we're family now

Last week I attended a 90-minute writing workshop with a best-selling local author.
And it's not just that Maurice Carlos Ruffin has sold books. His short story collection, The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You, is both a valentine to and keen-eyed critique of the city of New Orleans.

So, to experience an hour and a half in conversation with MCR was a gift I don't take lightly. At the end, after we'd listened and asked questions and read aloud snippets, he closed by saying, We're family now. You can call on me to have coffee and talk or ask a question anytime.

I couldn't help but contrast this generosity of spirit with the way it went in the PNW. I'm far too shy to ask the famous for help, but a good friend did once on my behalf and I was swiftly swatted down, sternly reminded of my place.

And so. I feel revived and encouraged.

once it’s out, you’re done for

Good LORD it has been a week.

As a writer I know I need to find the words, but I’m struggling.

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So much is going on and yes I’m going to vague-blog for now, sorry, but it’s everything, writing and work and family and misophonia and life and

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I feel exhausted from the inside out, charred like a stump that got hit by lightning and smoldered for awhile.

Energized, raw, with a slight danger of collapse.

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Misophonia outwits my most valiant attempts at being among friends in a public space. I snapped at beloveds the other night at an outdoor show. I knew I was going to, knew it would spoil the evening, heard the words exit my lips & saw their faces register my irritation & desperately tried to reel it all back in but I could not, in the same way you can’t re-roll a sleeping bag back into its little nylon case or put toothpaste back in the tube. It was in there, compressed and tidy and coiled to escape.

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Once it’s out, you’re done for.

I call this one fairy gator

 

fairy gator (unsigned)

book festival musings

 

Tulane University hosted the New Orleans Book Festival last weekend and dozens of nationally-known writers were there. Is it unlikely that a city known for brass bands and Mardi Gras and 24-hour bars would also host a world class literary event? What I experienced was a definitive outbreak of literary joy: two-plus days of panels and readings, book signings and performances, food trucks and kid-friendly activities on the lush Tulane campus.

I attended one day and volunteered the next--it’s a free event but ushering offered me a free t-shirt, snacks and beverages, a badge and a great view (if I wanted it) of three hours of NYT best sellers talking shop.

Unfortunately, the best selling writers I ushered for were alternately a repulsive South African millionaire (all absurdly gigantic cowboy hat and 9-11 braggadocio) and an exploitative and tone deaf journalist-turned-novelist writing dead celebrities into fiction and patting himself on the back for his female character noticing another’s boots.

The bestseller panels I saw off the clock were miraculous though, thought-provoking and generous and funny. Charles M. Blow hosted professor and ethnographer Corey J. Miles, brilliant artist Brandan B.Mike Odums and avery r. young (Chicago’s poet laureate), in a discussion of art, culture and writing. Odums talked passionately about his art preceding him into places where he’s not yet welcome, in America, in 2024. 

And Eddie Glaude, Jr. interviewed Clint Smith, Imani Perry and Jesmyn Ward on writing about the South. Smith spoke of the dangers of myopic nostalgia for a South that never existed; Ward about depicting both trauma and joy in her writing. I read Perry’s South to America recently, her thoughtful analysis of the intricacies and identities of each state below the Mason-Dixon line. Glaude hilariously introduced Q&A by asking wryly, Let it be a question, please. (Spoiler: it wasn’t.)

Every festival is what you make of it, I’m learning, and I am glad to have heard these thinkers and talented writers share insights right now, at the height of their skills and power.