Words

Words have a magical power.  They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions.  Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men’s actions. 

~ Sigmund Freud, born on this day in 1856 

 

Portrait of Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds, 1775.  Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755 and has been described as “one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship.”

May

The wind is tossing the lilacs,

The new leaves laugh in the sun,

And the petals fall on the orchard wall,

But for me the spring is done.

 

Beneath the apple blossoms

I go a wintry way,

For love that smiled in April

Is false to me in May. 

~ Sara Teasdale

 

“Apple Blossoms” by Henry Ryland (1856-1924)

Book Bash

In an effort to raise awareness about literacy and books banned in the Tucson Unified School District as a result of its dismantled Ethnic Studies Program, the College of Educational Studies at Chapman University will be hosting its first Annual Book Bash on Thursday, May 3.

The event will take place at the Attallah Plaza from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.  Guest speakers include Luis Rodriguez, the author of Always Running (Touchstone, 1994); Presidential Fellow Rueben Martinez; and CES faculty member Dr. Anaida Colon-Muiz.

 

An Evening with Memoirists

The Pen on Fire Writers Salon is pleased to present an evening with memoirists Claire Bidwell Smith, James Brown, and Dinah Lenney on Tuesday, May 15, at 7:00 p.m.  This speaker series, hosted by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, features authors, literary agents, and others involved in the field of writing.  The events take place in the atmospheric Scape Gallery in Corona del Mar and entail readings, literary discussions, and book signings. 

Claire Bidwell Smith is a therapist specializing in grief and the author of the memoir The Rules of Inheritance.  She has written for many publications, including The Huffington Post, Time Out New York, and BlackBook Magazine. 

James Brown is the author of several novels, including Lucky Town and Final Performance, and the memoirs This River and The Los Angeles Diaries, which was chosen as a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly and The San Francisco Chronicle.  Brown is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Nelson Algren Award in Short Fiction. 

Dinah Lenney is the author of Bigger than Life: A Murder, a Memoir, published in Tobias Wolff’s American Lives Series at the University of Nebraska Press, and co-authored Acting for Young Actors.  Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Ploughshares, Brevity, and other journals, and she received special mention in the 2010 Pushcart Anthology for an essay published in Water~Stone Review. 

Advance tickets are required to guarantee a seat at this event.  To read more about the speakers or the Pen on Fire Writers Salon and to purchase tickets, visit the website at www.barbarademarcobarrett.com/writerssalon.

 

The Moonlight’s Dream

Tonight the house was mouse-still except for some beam

That, whisper or creak, complained of the years it had borne

The weight of reality and the human dream

As the real became more real, and the real more forlorn.

Outside, I wondered why I had come here and where

I would go, and back-looking now, saw the tracks of my bare

Dark footprints set in the moonlit dew like snow,

And thought:  I must go where they go, for they must know where to go.

 

~ From “The Moonlight’s Dream” by U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Penn Warren, born on this day in 1905

 

"Moonlight Night" by Ivan Kramskoy, 1880

John Fowles Literary Forum – Bogdan Suceava

As part of the 2012 John Fowles Literary Forum at Chapman University, contemporary Romanian novelist, mathematician, and journalist Bogdan Suceava will be reading excerpts from his work on Monday, April 23.  I am pleased to have been invited to present a brief excerpt of my own original fiction at this event and will be reading from my thesis novel, Time of Death. 

Suceava is the author of The Night Someone Died for You (2010); Vincent the Immortal (2008); Miruna, A Tale, recipient of the Fiction Award of the Association of Bucharest Writers (2007); and Coming from an Off-Key Time (2004).  His short fiction has appeared in English in Short Story, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Two Lines, Absinthe: New European Writing, Red Mountain Review, Natural Bridge, and other journals.  Currently, Suceava is a lecturer at California State University, Fullerton.  

The event will begin at 7:00 p.m. in the Henley Reading Room of Leatherby Library.  Admission is free and open to the public.

 

Call for Submissions – The Cupboard

The quarterly prose chapbook series The Cupboard has extended the deadline for its second annual contest through Monday, April 30.  Cupboard editors are looking for creative prose submissions between 4,000 and 10,000 words for its next issue of short stories, essays, collections of flash fiction, and prose poems.  Submissions may be composed of one piece or any combination of multiple pieces. 

Maud Casey, the author of The Shape of Things to Come, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Genealogy, a New York Times Editor’s Choice Book; and Drastic, a collection of short stories, will be this year’s judge. 

The Cupboard is published in Lincoln, Nebraska by co-editors Emily Danforth, Dave Madden, and Adam Peterson and features a body of work by a single author.  Previous volumes have showcased work by Jesse Ball, Mathias Svalina, Chanelle Benz, Joshua Cohen, and Anne Marie Rooney. 

For more information and to submit your work, visit the website at http://www.thecupboardpamphlet.org.