Creative Writing San Francisco
Sun, 02/28/2010 - 10:53am | Matthew Clark D...
I’m on an annual getaway with a bunch of friends. A trip I didn’t think I’d be able to afford this year until the prospect of budget cuts leaving me teaching 0-2 classes per week turned into the reality of teaching 9 classes per week. A trip in years past I loved to take turned, in the midst of the busiest and most-charged period of my life, into a trip I felt like I needed to take.
One of my friends in the hotel biz hooked me up with a luxurious room I’d never be able to afford at its normal rate—or even its near-normal rate. I still must work, but working from the beach after doing yoga and then reading in a bed with 400 thread-count sheets feels much more doable than driving from class to class on a motorcycle in the rain. My hotel-biz-friend is the same friend who has us waiting out the tsunami in the penthouse. My room (on the third floor) was evacuated to a public place in the hotel across the street.
Life is so strange.
I also just finished reading TRUTH AND BEAUTY by Ann Patchett. It’s about all the subjects I find endlessly fascinating: family, friendship, writing, the creative process, self-destruction, loss, addiction, and survival. This book really digs into dumb luck of survival--the randomness and even brutality of it—-she explores what often, and mistakenly, gets reduced down to "the triumph of the human spirit." It details her enormously complicated and compelling relationship to the late writer Lucy Grealy, who’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FACE I assigned along with TRUTH AND BEAUTY for my Uses of Personal Experience course at SF State.
The Douglass Street Lab, I can hardly believe, is going into its sixth of eight weeks. This session’s group, more newcomers than regulars, more people I’ve met for the first time than people I’ve known before, is producing some of the most charged work I’ve seen. I love the freedom The Lab offers, not ruled by the necessary rules of a university or grant funding. It brings me much joy.
There’s so much more I want to write about. Somehow I want to tie-in the feeling I got reading TRUTH AND BEAUTY, how the narration of Patchett’s memoir maintained its steadily-increasing tension even though the reader knows in advance what will happen—and what it’s like to be waiting for the tsunami to hit from the 21st floor from a penthouse suite—and what it’s like to be waiting to hear if I’ll ever get my first book deal now that my agent has sent out my manuscript to the first round of editors. But I just can’t.
Creative Writing Classes Bay Area San Francisco Fiction Memoir SFSU
Sun, 01/17/2010 - 2:16pm | Matthew Clark D...
January 2010 Blog Update:
***
Contents:
-2 Slots Left in The Douglass Street Lab, which starts this Tuesday 1/19
-Update from New York City
***
It's not too late to sign up with 2 slots left...
The January Douglass Street Lab is looking to be one of the most exciting groups of Labbers so far. With ten people signed up (thanks to all of you who helped spread the word on Facebook!), we have, for the first time, more newcomers than veterans. This should be great because the four veterans are so talented and open and generous in their participation. They're the kinds of folk you want in a room when you’re taking new risks with your writing.
I’m excited to see where our 8 experiments take us. There are still two slots if you care to join us, I’d love to have you.
To sign up for The Lab, click here.
***
Greetings from New York. My cousin Greg and his partner Michael (who also happen to be two of my best friends), surprised me around Thanksgiving-time with an invite and ticket to New York. I hadn’t been here during the wintertime in more than twenty years. I took full-advantage of the much-needed getaway and saw a ton of art. Highlights included the Jim Hodges/Felix Gonzales-Torres show, Joseph Beuys, Martin Wong, and the Kandinsky retrospective at The Guggenheim.
I saw Alan Cummings perform his live cabaret act (lower-case not capital Cabaret, see above) at Joe’s Pub & was so lucky to see David Greenspan perform his inspired show The Myopia. I reunited with a friend I hadn’t seen in seven years, met his partner, saw my NY homies, hung with my cuz and the hounds. All in a week!
Now I’m sitting on the couch, over-flowing with gratitude and appreciation at my dumb luck while procrastinating packing. I’m writing in the seat where I spent so many hours over the past three summers researching, reading, and writing. It’s a joyful/melancholic and slightly nerve-wracking sensation to reassume the position now that the manuscript is finished and out of my hands.
How strange it has been to walk through New York without the filter of “would Janis go here?” (Janis is the subject of the novel I just finished). Instead, I said, (sometimes aloud), “Janis used to go there,” and “My friend Janis loved that place when she lived in New York.” Now, because of this trip, I want to go back into the manuscript and rewrite some of the winter scenes because of what I’ve learned about the winter light.
***
THANKS AGAIN TO ALL OF YOU. I HOPE YOUR 2010 is off to a great start.
Creative Writing San Francisco
Fri, 11/27/2009 - 9:43am | Matthew Clark D...
*Sign up for The Douglass Street Lab's next session starting 1/19/10.
***
The new issue of Fourteen Hills is also about to be released. You can come hear some of the writers at the release party on December 16th at the San Francisco Motorcycle Club. This issue is visually stunning and the work in it will please all of the word nerds in your life. You can buy it through SPD or you can subscribe here. Either way, come to the party. It’ll be fun. And it’s free. More info on the address/time/readers here.
***
Ok. It may not have been the best movie on earth but something that came out of that movie totally changed my life. Oprah interviewed the cast of the movie and several of the actresses lamented about how hot it had been on the shoot. The way I remember it, Oprah listened to the details about how hot it had been on set and Dolly Parton said nothing. Oprah turned to her and said, “Dolly, you’re the one who had to wear all those big wigs and all those layers. Weren’t you hot?” And Dolly Parton looked at Oprah, paused, then said, “When I was a little girl growin’ up in the backwoods of Tennessee I wanted to be a famous country western singer and a movie star. Now I’m a country western singer and a movie star and I’m not going to complain about the weather.”
In a recent conversation with my mother and a friend she's known for forty-five years, we all talked about the teachers who had an influence on us even when we didn’t know it at the time. I’ve had a lot of great teachers. But with most of them I’ve known how great they were even during the “during phase.” With some of them, I’ve had the pleasure of having time-delayed double-appreciation for what I’d already appreciated.
I had a high-school art teacher named Mrs. Fitz. Anyone who knows me knows that I dropped out of high school when I was fifteen. And I only attended a tiny portion of my freshman year so I couldn’t have been in her class more than a dozen times. My high school felt like an entirely hostile environment—students and faculty included—so I’d given up on any attempt to gain anyone’s acceptance or approval. Instead I rebelled, refusing any help. I don’t know if Mrs. Fitz ever even noticed me. But I noticed her. She came to our small-town conservative Massachusetts school with her spiked hair. She wore layered outfits that looked like a cross between Pat Benetar and Stevie Nicks. She called herself an artist and her teaching style reminded me of Debbie Allen’s character on the television show Fame.
Memory is imperfect, and my filters of that time were incredibly emotional and hormonal, so I’m not stating any of this as objective fact. I remember her talking to the people in the room who were most interested in what she had to offer. She didn’t exclude anyone or ignore anyone—but drew people in with her passion for the subject. To appear on her radar one needed to take risks and show some passion of one’s own. I was already too far gone. I’d hatched a plan to run away and return to California and make it as an actor. I didn’t want small town art classes. I judged her and everyone else I liked before they could judge me. I’m not sure she and I ever even had a one on one conversation. I do, however, have an awareness of how often I thought of her over the years. I wondered what it was like to be her. There. In that town. I wondered if she were married or single or if she had a boy or girl friend. I wondered if she’d sensed my gayness. (After all, didn’t all artistic people have advanced gaydar?) I’ve thought about her when in museums or when playing with clay with my nieces and any time I’ve ever attempted to sketch something on paper (a town square, an apartment’s floor plan, an outfit that I’ve needed to see first on paper in order to describe in a story). She once told me a sketch I drew of a mouse sticking his head out of a hole in a triangular piece of Swiss cheese had good shadowing. I’ve never forgotten her or it.
Why? She taught me that having a life as an artist is a possibility. It didn’t matter where you lived. It’s how you lived. What mattered was how you saw the world and how you responded to it.
Things have been tough this semester at SF State with the cutbacks, and word is that it’ll get worse before it gets better. But I’m not going to complain. Why? When I was a little boy sitting on a rock looking up at the stars in a small town in Massachusetts, all I wanted was to be around people who made art with words or paper or their bodies. I wanted to make my living not as a truck driver or a computer programmer or a waiter (all jobs held by people I loved), but as an artist. And now I’m making my living as an artist and I’m not going to complain about a couple of cutbacks.
I few weeks ago I wanted to complain about the classes I’m teaching to forth and fifth graders and at an afterschool middle-school program. But I held my tongue. And I’m glad I did. Not only because they’re starting to trust me, to open up and actually write stuff down, but because during this conversation with my mother and her friend I realized that being a teacher has nothing to do with getting the results I want to see. It’s about presenting possibilities. These classes through Performing Arts Workshop are the most challenging I’ve taught. Or maybe it just seems like that because I’ve been teaching the others for a while and I’ve gotten more used to them. At any rate, they make me feel alive.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. By the time this goes up it will be the Monday after. I’m writing this from Mendocino where my mother and I have spent the week driving up and down Highway 1 stopping to eat sushi and Thai spring rolls and avocados on benches overlooking cliffs that drop into the bright blue Pacific. I was raised in California before my father was transferred to Massachusetts and my parents took my brothers and me along this coast when we were kids. It’s quite a sensation to revisit this area with my mom. She with her head of hair as white as the wave caps and me with my baldhead and graying beard. On days like today it seems like all of it makes sense and no matter what happens it’ll be okay. Or not. And either way, everything will continue on.
Writing Class Begins January 2010
Fri, 10/23/2009 - 10:46am | Matthew Clark D...
*Douglass Reads 6/Tuesday November 3rd at Adobe Books on 16th 6:30pm
*"Start Your New Year Write" Douglass Street Lab's Greatest Hits starts 1/19/10 and is open for registration now.
Happy Autumn everyone. It feels like years have gone by between the September and October updates.
I also just finished my third week of teaching at Paul Revere School in Bernal Heights through
Performing Arts Workshop. There, my job is usually to work with the teaching artists, not the students. I first went to Paul Revere as an on-site mentor for a new artist, and was delighted to find one of my former students in charge of their after-school arts programming. She asked me I could teach Creative Writing to their 7th and 8th graders. At the time I couldn't, because of my schedule at State....and then came the cutbacks...So now I'm not only teaching those two after-school classes to middle-schoolers, but I'm also teaching two 4th grade classes and a 5th grade class. Five classes in a row in Creative Writing!
They've all expertly grasped the difference between fiction and autobiography, realistic fiction from fantasy, and they're preparing to write entirely fictionalized but realistic stories that borrow from their autobiographies. I read them a story I wrote in graduate school, one that explores the inner-life of one of two little sisters. They're coping in the aftermath of the death of their mother. (Don't worry: I okayed it with the school counselor. Seriously. I did!). It's set in deer-hunting country and one of the girls is obsessed with a dead deer in the back of her uncle's truck. Then I answered questions about what I imagined (some said they couldn't believe that I'm not, and never have been, a hunter or a father or a girl); and what I borrowed from my autobiography.
The most recent session of The Lab has also been a joy. I feel lucky to see how creative writing can open things up for people in so many different settings/age groups/contexts. The experiments this time were inspired by Philip Glassand Roland Barthes and Lucy Grealy and Aristotle and Zadie Smith and a cartoonist and an architect (just to name a few). The Labbers' findings have often been thrilling, inspiring me to keep my eyes open to how every single thing might deepen or expand the worlds of my fiction.
A student from the Fourteen Hills MA/MFA class at SFSU just interviewed me for a new blog. You can check it out here.
***
Speaking of The Lab,
The most recent session of "Douglass Street Lab," an intimate writing workshop, INVITES YOU to a public reading:
“DOUGLASS READS 6”
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 3rd, 2009
6:30-8:00 pm
ADOBE BOOKS
San Francisco, CA 94103-3363
(415) 864-3936
ADMISSION: FREE (but you're welcome to make a purchase at Adobe Books and keep an independent bookstore alive!)
"The Lab," which focuses on the prose experiment, is named after the street where the group meets. "Douglass Reads 6" will feature short shots from the works-in-progress of:
Chris Brecheen
Erica Eller
Dax Garcia
Diane Glaub
Zach Grear
Laura Haber
Roseli Ilano
Lorena Landeros
Miya Reekers
Derek Rock
Mark Rubnitz
Claire Sherba
Anne Trickey
The vibe will be more sunny than somber. We are people who take our work—but not ourselves—seriously.
***
And finally, I'm registering people for "Start Your New Year Off Write: The Douglass Street Lab's Greatest Hits."
Memoir Class San Francisco
Sun, 09/06/2009 - 6:51am | Matthew Clark D...
Many exciting things. First, be on the lookout for my new website. It's coming soon!
I'm back to school at SFSU (see picture above), and we're already cookin' in Craft of Fiction. Also, Fourteen Hills has been on a poetry -success-run, with selections from the most-recent issue on Daily Verse as well as in Best New Poets 2009. Congratulations to the incredible editors and writers!
A former student/Teaching Assistant, RA Martin, was on the cover of the NYT book review recently, for an anthology he edited and contributed to. In it, there are pieces from SFSU's Kirk Read and a former Labber and SFSU student Lorelei Lee, who is now off at NYU pursuing her MFA.
In my own writing life, I'm in the thick of it. I suspected this day would come. The day when the excitement of finishing a big project would wane and the anxiety of waiting to see what, if anything, the world will do with it would wax.
Standford University has set up this page for their faculty and staff to address "Writing Productivity Problems." It's pretty intense, going well beyond the expected list of symptoms that these Stanford doctors say can result from writer's block/deadline pressures.
I want to know. Where is the medical advice page for those who've finished a project and are waiting?
It has been recorded that William Faulkner would go on major drinking binges between his projects, ending up at Wright's Sanitarium, a Mississippi Nursing Home. Virginia Woolf's husband Leonard described the time between his wife's sending off the proofs ofher biography of Roger Fry to the printers on 13th May, 1940, and hersuicide on 28th March, 1941 as "319 days of headlong and yet slow-moving catastrophe."
Oh Good Lord. What have I done with this update?
Please know that this is not a personal cry for help. Nor is it meant to minimize Virginia Woolf's lifelong struggle with depression or mental illness. I am not being glib. In fact, I spend a lot of teaching time reminding students (and myself) of the brilliant AND healthy living artists who take care of their bodies, treat their illnesses, and find ways to feed their souls so they can continue to contribute their art to the world.
I'm just sayin' I can understand how easy it might be to get derailed.
I'm also so utterly grateful that school started again. That The Lab is starting again. That work with Performing Arts Workshop is resuming. Because—the waiting—the waiting to hear yes or no, the waiting to hear good or bad—It's a real challenge. One that I'm very happy to have the luxury of trying to live with.
The only thing that works is to keep writing and/or to nourish the imagination of the writer. So. That's what I'll do. I'll keep going out and finding art that makes me want to create something. And this Fall at Douglass Street, I'll be doing all of the same writing prompts as the pupils in The Douglass Street Lab. Meanwhile, keep your fingers crossed for me. And I'll keep mine crossed for you.
Creative Writing San Francisco
Fri, 08/14/2009 - 7:12pm | Matthew Clark D...
August 2009 Blog Update:
***
Contents:
*Updates.
*East Meets West at Laundry Party on 8/20.
*Fall 2009 Registration Douglass Street Lab & Open House.
*1-on-1 Manuscript Consultations.
*Become "a fan" of The Lab on FACEBOOK.
***
Updates:
July was one busy month. I said "so long" to my beloved New York, reunited with The Bay and worked hard to deal with my work situation. So many incredible teaching artists are suddenly out of jobs and insurance because of the mammoth cutbacks in education.
Still, I'm grateful for the distraction that looking for work provided. There's nothing like finishing a project that took years to do and then WAIT to find out what's next. I've been calling people who've finished novels and asking them how they did it. How they waited for the agents and editors and readers to finish reading. One said she gained 20 pounds. Another said he went crazy "dating" (ahem). The most sensible answer was a friend who said she got right back into writing, as if the previous manuscript never existed. Her answer fits right into what Philip Glass, the American composer, said in the documentary I'm watching about him, "I have one secret. You get up early in the morning and work all day. That's the only secret."
My plan was to jump right back into my writing. I thought I'd edit my short fiction for a collection. Instead, I had to start job hunting.
Luckily, things look like they're going to be okay now. At least for the next six months. This morning, I opened a story I've been putting off getting back into for years.
Thanks to everyone who sent such supportive notes about the finishing of the big draft and/or about my work at State being cut back. Thanks to everyone who signed up/posted/forwarded/talked about The Douglass Street Labs and/or my manuscript consultation services.
I know there are tons of classes and very qualified writers out there, and I very much appreciate your support.
***
"The Laundry Party"
Thursday, August 20, 2009
7:00pm - 10:00pm
Kearny Street Workshop at PariSoma
1436 Howard Street @ 10th Street
San Francisco, CA
A bi-coastal sometimes private/sometimes public salon series, this one is a free public event where a variety of different artists preview, workshop, and showcase new works in multiple genres.
I'm thrilled that the series' originator, the actress and playwright Samantha Chanse , is going to be back in SF from Columbia University's MFA Playwrighting program. Sam will perform a chapter from my novel manuscript as part of the evening's lineup.
Hope to see you there! For more information, RSVP on facebook.
***
Douglass Street 6, The Fall 2009 Lab, starts Tuesday 9/8/9 and runs for 8 consecutive weeks. As it stands, three slots remain.
This Sunday 8/16, I'm co-hosting an "open-house" to catch up with those who've already taken The Lab and to meet people who're interested in finding out more about this/future sessions. Please feel free to drop by. Details here.
Click here:
to find out more about The Lab
about Matthew
or to read testimonials from people who've taken The Lab.
If you're already sure you'd like to sign up, don't wait! I've joined eventbrite to make signing up a breeze. Click Here for more info & to register.
OPEN SLOTS FOR MANUSCRIPT CONSULTATION
For nearly fifteen years, I've been working with fiction/memoir writers who're interested in tightening their work. They may be sending it out for publication consideration, or applying for graduate school, fellowships, or grants. Some clients simply want to improve upon their craft. Through the years, I've worked with Pushcart and O'Henry-winning authors, and writers whose imaginations and hard work got them invited into MFA programs as competitive as University of Oregon, Syracuse, Columbia, and NYU.
While The Lab is ideal for people who want to generate new work and/or to expand a project; working 1-on-1 is best for those who have an existing project they're ready to work hard on finishing. Click here to find out more about how it works. Click here to read testimonials with people who've worked 1-on-1 with me.
***
If facebook hasn't already taken over your life, here's an opportunity to increase the chance that it will. Click Here to become "a fan" of The Lab. Past, present, and future Labbers and lovers of words drop by and contemplate quotes for/by/about writing and/or life and/or art. Also, up-to-date information about The Lab and the people in it.
Thanks for reading this update!
Fiction Classes in San Francisco
Sat, 07/11/2009 - 1:51pm | Matthew Clark D...
This Blog Entry Contains:
*Updates.
*NY Reading with Anne-E Wood and Evan Rehill on 7/12.
*Fall 2009 Registration Douglass Street Lab.
*1-on-1 Manuscript Consultations.
*Become "a fan" of The Lab on FACEBOOK.
***
Updates:
I'm delighted to report that the finished draft of my novel manuscript is finally in the hands of my agent and a couple of trusted friends. I've learned a lot about writing (and about myself) from the last phase of the process, and wrote about it a bit in a blog entry I posted this past spring.
"Do not hurry. Do not rest." is a Goethe quote for which I've come to gain the utmost appreciation.
Now I'm vacillating between complete and utter calm and serenity (which very well may be denial) and impatience to get back to work. Happily for me, the ratio is about 80/20.
Given that I'm here in New York, with the splendid good fortune to be living in an art gallery, I have no shortage of activities with which to fill the time I'd been working on the novel. I've been going to plays and museums, walking around taking photographs, talking to visual artists about their processes, and reading, reading, reading.
In those ways life feels so very good.
The same day I finished my manuscript, I also received a phone call from my boss at SFSU. Two of the three classes I was scheduled to teach have been canceled due to the disastrous state California finds itself in.
That's never a fun call to receive.
But it's not surprising when one makes one's living in Arts Education in a state institution. After all, California employs a former bodybuilder as the governor.
It'll be interesting to see the art that will result from particular time in history.
My hope is my SFSU students will not be entirely discouraged by their ever-decreasing educational options—but will instead keep reading, keep writing, keep on engaging in the activities that ignite that fundamental human impulse to create.
***
R/A R/A READING with Anne-E Wood and Evan Rehill.
If you're in NY, or know someone who is, please consider coming to and/or forwarding this invite to your NY friends:
Sunday, July 12, 2009
7:00pm - 8:00pm
I'll be reading from LETTERS TO THE DEAD with the following two former-SF-writers who now live in Brooklyn:
Anne-E. Wood's fiction is forthcoming or has appeared in Tin House, Gargoyle, Able Muse, Agni, The Chicago Quarterly Review, New Letters, Karamu Literary Journal, Beloit Fiction Journal, Other Voices, The Cream City Review, Fiction Attic, Fourteen Hills Magazine, Hustlers: An Anthology of Gay Male Sex for Hire (under a pen name) and others. She has an MFA in Fiction from San Francisco State University and won the 2006 Michael Rubin Chapbook Award for her collection Two If By Sea. She has taught creative writing at San Francisco State University, Rutgers University, The New Jersey Institute of Technology, the Gotham Writers' Workshop in New York City, and in public schools, juvenile halls, homeless shelters, and youth centers all over the country. She currently lives in Brooklyn and is at work on a novel.
Evan Rehill grew up in Jersey. His writing has been published or is forthcoming in American Short Fiction, Instant City, Watchword, 14 Hills, Big Bell, and Kitchen Sink Magazine. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2006, won the Miriam Ylvisaker Award for Fiction in 2007, and earned his MFA from San Francisco State University in 2008, where he was also an Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing. He has delivered lectures at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and on Neighborhood Public Radio. Push Press published The Way We’re Used To (limited edition) in the summer of 2008. Rehill has completed a collection of short stories (Night Comes Later) and is at work on a novel. He currently teaches fiction at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop in Manhattan. He lives in Brooklyn.
***
Douglass Street 6, The Fall 2009 Lab, starts Tuesday 9/8/9 and runs for 8 consecutive weeks. If you're interested, you can guarantee yourself a seat now. (The Fall session usually sells out a few weeks before it starts). As it stands, a few slots remain.
I've joined eventbrite to make signing up a breeze. Click Here for more info & to register. I'd also very much appreciate it if you'd forward this email to that friend who has been talking about taking a writing class.
Click here:
to find out more about The Lab
about Matthew
or to read testimonials from people who've taken The Lab.
***
OPEN SLOTS FOR MANUSCRIPT CONSULTATION
Since I'll be teaching less at SFSU this Fall, I'll have a few extra open slots for 1 on 1 Manuscript consulting. For nearly fifteen years, I've been working with fiction/memoir writers who're interested in tightening their work to send out or to apply for graduate school, fellowships, grants—or to simply improve upon their craft. My clients have included Pushcart and O'Henry winning authors, and writers whose imaginations and hard work got them invited into MFA programs as competitive as University of Oregon, Syracuse, Columbia, and NYU.
While The Lab is ideal for people who want to generate new work and/or to expand a project; working 1-on-1 is best for those who have an existing project they're ready to work hard on finishing. Click here to find out more about how it works. Click here to read testimonials with people who've worked 1-on-1 with me.
***
If FACEBOOK hasn't already taken over your life, here's an opportunity to increase the chance that it will. Click Here to become "a fan" of The Lab. Past, present, and future Labbers andlovers of words drop by and contemplate quotes for/by/about writingand/or life and/or art. Also, up-to-date information about The Lab andthe people in it.
Writing Classes San Francisco
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 12:09pm | Matthew Clark D...
Greetings from NYC!
June 2009 Blog Update:
***
If FACEBOOK hasn't already taken over your life, here's an opportunity to increase the chance that it will. CLICK HERE to become "a fan" of The Lab. Past, present, and future Labbers and lovers of words drop by and contemplate quotes for/by/about writing and/or life and/or art. Also, up-to-date information about The Lab and the people in it.
***
Since arriving in New York, I've been busy gathering ideas for Douglass Street 6, The Fall 2009 Lab, which starts Tuesday 9/8/9 and runs for 8 consecutive weeks. If you're interested, you can guarantee yourself a seat now. (The Fall session usually sells out a few weeks before it starts).
I've joined eventbrite to make signing up a breeze. Click Here for more info & to register. I'd also very much appreciate it if you'd forward this email to that friend who has been talking about taking a writing class for eons.
***
Updates:
Douglass Street Lab, Session 5, had its public reading,"Douglass Speaks," on June 2nd at Farley's. What a joy is was hear the brilliantly re-visioned material generated in The Lab. I'm still gleaning inspiration from their work.
Thanks to the writers who read & thanks to everyone who came!
***
On June 6th, fellow writer/teacher Michael McAlister, curator of "The Barbershop: A Reading Series" hosted an incredible night at Joe's Barbershop. 75 people showed up to the reading, fostering an incredible feeling of community.
This wasn't your momma's literary reading!
Sure there were the usual writers and word nerds gathered at the book table and sitting on barber chairs. Gathered among them were neighborhood regulars and flat-topped leather-queens and all genders of porn divas sharing cupcakes and vodkas and diet cokes as stories and poems were read.
Lorena Landeros, a former student from SFSU-turned-Labber-turned-friend brought my character Janis to life by reading a chapter from my almost-completed manuscript LETTERS TO THE DEAD. Lorelei Lee, another former-Labber, read her brilliant story before traversing the applauding crowd in a hot pink dress and cork platforms (she had to catch a cab and get to work). Wolf Larsen transitioned the shop from a buzzing intermission into stillness as she sang her hauntingly beautiful songs. As a finale, form-master Randall Mann seduced and bewildered the audience with his unflinching poems.
What a gift to be a part of such a special night. Thanks Michael & Lorelei & Randall & Wolf & Joe & Everyone who came out.
***
NEW YORK HERE I AM!
I'm very lucky to have the chance to come New York for a few weeks every summer. My cousins Greg and Michael have no idea how valuable their hospitality. It's so much easier to find the extraordinary in the ordinary when I'm able to observe and explore another's ordinary for a while. (If that doesn't make sense to you, take The Lab, and it will).
NY's offerings light a fire under my you-know-what. I'll be participating in a reading here in NYC. Former-San Franciscans-now-Brooklynites and word nerds Evan Rehill and Anne-E Wood and I are reading at Cinders Gallery in Brooklyn on July 12th. I'll keep you posted with more details on Facebook in case you're in or will be in New York.
Here's to it! Thanks for reading.
Matthew
Click here:
to find out more about The Lab
about Matthew
or to read testimonials from people who've taken The Lab.
Late Spring Update
Mon, 05/18/2009 - 6:31pm | Matthew Clark D...
Thanks for visiting my blog. Hope everyone receiving this is enjoying their Spring. San Francisco is having INCREDIBLE weather. As soon as I'm done with this entry, in fact, I'm off to Ft. Mason park with some sunscreen, a picnic, and pile of final papers from my writing students at San Francisco State.
This update contains:
*Fall 2009 Registration Douglass Street Lab
*Save The Dates! 2 Upcoming Readings
*Douglass Street 5 Update
*Matthew's New York Summer
***
If you're interested in being a part of The Fall 2009 Lab, which starts Tuesday 9/8/9 and runs for 8 consecutive weeks, you can garauntee yourself a seat now. (The Fall session usually sells out quickly). I've joined eventbrite to make signing up a breeze.
For more info & to register, CLICK HERE.
***
Save the dates:
1. Douglass Street Lab Session 5 will be having its public reading "Douglass Speaks" on Tuesday June 2nd, so save the date! Exact time and location to be announced soon on The Lab's Facebook Page.
2. To help kick off the inaugural evening of "The Barbershop: A Reading Series," I will be reading (along with a very special guest) from my almost-completed manuscript LETTERS TO THE DEAD (a novel-in-progress) . Randall Mann and Lorelei Lee, both wildly talented writers, will also be reading. Please join us for the fun. There will be an optional $5 suggested donation to help cover the cost of snacks, chairs, wine, beverages, etc. Here's the info:
Saturday, June 6, 2009
8:00pm - 9:30pm
2150 Market Street (between Church and Sanchez)
San Francisco, CA
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Douglass Street 5 Update:
Last Tuesday Douglass 5 completed their 6th Session. We read an interview with Rafael Campo, who is, among other things, a gay Cuban-American, a Harvard Medical School physician and poet, who describes his writing process this way
"I’ve been drawn so irresistibly to so-called received forms...they are physical touchstones that provide a kind of entrée into the arduous imaginative journey back to my lost, decrepit island, to inhabit the beautiful but forbidden body of my desire. So I try to rewrite the sonnet, pushing against its narrow walls, asking it to contain a not-so-different love; beneath the scaffolding of a villanelle, I imagine I might rebuild the fanciful architecture of crumbling Havana."
Members of The Lab, after reading the interview and one of Campo's poems, were then challenged to see what they could get onto paper about their characters using exactly thirteen lines (Campo's poem was five 13-line stanzas) under the catagorical prompts of: Injury, Esctasy, Dispair, & Repair.
While some of the members showed some initial resistance, the findings were INCREDIBLE. They were then encouraged to continue with or completely abandon the formal constraints of the exercize as their projects and vision deemed fit. THRILLING!
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NEW YORK HERE I COME!
After a quietly glorious year of writing and teaching and frequent immersion in San Francisco's art & performance scene, I'm putting the finishing touches on the first real definitive beginning-to-end draft of LETTERS TO THE DEAD to send to my agent and a couple of trusted readers.
Then I'm getting on a plane to New York to spend 6 weeks with Greg, Michael, Jetson, and Frizbee (my new canine nephew who I have yet to meet.)
I plan on recharging by immersion into New York's artistic offerings while doing the final revisions on the novel. I'm also very excited to get back into short fiction. I recently took an inventory of the stories I've written and hope to be able to compile them into my next manuscript.
I'll update you in June and July from New York.
Happy Late-Spring early summer everyone!
Sign Up for Douglass Street Lab Fall 2009 Session Starting September 8th Using Eventbrite!
Sun, 05/17/2009 - 7:41pm | Matthew Clark D...
Quick and Easy! Sign up for the Fall 2009 Session of The Douglass Street Lab using Eventbrite.
Or feel free to contact me to send a good old fashioned check!