Summer Literary Seminars

February 28, 2009

This week I applied for a fellowship to the SLS–Summer Literary Seminars– a monthlong residency and workshops in another country. They’ve been in St. Petersburg, Russia since 1998 and later Kenya and now are offering Italy and Lithuania as well.

While I’d love to go, I know my chances are probably slim. Though I did get a partial scholarship a few years ago. I think what i’m most excited about is that I sent them 20 pages of my novel. This is all very new to me. Like a newborn, the novel is still fragile and tiny and i’m very protective of it. But I need to push myself more with it. Need to put it out there for my friends to read and give me feedback on it. Need to keep forging on with it, and not look back.

So, we’ll see what happens. This is the 2nd residency program I’ve applied to in the last month–this and Vermont Studio Center (where I was also given a partial, though not quite enough, scholarship).

What are you reading these days?

Currently i’m reading the book The Man Who Fell in Love With The Moon, by Tom Spanbauer.

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is an American epic of the old West for our own times — a novel huge in its imaginative scope and daring in its themes. The narrator is Shed, or Duivichi-un-Dua, a half-breed bisexual boy who makes his living at the Indian Head Hotel in the little turn-of-the-century town of Excellent, Idaho. (from Spanbauer’s blog/book description).

So many people recommended this book to me, not just because Spanbauer is a fantastic writer but because my novel has Native American characters in it as well.

I wish I had more time to read it– lately i’m only reading at night before bed, 5-10 pages or so– but it’s still wildly imaginative and compelling, bawdy and beautifully written.

Some lines I love:

“Wasn’t daylight yet, but the sky wasn’t black, was dark blue. Stars were tiny pieces of broken glass.”

“Flat-topped mountains sloped their big dirt bodies down to trees that stood in families along the river.”

And a character who is described as “feeling the warm of the coffee cup on the palms of her hands.”