It’s the fifth Monday of a month: time for the newsletter. Since my previous newsletter post, back in August, as usual, every Monday I have posted here to the Madam Mayo blog, with the second Monday of the month dedicated to the workshop and the fourth to a Q & A with a fellow writer.
November 23, 2020 – Q & A:
Q & A with Poet Matthew Pennock on The Miracle Machine
November 16, 2020
Hunkering Down, Plus From the Archives: A Review of
“John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Reappraisal”
November 9, 2020 – WORKSHOP:
Using Rhythm and Sound to Add Energy and Meaning to Your Prose
November 2, 2020
A Glimpse of the New Literary Puzzlescape
October 26, 2020– Q & A:
Q & A with Timothy Heyman on the Incomparable Legacy of
German-Mexican Novelist B. Traven
October 19, 2020
“Traven’s Triumph” by Timothy Heyman (Guest Blog)
October 12, 2020 – WORKSHOP:
Grokking Scansion: A Teensy (Albeit Painfully Tedious) Investment
for a Megamungous Payoff in the Power of Your Prose
October 5, 2020
Roger Mansell (1935-2010) on Researching the History
of the Mukden POW Camp
September 28, 2020 – Q & A:
How Are Some of the Most Accomplished Writers and Poets
Coping with the Digital Revolution?
September 21, 2020
Poet, Writer, and Teacher Pat Schneider (1934-2020)
September 14, 2020 – WORKSHOP:
Duende and the Importance of Questioning ELB
September 7, 2020
Translation on the Menu, Plus from the Archives:
“Café San Martín”– Reading Mexican Poet Agustín Cadena
at the Café Passé in Tucson, Arizona
WORKSHOP
No workshops are scheduled for the rest of this year. As for next year… it might be interesting. Meanwhile, the PDF of the handout from “Poetic Techniques to Power Up Your Fiction and Narrative Nonfiction,” the workshop I gave for the Women Writing the West virtual conference last month, is still available (free) at this link.
PODCAST
This finds me still editing the Marfa Mondays Podcast #22, a wide-ranging interview with Bill Smith about the history of Sanderson, the Cactus Capital of Texas. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, you can listen in anytime to the other 21 Marfa Mondays podcasts here.
CYBERFLANERIE
(DREAMING & TIDYING EDITION)
Wingmen do Ball’s Pyramid
*
Over at novelist Leslie Pietrzyk’s Work-in-Progress blog, a fascinating Q & A with Jennifer Howard about her book, Clutter: An Untidy History. I collect books on decluttering, LOL. Howard’s looks like an extra-crunchy one.
*
Lynne Kelly’s TED Talk on memory. In the new year I’ll be blogging about more her jaw-dropping work on these ancient and surprisingly powerful technologies of the imaginal.
*
Adriane Brown writes: “Many years ago, (2004, I believe), you taught a class at the Bethesda Writers Center called the Art and Craft of Writing. In that class, you had us write a 300 word exercise called ‘The Chef.’ You were very encouraging, and I continued to work on that piece over the years. It took a long time, but on July 30, 2020, it was published by Columbus Press as a 484 page novel titled The Café on Dream Street. It is currently for sale on Amazon, Barnes and Noble.com, and Indiebooks. You can also check out my website at www.adrianebrown.com .”
Adriane Brown, my warmest congratulations to you! Write on!
*
On the litbiz front, Cory Doctorow says “We Need to Talk About Audible.”
*
Graham Robb on his fabulous and important book, Ancient Paths— which has a different title in the US, The Discovery of Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts:
*
On the literary travel writing front: Count me a mammoth fan of Padraig Rooney’s The Gilded Chalet, on literary Switzerland, which I’ll be nattering on about, possibly, in my top books read in 2020 list, to be posted next month. Check out Rooney’s essay on Annemarie Schwarzenbach in Iraq, 1934.
Also, check out the trailer for Werner Herzog’s Nomad, about the incomparable literary travel writer Bruce Chatwin:
*
Jennifer Redmond on Reality versus Dreams; Sympathy versus Empathy.
*
More Youtuberie: My favorite example du jour of “finding a niche.” The title is “Handy Spielen,” which I would translate from the German as “Playing with My Smartphone.” This is two German teachers teaching German to Taiwanese.
*
Ja, I’ve got this German thing going on. By the way, here’s a fantastic BBC documentary on The Art of Germany.
For those who have an interest in the Mexican Revolution, as I do, an excellent conference on Jornadas Culturales de la Revolución en la Frontera:
*
And, somewhat related, PBS reports on the Whitney and Mexican muralism:
*
Snap-crrrrackle-cackle: Sothis Medias on Data Sonification.
*
Claudio Saunt’s West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776
Lord Kingsborough’s Antiquities of Mexico
*
My new book is Meteor
