Gatherings | Issue 9

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Each week I will send out a new prompt in a weekly email which you can sign up for here.

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Writer Tweets

Jenny Bhatt @jennybhatt

A gentle request for reader & writer friends: choose at least one relatively unknown, new writer's book (meaning: no reviews in big media venues, etc.) to champion this year. Read it, share it, talk about it, quote from it. Bonus points for picking a writer of color. Thank you.

Amy Jones @amylaurajones

People think that being a writer means you write all day, when in reality it’s more like 10% writing 10% publicity stuff 10% grant apps 10% answering emails/chasing down money 10% reading other people’s work for blurbs etc 50% working the other job that pays your bills

CRIT @CRITWorks

easy way to write a first draft: —hit compose email, address it to a good friend —describe your story idea scene by scene from start to finish —instead of sending email, copy paste to word done

Poetry

Beautiful and heartbreaking:

Saeed Jones @theferocity

I wrote a poem about why I have no desire to get pregnant.

The Tinder Sonnets by Jennifer LoveGrove

Order from knife | fork | book here.

Essays

Steven W. Beattie on Mona Awad’s new novel All is Well

It takes a scant forty pages before All’s Well, the new novel by Mona Awad, gets weird. Fans of Bunny, Awad’s 2019 satire of academia and female rivalry, will be prepared for the new book’s slide from realism into the fantastical, but those unaware of Awad’s penchant for pulling the rug out from beneath her readers’ feet might react with surprise or puzzlement. While the new novel’s more outré elements are not as thoroughgoing as in the previous book, All’s Well contains plenty of mystery and magic – most of it tinged with a healthy dose of dark comedy.
“I love using the surreal to explore the very emotionally and psychologically real fears and desires that we all have,” says Awad. “And how fantasy can reflect those in some ways so much more potently than a realist treatment.”

A memory of when I would just sit down and write anything … by Jacob Wren from a Radical Cut in the Texture of Reality

I’ve followed Jacob Wren’s blog for years. Here’s a recent post on writing, fear, and being open:

”A memory of when I would just sit down and write anything, not worrying about quality or what I might do with it, just to break the deadlock, a little bit, just to generate a little bit of movement within the paralysis I thought of as both my writing and my life. That was a long time ago.”

Bobos in Ikea by Brandon Taylor on Sweater Weather

sweater weather

bobos in ikea

Photo by Rendy Novantino on Unsplash Hello friends— On Friday, I officially move to New York. For much of the last month, I’ve been looking at furniture and trying to imagine myself as a different kind of person, someone capable of owning adult objects. I’ve selected a new table, a new couch, new chairs, a new bed. Resigned to the fact that the East Coast…

3 years ago · 75 likes · 39 comments · Brandon

Interviews

Nico Stratis interviews Casey Plett about her new story collection

“The number one thing I would want for any trans writer is to be able to write whatever is moving you, whatever is compelling you, without necessarily needing to feel like you’ve got to either wedge or not wedge your transness to whatever degree you don’t want.” —Casey Plett

Watch Your Head featured in The Quarantine Review

Watch Your Head was featured in an interview with the Quarantine Review, Issue 9.

The ninth issue of a digital journal created to alleviate the malaise of social distancing with exceptional writing and artwork.

The Quarantine Review celebrates literature and art, connecting readers through reflections on the human condition — our lived experiences, afflictions, and dreams. As we face a pandemic with profound implications, the essays within offer a variety of perspectives on the current predicament, encouraging readers to reflect on the world we knew before and contemplate how society can be reshaped once we emerge. Through The Quarantine Review, Dupuis and Sarfraz hope to give voice to the swirling emotions inside each of us during this unprecedented moment, to create a circuit of empathy between the reader, the work itself, and the wider world beyond the walls of our homes.

You can purchase a copy here.

Wonderful news from knife | fork | book!

“Yes, darlin's there is a hereafter.” —Kirby

BEGINNING 02 OCT

JUST IN TIME FOR OUR 5TH ANNIVERSARY

Courses and Community

Soundtrack: a queer oral history project and open mic events

Michael V. Smith has started a new event series called Soundtrack.

Soundtrack is a weekly live broadcast which uses albums as a spark to ignite a conversation between queer artists about ‘where were you when.’ It’s effectively a queer oral history project, with music as a mnemonic touchstone.

Every week, host Michael V. Smith and a special guest each share a story/poem about their respective memories for what was going on in their lives when they first heard whichever weekly album is featured. Then together they unpack the positionality of those memories. Each episode features two queer moments from two different geographies and backgrounds, but (likely) in the same timeline, with the same cultural prompt.

An episode is twenty minutes or so, and later (if you miss it live) uploaded to www.youtube.com/c/michaelvsmith71.

There’s more! This is a community project, to also help writers generate material.

In the remaining 40 minutes (which caps each session at one hour) viewers can participate by sharing their own story/poem drafts inspired by the album, in an open-mic style format. Maybe you have your own memories from the time you first heard that album? Maybe you’ve heard it for the first time this week? Write about that experience. Where were you then/where are you now?

Join Soundtrack here.

Chelene Knight brings you The Forever Writers Club

Editor, literary agent, and award-winning author (and Send My Love to Anyone contributor) Chelene Knight has started a new ventured which is very exciting called The Forever Writers Club.

The Forever Writers Club helps writers create a sustainable writing practice for life in a supportive environment through wellness, care, and process building, and publishing transparency.

This is NOT a craft-focused program.

After joining The Forever Writers Club you will have made space in your life for joyful creation. You will have built and established a clear writing process, feel connected to a community of like minded folks who are venturing on a shared journey and hold the same goals as you. You will have honed the craft skills you already hold in order to be well equipped to complete your project (and future projects) with a core group of cheerleaders in a healthy, nourishing, joyful, and sustainable way—for life.

Early bird pricing is in effect now until mid-September and the full program launches in October (all live sessions start in November).

You can sign up here.

Writing the Noir Short Story with Sam Wiebe

Learn about writing noir short stories and flash fiction, including plot, characters, endings, plus a writing prompt to get started on your own story!

Make the Leap Blogging Course with Kerry Clare

The next session of Kerry Clare’s online blogging course MAKE THE LEAP kicks off September 1.

This is a course for the blog-curious, new bloggers, and also experienced bloggers who want to insert some pep into their blogging step.

For many writers, the greatest obstacle to blogging success is perfectionism, shame, and an undervaluing of one’s own voice and ideas — all of which are born from cultural expectations that conspire to keep women small and quiet, struggling to fit our lives and stories into impossibly limited containers that were never designed to hold the reality of our lives.

Kerry Clare has 21 years experience as a blogger, and from 2011-2015, she taught a blogging course at the UofT School of Continuing Studies, also teaches blogging workshops at literary festivals and training sessions throughout Ontario. And now with this online program, she’s excited to help you create the blog you’ve been dreaming of by empowering you to find and follow your own voice, to pursue your own curious avenues.

Events

knifeforkbook @knifeforkbook

>>>NEW DATE SUNDAY 05 SEPT 11AM-?<<<

Lunch Poems at SFU is a unique opportunity to celebrate poetry and is held the third Wednesday of every month, from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m.

September's Lunch Poems reading features poets Kathryn Mockler and Michael V. Smith.

September 15, 2021 at 12:00pm (Pacific)/3:00pm (EST)

This is a virtual event. Register here.

Anthologies to Save the Planet

Presented by: Word Vancouver

Type: Reading / Panel

Host: Fiona Tinwei Lam

Date: September 24, 2021 at 1:30pm (Pacific)/ 4:30pm (EST)

Free event/by donation

Four editors discuss how anthologies can be an effective form of collective action and protest in face of the climate crisis and relentless human encroachment upon this planet’s precious ecosystems.

Readers

Christine Lowther (Tree Anthology, forthcoming/ongoing from Caitlin Press),
Yvonne Blomer (Refugium and Sweet Water, Caitlin Press)
Catriona Sandilands (Rising Tides, Caitlin Press)
Kathryn Mockler (Watch Your Head, Coach House Books)

If you're looking for copies of books featured at Word Vancouver, you can get them at Iron Dog Books.

A Map to the Door of No Return at 20: A Gathering

mapat20 @map2door20

None of this would be possible without MAP and the whole organizing committee: Andrea Davis, Michelle Molubi, Marcelle-Anne Fletcher, David Chariandy, Canisia Lubrin, Rinaldo Walcott, Ellyn Walker, Leslie Sanders, Aysha Campbell, and Christina Sharpe. Hold the dates!

Agents and Books

I discovered this excellent newsletter by agent Kate McKean all about agents, publicity, and books!

What an amazing resource!

Watch Your Head News

Watch Your Head Newsletter

I’ve started up a newsletter for Watch Your Head! Please sign up!

Watch Your Head at See You Again Arts Festival

Watch Your Head is so very excited to be a part of the Oculus Common's SEE YOU AGAIN Arts Festival where we will present a reading curated by Sanchari Sur and a screening curated by June Pak!

Date: Saturday, September 25, 2021 @ 7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Location: Oculus Pavilion, Humber River Recreational Trail, Toronto, ON, M8Y 3N7
Register here (it’s free).
Check out all the other events at this wonderful festival!

Watch Your Head presents 7 artists and 5 writers in this program of reading and video screening at the Oculus Pavilion in Toronto’s waterfront. The works in this program bring our attention to the interconnectivity of the climate crisis and urban ecology. Wind, water, trees, animals were once major and essential parts of our life, but now they are replaced by concrete, plastic and Capitalism. Convenience took over caring for nature; efficiency replaced the respect for the life cycle; financial gains ran over our consciousness.

Reading program (duration 45 mins):

Five writers, one editor of the Watch Your Head anthology (Jacqueline Valencia) and four previous contributors (Yohani Mendis, Khashayar Mohammadi, Jody Chan, and Karen Lee), meditate on relationality--with nature, with our surrounding space, the Oculus Pavilion, and the overarching theme of the festival, “See You Again”. The way we relate to each other has its basis in being human, being alive, being here in this moment; that despite our (geographical and other) positions, we function in similar ways. What can be more incredible than that?

Video Screening (duration 45 mins):

Previous contributors of Watch Your Head (Fiona Tinwei Lam, Choe Rayun, Shelley Niro) share their observations of elements of nature (or lack thereof) within the urban setting. Hong-Lee, HyunSook from Korea provides us with gleams of a soon-to-be disappearing area in her performative video with stray cats. The greedy sand mining business is documented in a poetic and whimsical gesture in Alexandra Gelis and Jorge Lozano’s work. Christina Battle’s work Water Once Ruled makes us think of the past, present, and future state of Earth in relation to Mars’ past. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s words and visualization of those words by Sammy Chien/Chimerik 似不像 in their collaborative work Solidification ᒪᔥᑲᐗᒋ give us a moment to contemplate and reconnect us with our conscious.

Curators

Sanchari Sur is the recipient of a 2018 Lambda Literary Fellowship in fiction, and a PhD candidate in English at Wilfrid Laurier University. Their work can be found in Electric Literature, AAWW’s The Margins, Al Jazeera, Ploughshares, Joyland, Toronto Book Award shortlisted The Unpublished City (2017), and elsewhere.

June Pak (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Tkaronto/Toronto. Her works have been shown in Canada and abroad. She received the K.M. Hunter Artist Award in Visual Arts (2004) and the Chalmers Arts Fellowship for her research in Korea (2017). She joined the Watch Your Head editorial team in 2019.

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