Grace Reading Series

Hey everybody--in the interest of avoiding going all James Bond villain and willing my eyes to weep blood from the overdose of Christmas carols being piped out of retail establishments this weekend, and instead actually getting a nudge forward into creativity, fun, and the amazing things my students come up with during writing exercises, I'm holding a 2.5 hour writing workshop that is easy, approachable, and where you just have to show up with a pen to get 10-20 pages written. I'll boss you around and you'll walk out the door with all sorts of new ideas! Plus, it's a way to get a taste of the kinds of writing transformations that go on regularly in my workshops without committing to a ten week course. 11-1:30 this Saturday, 12/2, near NYU:

(Go to elizabethsworkshops.com to sign up and for more information.)

*ELIZABETH'S WRITING BRUNCH!:
$50 - SAT Dec. 2, 11am - 1:30pm

A half-day class of Elizabeth’s most liberating and productive writing exercises. Join us to break through your creative doldrums—without even trying! Showing up is all you need to do to get your pen moving, find stories you didn’t even know you had, explore new territory, and meet other writers in Elizabeth’s famously easygoing, supportive community.

Elizabeth is an expert in making writing fun again—you’ll get so much written that you’ll go home shocked with your productivity. Held one Saturday a month, different each month, this class can be taken over and over again.

(Little snacks will be served, but the creative food is the main meal here!)

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 04:03 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Covered in lazy dust? The Times reassures you of the wisdom of hiding chez vous today:

Even those who arrived early Friday and waited in line for the doors to open at 5 a.m. were not guaranteed success. Brian Clark, 27, of Bristol left empty-handed after the televisions and computers he'd eyed as Christmas gifts were snatched by earlier shoppers

''Not that I'll probably need it, but just in case. You never know these days,'' he said, quickly adding that he has a state permit for a concealed weapon.

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 10:38 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Every Monday, Grace recommends a book by a woman writing literary prose.

MONIQUE AND THE MANGO RAINS by Kris Holloway

A memoir of a young American woman’s two years in the Peace Corps in Africa assisting a Malian midwife, Monique and the Mango Rains is a straight-ahead plunge into female friendship that tackles women’s issues in a developing country. Kris Holloway’s memoir is true-blue, the genuine article, a journey at once familiar and excitingly new as she vigilantly, and with great heart, recreates life in the tiny West African village of Nampossela. Holloway’s working relationship and friendship with Monique Dembele, a modern, educated African woman who works to advance girls’ education, maternal and child health, and to prevent brutal female genital cutting moves with all the urgency expected of a profound life-changing relationship. Most of the import and drama takes place in the village birthing hut, where women and their babies live or die by what they manage for themselves in a country where men come first. What this book unfailingly does is bring up the question of vocation and avocation in women’s lives. The acceptance of what comes with being a woman and at the same time how to push for reform, to coax acceptable degrees of change and development in an environment where women, even as victims, are less than equal is captured in the singular sagesse of Monique in Kris Holloway's remarkable memoir.

Posted by Emberly Nesbitt at 02:10 AM | Permalink

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 12:57 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Every Monday, Grace recommends a book by a woman writing literary prose.

FUN HOME by Alison Bechdel

Alison Bechdel can write, draw, and pull infinite quantities of pathos and humor from her memories of growing up in a funeral home in a small Pennsylvania town. Her graphic memoir, Fun Home, which came out this summer, examines her early life, in particular her relationship with her father, a closeted homosexual who died at the age of 44, possibly a suicide. Bechdel is a lesbian and the wonderfully evocative panels detail her attempts to cohere her father’s closeted sexuality with her own coming of age and coming out. Entwined with literary classics and novelistic in scope, Fun Home is an utterly absorbing, luminous, genre-bending work for book-lovers or for anyone who has ever tried to figure out where they came from.

A wonderful review of the book here.

Posted by Emberly Nesbitt at 05:29 PM | Permalink

Hey everybody. Are you doing your goodbye Rumsfeld dance? I am so looking forward to not having the same weird dreading-the-apocalypse feeling quite as bad on Sunday nights when the quiet catches up with me. It was bad this fall, after just reading the review of the new Cormac McCarthy, not to mention the elephants-going-crazy article. Monsters on Sundays worse than ever this fall. But now, I hope, better.

I had an amazing time at University Bookstore here in Seattle Tuesday night reading with Brangien Davis and Holiday Reinhorn--we had lots of fun. Thank you so much to everyone who came out. I showed Ariel Bordeaux's genius slideshow from the Grace Comics Showcase--Ariel's idea of viscerality being this key thing that women's comics do that men's comics don't so much really struck me. The slides she pulled together from various women comics artists really demonstrate that: hearts, guts, va-jay-jays, embarrassing painful truly vulnerable moments at summer camp and elsewhere, and also, the viscerality of a direct link to the natural world. Viscerality is missing from chick lit, for sure. It's also largely absent from work by women that fits easily into those male bastions of American letters that shall not be named. Seattle readers are so engaged and had lots of fun, smart questions--it really was a great night.

Two whispers from New York:

1) The Times reports that television is still a man's man's man's world (try not to die of shock)

2) Elsewhere, in breaking news of the visceral, complete with an anatomically correct diagram: Grand Army Plaza is a giant vagina (thanks Christine for the eyeopening link)

xoxoElizabeth

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 08:06 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Every Monday, Grace reviews a book by a woman writing literary prose.

The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas

An atmospheric concoction of mystery and science, as well as a ranging philosophical mind-walk, Great Britain’s Scarlett Thomas has written a compulsively readable second novel. The End of Mr. Y is a book that explores big ideas at a life-or-death clip. Ariel Manto, working on a PhD in English on nineteenth-century thought experiments, reads a cursed book, swallows a homeopathic tincture, and is transported to the Troposphere. Ariel is an intriguingly flawed narrator with her share of emotional and sexual hang-ups, but she’s a completely liberated force intellectually. The premise of the book is fantastical: the Trophosphere is a Wonderland, a veritable trip down the rabbit hole, where Ariel encounters the trippy fabrications of her own psyche as well as the ability to travel through space and time via other people’s minds. Thomas keeps her eye on the flow of the narrative and plays with the twists and turns of the adventure-mystery while managing to fit in a satisfying love story, a primer on the history of thought, and a comment on the dance into the obscure that is graduate school. An obsessive, playful, and suspenseful read bolstered with expressive and imaginative language, The End of Mr. Y is a wonderful escape from the ordinary.

Posted by Emberly Nesbitt at 12:09 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Lauren Weinstein & Allison Cole read to a solidly packed room at Mo's, a fabulous time was had by all, and I was introduced to Veselka's yummy vegetarian borscht afterwards. Reminder to everyone, don't miss it...

THIS SATURDAY November 4th, Bluestockings Bookstore, 7pm, FREE!

An Open Mic celebration of the fabulous ladies of comics with short readings by Heidi MacDonald, Fly, Lauren Weinstein, Ariel Bordeaux (that's me) and anyone else daring enough to step up to the mic in praise of female cartoonists. All of the above mentioned will be available to sign books and also attending to sign will be Megan Kelso, Allison Cole, Gabrielle Bell and Sara Edward-Corbett!

Posted by Ariel Bordeaux at 05:51 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)