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SAMANTHA CLAIRE UPDEGRAVE

50 Essays in a year -- the beginning

6/18/2019

A few days before author Andrea Askowitz turned 50, she encountered a Ray Bradbury quote on Twitter: “Write a short story every week for a year. It’s not possible to write 52 bad stories in a row.” And with that advice in mind, she wrote 50 essays in year.

After reading Andrea's No. 50 Year in Review, published last month, I decided to follow suit and write 50 essays over the next year as well.

When I'm not in the middle of a house move like I am right now, I have a solid writing practice that works for me. I wake up around 5 am (I am a morning person), start water for coffee, pee and brush my teeth, make coffee, and write until 6:30 am when I have to get my kiddo out of bed for school or camp. Mostly I fill my comp books with stream of conscious garble, or attempt to work out one small idea, or make lists, or spend the time looking up lexicon words. Some mornings I pull out a prompt or a piece a rough piece of generative writing from a class or workshop. But I haven't been finishing things lately. And it's discouraging. The slow speed of my writing is painful -- I'd like to think it's thoughtfulness but mostly it's fear or shyness or laziness or life getting in the way of forming solid thoughts. So the 50 essays in a year is my push toward completeness -- to shitty first drafts to full drafts to some polished pieces that I'll cast into the ether of submissions.

We can do this, right? Yes. Yes we can! Are you in? Feel free to comment below and please post links to your published essays (or stories or poems) that come out of this challenge.

Writing an Artist Statement - Explorations

10/15/2018

16 clumsy & shy....

About a year ago I took a workshop with Nicole Hardy, author of Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin, on writing an artist statement. She ran us through a battery of quick prompts to mine our lives so we could see the connections to our art. One question was about our early influences, which is a question that always flusters me. I don’t come from an academic family who introduced me to great works while in-utero, and I grew up on TV, pop tarts, and frozen vegetables. I listed out a few names that were true for me, but still nothing felt authentic.

The next day I picked through my books and pulled out Allen’s Ginsberg’s Snapshot Poetics: A Photographic Memoir of the Beat Era. I made some notes, and kept the book by my bed for a month, eventually tossing it back into the pile of my art and photography books, which were perched on top of an old Ilford photo paper box – a box full of contact sheets, test strips, and more than a decade’s worth of photos I’d taken.

I don’t know about you, but the artist statement is my most dreaded part of any residency or grant application. I often miss deadlines or abandon my application ¾ of the way through because I just can’t pull one together. Total self-sabotage. (Any other writers feel weird even applying “artist” to what they do?) I decided that it was time to get my artist statement done, just to have it in my pocket. I emailed my friend Carla who has a memoir coming out in 2019, and asked if she’d be my accountability partner and exchange drafts, giving us both (myself mainly) a deadline.

When I started working on my artist statement again, I went back to what I wrote in my notebook in the days following the workshop and decided to follow the photography thread. Alongside a detailed description of Ginsberg’s photograph of Kathy Acker, I scribbled in the margin, “In 61 pages of plates, there are less than a dozen women.” Rereading this sent me back to my bookshelf, back to the photographs of Sally Mann, Mary Ellen Mark, Cindy Sherman, and Annie Leibovitz.

At its heart, writing is an act of discovery. In going back to my original workshop notes, then the notes I’d written after, then exploring from there, I discovered that photography played a pivotal role in my development as an artist, as a writer. It’s so strange to me that I never saw it before. I studied photography from 7th grade through the seven years I spent getting my undergraduate degree, even taking architectural photography classes when I was majoring in urban planning. I’d also studied literature and creative writing during those times as well, and it still took me awhile to figure out that writing was maybe more than a hobby.

Here’s a snip from the current over-written draft-in-progress, which I really ought to get back to since I’m 16 days past my suggested deadline.

By middle school I discovered photography. The silvery images of Sally Mann’s children caked in Virginia dirt, naked in lakes and ditches, fascinated me. I wondered, how can one be so visible, and yet unknown? So vulnerable, and yet exude agency, an agency that eluded me? When I picked up a copy of Allen Ginsberg’s Snapshot Poetics: A Photographic Memoir of the Beat Era, I had only scant knowledge of that generation’s writing, but was again drawn to what was the images captured – life made visible, the leap from childhood to adulthood inside the grains. Both held the splendor of the ordinary. Photography became my first foray into the world of nonfiction.

When punk music first entered my world, I spent uncountable hours listening to my various boyfriends’ records as if I’d never outgrow my upbringing. Then the music/activist riot grrrl movement brought me into the folds of feminism and bedroom-bred fanzines. Armed with cut-and-paste pages and spoken word poems, my own voice began to accompany my images, and I began to grow, to become. To write.

Almost 30 years later, my writing still holds elements of the black & white photography that captivated me in my youth: the composition of the frame, the light and shadow casting nets on life’s totality, exposure and controlling the narrative as an antidote to erasure, the desire to show, show, show, show (and tell beautifully).

PULL OUT YOUR NOTEBOOK!
Who and what were your early influences? Are there any parts of that medium or those people that still resides within you? That shows up in your work?

Feel free to post in the comments, or reach out via my contact page. I’d love to hear what you discover!

xo,
scu

Some old work from the photo box, circa 1993 -- 1996

my grrrl, still my heart, Philadelphia, PA

WA DC Key Bridge

Bouncing Souls, Lancaster, PA?

a boy & his mama Biloxi, MS

McGuire AFB, NJ

2018 Washington State Book Awards!

10/13/2018

The 2018 Washington State Book Awards are tonight, and I'm excited that I was a part of the Ghosts of Seattle Past: An Anthology of Lost Places, one of this year's nonfiction finalist.

My worlds of urban planning and writing rarely intersect, and I'm grateful to curator Jaimee Garbacik for asking me to write the foreword.

Excited to be in such fine company, both the anthology and among all the finalists. Good luck to everyone tonight! And congratulations!

http://www.washingtoncenterforthebook.org/announcing-the-2018-book-award-finalists/

Meet the Readers & the Musician -- Looseleaf No. 4 (2/2)

1/31/2017

The next Looseleaf Reading is coming up on Wednesday, February 1, 2017 at The Den in Chop Suey, and features C. Rosalind Bell with Renee Simms, Tamiko Nimura, and Natalie Martínez, and music by Kristin Allen-Zito.

In this installation of "Meet the Readers & Musician" we hear from featured reader C. Rosalind Bell, Natalie Martìnez, and musician Kristin Allen-Zito.

Note the time change -- READING STARTS AT 7 pm, and it's gonna rule. The line up is stellar! In this round of "Meet Readers" we have Renee Simms and Tamiko Nimura.

Fine print: The Den is a bar, so event is 21+. No cover.
Based on feedback from all you fine, lovely attendees, the readings now begin at 7 pm!

C. Rosalind Bell held a three-year Endowment of the Humanities James Dolliver Artist in Residency at University of Puget Sound. She is the author of three plays, "1620 BANK STREET," "UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES," and "THE NEW ORLEANS MONOLOGUES" and received a City of Tacoma Arts Grant in 2009 and a 2010 commission from Northwest Playwrights Alliance. Her short story, FIRST FRIEND, was adapted into a short film and screened at THE SEATTLE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL and PBS' KCTS Channel 9. "THE NEW ORLEANS MONOLOGUES," produced by University of Puget Sound in 2007, was named a Top Ten Entertainment by The Tacoma News Tribune and had simultaneous November 2010 productions at City College San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz's Rainbow Theatre. COLORLINES, the national newsmagazine on race and politics, featured Rosalind in its INNOVATORS FOR 2008 issue. She is a member of Macondo, a Writers Workshop conceived by author Sandra Cisneros in San Antonio. She has been a writer in residence at Lincoln High School’s Lincoln Center and schools throughout the South Sound. Rosalind directed August Wilson’s Pittsburg Cycle – staged readings – at the Broadway Center over the past several years.

MEET ROSALIND...

What are you reading at Looseleaf?
New words from my project in motion: "Standing In The Middle Of A Secret"

Who’s a writer you’re stoked on right now? What’s exiting about their work?
Harryette Mullen. She's fearless and funny.

Is there a quote / soundtrack for how your week is going?
Love's In Need of Love Today (Stevie Wonder)

Anything coming up for you in the near future?
Continuing to write the louisiana project: Standing...

Bonus treat!
Read "Standing in the Middle of a Secret," a 2015 interview LL reader Tamiko Nimura did w/ C. Rosalind Bell in the Seattle Star.

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Natalie A. Martínez is a scholar and poet. She received her PhD in Rhetoric, Composition, and Linguistics from Arizona State University where her research and writing has focused on the rhetoric of anger and melancholia among queer LatinX writers and activists and the productive ways those emotions have been mobilized. She is a professor at Bellevue College and is currently working on a book-length poetry manuscript.

Her poetry and non-fiction has been published in Ellipsis, Nepantla: A Journal of Queer Poets of Color, and the art zine, La Norda Specialo.

MEET NATALIE...

What are you reading at Looseleaf?
I’m currently working on a poetry manuscript called, “The Body’s Reservations” that is loosely memoir. It can be read backward or forward. It’s not a linear collection. And one can enter it at any point of memory. It weaves in memories of family and place, the muscle memory of a serious illness I had after coming out at the age of 31, histories of my maternal grandmother, and my paternal grandfather, who just passed a few months ago. Both grandparents were storytellers, avid readers, artists who used their hands. My maternal grandmother was Metis [Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and Norwegian] and my paternal grandfather Mestizo [Chama and Farmington areas of New Mexico]. Both families experienced an incredible amount of displacement in terms of land historically. I’m constantly thinking of this land as an extension of their bodies.

I’m also always thinking about the impact of trauma and colonialism on the body over generations, and the bodies born to those bodies after. There’s a longing and inability to connect, a kind of paralysis sometimes with others because of these traumas, but once in awhile there’s joy too, when it happens. I’m interested in teasing out poetically those be/longings, and intimacies. And of course more optimistically, that possibility of connection.

Who’s a writer you’re stoked on right now? What’s exiting about their work?
I’m always reading six things at once!

Right now, in poetry I’m really enjoying Aracelis Girmay’s, The Black Maria, Ocean Vuong’s, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, and Ada Limón’s, Bright Dead Things. I love the way Vuong and Limón write desire in their poems and how I experience it. Girmay’s book inhabits the sea of black mourning. We’ve already drowned but she picks us up in the fishes of memory. And somehow, as a reader, I’m led out, out of sea, out of beauty. Beyond consolation.

Indira Allegra is a writer and artist based out of Oakland. Her Tex/tile Performances I’m really drawn to right now. She weaves in words with different materials on various textiles. She inverts the eye and our expectation of how to engage, feel, be queerly with a text, what is text and what is sensual, tactile.

I just read and bought a wonderful design book for a friend recently called, A New Nature: Architectural Conditions Between Liquid and Solid by Anders Abraham that may have well been a book of visual poetry.

My favorite local writer right now is Quenton Baker. The way he uses space on the page to make a percussive moment in language. I find him in the good company of writers such as Fred Moten and Dawn Lundy Martin. He has a reading at Open Books with poet, Fernando Pérez, on Feburary 3rd featuring his first full length book, This Glittering Republic.

Is there a quote / soundtrack for how your week is going?
Yes. The song,“Replica” by The XX.

Same right, same wrong / Only difference is that I'm the one / Second time around / Feels like the song’s already been sung / Mirroring situations, accurate imitation / Do I watch and repeat?

I’m seeing so many people I care about suffering a lot right now. I’m simultaneously holding that suffering with a lot of joy around new art and writing right now. This last week on a personal level, was about lost connections, lost possibilities, the inability to move or communicate with someone you so very wanted to understand and to understand you. Getting stuck in old patterns and old hurts. The inability to be touched. By contingency.

Anything coming up for you in the near future?
I’m one of the curators at The Alice Gallery in Seattle, where we have a writer in residence program. Writers and artist sometimes collaborate but always respond to the work of the artists. Our larger vision is to eventually have a small press and/or print small chapbooks, Zines, etc. for the artists and writers.

In October, Molly Mac and I will be co-curating a Visual Poetry show at The Alice, hoping to intervene into what has been historically seen as a male centered and Eurocentric poetic tradition.

Where can we find you online?
Check out Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, Issue 2. You can find a full pdf of the issue is available on Lambda Literary page. Founded and edited by the talented, Christopher Soto.

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KRISTIN ALLEN-ZITO is a folk singer from Bellingham WA who has also spent time in Seattle and New York. Her recent album The Atlas came out on Clickpop Records, and it is pretty awesome. Her first solo album Helium is also awesome.

MEET KRISTIN....

What are you playing at Looseleaf?
I will be singing a few original songs from my upcoming album as well as some older ones.

Who’s a writer you’re stoked on right now? What’s exiting about their work?
Right now, I'm really into Donormaal. I think Christy is an innovative poet, musician and performer. Her lyrics are personal and political. She radiates power and joy as she plays. I love it.

Is there a quote / soundtrack for how your week is going?
My soundtrack for this week: Dime by Donormaal.
It helps me hold summer in my heart as we march through the winter.

Anything coming up for you in the near future?
I am excited about my new album that should be out in the fall! It's been a few years since my last album (The Atlas), so I am bursting a bit right now.

Also, I'll be playing a show at Chop Suey on February 21. I think it will be a fun evening!

Where can we find you online?
You can find me at kristinallenzitomusic.com
Or you can find me under my old band name, The Trucks.

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The Looseleaf Reading Series is run out of Seattle, WA. It's co-curated by Spark A'wesome, Shelley Casey, Casandra Lopez, (Dawn Quinn emeritus), Samantha Updegrave, and Suzanne Warren to create a space for woman-identified and non-binary emerging and established writers to step out of their binders and share the stage. Combining storytelling and music, the series is held at The Den in Chop Suey.

Meet the Readers! Looseleaf Reading No 4. (1/2)

1/24/2017

The Looseleaf Reading Series is run out of Seattle, WA. It's co-curated by Spark A'wesome, Shelley Casey, Casandra Lopez, (Dawn Quinn emeritus), Samantha Updegrave, and Suzanne Warren to create a space for woman-identified and non-binary emerging and established writers to step out of their binders and share the stage. Combining storytelling and music, the series is held at The Den in Chop Suey.

The next reading is coming up on Wednesday, February 1, 2017 and features C. Rosalind Bell with Renee Simms, Tamiko Nimura, and Natalie Martínez, and music by Kristin Allen-Zito.

Note the time change -- READING STARTS AT 7 pm, and it's gonna rule. The line up is stellar! In this round of "Meet Readers" we have Renee Simms and Tamiko Nimura.

Fine print: The Den is a bar, so event is 21+. No cover.
Based on feedback from all you fine, lovely attendees, the readings now begin at 7 pm!

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Originally from Detroit, Renee Simms is an assistant professor of African American Studies and contributing English faculty at University of Puget Sound. Her published work appears or is forthcoming in Callaloo, North American Review, Southwest Review, The Rumpus, Salon, and elsewhere. She’s currently at work on a novel and a short story collection.

MEET RENEE....

What are you reading at Looseleaf?
I think I'm going to read an oldie but goodie: A short story, "High Country," that I wrote after someone in a fiction workshop said that they hated metafiction in response to my reference to this form of writing. Apparently humor is how I respond when I'm provoked.

Who’s a writer you’re stoked on right now? What’s exiting about their work?
Stephanie Han. She has a debut story collection, Swimming in Hong Kong, which is smart and funny and really captures what it means to be a wanderer especially if you're a person of color.

Is there a quote / soundtrack for how your week is going?
"Private Joy" by Prince. I won't explain.

Anything coming up for you in the near future?
I'd like an extended vacation.

Where can we find you online?
I have writing available at a few places online. Google Renee Simms, but put writer after my name. There's another Renee Simms (actually there are thousands of Renee Simms in the world) who comes up if you don't add "writer". This other Renee Simms is young, white, an actress--everything I'm not. There's a story there. I just haven't written it yet.

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MEET TAMIKO NIMURA

Tamiko Nimura is an Asian American (Sansei/Pinay) writer who grew up in Northern California and now lives in the Pacific Northwest. She is a 2016 recipient of a Grant LAB award from ArtistTrust and 4Culture in Washington state. Her recent publications include pieces in The Rumpus, Heron Tree, HYPHEN, and Full Grown People. She is writing a 3-year commissioned series on being Japanese American for Discover Nikkei (web project of the Japanese American National Museum). She holds degrees in English from UC Berkeley and the University of Washington. She contributes regularly to the International Examiner. She lives with her family in Tacoma, Washington, and is currently working on a memoir and a novel.

What are you reading at Loose Leaf on 2/1?
It’s February, which is an important month for my community: the anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066, which ultimately authorized the mass wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. This year marks the 75th anniversary of that signing. I’ll be reading a short lyric essay called “How It Feels To Inherit Camp."

Who’s a writer you’re stoked on right now? What’s exciting about their work?
My dear friend and co-reader Renee Simms—I can’t wait for her short story collection! Renee’s work is fierce, beautiful, and wise. My dear friend and featured reader Rosalind Bell—her work on adult adoption, land ownership, and the long aftermath of slavery is much needed and powerful.

And I’m looking forward to reading Christine Lee’s forthcoming memoir, Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember, and Laurie Frankel’s novel This Is How It Always Is—both friends of mine, both writers that I admire for their ability to “dive into the wreck” and find treasure for the rest of us.

Is there a quote / soundtrack for how your week is going?
Quote: “Are you sure you want to be well, sweetheart?” from Toni Cade Bambara’s novel The Salt Eaters.

Soundtrack: The beautiful anthem by this Asian American artist MILCK, called “Quiet” (commonly known as “I can’t keep quiet”). Performed at the Women’s March by MILCK and a flash mob. That, plus Stevie Wonder’s “Love’s In Need of Love Today” and the whole album, Songs in the Key of Life.

Anything coming up for you in the near future?
The awesome writer Deesha Philyaw is publishing an interview with me at The Rumpus this month (February), in her column VISIBLE. This summer I’ll be working on my book, thanks to a grant from Artist Trust/Artists UP/4Culture. It’s an intergenerational memoir that responds to my dad’s unpublished manuscript about his wartime incarceration in Tule Lake, California.

Where can we find you online?
I update my writing portfolio on my blog, Kikugirl.net. I’m on Twitter at @TamikoN. And a lot of my writing’s available through Discover Nikkei, Seattle’s International Examiner, and the Seattle Star.

Looseleaf No. 3 -- Meet the Readers (Part 3 of 3)

8/11/2016

The Looseleaf Reading Series is a new Seattle-based reading series co-founded by Spark A'wesome, Shelley Casey, Dawn Quinn (emeritus), Samantha Updegrave, and Suzanne Warren to create a space for woman-identified and non-binary emerging and established writers to step out of their binders and share the stage. Combining storytelling and music, the series is held at The Den in Chop Suey.

The next reading is coming up on Tuesday, August 16, 2016. Doors at 7 pm, and it's gonna rule. The line up is stellar! In the third and final of these "Meet Readers" we have Max Delsohn and Natasha Marin both of Seattle. If you missed the first installment from Yi Shun Lai and Suzanne Bottelli, you can read it here, and the second set with Ramona Shore and Stephanie Barbé Hammer here.

Fine print: The Den is a bar, so event is 21+. No cover.

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MAX OLIVER DELSOHN is a non-binary writer living in Seattle, Washington. His creative nonfiction has been published in Seattle University's Fragments and Cutbank Literary Magazine. He holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from Seattle University and works at front desk at the Hugo House. When he was 5 years old a duck bit his finger at Legoland.

Meet Max Delsohn.....

What are you reading at Loose Leaf on 8/16?
I'm going to read a piece about my experience working in customer service. It's called "Nice to Trans You."

Who’s a writer you’re stoked on right now? What’s exiting about their work?
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. I just finished her memoir, The End of San Francisco. Her commitment to telling the truth, both in her writing and her activism, guides me unlike anything else right now. And the way she innovates with language and form-- it's a fearless, beautifully written book. It's a deeply-needed sock in the teeth to the cowardice, gaslighting, and selfishness that dominates so much of American culture. Mattilda's work just makes you smarter, I'm convinced.

Is there a quote / soundtrack for how your week is going?
This was a big week for me, as I told my parents I've started testosterone therapy. Thankfully, they were supportive! As someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder, though, it's particularly exhausting for me to wade through my obsessive doubts to confidently assert who I am and what I want. So my soundtrack for the week is the song "Existential Crisis Hour!" by Kilo Kish played on repeat for 45 minutes, then a combination of songs by DoNormaal, Sia, and Nicolas Jaar so I can find my way back to joy.

Anything coming up for you in the near future?
Right now I'm deep in the hellscape that is submitting to literary journals. I'm also continuing to work on a web series with my friend Alex Masuoka. It's a dark buddy comedy called "Kicking Air."

Where can we find you online?
My Twitter handle is @happygimme. I'm also on Instagram, Facebook, etc.

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NATASHA MARIN is a poet and interdisciplinary artist. Her written work has been translated into several languages and has been showcased in exhibitions, performances and events around the world. She is a Cave Canem fellow and a Hedgebrook alum who has been published in periodicals like Feminist Studies, African American Review, and The Caribbean Writer. She received grants from the City of Austin, Artist Trust, and the City of Seattle for community projects involving text-based, visual, performance, and multimedia art.

Meet Natasha Marin....

What are you reading at Loose Leaf on 8/16?
If I were to surround myself with crystal balls in the shape of a pentagram, I still wouldn't know. I am very likely to decide as I step up to the mic. I have always been a big fan of the "anti-performance" ...

Who’s a writer you’re stoked on right now? What’s exciting about their work?
I'm excited to read Quenton Baker's forthcoming book. Quenton isn't afraid to make people feel uncomfortable by speaking eloquently and frankly about anti-black racism.

Otherwise, I do most of my reading on social media. It makes me sad to admit, but it's true.

Is there a quote / soundtrack for how your week is going?
Thousands of racist trolls attacking me because they don't have the same grasp of the English language as I do, has made me very tired.

The quote would be "Can I live?"
The soundtrack would be "This Used To Be My Playground" on loop.

Anything coming up for you in the near future?
I will be relaxing in an overwater villa in the Caribbean soon. I can't wait. I deserve this so much. We all do!

Where can we find online?
These days? Any of the following keyword searches will be a rich Google harvest:

"Natasha Marin"
"Natasha Marin Seattle"
"Natasha Marin Reparations"
Please note: I am not Cheech Marin's wife, the concert pianist.

Author of Milk, Creator of #WomanCentered, Red Lineage, & Miko Kuro's Midnight Tea

Looseleaf No. 3 -- Meet the Readers & Musician (Part 2 of 3)

8/8/2016

The Looseleaf Reading Series is a new Seattle-based reading series co-founded by Spark A'wesome, Shelley Casey, Dawn Quinn (emeritus), Samantha Updegrave, and Suzanne Warren to create a space for woman-identified and non-binary emerging and established writers to step out of their binders and share the stage. Combining storytelling and music, the series is held at The Den in Chop Suey.

The next reading is coming up on Tuesday, August 16, 2016. Doors at 7 pm, and it's gonna rule. The line up is stellar! In the second of the three part of these "Meet Readers" we have Ramona Shore (Seattle) and Stephanie Barbé Hammer (LA / Coupeville). Check back for more from Max Oliver Delsohn & Natasha Marin in the coming days. If you missed the first installment from Yi Shun Lai and Suzanne Bottelli, you can read it here.

Fine print: The Den is a bar, so event is 21+. No cover.

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RAMONA SHORE is a local musician seemingly dedicated to being someone who recreates that feeling when you’ve just met and had a real conversation a little too soon for comfort but aren't sorry you did.

Meet Ramona Shore.....

What are you playing at Loose Leaf on 8/16?
I will be playing a few original songs for you.

Who’s a writer you’re stoked on right now? What’s exiting about their work?
Right now I am pretty excited about Hannu Rajaniemi who wrote the Quantum Thief series. His writing style is very immersive and a little difficult for what is essentially a fun sci-fi mystery series and it took me a while to realize that, in the vein of snowcrash, he's one of those writers that is re-mapping the way we conceptualize and talk about our possible future with tech.

Is there a quote / soundtrack for how your week is going?
"The days are long but the years are short." With a bit of a running remix of 'I'm Your Man' by Leonard Cohen/'Harder Faster' the Kanye remix and Aerodynamic -- I guess it's a Daft Punk kind of week

Anything coming up for you in the near future?
Nope.

Where can we find online?
My music can be found at: https://soundcloud.com/standardheart

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Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a 4-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her work has appeared in Pearl, Hayden’s Ferry, the Bellevue Literary Review and S/tick among other places. She was a comp lit scholar for many years, but then decided she wanted to make creative work, rather than just talk about it. Born in New York City she now lives on Whidbey Island where she writes flash fiction, poetry, and occasional essays and teaches creative writing at community colleges and non-profits. She is the author of a novel The Puppet Turners of Narrow Interior (Urban Farmhouse Press in 2015), a poetry collection How Formal? (Spout Hill Press, 2014), and a chapbook, Sex with Buildings (Dancing Girl Press, 2012). She’s working on a new novel about a repentant drug dealer and a new poetry collection about being a city dweller attempting to deal with nature.

Meet Stephanie Barbé Hammer....

What are you reading at Loose Leaf on 8/16?
I'm reading a bit of a new flash fiction piece that is appearing in the James Franco Review 2 days after the reading!

Who’s a writer you’re stoked on right now? What’s exiting about their work?
I'm a huge fan of the writing by Ryka Aoki. Ryka is a poet, novelist, essayist, and LGBTQ activist. I love how she is continually gesturing towards the utopian and towards abundance. That seems really politically important and exciting to me right now.

Is there a quote / soundtrack for how your week is going?
I keep on hearing an old Le Tigre track for a kohls commercial and it reminds me what a wonderful band they were. It's called HOT TOPIC and it's great.

Anything coming up for you in the near future?
Poem about mental illness coming out in INCANDESCENT MIND and working on my next novel. Stay tuned for the James Franco Review piece and hope you'll submit something to them!

Where can we find online?
I've got stories and poems and nonfiction all over the place. But here's one of my favorite stories -- published originally in Square Lake.

Looseleaf No. 3 -- Meet the Readers (Part 1 of 3)

8/2/2016

The Looseleaf Reading Series is a new Seattle-based reading series co-founded by Spark A'wesome, Shelley Casey, Dawn Quinn (emeritus), Samantha Updegrave, and Suzanne Warren to create a space for woman-identified and non-binary emerging and established writers to step out of their binders and share the stage. Combining storytelling and music, the series is held at The Den in Chop Suey.

The next reading is coming up on Tuesday, August 16, 2016. Doors at 7 pm, and it's gonna rule. The line up is stellar! In the first of the three part of these "Meet Readers" we have Yi Shun Lai (LA) and Suzanne Bottelli (Seattle). Check back for more from Stephanie Barbé Hammer & Ramona Shore, and Max Oliver Delsohn & Natasha Marin in the coming days.

Fine print: The Den is a bar, so event is 21+. No cover.

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YI SHUN LAI is a writer and editor living in southern California. She is the nonfiction editor for the Tahoma Literary Review. Her debut novel, Not a Self-Help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu, is out now from Shade Mountain Press.

Meet Yi Shun Lai....

What are you reading at Loose Leaf on 8/16?
I'll be reading from my novel, Not a Self-Help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu. It's a story about an alternate American experience, and folks seem to think it's easily relatable. (Live readings are great. They give you a really accurate idea of what resonates and what doesn't!)

Who’s a writer you’re stoked on right now? What’s exciting about their work?
Although I read her book Wives of Los Alamos months ago, I'm still noodling over it in my head: Tara Shea Nesbit did something amazing in this book, and I'm still picking apart just how she did it.

Is there a quote / soundtrack for how your week is going?
While I was at a coffee shop in New York the manager insisted on playing the entire soundtrack to "Cats." I left after "Jellicoe songs to Jellicoe cats," but I still have the overture stuck in my craw. So yeah.

Anything coming up for you in the near future?
We're still reading submissions for Tahoma Literary Review until August 31, so I'm looking forward to seeing more wonderful essays come across my desk. And my work-in-progress is burning a hole in my brain, so I need to start drafting some more scenes, stat!

Where can we find you online?
Find me and my earworms on Twitter @gooddirt.
And I'm trying desperately to keep up with my web site/blog: http://www.thegoooddirt.org.

I'm a ShelterBox Response Team member. Learn more about what I do at http://www.shelterboxusa.org

Suzanne Bottelli’s poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, The Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, West Branch and Fine Madness, among others. Her chapbook, The Feltville Formation (Finishing Line Press), was published in 2015. She has been awarded grants from Artist Trust and the Seattle Arts Commission, and has been a Jack Straw writer and a resident at Can Serrat, the Helen R. Whiteley Center, and the Icicle Creek Center for the Arts. She teaches Humanities and Writing and coordinates an Environment program at The Northwest School in Seattle, WA.

Meet Suzanne Bottelli....

What are you reading at Loose Leaf ‪on 8/16?
I'm going to read a few poems from my chapbook and a few new poems as well.

Who’s a writer you’re stoked on right now? What’s exiting about their work?
I have been (re)reading the amazing and now suddenly gone C.D. Wright. I've also been learning a lot from Roger Reeves and Robin Coste Lewis and Don Mee Choi. Choi's Hardly War takes a fascinating approach to blending historical artifact and personal history. She challenges me to think a lot more deeply about the language embedded in the "noise" of our upbringing.

Is there a quote / soundtrack for how your week is going?
A few weeks ago I saw Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing and then Straight Outta Compton, back to back. I'm still thinking about them and about how little has changed in the realities those films depict.

Anything coming up for you in the near future?
I've been traveling a lot this year, on a long awaited sabbatical from my teaching. I'm excited to be home now to carry forward some of what I've been writing and thinking about.

Where can we find online?
Here's a podcast about my chapbook from Jenn Fitzgerald's Chapbookapalooza series for New Books in Poetry.

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An Evening Prose Poems!

4/29/2016

What is a prose poem? Can there even be such a thing? Isn't the whole point of a poem its lines and breaks?

Less than a week away! Mark your calendars, RSVP on our event page, and join us for an evening of prose poems.

I'm hoping to pull myself together in time to do some Q+As with the readers. I love and admire their writing, and hope you'll check them out and join us on Wednesday, May 4.

I Made a Book

2/25/2016

Okay, I made something that's on its way to becoming a book. It's a complete first draft: twenty-two chapters and a coda, an epigraph and a table of contents.

Now, I'm working the revision toward a second draft, and I'm a little stalled at chapter 15, but it's for the best that I'm stuck because there's something it still needs to say. There's no panic, no writer's block, just a lot of walking through the city and drifting and going to bed early and seeing what my dreams have to offer up in the morning.

Holding a first draft -- slipping its pages into a binder and seeing it whole -- transformed how I relate to the work, and to myself as a writer.

Whatever it is you're working on, keep working it.