VANUATU

Island Reach sharing stories and images from work in Vanuatu, South Pacific, May-July 2014:

LATEST VIDEO!

Just out! July 2014. Couldn’t go to the launch in Bantry (so sad) but finally get to see Kakapo Poo in print. I rewrote it after it was too late to include, for a reading at Vermont Studio Center, but hey. Guess that’s what I do. RE-WRITE. A lot.

This is my 3rd Anthology with Fish Publications, out of Cork University Press.

The first of a series of videos on Llyr’s expedition through the South Pacific.

As ever, more details about the expeditions can be seen at their home site Berkshire Sweet Gold & Island Reach

The second video is now out too!

Island Reach part 1, heading to Vanuatu

And a sweet Video about the folks making canoes to sail to Australia to protest the Ozzie coal projects: 350 Pacific, Vanuatu Canoe Project

JELLYFISH DREAMING, has been shortlisted as a finalist for a grant from the Speculative Literature Foundation (Just announced, May 13th, 2014).

A previous version also made first runner up in 2012, which means I’ve been working on this for longer than I realized.

Got a message from Clem Cairn of Fish Publishing that “The Zen of Kakapo Poo” made Honorable Mention and inclusion in the 2014 anthology out of Cork University.

Finally found that one a home.

Evidently the judge, Irish writer Dermot Healy, said: “The first time I’ve encountered poo as the hero of a memoir.”

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA Program for Poets and Writers Route 9 has published an Omnibus of Poets, Writers and Artists from the UMass Amherst MFA program.

My story, The Greening, was accepted. I sent it in because it began in an MFA classroom, when a professor challenged us to read Joyce and write a pastiche that sounded like Joyce. I had a lot of fun with that assignment and happily showed the results to another professor, who was quiet for a long moment, and then said: “Well, there’s no way you can keep that up for a whole novel.” Of course I took the challenge, and of course I couldn’t, but I did get a long short story out of it that I was pleased enough with to make into the frame story for my first book, THE WHALE ROAD.

It’s fun see The Greening published as a stand-alone story in Route 9. Seemed appropriate for an Alumni edition, though odd/nostalgic to see old writing resurfacing.  I bet my old writing group, The Fiction Chicks, would say, “oh gahd, not that one again!” There are so very many ways any one story can be told (and creative nonfiction was not popular around the program when I was there).

I do hope to get to the Alum get-together this weekend (I gather Route 9 is asking to record authors reading from their works). A serious question. Why is it so hard to go back?

VSC has given me a partial grant and my amazing department, College of Natural Sciences is picking up the rest with a Mini Grant toward Professional Development.

Vermont Studio Center Residencies

Can’t wait. For the second year in a row, I get a transition between full time winter teaching and full time summer childcare with two weeks to just WRITE.

Feels like Christmas.

Article on RV Llyr in Conservation Minnesota by Chuck Dayton

SUWARROW

This is not Byrdcliffe, by the way (no kidding). This is the Canal boat I dream of sailing down the Erie Canal with Tim and the girls in order to finish ICE. It is going well so far! First third is in rough draft form (Thank you Birdcliffe Residency) and I’m working on the second third now, though may not finish before my residency ends. But I am averaging 7.8 pages a day, not a record, but close to my personal best. (After editing that changes significantly of course). The last third will have my protagonist boating down the Erie to the Hudson (as the world thaws), and finally around the coast to a much changed, near future Boston (the setting for JELLYFISH DREAMING, which will also be revised again as soon as possible).

Writing is good. Though I am always intrigued by how — as I take species out of my future world — I also lose language. How can Sandburg’s fog come, for instance, “on little cat feet” if cats haven’t existed for decades?

Update June 1: Two pages edited, plus 15 new, which I edited late last night. NOW we’re cooking with gas!

July 11: up to 200+ pages. But why am I counting? That can’t be a good sign, can it? Maybe working moms need to know they are producing something substantial for their art.

Finished the full rough draft July 25th! 300 pages. Sent off to my dear Copy Editor, Mike, and then started editing on my own. Mike says don’t send it out until he’s done with it, and he’s right, I’ve already found a boatload of changes to make. But it is hard not to trumpet it out to the world! I’mmmmm DONE! (Even if I’m not).

And now, to edit.

Been accepted to a Writing Residency in May.

Looking forward to figuring out what I want to revise or write there (Do I revise JELLYFISH or work on ICE?)

Gotta make the most of the time….Woodstock Byrdcliff Guild