A Sort of Homecoming

I’m happy to announce that The Florida Review has just published the first chapter of my thesis/next book. It’s called “A Sort of Homecoming” and here’s a little taste:

I am so starved for company, even a dead man’s would do.

Stamping on my boots, I follow a trail leading into a desert jungle thick with yucca and mesquite. Rain is so scant in this swath of South Texas, trees grow out instead of up, fusing together like brush. In some patches, you can’t see but two feet beyond. But it’s noisy here—gloriously noisy. Beetles munch through mounds of deer dung. Orange-bellied orioles and dust-colored sparrows twitter from treetops while flocks of chachalacas cluck about. My boots trample footprints, paw prints, hoof prints.

A chain link fence appears up ahead, enclosing acres of cleared land. The ranch hands call it Cowboy Cemetery. I pace among the graves, peering at the sunken stones. In the olden days, families carved the names of their departed into planks of wood and thrust them into the soil. Those crosses have largely eroded, with only the cement markers remaining. I hunt for Silvas and Quintanillas: members of my cowboy tribe. This quest seems promising at first. Practically every stone bears a Mexican surname. But after an hour-long search, I realize that none are mine.

My disappointment is bitter but unsurprising. Two years ago, I moved to Mexico to unearth my mother’s roots. I scoured the countryside for months searching for something familial, even convincing Mom to join me for a stretch. Together we set out for the tiny village in Tamaulipas where a rancher named Richard King recruited his cowboys a century and a half ago, my great-great-grandfather among them. We interviewed everyone who crossed our path there, from shop owners to officials to the area’s eldest resident. We related how, in 1853, the bulk of the village’s citizens gathered their burros and their chickens, their pots and their blankets, and marched several hundred miles north to forge a new life in Texas. But when they led us to their cemetery, we found no tombs to prove our ties, no ancestors to anchor us. Only sun bleached ribbons blowing in the wind. Like here. Like now.

Hola & Upcoming Events

Bienvenidos to my little bloguito!

2012 has been totally loca! It started with a distance-learning class I co-taught with Tijuana poet/journalist/badass Mariana Martinez-Estens in conjunction with the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. We gathered fourteen writers from ten nations to discuss immigration in creative nonfiction. It was a powerful experience for us all.

This spring, I presented on two panels at AWP in Chicago: one on immersion writing, led by Robin Hemley, and one on writer’s residencies, led by Wendy Call. I also gave readings or seminars at Washington University in St. Louis, U-Mass-Lowell, University of North Carolina Chapel-Hill, Florida International University, and University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

I’ll be graduating with my MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa in May and will then join Santiago Vaquera-Vasquez for a reading at the 8^th International Conference on Chicano Literature in Toledo, Spain. In July, I’ll teach a travel writing seminar at Pine Manor’s Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program in Boston, and will then move to Canton, New York to spend a year as the 2012-2013 Viebranz Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at St. Lawrence University. I’ll be teaching two classes there: intro to creative nonfiction and experiential writing. In November, I’ll join my Iowa gente at the 2012 NonfictioNow Conference in Melbourne, Australia, and in fall 2013, I’ll be moving to the South to be Assistant Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Here’s hoping our paths cross somewhere along the way. Gracias!

 

Labor Day Update

Hope y’all are having a peaceful and relaxing Labor Day weekend. The sun is shining out my window, but as of 5:15 p.m. Sunday, I have yet to greet it: there’s too crazy much to do! Some updates I’d love to share with you:

* Travelers’ Tales just sent me a box full of the latest translation of 100 Places Every Woman Should Go, from Korea. I can’t believe how thick it is–nearly double the heft of the original. Too bad I can’t read a word… though the layout/design/photography is terrific. Here’s the cover:

Que fun, no?

* The Believer has bought my profile of master frescoist Frederico Vigil! I met this extraordinary artist last May, when I was teaching at the National Latino Writers Conference at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, and was so blown away by his latest work–a 4,000 square foot fresco detailing 3,000 years of Latino history–I interviewed him on the spot. I returned to Albuquerque last October for the grand opening of the fresco, and have been in contact with him ever since. He is truly a magical man, and the Believer will be running my 4,000-word profile in their annual arts issue in November.

* The Florida Review has asked to publish the first chapter of my thesis/next book, currently titled Corpitos: Mystics and Mayhem in South Texas. The essay is called “A Sort of Homecoming,” and details my experiences at a silent retreat in Sarita, Texas, where I decided that, rather than run around the world again for my next book, I should take time to deeper explore my

Midsummer Bliss

Is it me, or is this summer blazing by at hyper-speed? Since I last wrote, I’ve been to San Francisco; Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Syracuse, New York; Dallas; and Houston, plus Corpitos at every point in between. Craziness! Some of the highlights:

* hiking through Tennessee Valley and then downing a bottle of wine, a bag of cherries, and a block of lavender goat cheese on Paradise Beach with Marcy Gordon

* bonding with Lavinia Spalding, editor of Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011, over dim-sum at Yank Sing (which serves the yummiest jiaozi this side of the Pacific)

* wandering the winding streets of San Francisco, chai-and-chocolate-milk in hand, with Lea Aschkensas

* biking across Elk Refuge and beholding the Grand Teton

* meeting one of my literary heroes, Cristina Garcia, at the Jackson Hole Writer’s Conference and then devouring her latest novel, The Lady Matador’s Hotel, in a day-long gulp

* meeting another literary hero, Ben Fountain, at a barbecue in Dallas and then re-reading and re-falling for Brief Encounters with Che Guevara 

* road-tripping South Texas in search of good stories with my co-pilot, Greg

Next stop is San Antonio, where I’ll be teaching a day-long travel writing class at one of my fave literary centers in the nation: Gemini Ink. Then I’m jetting back to the West Coast to teach a three-day memoir writing workshop at the Mendocino Coast Writer’s Conference in Northern California. I’ll also be jumping up and down with some of my most beloved people on the planet: Marisa Handler (BWTW 2010 contributor and singer/writer/activist extraordinaire) and my Trekker family. Happiness!

Here’s hoping your summer is equally blessed. Thanks for stopping by y saludos.

Intro to Travel Writing

I’m psyched to announce that I’ll be teaching an 8-week, online Intro to Travel Writing class with Media Bistro, from June 7 – August 2. Here’s the skinny, from their website:

Travel the world and get paid for it? Yes, it’s true! Whether a long weekend in Mendocino or a long walk across Nepal, there’s a market out there for your stories, and a proven path that successful travel writers follow. In this course, you’ll learn how to grow your freelance writing career by mastering one of its most adaptable, engaging genres: travel.

Travel writing is a conduit to many parallel genres, from food to art, politics to technology, and the skills and experience you’ll gain covering travel can be applied to all your writings. In week one, we’ll fully assess the travel writing market (magazines, newspapers, guidebooks, websites, blogs, and more) and set individual writing agendas for the duration of class. In following weeks we’ll reveal the inner workings of the field, showing how travel editors think and what they want from their writers. We’ll diagram the many different styles of travel writing, study the critical role of pitch letters, analyze key components to strong travel writing, and show how and why you can use travel writing as a springboard to other genres.

Throughout class we’ll extensively workshop your pitches and articles, and you’ll graduate with a series of solid pieces ready for you to sell. You’ll also create your own blog, develop a mission for it, and learn the opportunities that exist for publishing online.

In this class, you will learn:

• How to break into travel writing
• The rules of reporting, interviewing, finding sources, and local color
• What kinds of stories make good journalism
• What travel editors look for, and how to get them to notice you

48 Hours in Singapore

Apologies for the silence: February was one of the most manic months I’ve had in ages. Not only am I teaching two classes this semester, but I am also taking two classes, so traveling has become quite the juggling act. Two weeks ago, I did one of my craziest trips ever: flew 24 hours to Singapore, stayed 48 hours, and then flew 24 hours back. Between the jetlag and the uber-futuristic architecture, it felt a bit like time-traveling!

So what inspired this journey? A travel writing conference sponsored by the beautiful people at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. Sixteen scholars and authors from Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, China, Malaysia, England, and Iowa (!) gathered to discuss the state of travel letters from a variety of lenses and perspectives. Topics included everything from a Bakhtinian reading of nineteenth century women’s writings about Italy to war diaries by Japanese conscripts in the Russo-Japanese War. I gave my first-ever academic paper (well… an essay with a lot of footnotes) called “Wayward Woman: On the Road and on the Page.” In between sessions, we feasted on the single best conference catering I have ever sampled: tiger prawn curry, fish cakes, samosas, fried rice, green papaya salad, drunken noodles, tom yum soup, and pandanberry juice, all liberally spiced with lemongrass, ginger, coconut milk, and chilies. Aye!

I’ve long been curious about Singapore. Back when I was living in Beijing in the late nineties, a friend spent a few months there…

AWP 2011 Recap

Just returned from a manic 48 hours at the “largest literary gathering in North America,” otherwise known as the AWP Conference. Every year, some 8,000 writers, MFA students, and publishers swarm a major metropolitan city and hold hundreds of readings, panels, book signings, and discussions. I was super psyched about speaking on two panels this year, but Snowmaggedon intervened. Iowa City got pummeled with snow drifts and all flights were canceled for two days, meaning I missed my first panel (on Memoir & Latinidad). I finally made it to Washington D.C. around 2:30 a.m. on Friday–and had to moderate a “Women on Wanderlust” panel at 10:30! But grogginess wore off as soon as I met my co-panelists, the lovely Alison Stein Wellner, Johanna Gohmann, and Elisabeth Eaves (all contributors to Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010). Some 200 women–and an ebullient man–showed up to pay homage to the glories of the open road.

Aside from that, the conference’s highlight was catching a performance by Sapphire, author of the novel Push (which in 2009 became the Academy Award-winning film “Precious”). I have probably seen upward of 250 authors read from their work over the years, and would rate Sapphire in the top five. She practically channels her characters–to the point you believe she is performing a monologue. I was shocked to find myself fighting tears. Equally moving was her decision to read from the work of three other black women poets: Ai, Carolyn Rodgers, and Lucille Clifton. All three were “giants” who died in the past year. This was Sapphire’s way of paying tribute to her muses and honoring their lives and work. Que mujer!

The next AWP will be held February 29 – March 3, 2012 in Chicago. I am so there (snow permitting)….