News

My review of the latest Cafe Nordo show is available online and in the current (May 8-14) issue of Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger. Nordo’s SMOKED! is an homage to the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, and runs through June 16. From “A Fistful of Salt: Cafe Nordo’s Latest Limps into the Sunset“:

Artistic audacity should never be punished. Better to aim high and fail spectacularly than shoot for mediocrity and succeed. Reviews and word of mouth had led me to believe that Cafe Nordo productions are made in this spirit—bizarre dinner/theater hybrids that inspire love, hate, and bewilderment. Sadly, their latest show is dinner theater as we already know it: half-baked on both fronts, without meaningful integration of the two.

My internship at The Stranger is at an end. I’d only ever written on the long, layered schedule of magazines before (and the unfathomably long process of book-writing), so being at a newspaper taught me a lot about writing and interviewing in a crunch, without time to dwell on a single word or psych yourself up or do excessive/tangential research.  Especially when writing for the blog — “Can you put something together by this afternoon?” is a phrase that takes some getting used to.

On an unrelated note, during the aforementioned long book-writing process, I’d often comforted myself by thinking about the acknowledgements page. I love thanking people. I make great wedding speeches. When the day finally came, in the form of a nonchalant email from the production editor, I found it surprisingly hard to write. I raided my bookshelf to see how other authors did it. It boiled down to two approaches: a list of names, or a mini-essay in proper prose, with big name writers tending towards the former and first-timers towards the latter. I suspect first-timers worry that this might be their only chance to do it, so they want to do it effusively, while veteran authors have run out of ways to thank their agent and significant other. The mini-essays were risky, as they could be sweet or cloying, funny or jarringly jovial (at the end of a dark, serious book, say). And most of them were shockingly, raggedly personal.

The page doesn’t mean a lot to the people who aren’t in the list, but it means a helluva lot to those who are, something I’m lucky enough to know from experience. You feel honored in a concrete, public way, and the myth of the lone author-auteur is lifted. Better to write it for those people, rather than the majority of readers who close the book a couple pages earlier. And if there’s no way to say a heartfelt “thank you” and “I love you” without being a bit of a cheeseball, so be it.

Hey, everyone: thank you, and I love you.

I’ll be reading at the Vancouver launch of Alive at the Center: Poems from the Pacific Northwest (Ooligan Press), on April 12, 7-9 pm, at Rhizome Cafe (317 E Broadway). Kevin Spenst and andrea bennett, two of the most innovative and crushingly brilliant poets I’ve ever met (you may recall our frantic performance of 125 readings in a single day), will also be reading, plus the exquisite Rob Taylor (I’ve seen him read before and I’m really excited to see it again) and several poets more. It’s a lot of poetry for one evening, folks. The venue, Rhizome Cafe, has a reputation for positive community involvement, and they serve organic/free-trade coffee, veggie-based meals, and a full bar.

I’ll also be at the Seattle launch—not reading, just skulking in the corners—at Hugo House (1634 11th Ave) on April 5, 7-9 pm. If you’re looking to get your book signed by a Portland poet, they’re also having a launch at Literary Arts (925 SW Washington St) on April 19, 7-9 pm.

Alive at the Center recently got a positive review from Tom Lavoie at Shelf Awareness: “And then there are the poems. So many good ones.”  Lavoie quotes one of the poems from the anthology in full—”Poetry” by Richard Kenney—saying it “sums up the spirit of Alive at the Center.”

Nobody at any rate reads it much. Your lay
citizenry have other forms of fun.

Still, who would wish to live in a culture
of which future anthropologists would say:
Oddly, they had none?

See you there!

I have some new hats! I’ve been the Chow (Food & Drink) Intern at The Stranger for about a month now. The Seattle alt weekly may be the snarkiest place to have ever won a Pulitzer, and is the original home of world-famous sex guru Dan Savage. He shares an office with my boss and is, as far as I can tell, perpetually on the phone with someone hilarious. I share the byline on the weekly Now Closed/Now Open column, plus the occasional post for Slog, the Stranger’s news and arts blog. Mostly I write sassy restaurant and event listings, and eat free food when no one else wants it.

I’m also the Columns Editor at This, the progressive magazine of Canadian politics still going strong after 45 years, named Magazine of the Year in 2010 and 2011 by the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors. For the previous issue, I got to edit for outgoing editor andrea bennett and have been flying solo since. For the current issue, I was lucky enough to work with Krissy Darch and Lynne Quarmby, two passionate writer-activists whose pieces turned out beautifully. You should also try to get your hands on the 2012 Year in Review Issue: “stories you missed in 2012 because big media sucks.” And, to all Canadian journalists out there—you have to be Canadian, sorry—send me pitches! We pay!

Finally, I’m in the last stages of preparing my novel For Today I Am a Boy for its early 2014 release. I’ve now seen both the Canadian (HarperCollins) and American (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) covers, and they’re both great in surprisingly different ways. I can’t wait to share them with the world. (Also terrified, but that’s the nature of the business.)

I’m the guest poet over at the Ooligan Press blog this week, to promote ALIVE AT THE CENTER: Poems from the Pacific Northwest. I talk about sunsets, clichés, and cliché sunsets. The book can be preordered here.

I also wrote recently on the state of reproductive rights in Canada, with andrea bennett, for the Ms. Magazine blog. No socialist paradise here, Americans. andrea is all kinds of smart, sharp, and amazing, and I hope to collaborate with her again.

Finally, Best Canadian Essays 2012 is now available for purchase. My copy is still in the mail, but I hear it’s a helluva lot of excellent writing for $18.