Ana Maria

This blog has moved

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Sat, 01 May 2010 04:15:00 +0000

This blog is now located at http://anamariaspagna.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://anamariaspagna.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

Sunnyland goes to, well, Sunnyland

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:14:00 +0000

I had a fabulous time at Powell's on Hawthorne in Portland and at Get Lit! book festival in Spokane, Washington, and at A Book for All Seasons in Leavenworth. The spring weather - blossoms, blue sky, puffy clouds - put on a fancy show, and I got to meet and/or hang out with some fabulous writers: Diana Joseph, David Laskins, Jess Walters. Not to mention the friends who traveled a long way to listen, chat, pad the audience, cheer me on, and later eat drink and be merry!

This morning I hop on a plane to Southern California.

Readings this week are at:
CSU Channel Islands Tuesday April 20 7 p.m.
Perris Library, Wednesday April 21 6:30 p.m.
Rubidoux Library, Thursday April 22 6:30 p.m.

Looking forward to seeing some sun and some familiar faces ... some in Riverside (my home town - Perris & Rubidoux are right nearby) from way way back!

Test Ride hits the road

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 22:56:00 +0000

We're getting a little April snow (snow!) in Stehekin today, and tomorrow I'm heading out to start several weeks of readings from Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus.
It'd be a delight to see you / meet you.

Next week will find me at:
Powell's on Hawthorne in Portland Monday, April 12 at 7:30 pm
The Get Lit! Festival in Spokane Friday & Saturday, April 16, 17
A Book for All Seasons in Leavenworth April 18, 1 pm - 3 pm

You can see more events on my website at:
http://www.anamariaspagna.com/events.html

Meanwhile the book has gotten some nice press.

From The Wenatchee World:
http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2010/mar/31/back-on-the-bus-ana-maria-spagna-writes-a-lost/

And an excerpt (with an excellent photo attached) in Oregon Quarterly:
http://www.oregonquarterly.com/spring2010/feature2.php

Pilgrimage

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:13:00 +0000

I hate to admit how rarely I read a literary journal cover to cover. Pilgrimage, out of Southern Colorado, is the exception. The stories are always gripping, the writing graceful, and the perspective earnest without ever turning, you know, smarmy.

Last month I was surprised, and honored, to learn that long-time editor Peter Anderson chose one of my stories – “La Linea” – to include in the terrific anthology Telling it Real: The Best of Pilgrimage Magazine 2003-2008. When my token copy arrived in the mail, I was even more honored. There’s some great stuff in this book. If you don’t want to take my word for it, check out what the folks at Terrain.org have to say:

http://blog.terrain.org/2010/02/02/received-telling-it-real-the-best-of-pilgrimage-magazine-2003-2008/

And if you’re a writer type, consider submitting to Pilgrimage. It’s a top-notch venue:

http://www.pilgrimagepress.org/

Iris Graville

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:02:00 +0000

Writing is a solitary art. Except when it’s not. Much as I revere Michael Ventura’s essay “The Talent of the Room,” I also know that writing is at times – sometimes at the best of times – a collaboration.

Iris Graville’s book, Hands at Work, is the perfect collaborative project. She paired with photographer Summer Moon Scriver to create 24 portraits and profiles of people who work with their hands. In it you’ll find stunning photos of a sculptor, a weaver, a car mechanic, a sign-language interpreter, a midwife, and more.

But that’s not the only collaboration at work. Iris Graville’s written profiles of the workers are thorough, respectful, understated and engaging. Why? Because in a real sense, Graville also collaborates with her subjects. On the page, she gives plenty of space to direct quotes – to the workers telling their stories in their own words – but she melds these quotes seamlessly with her own (craftily “I”-less) observation of the work. The prose is clean and tight and verb-driven, with precise attention to the objects (limestone, lug nuts, reef nets, bread dough) required to do work with your hands. She occasionally weaves in anecdotes from the subject’s past, and she focuses always on the work itself and what it means to the person doing it.

The book is flat out gorgeous, a great gift for anyone who has ever worked with her hands or admires those who do, which is pretty much all of us. And it’s won several major awards including the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association’s “Buzz Book” of 2009 and the Independent Publishers Award 2009 for Outstanding Book – Most Life Changing.

The book is inspiring. So is Iris. As a first time self-publisher she’s already mastered the art. If you ever get a chance to hear her speak on the subject of creating your own book and taking it out into the world, it’s well worth your time. In the meantime, the book speaks for itself.

http://www.handsworking.com/

Linda Cooper

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:48:00 +0000

I’m no poet. So, despite having that master’s degree in the-language-I-learned-when-I-was-two, I’m not in any position to analyze poetry, much less to judge it. I don’t know exactly what makes poetry work, but I know what moves me. And Linda Cooper’s poetry moves me.

In her poems, familiar images from the natural world—leaves and rocks, insects and mosses, water and sky—suddenly have the capacity to startle me. Sometimes it’s the juxtaposition: the unlikely combination, the sound of this word with that. More often it’s a kind of seduction. I follow an idea where I think it’s going, then it takes a wild turn and evokes an emotion I didn’t even know was there: grief, exuberance, hope, fear, longing, emotions sometimes tumbling so fast, one after the next, that I feel off-balance. The experience is part-epiphany and part-healing, always a delight.

You can read examples in literary journals like Hayden's Ferry Review, West Branch, Third Coast, Willow Springs, Hubub, Elixir, Diner, Midwest Quarterly, and Redactions and at the links below.

http://weberstudies.weber.edu/archive/archive%20D%20Vol.%2021.2-25.2/Vol.%2022.3/Cooper%20Poe.htm

http://www.versedaily.org/2005/ponderousborer.shtml

http://www.versedaily.org/2005/vessellc.shtml

Wait! That’s not all! Linda Cooper is a nonfiction writer, too, and her essays have that same magic quality that her poems do with an extra-generous helping of her trademark humor. (Everyone I know who ever received one of Linda Cooper’s hilarious holiday letters has kept them to this day.) You can find her essays in Open Spaces: Views from the Northwest, and Concho River Review, and look for her collection, Echolocation, to appear sooner than later.

Little known fact (well, actually semi-well-known in some circles):
Linda Cooper also sings a mean karaoke version of “Dream On."

Steven Tyler beware!

David Oates

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:47:00 +0000

A couple of years ago, David Oates showed up in Stehekin looking for some quiet space in which to finish up his most recent book, What We Love Will Save Us. He’d arranged to stay in a small cabin near the river, but that wasn’t to be. Mid-visit the river rose with spring snowmelt and he ended up bunking on high ground at our place for a few days while we were out of town. Upon return, I joined him as he ventured out through the muddy slough to collect the gear he’d left in the riverside cabin. Here he is on that day, testing the waters, in his hip waders.

It’s a fitting image for David’s work. His long and prolific career, as a poet and essayist, has often taken him into turbulent waters. Whether challenging wilderness philosophy in Paradise Wild or lobbying for the crucial character of urban spaces in City Limits: Walking Portland’s Boundary (to which I contributed the short essay “A View from Teensy Town”) or always – in the forefront of his work or the not-so-distant background – telling his own story of coming out as a gay man in a strict Baptist household, his voice is courageous and steady, empathetic, and original.

What We Love Will Save Us is a collection of mostly very short essays that cover all of that terrain and more, wading into the contentious politics of the last decade – war, torture, scandal, and the rest -- and coming to the conclusion of the fabulous title: What We Love Will Save Us. “Our job is to work on what we love,” he writes. “Daily. With precision and determination.”

You can check out the title essay as it appeared originally in High Country News:
www.hcn.org/issues/332/16642

And you can read more about the book here:
http://www.whatwelovewillsaveus.com/

Jerry Gabriel

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 00:21:00 +0000

As promised I'm planning to spend the weeks before Test Ride appears discussing lesser-known writers I admire.

This week I start with Jerry Gabriel. His first book represents the culmination of more than ten years of work. And it paid off. Not only did Drowned Boy win the 2008 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction from Sarabande Books, the book has also been chosen a Barnes & Noble "Discover Great New Writers" selection and is 2010 Barnes & Noble Discover Award finalist.

What I most admire about these fabulous linked stories set in rural southeast Ohio is the seamless way that landscape and longing and community combine in prose that’s honed, spare, and often, astonishingly, funny. The dialogue between the two main characters, Nate and Donnie Holland, brothers as different as day and night, is wry and affectionate, snappy and original.

In the title story, a grief-struck teenager considers geological history: “The idea that a river might change direction had captivated Samantha at a time when almost nothing sparked any real interest in her.” In “Marauders,” a whole slew of old-timers latch onto the local elementary school basketball team like rock star groupies: “We traveled like gypsies to these little towns—places called Mudsock and Comersville and just plain Water.”

You read a lot these days about a “sense of place” in writing, usually it means extra-lyrical prose about extra-pristine landscapes. (Yep, guilty as charged.) These stories evoke place plainly, and therefore elegantly. They show how places – pristine and, especially, not-so-pristine – mold us irrevocably, then shift unexpectedly. In the closing story “Reagan’s Army in Retreat,” Nate goes looking for Donnie only to stumble upon a house fire after which all that remains is a talking robot trivia game on eight track tapes stuck in the snow, a game that had once belonged to the boys. If there’s a more poignant image of loss, I can’t conjure it. And if a better book of short stories comes out this year, I’ll be surprised.

Foot dragged into the future .. uh, the now

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:38:00 +0000

So I started a facebook fan page. http://www.facebook.com/business/dashboard/#/pages/Ana-Maria-Spagna/359334945433

And as an antidote to all this embarrassing self-promotion, starting soon, I plan to dedicate this space to some of my favorite lesser known writers. Stay tuned!

Never say never

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:51:00 +0000

There are some topics I never figured I'd write about. Christmas is one. But things change. Here's "Christmas Naked" from the current issue of Mountain Gazette. It's not nearly as risque as it sounds. And I'm forever grateful to John Fayhee, the brilliant curmudgeonly editor at MG, who keeps throwing these unlikely topics my way.

http://www.mountaingazette.com/news/mountain_notebook/christmas_naked/

"Spawning in Mud," meanwhile, is a title that Laurie gets full credit for. An oldie of sorts, about the 2003 flood that changed things a lot in Stehekin, it appears in the current issue of Watershed journal from Brown U

Fast words, slow words

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:37:00 +0000

For several years now, ever since we got our satellite Internet connection, I’ve been thinking about how many words I spit out each day – in emails, student critiques, press releases—and whether any of that counts as writing. The answer is sort of. But not really. It’s kind of like the difference between fast food and real food.

When my first book, Now Go Home, came out a reporter asked me how long it took me to write an essay.
“About a year,” I said.
He nearly fell over laughing.
“Is it getting any easier for you?” he asked.

I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure I wanted it to get any easier. The long process of writing, revising, then writing some more, was, I thought, the whole point. Every writer I knew and admired had spent years on a single essay or story. Maybe not every single essay or story, but still …

Truth is, five years later, the process is easier for me. Essays come faster. Sometimes in less than a week. But the books I love the most simmered for a long time. And the writers I admire the most are the ones who have stuck at it for years. They’re not necessarily bestselling authors, but they are real writers, who have what Michael Ventura calls the “Talent of the Room.”

http://www.michaelventura.org/writings/LA4.pdf

That is, I suppose, what I aspire to.

Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus cover art

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:03:00 +0000

So here's the cover for the book. The photo is from the Florida State Archives and is, actually, from the Tallahassee bus boycott. The rider whose face is most clear is Reverend C.K. Steele, the stalwart leader of the protest.

Of course, I would have loved for the cover to show an interracial pair, one black rider and one white, but that would have been far too dangerous for a photo op. In fact, in 1959, two years after my dad and his friends rode integrated, a group of student activists in Tallahassee planned another test ride. They decided that it would be safe for black riders to take seats in the front of the bus, though it happened rarely, but that white and black students riding together would only invite violence. They were right, of course. In 1961, when integrated Freedom Riders rode south on a Greyhound from Nashville, violence materialized at every turn, most famously on Mother's Day when an angry crowd in Anniston, Alabama threw gas-soaked rags through the bus windows screaming: "Fry the goddamn niggers." Most of the angry crowd, men and women, were still wearing church clothes.

One last footnote on the cover art: I heard a speaker on design this summer mention that orange is the second-worst color choice for a book cover, behind only purple. Then again orange does bring out that Sunnyland irony.

Know a good bookstore?

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:34:00 +0000

So here's the cover copy for Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus including the generous blurbs from two of my favorite memoirists, Kathleen Finnearan and Danielle Trussoni.

The info represents my makeshift press kit as I begin to scour the landscape for places that will invite me to come read from or talk about the book next year. I'm not picky. I'll visit a school, church, library, book group. If you can think of a venue, feel free to pass this stuff on, and/or to drop me a note about my schedule.

Of course independent bookstores are the best. When Now Go Home came out I was terrified to go out reading. Me from the boonies, on leave from trail crew. What should I wear? How should I act? From the minute Laurie and I walked into the first independent bookstore, I could tell it didn't matter a whit. Independent bookstore people were my tribe. They were kind and genuine, engaged and engaging, and always appreciative if occasionally quirky. I've been dismayed lately to find how many of those great little stores (and some big ones like Black Oak Books in Berkeley) have gone out of business in five years. Yikes!

Here's the info:

http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Test-Ride-on-the-Sunnyland-Bus,674635.aspx

Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus chronicles the story of an American family against the backdrop of one of the civil rights movement’s lesser-known stories. In January 1957, Joseph Spagna and five other young men waited to board a city bus called the Sunnyland in Tallahassee, Florida. Their plan was simple but dangerous: ride the bus together—three blacks and three whites—get arrested, and take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Fifty years later Ana Maria Spagna sets off on a journey to understand what happened and why.
Her journey complicated by the fact that her father never spoke of the Sunnyland experience and died unexpectedly when she was eleven, Spagna travels from her remote mountain home in the Pacific Northwest to contemporary Tallahassee, searching for the truth of the incident and her father’s involvement. She seeks out the other bus riders, now in their seventies, and tries to make sense of their conflicting stories. Her odyssey becomes further troubled by the sudden diagnosis of her mother’s terminal cancer.
Winner of the River Teeth Literary nonfiction prize, Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus deftly weaves cultural and personal history, memoir and reportage, in this fascinating look at a family and a nation’s, past.

“Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus stands as a magnificent testament and tribute to the lives of many people— Ana Maria Spagna’s parents, the many patriots of the Civil Rights Movement, and the citizens of communities far and wide, large and small. Her surprising story renewed my awe in the interconnectedness of all of our lives and affirmed that the current championing of hope in our country is a hope deserving of all its fervor.”—Kathleen Finneran, author of The Tender Land: A Family Love Story

“Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus is an absorbing story of a daughter’s search to understand her father’s involvement in the civil rights movement. While Ana Maria Spagna’s ability to capture the nuances of her father’s life is impressive, it is the wonder and persistence she brings to her tale that make this such an engaging book. Any daughter who has puzzled over the mystery of her heritage will love Spagna from the get-go.”—Danielle Trussoni author of Falling Through the Earth

Living on Glacial Time and NAR

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:23:00 +0000

Check out the feature about my trip to the almost-glacier in the current books/essays issue of High Country News.

http://www.hcn.org/issues/41.16/living-on-glacial-time

The process of writing/editing the piece with the help of HCN editor Jodi Peterson was wicked fast by the literary publishing standards (truly glacier-paced) I'm used to, and utterly enjoyable.

Speaking of literary publishing: I also have an essay ("Caucus") in the current issue of the venerable journal North American Review. Only problem is, it's apparently too venerable to have an active website. So, again, I hope anybody who's interested can chase down a hard copy.

The blue September sky in Stehekin is to die for. If I get my work done today -- hell, even if I don't -- I'm going windsurfing on the lake.

Whidbey Writers Workshop

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:08:00 +0000

So I headed off for a few days to teach on Whidbey Island in their unique MFA program (http://www.writeonwhidbey.org/mfa/) and came away, frankly, blown away. The students, the teachers, the setting were all superlative. I’d expected to find serious dedicated writers, but I didn’t expect their generosity and humility and good humor. I’d expected some nice views, but I didn’t expect to get weepy from the sound of waves lapping on the sand.

Each morning I’d walk the beach from the dorms to rehearse my hour-long presentations over and over to myself—this my own hang up, my own version of OCD; I have to do it before bookstore readings, too—and I’d watch seabirds against the blue blue Sound and the green forested Olympics on the horizon. Each afternoon, I’d speak. (Phew, got that over with!) Then each evening, I’d hang out with the writers and try to soak in as much good energy as I could.

One night I got to spend some time with Jason, my old trail crew buddy, who’s working out there on historic preservation projects. When he gave me the grand tour, including sunset from a driftwood beach with seals flapping just offshore, I understood why we don’t see him on the east side as often as we used to.

Meanwhile, from in Stehekin, Laurie reported that smoke settled hard from wildfires in B.C. Mosquitoes and yellow jackets grew plentiful and cranky, and zucchinis in the garden got predictably out of hand: one per five-gallon bucket. Now I’m home, and the brush is brown and the wind is hot, and the pickup truck we barged downlake cost more to fix than I made at Whidbey, a lot more. Still, I’m thinking that if they ask me back, I’ll go. In a heartbeat.

Garden, outhouse, lightning, not-quite-a-glacier, and some books

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 22:55:00 +0000

Summer is in full swing in Stehekin. The past couple weeks have included a fabulous 20-mile day hike to Pyramid Peak, a night camping at 6500’ watching lightning strike 360 degrees around us, and windsurfing with our friends, Ron and Vicki, to celebrate their brand new land purchase. (“The hard part is over,” said Ron. Ha ha.) Today alone included garden chores—harvesting way too many cukes, zukes, basil, cilantro, spinach, peas, and jalepenos and planting peas and curly cress (What is curly cress? We don’t know. Just happened to have the seeds)—picking up our weekly gallon of organic milk from our neighbors with a cow, commenting on about thirty student memoirs, then digging a new outhouse hole.

This week a new essay “The Seam” appears in Under the Sun. You can pick up a copy if you’ve got a (really) good bookstore in town. Or you can order one at the website: http://www.tntech.edu/underthesun/ Next week, a shorty about my ambivalence about being a writer called “The Dictionary Reader” will appear on the back page of High Country News (http://www.hcn.org/issues/41.14/the-dictionary-reader). Meanwhile, I weaseled my way around the fact that Jon Riedel and I didn’t make it onto the Easton glacier like we were supposed to last month. We got close, so I called the piece “Glacier’s Edge” and SueEllen Campbell graciously accepted it for her forthcoming, hugely ambitious, book The Face of the Earth.

Recent reading: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, Blindness by Jose Saramago, Lush Life by Richard Price, Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi, and Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. Next up: I Want to Take You Higher: the Life and Times of Sly & the Family Stone. I can’t wait.

A couple of shorties

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:22:00 +0000

So, whenever I'm frustrated at the keyboard - which is, of course, often enough - or inspired or frankly, in need of cash, I start work on a short essay. I love the form, how it forces you to condense your thoughts, to hoard your words, and mostly to get to the damned point. Sometimes these shorties (usually around 900 words) start out as much longer pieces, five or six times as long. Sometimes they just come out in a mad rush.

One downside to the process is that by the time I've condensed my thoughts and sent the essay off, and then, maybe, it gets published, a whole lot of time has passed. Such was the case with this one, which I wrote a year or so ago when our dear friend Wally was just beginning to seem sick. Wally died three weeks before it came out. Which is starting to seem like a disturbing pattern, since the short essay I wrote about our cat Daisy last year ended up coming out the week she died. Maybe I need to write on a lighter subject. Anyhow, if writers got to dedicate little 900 word ditties, this one would be for Wally ... and for Mike and Nancy Barnhart who took such good care of him toward the end of his life.

"Natural Comfort"

http://www.hcn.org/issues/41.10/natural-comfort?src=feat

This next one started out much longer, and the long version gives more credit where credit is due to our local volunteer fire chief, Bob Nielsen, who had the idea for the weekly work parties and who has been the driving force behind them. So this one's for Bob ... and for the regular Monday night gang.

"Just Right Here"

http://www.oregonquarterly.com/summer2009/old_oregon.php#fire

Test Ride wins River Teeth contest

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:21:00 +0000

My book Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter's Civil Rights Journey was named 2009 winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Contest. The book will come out next year from University of Nebraska Press.

The book honors my father and others that acted courageously during the 1956 Tallahassee bus boycott and also my mother who has shown remarkable courage in her long battle with cancer. The fact that she -- along with several of the "foot soldiers" from the Tallahassee movement -- will be able to read the book is a prize in itself, one that's both humbling and gratifying.

Life after Molokai

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:25:00 +0000

So how much writing can you pack into one week on a remote and gorgeous island in the Pacific? A whole lot, as it turns out, if you’re dedicated enough. I’m not. But the eight writers who joined me for the first annual Molokai writing workshop at Teresa Graham’s lovely home (http://www.hawaiivillamolokai.com/) buckled down at the keyboard for hours on end, and came up with some real gems. This, on top of readings, discussions, and workshops. Oh, and not to worry, there was still time for swimming, exploring the island (a little) and drinking wine (a lot!)

Now I’m back home in Stehekin, putting away skis, cutting next year’s firewood, getting ready to plant the summer garden, and trying to buckle down with my own writing (rewrites on Test Ride, a handful of new essays, that elusive young adult novel) before the busy season kicks into full swing.

Events on the horizon include the June workshop at Flick Creek, Making Stories Move, a trip to a glacier in July with geologist Jon Riedel (you can check out Jon’s glacier monitoring program at: http://www.nps.gov/noca/naturescience/glacial-mass-balance1.htm)
and three days teaching at the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA program’s fall residency http://www.writeonwhidbey.org/mfa/residencies.htm

Almost Spring

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:47:00 +0000

The sun is out in Stehekin – big news this gray winter! – and the pace of life is beginning to pick up for Laurie and me. Laurie’s begun early season pruning in the apple orchard, and I’ve got two memoir classes going at Gotham Writers’ Workshop, as well as a daily stint with the fine young writers at the Stehekin School. This year, they each picked a town on the U.S. map blindfolded and wrote historical fiction set in that town. So I’ve been reading some very cool stories about places as diverse as Atlanta, Georgia, Council Bluffs, Iowa and Silver City, New Mexico.

Last weekend, I also had the chance to read from my new memoir Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus for about twenty five of my Stehekin neighbors at an annual event sponsored by Arts and Humanities of Stehekin. It was a much-needed confidence boost for me to have such a supportive and enthusiastic crowd show up. The icing on the cake, for all of us, was seeing tiny new snow flakes fall in the headlights as we crept back home along the lakeshore.

In writing news, the new anthology Wild Moments: Adventures with Animals of the North (University of Alaska Press) includes an essay of mine, “The Woman Who Gardens with Bears.” I also have a short memoir – a love story, no less, called “The Fall Line” – in the current (Feb. 09) issue of Mountain Gazette. Check it out if you live where you can find a hard copy. The website http://www.mountaingazette.com/ is usually about a month behind.

St. Mary's College and Real Work

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 02:26:00 +0000

Greetings everyone!

It's been a busy fall/early winter. I spent November as the Artist-in-Residence at St. Mary's College Maryland. This offered me the chance to catch up with my old friend Jerry Gabriel (www.jerrygabriel.net) and his wife, poet Karen Leona Anderson. We had a great time walking along Cheasapeake Bay, seeing eagles and swans, having bonfires on the beach, and cutting and splitting firewood, East Coast-style (oak, maple, pine, gum ... gum???). I also enjoyed getting to spend time with students at St. Mary's -- young, eager, earnest writers. And the best part of the deal: I found the time more productive than I ever would have imagined, finishing up two long essays that may be the capstones to a new collection.

Here's an article from the St. Mary's student newspaper about my reading in late November: http://www.smcm.edu/pointnews/artsandentertainment/articles/issue69-6/voices-artist-redefines-home.html

After the residency, Laurie and I visited my brother in NW New Jersey and even ventured into NYC for the first time ever. We adored Brooklyn, especially the Botanic Gardens. Laurie has a new ambition to work there as a volunteer pruner. If anyone has connections, drop a line. If you have any doubts about her qualifications, you can check out this recent rant -- I mean, essay -- from High Country News: https://www.hcn.org/issues/40.21/real-work

anamariaspagna.com is up!

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Maria Spagna) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 07:22:00 +0000

More information coming soon.