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April Ossmann is Kate’s next Guest Writer–joining us on April 22 at 1:30 p.m. at Kate’s J Street writing loft in Sacramento!

Come to this free reading, Q&A and potluck book signing reception (bring your book money!). R.S.V.P to kate (at) kateasche (dot) com to receive address and parking information. Folks with first name with starting letter A-M please bring a snack to share, N-Z a beverage to share; servings for 6-8 will be great. (Can’t make it on April 22? Have no fear–you can catch April at Sacramento Poetry Center’s regular Monday readings on April 24. Doors open at 7:00 p.m. for reading at 7:30 p.m. at 25th and R Streets in Midtown Sacramento.)

This interview is Part II in a two-part series presented in conjunction with SPC’s Poetry Now. This part focuses on craft. To read Part I, in which Kate talks with April about her new poetry collection, visit Poetry Now.

April Ossmann is the author of Event Boundaries (Four Way Books, 2017), and Anxious Music (FWB), recipient of a 2013 Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant, and former executive director of Alice James Books. She is an independent editor (poetry, essays, reviews) and a faculty editor for the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Sierra Nevada College. Learn more at www.aprilossmann.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Q: How long have you actively been working with Event Boundaries as a collection? How many drafts has the book gone through as a whole? What poem(s) in the book went through the most drafts individually, and how many were those?

A: For the eight years between signing the book contract for Anxious Music and submitting the manuscript for Event Boundaries, I was writing new poems toward my second, as-yet-to-be-firmly-titled, second collection, but I also included earlier poems which fit thematically and stylistically with Event Boundaries. “Stubborn” fit thematically, but not stylistically, because I wrote it so long ago that my style had changed. I revised and revised until it fit…I’m not sure how many drafts it went through, but I’d guess at least twenty, as I worked to tighten and pare the language to match my current, more streamlined idiom.

I’d guess that I took the manuscript as a whole through around ten drafts, with increasingly minor revisions as I progressed. Before I submitted the manuscript for consideration at Four Way Books, I asked Kevin Goodan, a good friend and colleague, for criticism, and revised accordingly. I revised again, after receiving editorial suggestions from my editor and publisher, Martha Rhodes. They are both wonderful editors and poets, and I remain grateful for their assistance.

 

Q: “Scrim” and “Venture” make a lovely progression, in which “Scrim” comments on the speaker’s desire for wit [“All I ask of wit / is that it stand / between me and mystery, / not like a guard or armor, / more like a screen / against bites and stings”] and then “Venture” enacts the very kind of wit I imagine the speaker desires. This is just one of several mini-series of poems I found within the collection. What techniques for ordering the poems worked best for you as you assembled this particular collection?

A: I talked in the first half of this interview at SPC’s Poetry Now about ordering the poems to reflect my spiritual and emotional growth. I also ordered to interweave subjects, connecting them via shared themes, images, counter-point, argument, evolution―and undermining. When I placed a poem that spoke to a form of certainty, I often followed it with one which undermined it with a form of uncertainty. Following “Scrim” with “Venture,” does the opposite, offering comfort after an abyss―followed by “Stubborn,” which makes fun of surety, followed by…“The Doubt House!”

 

Q: I’m sure there are certain pieces of advice that you give to writers over and over again. What are some of these? Which of these were hardest for you to follow as you worked on this collection? Why were they hardest, and how did you (did you?) ultimately find a way through?

A: Try to eliminate prosiness and improve music by trimming clutter (unnecessary articles, conjunctions, and prepositions); try heightening language, dramatic tension and music, by eliminating unnecessary stage and time direction and explanations, and substituting active verbs for forms of the verb to be. None of this advice is hard for me to follow now in general, but an older poem, “Stubborn,” was challenging to revise, in part because of my emotional attachment to it, which can blind (and deafen) poets to a poem’s weaknesses. You might say the approach I used to solve this was stubbornness! I spent a couple of months revising the poem, but limited myself to short sessions (a few minutes to an hour), waiting a few days to revise again, until it finally fit my current, more streamlined mode. For example, the poem opening went from,

 

“I knew it would be harder what with

the blizzard and all, but didn’t think about it.

You can’t, if you’re going to do a thing. Where”;

 

to,

 

“I know it’ll be hard after the blizzard,

but don’t ponder it. You can’t

if you plan to act. Where would”

 

Q: What new (to you) craft concept or skill did you encounter/develop as you worked on this collection?

A: I wrote many of the poems during my first five years of editing poetry full-time. I discovered, on my first-ever writing retreat, that my first drafts read like my fifth or sixth drafts once did, thanks to that work. If you practice something constantly, you’re bound to get better at it! The most fun craft concept I tried was writing the golden shovel poems, “Celestial Solo, or Divine Funk?” and “Mars Rising.” I highly recommend the form, it’s inspiring, and seems to create direct access to the unconscious contributions I prize.

 

Q: Could you explain the “golden shovel” form?

A: The form was invented by Terrance Hayes, with his poem, “The Golden Shovel” (Lighthead, Penguin Books, 2010), an homage to Gwendolyn Brooks, which borrows her poem “We Real Cool,” in its entirety and incorporates it in the new poem. To write a “Golden Shovel” poem, find a short poem by Gwendolyn Brooks (or any poet) and lay it out vertically on the right margin of the page, so that the last word of each line in the new poem is the next word of the quoted poem (be sure to credit the poet). I used a variation of the form for my poems, borrowing a line from a Gwendolyn Brooks poem, and placing the borrowed line vertically on the right margin of the poem, so that the last word of each line in the my poem is the next word of Brooks’ quoted line.

 

Q: What has your work with this collection taught you about yourself as a person?

A: I learned to follow my advice to poets: keep the faith, and when you can’t, persist as if you still have it when you feel doubt about your skills or getting published.

 

Q: What has been the best thing to come out of the publication of Event Boundaries thus far? This can be a writing thing, a life thing…what has meant the most to you? Or maybe, what has surprised you most?

A: So far, the best thing about publishing Event Boundaries is the opportunity to honor my brother in a public and “permanent” way. I discovered, in an internet search for his name, that the only result was his obituary, which added to my grief. Now, for however far into the future people read the book, his having lived will continue to affect readers.

 

Q: In what way(s) does this collection still feel unfinished or unrealized to you? To put it another way: What haunts you from its pages?

A: I have two very different answers to those two questions. What feels unfinished is my spiritual growth, an ongoing process I expect all my future poems will nurture. What haunts me in the book is my brother’s early death. Writing those poems helped me to navigate my grieving, and reading/sharing them does as well, but I have yet to learn not to regret my―and his―loss.

 

Q: Are you working on a third collection? If yes, is there anything you feel comfortable sharing about it? If no, what is on your desk these days that we can look forward to reading?

A: I’m happy to say I am well into my work on a third collection, whose subjects and themes include prejudice/acceptance, judgment/compassion, and personal responsibility/accountability. In 2017, there seems to be an exponential number of possible causes to champion, and while I’m concerned about many, I find myself most absorbed by how to address prejudice in our society, beginning with self-examination. I was first moved to write about it by news stories of racial prejudice in policing and judicial practices, but I’m considering many kinds, not limited to gender, sexuality, political affiliation and class prejudice…I hope to learn where I most need to evolve, and how to set a better example.

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Welcome to the spring installment of my annual regional conferences and workshops list! The permanent (date-less) list lives over at my Resources page, so feel free to bookmark that! I will update with additional events as later-summer and fall dates become available.

I’d also like to note my own new contribution to these options: My first Weekend Retreat! Happening May 6-7 in Sacramento, the retreat offers a local escape into bodily rejuvenation and generation of new work, as we spend time at Asha Urban Baths as well as the workshop table. The theme for this retreat is Body: Presence and Memory. Full details are over on my Workshops page. Enroll today!

See you at one or more of these delightful events!

Kate

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Sierra Poetry Festival

April 1

Nevada County Arts Council presents the Sierra Poetry Festival, bringing together an array of local, national and international poets and performers to kick off National Poetry Month. With a keynote address by California’s Poet Laureate Dana Gioia, the day will be filled with readings, open mics, workshops, discussions, parties and youth voices. Featured poets and presenters include:

Al Young  •  Molly Fisk  •  Kazim Ali  • Genny Lim

Charles Entrekin • Gail Rudd Entrekin •  Kirsten Casey  • Mel Pryor

Jahan Khalighi  •  MK Chavez  •  Eve Bradford  •  Gayle Brandeis

Plus

Gene Berson  • Pablo Frasconi  • Sands Hall

Poetry Out Loud Performances & Youth Slam

Cost: $25-$40, free for students with valid ID

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Our Life Stories Conference (Alternate website here)

April 22, 1:00-5:00 pm.

The excellent long-standing cross-generational writers conference sponsored by Hart Senior Center and Cosumnes River College.

May 5-7

View program information and register here.

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Napa Valley Writers’ Conference

July 23-28

2017 Faculty:

• In poetry – Eavan Boland, Jane Hirshfield, Ada Limón, and Matthew Zapruder
• In fiction – Lan Samantha Chang, Peter Ho Davies, Daniel Orozco, and ZZ Packer

Since 1981, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference has provided an opportunity for fellowship and serious work with a focus on craft amidst the hills and vineyards that have made the region famous. The conference is a project of Napa Valley College.

I have been avoiding this blog post. I don’t know why. This is a celebratory post, a post of gratitude for time, transition and transformation.

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Sometimes the hardest part is finding the first word. Sometimes the hardest part is going inward, or going outward. After so much outward, what I crave right now is inward. This blog post is outward, so I have avoided it. This morning, a taught wire of energy presents itself to me, strung between these two modes of being. I pluck it and it offers a first note.

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The first note is tattered pipevine swallowtail.

Touch the string in one place and pluck it again: half-eaten green darner, the second note.

The third: honeybee, pollen baskets full.

Found shells of all sorts and sizes, from sand dollars smaller than dimes to clams wide as the span of my hand.

Sea glass and beach rocks.

Salmon bones and teeth.

Bird’s nest.

These are some of the objects that dot the over-full shelves in my writing room, which is where I write now. The way in is where I am.

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Five years ago, I did not have a writing room. I learned I needed to make this space for myself, and Charlie, my husband, helped me. His office was in the room I wanted, the room I needed, the room with better light and a window that looks out at the street, instead of—like the other spare bedroom—a fence and a wall.

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Most of the objects that dot my shelves also dot my poems. They more than dot my poems; they are many of my poems.

Charlie found most of these, while out on his long runs along the river, and gave them to me. Or he found them when we were walking together, like the beautiful bird’s nest, which I carried home as it teetered on a large slab of flaking tree bark. The bird’s nest is one of my favorite objects, mostly because of its fragrance, which I note in a poem as a combination of black pepper, cinnamon and vanilla. Who wouldn’t want to circle into its fabric of twigs and bird down and sleep and dream?

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Dream.

I am living large parts of mine through the many-faceted gift of teaching creative writing in the community. Teaching keeps me reading and learning from the writers who have come before me, so that I can pass along that magic to my students and incorporate it into my own practice (a first gift); also, my students teach me, both to write better and to live in greater wholeness (a second gift). As I lead and am lead by my students, I become my best self in the classroom: deeply present, aware of my thinking, and choosing to be as open and nonjudgmental as I can. As the only one at the table required—by the Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) approach in which I work—to share her freshly written drafts, in that space I have the strength to open the doors and windows to my deepest fears and loves, as well as to my odd, obsessive thinking, and see what happens when the warm wind of creative expression gusts in and rearranges old wounds and hopes into new feelings and ideas. Other writers at the table can choose to do the same, and through this we all have the chance to experience respect, witnessing, honoring and healing.

It’s this kind of space we need in which to draft, play with, revise and publish our very best writing. Teaching keeps me creating new work (a third gift), and playing with that work, and revising that work and publishing that work alongside my students (a fourth gift), who are also my first readers, my teammates, my friends.

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Five years ago this month, I began teaching my first community creative writing workshop in Sacramento. I taught my first workshop out of fear. I never wanted to run my own business. I didn’t think I knew enough, was accomplished enough, to succeed in running workshops on my own.

But the greatest fear of all was that I would not write, or be around writers, anymore if I did not teach.

I had had, for three years, my dream job. I didn’t know it was my dream job until I had it. I was an arts administrator for UC Davis Extension. I spent my days talking with writers, dancers, filmmakers, painters. Together, we created programs. I learned how to structure coursework in the arts, and how to budget and create marketing plans and plan events and evaluate instruction and instructors. I got to learn from amazing writers at The Tomales Bay Workshops, one of our flagship programs, each year at this time, and I also received an employer-paid week of immersion in the AWA method with its founder, Pat Schneider (and later was given leave to attend AWA affiliate training). Once I learned how to do my job, I realized I had stumbled into my dream job, and the knowledge of the precariousness of my finding of it made me soon realize the precariousness of my having it.

I was hired in March 2008, just as the U.S. economy entered major recession. By 2011, UC Davis Extension was cutting a number of programs that had not, or no longer, paid for themselves. The arts programs had run at a significant deficit for their entire thirty-year existence, but times had changed and the organization determined it could no longer justify the loss.

Though, in 2011, UCDE moved me to another position (for which I remain terribly grateful, and still occupy to this day), this position moved me outside of the arts world and into an entirely different part of academia.

In fall 2011, my position converted entirely to the new role. I panicked. My job, I realized, had conveniently provided for me all the writing community and motivation to write that I needed in my life. Where would I find writing community now? How was one to go about structuring a creative life, when one was now working essentially full-time outside the creative world?

The only thought that made my panic diminish was that of offering my own workshop. With a few student contacts I’d made in a couple of courses I taught in the UCDE writing program, I created my first community workshop. It began October 28, 2011, in the (lovely) home of one of the students.

That workshop fed me as it fed my students.

It saved me.

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Five years of workshops, by the numbers:

• Eight-week workshops: 25 (5 each year) – plus ad hoc one-day workshops here and there
• Individual workshop sessions: More than 200 (and I have repeated material in only a handful of these)
• Hours at the workshop table: More than 500
• Hours preparing for workshop: More than 500
• Alumni: More than 100 (plus another 150 or more from special event workshops)
• Alumni publications: I haven’t formally tracked this, but a quick glance at archived e-newsletters suggests it’s more than two dozen

I look at these numbers and I feel surprised, proud, grateful and—honestly—a little worn out!

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Charlie has a dream, too. For four and a half years of pre-reqs, volunteering, applications and interviews, he has been preparing to return to school for a second bachelor’s degree. His first was in photography, a career field whose technology has changed at an insanely rapid pace and made those very careers much harder to build, especially in smaller cities. His second will be in medical imaging, a field whose technology is also changing, but at a pace that is (conversely) favorable to those just entering the field. To fulfill this dream, Charlie is letting go (for the time being) of many of his great loves: ultrarunning, the river, art photography, and time with me. He is embracing commuting, distance, mental fatigue, and thousands of hand-made flashcards.

In order to support Charlie by working to create as much space as possible, in our life together, for his schooling and career transition, I too am letting go of things I love. I am taking a six-month sabbatical this fall and winter from teaching my weekly workshops. I am embracing cultivating more responsiveness and flexibility in my life, so that I can care for Charlie, and for myself, more attentively in this different time. I am inviting transformation in my writing workshops (I am offering my first monthly workshop beginning this fall, and look for one- and two-day weekend workshops from me in the winter, as well as increased availability for one-on-one work). I am learning to be in solitude more, something I used to fear in some respects and which I now find that I love (and have been needing for a long time). I am devoting this solitude to evening reading, something I was not able to do for several years as a result of a complex of health issues, and to my writing practice as I work through a deep revision of my book-length poetry manuscript, with the intention of submitting it for publication in the coming months.

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Charlie’s dream, by the numbers:

• Years of school: 2 (year-round)
• Estimated miles he will drive: 52,000
• Estimated hours he will spend in class, in clinicals and studying: 7,000+
• Bones in the body he will learn to image: All 206 of them

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Charlie won’t be bringing me objects from the river anymore. Our world is changing. I will have to find new objects and share them with him. Perhaps he will bring me objects from the new paths he is traveling, through classrooms and labs and hospitals. Already he is bringing me intellectual artifacts from his classes in radiation physics and the history of X-ray technology. Together, we are learning a new language for the body, and new ways of living with and loving each other in the midst of change and distance.

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This fall, I am thrilled to be celebrating this five year milestone, even as my life changes again. Without the commitment of my fellow writers and students, and the love and support of Charlie many others in my family and friend circles, my workshops and this moment would not exist. I can’t wait to see what the next five years bring!

Thank you~

Dear Writers and Readers,

I have embarked on two new projects! The first is an interview project, designed to help us get to know our regional writers and writers who are friends of our region better; interviews will be posted here, at Kate’s Miscellany (the first is below!). The second is a pop-up guest writers series!

Both launch this month as I welcome Kate Carroll de Gutes, whose debut essay collection, Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, won the Oregon Book Award for creative nonfiction and is also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award! Read on for (first) the event information, and (second) the first of my new interview series, in which Kate graciously participated!

June 17: Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear: Reading and Q&A with Kate Carroll de Gutes (& Social! & Book Exchange!) ~ FREE

Friday, June 17 at 7 PM – 9 PM

Studio J ~ Midtown, Sacramento (RSVP to receive address and parking info)

Join the Facebook event or email me at kate @ kateasche (dot) com to RSVP and for additional details! The critical info is:

Bring Books to Give Away! Bring Food/Drink to Share! Join Kate Asche as she hosts award-winning creative nonfiction writer Kate Carroll de Gutes for a smorgasboard of literary delights! Appetizer: Potluck munchies and mingling. First Course: de Gutes reads from her debut essay collection, Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear. Entree: Who doesn’t love a good Q&A? Ask de Gutes anything you want about writing, process and the writing life! Dessert: Book sales, signing and chatting with the two Kates, writerly fellowship and fun, and…drum roll, please…the *BOOK EXCHANGE*!

Yes, that’s right, step right up and pour your used books, your forgotten books, the books you said you would read and never did, the books you never wanted that people gave you…all these and more, pour them right out on the big table with everyone else’s. Then? Jump in and find some new treasures! All books left behind at the end of the night will be collected by Kate (Asche) and donated to the Friends of the Rancho Cordova Branch of the Sacramento Public Library (Kate’s home branch).

 

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Meet The Writers of Our Neighborhood: Occasional Interviews with Sacramento Valley Writers (and Writers who are Friends of the Sacramento Valley!)

Using questions developed by a group of Kate’s students, these interviews aim to connect writers at all stages in their practice. The first five questions will always be the same, and the sixth question–a “wild card”–will always be different. In this first interview, Kate (Asche) gets personal with Kate (Carrol DeGutes). Enjoy!

How did you begin writing? 

I’ve always written as a means of self expression.  In fact, I can’t remember not writing.  But I did get an undergrad degree in writing, worked on my college newspaper, and, after graduation, took a job as a feature writer for a Seattle-based magazine.  I took a few years off to work in corporate America (salary won out) and then spent five years in the late 80s and early 90s running my own espresso bar, but even then I continued working on essays. In the mid-90s I began freelancing, writing for the tech industry.  Interestingly enough, I don’t really consider that “real” writing.  I call it “paid work” but it doesn’t feed my soul like essay writing does.  I’ve been doing it 20 years now and I have a great deal of freedom and a nice stable of clients, but it is sucking the life force out of my own creative work, so some time in the next two years I’m planning to transition to a different job.  I’m just not sure *what* that job might be.

Describe your writing process. 

Well, it’s changing.  I used to write in the morning before work, but now I’ve got a new client and I’ve got an early morning meeting 5 days a week–and once I’m at my desk for paid work, it’s very hard to get away.  Now, I’m trying to take time every Saturday and Sunday afternoon to work on writing and at least one evening a week.  It’s working right now because I’m single, but I can imagine this dance would be difficult to do if I had a partner.

What are the easiest and hardest things about writing?

The easiest thing is the writing itself.  Really.  The hardest thing is getting my backside in the chair and doing the writing.  I like to say that I procrasti-clean before writing.  You know, do every single dish, make sure the grout on the counters is clean, sweep and vacuum.  Basically, any way I can procrastinate to keep from writing.  In fact, I’m late getting this to you because I just had to fold some laundry.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Stop trying to hit it out of the park every time you sit down to write.  My friend, the poet David Biespiel, makes an analogy to baseball.  He says, if a player is hitting .356 he’s a star.  What that means is 35% of the time he’s hitting the ball and making a base (and not necessarily even a home run).  But writers, we like to think we should write a “perfect” draft each time we put pen to paper.  But that’s impossible.  You have to write a lot of crap to get to a good draft — and there’s no such thing as perfect, there’s just the latest iteration (h/t to Fred Mills for that one).  So, stop taking yourself so seriously.  Play around.  Practice.  Hit some foul balls. Strike out.  The more you’re willing to do this, the better you’ll get.

What books have you read recently?

I’ve got three books going right now.  Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic” which I am loving because it’s full of practical advice on how to be creative in a world that doesn’t necessarily value creativity.  I’m also reading “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield — again about all the ways we distract ourselves from creating (are you sensing a theme here).  Finally, I’m reading some fiction because everyone needs a good escape: “The Amateur Marriage” by Anne Tyler

Describe your ideal writing day. 

Coffee and the New York Times to wake up my brain.  A few hours of early morning work, then a bike ride and lunch, then a few hours of afternoon reading, finally dinner and then two or three more hours of early evening writing.  I think good writers are always good readers, so I try to make time for that every day and my ideal day would include at least 3 hours of it.

Writers and lovers of good writing, don’t miss these wonderful upcoming conferences and festivals! I’d like to highlight new additions to my annual listing. These are Writing by Writers at Tomales Bay and at Lake Tahoe (listed at bottom because they are in the fall, but do note spring application deadline for scholarships to Tomales), WordSpring at Butte College, the Sacramento Black Book Fair, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference and the Suprise Valley Writers Conference.

Please note I have also given these listings a permanent home on my website on the Resources page so you can access them anytime!

I can’t wait to see you at one of more of these truly wonderful events for writers and readers. If you know of a conference you’d like to see added, please write me at kate (at) kateasche (dot) com and give me all the details, including the website URL, and I will add it if it seems appropriate (and when I can).

Happy writing this spring!

Love,

Kate

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The excellent long-standing cross-generational writers conference sponsored by Hart Senior Center and Cosumnes River College.

April 29-May 1, 2016

View program information and register here.

Squaw Valley Community of Writers

Poetry: June 18-25, 2016

Prose: July 25-August 1, 2016

Portions of the program are open to the public.

The Community of Writers was established in 1969 by novelists Blair Fuller and Oakley Hall, who were both residents of the valley. It was originally staffed by a band of San Francisco writers including David Perlman, Walter Ballenger, Barnaby Conrad and John Leggett, the latter two of whom went on to found, respectively, the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and the Napa Valley Writers Conference. The Community of Writers continues to be directed by Brett Jones.

Over the years the community has mounted workshops in Fiction, Nonfiction, Screenwriting, Playwriting, Poetry, and Nature Writing (the Art of the Wild, co-produced by Jack Hicks and University of California at Davis), and Writing the Medical Experience directed by David Watts. Lisa Alvarez and Louis B. Jones now co-direct the Fiction Program and Michael Carlisle directs the nonfiction Program of the Writers Workshop, which were for twenty years directed by Carolyn Doty. Galway Kinnell directed the Poetry Program for 17 years and Robert Hass has directed it since 2004. Diana Fuller directs the Screenwriters Workshop, founded in 1974 by screenwriters Tom Rickman and Gill Dennis.

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Tahoe WordWave

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I am so excited to see many Sacramento Valley writers and friends from the wider region preparing to attend the annual Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Los Angeles March 31-April 2 this year!

Below, you’ll find the list of events in which I am participating (plus some that I am tracking for the common good), and I would love to see you at any/all of these!

And here I offer some thoughts and advice for anyone attending for the first time:

• AWP is insanely huge. With over 12,00 participants, 800 organizations, 500 panels/readings/craft talks plus countless offsite events (What are those? Read on!), you will feel thrilled, overwhelmed, anxious, excited, happy, sublimely intelligent, utterly stupid, super cool, super un-cool, and–most certainly of all–exhausted and exhilarated during this event (and often all at the same time!). Come ready to embrace the craziness.
• The key to AWP happiness is to LIMIT YOURSELF. List out everything you want to do–all the panels, all the booths you want to hit, all the offsites (Trust me, read on for these!), all the individuals you want to try to run into, have coffee with, etc. Then cut out half. Then cut out half again. Now you have a list that might be doable without certain death-by-overwhelm! Or, an alternate approach: Spend one day in the book fair, one day wandering the panels, and one day wandering offsites. Or: Just show up and see what seems right in the moment to do, and go with it.
• Eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. Drink lots of water. Go easy on the caffeine, and on the alcohol. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. The convention center turns into the ninth circle of hell when you blood sugar plummets, your heart races from that “treat” of a quad latte, and/or your brain says “Goodnight! I’m going to sleep now!” after your third Scotch in the conference hotel bar where you have been waiting for an hour to meet [insert famous writer] and express your undying artistic crush. Trust me. I am a chronic over-doer, and events like this just set that part of me spinning at about a milling RPM. Treat your body and nervous system with some intentional TLC and you’ll have so much more fun!
• Need a place to call home during the conference? You are invited anytime to swing by the Sacramento Poetry Center/Under the Gum Tree booth, number 621, in the Bookfair where you will be greeted with joy. We are all veteran AWP’ers, so come with your embarrassing questions, your victories and defeats, and your fangirl/fanguy freak-out moments. We will be all smiles!
• The Bookfair: Yes, it’s HUGE! One year, I spent almost the entire conference going table to table–yes, to every single table in the bookfair–to really learn the landscape of literary publishing in the USA today. And I still felt rushed. The Bookfair is a great place to quickly say hi to many of your favorite all star writers, and also to connect in person with orgs that have supported your work. Here are the main strategies for the Bookfair that have worked for me: First, go to the orgs that have published your work recently and thank them again for all they do. Then: (1) Pick an interest and list out/wander and look for orgs that connect with that interest; for two years ago, I went to every org that published chapbooks. Last year, I went to all the poetry publishers that run prestigious first book contests. (2) Visit only the literary journals. I did this three years ago, and it was so helpful in upping my submitting game. (3) Check out your bookshelves. What presses seem to be consistently publishing some of your favorite books? Look for them in the bookfair. Connet. (4) Wander and see who or what catches your eye. 
• Okay, so, Offsite events: These are where the good times really roll. Both Under the Gum Tree and Sacramento Poetry Center are hosting offsites. See below for details! And see the conference website for listings.
• Spend an afternoon on the AWP website where you can view the official conference schedule, offsite event listings and download the conference app to your phone. I used the app last year and, while it’s not perfect, I really found it helpful! You can use the schedule on the website or the app to select events into a convenient personal calendar list. In the app, you can make notes about things to remember for when you go to each event. You can also select booths to visit from the list of Bookfair exhibitors and make notes about what to do when you visit them. And, you can add your own to-do’s with notes. You can set calendar alerts, etc. This all–for me, at least–helps combat the overwhelm…

At the end of the day, with AWP, it’s important to be honest with yourself about what you want out of the conference. Don’t try to do what the trendy things are, because it’s all trendy and it’s all completely not trendy, depending on who you are. Focus less on what you feel you should do and instead on what you want to do. What will bring you the most joy in this short time with many of the best writers, publishers, editors, universities and community organizations in our country today? Answer that question as best you can. And then go, and do!

Okay, here are some of the events I am tracking. I hope to see you at one or more of these!

xoxo until L.A.,

Kate

**

Thursday AM: R139: Join Kate at The Chapbook Across Genres (Moderated by Yours Truly!)

Robert Muroff Bookfair Stage, LA Convention Center, Exhibit Hall Level One
10:30 am to 11:45 am

 

Dearest Writers,

 

As this year ends and we think about our schedules for next year, where can we go to find out about literary events?

 

A number of people have reached out to me recently, saying something akin to: “I used to write poetry [or genre of choice]. I haven’t done it in years. Your launch reading [last month, for Our Day in the Labyrinth–video coming soon!] made me want to dust off my journals, start writing again, and get out to readings. But where do I start, to find out about literary events in Sacramento?” What wondrous music to my ears!

 

In an effort to support the folks who have been inspired, through whatever experience, to return to/continue with their writing, and who have contacted me for resources–and to support you, dear reader!–I share the following short list. Disclaimers: This was assembled quickly, in a season in which I am still recovering my energy, and is thereby necessarily limited. If I am missing a key clearinghouse of literary events and resources in town, please email me at kate (at) kateasche (dot) com and let me know! (Please note: The poetry venues listed below also often list fiction and nonfiction events and series, as well.)

 

Enjoy, and Happy Holidays!

Kate

 

Some Literary Event Calendars for Sacramento/The Valley/Northern California

• Perhaps the most comprehensive calendar is Rebecca Morrision’s Eskimo Pie – thank you for the energy you give in curating this, Rebecca!
• Sacramento Poetry Center‘s website – and the weekly emails Tim Kahl sends tirelessly, 50+ weeks per year
• Kathy Keith over at Medusa’s Kitchen has a great listing of recurring events
• Poetry in Davis offers a nice list of regular series
• Of course Poetry Flash offers a great calendar covering the Bay and Northern California
• Sacramento365.com is a good resource
• Shut Up & Write! – Sacramento is a another great place to meet writers of all genres “on the ground” and plug in that way…
• …and so is Writers Who Wine as well as the many other wonderful Facebook groups for writers (Sacramento Poetry Center, Poetry in Davis, etc.)

The Writing By Writers Conference at Tomales Bay (October 2015) was a fantastic five days of writing, learning, and working (and playing!) in community with dozens of amazing writers. Here, I share a bit of the participant experience and, mostly, as many of my notes as I could manage from my time working with Mark Doty! Enjoy. ~Kate

 

21 October 2015

 

Hello, Friend!

 

Well, I’m here. Both elated and exhausted. You, too, must know how hard it is to disengage from the ever-turning wheel of (more than) full time job-work and life-work and give yourself time—real, deep time—to do the creative work that makes you most alive: thinking, writing, wondering. Moodling, as Brenda Ueland called it. That’s what I’ve come here to do, a bit. I’ve also come to feed myself with new ideas—to over-feed, really, as though to pack these morsels away in my imagination so that they burn slowly and light my thinking and my drafts in the winter days to come. That this special time comes to me as a gift, in the form of a fellowship award, allows me some relief of daily anxieties to feel into the days that stretch before me here, days that are essential, longed for, rimmed in golden October water-light.

 

We gathered in Mark Doty’s workshop for the first time this evening, before dinner. I will be drafting new work in this generative workshop alongside fourteen other writers. We introduced ourselves. Mark asked us to say our names, and then to name one of our struggles as writers. So we shared our fears of not being good enough, of not knowing how to start (or how to end), of the thrill of finishing the first, horribly messy draft and the terror of going back into that mess. The perplexing challenging of thinking a piece is done, of having published it, even, perhaps, and then feeling a shift in our work and the desire to go back into that old piece and make it better—but how to find the way back in? We talked about our desire for more surprise in our work as well as our anxiety about exposure. Mark offered that when we write, “we confide in no one in particular but someone very attentive. If we aren’t fearing some exposure, we aren’t risking enough. The writer’s challenge is how to embrace what you are—and be good at it.”

 

Mark interwove short meditations on the practice of writing as we responded to each other’ shared our struggles. He offered different ways of seeing some common struggles. Arc, he said, doesn’t have to be so forward-moving. Arc can be simply a traveling. Arc is built out of the “technology of shift,” he said. You could see your material as a crystal, he offered, a faceted crystal, where the view in each facet offers a different way of seeing meaning. You can that crystal forever, he said. Arc is how the turning starts, how it progresses, and how it stops. Creating is an obsessive act. “You go into a private place,” Mark said, “and make an order you can bear. We writers create out of the commonest material there is. Language is shared. It has history, context…Your words are never entirely yours. Language is always in motion between people.”

 

We received our first reading assignment—an essay by Joni Tevis about the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose—and trundled up the many hills to dinner.

 

The first day finished with an evening reading by Mark Doty of work from his newest book, Deep Lane. And cake. And then lights blinking on in all the sleeping rooms and no one sleeping, just yet, but reading, writing, thinking. Moodling. Making new friends with roommates. Burning with the bright energy of being here.

 

More to come,

Kate

 

*

 

22 October 2015

 

Hello Dear One,

 

It was hard to sleep last night. I was so excited to be here! And to see what I would write today.

 

I woke up before sunrise, dressed quietly and slipped out into the chill morning. There is a small yoga room at the Marconi Center and I have brought my mat with me. I turned the lights on very low and opened one of the sliders onto the deck so that the scents of pine, brine and hillside cattle could drift in. I had the place to myself for a while, and then some others trickled in. I worked into my daily core and back strengthening exercises and through the stretches I learned most recently at physical therapy. Then I rolled back into savasana and did a simple breathing meditation for ten minutes. It felt good to limber up before an intense three-hour morning writing workshop.

 

I am not always good at managing time when I perform self-care like yoga, exercise and meditation…it’s hard for me to give myself permission for self-care, and then when I do make time for it, it feels so good that I struggle to go back to whatever I was doing that seemed so important—in this case, showering, which I skipped. I missed breakfast at the dining room, too, instead cramming a container of trail mix into the Writing by Writers shoulder bag and stuffing my mouth with some peanut butter pretzels I keep, hush-hush, in my room. After pouring hot water over the lavender red tea bag in my new WXW travel mug, I laced up my shoes and dashed out the door.

 

The gravel trails at the Marconi Center are nicely groomed but still a bit steep in places, so I walked as fast as I could. As I rounded a small switchback, I was relieved to see Mark striding down the path with one of the porcelain mugs from the dining room in hand, steaming—I would not be late now! I slowed my pace and we chatted a little about how delighted we were to be starting our day in such a beautiful place.

 

In workshop, we discussed the assigned reading. We talked about how, if we can push ideas of category and genre aside for a while when we’re drafting, interesting things can happen. In the Tevis essay, we saw how form and content were the same. We saw how the essay was both about a specific person’s unusual creative practices and simultaneously about creative practice at the conceptual level. We talked about recurrence, about repetition with variation. Then it was time to begin drafting.

 

But our first act of pen to paper in our drafting was not to draw words, but rather, to draw. We drew—mapped—a place that mattered to us. I drew mine first as a map, from a birds-eye view, and then as I remembered it, as though I were still standing on the point in that moment nine years ago, looking west into the setting sun. Mark called time.

 

Oh goody, I thought. Now we’ll write!

 

We did—sort of. Mark had us do a brainstorm, a simple list or cloud of words and phrases that occurred to us as we held that place in our minds. Include everything, he said. Do not self-edit.

 

To be honest, I felt a tinge of irritation. I’ve already mapped my place, I thought. I just want to write now! But: I came here to be in the passenger seat, to be in beginner’s mind, to be lead by Mark and my classmates into a place in my own practice. So I exhaled, probably clenching my teeth, and did what I was told.

 

And I am so glad I did! Without the brainstorm, I am not sure I would have began where, or perhaps how, I did in the piece that came onto the page this morning. And that starting place—a place of emotional and imaginative inquiry, of wanting to examine and ponder instead of figure out (my usual stance)—made all the difference. The rule Mark gave us when we finally did write (to draft it in present tense) may have helped, too. Mark suggests that present tense keeps us closer to the body and therefore provides a great composing process, even if the piece changes tenses during iteration and revision. Going into the senses takes the writer away from pre-formed ideas about the material and into a zone where surprise can emerge. Also, by getting closer to the body, layers of time and layers of apprehension come to coexist in the same space more freely—and this, Mark says, makes writing feel real.

 

We left class this morning with another reading assignment, a short story by Elizabeth Bishop, and a homework writing assignment. I practically ran up the hill to lunch, I was so hungry, and then I skipped the post-lunch panel to prepare for my part in the fellowship winner reading later in the afternoon. It was such a thrill to read from my new chapbook, Our Day in the Labyrinth, among beloved friends and in this place, and with people like Pam Houston, who have been such an important part of my continuously developing practice as a writer.

 

As we all filed out of the fellowship reading for a short break before dinner, the writer Steve Almond, one of the conference faculty, stopped me to say that he liked what I read—which made me *so* happy, because I love Steve’s writing! I have read and taught (or taught from) a number of his craft essays, and I recently enjoyed his newest short story collection, My Life in Heavy Metal, on Audible—Steve reads it himself and does a great job! We walked slowly up the hill and talked about independent teaching and process and the need for more authentic love and empathy in the world. I gave Steve a copy of my chapbook and was able to snag one of his DIY books (“my drug-deal books,” Steve calls them), a charming little back-to-back of two books under one cover, one a collection of short/flash fiction, the other a mini-collection of short craft essays.

 

It was a true delight to connect with Steve—and to enjoy, an hour later, dinner with him and two of my fellow Davis alums, Melanie Thorne (author of the novel Hand Me Down) and Alex Russell, fiction writer and leader of a unique creative writing program, with support from Sacramento Poetry Center, for at-risk youth. We talked marriage and kids (Melanie and I are kidless, Alex has an 18-month [-ish] old, and Steve has three kids) and art-making and getting by and vegetarianism and corn allergies and sourdough bread making. Mostly we just laughed.

 

And then we traipsed back down the two hills to the main hall where Greg Glazner read what I thought was a killer selection of new poems rooted in history, family and water (the lack thereof, then and now) followed by an insanely funny essay about taking a fly ball to the…yeah…at a River Cats game. Then Lidia Yuknavitch read a new essay, “Woven,” that knocked all our socks off. I hadn’t been sold on Lidia’s work when I arrived at the conference—I’d only read her newest book, On the Small Backs of Children, without knowing much about her or her previous work. I didn’t love it (that’s for another discussion), but man, I was hook-line-and-sinker into “Woven.” I bought Chronology of Water—which folks in the know say I should have read first—and am thirty pages in and really like it. Perhaps it will change my perspective on Small Backs, and if it does, that raises other interesting aesthetic questions…again, for another time!

 

Then it was dessert and back up the hill and reading and writing by flashlight until I fell asleep.

 

Ciao for now—

Kate

 

*

 

23 October 2015

 

Hi Darlin’—

 

I don’t know what did it, but I slept like a baby last night. And I needed it, too! I skipped yoga and exercises and stretching and meditating this morning because I overslept a little. I still missed breakfast! My mind started wandering into and around my draft as soon as I woke up. What a treat, to be able to let it.

 

In class today, Mark talked about inviting formal and rhetorical shifts like those we see in the Bishop story (changes in point of view and mode of address, word play, radical tone and tense shifts, etc.) into our own work, and then using these moments as points of departure into deeper engagement with our material.

 

We did some more in-class writing with this in mind and then discussed our experiences. Some of the thoughts that came up:

 

Authority rises out of acknowledging what is excluded. The more you know about your material, the better. Why you know and don’t ultimately include certain elements pressurizes the writing in a powerful way.

 

When you are drafting new work, suspend your will to achieve closure and your desire to please an audience.

 

Sometimes we keep ourselves from knowing things. Sometimes we need to write away from things to write back into them. Sometimes putting a draft away for awhile allows us to shift our perspective on the material enough to see what it’s really about.

 

When we change tense in our drafting, we change our relationship to the perception of knowledge. This is also true of point of view shifts.

 

Emotions and experience are marbled. They are never just one thing.

 

Many of these ideas recurred in today’s afternoon panel, the basic topic of which was how to make language from experiences that feel beyond our outside language. Mark said these spaces are “breaches into which knowledge other than language can enter. The poetic spirit is to give voice to an in the silence. Poetry draws a circle around these open spaces so people can see within them.”

 

After the panel, we had some free time, which I spent working on one of my email newsletters and walking up on the highest hill, where I could enjoy the view and get a few phone calls out at the same time. And then I just stayed up there for a while and listed to the cows lowing and rested my eyes on the rings in the tree trunks used as part of the old Marconi Station structure and…moodled. The evening closed with a hilarious reading by Steve Almond and new work read by Dorothy Allison.

 

And then it was back to our rooms for more reading assignments (ours, this time: Terry Tempest Williams) and writing assignments. Though it’s probably not prudent all the time, there is a certain seductive, electrical energy I am feeling from staying up an hour or two past my usual bedtime to read and write.

 

Until tomorrow,

Kate

 

*

24 October 2015

 

Hello, Fellow Word Artist:

 

Started this morning with the health routine again. It felt good to get back to it. I needed to ready myself; today will be a long day, and tonight, I suspect, I may stay up very late, as it will be my last chance to do so in this cocoon of gorgeous land and light and every-meal-is-prepared-by-someone-else-and-even-my-bed-gets-magically-made-while-I-am-in-workshop-ness.

 

All of us in Mark’s class have several pages of new words at this point. Mark took a few minutes at the beginning of class to talk about “patience in waiting for meaning to emerge. One wants to preserve in the work a feeling of spontaneous speech. Allow evidence of the process of coming to knowledge remain in the text.” Over time, he told us, as a piece “becomes less for you, you can see what’s needed and not needed for the reader” and make revisions based on this. Mark is continually revising. Even books that have been out for twenty years appear, when they are reprinted, with slight variations. A word may be struck for a decade and then reappear in a later edition. Even when he reads from his newest book, he’s still fiddling with it. This felt very freeing for me, a perfectionist!

 

We discussed the night’s reading and then used techniques we drew out of it to do some more writing in class. We went (up the hills) to lunch. We went (down the hills again) to the main hall for readings by Naomi Williams and UC Davis Director of Creative Writing, Lucy Corin. (At her reading, Lucy made a comment about “organizing meaning versus distributing it” and this connected to much of what we’d been discussing in class.) And then we walked out on the patio and ate oysters (so many oysters!) and drank chilled white wines and looked at the sun on the water between the trees and talked. We snapped photos (the one above: a crew of UC Davis MA program alums from across the years, with Pam Houston and Lucy Corin). And then there was music coming from inside the hall—Greg Glazner and one of his bands—and soon we were dancing and singing along. And when we were laughing and thirsty and all sweating a little, the band quieted down and Pam Houston read us the opening to her book-in-progress, a piece about her beloved ranch in the High San Juan Mountains in Colorado (a place I have been) and about how we make place and how place makes us. (For those lucky enough to have been at last month’s TrueStory reading in Sacramento, you heard this same lovely piece. It was just as good the second time!)

 

And then the sun dipped low and we walked on hot tired feet (up the hills) to dinner, which was loud and raucous even though some folks trekked into Point Reyes Station to eat—all of us now so friendly and goofy with each other.

 

And then? You guessed it—back down the hills, this time for the open mic reading and hot cocoa in the main hall. And the open mic rocked. I think it went on for an hour and a half, maybe a little more. Almost everyone—maybe, in fact, everyone—came, including the conference faculty, and no one left early. Everyone got cheered on the walk to and back from the podium. Everyone who wished to be was heard. Witnessed in the practice of writing, of being a writer.

 

And here I am now, (up the very same hills) in my room, finishing the last reading assignment (Anne Carson) and at last transcribing my seven longhand pages into my laptop, and starting to move the parts around. I have to distill what turns out to be about four and a half typed pages to no more than two pages to read in class tomorrow. Ah, cutting. It’s by your sharp edges that I know Mark has walked as around a corner in the composing process: from generating, adding, asking into a different kind of asking that operates through shaping, condensing, stripping away.

 

It will be some time before I go to sleep.

 

So for now, I must bid goodnight,

Kate

 

*

25 October 2015

 

Good Morning, Friend,

 

Workshop has just finished and the clock is about to strike noon. We spent this morning, three hours, sharing the drafts we wrote and wrote and wrote, and—last night—began to revise. Almost all of us chose to share. Hearing fourteen strong and true drafts…nothing inspires me to keep writing, keep teaching writing, like that.

 

Okay, almost nothing. You know what else is driving me, today, hard and fast into the future of my writing practice? What Mark has taught us.

 

I did not come to Writing by Writers at Tomales Bay expecting any particular thing in Mark’s workshop; I simply love his writing (I love it so much I am continuously teaching it, in whole and in part) and I knew whatever he was selling, I wanted that. But as I think back now, I see I did have an expectation: I thought he’d create a space in which we’d draft new work, and that I’d come away with a handful of new drafts to keep working on when I got home. And he did give us that—we wrote, and I have an exciting draft to keep playing with.

 

What I got on top of all that, and for which I am so grateful to Mark Doty (that’s him and me in a fangirl snapshot up there!): A fundamental transformation of my thinking about what drafting new work is. About what the process is. About what it means to really explore and more concrete ways for doing so. I am more aware now of how I rush to close down my drafts—the first potential meaning glitters in them, and I start chasing that thing, and I chase it down and down the page even as I write the piece for the first time. You see, I want so badly to know what it all means.

 

Some of my drafts have surprised me in the last year or two. I could not before name why. And now, I can: The pieces I have written most recently often have not followed this path of progression through limitation while I draft their first versions. Instead, I have written them laterally, if you will, and through that lateral movement, found other sources of propulsion and other places toward which to race in and through them in their initial formation. In other words, my work surprised me, and gave me a hunger for more of that surprise.

 

Pam wrote about how we make place and place makes us. The same thing can be said about us and our work. This is not a new idea. It’s one I revisit now because this shift in my understanding of drafting also offers me, Kate Asche the person, another opportunity to remake my way of assembling meaning in all aspects of life.

 

During the Friday afternoon panel, I wrote a note in my journal that’s not totally legible. I was trying to capture something Mark Doty said. Something like, “Beauty is what we wish for and what we are and what is in between.” Elsewhere in the panel he said, “How can you become the person who can write this thing?”

 

That’s what I’m chasing how: How to become, to be continually becoming, the person who can write work that surprises me more and more.

 

The person who can live her life that way.

 

I’ll be home soon. Much love,

Kate

 

 

 

Friends and Writers,

I hope these beautiful fall breezes are stirring your imagination for autumnal writing. I can’t wait for this fall, which is–for me–going to be a whirlwind (to continue with weather references) of lit mag submitting and chapbook readings and celebrations.

I’d love for you to join me in this fun!

First up: Saturday, September 19, join me at Studio J in Midtown Sacramento for a Sub Party! Only $40 gets you fun, friends working alongside you, and frank answers from Janna and me to any and all your submitting/publishing questions! More info here!

Next, mark your calendar for the launch reading and party (emphasis on party) for my first poetry collection, the chapbook Our Day in the Labyrinth, on Friday, November 6! You won’t want to miss this delightful evening featuring an unconventional reading with performances by four other terrific, beloved local poets, plus other surprises…

Below, I include highlights from my still-evolving fall and winter mini-tour of readings and talks. Updates will appear regularly on kateasche.com/readings-events/.

I look forward to being with you in and around writing this fall!

xoxo

Kate

**

Join Kate this fall and winter as she celebrates the release of her first poetry collection, the chapbook Our Day in the Labyrinth, with a series of readings, events and other appearances!

Don’t miss the launch party for

Our Day in the Labyrinth!

Friday, November 6 ~ 7:30 p.m.

Sacramento Poetry Center (25th and R)

Join Kate and her friends and family, mentors and students, and other loved ones from our area writing community for an evening of poems, book sales and signings, and–mostly–snacks and sweets, drinks, and fellowship! There will be surprises. Don’t miss it!

 

---

Other Fall 2015/Winter 2016 Readings & Events

 

Sunday, October 18, 2015 ~ Coffee & Poets ~ 5:00 p.m. @ Naked Lounge (11th & H) in Sacramento

Kate will interview poet, translator and novelist William O’Daly on this innovative podcast produced by NSAA. Join in the conversation! Listen to archived episodes here and here.

~

Thursday, October 22, 2015 ~ Fellowship Winners’ Reading at Writing X Writers at Tomales Bay ~ 3:45 – 5:30 p.m. @ Buck Hall

Open to the public. Reading takes place at the Marconi Conference Center, in Buck Hall. Email Kate at kate (at) kateasche (dot) com in advance if you plan to come, and she can give you info on parking, etc.

~

Friday, November 6, 2015 ~ LAUNCH PARTY!! See the red text above for details!

~

Tuesday, January 12, 2016 ~ Barkin’ Dog Poetry Reading Series ~ 6:00 p.m. @ the Barkin’ Dog Grill in Modesto

Kate will read with another poet (TBA) at this delightful series curated by Gillian Wegener

~

Sunday, January 24, 2016 ~ Mosaic of Voices ~ 2:00 p.m. @ Avid Reader at Tower in Sacramento

Kate will read with Sacramento Poet Laureate Jeff Knorr at this much-loved series curated by Nancy Aide Gonzalez.

~

TBA: Reading at Why There Are Words ~ Second Thursdays ~ 7:00 p.m. @ Studio 333 in Sausalito

~

TBA: Reading at Poetry Night in Davis ~ First and Third Thursdays ~ 8:00 p.m. @ John Natsoulas Gallery