Zeitoun (Dave Eggers)

New Orleans conjures up mouth-watering Cajun fare paired with jazz and late-night revelry. That is, until 2005.  Now, New Orleans can’t be talked about without mention of the devastation post-Hurricane Katrina.  In fact, most assume that it can never be the same.  Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and What is the What?, has most recently written Zeitoun, a compelling story of a family in New Orleans, who lived through the havoc wreaked by the hurricane and the storm of confusion that followed and created an even greater disaster for the surviving residents.

Yet, New Orleans, for all the lingering repercussions of the disaster, still attracts visitors and wanna-be visitors who explore the city and tradition through its food. Last night my boyfriend and I celebrated his recent success on a graduate-school placement test at Coastal Kitchen on Capitol Hill.  This month, the restaurant  is “touring” New Orleans cuisine. We devoured a cast iron pan-delivered jalapeño-peppered cornbread. Then, oohed and ahhed over blackened redfish atop a creamy crawfish remoulade and a smoked pork butt rubbed with brown sugar and cayenne pepper, served over bacon-roasted turnips and pork juice and garnished with potato skins.  This is the New Orleans in my mind.

Not the unimaginable one that forever changed Abdulrahman Zeitoun, husband, father, and owner of Zeitoun A. Painting Contractor, LLC, in the days after Hurricane Katrina. He stayed behind to care for the house and the rentals while Kathy, his wife of 11 years, and his four children evacuated the city with other New Orleans residents. Before emigrating to New Orleans, Zeitoun was a seaman.  He was born and raised in Jableh, a fishing town on the coast of Syria.  But he left with his brother, Ahmad, to explore the world by ship. 

New Orleans was inundated with a tide of water from the collapsed levees, destroying homes left behind by evacuating residents. Zeitoun was able to move valuables upstairs to the second floor. And a second-hand canoe he had purchased on a whim years before became his mode of transportation in the water-logged city. Day after day, he set off, rowing his canoe along submerged streets, rescuing trapped residents and bringing them to safety. Day after day, he fed pairs of dogs that lived in neighboring houses with his stores of frozen steaks.  Fiercely religious, Zeitoun refused Kathy’s plea to join her first in Baton Rouge and later in Houston. He felt it was Allah’s calling, to stay and help.

KatrinaNewOrleansFlooded edit2.jpg New Orleans, Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (2005:08:29 17:24:22), showing Interstate 10 at West End Boulevard, looking towards Lake Pontchartrain. Photo credit

But the confusion after so many were evacuated and others were stranded brought out the worst in some people, too. The news broadcast reports of widespread looting of abandoned houses and stores.  Of gangs who killed without second thought to protect their stolen goods.  And then there was the armies of police and military flown in to create a semblance of order. 

Electricity was gone, cell phone service useless.  Food refrigerated and frozen soon to be inedible.  Certainly not creamed corn, bacony collard greens, red beans and rice, Southern coleslaw or white cheddar cheese grits--the food I enjoyed last night at Coastal Kitchen was far different than the leftovers and canned foods Zeitoun was eating.

And then the awful turned to nightmarish.  Zeitoun disappears for weeks without word, and Kathy fears he’s been murdered. Zeitoun’s family in Syria and his brother Ahmad call daily, worried sick.

His family found out later that Zeitoun had been taken at gunpoint, arrested, locked in one of the open cages at a hastily erected prison in the bus station.  He was never charged with a crime, never received a phone call, and was called Taliban.  His foot was swollen from a metal splinter and his side gave him splitting pain, but he received no medical attention. He lost weight quickly, served food he could not eat as a devout Muslim. 

How could such ignorance, such overt racism, such injustice, clearly a violation of civil rights, happen within the borders of the U.S.?  At the hands of law enforcement brought in to protect and bring order to the destroyed city?  Instead, Zeitoun is taken to a high security prison outside of New Orleans, where he remains for weeks.  Zeitoun's situation evokes similar atrocities at Guantánamo Bay.

I think about Zeitoun’s treatment post-Katrina as I sip bourbon after the meal last night.  Aged twelve years, the oiliness tickles my tongue and just after the heat slides down my throat,   I raise the glass, look at the golden color.  What does it say about our country when in a destroyed city, we could have allowed such things to happen to an innocent man? Was Zeitoun stigmatized by his religion, by his accent, by his dark hair or skin?  Would it have been better if he had left when his wife left?  Perhaps. But at least three people he saved might have died. 

Zeitoun and his wife, Kathy’s story, is one needed to be told.  It’s a story of a man with a rich history, who like so many of us hope to lead a happy life, raise a family, work hard, and succeed, get ahead.  Zeitoun is a story that peels the layers away and exposes a side of “what can happen” that is most terrifying. 

“I felt cracked open,” Kathy says in the book. “It broke me.”

And shattered my illusions as well, that all in New Orleans will be well and be taken care of, given time.  The impact of these incidents have changed Kathy and Zeitoun forever, and in telling the story, Eggers has affected his readers, too. 

Is knowing the truth for the better or for the worse? I wonder, placing my linen napkin back on the table at Coastal Kitchen. A hurricane won’t happen so far north in Seattle.  But disasters can happen, and I’m not at all prepared to face a city shattered and shaken. It scares me, too, that the people within this country’s borders have so much we share, and yet, it’s the differences that are brought to the surface and focused upon, especially in times of crisis. 

Perhaps it takes a man like Zeitoun to show us that our relationships with each other are vitally important, that they cross language, culture, religion, and you-name-it-differences.   That we need each other. And that’s gives power to hope.


"An in-depth interview between Abdul Rahman and with Ambassador Akbar Ahmed in New Orleans. Abdulrahman's heroic story of saving lives turned tragic and shocking after he was arrested and held for three weeks in a prison, fed only pork, sleep deprived, strip-searched, and then questioned for being terrorist. Dave Eggers' new book Zeitoun centers around this man's experience." journeyintoamerica — March 10, 2009 — http://journeyintoamerica.wordpress.com/

How to write like Stephanie Kallos (May 11 at 826 Seattle)

(http://www.stephaniekallos.com)

Stephanie Kallos, author of Broken for You and Sing Them Home,  compares writers to actors. Both must imagine other lives, embroider them in the fullest way possible.  Whether it be a play by Tennessee Williams, who gives detailed description of what his characters are like, or a more cryptic allusions by Harold Pinter, actors, like writers, must read between the lines, understand what happens to a character before, after, and between each scene.

Kallos says characters start with a person, a real person. "I hope you're all people watchers."  By which she means observing real people is valuable fodder for imaginative characters.  Sometimes, the character is "downloadable from a dream.."  A line someone says, that is so compelling you write it down.  "Be open to business," Kallos explains, at all times, as the most unlikely person or situation can give you ideas.

Then in order to develop a full character, first assemble all the givens, the facts, says Kallos, the common ground.  As in, what do you share with the character?  Kallos gives an example. Take Juliet, the famous one from Romeo and Juliet.  What do you have in common with Juliet?  A mom who wants to tell you how to dress and who to meet and what to say?  A dad who doesn't like your boyfriend. Falling for a bad boy.

But the writer, Kallos cautions, has to elevate the character, make the leap to something else, or you will only write "thinly veiled versions" of yourself. 

How do you do this?  How do you foster a connection with someone you develop different from yourself?  She explains that you must pull yourself into the life of someone else with what she calls "assists:"

• do research
• watch a movie
• observe
• interview people
• wear different clothes
• find a sensory connection, the smell, the sound, the taste
• shadow a professional

Then, you must find an emotional connection with your character.  So for example, even if 99% of the time, given a situation, you wouldn't possibly respond in the way Romeo does by killing a person.  But if you could locate one moment in time you were mad enough to kill someone, and you can imagine what that feeling and that moment was like, you have found the emotional connection you need to understand your character.

Finally, there is the "What if?" Kallos explains this question will take you to places to imagine what the character would do if something unimaginable happens.  "You dive off the cliff," Kallos explains, "you take the leap" needed to create a character.

So, in order to reinforce these points, Kallos says you have to know who you are so you know what attributes to cast off  in your characters. She extolled the virtue of laundry lists for this purpose:

1. List stats, like the kind of information you would find on your driver's license or an application form
2. List distinguishing marks, like a close friend might identify you to a police officer or how a mortician would look dispassionately at your body
3. List words describing your demographic group, such as the marketing ads on Facebook
4. List relationships, specific ones like father, daughter, sibling, wife, and more specific ones, too, that delve deeper into relationships such as garbage-taker-outer, dish washer, counselor, sugar mama
5. List adjectives that describe you, how your mother or a best friend would describe you
6. Then write the opposite of these adjectives, take each adjective and write its antonym

Then she led an exercise called "Never Say Never," which she keeps and adds to on her own desktop at home.

1.  Three magazines you would never buy
2. Three things you would never wear
3. Three professions you would never have (not because you can't but because you wouldn't)
4. Three groups or organizations or affiliations you would never have or take on
5. Three things you would never eat
6. Three things you would never say
7. Three things you would never do

Notice in these lists that  there are some related to moral framework, others that are less personal.  But in writing, hopefully, she said, you will find what's "juicy."  And in writing these, you also discover where you need to push yourself more as you develop characters.

The next exercise cultivates compassion.   She gave the example of Malcolm McDowell, who is often cast in the role of a villain. He says never think of your character as a villain.  Because if you did, Kallos explains, you will otherwise stand outside of your character and judge them. You must learn to "stand in their shoes. Writing character is a form of cultivating compassion."

The exercise: First write a short character sketch of a person you strongly dislike in a specific situation, told from your point of view.

Then take that person's point of view in the same situation and tell the story from his or her lens.

Finally, look at the "never" list and write a character sketch of someone that is completely unlike you.  This sketch will stretch your self into places that are uncomfortable. The character sketches must be "rich, evocative," with details and lots of possibility. She says, we as writers "have to learn to lie with authenticity, step outside our own boundaries." We can't always write from our default selves.

A woman she met at a conference puts together a scrapbook for each character.  Kallos writes letters to her characters. In essence, Kallos says you have to know "way more" about your character than will ever go on a page.  But what you do know will enhance the sense of the character as a real person. She recommended Elizabeth George's Write Away: One Novelist's Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life as an example of what one writer does to develop character.

Tuesday, May 11, 7-9 PM How to do what Actors Do--But on the page, not on the stage, with Stephanie Kallos

From the 826 Seattle How to Write Like I Do Webpage: The only thing that qualifies Stephanie Kallos to teach this class is the fact that she spent 20 years in the theatre as an actress. In this one-night workshop, learn how much novelists have in common with actors and how some of the most basic tools of the actor’s trade will help you write better fiction.

ABOUT STEPHANIE: Stephanie Kallos spent 20 years in the theatre as an actress and a teacher of voice, speech, and dialects. Her first novel, Broken for You, was chosen by Sue Monk Kidd as a Today Show book club selection; a national best seller, it was translated into ten languages and adapted for the stage. Her second novel, Sing Them Home, was an Indie Next selection, a Shelf Awareness Pick of the Year, and a PNBA best seller. Stephanie lives in a North Seattle neighborhood where sightings of men in kilts are common. Her website: www.stephaniekallos.com

Wednesday, May 19, 6:30–8:30 p.m. NSWA presents: Freelance science writers: The Few. The Proud. The Underpaid.

Wednesday, May 19, 6:30–8:30 p.m. (starting with a social half hour). NSWA presents: Freelance science writers: The Few. The Proud. The Underpaid. From children's books on geology, to news reports for science journals, members of the Northwest Science Writers Association have carved out niches in the competitive world of freelance science writing.
Three writers and an editor will share their stories and tips for success in today's tight market:

* Bryn Nelson, former newspaper reporter and PhD microbiologist. Bryn writes for a variety of publications on topics as diverse as snake-like robots, clean coal, and DNA bar coding.
* Melissa Lee Phillips, also a recovering scientist, focuses on neuroscience, genetics, and infectious disease in her writings for journals like The Lancet and popular publications like New Scientist: www.nasw.org/users/mlp/
* Beth Geiger, a former geologist who now writes about science for children. She has written books for kids, and her work has appeared in Weekly Reader, Current Science and many other publications: www.beth-geiger.com/
* Kathryn Kohm, editor of Conservation magazine, published in Seattle by the Society for Conservation Biology: www.conservationmagazine.org/
* Moderated by David Williams, freelance writer and author of Stories in Stone and several other natural history books: www.storiesinstone.info/

Writing Prompts

Writing prompts are the equivalent of warm-up exercises for writers. In the gym, the first ten minutes are stretches and a small bit of cardio to wake up the muscles, get them in gear for something more strenuous.

In the same way, writing doesn't come out in golden nuggets from the get-go. The creative brain needs to wake up and start moving, too. So, a ten-minute freewrite does the brain good.

Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones, may be one of the most famous advocates of the timed writing practice. In an interview with Genie Zeiger for The Sun, Goldberg describes the method:

"A writing practice is simply picking up a pen — a fast-writing pen, preferably, since the mind is faster than the hand — and doing timed writing exercises.

The idea is to keep your hand moving for, say, ten minutes, and don’t cross anything out, because that makes space for your inner editor to come in. You are free to write the worst junk in America. After all, when we get on the tennis courts, we don’t expect to be a champion the first day. But somehow with writing, if we don’t write the opening paragraph of War and Peace the first time we sit down with our notebook, we feel we’ve failed.

You can use a computer, but I always say you should be able to write with a pen, because someday your computer might break, or you might not have access to electricity. It’s sort of like driving: you still have to know how to walk."



Writing prompts can be a question or a statement. A prompt can give a situation that sparks the imaginative process for what happens to a character in a particular dilemma or crisis. I have used a photo to tell a story. A song or lyrics can do the same. Anything that sparks the imagination can be a cure to writer's block and a kick-start to fueling new writing ideas.

Searching online for creative writing prompts returned a heaping goldmine of resources. These are just a few:

Creative Writing Prompts
Writer's Digest Writing Prompts
Writing Fix: Writing Prompts, Daily Writing & Journal Prompts
About.com Creative Writing Prompts
Pictures to use as Writing Prompts
Writing.com Fiction Prompts
Five Fiction Writing Prompts for Plot
Six Fiction Writing Prompts for Character
FictionAddiction.net Song Lyric Prompts

Revanche (a film by Gotz Spielmann)

Revanche, a 2008 film written and directed by Götz Spielmann, is good. Very, very good. It's a film that feels weighted every moment, like something inevitable and awful will happen, despite the characters' best of intentions.  And so it goes: In a seedy area of Vienna, an ex-con man Alex works in a brothel where he meets and falls for Tamara, a Ukranian hooker.  In an attempt to protect Tamara, pay off her debts that keep her tied to the brothel owner, and take her away with him, Alex plans a bank heist.  But Alex's encounter with a rural cop and later the cop's wife leads them all toward a different conclusion, one that uncovers human frailty in the face of love  loyalty, and revenge.

The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2008 and won a number of awards. It was nominated for the 2009 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn) on Sunday

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mckaysavage/ / CC BY 2.0

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn's Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, is a collection of essays about women in extraordinary circumstances that the two journalists met and interviewed. Yet despite the horrors each of these women faced, an inner strength kept them from giving up. The authors describe the despicable conditions and horrid treatment in painful detail. So, the book is hard to read, to realize people can be treated that way, to understand that rising up and out of those circumstances remains so difficult. The culture condones it in some cases. Corrupt police look the other way or take advantage of the situation themselves in other cases.

Take Meena Hainsa, an Indian Muslim. She was kidnapped, trafficked, sold and kept enslaved in a town in Bhihar, near Nepal's border. She like many girls from poor village families in Nepal, India, and Cambodia are taken to town by middlemen with promises that they will work as fruit sellers. Instead, they are sold to brothels. And even if there was a chance to escape--where would they go? Their own family would not even take them back after learning their daughter lost their virginity, was taken by men.

Given the subject matter, I struggled with the brunch I would pair with the book club's discussion of the book. The women, who come from countries in sub-Saharan Africa, from Cambodia, Thailand, and India, are vastly different in terms of language and culture. Yet, all come from economically impoverished backgrounds and so the idea of serving opulent food was at odds with the women being represented in our reading. Playing host for such a book was proving more difficult than I thought.

So as I drove home from a busy morning downtown, I stopped at the new Whole Foods grocery store in Inner Bay in Seattle. Whole Foods, wholesome foods, and then I knew what I would cook. The book is about subsistence, the raw elements of human nature are all we have left when we find ourselves abandoned. And it is their strength of character that makes these women survive when all seem against them.

Subsistence is simple. Subsistence is fresh. Subsistence is to satisfy basic needs. So, I chose the egg. I cooked simple french omelets. Cheese. I shredded a bit of cheese on top, a small luxury: Morbier A.D.C. raw Mile, Les Trois Comtoi. Apparently morbier cheese is known for how it is treated. During the cheese processing, beer, water, or wine is poured over the rind and so the cultured cheese takes on a kind of nutty flavor.

I used salt and pepper to flavor the omelet and a little butter. The very basic of basic seasons. I bought a loaf of fresh bread from Whole Foods as well. Heated in the oven so the crust was flaky. Then despite extra carbohydrates, I fried potatoes as well, adding a little salt and pepper as well as garlic for spice.

On the table I had fresh grapes and strawberries, and a bit of watermelon. I made a pot of Darjeeling tea as well as brewed some coffee.

Bread, egg, potato, fruit. Of course the meal was a luxury far more than many of the women in this book had.

Those of us who read the book know that it was a stroke of luck that we were born here in the US versus in the small villages of Ethiopia, Congo, or Cambodia. But the crux of a book like this is to realize that we have the capacity to help, to change things on a small scale or even a large scale. A book like this opens the world wide to knowing why and how.

Nicholas Kristof's columns in the New York Times

Nicholas Kristof's channel on YouTube

Sunday Brunch Menu

French omelet with Shredded cheese: Morbier A.D.C. raw Mile, Les Trois Comtois
Potatoes seasoned with salt, pepper, and garlic
Bread
Butter and French Cantalet cheese
Goat cheese
Strawberries
Red grapes
Watermelon
Coffee
Darjeeling tea

HOW TO INTERVIEW SOURCES FOR NON-FICTION WRITING (and How to Tell When They are Lying) with Charles R. Cross

Tuesday, April 13, 2010 - 7PM

I am thrilled to work in a job where a great deal of my time is spent writing. And in order to write, I have to interview a fair number of people. So, for this reason (as well as to be in the same room as Charles Cross), I went to Charles R. Cross's How To Write Like I Do workshop on interviewing at 826 Seattle.

Charles Cross is author of seven books, including Led Zeppelin: Shadows Taller Than Our Souls and Heavier Than Heaven, his biography of Kurt Cobain. A writer who knows how to interview people to be sure. http://www.charlesrcross.com/

So here are a few of the tidbits I gleaned from two precious hours under his tutelage.

Prepare
1. Write a wish list of interview subjects. (Cross says his list may be 12 people for a magazine article and 300 people for a book)
2. Do informational interviews to find out "who else to talk to."
3. Make up a matrix of who to talk to when, as in at what point in the writing do you need that critical information or after you have some critical information that you need in order to gain valuable perspective from a particular person

Asking for the interview
1. Don't pay them. Offer to buy them lunch.
2. Make them feel like they are essential to the story being told.
3. Be prepared to do the interview when you make the call to ask for the interview. Have the tape recorder ready to go, questions ready, pen and paper at hand.
4. If they're famous or have done other interviews, read and listen to everything the person has said and don't ask the same questions.
5. If don't reach them, record the date of the call and when to call back. Never give up. Never get mad or take it personally if the person doesn't call back.

During the interview
1. Be friendly, but stay professional at all times. In other words, control the interview. Ask the questions you need to ask.
2. Record the interview.
3. Listen attentively. Never underestimate the power of silence.
4. Ask a question repeatedly in different ways until you get the answer you need. But don't get testy, mad, or defensive.
5. Practice the Columbo technique: act dumb but never act like you know as much as you do, as in don't act like you've never heard it before.
6. If anything is controversial, let the person you are interviewing bring it up.

After the interview
1. Transcribe the interview
2. Go back to people when you find out new information.
3. Choose wisely what you use.
4. Capture the essence of someone's voice.

October 5, 2009 Ron and Don of MyNorthwest.com interview Charles R Cross

Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage (Elizabeth Gilbert)

By the best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love, the sequel, Committed takes us with Elizabeth Gilbert as she comes to terms with a life-changing decision. In fact, she's committed to the decision. Committed to a significant other, ring or not. Committed to make marriage vows, like them or not. In this most recent book, Gilbert meditates on her reluctance to marry Felipe, a Brazilian man she had been dating and living with for two years.

He is the same man Gilbert fell in love with at the end of the sojourn she chronicles in Eat, Pray, Love, now being made into a motion picture with Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem.

Gilbert is not alone in her decision not to marry, as it is shared by her significant other. It is that they are forced to make this choice when no other is left available. Felipe is permanently blocked from returning to the US after "overusing" his tourist visa, according to the Homeland Security guard that "deports" him back to Australia, where he has citizenship but no longer a home, and hasn't had a home there in over ten years.

So for nearly a year, the two of them travel from one cheap hotel in Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, or Indonesia to another. All the while, Gilbert researches the history of marriage in the Western world and interviews married women, not all of them Western.  She interviews a Hmong woman in Vietnam as well as her own mother and grandmother to find out  if they were happy to be married and if they were okay with whatever they gave up in getting married.

Gilbert's book interested me, not only because I thoroughly enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love, but because as a single woman Gilbert's own age,  I, too, have thought a great deal about marriage, its benefits and detriments. And in comparison, other kinds of commitment that don't involve an exchange of vows and a signed, witnessed piece of legitimacy. For as Gilbert discovers in her research, and I have read and heard before, studies show marriage benefits men much more than women. Women who marry are more likely to be depressed than their single sisters; they are less healthy in general; and they don't make as much money or go as far in their careers. The inverse of all of these is true for married men. They are richer, healthier, and more successful when compared to their bachelor brothers.

Albeit, I have no statistics or studies to back me up, I'm going to go out on a limb so say that  not all single men are like my good friend Scott who dines out more often than he uses his own kitchen.  And not all single women are akin to the Cosmopolitan-drinking, weekends-on-the-town with Carrie and friends on Sex and the City. Because unlike these women, I like to cook. As do many men I know.  Likely all of us for the same reason.  We like really good food, and food worth eating does not come from a box or a carton that is reconstituted with oil and water or nuked in a microwave.

Here's another tidbit that women reading this may recognize. For a great while, I found myself reluctant to admit I liked to cook, because what often followed was a comment that my liking to cook would make me a good wife (and note here that I know full well that this comment was always meant as a compliment), but it was a comment that I never took lightly.  For what I heard, nice or not, was that my culinary aptitude was akin to a job qualification, or was it a designation?

So, I was relieved that Gilbert was not the chief cook in her book, or was that purposeful? She purposely mentions that it is her boyfriend, Felipe.  I can name a number of men that cook delicious food, but I can also imagine that not a one of them have been told that he would make a good husband, based on his skill in the kitchen.  Because a woman who cooks is akin to a woman that cares for a man and her children. That's how I would interpret the comments I received. A caretaker. Someone who brings comfort as well as sustenance to those she loves. Gilbert has no inclination for children, unwilling as she is to make the sacrifices she sees her own grandmother and mother made in marrying and starting families.

So, if I were to cook or to dine, I would not choose the caviar and champagne moments associated with marriage proposals. For Gilbert, like me, does not take the decision to marry lightly. Rather it is a decision mulled over, journalled about, researched, and talked about endlessly into the night.  And in times of stress and strife, what do we normally turn to? Comfort food would be "it" for me. Mac 'n cheese, of course. Cheesey, creamy bowls of macaroni noodles. Or a bowl of minestrone and a long fresh baguette. A glass of Beaujolais. Food that stirs tastebuds, brings back memories of the cozy kitchens we felt at ease in. Because for all the hesitation I have to be a mother, I loved being mothered. Does this make me "unwomanly or unnatural or selfish," adjectives Gilbert uses to describe the attitude some may have toward women who are not dying to have children or get married? I certainly hope not.

Because the truth is I would readily invite my whole neighborhood over for a Friday night cocktail or a Saturday barbecue of grilled salmon. And my nephew knows he has got me wound around his little finger when it comes to spending time with him. Because I have never for a minute doubted the joy that children bring.

More on Elizabeth Gilbert: http://www.elizabethgilbert.com

826 Seattle: HOW TO INTERVIEW SOURCES FOR NON-FICTION WRITING

Tuesday, April 13, 2010 - 7PM
HOW TO INTERVIEW SOURCES FOR NON-FICTION WRITING
(and How to Tell When They are Lying) with Charles R. Cross
How to Write Like I Do Adult Writing Series at 826 Seattle

One of the most important skills for any writer to learn is how to properly interview sources. Often, aspiring writers put excessive amounts of energy into crafting prose, ignoring the quality of the source material used to create their thesis. For a biography, interviews are usually the foundation upon which a book is built, but they are also vital to journalism, memoir, script writing, and historical fiction. For Charles R. Cross’s 2005 book, Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, he interviewed 325 people—and a dozen of them were liars who could have scuttled the book, and history, without proper interviewing truth-seeking techniques. In this one-night workshop, Cross will address some of the basics of interviewing techniques, but he also will discuss how to determine the validity of subjects—an increasingly important aspect to writing in an era of fabrication and scandal.
BUY TICKETS AT BROWN PAPER TICKETS!

ABOUT CHARLES: Charles R. Cross is the author of seven books, including Led Zeppelin: Shadows Taller Than Our Souls released in October 2009 by It/Harper Collins. Heavier Than Heaven, his biography of Kurt Cobain, won the ASCAP Award for Outstanding Biography in 2002 and is presently being made into a theatrical film. Cross was editor of The Rocket, the Seattle music magazine, from 1986 through 2000. His writing has appeared in numerous magazines including Rolling Stone, Esquire, Playboy, Spin, and Spy. His writing has also appeared in dozens of newspapers including the London Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Seattle Times, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He lectures and teaches at a number of colleges on both journalism and pop culture. He has taught interviewing techniques at a number of writing workshops, and he occasionally is hired by law firms to present this class.

Short Stories Live: A Mother's Tale, Sunday, May 23, 2010, 4 – 6pm

Downstairs at Town Hall, enter on Seneca Street
Your mom deserves more than a day—let’s make May Mother’s month and celebrate with this rich afternoon of classic short stories. On the program: "Eleanor’s Music" by Mary Gordon, a 2007 Best American Short Stories selection; the remarkable allegory "A Mother's Tale" by James Agee; and Cynthia Ozick’s chilling, compact Holocaust story "The Shawl." Program directed by Kurt Beattie. Presented by Town Hall with A Contemporary Theatre.

Advance tickets are $13/$10 Town Hall members, seniors & students, at www.brownpapertickets.com or 800/838-3006. $15/$13 at the door. Late seating is not guaranteed.

LEARN MORE:
www.acttheatre.org

Science: Lee Hood: Genomics 101, Wed, May 5 at 7:30 pm

Science: Lee Hood: Genomics 101
Wednesday, May 5, 2010, 7:30 – 9pm
Town Hall, Great Hall, enter on 8th Avenue

Institute for Systems Biology co-founder Lee Hood and his colleagues recently published a groundbreaking paper detailing the first whole genome sequencing of a family. Expected to boost the power and impact of genetic research, the study offers the first direct estimate of the human intergenerational mutation rate and pushes researchers closer to discovering the role genes play in diseases. Hood will recap the Human Genome Project, tie it into recent research, and discuss where this technology is headed. Presented as part of Seattle Science Lectures, with Pacific Science Center and University Book Store. Series sponsored by Microsoft.

Tickets are $5 at www.brownpapertickets.com or 800/838-3006, and at the door beginning at 6:30 pm. Town Hall members receive priority seating.

LEARN MORE:
www.systemsbiology.org
Read about genome sequencing in The Seattle Times
And in The New York Times

Seattle Poetry Slam, Sun, April 25, 7 – 9:30pm

Sunday, April 25, 2010, 7 – 9:30pm
Town Hall, Great Hall, enter on 8th Avenue

The Seattle Poetry Slam’s biggest show of the year will feature World Poetry Slam Champion Joaquin Zihuatenejo as well as the top eight performance poets in Seattle competing for a spot on the 2010 Seattle National Poetry Slam Team. Each year, more than 500 poets from 50 cities converge at the National Poetry Slam Championships, this year in St. Paul, Minn. Since 2000, Seattle has had a strong presence at this competition, regularly placing among the top 10 teams; last year, Tara Hardy, Karen Finneyfrock, coach Daemond Arrindell, Greg Bee, and Maya Hersh brought home the second-place trophy for the “Group Piece” competition.

Advance tickets $15/$12 earlybird/$10 under 21 at www.brownpapertickets.com or 800/838-3006.

LEARN MORE:
www.seattlepoetryslam.org
On YouTube

David Remnick, Mon Apr 19 at 7:30 pm

When New Yorker editor David Remnick writes a book, he doesn’t shy from big topics, or big subjects. His 1994 book Lenin’s Tomb, about the collapse of the Soviet Union, won the Pulitzer Prize; he’s also the author of King of the World, the story of Muhammad Ali during the civil-rights movement. His latest book, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, charts the president's evolution from a confused young man to an icon of hope. UW Communication Professor David Domke will discuss the book with Remnick. Presented by Seattle Arts & Lectures.

Tickets are $15 general/$30 patron, at www.brownpapertickets.com, 800/838-3006, or at the door. A reception with Remnick for patron ticketholders will be held from for more information.

Black Female Pioneers in the Old West , April 15, 7-9:30 PM

There are some saucy tales to be told as this generation moved from emancipation to madams, mothers, cowgirls, and society ladies. Despite oppressive circumstances, by grit, they thrived.

Northwest African American Museum
2300 S Massachusetts St
Seattle, WA 98144
April 15, 7-9:30 PM
Buy Tickets ($7) @ http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/72065

Hunger, a film (Steve McQueen)

Hunger is a film about the 1981 Irish hunger strike by the Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. Written by Enda Walsh and Steve McQueen, who also directed, it premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, and won the Caméra d'Or award for first-time filmmakers.

The imagery in this film is haunting. The naked, bony bodies of the proud, defiant men. The ugly brutality of the conditions. The visceral pain. The hunger epitomized in the starving body of Bobby Sands. A film that is riveting and difficult to watch.

Writing prompt: Write a scene in which one of the characters is furiously angry and powerless against the forces at work in the scene or other characters.

Hunting and Gathering (Anna Gavalda)

I lucked out big time when I was invited to join this book club. Not only do we talk about intriguing books, but the food we eat to accompany the conversation is worthy of a five-star restaurant. So, henceforth, I will review books from this book club alongside the menu.

March 14, 2010

Perhaps most perfect is the most recent book club read: Hunting and Gathering by Anna Gavalda. I say the "most perfect" as food is central to the gained intimacy of the characters, and an amicable setting for friends to gather and discuss books.

Around our real table, Carol proudly admitted to using Volume 1 of Julia Child's original cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And it sounded like she and her husband spent many hours following the recipes to a tee, complete with all the butter. It wasn't the first time. The book looked well worn, with stains like bookmarks on favorite recipes.

On each of our plates, Carol had placed a menu:

Potage Parmentier (Leek and Potato Soup, blogged about here: http://cookinginpajamas.onsugar.com/Mastering-Art-French-Cooking-Potage-Parmentier-aka-Leek-Potato-Soup-3462687)

Salade avec Sauce Vinaigrette (Salad with French Dressing, the dressing copied here: http://bad-girls-kitchen.blogspot.com/2010/04/sauce-vinaigrette-french-dressing.html)

Quiche a la Tomate, Nicoise (Fresh Tomato Quiche with Anchovies and Olives, and I thought I didn't like anchovies. How wrong I was!)

Quiche aux Champignons (Mushroom Quiche)

The dessert, Carol added, had been too much after cooking the other dishes for most of the day. So, instead, after the meal, she pulled out frozen containers of lemon and raspberry sherbet.

Anna Gavalda

Carol had cooked French food because the book of the month, Hunting and Gathering, had been originally published in French as Ensemble, C'est tout. It was Anna Gavalda's fourth book. It's the story of a oddball group of four characters brought together despite their history, baggage, and circumstances in a timeless apartment where they are all little more than temporary squatters.

Camille Fauque, the central character, is a failed artist. Anorexic thin, we meet her when she has given up all hope and resolved to get by as a cleaning woman at night. Yet, living with Philou and Franck and eventually Franck's grandmother, Paulette, she finds herself wanting to find her way back.

Philou, the endearingly tall, awkward and stuttering fellow that Camille invited over one evening for dinner, becomes the catalyst that eventually brings Camille into the apartment after he finds her deathly ill. He comes from an aristocratic family, but has little affinity for them. His interest lies in by-gone centuries, and he opts to sell postcards on the street.

Franck is a womanizing, seemingly selfish and conceited fellow, who works six days a week as a chef. And yet, he becomes essential to the nourishment Camille needs for her transformation. She requests the food he cooks so that she will "be warmer and more appetizing," she says.

(An interesting idea--that good food can make us more lovable. All the more reason for us to talk about a book around a meal!)

The three, led largely by Camille, kidnap Franck's doddering grandmother, Paulette, from the public home to live with them in the apartment. Paulette is slowly slipping into dementia, but "with it" enough to recognize Camille needs a house as much as a home. She is by far my favorite character, especially after she comes into her own, teaching Camille how to plant and care for a garden.

(Again-food! Subsistence and life force, but thanks to birthplace and privilege, a taste-bud buffet stringed chemically to our feel-good meter.)

But why oh why was the French title translated into "hunting and gathering?" The French, "ensemble, c'est tout," translated imperfectly, is "together, that's everything," a more accurate title, if you ask me. Living together, despite squabbles and irritations, is infinitely better than living alone. And that friends, dear, dear friends, can provide a sense of belonging when family is absent or cancerous.

If my one gripe is that the ending is too predictable, I have to still admit that I kept reading with the same fascination 'til the end. Probably because a skeptic like me expects failures too often. Failed relationships. Failed love. Failed careers. And each one of these characters has failed. Failed in big ways. And still, these characters find solace in each other, making me realize that human compassion, love, and hope survive calamity. So long as there are others and that they stay together. That's everything.

Now a motion picture, starring Audrey Tautou. Trailer for the movie at: http://www.huntingandgathering.com.au/


PS Stay tuned. Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times is up next. And I'm the chef. Any suggestions for menu items?

Writing Prompt with video

An elderly couple walked into the lobby of the Mayo Clinic for a checkup and spotted a piano.  They've been married for 62 years and he'll be 90 this year.  Describe the moment right before they started playing.

Arundhati Roy at Town Hall (March 29, 2010)

Arundhati Roy, small in stature, stood tall, elegant, defiant in a red sari on Monday night before a sold out crowd at Town Hall in Seattle.  She is author of the New York Times best selling and Booker Prize winning The God of Small Things. And a prolific nonfiction writer and outspoken activist and critic of social and political issues in India. She read an essay from her new collection, Field Notes on Democracy, published by Haymarket Books, a project of the Center for Economic Research and Social Change, as well as from a recent essay she published in Outlook called "Walking with the Comrades." http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264738.

In "Democracy's Failing Light" she talked of the failings and shortsightedness of governments bent on spreading democracy, blind to the other kind of evil democracy perpetuates. She writes, "what happens now that democracy and the free market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profits."

In reading her recent article from Outlook, she spoke at length about her experience going into the forest of Chhattisgarh in West Bengal to meet the people that the corporations and government officials in India are calling "terrorists."

An incendiary categorization that Roy cuts down to size.  She explains succinctly by telling this story:

"I arrived at the Ma Danteshwari mandir well in time for my appointment (first day, first show). I had my camera, my small coconut and a powdery red tika on my forehead. I wondered if someone was watching me and having a laugh. Within minutes a young boy approached me. He had a cap and a backpack schoolbag. Chipped red nail-polish on his fingernails. No Hindi Outlook, no bananas. “Are you the one who’s going in?” he asked me. No Namashkar Guruji. I did not know what to say. He took out a soggy note from his pocket and handed it to me. It said, 'Outlook nahin mila (couldn’t find Outlook).'

'And the bananas?'

“'I ate them,' he said, 'I got hungry.'

"He really was a security threat.

"His backpack said Charlie Brown—Not your ordinary blockhead. He said his name was Mangtu. I soon learned that Dandakaranya, the forest I was about to enter, was full of people who had many names and fluid identities. It was like balm to me, that idea. How lovely not to be stuck with yourself, to become someone else for a while."

In the article she describes the real issue as the enormous resources that are at stake in the conflict. To control them, corporations can make enormous profits, at the terrible, fatal expense of the poor they take them from. Stop water far up the stream by a dam, turn it into energy to be sold by the rupee to those who can afford it. Divert the water from the fields of sustenance farmers downstream, and irrigate the large company agricultural holdings or toward multinational companies like Coca Cola. http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100401/FOREIGN/703319884/1103 The corporations say they are bringing the tribal peoples "into the mainstream." Yet, they turn language into an insidious form of power to benefit those who can wield power and influence, leaving the poor isolated and alone. Add government buy-in and media influence, and Roy says the "wall of propaganda" hides the "well of silence" as the voices of those marginalized are not heard.

In the question and answer session that followed her reading, one woman asked her about the fiction Roy writes.  And Roy talked about the merging of fiction and non-fiction in the experience in the forest, about how the people she met took on and shed names and identities to protect themselves and others but also to honor the dead, who have died perhaps in the struggle for liberty and to protect their livelihood.

I see Roy unmasking what one side of the fight calls "fact" as a fictional tale they want to feed the rest of the country and the world.  And by entering the forest and recording the marginalized tribal people's history and their experience, she brings light to the truth of their struggle to survive on their own terms.

A.Word.A.Day's Thought for Today

Bangkok, Thailand 2002

A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg © 2010 Wordsmith.org

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
To write that essential book, a great writer does not need to invent it but merely to translate it, since it already exists in each one of us. The duty and task of a writer are those of translator. -Marcel Proust, novelist (1871-1922)