The Voracious Reader

Are you a voracious reader? I am! I have always labeled myself that way, so I was intrigued when I found out there is a bookshop and owner in Westchester who feels the same way about that turn of phrase. The Voracious Reader in Larchmont specializes in books for kids, tweens, and teens!

I was in heaven when I first visited and met the owner, Francine, this past winter, and thrilled to be asked to join three other contemporary authors for an event called Get Real on April 29th.

Well, I certainly got real last night with my buddy Sarah Darer Littman, and fan gurled it up for Melissa Walker and Micol Ostow, three seasoned authors who share a blog called The Contemps, (where I was a guest blogger last January).

The bookstore is both roomy and warm and cozy, an environment custom-made for literary pleasures. Melissa read from Violet in Private - the third in her Violet series, written about the life of a runway model (based on her experience as a magazine editor interview. She has a new book to look for in August: Small Town Sinners. Micol read from her new book Family, written in verse about a girl who falls victim to a cult leader. Chilling. Sarah read from Life, After.  (Her new book, Want to Go Private, about a girl meeting up with an internet predator, will also be out this August.) I of course, read from Edges, sandwiched between Melissa and Micol. And then I had to buy their books!

We all had fun interacting with the teens and each other, amidst pizza (thanks Francine!) and signing.

Francine is also EXPANDING! She's going to have a tea room, and a WORKSHOP room! (You know where my wheels are turning to, don't you? Stay tuned . . .)

Now I am kicking myself for not taking pictures. Sarah wore an AMAZING flower pot hat in honor of The Royal Wedding, and I felt comfy and chic in my new pajants. Pajama jeans. They've become something of a YA author phenomenon and they live up to the hype! In fact, some YA Authors are participating in The Twitterhood of the Butt-Lifting Pajants and are wearing them, drawing something on them, and then passing them on. In fact, Melissa was running late because she had to stop by Tara McCarthy Altebrando's house to give the pajants to her!

And I'm guessing that Micol and Melissa always look fantastic!

(And you know what? Even though I think of myself as too plugged into this internet world, the whole Royal Wedding passed me by - it never even got on my radar until last night!)

Now I have to get ready for tonight's Writopia Open Mic event at the Borders in Mt. Kisco, NY! Writopians are gonna BRING IT!!!!!!!

Girls Write Now is Rockin' an Anthology

I spent a couple of days this week on a reading jag of work from literary teens and their older counterparts.

This winter I was asked to be co-editor of this years' Girls Write Now Anthology, and since I adore this community so much, my answer couldn't be anything but "yes".

A more organized person might have paced herself, (I'm looking at you, co-editor and pop culture diva Kirthana Ramisetti!) but my kids were on spring break and before I knew it, my editing "duties" were upon me. But as with service of any kind, I'm left wondering, who is really doing the service here?

The first day I locked myself in the bedroom and wrapped myself up in sweet and harsh words. In yearning and despair. Teens and-those-who-love-them aren't afraid to go to dark places. It made me fall in-love with Girls Write Now and the power of words, of people finding their "voice" all over again. GWN offers an opportunity for a diverse group of young women to not only nurture their craft, but to transform themselves through the process of writing and being part of a supportive community.

My eyes were burning by the end of the night.

The next day I came into the city to meet with Kirthana at GWN headquarters in mid-town, prepared  to stay well into the night if need be. We had to arrange all of the submissions! Well, it turned out that some of our incredible Anthology Team had already done half of the work! They had come in and put the submissions into chapters already - Kirthana and I just needed to spend a few hours to arrange the work within those chapters into some sort of narrative arc. We marveled at the level of commitment, service and professionalism of not only our team, but the entire community of Girls Write Now.

We had already decided on chapter themes at our team meeting, and found the pieces organized into folders entitled: Growth, Family, Identity, New York City, Relationships, Writing, with a TITLE lifted from an OPENING LINE of one of the mentees' pieces, supported by a quote from a fully seasoned author. We arranged poetry, fiction, memoir within each chapter, as I wrote down the names of each of the authors in their order. There was something so powerful about that kind of writing, and saying their names out loud, reflecting the richness and diversity of Girls Write Now. Kirthana and I left  satisfied and inspired.

Thank YOU, Girls Write Now, for letting me be of service!

Now all we have to do is write the PREFACE by Monday!

The Anthology will be ready in mid-June and will be sold on Amazon. You can also find Kirthana on Twitter under her handle, @popscribblings.

WIT, UN, and Mary Pope Osborne

Tuesday I got an email from my sister Charlotte with the headline: WIT and UN. In the body of her email was: This is incredibly last minute and I'm not really sure what it's about, but do you want to come with me? Following was an invitation to a luncheon at the United Nations with Mary Pope Osborne as the special speaker.


Hells yes! Lunch with my sis at the United Nations AND Mary Pope Osborne, famed writer of The Magic Treehouse series?

I was confused about how A Wrinkle in Time would be involved -  we use WIT as Wrinkle shorthand, and as the 50th anniversary is coming up in February 2012, it is very much on our minds.

All became clear later that evening when we realized that WIT is an acronym for World Information Transfer. (Evidently, Wrinkle doesn't tie into everything!) It is a yearly conference on nuclear energy, created after Chernobyl and ever more important after the recent disaster in Japan.

Yesterday I met Charlotte near the United Nations and we made our way in through the maze of security- we even needed an escort!

It took us a good twenty minutes to find the delegates dining room, but find it we did. We were seated with folks from Random House, John Patterson (Katherine Patterson's son) and Will Osborne (Mary's husband). I turned to introduce myself to the person on my right when she said:

"Léna! I know you! I'm Mallory, Yeardley's cousin!" My eyes opened wide with joy and recognition. Yeardley and I went to Barnard together, and Mallory and I had hit it off a few years ago at Y's baby shower. It turns out that Mallory is Mary Pope Osborne's editor! The last time I saw her she was pregnant with her second child, and now she s pregnant with her third! I LOVE stuff like that!

It also turns out that Mary and Will live five minutes away from my mom in Goshen! Lot's of synchronicity . . .

Mary gave an amazing speech on the power,  gift and right of reading for every child, especially those impoverished or who have suffered global trauma. (I wish I had the speech in front of me to quote it, but it hasn't been downloaded yet!) She was so inspiring! I am always pontificating on the power of writing and creating, and it was wonderful to have a reminder of the power of reading. (There is so much to say about it. I promise to provide a link when I get it!)


Afterward, Mallory introduced Mary to us, and she couldn't have been more gracious and down to earth. In fact, she shared a lovely memory of my grandmother: when Mary started going to Author's Guild meetings a long time ago and was so intimidated by everyone, my grandmother talked to her and made her feel comfortable.

Mary herself couldn't have made us feel more comfortable, and grateful that we had heard her speak. (Plus, it bumped up my cred with my kids, BIG time!)

The Miracle of Story

Image via Wikipedia

Albert Einstein: “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”

I would much rather live the second way, but it's not always easy, is it? Like most people, I need constant reminders that I have a choice in the way to look at life. I need stories that offer a variety of perspectives, where I can both agree and yes, disagree. I need stories to help me think and I need to write stories to discover what I think.

Stories are like eggs, waiting to hatch. They may be ugly or they may be beautiful,  but most likely they are somewhere in between, a combination of both ends of the spectrum. 



Today I am gorging myself on stories by the teen writers of Girls Write Now and their mentors as I dive into the final stages of Anthology edits. Tomorrow I will go to headquarters to sit down with my co-editor, writer Kirthana Ramisetti, where we will shape it into a book, and then hand it off to the copy editor before it goes to publication.

Some of us have just celebrated Easter, the story of the resurrection of Jesus. Others of us have celebrated Passover,  the story of the Exodus from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the desert. Some have also celebrated the return of Persephone from underground, the return of the sun, making the earth fecund again.   

We have all certainly made note of the springtime with the rains and budding leaves. (Our family celebrates with all of these stories and more - the requisite scavenger hunt for candy filled eggs.)

Stories tell us who we are. And that's why we write, don't we?


Stories and faith are talked about in the same way: it's like driving at night - our headlights only show us the way a little bit at a time. We have to trust in doing the next right thing. We may get lost, but we can always find our way back to our story, our center. 


Sometimes I get anxious when watching a movie with the husband because I don't know what the story is about. He laughs at me (gently) and reminds me to enjoy the ride.


Are you enjoying the ride in your writing, your reading, and/or your faith?

Good Earth Fri-Day, Daffodils, and William Wordsworth

If weather is a metaphor for our feelings, then the cold, windy and gray day mirrors my heart. It is both Earth Day and Good Friday, days that have me thinking about my own relationship to Nature as well as resurrection and redemption. It's been a long winter, and I am ready for Vitamin D from the sun to flood my veins.

Yes, I need a little nature therapy, so a visit to the daffodil garden in Litchfield, Connecticut is the perfect remedy.

We are all a part of the fabric of the Universe: we all matter, whether we identify with the gray wind or a lovely flower in whatever particular moment.

It is beautiful in spite of (because of?) the dismal weather surrounding the garden. Life still springs forth, there is peace and beauty. My daughter frolicks as she poses for my camera, delighting in the daffodils and surrounding lake, a large rock, and a tree stump broken to look like a throne. Scarlett is the Faerie Queene. Yet instead of Spenser, we find one of the most lyrical poems by William Wordsworth etched in stone. I stop short and read, tears in my eyes. William in 1804 knows exactly how I feel! Literature, Nature, Love - I am transcended, transported to another realm. I am William, I am a daffodil, I am my daughter, I am me.

DAFFODILS

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

Gone Readin'

Image by Bobs Market via Flickr

Guten Tag. It's Wednesday, right? And I haven't written since Saturday . . . my kids are on vacation from school, so life has been dizzyingly full and unscheduled.

And I need schedule! For an unorganized person like me, it's a life-line.

So this is why I have been so quiet on the blog front. Our house has been full of friends, or we've gone a-visiting. On Sunday, my mom came in and took the boys and I to see The Importance of Being Earnest on Broadway (two B'way shows in one week? I'm making up for lost time!) and I was thrown back to 11th grade where I played Cecily Cardew in our high school production, and got to kiss the boy playing Algernon. (Sigh. SUCH a crush!) We LOVED it! Oscar Wilde really knew what he was doing didn't he? We had fun coming up with homophones other than EARNEST . . .

But I must check in quickly to say hello before we further decorate Easter eggs and go to see Hop. (Yesterday we dyed them!)

The other thing I've been doing besides writing is DEVOURING George RR Martin's Game of Thrones' series. I am currently in the middle of the fourth A Storm of Crows. (The fifth comes out this summer!)

And I have to trust that if I am not writing, things are surely marinating, waiting to bloom, and . . .

If I am not writing, you can always find me reading! (Because when I am in the throes of writing, it is hard to get into another person's story!)

What are you reading?

Gettin' High

I had the chance to see High the other night - a Broadway play with Kathleen Turner (love her) about "addiction and redemption" - two of my favorite subjects. My BFF had scored us free tickets for a preview performance (the show opens on Tuesday) through a contact at work. (She is an awesome psychotherapist, if you will allow me to brag!)

Our seats were amazing - second row center, and I left the theater completely disturbed. Which is not a bad thing. I esteem work and art that encourages an inner dialogue with self. I had "wanted" a different outcome to the story, a different ending - so it gave me a lot to think about, as someone who believes in the power of prayer and faith (not just inside of organized religion).

And I want you to see it, so I won't "spoil" anything for you by telling the story. Well, the whole story. (I have to tell a little bit, don't I?) To just say that the performances were "gripping" or "powerful" wouldn't do it justice.

Turner plays Sister Jamison, "a foul-mouthed alcoholic nun" who lives and works in a Catholic rehabilitation center. The play opens with Sister Jamison telling the audience a vignette from her childhood - she reads a story to her little sister every night about the stars, because someday, her sister says, she wants to be HIGH, to go and be "up there".

Turner had me right there, as I truly believe that we are all spirit seekers of one form or another. We all want to be High up in the stars, transcending the human experience.

The play, centered around three characters is peppered with Sister Jamison breaking the fourth wall with these monologues, revealing more about her childhood and her relationship with her sister, her own need for redemption.

Sister Jamison's "job" is to run groups for recovering alcoholics like herself. Her boss,  "Father Michael" played deftly by Stephen Kunken, asks her to take on an seemingly impossible case - a-damaged-beyond-repair 19 year old drug meth addict and prostitute named Cody. Sister Jamison knows first hand that  recovery is for those who want it, and are willing to work for it. Cody is not an addict pre-disposed to want to get better. He needs to be in a lock down rehab for six months, if there is to be any hope.

But Father Michael challenges her to think outside the box, that "miracles" are up to God, and come in different forms, that it is not up to us to decide who can recover and who can't.

Sister Jamison doesn't want to get emotionally involved with this kid. Yet she does, which of course brings up her own demons.

Evan Jonigkeit as Cody broke my heart. Sitting so close to the stage, his pain and trauma were absolutely convincing. The word "brutal" kept floating through my mind and I couldn't help but think of the uncle I have lost to alcoholism and the friends I've lost to addiction. Are they "high" up with God now? What do I really believe?

Sister Jamison tries to introduce Cody to some kind of faith, and teaches him the rosary.

"What has God ever done for me?"

"God hasn't done this to you, people have," Sister Jamison says.

Yes, people have. But recovery can only happen when a person can say: "yes people have done this to me, but I can make different choices now. I can take responsibility for my part in the past and in my present and future actions."

This is impossible for Cody. So what do you think happens? Why was I such a wreck afterward?

I guess I saw all of the "addiction" and none of the "redemption". More's the pity.


Related articles

• HIGH Star Kathleen Turner featured in Associated Press (boneaubryanbrown.com)
• Kathleen Turner Gets 'High' as a Nun on Broadway (abcnews.go.com)