book belches, book reviews, do over stories, Moby Dick is boring, prizes, robin hemley
In Events, Nonfiction Books, blogs we like, book reviews, memoir on July 22, 2009 at 10:58 am
The indefatigable Robin Hemley (pictured on the right), a Brevity contributor and friend, and author of the charming memoir, Do Over!, has opened two new contests on his blog(s), so here’s your chance to win money, or free books, or just have fun.
1. Robin is looking for silly reviews and dumb book blog postings at bookbelches.blogspot.com. Cash prizes!! The first entry is in, and here’s a preview:
Moby Dick is the most BORING book I have ever read!…. We were given a list of books in English class, and I chose to read this. After a week, I was just in page 103. It was needed the next day, so I panicked and switched books, and bought War and Peace. And I finished that book in 8 hours of straight reading.
2. Also, at Robinhemley.blogspot.com, Robin (aka Mr. Red Bull) is sponsoring a contest to win free copies of Do Over. Simply email him at Robinhemley@gmail.com what you might like to do over in your life. On the same website, well-known authors (and a certain Brevity editor) share Book Tour Disaster stories.
Whew!
Now everyone, back to work.
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graphic memoir, iowa nonfiction MFA, maggie mcknight, robin hemley
In Brevity Updates, Brevity contributors, Teaching Resources, memoir on June 3, 2009 at 9:58 am
Brevity 30 contributor Maggie McKnight writes about her essay “Tonight” and her decision to extract the text from a graphic memoir (still in progress) to compose her brief essay:
I first wrote “Tonight” several years ago as a response to an assignment in grad school—the assignment, in Robin Hemley’s “Nonfiction and the Image” class, was to take self-portrait photographs and write an essay inspired by them. My partner and I photographed the part of myself that most occupied our thoughts—and our hearts—at the time. Later, in working on a graphic memoir based on the same events, I converted the essay to graphic format (using less than half of the original text), to use as a prologue for my book.
The existing draft of the graphic essay is here; it needs revision still. (Among other things, some of the images aren’t working yet—the one at the top right of page 4, for instance, is indecipherable to most people. And I feel uncomfortable with the lead-in to my mom’s dialog, class-based assumptions that I know don’t accurately represent either my opinion or hers.)
Meanwhile, I decided to extract the text from the graphic essay to turn back into a short prose essay, with further revisions to the text. So the piece went from a 1600-word prose essay to a five-page graphic essay, and back to a 540-word prose essay. Now I have to do the graphic version again.
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NOTE: You can see the draft version of Maggie McKnight’s graphic memoir here: Mcknight Tonight PDF. Your discussion of how the graphic version differs from the prose version invited.
Dinty W. Moore, robin hemley, book tour, chris van allsburg
In Brevity Updates, Brevity contributors on May 12, 2009 at 8:18 am
Brevity contributor and nonfiction heavyweight Robin Hemley has been collecting book tour disaster stories on his blog these past few weeks, and this week he features Brevity editor Dinty W. Moore:
http://robinhemley.com
“I admit to a measure of dismay when the manager met me in a dirty, ill-fitting, pilled sweater at the front of an empty store and then walked me up a flight of steps to a narrow, dingy second floor. It wasn’t the small number of cheap folding chairs that caught me up short, or the rickety podium. It was the vast array of “gently used” pornographic books and magazines that lined the walls. Though the main floor of this once-thriving bookshop contained the finest contemporary and classic literature, it seems the second-story skin books were paying the electric bills.”
do-over, immersion memoir, kindergarten, robin hemley
In Brevity Updates, Brevity contributors, Teaching Resources, blogs we like, memoir on April 2, 2009 at 6:17 am
Our friend and past Brevity contributor Robin Hemley is blogging in anticipation of the release of his (we certainly anticipate, and expect) sharp and funny new memoir Do-Over! [In which a forty-eight-year-old father of three returns to kindergarten, summer camp, the prom, and other embarrassments], and to Robin’s great credit, instead of just blogging the usual “buy my book, please, or I’ll kill this puppy,” he’s offering some useful commentary on the process and context of his immersion book:
“To me, in “Immersion Memoir,” a writer creates a kind of framework to actively engage in experience and memory…
“I suppose someone could conceivably consider my book [and some similar immersion memoirs] as ‘gimmicky,’ but I would say that they’re simply structured around a theme and that they are no less ‘Authentic’ than any work in which the writer imposes a structure – which would pretty much include all novels and all memoirs. There’s certainly artifice in all art and as writers know, writing is not simply a matter of recording life but shaping it in a kind of ‘return the favor’ way.”
Read the entire entry here.
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– Dinty W. Moore
libel, robin hemley, volunteer lawyers for the arts
In Uncategorized on May 22, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Ran across this while re-reading (past Brevity author) Robin Hemley’s Turning Life Into Fiction (a great text to teach)–a resource called “Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.” Hemley says it’s “a nationwide organization of lawyers who offer free or reduced-fee legal services to people in the creative arts on matters related to practicing art” (182). This resource is certainly worth noting if you have any questions about the legal implications of your work (I’ll spare you my own). Hemley lists this address: Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts; Sixth Floor;1 East 53rd Street; New York, NY 10022. And the website is here: Volunteer Lawyers
- Rachael
