fine and mellow: news and classes
Happy New Year! A bit belatedly, sure, but nevertheless...
I hope your year is starting off as fine and mellow as mine is. I spent Jan. 1 just sitting around the house with my family, and I can't think of a better way to have begun the year. 2019 was a year of mostly ups and just a few minor downs for us, and 2020 is doing pretty well so far—though it's admittedly young yet. Even so, I cooked up a tiny book proposal in January and finished an MFA (more on this below), I took a board seat with the new nonprofit corporation that the Writers Grotto has become (this too), and I'm listening to Billie Holiday as I write this, so things are looking good. Start as you mean to go on, as the saying has it. That's what I'm doing.
I'm not too big on recaps, but I thought I'd send along just a few recommendations, drawn from the reading I did last year. These are below as well. And if you're interested, there are a couple of classes I'm teaching in February: a workshop on Reading & Writing the Personal Essay at the Grotto (in which we read great published essays as we also workshop student pieces), and my class on writing about place, which I'm teaching online for the first time. Should be fun.
The Grotto
As I Tweeted a couple of weeks ago, I was recently elected (along with six other fine people) to the inaugural board of directors of The Writers Grotto, a 25-year-old institution that is now in the process of converting to a nonprofit. The Grotto is a writing community and coworking space in San Francisco that provides low-cost space for writers both established and emerging, and also works to better support the kinds of voices that often have a harder time making themselves heard. The community has grown from three people 25 years ago to 140+ today. But it needs a foundation as a nonprofit. Part of the board's work this year will be to collaborate with the brilliant community that is the Grotto to establish that foundation. To create leadership structures that work for everyone. To look at new programs we can launch in support of our mission. To find new ways to amplify writers' voices. And, of course, to bring in some cash. (Here's one way you can help, if you're interested: https://sfgrotto.org/donate/) I'm really honored and excited to have been asked to do this work on behalf of a terrific organization, so stay tuned for more this year. And thanks (in advance or otherwise) for your support.
The MFA
Careful readers will have noted my casual mention of an MFA. It's true. For the last two years, I've been part of the low-residency MFA program at Bennington College—from which I graduated in the midst of a snowstorm in mid-January. It's an amazing place to work and learn, especially when you get to study with writers like Brian Blanchfield, Jenny Boully, Dinah Lenney, Susan Cheever, and all the other great teachers and advisors there. For me, the graduation marked another kind of milestone as well: Having never finished an undergraduate degree, this was the first time I'd graduated from college—a mere 37 years after I graduated from high school. Not a bad feeling.
Finally, here's a top three of the 48 books I got through in 2019:
To the Lighthouse
It's hard to believe that I had never read Virginia Woolf's stunning Modernist masterpiece before this year, but it's true. And it absolutely floored me. Woolf's command of not only language but structure, and of the rapidly shifting points of view the story takes up as it progresses, are the mark of visionary genius. Along the way she manages to convey some real complexities of heart and mind and soul, in ways that feel meaningful and important. It is one of the most heartbreaking novels I know, but it is also a book about connection, and how heroically we work to express ourselves and to perceive each other and the world around us. A bit of a life-changer, this book.
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, by Alexander Chee
Chee's essays—about becoming a writer and about gay life in the 90s—are exemplary of the form. I generally teach his beautiful essay "The Rosary" in my personal essay workshop. He's a brilliant craftsman, both raw and considered, revealing of himself in the right measure and at the right pace. There's a lot to learn from this book.
Calamities, by Renee Gladman
I loved the hypnotic rhythms of this book, each short section beginning with the words "I began the day...", and the way in which, necessarily, it explores the same ground over and over, taking it on from many infinitesimally different points of view. It's a fascinating exercise in form, and an innovative way to consider a self and a life. A really interesting book.
That's it. I'll plug the classes again here (the personal essay workshop and the online class on writing about place), since they're fun and since that's what I'm supposed to be doing with this newsletter. But otherwise I think I've gone on long enough. Write back! See you in a few months.
all best,
Wallace