Posts From Author: Blog
Writers and Storytelling: Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart, Apocalyptic Swing (a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize), and Rocket Fantastic, winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Calvocoressi is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship from Stanford University; a Rona Jaffe Woman Writer’s Award; a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, TX; the Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review; and a residency from the Civitella di Ranieri Foundation, among others. Calvocoressi’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals including The Baffler, The New York Times, POETRY, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Tin House, and The New Yorker. Calvocoressi is an Editor at Large at Los Angeles Review of Books, and Poetry Editor at Southern Cultures. Works in progress include a non-fiction book entitled, The Year I Didn’t Kill Myself and a novel, The Alderman of the Graveyard. Calvocoressi teaches at UNC Chapel Hill and lives in Carrboro, NC, where joy, compassion, and social justice are at the center of their personal and poetic practice. “In Your Own Words,” tell us something about your writing style or where you get […]
Read MoreWRITERS AND STORYTELLING: Torrey Maldonado
New York City’s current and former Chancellors have praised Torrey Maldonado as a top teacher and author. He has taught for over twenty years in his Brooklyn childhood hometown. His middle-grade titles include Tight, which won a Christopher Award and was named a Washington Post and NPR best book of the year, Secret Saturdays, and, most recently, What Lane?. Growing up, Torrey hated books because “they were boring or seemed to hate or dismiss people where I’m from.” Culturally responsive books and educators inspired him to teach and write. Voted a Top Latino Author and best Middle Grade and Young Adult novelist for African Americans, his work reflects his and students’ experiences and is praised for its current feel, realness, and universal themes. How has the current state of things impacted your writing life? Listen, this pandemic has had a HUGE impact on my writing. Before, if an interviewer asked, “Where do you write?” I’d answer, “Anywhere”. Now? Now I write in an underground quarantined bunker with a mask on and . . . I’m joking. I don’t write in a mask. I just write in quarantine. And another real fact? The pandemic DID change my writing-life. People appreciate my […]
Read MoreWriters and Storytelling: Adam Begley
Adam Begley is the author of Houdini: The Elusive American (2020); The Great Nadar, The Man Behind the Camera (2017); and Updike (2014). For many years the books editor of The New York Observer, he has been a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, London Review of Books, TLS, and Spectator. He lives with his wife in Cambridgeshire, England. How has the current state of things impacted your writing life? Writers practice a form of quarantine whether it’s required or not. The difference right now is that most of the world has joined us. What are the ways you’ve been connecting to your community? Like most people, I’ve spent more time on video calls and messaging platforms. How do you stay focused? With great difficulty. It’s one thing to retreat to your writing desk when all around you everyday life is busy and noisy and relentless – you try to shut it out. These days, in the countryside where I live, there’s very little to shut out. On the other side of my front door the quiet and the empty calm […]
Read MoreWRITERS AND STORYTELLING: DAVID KILCULLEN
Dr. David Kilcullen is the author of five prize-winning books on terrorism, insurgency, urbanization and future warfare, including The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West, as well as numerous scholarly papers on urbanization, conflict and the evolution of warfare. He won the Walkley Award (Australia’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) for long-form journalism in 2015, for his reporting on the rise of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. He is contributing editor for military affairs of The Australian, Australia’s national daily newspaper, Professor of International and Political Studies at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, Professor of Practice at Arizona State University, and CEO and President of the global research firm Cordillera Applications Group. Dave is a theorist and practitioner of guerrilla and unconventional warfare, with extensive war zone experience over a 25-year career with the Australian and U.S. governments as an Army officer, intelligence analyst, policy adviser and diplomat. He served in Iraq as senior counterinsurgency advisor to U.S. General David Petraeus, then as senior advisor to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He worked for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Afghanistan, and continues to work with advanced research […]
Read MoreWriters and Storytelling: Anne Nelson
Anne Nelson is the author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right a ground-breaking exploration of the coalition of fundamentalists and oil who helped bring Trump to power. Nelson began her professional career on the editorial staff of The New Yorker. In 1995 she became the director of the International Program of the Columbia School of Journalism. She has taught and conducted research on digital media and development at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs since 2002. Nelson is the recipient of the Livingston Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Bellagio Fellowship. Her 2001 play The Guys, dealing with the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, has been produced in 50 states and 15 countries, and as a feature film starring Sigourney Weaver. Nelson is a member of the New York Council for the Humanities and the Council on Foreign Relations. How has the current state of things impacted your writing life? I was scheduled for a national book tour for Shadow Network in March and April (including House of Speakeasy*). All ten events were cancelled –including the Virginia, Arizona, and Los Angeles Book Festivals. I’ve continued to do radio and podcast interviews for […]
Read MoreWriters and Storytelling: Mahogany L. Browne
Mahogany L. Browne is a writer, organizer & educator. Interim Executive Director of Urban Word NYC & Poetry Coordinator at St. Francis College. Browne has received fellowships from Agnes Gund, Air Serenbe, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research & Rauschenberg. She is the author of Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, Woke Baby & Black Girl Magic, Kissing Caskets, & Dear Twitter. She is also the founder of Woke Baby Book Fair (a nationwide diversity literature campaign) & as an Arts for Justice grantee, is completing her first book of essays on mass incarceration, investigating its impact on women and children. How has the current state of things impacted your writing life? I’ve cancelled 90 days of touring and performance opportunities. I also had to cancel my book launch for my newest YA book: WOKE: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice What are the ways you’ve been connecting to your community? IG Live, Zoom Meetings & Happy Hour via ZOOM with friends. How do you stay focused? I’m reading and writing in a small group. When that doesn’t work I bake a cake. When that doesn’t work I binge on a Netflix series. When that still doesn’t work, I sleep. […]
Read MoreSeriously Questioning…Maggie Paxson
Maggie Paxson is a writer, anthropologist, and performer. Fluent in Russian and French, she has worked in rural communities in northern Russia, the Caucasus, and upland France. She is the author of Solovyovo: The Story of Memory in a Russian Village, and her essays have appeared in the Washington Post Magazine, Wilson Quarterly, and Aeon. Her newest book is The Plateau. On November 12th, she will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, For Good Measure alongside Nina Burleigh, James Geary, and Monique Truong. What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? In second grade, we made little books with rough gray construction-paper covers. Mine was about Rosa Parks. I remember getting inside the story at some point, writing quickly, with exclamation points! No!, said Rosa Parks when they tried to get her to leave her seat! That is my first memory of getting swept away—trying to convey something big. I also remember that I drew Martin Luther King in profile. What is your favorite line from your current work? The last line of THE PLATEAU, for sure. But I can’t share that here, because it’s the whole book in a mustard seed. Another line I love, though, comes like a […]
Read MoreSeriously Questioning…Nina Burleigh
Nina Burleigh is an award-winning journalist, and the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller The Fatal Gift of Beauty and, most recently, Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump’s Women. On November 12th, she will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, For Good Measure alongside James Geary, Maggie Paxson, and Monique Truong. What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? My mom or dad reading poetry to me from the My Book House books. My dad scribbling in his little notebook (he was a poet) and quoting grave things at me like “Cast a cold eye on life, on death, horseman pass by!” That’s Yeats, Under Ben Bulben. I was writing poems in second grade. What is your favorite line from your current work? Hard to pick a favorite. Opening to a random page I find this amusing. “Marla eventually found inner peace in a Dixieland gumbo of every late 20th Century pop-spirituality, from Hollywood Kabbalah to color therapy and yoga, but during her years in hiding, she got spiritual succor from Emmanuel’s Book, in which author Pat Rodegast, channeling an occult philosopher named Emmanuel opines on “the limitless power of love.” What is your favorite first line of […]
Read MoreSeriously Questioning…James Geary
James Geary is the author of four previous books, including the New York Times bestseller The World in a Phrase, and is the deputy curator at Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism. A sought-after speaker and avid juggler, he lives near Boston, Massachusetts. On November 12th, he will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, For Good Measure alongside Nina Burleigh, Maggie Paxson, and Monique Truong. What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? Of reading, discovering the Quotable Quotes page in Reader’s Digest when I was 8 and reading my very first aphorism: “The difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.” This sparked a lifelong obsession with aphorisms—and two books about them. Of writing, after watching a sci-fi film on television with my eldest brother, also when I was about 8, and thinking, ‘I could write a story like that.’ I immediately went upstairs to my room to do so, writing a story about a desert planet, about which the only thing I remember is that poisonous snakes looked like dry sticks until you reached down to pick them up, when they would unleash themselves and bite you. What is your favorite line from your current […]
Read More