I have deep thoughts about Beyoncé and you can read them here.
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January 25, 2007
January 23, 2007
Workshop schedule change!
Hey everybody--my Writing Brunch has been postponed to next Saturday, 1/27, from 12pm-2:30 pm in lower Manhattan.
ALSO: There is still time to register for the ten-week Foundation Class. I have 2 spots left, and it's starting NEXT Tuesday, 1/30, from 8-10 in lower Manhattan.
Foundation class: Works for fiction, nonfiction writers, and those who are undecided, absolute beginners to twenty-year veterans. We start by doing lots of in-class writing and protecting your intuition and inspiration, and giving you tools to keep doing that on your own forever. There are small assignments that build up gradually and quickly so that you have a finished story in no time.
You can tailor the course to your own time needs: as little as 2 hours a week, but there are optional assignments so you can increase that as you wish.
We get to workshopping student work by about week four or five, and the workshops employ my Editorial Toolbox of Miracles which gives you specific technique strategies to improve your weak spots and understand how to move forward from where you usually get stuck.
The vibe in the workshops is fun and not nasty or defensive like the vast majority of writing workshops. Yet we always get to the point of how to make improvements on a piece quickly, because all the students have a group language for making practical changes via my lovely Editorial Toolbox of Miracles.
Sounds fun, no? My students are the best in New York. No duds. Come hang out.
xxooElizabeth
January 12, 2007
Elizabeth's Writing Brunch--in one week! Sat. January 20, 12-230.
Come hang out with us in a comfy loft space in lower Manhattan and get 15-20 pages written in 2.5 hours!
My workshops work because my students are the smartest, most fabulous writers--beginner to advanced--in New York. It's a community that is based around creativity and generous intelligence, not literary snobbishness.
We zoom into creative intuitive "right brain" space at the start of class and don't leave there until you're done!
It's like getting a massage or a facial, but at just $50 way cheaper, and with the benefit of having a bunch of pages done AND meeting likeminded writers--getting that creative support that is so hard to come by.
Full information and to sign up: www.elizabethsworkshops.com
Nina Burleigh at Huff Po:
If the right wing elves could do it over a blow job with a popular president, surely you have enough ammunition with war crimes, negative approval ratings and enough malfeasance and inefficiency to keep the GSA busy for years.
January 08, 2007
GRACE BOOK CLUB
Every Monday, Grace recommends a book by a woman writing literary prose.
THE TEAHOUSE FIRE by Ellis Avery
Nineteenth-century Kyoto, the floating world of geishas and temae (tea ceremony) is the subject of Ellis Avery’s grand new page-turner of a novel, The Teahouse Fire, out in hardcover from Riverhead Books. In 1865, nine-year-old Aurelia Caillard, a French-born New Yorker, is taken to Japan by her missionary uncle. When her uncle dies in a fire, Aurelia becomes an adopted servant of the Shin family, master teachers of temae. As Japan moves from a closed Shogun society to the Western-leaning reign of the emporer Meiji, Aurelia's (now called Urako) life in the teahouse switchbacks through the years, shadowing the rise of modern Japan. Ellis Avery's novel has layers of betrayal and intrigue and there is something so deliciously pulpy in the tale of an undiscovered Westerner growing up cosseted in traditional Japanese society. At the same time the novel manages its drama around a very still center. Urako’s gaze takes in arresting and provocative period details. The tea ceremony scenes are precise and vivid as they illustrate the pull of old ways. Urako’s oblique looks at Yukako, the strong-willed daughter of the master teacher, transform into an excessive, erotic, unrequited love. Shoguns, merchants, and a bartering geisha move in and out of teahouse life. Here is a compulsively readable, literary epic.
January 07, 2007
Is your favorite thing in the New York Times Amanda Stern reporting on a night out with a pants designer? You can feel the Brooklyn seething, it is delicious, it slices right open the lie that Manhattan is still New York and not just Disneyland for bankers and pretty lobotomy cases:
Margarita in hand, Ms. Bendet saucily added a signature drink to the chalkboard menu (misspelling Patrón): “The Pantserita. Petron Silver. Fresh lime,” then drew an equal sign and a smiley face.
An hour and a new bar later (Beatrice Inn, on West 12th Street), someone reached for Ms. Bendet’s drink, and she spoke like a true designer. “That’s your drink,” she said, pointing to another glass. “It has a golden hue. I’m very color-sensitive.”