If the importance of book cover design was ever in question, the art for Jeremy P. Bushnell’s debut novel, The Weirdness, should put all doubt to rest.
ByGD
Book Report: The Weirdness
ByGD
February 2014: Statistically Speaking
I don’t know much about VIDA – no, I don’t mean “life,” although I’ve got plenty to learn there, too. I mean VIDA, the organization that formed in 2009 to create more space for women in the literary dialogue.
Having just attended the 2014 conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (more on that to come), I can confidently say that the representation of women in the community of people who identify themselves as writers is proportionate to the general population. But every year, VIDA undertakes a painstaking manual survey of literary publications and book reviews (think Audubon here) that quantifies women’s bylines, and the number of books written by women that get reviewed. The results are highly illuminating.
ByGD
People of the Book: Report
In preparation for Iceland Writers Retreat, I am reading books by each of the featured authors. It feels a little weird to review authors who are about to become my teachers, but it’s easier to read critically when I know I have to report on it afterwards. I had already read Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders; I enjoyed it as a reader. As a writer I enjoyed trying to understand her choices: writing about survival instead of adventure, building an overtly feminist story within a culture that was anything but. My library holds on the remaining authors hadn’t come in yet, so I started People of the Book. By the second page, her Sam Spade of a protagonist had grabbed me by the throat, and she didn’t let go until days after I finished reading. Read More
ByGD
Get Your Papers Together to See Seattle Opera’s The Consul
A modern, English-language opera about a woman fighting bureaucracy sounded like a painfully tedious proposition – too much like my real life. But I attended The Consul at Seattle Opera because I have season tickets.
A bleeding man bursts into a decaying apartment, forgetting to shut the door. Knocking over furniture, he falls to the floor, calling his wife. She rushes into the kitchen, trailed by his mother. The secret police discovered their meeting place; one of their friends is dead. He has been followed. John Sorel drags himself up the fire escape while his wife washes his bloody hand print from the door frame seconds before men in trench coats enter without knocking. Read More
ByGD
Crutches, Color, and Confidence
On a Friday night almost exactly 21 years ago, I was alone. My boyfriend was at Jam Box with his band. My roommate was with her boyfriend. So I planned a night with the blues: Eric Clapton, Dr. Pepper, and my new bass guitar. I went to the gas station across the street from my dorm and bought a six pack of Dr. Pepper.
Alone on the street corner across from Bellarmine Hall, the night felt ominous. I had only taken driver’s ed the year before, so I knew a yellow light was nine seconds long – in Arizona. In Washington, where the speed limit was 15 mph lower, a yellow lasts four seconds. I did not know that. I ran into the crosswalk on the yellow. The light changed, and a Baptist minister in a 1981 Mustang hit me, breaking my leg in three places. Read More