by Pat Dennis

I first became aware of the waif-like woman with the warm, big eyes at Once Upon a Crime Mystery Bookstore. Theresa Weir was one of 50 or so authors scheduled for the annual Write of Spring daylong book signing. When I shook her hand, she introduced herself as “Anne Frasier.” Embarrassed, I mumbled that I hadn’t read any of her novels. Her subsequent laughter made me feel so welcomed.  I immediately purchased one of her books. After reading her thriller Hush, I decided to read all of this author’s work—a daunting task because Anne Frasier’s real name is Theresa Weir.

Theresa Weir/Anne Frasier is the best-selling author of 19 books in multiple genres, including suspense, mystery, thriller, romantic suspense, and paranormal. Theresa was born into a blue-collar family and when divorce hit she grew up in poverty. After high school, she worked as a waitress, then at the Levi Strauss factory and ended up tending bar in rural Illinois. There she met an apple farmer and three months later, they were married. After moving to the farm, Theresa, a natural-born storyteller, decided to write a novel. At the time, she was so unaware of the writing process she didn’t know if a manuscript should be single- or double-spaced, or what she should do with the book once she finished it. A year later she mailed her manuscript to the address of a publisher she’d found inside a book. As happens with most novice writers, her manuscript was sent back with a rejection notice. She sat down, rewrote the story, and mailed it off again and again. Three years later, the cult phenomenon Amazon Lily was published.

by Paul Zerby

 “There is an old style of teaching where the teacher has gold bricks of knowledge, reaches back,” said Father Jogues, reaching back over his shoulder, “and hands them out to the students,” miming distribution. “We believe in the pizza style, where each of us puts an ingredient on the pizza, and the facilitator,” he looked at me, “is the crust.” We were beginning the second of a four-session workshop called “Writing Fiction from Life” I’d been engaged to teach the Storyweavers, a group of seniors who had been meeting weekly over the past year to work on their writing, on their own, thank you. Father Jogues looked at me and waited. 

by Pat Dennis

The ability to make someone laugh, whether on stage or in print, is not only a gift but quite possibly a genetic defect. I believe a person’s funny bone is inherited, right along with eye color and feet the size of Toronto.

In other words, you’re born funny. From day one, the humorists amongst us have had no choice but to look at, see, and experience life differently from the norm. It’s as if we were shot into this world, straight from our mommas’ wombs, wearing 3-D glasses perched atop rubber noses.

Tomás Riley will appear with Sham-e-Ali Nayeem  for Equilibrium: Spoken Word at the Loft on Saturday, April 16, 2011. He is kind to share some of his work prior to the event.

by Tomás Riley

Christopher Columbus statue

October 1992—As the nation observed the Columbus Quincentenary, 5,000 or more Chicanas/os from Seattle to San Diego, Los Angeles to Kansas City, all converged on the US-Mexico border town of San Ysidro in counterdemonstrations celebrating the survival of indigenous cultures in the Americas through the 500 Years of Resistance March.

asphalt shook and rumbled under foot

and up the block heat and mirage combined to ripple like the sea

soon we would all walk on water

we martyrs

we aching fragments

searching for a face

•   •   •

October 1992, Columbus Day, and as we made our way down San Ysidro Boulevard toward the Tijuana border crossing I couldn’t help feeling a little swept up by the tide—its ebb and flow with myths about Columbus and indigenous ancestors all swirling over the breakwaters of the last 500 years. I resigned myself to following the drums, the danzantes leading the way with hard steps on hot streets. This was the pulse we found, all 5,000 marchers from places as far away as Oregon, Colorado, and Arizona; all of them beneath their banners; all of us beneath the grumbling of a monolith in motion. If we could speak anything that day, it would emerge in the beating of the drum in a cadence we could feel throughout the crowd.

•   •   •

break beats boomin’ off a red sun caught

between the upkeep and the downstroke

un homenaje al pasaje suroeste

•   •   •

I should add that this was all still pretty new to me, being one of those Chicanos who came to the movement intellectually before understanding it culturally (the net effect of growing up “super pocho” in the African American enclave of Emerald Hills in southeast San Diego). So when I say we found a heartbeat there it might be better said that I had found one where once was only absence, and with it came the tone and timbre of resistance. This is why we deal in metaphors. How else to describe what exists only within your chest but flows through others too as if we all flowed through the veins of giants? What hands throb beneath the surface of a world undone holding your feet down to this earth releasing just so often as to guide you ever forward?

Movements move like this, slowly, deliberately—almost tectonically—past all the shops on the avenue still open for business and the disbelieving onlookers. This was no exception. Already some 40 minutes into the breach, and the border was still barely visible on the horizon with its spiraling walkways at either end of the footbridge teeming with shadows.

•   •   •

go back

across

effete and desolate

america

not threatening

not warning

que te vayas pues

pero voy a llegar primero

•   •   •

I am on the footbridge looking forward into the milk of an interminable sun. Our yellowish heat burns at the edges of America. We slide fervently above the port of entry staring brashly at where we’d come from—where we were not from. Beneath us, hordes of commuters curse as Interstate 5 becomes a parking lot outside the port of entry into Mexico as the gates have suddenly closed. Car horns launch into a peevish symphony of “I demand my keys to the kingdom!”

And amid the palpable confusion five or six brown faces hurdle past the barricade racing between the traffic lanes at top speed, weaving, dodging, ducking toward el norte. The marchers roar in triumph! We look down from the overpass to see that no one is giving chase, and then roar louder, creating all the more disturbance and distraction as the men will make their way to safety. They will fade into our masses, blurring the line between the disappeared and the invisible among our ranks. If the whole thing halts here, we’ve already gained entry to the world.

•   •   •

here

there is nothing

but return

and you imagine

not to go

not to search

through useless pockets

and let what is

ungodly

be

Tomás Riley is a Chicano artist and activist born in Oakland, California, and raised in the southeast San Diego neighborhood of Emerald Hills. His work has been published in several anthologies, including Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam (Three Rivers Press, 2001). His first book, Mahcic, was published by Calaca Press in December 2005. As both a soloist and member of the Taco Shop Poets, Riley has performed at more than 200 venues across the country. His work has been described as a meld of Chicano bilingualism and conscious cultural politics set to a soundtrack of hip-hop, jazz, and indigenous ceremony. His aesthetic, however, defies the singular categories of any of these influences, opting for a controlled lyricism that fuses them all in a remix on a par with the pastiche of a master turntablist.

Tomás Riley will appear with Sham-e-Ali Nayeem at the April 16 Equilibrium: Spoken Word at the Loft performance.

Sham-e-Ali Nayeem will appear with Tomás Riley for Equilibrium: Spoken Word at the Loft on April 16, 2011. She is kind to share some of her work prior to the event.

Expert

(Previously published in Mizna Journal, used by permission)

dusty desire

to suspend her in

a make-believe past.

traditional

customary

time warp.

instruct her

on her plight

you,

ventriloquist voyeur

telepathic authority

who climbs the bones of her spine

to get a better view.

expert of delusions

speaking of silhouette apparitions

draped in black,

non-entities restricted

to fantasy private spaces.

ponder, over this “kind” of woman.

grade A specimen B

displayed in glass case #5

scurrying about natural habitat

imaginary woman

indiscernible invisible kind of woman

distorted contorted

shadow woman.

but despite desperate wishes

you can’t claim her blood

healed wounds, heart

can’t explain what you don’t know

indispensable life-force

gut essence, dignity

unable to contain

nucleus incandescent spirit

substance, survival

who exists

in this modern present,

living       being.

Seeing Ourselves

No matter,

that I was told to

devalue

her,

Resilient with

kaleidoscopic

beauty

flourishing

even without

nourishment.

Told to

embrace

apologies for oppression

or pull the frayed edges

of fabric we have woven

holding our tale

in our words.

How do I see you through the

tangled caricature?

Us?

sharing story

over dinner as we

carefully weave

soul strands together

or the serenity of your smile,

as you wish me peace

on the subway platform.

Place of Birth

I write

my place of birth

with attention

to longitude and latitude

planetary alignment

when the earth on its

axis tipped

just so

as the sun set orange

on rocky Hyderbadi soil.

See the moon rise and new stars

arrange themselves

painstakingly in preparation

to guide me in dreams

to this place

long after,

lodging themselves

in my deepest memory

burrowed in the folds

and wisdom of infancy

their light

clinging to mild wind.

So what?

That I never lived

here more than a month

emerged from womb

to this small spot

a space forever

rewriting itself

in my heart

shape shifting

and transforming

as the skies

in earth’s cycles

the smoky smell of this air

have I imagined it?

I taste the air’s dryness here first.

This can never be taken from me

when the longing returns

my eyes reveal visions

from those first days

when the light reflected

only that way.

by Anika Fajardo

Memoir revolves around ourselves and our families. But writing about these subjects can be a difficult undertaking, both emotionally and technically. The things we enjoy about reading personal stories—the gritty, unvarnished truth of someone’s life—are also the things that can hold us back as writers of creative nonfiction. Our personal bias, self-censorship, and fear often interfere with telling the truth in our stories.

by Burt Berlowe

blatantnews

The epiphany came to me 40 years ago amidst the flashing neon, echoing chants, and quiet drizzle of a historic Times Square afternoon. In that powerful moment, as I marched with people from around the country who had come together to walk their antiwar talk, I moved from interested spectator to active participant in the peace movement.

In the days that followed, that transformative moment became story. I put on paper what I had observed, experienced, and felt, and imagined what might be the stories of the others who rode on the bus, camped in the church, and marched through downtown New York in an awesome display of commitment and purpose. Thousands of compelling stories were unfolding that day, and I wished I could somehow know them all and tell them to a larger world. Although I didn’t label it as such at the time, I was yearning to be a story carrier.

Interview by Dara Syrkin

During her 1999 Bush Fellowship for midcareer physicians, Maggie O’Connor dedicated 10 percent of her time to learning how to write. “I had terrible writer’s anxiety. I chose my college classes based on which ones required the fewest essays. English 101 gave me stomach cramps. I decided I had grown up. The time had come to deal with my anxiety about writing.”

Fear or no, Maggie embraced the newness of writing. “My dad started weaving when he retired. So when I set out for the Loft with my guts quaking, I had the reassurance that old people can learn. I sat in classes and introduced myself as a science and math jock who wanted to learn how to write. One of the wonderful things about being a beginner is that you are free to ask any question.

by Francine Marie Tolf

Philip Gerard’s observation about a book’s structure feels spot on to me—the average reader doesn’t notice flawed structure until a book falters. As a writer of memoir, I know how vital good structure is. It keeps me in control of my material instead of the other way around. But before starting a book, I have a choice: do I plunge into my story and let structure develop organically, or do I map out a plan?

The preference seems to be to plunge in. “As far as I’m concerned, the less you know about where you’re headed, the better . . . Take your time, listen more to your heart than your head, and let your writing shape itself into what it wants to be.” Elizabeth Berg’s advice (from her book on writing, Escaping into the Open) is echoed by creative writing instructors across America. It’s advice I find immensely attractive, an approach to writing that values the act itself and removes a lot of intimidation.

by Caryl Yvonne Hunter

All writing, even fiction, contains some truth. Characters are usually based, at least in part, on someone we’ve met in our lives. Our perceptions, beliefs, and experiences can’t help but come through in our stories.

But when writing memoir, the author can’t hide behind a character. And no matter how much you might try to avoid telling a story, it will eventually have to be written or you just can’t move on with your life. I read somewhere that author Kathryn Harrison had to write about her incestuous relationship with her father, something that had been running in her head for years. When she finally wrote it out, she was no longer blocked. Said Harrison, “One of the solaces that art can offer you is the chance to make something out of what’s hurt you. You can objectify an experience, put it on paper, craft it, and shape it. There’s perhaps an illusionary control over it. But it is significant.”