Month: February 2024

Writing in Paris – Part 2

The Paris Writers Workshop

In January, I wrote about the first workshop I ever participated in and why it was so valuable to me. And because of the Workshop, I went on to write and publish a book, and call myself an author.  Now that the Paris Writers Workshop is open for registration and only three months away, I wanted to describe specifics. As dry as this writing might be, every word is written with gratitude for the opportunity granted to me.  As my mother used to say to me constantly: “There is no such thing as luck. It’s grabbing at an opportunity when it presents itself.”

Why would Paris residents want to register for PWW? For one, it is so accessible–a metro ride away. It’s affordable—as in the past, there is an early bird registration which I took advantage of each year that I registered. And as WICE is a nonprofit, the price is very reasonable.

PWW will be held at the beautiful Reid Hall in the Columbia Global Centers in the literary Montparnasse neighborhood. There is a large beautiful garden area with plenty of seating. One can write at one of the many tables or bring a bag lunch to enjoy with your cohorts surrounded by trees and summer flowers. Le Select, La Coupole, Le Dome, and Le Closerie de Lilas (one of Hemingway’s hangouts) are in walking distance.

Reid Hall

And non-Paris residents? Who would turn down a chance to visit Paris in the early summer before the craziness of the Olympics starts? We will happily make suggestions for reasonable accommodations (but I’m told you need to make those reservations now as Paris is raising prices in anticipation of the Summer Olympics), and you will have a new literary home away from home.

Now to the really good part:

We have an amazing lineup of teachers for six tracks.

The Novel master class will be taught by Samantha Chang. I know her as Sam.

Sam is the Director of the famous Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the author of The Family Chao (she spoke at the American Library Summer 2022), Inheritance and other titles.

The Memoir/ Creative Nonfiction class will be taught by Jennifer Lauck.

Jennifer is the Founder of the Blackbird Studio for Writers. She is the author of Blackbird,a Memoir of her childhood, and 3 more memoirs that followed. Oprah said that everyone should read Blackbird. She also writes a wonderful Substack: Flight School with Jennifer Lauck

Poetry will be taught by Heather Hartley.

Heather, a resident of Paris, teaches Creative Writing at the University of Kent (UK) Paris School of Arts and Culture.  She is the author of the poetry collections Adult Swim and Knock Knock.

This year, we are offering three new tracks:

Speculative Fiction will be taught by Kevin Brockmeier.

Kevin is the author of The Brief History of the Dead, The Truth about Celia and other titles. He frequently teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Screenwriting will be taught by Diane Lake.

Diane has written many screenplays for major studios including the Academy Award winning Frida. She is the author of The Screenwriter’s Path: From Idea to Script to Sale.

Travel Writing will be taught by Don George.

Don is Editor-at-Large for National Geographic Travel. He is the author of How to Be a Travel Writer: the best selling travel writing guide in the world.

Go to our website, https://wice-paris.org/paris-writers-workshop for more details about our amazing faculty. Each track has its own registration page. Click on the photo of the teacher to get to that registration.

Once you register, you will receive an acceptance e-mail unless the course is full. Each Masterclass will have a maximum of twelve students.  You will be given some choices if that is the case.

Your masterclass package includes:

·       Daily small group masterclasses in your selected genre

·       Individual meetings with your faculty instructor

·       Inspirational and practical guidance for your work in progress

·       Panel discussions focused on tools of writing and paths to publishing

·       Readings by your fellow writers and faculty

·       Social gatherings with an amazing community of writers from all over the world

Students and faculty will meet together Sunday, June 2 from 2 PM to 4 PM at Reid Hall.

The masterclasses will meet each weekday from 2 to 5 PM Monday through Friday. There will be literary events each evening.

Monday morning there will be a LITERARY walking tour of the Montparnasse area for anyone who is interested. The whole week will be topped off on Friday evening June 7 with readings by the faculty and students.

And on Wednesday and Thursday, we will have two well-known British agents here. You can pre-send a writing sample to one or both and pitch your project face-to-face.

Registration is now open. The earlybird registration fee is €975.

After March 15, the fee for the workshop will be €1100.

This is a wonderful opportunity to write, to meet other writers and authors, to organize writing groups at the end of the week, and to pick the brains of published authors.

If you know anyone who is a writer who wants to write as I did or is a secret writer please pass on this information.

A group of people raising their hands Description automatically generated

Participants of the Short Story track at a PWW.

Thanks for reading Out My Window! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

A bientôt,

Sara

AWP 24 in Kansas City

I’m sitting in the Long Beach airport waiting for a plane back to Oakland. The weather is beautiful, the airport is small, and I could pretend I’m at some beach airport in a foreign country. It has that feel. On the TV is the Super Bowl. I’ve come from Kansas City which, it turns out, is a huge sports town. Everywhere was red and yellow. People walking in swag, banners hanging off lamp posts, signs in business windows. Now going up to the Bay Area where I imagine most everyone is rooting for the Forty-Niners. I once flew during the World Series and asked the pilot if he would give us the score periodically. He kindly accommodated me. Many others were very happy!

Angela, on our visit to Union Station where all things Chiefs was happening!

I went to Kansas City with four members of my writing group to attend AWP 24 (Association of Writers and Writing Programs). Most people register Wednesday afternoon. The panels officially start on Thursday morning and last until Saturday evening. There are so many panels, up to fifty every hour, that it is overwhelming. Last year, I looked at the titles and attended ones that sounded good. This year, I looked at the presenters and went to panels where I knew the presenters. Jeannine Ouellette, who writes Writing in the Dark, was on the first panel that I attended Thursday morning.. It was a craft panel on How to write trauma so that it doesn’t overwhelm your reader. Jeannine did not disappoint. In 15 minutes, she gave a Masterclass in trauma writing using excerpts from her book The Part that Burns to illustrate her points. She is easy to listen to and her students who have her for longer IN PERSON are very lucky, in my opinion. Those of us who subscribe to her Substack are treated to masterclasses every week. She is a generous teacher and interacts with those who are vulnerable enough to write what they have written.

Jeannine Ouellette

Thanks for reading Out My Window! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

My next panel was an homage to James Baldwin. I believe Thursday would have been his 100th birthday. The moderator had chosen people who “commune” with Baldwin. I was touched by both panelists. Unfortunately, two other panelists had to cancel last minute because of illness. It didn’t make any difference to me. I was so moved by the love and dedication he still inspires in people. I consider myself an essayist and look to his writings as examples of terrific essay writing. 

Baldwin struggled with his love of living in France with his guilt that he should be home……That hit a nerve with me. My mother, if she were alive, would look down on my choice of living in Paris. She would tell me to come back to the US and fight for democracy.

Friday was a wonderful day for panels. But the panels, as interesting as they are, aren’t the main reason that many of us attend the Convention. It’s a chance to meet and talk with publishers, meet and talk with the editors of journals, emerging and established, and to meet other authors. Last year, I met the editors of the Under Review. I liked them and they liked me. Eleven months later, they have published my story The Perfect Game. They had a small celebration at a place called Sinkers on Friday night and six of us read our stories. It was thrilling. This year I’ve set my sights on a Canadian Journal called Brick.

The highlight of the Convention was the Opening Keynote Speech given by Jericho Brown. All five of us in my writing group were tired even though only one day of the Convention had passed. Just navigating one’s way around the Kansas City Convention Center, without a map in hand, was an exhausting experience. I figure that three of the Seattle Convention Centers, where AWP was held last year, could fit in the KC one. The Center took up three long city blocks with bridges over the streets. A long underground unfinished walkway. It was daunting.

The Keynote speech was virtual and the AirBnB we stayed at had a smart TV! So we ate a wonderful home cooked meal of chicken, butternut squash, and salad. Then we piled onto the living room couches to listen to Jericho. I have only read his poems. I had never heard him speak. He is funny. He is passionate. He is smart. And he cares about this country. I don’t think I could find the words to do justice to his 20-30 minute talk so please know that whatever I say here, it was 1000% better. So far, the video is only available to convention goers so I can’t even refer you to that. I can start by saying he has a smile that would light up any room. He has a smile that is warm and sunny and in no way gives away the violent childhood he suffered and writes about in his poetry. He opened by making us laugh and slowly, word in hand, moved us to our responsibilities as writers and as Americans. He did this by citing many of the books that have been banned in the state of Florida: five versions of the Dictionary, the Encycopedia, the Bible (the Bible????), to mention a few that students need just to progress in school. He brought home that we writers are being banned. We aren’t spectators, we are victims if we want the freedom to express ourselves. As I’m a fairly new author, I had not made the connection that I could be banned if someone thought I used a wrong word. 1984 should be renamed. Images of Nazis burning books in the street came to mind. Jericho Brown kept at it. making sure we got it. This is happening, it can happen to you, it is happening to many of us.

By the time he finished, I was breathless. I was paying attention.

A bientôt,

Sara

Four kittens, Mama, and Me

They are tiny, four weeks old, grey with blue eyes. One of the males has a slight white blaze on his chest. One of the females is the most distinctive with white paws, a white chest, and a white line that circles the edge of her ears. She has a white ring around both eyes, which makes her eyes look very large. The other two kittens are identical except one is male and one is female. Their nails are so small, but they use them to climb everything. Unlike larger cats, no damage is done to the furniture. They weigh in around 400g. When they meow, it is a high almost inaudible peep. I’m never sure who is peeping. 

All four kittens are there.

They are all long-haired. There is a breed called Russian Blue. Usually completely grey and retain their blue eyes throughout their lives. Perhaps Mama had Russian Blue in her. 

When I travel back to the US, I leave my cat, Bijou, in Paris. Even a nonstop flight to San Francisco would require her to be in her crate for a minimum of 15 hours: 40 minutes to the airport, 2 to 3 hours at CDG, 11 hours on the plane, and one hour Bart ride to Oakland after whatever time it takes to get through Customs and Border Control. It all feels very cruel to me. So Bijou stays in Paris and I volunteer as a foster parent for Hopalong Animal Rescue. When I first arrived in November, I fostered Aleppo and Cayenne, two twelve-week old unrelated kittens. Both were sick with an illness that is contagious to other cats but not to humans. Cayenne, who lived up to his name, is an orange and white tabby and just about the friendliest kitten one could imagine. Aleppo is completely black, smaller than Cayenne, and followed him everywhere. They adored each other. After a month of daily medicine, they were fixed and both have been adopted.

Aleppo and Cayenne

Then I was asked to foster three very “shy” beauties. I put the shy in quotes because shy was another way of saying ‘still mostly feral’. I had them for a week and a half and they never came near me. They eventually wandered around the third floor level of my home that I have segregated from the rest of the house. But they would scram and hide in the boxsprings of my bed if I even made a movement. 

Two of the three “shy” kittens

I suspect I was given Mama and the four kittens partly as a way to say thank you for sitting with the three little terrors. 

When I’m sitting on my couch writing or watching some streaming on TV, the kittens treat me as if I were a climbing cat tree. Using their tiny little nails, they pull themselves up my jeans to my lap. From there, each will find a resting spot depending on what I’m wearing. one will fall asleep in the hood of my sweatshirt. Another finds any opening in a bathrobe or zippered sweat. One curls up where one of my legs crosses the other, and one will fall asleep even as he is falling off my lap. 

So where is Mama? When they arrived, all four kittens were snuggled up against her belly. She becomes a ragdoll. The kittens push each other around, trying to find the best place to sleep, or suckle. Mama’s hind leg may be straight up in the air while she tries to accommodate her brood. On the second full day that I had them, Mama found the box springs of the bed and crawled off for the entire day to rest. She is very thin. She has four white paws and a completely white chest and a pleading look in her eyes. She looks as tired as a human mother with four week olds. 

Mama is such a fur ball that you can’t see she weighs 5.5 lbs and is skin and bones.

Today, I ate my lunch up there with everyone. Mama came and jumped up on my lap. She really does seem wiped out. She purred when I petted her and we had a few sweet minutes together. Then, all four kittens started climbing my legs and snuggled into her belly. They fought over the best places, knocked each around, falling off my lap, climbing back up and eventually everyone fell asleep. Except Mama. 

Four days in, it was clear that Mama wasn’t well. She has lost almost 2 pounds. Yesterday and today, she growls at the kittens if they come near her. Everyone went back to Hopalong yesterday for a check-up. Mama got lots of saline to hydrate her. Last night she threw it all up. I was given milk substitute, itty bitty baby bottles to feed the kittens, plus transition food. They are having none of it. One of them drank a lot of the substitute milk then threw up all over my bed as I was going to sleep.

I was at my wits end. I’m now afraid Mama will die on my watch. The kittens seem fine, they just aren’t gaining any weight. I’ve bottle fed kittens in the past, many times actually, before I moved to Paris. All of them were motherless and so grateful for fake nipples and substitute milk. These kittens know Mama is nearby. My sense of them being so cute and lovable is passing. I feel I’ve taken on more than I can handle. Caring for them is a full time job. There is a reason I never wanted to be a mother. I’m too impatient and I scare easily. 

As I type, Mama has gone back into hiding. She came out for a few minutes, growled, then hid. The babies are asleep in a big grey heap on my couch. Monday, they will return to Hopalong and to another foster family. I will be flying to Kansas City and AWP 24.

Thanks for reading Out My Window! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

A bientôt,

Sara