Author: redict239

Writer and Teacher

Book Readings in the Los Angeles Area

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Looking back on my past two months attending book readings in Los Angeles, I’m inspired and energized by the manner in which these gatherings create community!

Connecting on social media is great, but real life is so much better. In-real-life events allow us to detect nuances we just can’t perceive when we interact digitally. And the connections we make are more authentic and lasting.

I found and/or rediscovered literary spaces where I feel at home. And I even became a member of Women Who Submit!

So which events did I attend?

At Skylight Books in the Hollywood area, I heard Michelle Gurule talk about her new memoir on sugaring titled Thank You, John. Brandon Taylor engaged in conversation about his novel Minor Black Figures which portrays a NYC painter pondering life and art.  And Myriam Gurba read from her hybrid memoir about plants and memory titled Poppy State and then passed out seeds to members of the audience.

On the westside at Beyond Baroque, poet and author Kevin Young read from two books — A Century of Poetry in the New Yorker: 1925-2025, edited by himself, and Night Watch, his newest book.

In East LA at Espacio 1839, editor Romeo Guzman accompanied Jenise Miller, Elaine Lewinnek, and Peter Chesney as they read from their essays in the anthology Writing the Golden State while George Sanchez-Tello performed and read as well.

Toni Ann Johnson read from her short story collection But Where’s Home? at a Women Who Submit event in Highland Park.

And never to be outdone, Reparations Club in South LA hosted Michaela Angela Davis as she engaged in conversation with Authur Jafa about her memoir tenderheaded.

I closed off this sprint of events in Santa Monica by attending the PEN America Emerging Voices LA Workshop reading. It was thrilling to hear participants read from their fiction, nonfiction, and poetry and to reflect on my experience as a PEN honoree and participant last year. 

I can’t wait to see what the new year brings in readings and lit events!

New York, Ten Years Later

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Attending the inaugural New York Black and African Literature Festival in September was the perfect excuse to revisit Harlem after ten years. And the three-day festival organized by author and poet Efe Paul Azino continually served literary vibes during my stay.

Because I chose a hotel in Midtown, I was able to experience large swaths of the city each day as I made my way uptown.

With the theme “Radical Solidarities,” it’s not surprising that one of the first panels I attended on Friday focused on coalition building. Dr Saudi García, a medical anthropologist, Samson Itodo, a Nigerian author and community organizer, and Omar Freilla, a social justice organizer discussed a wealth of themes relevant to the social challenges we face today. They described organizing as a way of life and a spiritual calling as they exchanged ideas about environmental resistance, the need for cooperatives and the necessity for unconventional alliances.

On Saturday, I attended the Radical Press panel which was a definite highlight. Speakers included Sean Jacobs from Africa is a Country, Bhakti Shringarpure from War Scapes Magazine, and the inimitable Ainehi Edoro of Brittle Paper. I was elated to hear all three speakers and to meet Dr. Edoro in person, especially since I’ve written a few book reviews for her admirable magazine. This trio of editors and publishers discussed how they founded their magazines around 2009/2010. They spoke on the current decline of corporate media and the need to take over spaces being abandoned by the mainstream. While Bhakti questioned even the role of independent media in the current paradigm, Jacobs emphasized how he stopped reacting to bad press in the West and made the decision to appoint more editors to cover the African continent.

On Sunday, I listened as journalist Howard French spoke about his latest book The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide with Kola Tuboson. Finally having the opportunity to hear this prolific author speak in person and discuss not just the role of Nkrumah in the development of Pan Africanism but also the diaspora wars amongst Blacks on the continent and in the Americas was definitely a highlight for me.

My insights here give just a small sample of the panels and readings I attended. There were several others that, in the spirit of the festival, brought together Africans from the continent, African Americans, and people of African descent from England and the Caribbean as well.

Ten years ago, when I visited New York, I crossed the Brooklyn Bridge on foot under the hot August sun. During this visit and once the festival ended, I did the same with the goal of visiting the Center for Fiction. The air was cooler this time, but the trek was just as challenging. During the same days that the Black and African Literature Festival was taking place, the Center for Fiction was hosting the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. As always, New York City was serving more events than I could possibly take in. So, I missed that one. But I still visited the Center to buy an anthology of short stories on Gaza and a bookmark depicting the Chrysler Building so I could carry a piece of the city back with me as yet another fond memory.

Art During Crisis

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In turbulent times, art won’t save us; but it can serve as a guide.

That is the message of the two art books that are bookends for my summer.

A Black History of Art by Alayo Akinkugbe is a recent publication in which the author “delves into the portrayal of Black figures in Western art, explores Blackness within museum spaces, and examines curatorial practices.”

In June, I was able to experience the power of Alayo Akinkugbe’s book by attending a 5-week, online course hosted by Black Blossoms, UK and given by the author who earned her degrees at both Cambridge and Courtauld Institute of Art.

The audience was as diverse as the art, with participants hailing from the African Continent, Europe, and the Americas.

Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st Century Art and Poetics by Dhyandra Lawson et al was published at the end of last year. This book captures the essence of the exhibit I saw in August at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Likewise, it “illuminates aesthetic connections among established and emerging US–based artists in dialogue with artists working in Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Europe.”

Why my interest in these books?

Art continues to strengthen my interpretation of the Black diaspora and Pan Africanism. The Black diaspora crosses over international borders and various continents, and it communicates in various languages. Visual art is one of the most accessible avenues for interacting across differences because we might not be able to read the foreign language of the novel or understand the foreign language and accent in a song. Art is visual and immediate. It invites us to interact instantaneously with themes and motifs that crisscross the Black and Pan African experience.

I’m grateful for the connections art spurs me to make, whether in art galleries, via social media, or in excellent books such as these.

The LA Opera and Memories of Fascism: Federico Garcia Lorca, Neruda, Hemingway

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Would you flee a fascist state?

Given the current state of US political affairs, I was left to ponder that question as I watched the LA Opera production of “Ainadamar” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillon downtown. In the opera, the character who plays actress Margarita Xirgu tries to convince her friend Federico García Lorca – a poet, playwright, and theater director — to flee Spain as the country hurdles towards civil war. She goes into exile, but the poet refuses to leave. Xirgu then engages with the audience to tell the tragedy surrounding García Lorca’s last days during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939.

Why Federico García Lorca?

Upon hearing about this opera, I was compelled to see it. As I state in my hybrid memoir manuscript, I first learned about Federico García Lorca at age sixteen when my AP Spanish Literature teacher introduced me to two poets who had a lasting impact on my own bilingual poetry – García Lorca and Pablo Neruda.

García Lorca is the most prominent Spanish writer of the early twentieth century. Born in 1898 in Granada, Spain and assassinated in 1936, his literary influences were futurism, symbolism, and surrealism. While doing recent research on his life, I realized authorities have given various reasons for his death. Most prominent amongst them is the fact that he was gay and a socialist in a country that was moving further and further to the right.

Was the Spanish Civil War a proxy war?

I am a fan of hybrid memoir, so literature inevitably leads me to history. Because I read the book The Red Flag by David Priestland a few years ago, I reflected on the historical context of the opera as I watched the L.A. production. From Priestland, I learned how the far right in Spain gained more popularity as Hitler consolidated power in and around Germany. Before World War II, Spain, France, and Chile had formed popular front governments to combat fascism. The Spanish left had one of the most successful popular fronts – communists, socialists, and left liberals — in the Western world, and they won the 1936 election.

Regrettably, the leftist victory of the Spanish Popular Front was short lived because General Francisco Franco staged a coup in 1936, the year García Lorca was assassinated. The country endured three torturous years of civil war fought not only by its citizens but also by volunteers from over fifty countries. The fascist governments of Germany and Italy supported Franco while Stalin sent arms to the political left.

While doing recent research, I learned new details about the quickly shifting politics of 1930’s Spain. I knew from Priestland that Picasso became a card-carrying communist during the civil war era. But I also discovered that Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda was on diplomatic duty in Spain where he met García Lorca. Like Picasso, Neruda became radicalized as a communist, but he also lost his diplomatic post due to his beliefs. The Chilean poet also met Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo and attended the 1937 Second International Writers Conference that Hemingway attended.

Despite the valiant efforts of the leftist resistance and the toil of a civil war that cut short 500,000 lives, the General gained control of the country. Franco banned García Lorca’s writing until 1953 — interestingly, the year Joseph Stalin died — and maintained his dictatorship until 1975.

A surprise for me was learning that after many years of tragic war and decades of dictatorship, García Lorca’s remains have never been found.

The LA Opera’s production of “Ainadamar” — conducted by Lina González-Granados of Colombia and choreographed by Antonio Najarro of Spain – was excellent. I appreciate how it put this history and García Lorca’s art on a Los Angeles stage for us to remember and reflect on the importance of resisting the destruction and dehumanization of far-right politics.

AWP vs LA Festival of Books

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Los Angeles hosted two large book events within two months, and I attended both. Was one better than the other? I think not. They both focused on their audience and did so quite well.

March was abuzz with AWP and the writers who visited from across the country and internationally to make the city grand!

Association of Writers and Writing Programs hosted 12,000 writers, editors, publishers, book sellers, college programs, and others at the LA Convention Center. Amazingly, I didn’t just attend. I also presented for the first time! I was on the “New Literary Forms for a New Los Angeles” panel moderated by Claire Phillips. Along with Claire, I was proud to accompany writers Steph Cha, Sesshu Foster, and Gina Frangello.

Challenge number one was to calm my nerves! This was my first time presenting at AWP. The closest I’d ever gotten to presenting at AWP was participating in an off-site event alongside my publisher, Another Chicago Magazine, at AWP Seattle in 2023. But practice paves the way for perfection. And practice I did, even though my goal wasn’t to be perfect. I just wanted to be prepared enough so that if I made a mistake, I’d be able to regain composure and keep it moving.

As an attendee, I made my way to the panel “Do the Hustle: How to Publicize Your Book.” Luckily, I am reaching that yearned-for point in the writing process in which I get to focus now on submission, marketing, and publicity. So, it was great hearing how authors are clearing their own pathways to sales in an era in which publishers do less book promotion.

The panel “Literary Production During Authoritarian Governments” hit the right notes of concern and caution given our current administration in D.C. I share in the presenters’ belief that it’s imperative we continue writing and resisting during this era of book bans and limited funding.

“We Beautifully Outside: Informal Writing Collectives, Community and Kinship” was a wonderful reminder of the power of writing groups and how they have nurtured Black women writers in Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Seattle.

In April, LA Festival of Books had about 160,000 people in attendance and was more about casual engagement. Let’s face it, at AWP writers are speaking to their peers — the toughest audience sometimes.

Because AWP and LA Festival of Books were back-to-back in the same city, I picked up on the different tone right away. At the book festival, authors speak to their readers. So, the presenters delve into the content of the text more so than the writing process that led to its creation. Their presentation is more relaxed because they want to meet their audience halfway, and their audience is simply out and about enjoying their weekend.

For me, panel number one was “Existential Memoirs.” As a writer of hybrid memoir, I search out this genre. The panel was moderated by Gina Frangello, my co-panelist at AWP, and included authors Meghan Daum, Lyz Lenz, and Glynnis MacNicol. The women covered a wide range of topics including relationships, motherhood, the humor of daily life, and the horror of contemporary politics.

And finally, the “Speak Out” panel on writing and activism was moderated by journalist Jonathan Capehart and included authors Ibram X. Kendi, Aida Mariam Davis, and Rita Omokha. I loved that this panel had a Pan African scope, with presenters of US, Ethiopian, and Nigerian heritage. Their call to activism was rooted in US reality but stretched across the African/Black diaspora and highlighted the need to act locally and analyze globally as we draw on Black activism from the past to traverse the winding roads of an uncertain future.

My Interview at Write or Die Mag

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Last month I was featured in the Write or Die Magazine Newsletter. Write or Die Mag is on Substack, and they have a huge following of more than 11,000 subscribers. They publish short stories, essays, and interviews.

Check out the interview here.

Write or Die Editor and prolific writer Brittany Ackerman kindly invited me to participate in the GRWM (Get Ready With Me) feature. In the interview, I discussed my favorites — a favorite bookstore, recent book, winter purchase, and brunch order. I also recalled my best and worst writing advice.

Why Samuel Beckett: A Black Writer’s Perspective

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Studying Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett during junior year at UCLA was the final straw that pushed me towards mental and emotional exhaustion. I had overextended myself academically by taking too many classes during spring and summer quarters; and, studying Beckett in the fall led to questioning my Catholic faith and having to take a quarter off from my studies.

When I heard that OR books was publishing a hybrid memoir titled Beckett’s Children by Michael Coffey, I rushed to pre-order it. Coffey’s memoir, published in July this year, offered a sense of relief because I had worried that the allusions to a modernist writer in my memoir manuscript might seem a bit dated. But here was a memoir published in 2024 proving me wrong.

Unlike Coffey’s book, there are no continuous references to Beckett in my manuscript. Studying Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is pivotal to the inciting incident in chapter one because it causes me to doubt my faith. In Beckett’s Children, on the other hand, the author’s inciting incident centers around the idea that the Irish author may have fathered the American poet, Susan Howe.

Threads running through Coffey’s hybrid memoir include the stated curiosity about a familial bond between Beckett and Howe, Coffey’s literary research on the two writers, his own history as an adoptee, and his relationship with his son who is a three-time felon and addict.  In my manuscript, I weave in the history of Black Los Angeles beginning with the founding of the city by the Spanish.

Coffey’s description of airports and prisons as structures distinguished by their “architecture of waiting” stood out to me. This description was impactful because I’m familiar with Professor David Harvey’s description of the revolutionary potential of airport workers who are a class in themselves with the potential of becoming a class for themselves. In contrast, prisoners are the most captive humans on US soil; and prison is where the US Government has sent revolutionaries, such as members of the Black Power Movement and the Black Panther Party. So, I found the analogy of prisons and airports interesting because the two structures can also be considered exact opposites.

I recommend Beckett’s Children because one or more of the four narrative lines the author weaves into his hybrid memoir will grab your interest and pull you through the author’s skillful storytelling until the last page.

“The House on Mango Street” and a Garden in Watts

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The House on Mango Street in a roundabout way helped me buy the garden in Watts. The garden wasn’t just the purple fountain grass and Mexican feather grass protected by weed fabric and surrounded by wood chips at the side of the house. But also, the papyrus grass that grew six or seven feet in front of the house. I bought the house in 2004 and watered the decorative grasses and the green St. Augustine grass every Sunday until the house went underwater, financially, in 2008. Then I sold it in 2009; and not because of the garden and not because of the house, but because of a family emergency that was more important than the house.

When Sandra Cisneros first published her novella The House on Mango Street in 1984, I had been living my period of attempted literary exile that inspired me to fly from Los Angeles to Paris in search of a city Anaïs Nin portrayed as inherently artistic. Nin told me this when I ditched eleventh grade and read her autobiography inside the newly constructed big blue Pacific Design Center on Melrose Avenue. While I was ditching at Pacific Design, the Diaz sisters also had a house on Melrose that they owned before the building was completed in 1975. Ironically, their 900-foot house sat at the front steps of the blue building until 1997 when they finally sold. Another irony is that as an adult I would hear Cisneros read from her book inside the auditorium of Pacific Design. I can’t remember now if the Diaz house was still at the entrance or not.

During my literary exile that mimicked A. Nin, J. Baldwin, and J. Baker, I sat one day on a bench in the cold of winter listening as the streets of Paris told me I needed a vocation. On the metro running beneath the streets, the Black skin – akin to my own — of Francophone Africans hinted I needed a home. I returned to Los Angeles determined to teach despite my mother rightly warning that secondary education was too much work for too little income. Cisneros’ House on Mango Street gave me something to teach. And lasting in the trenches of teaching, so you can have a livelihood, pay your rent, and maybe one day buy a house, is all about having something (you are passionate about) to teach.

Cisneros is back in the States from her current home in Mexico. Speaking at City of Asylum on October 20 for the fortieth anniversary of the publication of her book, she described her time teaching high school in Chicago and how she realized the students needed more than literature; she suggested that what they needed were social services and social change. Indeed. I agree. At the same time, I am thankful she gave me poetically crafted chapters to teach, such as “My Name,” “Marin,” and “Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the Dark.”

As I taught, I wrote poetry. Lots of it. My first published poems were bilingual, and Arte Público Press accepted them for publication in their journal The Americas Review. At City of Asylum, Cisneros stated that House on Mango Street was first published by Arte Público – a press, she said required its writers to be better than good. They had to be excellent. I knew, without a doubt, that my poems – “La Chanteuse de Jazz,” La Pachanga,” and “Boca Oficial” were excellent. Cisneros also whispered to us during her talk that a lot of Latinx writing today is pop literature.

Mango Street not only inspired me to continue teaching; it was a catalyst for me to write my own YA novella while I lived in the house in Watts where on Sundays I tended to purple fountain grass, Mexican feather grass, and papyrus grass. Thinking back now, I can’t fathom how I wrote a novella as my marriage slowly dissolved and I stepped into the role of single motherhood responsible for two kids while tending to three dogs and a garden behind wrought iron gates.

It dawned on Cisneros as she studied creative writing at University of Iowa in her early twenties that everyone in her class had a house except her. That difference was another inspiration for her writing the novella. Did I ever think of my house in Watts as “A House of My Own” that was “a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem”? Considering that idea now, I don’t think so. I wrote a novella inside its four walls, but that writing occurred in a whirlwind I barely remember. The Watts house didn’t nourish my ability to write for publication; it nourished my ability to write in order to live. It, like teaching, erased the line between writing, teaching, and living until one and the other became the same.

Creative Writing Meets Fashion Design

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Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the 15th Annual Ankara Festival in Hollywood, CA for my third or fourth time. I enjoyed taking in the African fashion created by designers from Ethiopia, South Sudan, USA, Nigeria, Congo DR, Sierra Leone, and Cameroon.

While attending, I deliberately made the following connections between fashion design and creative writing:

Embodying your narrative. (Just like fashion designers when they create a collection; just as models do when they approach the runway.) It’s important, as you write, to show your characters (including you, if memoir) feeling the chill of the air, the rough sand particles at the beach. For writing, we find these ideas in the book Body Work by Melissa Febos and in the instructional resources at Corporeal Writing.

Use descriptive imagery. (Fashion designers are masters at this because fashion is all about image.) But also appeal to your readers’ sense of smell, taste, sound, and touch.

A beat is a major turning point in narrative. It’s also the make your point moment. (Just as models stop at just the right moment to capture an audience’s attention, take advantage of your beats.)

Publishing

Research your comparable/competitive titles when publishing a book. Check your local bookstores, bookstore websites, and Publishers Weekly.

Know your audience. Who are you writing for? How can you connect with them and stay connected? (Fashion designers know who they are designing for.)

Work with your team – editors, agent, publishers. (Like writing, fashion is teamwork.)

Can I Really Pitch This Book? — Black Writers Weekend, Atlanta

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I recently returned from Black Writers Weekend (Aug. 1-4, 2024) in Atlanta where I participated in their Pitch Fest.

My biggest takeaway was that I needed to embody my logline – that one-sentence synopsis of my hybrid memoir that reveals the central conflict in the manuscript. Embody how, you might ask? I have to walk in a room and incorporate the three selves of my memoir – the writer, the character in the scenes, and the reflective narrator (Kate Bannon) and convince my listeners that my book is worth their time.

What is Black Writers Weekend?

Black Writers Weekend is a four-day event that brings together authors, screenwriters, and media professionals for a bookfair and a series of panels, discussions, and movie viewings. Founded by writer Tamika Newhouse in 2008, the festival has been held annually in Atlanta since 2014.

My Logline

I started writing the logline for my hybrid memoir in 2022 during a UCLA Extension class titled Conquering Your Story and Its Superstructure with Steven Wolfson. The challenge I’ve faced in writing my logline has been incorporating the history of Black Los Angeles with my personal narrative about being a writer. My memoir structure is hybrid/researched, and my manuscript isn’t just about me. It’s about the experience of writing bilingual poetry in a city with a distinct history.

Since the 2022 course, I’ve continued to refine my logline. And I don’t think my current version will be the last. Each class I take, along with each event I attend, encourages me to revisit my logline and perfect it.

The logline is not only essential for querying and pitching, it also has helped me stay focused while writing.

The Foundation

Some other courses I have taken that have helped me refine my query and pitch include Query Your Memoir with Allison K. Williams, Writing and Pitching Hybrid Memoir with Courtney Maum, and The Query Workshop with Mary Alice Stewart of the Shipman Agency.

The Challenge

Black Writers Weekend required book writers to write and send in a description of their project if we were going to participate in Pitch Fest. My goal in participating was to challenge myself to pitch in person and then receive the bonus of immediate feedback. To write my description, I referred to the notes from the courses I had taken and the workshops I’d attended. And to pitch in person, I read three articles on the Jane Friedman website – “How to Pitch Agents at a Writers Conference,” “How to Pitch Like a Hollywood Pro,” and “The Power of Silence in a Pitch Situation.”

When push comes to shove, I’m almost certain I will query and pitch via email submission; but I realize that in-person pitch skills are invaluable. The Jane Friedman articles helped me pinpoint why my book is relevant, who it’s going to help, and why I have the authority to write this book.

Authors are constantly pitching their books, whether in manuscript form, at conferences, or at bookfairs. During the bookfair at Black Writers Weekend, I noticed how powerful the pitch is if we want readers to buy our books. My first day at the bookfair, I was determined to walk around and get a sense of which books were available. The second day, I planned to do the same, but an author invited me to her table. She began to pitch her book, and I bought a copy. Other authors noticed her success and followed suit by pitching me their books as well. Before I knew it, I had walked away with seven or eight titles by different authors.

Black Writers Weekend encouraged me to focus on the editorial challenges I have ahead of me. It also allowed me to get a clearer idea of who my readers will be and how I will need to improve my pitch to get my book into their hands.