Upcoming Events
Leading workshops at the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast MFA program
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Reading and Signing at Agawam Public Library
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Speaking at Metropolitan Community Church of Richmond
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Readings and signings on Cape Cod
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Reading and signing at St. Sebastian Catholic Church, Baltimore, Maryland
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Reading and Signing at Sunderland Public Library
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Leading a workshop at Curry College
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Leading workshops at Cape Cod Writers Conference
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Reading and signing at First Congregational Church
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Reading and Signing at Church of the Good Shepherd
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Leading workshops at Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance retreat
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Reading and signing at Andover Bookstore
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Reading and signing at Royalston Library
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Reading and Signing at Second Congregational Church
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Reading and Signing at Westfield Atheneum
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Leading workshop at Writers Week in Ireland, Fall 2008
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Reading and Signing in Claremont, New Hampshire
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Panelist at Write Angles Conference
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Reading and Signing at Simon Fairfield Public Library
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Beacon Broadside Blog
Should we think that our current problems as a nation—the falling value of the dollar, a perilous dependence upon overseas products, an administration that favors the wealthy over the ordinary man, and an edgy attitude towards women in politics—are unique to 2008, they also worried a nearly forgotten Founding Mother over two hundred and twenty years ago.
The end of the Supreme Court's term gives me a chance to reflect on some of the dissents that the justices wrote. The question I want to explore – which I deal with in some of the essays accompanying the opinions I've reprinted in I Dissent – is this: Why bother to dissent, especially at great length?
In the department of jobs you may not have known existed, Kate Braestrup is the chaplain for the Maine Game Warden Service. Lest you think that she spends her time blessing moose and praying for trout, read this excerpt of...
Roughly a month ago, the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision in United States v. Williams that upheld the consitutionality of the Prosecutorial Remedies and other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003 (The PROTECT Act). The 7-2 decision is the latest in a disturbing line of Congressional actions and Supreme Court decisions that cloak encroachments on the First Amendment in the pious garb of protecting children.
For Pride Month, Beacon Broadside invited Pat Griffin, director of It Takes A Team! Education Campaign for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Issues in Sport, to discuss the issue of homophobia in sports. Dr. Griffin is the author of Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbian and Homophobia in Sports and co-editor of Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook for Teachers and Trainers. The interview questions are from Helen Wheelock, a regular contributor to the Women's Hoops Blog and the Women's Basketball Coaching Association's magazine, Coaching Women's Basketball.
There have been gay poets—or, at least (if you prefer historical accuracy) poets who presented same-sex erotic passion—for as long as poetry has been written down; maybe longer. Think of Sappho, whose name has referred for centuries both to the idea of eros between women and to the ancient idea of lyric itself: think of what may be her single most famous poem, "He seems to me equal to a god, that man/ Who sits beside you," its first sentence a feint towards opposite-sex desire, its substance an homage to the young woman Sappho loves. Shakespeare's sonnets, most of them addressed to a comely young man, have inspired centuries of arguments about his erotic investment in, "the master-mistress of my passion." Walt Whitman insisted that he wrote for, and about, both women and men, but what records there are tell us that he loved men; he put his poems about same-sex love ("adhesiveness," as he called it) in a discrete segment of his lifework, Leaves of Grass, entitled "Calamus" (after the phallic plant of the same name): Whitman inspired what later became gay movements as his poetry circulated internationally—in England, Edward Carpenter and J. A. Symonds thought they had found in his work a model for gay Utopia. Federico Garcia Lorca's "Ode to Walt Whitman" called together, under Whitman's name, the stigmatized homosexual men of the Old and New World, trying to wring new lives from their frequent self-hate.
I chuckled to myself wondering what William F. Buckley, the author of the landmark conservative tract God and Man at Yale, might have thought of this year's Baccalaureate Service at Dartmouth College. In addition to Christian hymns and Bible readings, there was a Native American prayer offered in the Yuchi language, and recitations from the Hindu and Buddhist traditions.
The main speaker – yours truly – was a Muslim.
Trans people aren't broken. We aren't looking to be "fixed," and we have no need of a repairman. We have spent decades trying to convince the Western world of this, and forgive us if some in our ranks were starting to feel a little optimistic about our progress – until, maybe, now.
On June 19, 1865 Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas and let people know that the Civil War had ended and the enslaved were free. This news—and the Union soldiers necessary to enforce the law—made it to Galveston two and...
Lesbian couples raising children in the suburbs of my city, Washington, DC, got a one-two punch in the last three weeks. First the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that when only one member of the couple had adopted the child they were both parenting, and then the couple split up, that the child had only one mother….and that mother can decide whether to maintain or stop contact between the child and the other mother. Since 2000, Maryland courts had been awarding visitation rights in this situation. Not anymore:the highest court in the state said there’s no such thing as a “de facto” parent with rights to continue a relationship with a child she has raised.
As someone who grew up a comic book fan—and who grew into graphic books—I'm thrilled to be the acquiring editor of graphic nonfiction for Beacon Press. This is a new field for us as a publishing house, but it's certainly not a new field. Stories told in a book-length graphic format have their own deep history, pieces of which are deftly told in two books I have sitting on my desk: David Beronä's Wordless Books and Douglas Wolk's Reading Comics.
Yale Environment 360, a new online magazine from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental studies, launched last week. Among the stellar commentary from leading voices in the environmental movement is Beacon's own Fred Pearce, whose piece "Water Scarcity: The...
Welcome
Hello and happy spring (nearly)!
I visited Edwards Books yesterday and saw stacks of proof that
"Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith" is now in print.
Janet Edwards has enthusiastically ordered something like 250 copies and I stood there thinking how it was just about two years ago that I started wondering what makes one Christian religion different from the next – and Tommy, as he often does, suggested "Write about it."
The result is this
book, my eighth, and my third of non-fiction.
And it's the first book of mine that’s been chosen for mention by Book Sense, a national marketing campaign by and for the independent bookstores of America. "Sundays in America" will be a Book Sense Notable Title for May and will appear in the 450,000 May Book Sense flyers which distributed through independent bookstores around the country.
I’ve got lots of readings and signings arranged, and big thanks goes to those who will be hosting me at their bookstores, libraries, schools and clubs in the next few months. I also thank everyone who’s been reading my books – if nobody were, I wouldn’t get to do this for a living, as I have now for thirteen years. See the Events page for "Sundays in America" reading dates, which start at 7 p.m. on March 12 at the Broadside in Northampton, Mass. It’s been my tradition and good fortune to hold my first readings there since 1994, as I have since its founder, the late Bruce MacMillan, asked me to read there with my first book – even before it was out or he knew what it was about. He simply loved to help authors. I will be signing at Edwards Books the next day, March 13, from noon to 1:30. Edwards, which inspired my second memoir, "Shelf Life," has at the ready the abovementioned stacks of copies of Sundays in America. If you’d like to purchase a signed copy of the new book, or any of my books, write info@edwardsbooks.com or phone 413-736-6844.
Anyone who’d like to book a "Sundays in America" reading or signing at a bookstore, library, social club or book group is invited to contact me or my publicist, Pam MacColl. Don’t hesitate to propose an event just because you’re not in New England, I’m planning to tour far and wide. Check the Events page for the latest list of readings.
Somewhere in all of this, I’ve been continuing to write for the online magazine Obit, www.obit-mag.com, and contributing to Beacon Press’ new blog, www.beaconbroadside.com.
And if you’d like to write, take note that my wonderful friends, poets and authors Ted and Annie Deppe and I are checking for preliminary interest in an Irish writing retreat in autumn 2008. We'll be offering a conference from 15-22 October 2008 in Howth, a beautiful seaside village just north of Dublin. We plan to have a week of workshops, seminars, readings, and field trips to literary sites in Dublin. Click on the Workshop page for more information. Applications are due by March 28!
Speaking of Ireland, if you’re headed to the Dingle Peninsula, may I recommend firsthand Saoirse Tours (saoirsetours@eircom.net, 011-353-86-3772195) for guided tours of Counties Galway, Clare and Kerry, with other areas explored on request. Packages include transportation to and from the airport, accommodations, meals, and a whole lot of fun.
And speaking of workshops, as I was a few paragraphs ago… The Blue Hills Writing Institute has invited me to lead a workshop this August, so I’ll be at Curry College in Milton, Mass., Aug. 11 and 12 to present two days on "Writing Around the Corner—Setting Stories in Your Hometown." Full details are available on the Blue Hills Writing Institute web pages.
It was at the Blue Hills Writing Institute that I met Allan Hunter, a Curry professor, counselor and author who has a 99-year-old motorcycle in his garage and a zillion years of wisdom in his head. Lucky for us, he’s generous enough to share. His latest book is the amazing "Stories We Need to Know: Reading Your Life Path in Literature" (Findhorn Press), in which Allan has scooped six archetypes from 3,000 years of literature and myth. Find out which you are at this moment in your life, and how age-old and currently bestselling stories ("Homer to Harry Potter" is how Findhorn perfectly puts it) can light the way from one challenge to the next. When my first book came out, a woman nearly as old as Allan’s motorcycle wrote me and said "Keep writing fiction. Fiction saves lives." I kept that note.
Now I have just the book in which to press it.
I’d also like to get everyone I know reading "A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants" by Jaed Coffin. This DaCapo Press memoir is the first book for Jaed, a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program in which I teach. At age 21, this Thai-American Middlebury College student spent a season as a Buddhist monk in his mother’s native village in Thailand. "A Chant" details that, along with compelling contemplation of culture and identity.
For the second time in a row, I’m closing an update of this site with a remembrance, this time of Jackie Walker, who died January 8. Jackie and her equally dynamic counterpart, Deb Orgera, eight years ago founded the Cancer Connection of Florence, Mass., which helps patients, survivors and loved ones alike. So many in this area were blessed and fortunate to have received from Jackie love, guidance, presence and the occasional pink-themed doo-dad. I send armloads of thanks and love to the spirit of Jackie, and much love and strength to her family, and to her Cancer Connection family, starting with Deb and Sibyl.
Suzanne
03/10/08
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