FPP Interview: Max S. Gordon

Posted on January 16, 2021 by admin

In this 2021 FPP Interview with Max S. Gordon, Gordon shares how he believes “the spirit of Fannie Lou Hamer definitely lives on in the work of Stacey Abrams,” how difficult it is to sustain “relentless pain” in this country without wanting escape, about how his writing about Donald Trump has changed over four years, and so much more. Join us on Sunday, January 17th for “The Way Forward,” to hear Max S. Gordon read live, via Zoom, with writers Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, Desiree C. Bailey, Roberto Carlos Garcia, Sara Lippmann, Gloria Nixon-John and Samantha So Lamb and Alex Torres who will be memorializing Anthony Veasna So. RSVP here. – SPL

We have been so lucky that you’ve written an essay every year since 2016 for this post-election reading. I will never forget how in 2017 you told us about getting so angry and disgusted with Trump that you shouted at the TV: “The power of Fannie Lou Hamer compels you!” Looking at what Black women organizers and voters en masse achieved ever since, I think her power indeed compelled! How would you describe life over these past four years? What have you learned? Who gave you inspiration?

Thank you for remembering that essay, and for making that beautiful connection. I believe the spirit of Fannie Lou Hamer definitely lives on in the work of Stacey Abrams. I am inspired by Ms. Abrams because I thought when she lost the governorship, they had snatched her dream and smashed it. But clearly she had more than one dream – and spirit had a plan for her. Now I think the powers that be wished they had made her governor because look at the trouble she’s caused! Being governor, in some ways, seems a smaller destiny when compared to how she has changed American history forever.

I watched her take pain, disappointment, outrage, and inspiration and apply it to a greater vision, which she and others alchemized into the result that brought us a win for Joe Biden in the presidential election and two democratic senators – a Black man and a Jewish man, who will now serve under a vice-president who is a Black woman. In short, I needed that lesson from Stacey: don’t give up.

That was very important for me after four years of Donald Trump; it’s hard to have your heart broken over and over again. It wears you down after a while, the lack of consequences, the lack of collective outrage, the complicity, the constant assaults, you can give up hope. It’s important to see someone who hasn’t given up hope, who puts that hope into action.

You’ve written movingly about addiction, and what it’s like for those in recovery to cope with our political circumstances. What gives you hope? What keeps you frightened?

I see it all connected, all part of the same story. I have a visceral response to Donald Trump; my body recognizes him energetically, as a recovering addict and as a child who grew up with trauma. I can listen to others talk about Donald Trump all day long in terms of politics, but because of his malevolence, I know the child part of me wants to hide under the covers when I hear him coming up the stairs. I try as often as I can to listen to that part of myself, especially when I write. That was the child, who became the teenager, who became the adult who used drugs and alcohol to numb his pain.

To be clear: Donald Trump isn’t responsible for my addictions, but he has definitely triggered them, and I know I’m not alone in this. There are probably millions of us who find ourselves struggling again with eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, post-traumatic stress disorders. I’ve talked to friends who have gone on medication for the first time in their lives. There have been overdoses and suicides. This isn’t weakness; something has been very wrong for years now, and it’s hard to sustain that level of relentless pain and not want to escape.

What’s scary is that everything we are dealing with now was foretold. We have a library of information now on Donald Trump, but all we needed to know could have fit on the paper inside a fortune cookie. “Grab ‘em by the p—-y” foreshadowed exactly what happened at the Capitol on January 6. Many of us who recognized his personality disorders early, because we’d seen them in our own families, had been waiting for his rhetoric to result in a larger act of violence. And that’s distressing on so many levels. But I’m glad that I have a recovery that tells me, “Yes, Donald Trump is an abusive asshole; and no, that doesn’t give you permission to have a drink today.”

How has your writing changed over the past years?

At some point, I’d like to compile all the writing I’ve done on Donald Trump. What a fascinating arc it has been! And to think that sometimes, when I was shopping on 5^th avenue in New York many years ago, I’d go to the basement of Trump Tower and have lunch; they had the most delicious pasta there. While I ate, I didn’t think much about Donald Trump himself, I saw him as a grandiose fool; I’d never even watched a single episode of “The Apprentice.” I just never got around to it.

My first writings were more sympathetic; in 2016 I wrote about his being bewildered that he won the election and feeling lonely in the White House. I assigned him self-reflection, maybe because part of me wanted to believe he had some. I’ll admit, I was exhilarated by his sass in the Republican primaries of 2015 – I loved him taking down other Republicans. There was danger from the very beginning, his behavior was already repulsive, but who believed he could actually win?

The last piece I wrote about Donald Trump included a conversation about prayer, because by 2020 his relentless cruelty and sociopathology had brought me to my knees. And I don’t usually write about spirituality so overtly – that was different for me. The question I had to ask myself last week after the Capitol insurrection was: did Donald Trump change, or did we? Did he surprise us? Because upon reflection, I feel that he has been extraordinarily consistent. This doesn’t absolve him of any of his crimes; and I think that, as he fades into history, he will become less interesting. But I think the question we will ask ourselves is not whether he changed, but how we allowed him to change us. What did he reveal in us? There is no question that he was definitely eager to take away our power; but why were we, as a country, so willing to give it to him? That’s a question to make you sit down and think.

FPP Interview: Sara Lippmann

Posted on January 13, 2021 by admin

In this FPP Interview with fiction writer Sara Lippmann we learn how the “urgency and alienation and erasure” she felt as a new mother pushed her to create her short story collection Doll Palace, how people have given her “all kinds of shit” for her writing, how characters’ bad choices are often “what makes fiction compelling,” and so much more. Join us on Sunday, January 17th for “The Way Forward,” to hear Sara Lippmann read live, via Zoom, with writers Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, Desiree C. Bailey, Roberto Carlos Garcia, Max S. Gordon, Sara Lippmann, Gloria Nixon-John and Samantha So Lamb and Alex Torres who will be memorializing Anthony Veasna So. RSVP here. – SPL

In your short story collection Doll Palace and in stories published since, you tell the stories of women and girls in such profound ways that readers experience the good, the bad, and the ugly of our lives. What first motivated you to tell your stories? Is that how you still feel today?

I’ve been obsessed with writing since high school but there is a difference between wanting to write and having something to say. So while a love of language might have first drawn me to the page, it’s taken longer to develop voice and to embrace impulses of story.

Doll Palace came out of an urgency and alienation and erasure I felt as a new mother. I remember strangers touching my belly when I was pregnant with my first kid — as if a woman’s body becomes public domain. Wield a stroller on the sidewalk and there’s no shortage of those who know better. And so the stories in some way are in direct conversation with that. My new collection, JERKS, is both a deepening and an extension of those themes. Characters feel trapped by their circumstances and their choices, by societal expectations and systems. But whereas Doll Palace is arguably grimmer and more static, JERKS features more quiet rebellions and uses dark humor and lots of lust and desire to chip away the confines that hold us back from our own selfhood, and freedom.

I was listening to an episode of the New Yorker fiction podcast this morning where Chang-rae Lee reads a Steven Millhauser story and in the conversation with Deborah Treisman that follows he says, “the genius of all great writers is they show us something about reality that disturbs and disorients” and although I would never in a million years put myself in the Millhauser stratosphere but I would say that what I’m trying to do is expose a reality that is often glossed over or brushed under the rug — and yes, it’s sometimes hard and sometimes tender and rarely pretty.

Do you ever encounter resistance to your topics or to your narrators? Or, do you ever find readers get uneasy with the truths of your stories?

I’ve gotten all kinds of shit for my writing. What does your husband think? Your family? Your children? It’s all enraging. My characters are not particularly “likable” — which, don’t get me started. Philip Roth once said, “Literature is not a moral beauty contest,” which is something I return to again and again. Not as an excuse or pass for irresponsible fiction. I have no patience for hateful characters, but I’m also not interested in characters who always take the moral high road. I am resistant to didactic or moralistic storytelling, unless it is somehow subverting a fableistic trope. My characters make bad choices. My characters let their jagged seams hang out and unravel. That, to me, is what makes fiction compelling. I’ve certainly been told my writing is crass and unsavory among other things which only makes me want to double down on that aspect of humanity. Not to provoke. Not for the sake of exhibitionism. But because I want to tell honest stories.

Has your storytelling changed over time? If so, how?

Over time, I’d say my work has become more honest. Yes, I’ve always written fiction. But the stories must ring true. Every sentence has to feel honest and true with a clear sense of imperative. Often this entails paring back on language I’ve gotten carried away with. The older I get, the less tolerant I’ve become of language for the sake of language. Nothing is precious. I’ve gotten a bit better at being less self conscious, at getting out of my own damn way. Sentences without a focused point of view are just words. If the writing is not in direct service to the story it gets cut.

As the First Person Plural Reading Series, we’ve always been interested in what it means to be “we” – with all of its promises, power, and problems. When do you feel most “we” and when do you feel most “I”? Does it matter?

I am a big sucker for a first person plural story. I often draft longhand so I try not to censor myself in whatever voice comes out and it’s sometimes slippery, like I’ll move from I to you to we in morning pages all the time. I’ve published a couple of stories using a collective we — which often slips in when talking about mothers and women and girls. I like to play with assumptions placed upon these groups and also to subvert them. To embody the collective and to challenge it, to bristle against its confines. Erasure happens when you are lumped into a category, so it’s important to locate the individual in the we. In JERKS, there is a story called Har-True that moves between first person plural and singular. I also think the collective lends itself well to flash (“Aromatherapy” and “Father’s Day” are two micro examples of that). There is so much to unpack. While there can be power in the plural there is also a danger of homogeneity. Two sides of a coin. One the one hand, a collective lends support and company. But there can also be peer pressure and mob mentality. Sometimes I watch both of these patterns play out on Twitter.

Is there a community (or a “we”) that is sustaining you now?

The writing community — both at large and immediate — sustains me. My students. Writing is lonely enough business, and it’s so easy to feel even more disconnected and disaffected right now when we can’t go anywhere, that I am incredibly grateful for writers I connect with online — and on the phone. And even on zoom, though I loathe it. I haven’t met with my own writing group in person for over a year but we started holding each other accountable to our own progress on longer projects and these daily check-ins and cheers are getting me through. I don’t know where I’d be without them.

FPP Interview: Samantha So Lamb

Posted on January 10, 2021 by admin

We only mark in days, weeks how long it’s been since writer Anthony Veansa So passed away. I identified him as a writer in that first sentence, but he was of course a son, a brother, a partner, an uncle, a friend, and so much more to the communities that mourn him. Anthony had committed to reading at “The Way Forward” right before his death. I asked his elder sister Samantha So Lamb and his partner Alex Torres to read and memorialize Anthony as part of the night. In this interview, Samantha shares what her grief has been like so far, what it was like to have Anthony as her brother, and what it was like to read his work in-depth for the first time. We welcome you to join us on Sunday, January 17th for “The Way Forward,” to hear Samantha and Alex. They will participate with writers Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, Desiree C. Bailey, Roberto Carlos Garcia, Max S. Gordon, Sara Lippmann, and Gloria Nixon-John. RSVP here. – SPL

Do you feel you’ve been able to grieve as necessary? Has anything surprised you about your grief?

Anthony was my only brother and we were very close. He also was the only son for my traditional Cambodian parents. When he passed, my parents were devastated and still are.

I had to step up in the first 3 weeks following his death. I planned the funeral – we did a mix of traditional Cambodian rituals tailored to a pandemic and modern American burial norms. In the moment, I was in disbelief that I was burying my younger brother, during the COVID-19 pandemic, while his book was starting to get recognition, and having to do it with Cambodian traditional funeral beliefs. I was not equipped to do any of that. It never crossed my mind that I would have to bury my brother. I haven’t been to any funerals during the COVID-19 pandemic. I didn’t know that his work was so well received (he never shared it with us). Most of all, the last time I attended a traditional Cambodian funeral was when my aunt died when I was 12. I had no idea what I was doing.

Everything worked out in the end and we wrapped up all of the funeral rituals days before Christmas. It wasn’t until after Christmas, when everyone went home and life turned to normal, was when the grief started. Grief does weird things like unlock trauma that has been buried deep down inside. I think that has been the most surprising, that the grief has opened up something deeper that I will need to seek additional help for.

Tell us about Anthony as your brother.

Anthony was the best brother, uncle, and son my family could ever ask for. He was always the most reliable, although he was sometimes questionable on his timing. When I would inevitably ask him to do a favor he would never complain, at least not about doing favors…and at least not directly to my face. On the day of my engagement party, he drove across Stockton to pick up my favorite dessert which I absolutely had to have (and it tasted all the more amazing because he did it just for me). On another occasion, I remember, after feverishly scouring Craigslist from Oakland to Richmond for a specific $22 Ikea chair, I was able to locate one in San Francisco for $7. I convinced my brother, on a Thursday evening, to drive to a random stranger’s apartment in the Mission, with cash, to pick up said chair, and bring it all the way back to my house in Pinole and he did it, without hesitation. That was sibling dedication.

Anthony was a devoted uncle to our son, Oliver. He loved to sing “Baby Shark” to Oliver extremely off-beat, on purpose, usually while glancing at me to make sure I was thoroughly annoyed. He always said that he would never have children himself. Instead, he would choose one of mine to be his favorite, send them to a fancy private school, and potentially fund their Olympic fencing career as a means of becoming a Stanford legacy admit.

Years from now, we will tell our children how free-spirited, fun and hard-working he was. Seriously, he was his own spirit, you should have seen him dance at my wedding. I’ve never seen anyone actually dance like Charlie Brown from Peanuts.

What do you love most about Anthony’s work?

When I read Anthony’s work, it is so personal and real. I can read parts of his story and know where he spun the story from, what memory he took from our childhood, what character traits he gathered from our family. On one hand, it is fiction. On the other hand, it is my family’s story told from his perspective. It takes me back to a place that gives me a warm feeling but it also pains me because he reveals feelings he has never told me or my family before. Reading some of his pieces over the past weeks has made me realize just how much he loved my family, how he was inspired by their stories, and how he had found his true calling in being a voice for Cambodian Americans, specifically from Stockton. For that, he makes me proud to be his sister.

What is something we should take with us on the way forward?

I know what I will be taking on my way forward through this traumatic time of my life. I will hug my partner every single night, I will tell my son I love him every single day. I will take risks in my career, use up my vacation time, and won’t be afraid to use a mental health day. As an educator, I will pay more attention to my LGBTQ students. I will practice more mindful strategies with them, as well as advocate for social-emotional awareness.

The Way Forward

Posted on December 30, 2020 by admin

Join us virtually on Sunday, January 17th, 2021 for “The Way Forward,” a reading by the First Person Plural Reading Series featuring Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, Desiree C. Bailey, Roberto Carlos Garcia, Max S. Gordon, Sara Lippmann, Gloria Nixon-John, and Samantha So Lamb and Alex Torres who will read in memory of Anthony Veasna So. The reading is curated and hosted by Stacy Parker Le Melle. This is our fifth annual post-election reading, but instead of our focus being on “what just happened?” our readers will share work that speaks to what we must hold on to, what we must seek, what we must know and learn and feel as we find our way forward. The reading is from 6-8pm. Admission is free.

Please RSVP via Eventbrite here. You will be sent log-in instructions prior to the event.

About the readers:

Ibrahim is a bright, playful spirit who authentically reflects and acts on bold questions. His artful blending of idealism and spiritual commitment with pragmatic application has led him into government, public administration, parenthood, and media. His unique voice has helped elevate the environmental vision of Islam, the spiritual opportunity of parenting, and the cultural and political side of sports and the ethical imperative when considering decisions about how we manage land, waters, and open space.

Ibrahim Abdul-Matin is an urban strategist whose work focuses on deepening democracy and improving public engagement. He has advised two mayors on the best ways to translate complex decisions related to the cost, impacts, and benefits of environmental policy on communities. He is the founder of Green Squash Consulting a management consulting firm based in New York that works with people, organizations, companies, coalitions and governments committed to equity and justice. He is the author of Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet and in addition to the New York Advisory Board of the Trust for Public Land he is sits on the board of the International Living Future Institute encouraging the creation of a regenerative built environment and Sapelo Square whose mission is to celebrate and analyze the experiences of Black Muslims in the United States.

Desiree C. Bailey is the author of What Noise Against the Cane (Yale University Press, 2021), selected by Carl Phillips as the winner of the 2020 Yale Series of Younger Poets. She is also the author of the fiction chapbook In Dirt or Saltwater (O’clock Press, 2016) and has short stories and poems published in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, American Short Fiction, Callaloo, the Academy of American Poets and elsewhere. Desiree was born in Trinidad and Tobago, and grew up in Queens, NY.

Poet, storyteller, and essayist Roberto Carlos Garcia is a self-described “sancocho […] of provisions from the Harlem Renaissance, the Spanish Poets of 1929, the Black Arts Movement, the Nuyorican School, and the Modernists.” Garcia is rigorously interrogative of himself and the world around him, conveying “nakedness of emotion, intent, and experience,” and he writes extensively about the Afro-Latinx and Afro-diasporic experience. Roberto’s third collection, [Elegies], is published by Flower Song Press and his second poetry collection, black / Maybe: An Afro Lyric, is available from Willow Books. Roberto’s first collection, Melancolía, is available from Červená Barva Press.

His poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY Magazine, The BreakBeat Poets Vol 4: LatiNEXT, Bettering American Poetry Vol. 3, The Root, Those People, Rigorous, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Gawker, Barrelhouse, The Acentos Review, Lunch Ticket, and many others.

He is founder of the cooperative press Get Fresh Books Publishing, A NonProfit Corp.

A native New Yorker, Roberto holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Max S. Gordon is a writer and activist. His work has also appeared on openDemocracy, Democratic Underground and Truthout, in Z Magazine, Gay Times, Sapience, and other progressive on-line and print magazines in the U.S. and internationally. His essays include “The Eroticism of Brutality – On Mary Trump’s ‘Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man’ and “How We’ll Get Over: Going to The Upper Room with Donald Trump.”

Sara Lippmann is the author of the story collections Doll Palace, long-listed for the 2015 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and JERKS (forthcoming from Mason Jar Press.) She was awarded an artist’s fellowship in fiction from New York Foundation for the Arts, and her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Millions, Fourth Genre, Slice Magazine, Diagram, Epiphany and elsewhere. She’s landed on Wigleaf’s Top 50, and her stories have been anthologized in Mamas and Papas: On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting (San Diego City Works Press) and forthcoming in New Voices: Contemporary Voices Confronting the Holocaust (Blue Lyra Press) and Best Small Fictions 2020 (Sonder Press). Raised outside of Philadelphia, she lives and teaches in Brooklyn and co-hosts the Sunday Salon NYC.

Gloria Nixon-John, Ph.D. Gloria’s novel The Killing Jar is based on the true story of one of the youngest Americans to have served on death row. Her memoir entitled Learning from Lady Chatterley is written in narrative verse and is set in Post WWII Detroit. Her chapbook, Breathe me a Sky, was recently published by The Moonstone Art Center of Philadelphia. She has published poetry, fiction, and essays in several literary journals and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by A3 of London. Many of her essays and poems deal with her love of gardening, and with her love of, and care for, her horses.

Gloria has collected an oral history of sculptor Marshall Fredericks for The Marshall Fredrick’s museum in Saginaw Michigan and has done oral history work for the Theodore Roethke House, also in Saginaw, Michigan. She currently works as an independent writing consultant for schools, libraries, and individual writers. Gloria lives in rural Oxford, Michigan with her horses, dogs, cats, husband Michael.

As Anthony Veasna So agreed to read for “The Way Forward” just days before he passed away in San Francisco, CA, I am grateful to be able to keep Anthony as part of the lineup in order to remember him and to honor his work. He will be memorialized by his sister Samantha So Lamb and his partner Alex Torres. – SPL

Anthony Veasna So (deceased) is a graduate of Stanford University and earned his MFA in Fiction at Syracuse University. His debut story collection, Afterparties, is forthcoming from Ecco/HarperCollins in August 2021, and his writing has been or will be published in The New Yorker, n+1, Granta, and ZYZZYVA. Born and raised in Stockton, CA, he lived in San Francisco, where he worked on an essay collection and a stoner novel of queer ideas about three Khmer American cousins—a pansexual rapper, a comedian philosopher, and a leftist illustrator.

Samantha So Lamb was born and raised in Stockton, California. Her parents are Cambodian refugees who escaped the Khmer Rouge. First in her family to graduate from college, Samantha decided to become a teacher. She dedicates her career to teaching elementary grades in urban neighborhoods and deeply believes in equitable access to rigorous education for all students, especially black and brown children. She currently lives and teaches in Richmond, California with her husband, her son, and dog.

Alex Torres has taught English in Bogotá, Colombia as a Fulbright Scholar, reported on venture capitalists & startups for Business Insider, and published academic research on nineteenth and twentieth-century US literary culture.

Curator and Host:

Stacy Parker Le Melle is the author of Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House (HarperCollins/Ecco), was the lead contributor to Voices from the Storm: The People of New Orleans on Hurricane Katrina and Its Aftermath (McSweeney’s), and chronicles stories for The Katrina Experience: An Oral History Project. She is a 2020 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow for Nonfiction Literature. Her recent narrative nonfiction has been published in Callaloo, Apogee Journal, The Atlas Review, Callaloo, Cura, Kweli Journal, Nat. Brut, The Nervous Breakdown, The Offing, Phoebe, Silk Road and The Florida Review where the essay was a finalist for the 2014 Editors’ Prize for nonfiction. Originally from Detroit, Le Melle lives in Harlem where she curates the First Person Plural Reading Series. Follow her on Twitter at @stacylemelle.

Join FPP at the Reading Series of New York Taster at the Brooklyn Book Festival – Virtual and Free!

Posted on September 27, 2020 by admin

We are thrilled that on Monday, September 28th at 7:30pm we will be taking part in the Reading Series of New York Taster Brooklyn Book Festival bookend reading! Produced and hosted by Andrew Lloyd-Jones and Katie Rainey, the reading features Rosamond S. King (Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon), Stacie Evans (Big Words, etc.), Malcolm Tariq (Maracuyá Peach Reading Series), I.S. Jones (Angry Reading Series), Marwa Helal (Soul Sister Revue), and Rachel Eliza Griffiths (First Person Plural Reading Series)! The reading is virtual and free. Join us from anywhere you have a computer or smartphone connection. For more info and to register for this free reading, please click here.

More about Rachel Eliza Griffiths:

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a visual artist, poet, and novelist. Her work has appeared widely, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Lit Hub. Griffiths’ most recent collection of poetry and photography is Seeing the Body (W.W. Norton 2020). She is a recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem Foundation, Kimbilio, Yaddo, and Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Her first novel, Promise, is forthcoming from Random House. Photo Credit: Nicholas Nichols.

On This Night in March 2020…

Posted on September 1, 2020 by admin

We couldn’t know that this would be last reading we’d have before the COVID-19 pandemic changed all of our lives in New York City. I am so grateful that on this night, Sunday, March 8th, we were gifted with the brilliance of Joey De Jesus, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, and Carolyn Ferrell (Tanya Domi was sick and could not make it). We have always aimed to create reading nights where if you missed it, you really missed something. I’ll always remember this night. Special thanks to our host Silvana and to our bookseller Word Up. – SPL

FPP Interview: LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs

Posted on March 7, 2020 by admin

“Make quilts not condos,” says LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs in this second interview with the First Person Plural Reading Series. Read on for what gives her hope, what keeps her awake at night, and what she can tell about Harlem today when walking down Lenox Avenue. Diggs will be reading with Joey De Jesus, Tanya Domi, and Carolyn Ferrell this Sunday at Silvana, March 8th, at 6pm. Silvana is located at 300 W. 116th St near Frederick Douglass Blvd. Books sold by Word Up! Books. Admission is free. Please RSVP via Eventbrite here. – SPL

It’s March 2020. What gives you hope?

That my plants will survive a stock market apocalypse. That I will finish my second book. That I will repair my childhood violin and gift it to the next generation of musical wonders.

What keeps you awake at night?

Mass vacancies. The number of homeless folk in NYC. The second book I’ve yet to finish. Watching Westworld for the third time and catching all the Easter eggs.

What is meaningful action these days? What will tip the scales?

Kindness. Humanity. Though I don’t know if either will tip the scales. It’s just where I need to be right now.

Tell us about your Harlem today.

Where do you want me to start? Today it is raining as I walk from Lenox Ave to the Studio Museum of Harlem next door to Gavin Brown. There’s a new cafe near there filled with the next wave of gentrifiers though I suspect they’ve yet to walk east of 5th Ave. The Dollar Store is packed and there’s a young woman purchasing hot dogs and frozen breakfast sandwiches in front of me. The 99 cents store across from the post office is gone and some new building is being built in its place. For the first time, I don’t mind Atlah’s latest signage. Most stores have sold out of hand sanitizers. The building where I live is being warehoused. I am the last person on my floor and one of five remaining. It is quiet but a discomforting quiet. So quiet, the puritanical arguments/contradictions towards white businesses vs black businesses in Harlem annoy me. Much so like the non-response of those Harlem representatives I’ve sought assistance from. I stroll pass the new French cafe next to the barber shop on 115 and I worry that they may attempt to have Mo the Hot Dog man removed despite Mo being there for over 20 years. I imagine my top blowing should that happen. While I may not be an eater of burgers or sweet sausages, I would defend him as if I were. Fuck your croissants. Mo is family.

If you could whisper something to us as we sleep tonight, what would it be?

Housing is a human right. Make quilts not condos.

Our Next Reading Is Sunday, March 8th – Join Us at Silvana in Harlem!

Posted on February 19, 2020 by admin

Join us on Sunday, March 8th for what promises to be an extraordinary night! We’ll be joined by poets and writers Joey De Jesus, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Tanya Domi, and Carolyn Ferrell, hosted by Stacy Parker Le Melle. The reading is from 6-8pm. Silvana is located at 300 W. 116th St near Frederick Douglass Blvd.

Books sold by Word Up! Books. Admission is free. There will be cake!

Please RSVP via Eventbrite here.

About the featured readers:

Joey De Jesus is the author of HOAX (Operating System, 2020), NOCT- The Threshold of Madness (The Atlas Review, 2019), and co-author, alongside Sade LaNay, of Writing Voice into the Archive vol. 1, edited by Jennifer Tamayo with support from UC Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender. Joey received the 2019-20 BRIC ArtFP Project Room Commission and 2017 NYFA/NYSCA Fellowship in Poetry. Poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Artists Space, Barrow Street, Bettering American Poetry, The Brooklyn Rail, Brooklyn Magazine, The New Museum, The Newtown Literary Review, Southern Humanities Review, Symmetries: An Anthology of the Dominique Levy Gallery, and elsewhere. They’ve performed in Art Omi, Basilica Soundscape, The Nuyorican, The Poetry Project and elsewhere. Joey is an Adjunct Lecturer at BMCC and a member of the Ridgewood Tenants Union. Joey is on hiatus at Apogee Journal, a literary non-profit committed to uplifting the voices of writers at the peripheries of literary inclusion and sits on the advisory board of No, Dear Magazine. Joey lives in Ridgewood, Queens, where they are the hardest-Left candidate for New York State Assembly District 38 ever. Photo credit: Dan Gutt & RAGGA NYC.

A writer, vocalist and performance/sound artist, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is the author of TwERK (Belladonna, 2013). Diggs has presented and performed at California Institute of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, The Museum of Modern Art, and Walker Art Center and at festivals including: Explore the North Festival, Leeuwarden, Netherlands; Hekayeh Festival, Abu Dhabi; International Poetry Festival of Copenhagen; Poesiefestival, Berlin; and the 2015 Venice Biennale. As an independent curator, artistic director, and producer, Diggs has presented events for BAMCafé, Black Rock Coalition, El Museo del Barrio, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the David Rubenstein Atrium. As a vocalist, she has worked with Guillermo E. Brown, Rashida Bumbray, Burnt Sugar, Gabri Christa, Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade, DJ Logic, Lisa E. Harris, Vijay Iyer, Val Jeanty, Mike Ladd, Paloma McGregor, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Vernon Reid, Towa Tei, and Edwin Torres. Diggs has received a 2020 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, Whiting Award (2016) and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (2015), as well as grants and fellowships from Cave Canem, Creative Capital, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, among others. She lives in Harlem.

Tanya Domi is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and a faculty affiliate of the Harriman Institute where she teaches human rights and international relations in the Western Balkans. She is also an Adjunct Lecturer at the Roosevelt Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, CUNY where she teaches global contemporary LGBTQ human rights. As a scholar on the Balkans, she has published numerous journal and book chapters and has been a frequent commentator on Balkan issues. Domi served in the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1996-2000 where she worked on the Dayton Peace Accords. Previously she has worked as a Congressional aide and also was a chief of staff in the Hawaii State Senate. Domi is a widely published author and journalist and currently is the host of The Thought Project podcast at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her writings has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic Magazine, Al Jazeera America, The Christian Science Monitor, Balkan Investigations Research Network, Balkan Insight, Radio Free Europe and The Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

Carolyn Ferrell is a professor of writing at Sarah Lawrence College and the author of the short-story collection, Don’t Erase Me, awarded the Art Seidenbaum Award of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, John C. Zachiris Award given by Ploughshares, and Quality Paperback Book Prize for First Fiction. Her stories have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories 2018; The Best American Short Stories of the Century; Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers; The Blue Light Corner: Black Women Writing on Passion, Sex, and Romantic Love; and Children of the Night: The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to the Present. She is the recipient of grants from the Fulbright Association, German Academic Exchange (D.A.A.D.), City University of New York MAGNET Program, and National Endowment for the Arts (Literature fellow for 2004).

About the host:

Stacy Parker Le Melle is the author of Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House (HarperCollins/Ecco) and is a contributing editor to Callaloo. She was the lead contributor to Voices from the Storm: The People of New Orleans on Hurricane Katrina and Its Aftermath (McSweeney’s) and chronicles stories for The Katrina Experience: An Oral History Project. Her recent narrative nonfiction has been published in Callaloo, The Offing, Apogee Journal, The Nervous Breakdown, Silk Road Review, The Butter, Cura, The Atlas Review, and The Florida Review where the essay was a finalist for the 2014 Editors’ Prize for nonfiction. Originally from Detroit, Le Melle is the founder of Harlem Against Violence, Homophobia, and Transphobia, and the curator and co-founder of Harlem’s First Person Plural Reading Series.

This event is funded in part by Poets & Writers through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

Thank You from the First Person Plural Reading Series!

Posted on February 15, 2020 by admin

A hearty thank you to all who came out to hear from this fantastic lineup. How great it was to hear from Lilly Dancyger, Sam Perkins, Pitchaya Sudbanthad, Sarah Van Arsdale, and Mimi Wong. Thank you Word Up Books for bookselling. And of course, thank you to Silvana for hosting. You are appreciated! Our next reading is March 8th, 2020. Lineup announcement coming soon! – SPL

FPP Interview: Mimi Wong

Posted on February 9, 2020 by admin

“I believe that art and literature fundamentally become better when we allow for different visions and voices to be seen and heard,” says writer Mimi Wong when considering the power of diversity in publishing. In Wong’s FPP Interview, we hear about how working in various media has impacted her writing, the toll rejection takes, guidance for emerging writers, and much more. Read her words then hear Wong read live with Lilly Dancyger, Sam Perkins, Pitchaya Sudbanthad, and Sarah Van Arsdale this Sunday at Silvana from 6-8pm. Silvana is located at 300 W. 116th St near Frederick Douglass Blvd. Books sold by Word Up! Books. Admission is free. Please RSVP via Eventbrite here. – SPL

In addition to writing fiction and nonfiction, you’re a video producer and editor in film, television, and web work. Tell us about this multi-media work, and what working in various media has meant for your art.

Working in film and TV definitely tapped into my interest in storytelling. But instead of using text, I’m pairing visual imagery with audio. My experience with documentaries taught me how to juggle a lot of information in my head at once and learn how to problem-solve quickly. I wonder if those skills come from the same place in my brain that also enjoys writing long-form fiction. Across all media, I find that having compelling characters is my entry point into any story.

As editor in chief of The Offing, you helm an online literary magazine that “seeks out and supports work by and about those often marginalized in literary spaces.” How is this focus meaningful to you and to the publishing landscape? What guidance would you offer other editors based on your experience?

What I really love about the work I do at The Offing—which is entirely volunteer-based, by the way—is that I believe it goes hand-in-hand with my own desire to tell stories that are currently missing from the mainstream. The dream is a more inclusive literary landscape for everybody, and that’s why it feels necessary to use whatever small amount of privilege I have to help uplift other writers. The commitment to inclusive representation in The Offing’s content is also reflected on our masthead. At the same time, we recognize that as editors we each have our blind spots. So it becomes even more vital to have a diverse pool of readers, and to be able to collaborate with colleagues who have different lived experiences from our own. But it’s not about diversity for diversity’s sake. I believe that art and literature fundamentally become better when we allow for different visions and voices to be seen and heard.

It’s 2020. What gives you hope? What gives you pause?

I won’t lie—I’ve been struggling to find my joy again. At the end of the year, and into the new year, I felt really beaten down as a writer. Dealing with constant rejection from an industry that seems reluctant to change has been tough. It’s at those low points that I’ve come to appreciate being part of a community. As a writer who didn’t go through an MFA program, I didn’t have that for a long time. So I’m truly grateful to how welcoming other editors and writers have been. I’m finding hope in being able to make new connections and friendships.

What advice would you give emerging writers today?

When I was in my 20s, I put a lot of pressure on myself, and it made me impatient with my writing. My advice to other writers is that it’s okay to take your time. Don’t feel like you have to rush the process, whether that’s with your writing or finding an agent or trying to get published. Also don’t be afraid to re-apply or re-submit to places after you’ve been rejected. In a funny way, finally getting something after multiple failed attempts has actually helped alleviate that sense of imposter syndrome for me because I know how hard I worked to earn my spot.