Grace Reading Series

Hi everybody, happy holidays. I hope you are zoning out on Law and Order in a carbohydrate coma. Anne, our publicity director here and a dear friend, and I have been Meloni-ing our way through December. He is our new imaginary boyfriend. You know it's getting weird when you're ranking the dudes on Law and Order (yes, even the scary narcissist Ice T) in terms of which one you would make out with first.

Oh--I probably shouldn't write that. If Anne and I have lust in our hearts, Dawn Eden might come around and tell us our friendship isn't deep enough. It was a little hard to discern exactly what she was saying from this Salon article, but she seems to think that friendships between women only have depth if nobody is slutty:

I'm not saying that my old friends weren't nice people, weren't giving people. But when you're not chaste, at base your friendships are transactional, and there may be sparks of real give-and-take, but never like the kinds of friendships you can have when you're taking the focus off the superficial.

Absurd. Of course this whole "I can only be spiritual and connected and not superficial if I have no sexuality whatsoever" is exactly what I wrote a 500 page novel to help dismantle. Time for some essays, I think. I think it's this huge crisis that women only think they get to have a sexuality if they are a porn star, an anorexic, or, as in Eden's case, a trophy wife. Women's sexuality is not internet porn--it's not automatically disconnected or self-hating or superficial if it's outside of marriage! My word! It's disconnected and self-hating and superficial if the woman is doing that to herself. And I am afraid it's kind of tough in this culture for women to figure out any other way to be. Essays, essays, I am typing as fast as I can.

In the meantime, I highly recommend The Painted Veil with Edward Norton and Naomi Watts. It is so gorgeous--a complex love story between two actual grownups, and a sense of story in the way I believe our best stories work--with an opening, a hope at the end despite these often grisly circumstances on earth.

Anne and I went to a pre-release screening last week, the theater was full of lunatics--people randomly yelling at the row in front of them, the guy behind me making masturbatory noises then suddenly stinking of peanut butter. It was like Personality Disorder Science Fiction Theater, and still the movie was amazing.

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 09:57 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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

I LOVE LED ZEPPELIN by Ellen Forney

A beautiful collection of Ellen Forney’s comics published by Fantagraphics Books, I Love Led Zeppelin is the work of an artist totally geeking out on human behavior. Black and white panels are crammed with texture, motion lines, grunts, gulps, and scads of wry commentary. Forney is funny and lowers a big bullshit detector on topics such as sex (gay), drugs (recreation/recovery), and the marvelous enterprises of others (blacksmiths, microvascular surgeons, call girls). In the “How To…” section of the book, large one-page panels demonstrate How To Be a Fabulous Fag Hag (a collaboration with Margaret Cho), How To Sew an Amputated Finger Back On, How To Tip, How To Use Your Voice, and How To Fuck a Woman With Your Hands!!. Ellen Forney has done her research, the comics are practical and instructive and hilarious and serious, too. The artist’s inner nerd has been commissioned to celebrate the diversity and the diversity of skills in the people around her. Later sections of the book include more comics in the single-page format, a section of longer comics from ’92-’94, and a series of collaborations with the likes of Dan Savage and Kristin Gore, who write text paired with Forney’s bold illustrations, as well as a collaboration with artist Ariel Bordeaux. Ellen Forney draws with a wink and a nudge and then draws you in with intimate close-ups of how sweet and silly and vulnerable we all are. In I Love Led Zeppelin, maybe she loves Led Zeppelin, but she also loves the people in her world and all the neat shit they know how to do.

Posted by Emberly Nesbitt at 05:26 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

*Start having (productive) fun again in any art form.
*Find your creative true north.
*Gain rock-solid belief in yourself as an artist.
*Create a career you truly love.
*Learn how to leave torment and creative blocks behind—in the blink of an eye!
*Work through creative blocks in any medium at any level.

A full-day workshop of transformative writing exercises and creative brainstorming in a warm and supportive environment. Creative Jumpstart was engineered by Elizabeth to bring out your best creative path and banish your self-doubt—at record speed. Perfect for artists in all disciplines at all levels. Whether you want to get started, get back to work, blast through a specific block, or chart your creative career path: this class delivers results immediately. Meet other creative firecrackers (and shy firecrackers!) and enjoy the benefits of Elizabeth’s creative coaching at a fraction of the cost, complete with an end-of-the-day personal action plan from Elizabeth to get you moving in the creative direction of your dreams.

$125 - Select Saturdays, 11am - 4pm with a break for lunch; in a comfortable, convenient lower Manhattan location
Also offered: Saturdays, Jan. 27, Feb. 24, Mar. 24

Please email Tess@elizabethsworkshops.com with any questions or for assistance with registering for a course.

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 10:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

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

POP! by Aury Wallington

Aury Wallington (Sex & the City, Veronica Mars) has dished up a teen novel about sex that focuses on that universal teenage preoccupation: everyone-has-done-it-but-me! Sterling Prep high-school senior Marit is set to lose her virginity. She just needs to find the lucky guy to give the goods to. Only no candidate seems exactly right and Marit tends to bail when things get intimate. Marit plays violin badly, dresses with an artistic bent, and is at times bold and other times convincingly self-loathing and insecure. (In other words, a girl, a real live flesh-and-blood girl!) When she decides to take her virginity in her own hands and sleep with her best guy friend, Jamie, who is also a virgin, Marit finds out exactly what “doing it” does and doesn’t change. Pop! is not the usual sensationalistic fare. Bubbly and fun, serious and relatable, Wallington doesn’t hold back when talking about the confusion, the embarrassment, and the thrall that sex holds over teens.

Posted by Emberly Nesbitt at 10:06 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Please join us for the final installment of the 2006 Grace Comics Showcase curated by Ariel Bordeaux:

TONIGHT: WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 6, 7pm at Mo Pitkins, 34 Ave A between 2nd and 3d FREE!!

FLY, author of many comics and zine titles including: CHRON!IC!RIOTS!PA!SM! and PEOPs and Ariel Schrag, author of the autobiographical comics books Awkward, Definition, Potential and Likewise.

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 12:01 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As a teacher, I do not worry about the yucky little ego desires we all have as writers and students and citizens of New York trying so hard to get to that big big blockbuster status so we don't have to scrounge so much for time. (The cash money ego desires are less about finding that time to write actually--you can find that, if you want it, without a major cash infusion--than about avoiding all the interesting underbelly stuff, the vulnerability and fear of speaking the messy truth--those ego desires for huge bestsellerdom are far more often actually all about the desire for so much external approval that you're impermeable. Blech.)

When I teach my classes, I emphasize, instead, just really listening to the book that wants to get written, to what the right brain wants to say in the world. This endeavor is really the opposite of chick lit--and not just chick lit, but all kinds of books that are aiming to be a Botox doctor instead of an emergency room doctor.

Here, this is sort of what I'm talking about, from the New York Times:

Neither policymakers nor society at large need sympathize with the longing of millionaires to become billionaires. But we do need to worry about the effects on society as a whole when members of the educated elite think they are grossly underpaid. The more they feel as if they are losing ground against their peers, the more likely they are to ditch professions in which the pay is only good — like delivering babies — in favor of less useful careers in which the compensation is off the charts — like eliminating lines from wealthy people’s foreheads.

Part of the explanation is undoubtedly a tax code that has sent the incomes of the wealthiest sliver of the nation into hyperdrive. Another might be the spike in education costs, which send many new doctors, lawyers and scientists out into the world armed with a diploma and a six-figure debt. But the bottom line seems to be that in 21st-century America, more people can’t feel successful unless they’re making a killing.

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 09:02 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)