Poetry Reading: Lelawatee Manoo-Rahming at FIU

Bob Marley Symposium @ Florida International University, Biscayne Campus

http://africana.fiu.edu/events/2015/bob-marley-symposium-bob-marley-at-70-critical-look-at-the-man-the-music-and-the-message/

The Heartbreaker: Chatting With Anjanette Delgado

By Jennifer Maritza McCauley

In Anjanette Delgado's The Heartbreak Pill, scientist Erika Luna tries to develop a cure for heartache after her marriage crumbles. Delgado is a broken heart specialist herself. “Anytime I’ve written anything, I’ve written about somebody’s heartbreak,” The celebrated writer says. “I'm obsessed with it.”

Delgado’s obsession has paid off. During her eighteen years writing and producing for outlets such as CNN, Vogue, NPR, Univision and Telemundo, Delgado has received much acclaim for her stories about women struggling with emotional pain. Delgado’s documentary series “Madres en la Lejania” won an Emmy, her sitcom “Great in Bed” was bought by HBO Latin America, and her latest novels The Heartbreak Pill and the upcoming The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho have been optioned by De Oro Media, of the Jenni Rivera reality shows fame.

The author is just as accessible and vivacious as her work. Even if she barely knows you, she speaks to you like you’re a long lost girlfriend. I conducted a phone interview with Delgado and we talked about self-transformation, sticking to deadlines, and why her work connects so well with readers.

JM: Your first published novel The Heartbreak Pill was originally written in Spanish, and your newest book The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho was written in English as your MFA thesis. What was your process like working on these two novels?

AD: For The Heartbreak Pill I had no process. I didn’t know what I was doing. I wrote four drafts of it and threw them all out. It took me five years and I was so confused with [writing in the English] language.  Ultimately, I felt the voice coming through more clearly in Spanish and I went with it.

For my second novel, I used the model I now use for my class [“Finish Your Novel – the TV Way” at The Center for Arts and Literature at Miami Dade College.] In T.V. writing you have a deadline and can’t go off that deadline.  You budget your time and how many scenes or chapters are going to be written in so many days. You have maps, you have pre-pro work. You write out the dialogue of the scenes, but you have a map. You have a route.

For the second novel, I did all this and it worked for me. That’s why I created this class. I think I could have done a better first novel if I had had a process. With the first I was grabbing time when I could and writing on yellow pads. I didn’t even own a home computer when I started. So there wasn’t really a process for the first book. I would have had more fun writing if I did.

JM: In The Heartbreak Pill your protagonist Erika Luna undergoes serious emotional pain. She loses her husband and her sense of self all at once. Heartbreak is both universal and unifying. I'm sure readers connect with the book emotionally. How did you feel about the positive responses to The Heartbreak Pill?

AD: I love The Heartbreak Pill. It was the best book it could be at that time. I wrote it before I finished the MFA. It's what I wrote on my own, by myself. And it was a hard novel to write, with no help and a lot less training. But it was heartfelt. I had insights about it and I really wanted to put those thoughts down. I think that's why readers seem to have such a deep personal connection with the novel. I get e-mails all the time from people saying how the book changed them. That amazes me.

I had a reader write to me via Facebook. She told me she gave my book to her mother-in-law and that it had been the first time she'd seen her laugh in nine years! Others write to me and tell me their stories of heartbreak. Even men.

I have three friends who I’ve met through the book. One of them is the editor of Siempre Mujer, Maria Cristina Marrero. She looked me up and said, “I read your book and had to become your friend.” It’s definitely a novel of connection. Some call it chick lit, but it connects and that is what is important to me.

JM: Do you have any themes that consciously come up in your work?

AD: Heartbreak is my theme. In the end, there are a lot of lessons to learn in life. One of them is that heartbreak isn’t always sad. It can be cleansing. It can teach you lessons. Heartbreak is the thing I keep returning to in my writing. When I talk to my students I ask them, “What are you seeing…what holds you? What comes up again and again in your writing?”

As a T.V. producer, I won an Emmy for a T.V. series called Madres en la Lejania. This was a story about immigrant mothers who left their children behind to become nannies. It’s a series about immigration and it’s about the plight of mothers and children, but it’s really about heartbreak. In that case it was the heartbreak of separation.

I’m working on a story called Gridlock, and it’s about a couple on their way to an abortion clinic. She wants to terminate the pregnancy and he doesn’t. So, another kind of heartbreak. I’m obsessed with the idea of it and how it changes you.  Why you love some people and not others.

In the end, anytime I’ve written anything, I’ve written about somebody’s heartbreak. I’m obsessed with it and with self-transformation.

JM: Your work is very empathetic. Do you feel, since heartbreak is your “theme”, that you are hyper-aware of your own suffering or the pain of others?

AD: There are ways to experience heartbreak. There are stories that stay with me and there are stories that have broken my heart. Sometimes [pain] is like a bullet. Sometimes the news will say this or that, and I’ll see that somebody’s life is shattered and it feels like a bullet. Like somebody physically hurt me just by reading that headline as if it were just one other thing that happened that day to be brought to you tonight at six.

I remember [working on daily newscasts] and forcing myself not to feel it, though. I do think it’s like being a doctor. When you’re writing the news you’re thinking about doing your job. You can't feel all of it, it's too much. But when I'm on the other side, it's amazing how much it affects me.

JM: So much of your work encourages Latinas and women in general, to positively transform their lives. At the end of The Heartbreak Pill, and even as she gets a green light to research a remedy for heartbreak, Erika realizes that this elusive “pill” is really just her decision to stop suffering. Can you talk a little bit about writing fiction that both empowers and entertains?

AD: So this really goes to the center of why I write. At one point I even considered calling myself a self-help writer. While I was writing The Heartbreak Pill, I was in my thirties and I didn’t have any training or contacts. I had two children and I had a very demanding job as a TV producer. Back then I was addicted to self help books. Addicted! If you went to my bookshelf you’d see all of these self-help books, Why Men Love Bitches… you know. I was just obsessed. I especially wanted to know more about relationships. Because of that obsession, I think all of my novels deal with women teaching themselves something to make themselves happy.

Women are into self-transformation. If we want to be something we’ll go find a book and find out how to be that thing. If we want to be sophisticated, we’ll go and buy a book called “How to Be Sophisticated.” If we want to be better at romance we’ll buy a book called “How To Be Romantic.” For all the things people say about women, we work to make things work. We figure out what it is we need and we get it. Same with immigrants, even though my books are not about Latinos in the traditional way you'd define a book to be about a people.

JM: How so?

AD: When I’m writing I think about the story, not about the narrator being Latina. If you want to promote an idea or rewrite history, that’s all fine. But when you start it’s about the story. You have to think about how the reader connects with your book, who spends time with it. I don’t think about empowerment. I think about what I want to learn.

The Heartbreak Pill is about suffering and how to let go. How we can’t control everything, so of course my protagonist had to be someone who had it all together. She had to be a scientist and she had to go through a divorce, there had to be an arc. This thing had to tear her apart so she could realize she can’t control everything. So I’d love to think I’m empowering women and Latinas but I don’t think about that. I just like a good story. I’m a Latina and I like humor and it’s really hard to not put my sense of humor in my work. [Erika] is a scientist not because I wanted her to be an empowered Latina, but because I wanted her to be dramatic for the story’s sake.

In The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho the protagonist is the opposite. She only has a high school diploma but she learns what she needs to learn for the book. So the story, for me, comes first.

JM: Your narrator in The Heartbreak Pill has a desire for her pain to be understood. Is being understood also a theme of your work?

AD: I really think that [idea] survived in my agenda. Heartbroken people do want to be understood. The other day I was watching an episode of the Mindy Kaling Project on television. I love that show. I'd love for [Mindy Kaling] to play Erika [in a film adaption of The Heartbreak Pill]! Mindy said she needed a Heartbreak Day and when she didn't get it, things went bad. She said to her boss, “If you'd given me a Heartbreak Day, we wouldn’t have had this problem!”

Really, heartbreak is just as awful as a cold. If you have a cold someone will say, “Aw, I’m so sorry you feel sick” and they expect you to get better and they'll wish you “get well.” But if something bad happens to you and you feel heartsick, people think you should suck it up and move on. People don’t really understand and it’s frustrating. So in The Heartbreak Pill Erika is trying to cure heartbreak like it’s an illness because it is an illness. 

JM: You capture Erika's denial of her loss beautifully. Erika’s lawyer and friends tell her that she doesn't want a quick remedy for her pain. She really just wants to go back to a happier time with her husband. She wants her marriage back. Why do you think it takes so long for women and men to get over heartbreak?

AD: After all of my research, I didn't get an answer to that one. I don’t think the problem is in the brain. I think the brain could get over [heartbreak] really fast. There are some things in life you can get over in two seconds. You say, “Oh my God, that thing is useless to me!” and then you're done. If you're open to seeing that [it’s useless], it takes a good day or two to get over it. But you are your habits and love is a habit.

For some, heartbreak is always there. Maybe the person you loved is great or she's a sack of shit, but loving her is a habit. It's ingrained in you. Since you loved her yesterday, you can't just stop loving her today. It's going to take you a while. I thinking hanging on is a reflex. If you were able to change your feelings, you would. Lots of people measure things in terms of how long they loved the person. How long they invested themselves. If you loved someone for a long time, it feels more real. And we are always trying to make love more real. To make it stay, to make it true. You think, “I'm going to push that person away, but then you think, “Holy crap, I put so much into that person.”

I think the brain has to do with heartbreak but the hanging on is us. I'm not a scientist or a psychologist or a marriage counselor, but that is my instinct. I'm a woman and we're insightful. We're wise.

JM: Why did you choose Miami as your setting for The Heartbreak Pill and The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho?

AD: I like Miami. I like a lot of other places too, but I think there's something quirky-hazy-magical-romantic about Miami. It doesn’t give itself up. Sure, you can go to South Beach and it's there, but there's an underground. Even if you don't go to the beach, there's still a lot to do. You can go find the Last Shoe bar open in Overtown  and you'll catch a person jamming on at 3 a.m on a Tuesday. You can try a vintage shop. It's not what you see in the magazines or what you imagine on Ocean Drive. That's part of why Miami is so unique.

There's cool poetry in Miami too, poetry from all over the world. I also like the immigrant quality. My protagonists are Latina and they do well in Miami. Maybe one day soon I'll place my novels somewhere else, but for now I still have a few stories to tell in Miami.

AD: Who is your first reader?

These days it's anyone I can find. For the first book, it was my husband. When we first met he was my number one fan. The second novel was in English so I didn't have him all the time. I’m dying for him to read it. My ideal reader is my best friend. She's a news director for NBC Six and she's a good friend, but we're different in many ways and smart in ways that help her give me a good read. She's tough, too. Sometimes I'll imagine she's reading my stuff to catch if I'm missing anything.

One of the kindest readers I've ever had is Lynne Barrett. She'll take your stuff and tear it apart, but whatever comes out will always remain your story. She'll never tell you have to change something; she'll just give you the tools. John Dufresne told me, I'd never find a person more respectful of my work, who'll work with what's there, and he was so right. So my husband is my first reader, my ideal reader is my best friend and my kindest reader is Lynne Barrett.

JM: Who are your literary heroes?

AD: That's such a hard question for a writer! My first books were in English. I learned to love books in English and that’s why I connect to stories in English. Even though it's so much easier to write in Spanish. I really love Muriel Sparks and Isabel Allende, Esmeralda Santiago, Sandra Cisneros and Julia Alvarez. Another literary hero, although it's hard to read him, is E.L. Doctorow.

I love Billy Bathgate. F. Scott Fitzgerald, I love The Great Gatsby and all of his stories. And locally, John Dufresne for sure. That man can make you laugh or cry with the just the slightest breeze of words. Then there are new voices. Patricia Engel and I went to school together and she has written a lovely book called It's Not Love, It's Just Paris, and Justin Torres wrote a novel called We The Animals. It’s amazing. Jennifer Bell writes really smart chic lit. I just read Junot Diaz's This is How You Lose Her, and I loved it and him. I felt like he was writing the male's side of The Heartbreak Pill. I thought, Oh my God, this is what the other person is thinking!

Also, Tony Hoagland and Campbell McGrath. John Dufresne, Lynne Barrett writes really wonderful women stories. Lydia Davis has nothing on her. The teachers from [the graduate program at] FIU aren't my heroes because I feel they are so close to me. They're mine.

JM: Why do you write?

 I love stories. I love being God, creating a world that’s a little cooler than mine. I had so much fun decorating Erika's apartment. I love to create that world. I love writing characters who can say that cool thing that you never get to say in real life. There's definitely a control freak in me. When you write a book you can control everyone in it. I don’t have a noble purpose, I just love creating people and making my readers smile.

Anjanette Delgado will join Isabel Allende on Saturday, February 1st at the Miami-Dade College Wolfson Campus.

For tickets and more information please visit the website: http://www.booksandbooks.com/event/isabel-allende-ripper-miami-dade-college-wolfson-campus-chapman-conference-center/

To learn more about Anjanette Delgado visit her website at: http://www.anjanettedelgado.com

The Writing Life: Marci Calabretta

Why did you take this course?

I am primarily a poet. I often feel that language is utilized in my field with all the power and usefulness of a frilly-finned goldfish. I should say that I took Literary Journalism because I was interested in how journalism impacted the literary world. I could also say that learning about various forms of writing improves my imagination on all sides, or that I wanted to become a powerful goldfish of language.

But the real reason is Lynne Barrett. Every once in a while, I discover a professor who dedicates herself to her students as enthusiastically and meticulously as she does to her own endeavors. Lynne Barrett is such a person. I felt that studying literary journalism with her would teach me to navigate the field more respectfully and attentively, but I really just wanted to take another class with her.

What did you hope to learn in this course?

I was particularly interested in building a platform for myself as a writer. In a world where so many people have an MFA and everyone is glued to the internet, visibility and diversity go a long way. A bit of direction in understanding how to present myself as such can go a long way.

What have you learned so far?

Lynne asked me several times throughout the semester how my author website was going, and has motivated me six ways from Sunday to actually create an online presence. I’m also inspired at what wild sprigs of ideas can be explored and planted under the umbrella of “literary journalism.” And people are interested. Look at http://www.brainpickings.org. Or http://paperandsalt.org, this amazing website that pairs authors with recipes. If you can think it, organize it, write it, you can probably find readers for it.

When did you begin blogging and why?

I’ve had everything from MySpace to Wordpress. You name it, I’ve tried my hand at it. Every time I started a blog, it petered off after a few tepid entries of useless personal information. I’ve never had great discipline with blogging. I would rather spend my time editing a journal or practicing archery than typing up a blog post that will probably crawl out of its internet grave in twenty years to haunt me.

However, when wielded attentively and devotedly, blogging can be a writer’s greatest asset. I think one valuable thing Lynne has taught me is consistency with taking on the internet literary community. If you say you’re going to post once per week, you’d better be true to your word. And then perhaps one right blog post shared on a whim can go viral and elevate you to fame. Isn’t that the luck of the draw? I’m not hoping for that. Some days, it’s a challenge to get anything down on paper at all.

What are the advantages of blogging? Disadvantages?

Time is definitely an issue for me. I foresee myself not so much exploring the advantages of blogging (or blundering through the disadvantages) as utilizing a website as a platform that requires minimal maintenance. I would imagine the entire internet community keeping me accountable to my own online presence. Everything about the web is a double-edged sword. Isn’t that why it’s called a “web” and a “net-work?” Sometimes you’re the fisherman, and sometimes you’re the fish.

Marci Calabretta is a Knight Fellow and poetry MFA candidate at Florida International University. Her work has appeared in American Letters & Commentary, The MacGuffin, and other journals. She is Managing Editor of Print Oriented Bastards, Poetry Editor for Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and a contributing editor for The Florida Book Review. Her chapbook, Last Train to the Midnight Market, was released from Finishing Line Press in 2013.

Twitter: @pobastards

Web Site: www.MarciCalabretta.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marci.calabretta

"Teaching J to Read" by Ashley Jones

I don’t know how to begin,

how to explain that A means A,

that B isn’t Beaver

but simply B,

the second drawing

in a series of twenty-six.

He is in the fifth grade

and he can’t read about Dick or Jane.

He spends his days

finding new places to hide—

in between book chapters, scraping ink;

at the end of a punchline;

on the lip of a carton of milk.

I am useless, like an after-school special—

here, there is no purple dinosaur,

no sparkle in our smiles,

no bell-toned music to montage this away.

He finds pig in big

and the way a fist can solve these things.

He loses his name

in the sprawling alphabet—

the surest letter is the first: J.

This is the dark curve

that marks him,

and, even now,

I can’t remember the letters

that follow.

Ashley M. Jones is now in her second year at FIU, where she is a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellow in Poetry. She is originally from Birmingham, Alabama, and her poetry has been published in Aura Literary Arts Review, Sanctuary Literary Magazine, and the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy.

***

Interview with Ashley M. Jones: Official Poet of the Sunrise Little Free Libraries Initiative

By Ellene Glenn Moore

The Little Free Libraries initiative is a national project that brings free library boxes to cities with no libraries or libraries with limited selections. In early 2013, still in her first year as an MFA student at Florida International University, Ashley M. Jones responded to a call for a poet to read at the City of Sunrise’s Little Free Libraries Ribbon Cutting Ceremony. In the following months, she has continued to contribute to the poetry community of Sunrise. Last month, we spoke over email about Little Free Libraries, the poetry community of the City of Sunrise, and her upcoming workshop for high school poets.

Ms. Jones is now in her second year at FIU, where she is a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellow in Poetry. She is originally from Birmingham, Alabama, and her poetry has been published in Aura Literary Arts Review, Sanctuary Literary Magazine, and the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy.

Ellene Glenn Moore: How did you become the Official Poet of Sunrise, Florida? 

Last year, there was an email sent out to the [Florida International University] MFA listserv from the City of Sunrise—the City needed a reader for their Little Free Libraries Ribbon Cutting Ceremony. Little Free Libraries is a nationwide initiative which provides free library boxes (à la newspaper distribution boxes) in areas in which there aren’t libraries, or in which there aren’t a lot of selections in the library.  The Sunrise Leadership Academy Class of 2013 initiated this project, and along with the help of Miami based artist GG, it all came together beautifully.  I responded to the call for a reader, and, after sending some of my work, I was chosen to read at the ceremony.  Not only did I get to read my poems alongside award-winning author Edwidge Danticat, but my work was put into a booklet that was distributed in each of the four Little Free Libraries in Sunrise. Since that ceremony, I’ve remained involved in the Sunrise community and, before my first free workshop, the lovely people in the Sunrise government office named me Official Poet of the program. 

EGM: What are the responsibilities of the position?

AMJ: Basically, as Official Poet, I’m involved in the City’s poetry initiatives. So, I provide free poetry workshops to local high schoolers every semester. My first workshop occurred in May 2013, and my upcoming workshop is scheduled for November 16th. Recently, I participated in the Word UP! Spoken Word Competition, co-sponsored by the Jason Taylor Foundation and the Omari Hardwick BluApple Poetry Network. I was originally a judge for this initiative, but ended up not being able to judge because I attended all of the workshops leading up to the slam to connect more with the students and witness the process of preparing for this event—I was just trying to have my cake and eat it, too, because I love being around the students so much. 

EGM: On a broader scale, what do you think are the responsibilities of poets to their communities? Why do we have Official Poets and Poet Laureates?

AMJ: I think it’s important for artists, not just poets, to stay grounded. It’s easy to get wrapped up in line breaks and word choice and just the right sprinkling of simile. Although the artiness of poetry is important, I think it's also important to do something with that talent and spread the joy of your art throughout the community. This not only shows the world what wonders are found in poetry (it’s more than stuffy wordplay to me, and I think if more people realized [this fact] the world might be more full of beautiful words than harmful ones), but it also provides an important outlet for people who don't know where to turn. This idea of writing as an outlet has manifested itself most frequently, in my life, through my work with high school students. Students find a way to channel their feelings and their passions into words, and that, I think, is a lot more helpful than channeling those feelings and passions into hurting themselves or others.

Taking poetry into the community can also be a useful tool for literacy training—showing students that they can play with language on the page makes them want to interact with words a lot more, which is great for their reading and writing lives. The task of an official poet or a Laureate is to reach people with poetry. However that might happen is up to the poet, but it must happen. Even if I never write a work of poetic genius or receive hundreds of prizes to stack on my CV, I will be perfectly happy—more than happy—to take poetry into my community and make a positive difference with words. Words!!

EGM: Is your role as Official Poet in dialogue with your own work as a poet and a student? Has the experience informed your work, or vice versa?

AMJ: That's an interesting question...I think my role in Sunrise is definitely in dialogue with my own work as a poet and student. Like I said before, it’s easy to get caught up in the brainiac world of poetry. When I read at the Sunrise Little Free Libraries ceremony, a lot of people came up to me afterward and told me how my poems made them happy, how they made them reminisce on their own childhoods, and even made them cry. They asked me—me, little old nobody Jones from Birmingham, to autograph my booklet of poems that was passed out to the audience. These and other real-life reactions I've received really give me the confirmation that what I'm writing means something to people. I write about my life and I communicate my emotions in the best way I can—through poems. It’s good to know that the communication I'm offering isn’t dropping off into the literary abyss—people are listening and they hear what I'm saying. I've been in the academic writing world for a while, and sometimes I get down on myself because I'm not always as “poemy” as other poets—I write about the way my hair curls and the way my mom taught me to make biscuits. I'm glad to know that real-life people respond to it well.

As far as learning from my Sunrise experience, my students teach me a lot about being fearless—just this weekend, a student wrote about what I think was her childhood rape experience. It took me 10 years to finally write about my own truth—and it’s not a gruesome truth. Seeing this 16-year-old get up on a stage and perform such a personal piece tells me that I should stop being so afraid of being me on the page. I've gotten a lot more honest in my writing, and I'm going to keep on doing it. 

EGM: How did you come to poetry?

AMJ: Well, I’ve always liked reading, writing, and inventing stories. When we weren’t reading books or watching public television, the siblings Jones would spend time playing make-believe or constructing complex, soap-opera style plots for our Barbies to act out. I bought composition notebooks and wrote notes on everything I saw—spy missions, a la Harriet the Spy. These missions sometimes engendered poems about my family—little, awful, rhyming things. I once got so angry about something that I wrote a poem about how everyone hated me, and I posted it in the hallway at my house. My mom was not pleased... […]

EGM: Who are you currently reading? Who do you keep coming back to, and why?

AMJ: Hmmm... a better question might be “who do you wish you were reading?” because I barely have time for recreational stuff anymore. I've got a huge stack of library books waiting, unread, and a few books I bought last semester that are waiting for my attention. The last non-required new book of poetry I've looked at was actually Denise Duhamel's Blowout. Denise is my professor, so I’m always excited to see what she’s writing. Blowout, like a lot of Denise’s books, is one about real life. She’s able to write in such an everyday tone while keeping her poetic muscle moving. It’s great—I’m glad to be learning from a professor whose writing style seems so close to my own.

As far as my old standards, Lucille Clifton and Kevin Young are in constant rotation—I’ve been reading them a lot lately as I prepare to guest teach in a friend’s creative writing class and as I prepare for my workshop in Sunrise. […] Lucille Clifton is my favorite poet of all time—I was first struck by her use of lowercase letters (cummings was a fave of mine in the early years for that reason, too—I used to write in only lowercase letters). Then, when I actually paid attention to her words, I was doubly struck.

Clifton’s ability to craft language into an effortless punch never ceases to amaze me. Her poem, “what the mirror said” is a constant mantra of mine—if you're in need of quick empowerment, check that out. Kevin Young is just the man. I loved him for Jelly Roll and the way he managed to make jazz on the page while still using poetic technique. His playful voice is one I always want in my ear. Terrance Hayes is a new addition to this rotation—I absolutely love his voice and the way he makes me swoon with his words. He’s basically in the Ashley canon now. But I return to these poets because they refresh me when I'm feeling lost—they remind me what good poems look like when I'm in a slump, and they speak to me when I need someone to spell out my pain/joy/confusion/anger.

EGM: If you weren't a writer, what would you be doing?

I used to want to be a counselor (in schools or otherwise), so maybe I’d do that. But I also have dreams of being a university president, so maybe I'd still be on that path, just minus the writing. I’d also love to be a personal shopper (the mall is my friend, and I love helping people express themselves—affordably—through clothes) or a restaurant owner (I love to cook). If I weren't doing the MFA right now, I would be in Birmingham, working in the Administration or Admissions department at my alma mater. I was a part of the Stewardship team and I was a tour guide as an undergraduate—both would have panned out into good careers if I hadn't hopped the crazy train and pursued my dreams to get an MFA. 

One interviewer at Redivider Journal likes to close interviews by asking the interviewee for a favorite recipe. I am happily aware that you are an excellent baker, so I will ask if there's a favorite recipe you'd like to share here—Biscuits? Cookies? Banana bread? The floor/ counter is yours.

Gosh, a favorite recipe! I’d LOVE to share my recipe for biscuits. Here it goes:

Ashley’s Biscuits

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour (If you're into it, you can substitute one of those cups of flour for whole wheat flour—it tastes just as good)

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 stick of cold, unsalted butter cut into cubes (No getting around this, folks. Butter or nothing)

3/4 cups of lowfat greek yogurt (Or buttermilk, or whole milk, or whatever milk you’d like)

*you can add herbs and cheese if you want to make these for fancydinner

Instructions:

-Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F-

1. Measure the dry ingredients into a food processor (or a bowl if you've got the muscles for hand-cutting). Add the cubed butter and pulse until the mixture resembles cornmeal and the butter is incorporated. If you're using a regular bowl and biscuit cutter, work it until you can't work it anymore!

2. Add your greek yogurt/buttermilk/milk and mix until the dough becomes a ball.

3. Dump mix onto your floured counter and flatten it.

4. Fold the dough onto itself and flatten again. Repeat a few times. 

5. Flatten dough to your desired biscuit thickness (an inch, at most)

6. Cut the biscuits using a biscuit cutter or some circular object. Put the biscuits into a greased pan. 

7. Bake for 15-20 minutes (start checking at 15) until the biscuits are tall and lightly brown and beautiful!

The Writing Life: Erica Kenick

Why did you take Literary Journalism?

I was under the impression that this course was a journalism course in which we would be able to report creatively/in a more "literary" way on news events. It turned out to be a Journalism course with a focus on literary events! That's what I get for not reading the full online course description, I guess. I'm really enjoying the class though.


What have you learned so far?

Literary Journalism is a very broad field. We aren't just writing book reviews and author interviews- we're encouraged to think creatively. For example, a Literary Journalism piece could focus on anything from the evolution of the pen to a diary entry. This course also gives me an excuse to get out of my comfort zone a bit and take part in community Literary events. I've been to Books & Books more often than usual to scope out authors for class assignments and I'm looking forward to interviewing or live blogging when the Miami Bookfair rolls around.

Is blogging in your future?

I have blogged in the past on my experiences practicing Buddhism and meditation (when I first gained interest in those subjects), but found it tedious to post as frequently as I wanted to  - not good for my Zen! I would like to start a blog in the future, but my interests are so varied that I'm having a hard time honing in on one subject. 


About  Erica Kenick

Erica Kenick is a recent graduate of the University of Florida and is pursuing an MFA in Poetry at Florida International University. When she's not dutifully reading or writing, she enjoys spending time with her parrot, swimming, and stargazing at the Weintraub Observatory.

The Writing Life: Jan Becker

Why did you take Literary Journalism?

To be honest, I discovered after the first class meeting that I was taking a different course than I anticipated. Prior to this semester, I thought "literary journalism" was the kind of writing that Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson and to some extent, David Foster Wallace wrote. I thought I was taking a course on what I would now call "artful journalism," or journalism with literary merit. That topic was interesting to me, because I am concentrating in non-fiction for my degree and much of my reading has been very artful journalism. I also enjoy writing about writing, and I wanted to take at least one course with Lynne Barrett while I'm still in school. 


What did you hope to learn in this course? 

Lynne has a reputation for being an excellent editor and a challenging teacher, so my expectations coming in were more focused on technical aspects of writing than on a specific topic. To give you a short answer, I'd have to say I took the class because I think it will help me improve my writing to work with a teacher I know will challenge me.


What have you learned so far? 

So far, I've learned that "literary journalism" is a much larger field of writing than I was aware, that it is possible to support oneself with an MFA after graduation, and that writing overall is changing rapidly with the advent of electronic media.

When did you begin blogging and why? 

I work on two different blogs. My personal blog is one I neglect to write. I started it after having an essay published in Sliver of Stone, mainly because I have seen friends who are trying to start their careers as writers. My friends who write blogs regularly are able to find readers easily through the world wide web. In a way, I suppose blogging is the most convenient vanity press ever, and much less expensive than going through a printer. 

The second blog, Selfies in Ink, is a collaborative art project on Tumblr. I was invited to be a regular contributor to that blog by the editor, Dana Jaye Cadman. Her vision was to pair women writers' poems and flash memoir pieces with cell phone self portraits. By doing this, we are able to take authority over the images we project of ourselves and create identities that we determine separate from what is typically expected of women. It's a good, sneaky way to subvert many of the oppressive niches society often tries to cram women into. The scope of the project is expanding also, as men have begun contributing, and truthfully men are getting shoved into corners as often as women are, so it's only fair we include them.

What are the advantages of blogging? Disadvantages? 

The advantages I would say are that blogging is a good way for a writer to get publicity, and to attract readers. I think the flip side is that it is hard sometimes to be regular about posting, the criticism seems to be a lot nastier on the web than it is in response to print publications, and there is no editorial oversight, so if I write something that is factually incorrect, or even just grammatically incorrect, there is no one there to point out my errors. 

About Jan Becker

Jan Becker is an MFA candidate at Florida International University. Her writing has appeared in Sliver of Stone, The Florida Book Review, The Circus Book, Brevity Poetry Review and Emerge. She is a regular contributor to Selfies in Ink, an online writing and art project.



Twitter: @olivepoetry
Web Site/Blog: http://selfiesinink.com/tagged/janbecker 
http://selfiesinink.com/ 
http://olivepoetryblog.wordpress.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jan.becker

***

The Writing Life: Lynne Barrett

Why did you create the course Literary Journalism?

Since 2008, I’ve been editing The Florida Book Review. Some of my FIU students have written book reviews and features for FBR, in some cases doing independent studies, so I’ve been teaching them elements of book reviewing and writing for the web. I also had students in graduate fiction workshops write book reviews (of all sorts of fiction, not solely Florida books) as a way to articulate their tastes and standards.  I’ve included blogging about Miami Book Fair International as an optional assignment in my nonfiction classes, and students loved doing it, alongside the FBR contributing editors. Last Fall, the WLRN-Herald News picked up pieces from the FBR Book Fair coverage for their website. Having seen how eager students were to learn the practical aspects of this type of writing, and how much confidence they gained when their work was published, I proposed a graduate course in Literary Journalism.

What were the challenges in setting up and maintaining the course?

I needed to think through what the assignments would be, in such a way that each student could pursue individual interests while all gaining needed skills and experience. I also felt it was important to look at current literary journalism as it happens, which means each week I am reading a great deal online to find examples (good and bad), innovations, controversies, etc., though I'm also using some older, classic pieces to balance that. To amplify their understanding, I'm bringing in visitors who can offer a range of perspectives on places Literary Journalism can lead them. And in November, they'll be live-blogging from the Book Fair, which is an intense experience.  I'll be acting as editor, posting the pieces, and checking them as I do so, for accuracy and suitability. This is fun but exhausting; it's a good thing the Book Fair comes just before Thanksgiving break.

When did you begin blogging? Why?

To be clear, I don't have a blog where I write regularly. I considered it, but could see that I don't have time to do it often enough, when I’m teaching, editing, and writing fiction.  Instead, I've been contributing to blogs and other web publications, and I post links to these pieces on my Goodreads author blog and of course on my website.  And I am active on Twitter. While I have written book reviews for a long time, it was really during the year leading up to the publication of my third story collection, Magpies, that I started to jump into writing for online media. I’d already published fiction and nonfiction in online journals. 

Then, in April 2011, The Review Review, a great online magazine that carries lots of reviews of literary magazines and coverage of them, published my essay, "What Editors Want: A Must-Read for Writers Submitting to Literary Magazines.” The editor, Becky Tuch, is responsible for that urgent subtitle on my piece, by the way, and I'm sure it's one reason the piece went viral, and within days had been written up in the L.A. Times book blog, linked to by The New Yorker's blog, and was being shared all over Facebook and Twitter. I got email from quite a few editors, and picked up lots of Twitter followers from as far away as India and Australia. Glimmer Train republished the piece in their digest. And it continues to get hits and comments—it had a second round of attention recently, with lots of shares at places like Poets & Writers. All in all, this was a great experience and an education in how rapidly the Internet can move and how eager an audience there is. I started to explore guest blogging and other web writing from there.

How have your past experiences prepared you to teach this class?

I've long been a book reviewer, and I worked on newspapers and as a free-lancer. And the experience of editing The Florida Book Review got me thinking about what I was teaching the writers who worked on it. And then, after Magpies came out, I wrote guest blog posts on my writing process for TSP, the Story Prize blog, and another about how place and displacement affect my fiction for Lisa Romeo Writes.  And I was interviewed by blogs (including Beyond the Margins, Gerry Wilson's The Writerly Life, and Angela Kelsey's Tell the Story) and online magazines like Sliverof Stone and Bookslut.  Reviews of my book appeared in other innovative online venues, like The Rumpus. From all this, I got a closer look at the lively discussion about books, publishing, reading, and writing that the web has made possible, and I wanted to introduce my students to the possibilities it holds for them.

What do you hope your students will learn from this course?

I've focused on the range of forms that come under the umbrella "Literary Journalism": traditional journalism (reporting, interviewing, profiles, and features that in some way touch on books/writing/reading); book reviewing and other opinion pieces; writing about literary history; and personal writing from the perspective of being a reader and/or a writer.  I want to help my students develop the many skills involved and to write a lot of different work that they can, ultimately, publish, whether on a blog or in a newspaper or magazine. A given topic—for instance the recent controversy here in Miami-Dade about library closures and public support for libraries—can prompt many types of pieces, from coverage of a protest, to an interview with someone who'd be affected by library closures, to a personal essay that ranges back to the writer's first experience of libraries. Since they aspire to be authors who will some day be reviewed and interviewed, I think this experience can help to prepare them to understand that role, as well.

And on another level, we are looking at the changing roles and opportunities for them to contribute to and affect what is happening in the literary world. The web has made it possible to show how powerful traditional publications choose to give voice to some groups far more than others, and there’s a debate about this taking place in ways not possible before, when someone can, on a blog or online publication, make an argument that gets seen, holding mainstream publications to account.  This is true, also, for genres that have not been reviewed, or for “niche” types of writing that can now find audiences across international lines. Many who have been invisible can now become visible.  In the class, we are talking about what that means for emerging writers, and for writers in South Florida where there is such a diversity of voices to be heard.

What are the advantages of blogging? Disadvantages?

Writing regularly, on a schedule, is an important means of developing your voice and exploring your material. And having your writing online helps a writer become known. At the same time, once something is out there, it's out there. It's important to be clear about what you do and don't want to cover, to think about what you really have time for.  Being trained in the skills needed for interviewing, reporting, and researching, and learning to write correctly, clearly, and interestingly under time pressure—all of this is training journalists get and that can benefit anyone who wants to blog successfully. 

I'd extend this sense of opportunity and risk to other parts of internet presence. Being on Twitter is a kind of micro-blogging, for instance.  In the class, we're discussing both what the students write and these larger issues, so that they can make informed decisions about the ways they'd like to be visible and how much, the interests they want to focus on, and how to navigate a public writing life.

About Lynne Barrett

Lynne Barrett is the author of the story collections Magpies (Gold Medal, Florida Book Awards), The Secret Names of Women, and The Land of Go. She edited Tigertail: Florida Flash and co-edited Birth: A Literary Companion. Her recent work has appeared in Real South, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Southern Women’s Review, Delta Blues, One Year to a Writing Life, and Blue Christmas. Her essay in The Review Review, “What Editors Want,” was featured in the L.A. Times and Glimmer Train’s digest. A recipient of the Edgar Award for best mystery story and an NEA Fellowship, she teaches in the MFA program at Florida International University and is editor of The Florida Book Review.

Twitter @LynneBarrett

Web Site/Blog:  www.lynnebarrett.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LynneBarrettauthor

***