WE'RE ON THE RADIO!!!!

DIRTY LAUNDRY LIT Host, Jeff Eyres and I will be on LATalkRadio.com’s State of the Arts radio program hosted and produced by Michael Sterling and Paul Stroili. (60-65,000 listeners) tomorrow, August 1st, LIVE at 1:00 pm PST at www.latalkradio.com. Yay!

You can listen through your tabletop internet radios, personal computers or smart phones (smart phones need the proper app). If you listen through your computer, once you arrive on the home page of the LATalkRadio.com Network, you just click on the “Listen Live” button and you’re on board.

Don’t forget us!!!

And if you did. Ha! Or were busy. Here it is...We talked about my brief time as a video vixen--I was 13--and it became my most embarrassing moment ever, we talked about Dirty Laundry Lit, and spackle. I hope you'll check it out.

MY FIRST PODCAST...YAY!

I can't believe any of this is happening...I'm so glad you're here. This past Friday, I had my FIRST EVER on-air interview for Joseph Lapin's podcast "Working Poet Radio." All of this leading up to Thursday's RADIO interview--60,000 listeners (MY FIRST EVER!) on LA TALK RADIO. Yay! And Thursday, I'll be with my co-pilot, Dirty Laundry Lit host, Jeff Eyres (woo hoo!) promoting DIRTY LAUNDRY LIT: CLOTHING OPTIONAL. (Yay! I'll tell you more on Thursday.)

But TODAY at 2:30 pm, you'll hear how I said too much about dildos--one word is enough, no?, waiting to hear back from my agent on the novel, about writing, and I read a 3 minute excerpt from the essay I most regret ever writing (I read it to let that memory go.)

It's a conversation between friends and awkward at times because we're being recorded. And at one point, I couldn't find the words when Joseph asked me about my law work--it's so personal--and why my clients touch me. I told him ego...seeing myself in them. But if I'm honest--naked--I feel like I can see God in others then...where there's mercy.

At 2:30, can you come over? Go to Joseph's websitehttp://josephalapin.com/, scroll down to the bottom "Episode 5", and click on our podcast, set it to play and wash dishes or drive or something fun. You'll be supporting a working poet--Joseph (because people are watching his numbers and he took a chance on me and Dirty Laundry Lit. Thank YOU, Joseph!!!!) and you'll be supporting 7 incredible Clothing Optional writers (yay!), our host-with-the-most, me (of course) and our incredible volunteer team as I cheer for all of them, every chance I get, leading up to Saturday.

Thanks y'all!

PROOF! AND THIS MAY BE THE LAST POST ON PRAGUE...MAYBE :)

So, I've been back for three full days from Prague and it's already becoming a blur. The more I try to hold onto pieces of memories, the more they pull away. I knew in Prague that I would have a hard time bringing any of this to the surface. (See my weird post, 3 posts back)

So last night, when I was at the PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Final Reading, I told a columnist "No, no I can't be sure," I said. "In fact, I can't say with certainty that I was even in Prague, at all." She had just asked me, "Are you sure there were really babies crawling up that radio tower...I will text my friend who's there in Prague now, shooting a movie." I told her that there was a photo but...I'm not in it.

Then I read this just now. I WAS THERE. Thanks again B O D Y for inviting me to read at your Birthday Bash and to the Muse Paper Press in Prague...thank you for agreeing that I was there, too. FRIENDS, I HOPE YOU'LL READ THIS PROOF. xo

http://musethepaper.blogspot.de/2013/07/body-birthday-bash.html

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A FEMINIST?

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A FEMINIST? I think I am...by my own definition. Especially when it comes to literature. And as a reflection of the human condition, I like literature that shows women as heroes--at home and in the street--where soft doesn't mean weak. So when L.A. Weekly asked me to choose my favorite L.A. novel, I chose the detective novel, Shooting Elvis, by Robert Eversz which features a kick-ass female protagonist. 

In the interview, I talk about what I think it means to "come of age" as a woman and how it relates to the novel, Shooting Elvis. So THANK YOU L.A. Weekly for letting me contribute to the conversation in "17 L.A. Literary Figures Pick Their Favorite L.A. Novels." I hope you support it by clicking on the link and reading more.

PRAGUE: AN EXPLANATION OF YESTERDAY'S BLOG ENTRY

SO…yesterday after I posted my blog entry about Day 8 in Prague, I received a few messages and emails from friends wanting more details about Prague and the Summer Writing Program that I can't give. 

I’m not being elusive, seriously, what I’ve said is pretty much it. It has been surreal. And the facts are misleading. They might cause you to think wrongly of this trip if you knew: My luggage was lost Day 1, minute 1. Was lost somewhere in Germany. Day 1, hour three, my iphone was stolen. Day 2, I was homeless and my first thoughts were to not "freak out" my family at home. Day 3, Monday, which was the first day of the Writing Program, I dropped out and the leaving was not a pleasant one. Confrontational is the right word.

Since then, I’ve found a new center and have made my own Prague program. I feel like an expat and because of the people I’ve met, this path has been way more amazing and dreamlike than anything I could have planned. So when I talk about the experience so far, surreal is the only way I can talk about it right now.

There is a visual that might make it more clear. It’s the only photo of me in Prague so far, which isn’t really a photo of me. It’s the one that Joshua Mensch tagged me in on Facebook a few days ago. Well, I was tagged, Josh was and Crawford, too. It was taken at about 2am after we’d wandered into a park after a day I can’t remember now. And the photo is of a 600-foot-high radio tower we "discovered" there with giant babies crawling up it. And it was lit in different colors. I remember only red (you'll have to look at the photo for the facts).

While we stood there gazing up at it, Joshua talked about the artist who made it during the Russian occupation, how the artist would sabotage it while it was being built, then had to explain to me that the babies weren’t actually moving. :) [Since this post, Josh has corrected my memory...he tells me what he said was that the babies were added later, the artist (David Černy) had sabotaged a tank during the revolution by painting it pink, becoming famous as an irreverent dissident artist.] You see, talking about Prague is like giving a serious talk on giant crawling babies on a radio tower and trying to remember the history when really, the most memorable part for me, was the company and that somewhere in Prague, in a park, there are large baby butts on a radio tower. And maybe, my first question will come to mind as well: "How did those big babies get up there?" 

I suppose my fascination is made more real by the fact that my days have started at 10am and ended at about 5:00am with the sun rising while listening to folks recite poetry. Magic. So this has been my lens.

Thanks for reading and for the emails that jog my memory. :) xo

The photo:

BLACK GIRL IN PRAGUE: DAY 8

I know this is a surreal post but it's all I've got.

Being in Prague to write and explore, away from family and friends and everything familiar, feels like being dropped into a vast ocean of beauty, sinking safely, miles down, and finding treasures that I know I can't bring back to the surface. I can't because they won't survive the journey home, they're only relatable here, unique to this experience. Even trying would mean they'd be destroyed by pressure, age, or other forces that I don't know about so leaving them is bittersweet. The sweet is knowing that they'll be here for the next person to see. It's already happening.

But I have the images of these treasures stored in my memory. Some of them. Logging them as they appear. Disappear. I have no doubt that it'll be like waking from a dream when I get home to the warmth and seeming newness of my reality and the things that loosely belong to me. And maybe I will fall asleep properly from there, and find myself here again. I don't know.

As I think about it, it seems that I should be jotting down notes about what I've been doing here in Praha, the sights I've visited, the architecture, the food, the beautiful language, etc, because remembering dreams like this one (it's what it feels like now) is as promising as keeping water cupped in hands, watching it slide through even the most tightly-laced fingers. But I don't want to remember this experience with great accuracy. I want to remember the moments and how they made me feel. The things that hurt, that made me cry-laughing, or just cry, or just laugh, to be proud of--the new things and the people that have touched me deeply (and there have been a few) and made me see myself differently...and in almost no time. It's been just days. Time is fickle. Or I am.

For now, I want to trust that the memories will come back to me as quickly as they were formed in the intensity of mere days that feel like years and that these memories will come when I need them most, as life lessons, or that they'll be reborn in a new novel that I've yet to write. I'm in limbo now. My just-finished novel, tentatively titled, "Sweet Tea and Honey" has just been sent out to publishers by my agent this past week and I can feel the loneliness of waiting. Something will happen or nothing will. The work has come down to this milestone that I don't control (It's what it wanted, wasn't it?), and it's not easy to hold one's breath for so long. But it's good that I am right now since, like I said, I'm underwater at this very moment.

This coming Thursday, my last day in Prague, I will have the pleasure of reading with the international, well-respected, literary journal  B O D Y alongside talented writers like Joshua Weiner. If you're near Prague and can be here Thursday, July 11 at 7:30pm, it would be great to meet you. Tell me you read this blog and make me blush. :)

I'll try to insert the image of the invite below and if you see it there, I'm saying Yay! because it'll be the first time I've been able to insert a photo in this blog on my own. :) If not, click on "B O D Y" above and it'll take you to the live link.

Thanks for reading. xo