJeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World.  Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.

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