Writing Life Archives - Page 7 of 9

November 9, 2016October 5, 2023

Melrose Bellow: An eclectic literary night in Hollywood 11/12

On the heels of Lit Crawl LA comes a brand new night of literary fun. On Sat., Nov. 12, Melrose Bellow will bring stand-up comedy, poetry, live music, and stories about everything from the desert to the sea to venues up and down Melrose Avenue.

Organized by Conrad Romo — best known as the guy behind the long-running Tongue & Groove reading series — Melrose Bellow features two rounds of pre-event happenings from 5 pm to 7 pm. Pick from a NaNoWrimo meetup, a block carving workshop, and an interactive poetry-improv hybrid performance.

Then comes the main event: two rounds of literary events, with a half dozen different happenings to pick from for each round. Here are my picks for each round:

Round 1 at 7 pm: Story Salon and the Mean Kind at Debonair, 7364 Melrose Ave.

Apparently Story Salon is LA’s longest running storytelling venue — How have I never heard of this series? — and The Mean Kind is a group of writers with ties to the South. Brandon Jordan Brown, Rachel McLeod Kaminer, and Chris L. Terry will read — Their work may or may not be about the South.

Round 2 at 8 pm: The Nervous Breakdown at Debonair, 7364 Melrose Ave.

Online lit zine The Nervous Breakdown will feature readings from Steve Abee, Dennis Cruz, and Milo Martin.

Other events include Rogue Machine Theatre’s Rant & Rave, a Women of the Rumpus reading, a Stand Up Bus featuring an open mic, and of course, a Tongue and Groove reading. Check the Melrose Bellow website for the full schedule.

Earlier: 7 big annual literary events in Los Angeles to put on your calendar now

October 28, 2016October 6, 2023

Best coffee shop in Los Angeles for writers who love butter

You love writing in coffee shops. But you don’t love the constant temptation of pastries and sugary frappes at said coffee shops. If you’re on a paleo, ketogenic, whole food diet — or are just trying to eat less sugar and processed foods in general — take your novel-in-progress to Bulletproof Coffee, where the brew is buttery and the food sugar-free.

The bulletproof diet has a growing fandom (as well as detractors), who swear on its high fat, lower carb way of eating — with an emphasis on healthy ingredients and upgraded supplements — for everything from weight loss to mental clarity to serious productivity. At the heart of this diet is bulletproof coffee — clean coffee blended with grass-fed butter and MCT oil — which many diet adherents drink in lieu of eating breakfast.

I’m one of these bulletproof coffee drinkers on some days. Buttery coffee is yummy, and the stuff really does give you a focus that lasts for hours! If you’ve never tried MCT oil before though, I’d recommend getting a small and maybe not drinking the whole cup. Otherwise you might get super jittery!

The Venice coffee shop also have a full menu of high quality foods. We’re talking grass-fed meats and fats, pasture-raised organic eggs, and organic, local veggies. Here’s the delicious steak and eggs breakfast I enjoyed this morning:

Then I sat down at the communal table and started writing with fellow bulletproofers. There’s indoor and outdoor seating and speedy wifi. One wall of the coffee shop features shelves full of upgraded whey protein and collagelatin and other bulletproof diet products — as well as The Bulletproof Diet book and cookbook for newbies to browse through and buy.

There’s a cafe in the Arts District of Los Angeles too. I think this one just serves drinks, though I haven’t been to that location yet. Stop by and see if bulletproof coffee helps you focus on your writing —

Bulletproof Coffee. Santa Monica: 3110 Main St. #116. LA Arts District: 300 S Santa Fe Ave.

October 17, 2016October 6, 2023

Lit Crawl LA: A Night of literary happenings in North Hollywood

Lit Crawl Los Angeles NoHo Arts District

Clear your schedule for next Wednesday night! Lit Crawl LA returns Wed., Oct. 26, turning the North Hollywood Arts District into the hub of Literary LA with irreverent readings and other fun events happening in local dive bars, fancy theaters, and other interesting spots.

The night’s set up so that each of the three hours of the night, a dozen or so events happen concurrently, with a few minutes in between each hour to let crawlers get to their next event. All the events are free! Unfortunately as of this writing the Lit Crawl LA website hasn’t updated the schedule for the night. But the Facebook invites have gone out — so here are the three events I recommend you crawl to!

Round 1 at 7 pm: The Rejection Game at The Eclectic Wine Bar & Lounge, 5156 Lankershim Blvd, North Hollywood.

Okay — I picked this event mainly because I’m in it — and also because it should be a fun time! Organized by Women Who Submit — a lit org that encourages women to submit to lit journals more frequently and tenaciously — this reading will “celebrate the work that has been rejected time and again, but that we still believe in.”

Come hear me, Rachael Warecki, Tammy Delatorre, Ryane Nicole Granados, Stephanie Abraham, and Kate Maruyama. Poet Lauren Eggert-Crowe will host!

Round 2 at 8 pm: The Literary Dating Game at the Kahuna Tiki, 11026 Magnolia Blvd, North Hollywood.

One brave creative-nonfiction-writing bachelorette called Brandi Neal has agreed to let three brave souls compete for a chance to take her out on a date! Organized by PEN Center USA, the event promises a “stellar host, a stunning mistress of ceremonies, literary questions, some audience participation, and a Mai Tai or two.” I am pretty sure you’ll need to pay for your own mai tais, so prepare accordingly —

Round 3 at 9 pm: Truth in Fiction at MOD Pizza, 5300 Lankershim Blvd #103, North Hollywood.

This event’s a chance to get to hear some of the bigger names in the LA lit scene read. David Ulin, J. Ryan Stradal, Natashia Deon, Matthew Specktor — as well as James Sie, Robert Roman, and Julia Ingalls — will all give short readings. Take your books to get signed!

I’m guessing there’ll be an afterparty with drinks and nibbles and socializing after the third round, as there has been in previous years. Check the Lit Crawl LA website closer to date for details.

Earlier: 7 big annual literary events in Los Angeles to put on your calendar now

October 12, 2016October 6, 2023

11 reasons to attend the Tin House Winter Workshops

Thinking about a writer’s getaway this winter? Read on to see if the Tin House Winter Workshops — which I attended early this year — might be a good fit for you.

1. You need a vacation. A weekend away spent on a gorgeous beach sounded like a dream to me. And at $1300 for the hotel, all breakfasts, a five-course dinner, plus cocktail parties in the evenings — not to mention the actual writing program itself!! — the price felt alright (I realize opinions will differ on the reasonableness of the price).

2. You’d like to see the Oregon Coast. Once I got to the Tin House offices in Portland, I quickly met the other workshop participants — before we piled into a van and headed up up to Newport. There, we were dropped off at the hotel, located on a gorgeous 45-foot bluff overlooking the Pacific.

3. The idea of staying at a literary-themed hotel makes you happy. Each of the 21 rooms at the Sylvia Beach Hotel are individually themed around a famous author. I got the Dr. Seuss room! Most of the rooms are more — sedately decorated — if the bright yellow’s too much for you.

4. You want some feedback on your writing. Well before the workshops began, all the participants submitted a short story — then got copies of the stories of all the other writers in the workshop group. We read and wrote up a page or two of feedback for each of the stories — then arrived in Oregon ready to discuss the stories during the morning workshops.

5. You want to learn from writers you admire. I’d enjoyed Wells Tower’s short story collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, and was psyched to be in his workshop, which met for about 3 hours each morning. It was great to hear Wells’s take on my story — as well as those of my fellow workshop members —

6. You like parties. Each night there was a social event of sorts, whether a multi-course dinner party plus book exchange, or a cocktail party at the nearby Hemingway House (owned by Tin House’s editor), or a karaoke fest at a nearby divebar that drew a strange and eclectic crowd.

7. You love seafood. The seafood is fresh and delicious here! One evening we even got a chance to visit the best seafood restaurant in town — though the name now escapes me.

8. You’re curious about Tin House. I enjoyed getting to know the Tin House staff members who came along on the trip, sharing info about how the editorial process at Tin House works. One of the highlights of the weekend was Meg Storey’s talk about her work as an editor for Tin House books. She ran through the process for acquiring one Tin House book, from showing us the first pages of the initial manuscript she rejected, to the detailed editorial letter she wrote to the author about why the manuscript was rejected and how it could be improved, to the first pages of the much revised and finally accepted manuscript. It was really illuminating!

9. You like bookish freebies. My Tin House welcome tote came with an issue of Tin House plus a Tin House book.

10. You enjoy meeting other writers. The workshop group ran the gamut, from young women just out of MFA programs to older women retirees. Why did I just say women twice? Because in terms of gender, the workshop is not diverse. There was one brave guy in our cohort of about 20! I’ve noticed that writing workshops and programs in general tend to be women-heavy; I don’t know why that is but I would be curious to hear your theories.

In any case — I made some great new friends at this workshop, and though we’re scattered all over the country now, we keep in sporadic touch via Facebook and email — and cheer on each others’ literary successes.

11. You’d like to hang out in Portland. I’d actually never been to Portland before, so I tacked on a few extra days after the workshop to walk around Portland, visit Powell’s Books and hang out with Kevin Sampsell (above), and drink lots of good coffee.

____

Interested in taking part in the workshops? This year, the fiction faculty members are Kevin Barry, T. Geronimo Johnson, and Michelle Wildgen — and I have to admit I’m not familiar with their work! If you’re thinking about applying to attend, I recommend reading each of the faculty members’ books, then asking to be placed in a workshop with the author whose work you feel most attuned to.

Tin House will run three different sessions in early 2017: Fiction from Jan. 20-23, creative nonfiction from Jan. 27-30, and poetry from March 3-6.Get your application in by Oct. 19 to be considered for a scholarship! The general application deadline is Nov. 7. Tin House also runs summer workshops, a longer, more in depth program with more people and more events — but applications for that program won’t be open for some months.

October 4, 2016October 6, 2023

Women Who Submit throws parties to empower women writers

Why do we still see more men publishing poems, stories and books than women? That simple question has a complex answer, but one part of the problem is that women make fewer and less frequent efforts to get published. Ask many a literary journal editor, and she will tell you that men, in general, send in submissions in far greater numbers than do women.

Why this is — is also a question with a complex answer. But one grassroots organization, Women Who Submit, has started answering it with a simple solution — by getting more women to submit more and more frequently to literary journals and other writing-related opportunities.

How does Women Who Submit do this? By throwing submission parties! At each of these events, women writers are encouraged to arrive, laptops in tow, to hang out and eat and drink and chat and have fun in real life — while also sending their work out to literary journals via the internet. Every time someone sends in a submission, the crowd cheers!

Each party is a little different. Some are held in people’s homes, and have the feeling of a cozy ladies potluck brunch. Others are held in bars, to the delight of writers who enjoy daydrinking. Yet others are organized in quiet community spaces — Those have tended to be the most productive spots for me.

Women Who Submit was founded in 2011 by three L.A. women — Alyss Dixson, Ashaki Jackson and Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo — as a response to the VIDA count, which shows in stark statistics just how many more men than women are seeing their name in print in literary journals.

Since then, WWS has formalized and organized and expanded. There are now parties organized across the US! Parties in L.A. happen on the second Saturday of the month — and I’ll be giving a talk at the next one on finding an agent! That WWS New Member Orientation and Submission Party happens Sat., Oct. 8 at Beyond Baroque in Venice. Hope to see you there!

To join WWS — or to find out about or start a party in your town, contact WWS. In the meantime, follow WWS’ blog, which has helpful posts demystifying the literary submission process, offering writerly encouragement, and celebrating the publication successes of its members.

Earlier: 5 important resources for women writers

Photos by Lauren Eggert-Crowe

September 21, 2016October 6, 2023

5 important resources for women writers

Every year we see articles bemoaning the dearth of women writers — on award lists, bestseller lists, magazine bylines, and more. But feminist lit groups are working to change that! Here are five moving things forward to get involved with:

Bindercon. Described as “the conference and community for women and gender noncoforming writers,” Bindercon hosts two conferences a year — one in NYC, one in Los Angeles. The two-day events are full of keynotes and panels, tackling everything from basic writing advice (how to pitch articles) to larger political issues (writing about reproductive rights and justice).

I moderated a panel on creating a writing community at Bindercon LA earlier this year, and loved taking part in the exciting and warm conference. The next conference happens in NYC Oct. 29-30, and is currently seeking volunteers!

VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. This feminist nonprofit’s best known for its annual VIDA count, a report that studies who’s getting published in literary journals and whose books are getting reviewed — then crunches the numbers to give us some concrete stats showing current gender imbalances in publishing.

The group’s larger mission is to draw attention to literary gender disparities — and to address them by amplifying marginalized voices. VIDA has a nice list of resources for women writers — including a list of women-run presses.

Women Who Submit.. This action-oriented group was actually inspired into existence by the VIDA count! The founders of WWS saw the lackluster numbers in the count — then decided to change them — by getting more women to submit more often to literary publications!

To that end, WWS hosts “submission parties” — where women congregate with their labtops at a local bar or member home and submit their creative work for a few hours, all while cheering each other on. Events happen around the country! The next LA submission party happens Oct. 8 — and I’ll be speaking there, pre-submission blitz, about how to find a literary agent. More details soon — Hope to see you!

Hedgebrook. For women who seek a room of their own, Hedgebrook offers writing residencies on Whidbey Island, near Seattle. This feminist organization basically offers selected residents a free space to live and write!

Hedgebrook also hosts other events and workshops, its goal being “Equality for women’s voices to achieve a just and peaceful world.” The next application deadline for residencies is in July 2017. Earlier. 5 things to look for in a writing residency and My Writing Residency at the Anderson Center.

Money for Women. Known also as the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Money for Women basically awards writing grants to women writers and artists. The grants range from $500 to $1500, and are intended to help women artists finish works in progress. Applications are due each year in January.
____

Know of other great literary resources for women? Share them in the comments —

Photo courtesy of Kenji Liu / Women Who Submit