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Text of the page (random words):
s lombards and 38 riv cabaret at au lapin agile i started this blog post almost two months ago i ve always admired people who can write dispatches from life when it s moving at high speed and for that matter i ve always admired diarists that s never been my way i can move and think fast but i write slow when it comes to my personal creative work in less than 24 months i have had to try on several lives for size one was too small one was too big the good news is that i m working at a nonprofit that feels humane and sustainable with room to grow and the skills i ve used in teaching for much of the last decade are also a great match for being a director of communications but still it s a lot of change bruce feiler is just one of the thought leaders in talking about lifequakes and his work has helped distill what i ve been processing and will need to keep processing in the spring i stole two hours from a weekday afternoon and walked along the length of the tidal basin during the last stretch of cherry blossom season i loved watching the people and the light as it shifted and i gave a respectful nod to stumpy i felt as i often have in the last few years the anticipatory grief of knowing we wouldn t be able to afford to stay here forever because our rental apartment would be priced out from under us no matter how much i loved this part of the city and i thought but what if what if we found a way to stay in southwest what if i just dared to let myself make that the goal that s how we ended up saying goodbye to an apartment that i loved very much and oh i miss the balcony and sunrises an apartment that took good care of us for more than five years through the worst of the pandemic but it s the beginning of the story of a slightly bigger new space one big enough to host thanksgiving dinners one with a spare sleeping space that i can offer a visiting writer and a ground floor studio that my husband is shaping into a place to make art also a front door of the five addresses i ve had in d c i always had to pass through multiple doors and across multiple floors now we re just here so very close to the larger world and a rose bush that i m pretty sure is mine to look after even though i know zilch about tending roses in 2021 i bought a quilt made by a mississippi friend coulter fussell inspired by the way the red starburst echoed the cover art of made to explode then it stayed in a box for three years because i didn t have the space to hang it anywhere now i do a couple of october opportunities i m so excited to join eileen weeren melissa scholes young and the legendary kathy fish as part of the stories in a flash residential retreat in charles town west virginia from october 21 through october 25 please consider joining us if you can the full details can be found here and i m happy to answer questions participants are capped at twelve and there are only three spots left on the afternoon of thursday 10 24 i ll lead a two hour generative workshop something new that i ve developed for this gathering on cultivating the poetry in your flash prose i ll be working with flash prose pieces by these ten writers to talk about musicality and the importance of speeding up slowing down and introducing rests in your work talea anderson tyrese l coleman patricia coral lucy corin nels p highberg davon loeb jono naito ed park george saunders sejal shah right on the heels of that on sunday 10 27 3 5 pm et i ll lead a zoom based recorded spotlight session for politics prose on sylvia plath s ariel as part of their series on the book that made me the writer i am registration is open now posted by sandra at 5 00 am no comments august 15 2023 home again home again got back from pennsylvania a week ago where i visited with the wcsu mfa program to read from made to explode which won last year s housatonic book award in poetry teach a seminar on sestinas and golden shovels and take part in a panel on publishing we were hosted at the highlights foundation retreat at the base of the poconos which was gorgeous and brought back memories of searching the hidden pictures feature in magazines kept in my allergist s waiting room readings fireside nights bagpipes karaoke so many wildflowers so many bunnies just got back from nebraska a week before that had a precious two weeks at home between north carolina and nebraska took a train to new york city on monday so i can read at bryant park on tuesday evening i m a little surprised i never titled a blog post home again home again until now i did title one jiggedy jig on october 1 2006 that was a short millay colony aftermath update that included a prescient announcement new manuscript title theories of falling as i type that i feel both the nostalgic wave of joy that i got my first collection published at all and then one of sadness that new issues poetry prose which gave a start to so many poets including jericho brown and chet la sebree was recently shuttered by the university that should have protected it i have to link to the university of chicago press s distribution page here because that s the last place one can easily survey the incredible back catalogue you should grab copies while you can the future of that distribution relationship is tbd once october 2023 is behind us the new issues website is down perhaps for good since there s no longer staff to follow up on getting the url registration renewed ooof this is such a harrowing time for university presses and mfa programs on an infrastructure level which is in such sharp contrast the vitality of these programs in person people still sometimes find chicks dig poetry through a particular archived post or because someone mentions it while using an old bio note to introduce me at an event i don t plan on ever retiring the blog entirely unless until technology forces my hand even if it survives simply as one or two posts a year everyone should have a place to speak freely on the internet and recent months have made it clear that facebook twitter x and other social media platforms are only free up until it is the whim of their owners to dictate otherwise that surely applies to this place too i notice that one of my posts has been flagged for sensitive content though i can t tell which one but for now i ll treat it as the closest i have to a soapbox in the public square for timely updates you can always check www sandrabeasley com on a practical level here s what has happened since i last checked in i started three jobs in the space of six months i don t recommend that pacing for the sake of work life balance but it was worth it i m putting in more hours with maestro group finding that i enjoy consulting on messaging and other projects beyond writing blog posts on inter office communication styles i also began a faculty affiliation with the university of nebraska omaha s low residency mfa program which takes me to the lied lodge in nebraska city twice a year although not as glamorous a setting as the university of tampa where i taught until the program s closure in 2020 this mfa program doesn t run the risk of losing students to the temptations of ybor city in july i watched my first thesis student give his graduating presentations in spring 2023 i also made good on a commitment inked two years ago by serving as the mcgee visiting professor of creative writing at davidson college in north carolina i came very close to enrolling at davidson way back when so this opportunity meant a lot to me on many levels the roster of mcgee professors past is serious business the program was established in 1988 and includes dorothy allison henri cole maxin kumin thomas mallon d a powell therese svoboda and kazim ali when i was offered the position at the height of the pandemic it felt like a pipe dream and then last year s medical crisis threw things into doubt all over again but we made it happen somehow fortunately the college loaned us a place to stay the bottom level of a house just across the street from campus that made it possible to feel at home while still maintaining our beloved apartment in southwest washington dc and with fairly frequent 6 hour drives between the two addresses sal the wonder cat promptly investigated the nooks crannies and drawers of the new place i got to teach a 200 level introduction to poetry class and a 300 level creative nonfiction class both met seminar style tuesday and wednesday afternoons plus thursday office hours i became a regular at one of the bars on main street where i d sit reading or working on the proposal for the next book davidson professor author and cartoonist alan michael parker made sure i got to a wildcats basketball game and ate lancaster s bbq while i found my own way to good music in cornelius and readings hosted by charlotte lit that included gaby calvocoressi and melissa febos my husband restarted his artistic practice thanks to an affiliation with the mccoll center and i sometimes joined him for tuesday evening figure drawing sessions led by artist felicia van bork who happens to also be married to amp old friends from grad school and even high school days plus new friends in the form of my english department colleagues helped us feel welcome davidson is deeply invested in learning and the administration understands that learning cannot flourish in an atmosphere of scarcity there was just so much about the school that miraculously functioned the way it was supposed to anyone who has spent time in academia will understand my sense of wonder conversations were lively classrooms were bright and airy tech worked accessibility needs were met the copy machine had paper in it the campus was teeming with artworks and hosted a robust guest speakers that included natasha trethewey robin wall kimmerer and rhiannon giddens my 26 students were amazing the kind of curious and creative minds that any professor dreams of having in the classroom i m pretty sure i coaxed a few to fall in love with sestinas and golden shovels braids and abecedarians more importantly i hope i helped them connect with their voices on the page the nature of the mcgee gig is that it is one and done but we fell a little in love with north carolina life i m going back for a charlotte lit reading on december 1 maybe i can eventually get someone to take me out on lake norman in early spring american university queried about my return for the 2023 2024 school year the administration cautioned that while they wanted to count on me to teach locking in my schedule and advertising classes under my name i wouldn t actually receive my nine month contract offer until late summer and as always it would be budget permitting this is the operating norm of so many colleges and universities these days a perpetual limbo of contracts that are nonrenewable and provisional on paper but in practice are essential to the integrity of a department i love au s community and i m appreciative of all who advocated for me to be in the position of being asked to return in particular i believe it is so important to carry on richard mccann s legacy of workshopping creative nonfiction and i was excited to teach a new class i d developed on the ethics of writing creatively but that budget permitting wilted my spirit i couldn t figure out a sustainable way to stay the salary offered for a 3 3 wasn t enough to for us to afford our place in dc with me acting as a sole income provider managing medical debt and yet the job would be too time consuming to coexist alongside other work plus i d have to look forward come summer 2024 to figuring out my options all over again so i decided it was time to move on in a sense moving on is exactly what will permit me to stay around and continue taking part in au events including sitting on another half dozen mfa thesis committees i m not really going anywhere i just want to feel like an enthused alumna who occasionally visits writers in print and person not a burned out contract worker wondering how to convince others to assign quantifiable value to her service shortly after making that decision i sent out a burst of applications to residencies and one yielded a yes i ll be at the kimmel harding nelson center for the arts for one month beginning in mid september an opportunity that i could not have taken if committed being on a dc campus three days a week thankfully both my work with maestro group and the uno mfa is portable walking away from an opportunity to keep teaching at the institution that trained me as a writer feels wild and frankly inspires periodic pangs of regret but i m going to resist that conditioned ever looming sense of worry and take a chance on myself i ll probably have some other news to report before end of year but even if i don t i m grateful to be figuring it out little by little with my husband in our apartment by the southwest duckpond i can t wait to wrap up my summer by looking out from our balcony filled with plants sal of course continues to serve in a supervisory position we re really lucky that my position at davidson college offered a chance to get some perspective and to be honest stabilize our finances and i m extremely grateful that maestro and uno in a very short period of time have provided so much foundational trust and camaraderie for me to build on when envisioning the commitments of future years our family and friends have lifted us up over and over in the past year a lot has happened there s also a lot to look forward to here s the thing t he universe can only give you new opportunities if you free up space in your life to hold them posted by sandra at 4 52 am 7 comments older posts home subscribe to posts atom sandra washington d c my collections include made to explode count the waves i was the jukebox which won the barnard women poets prize and theories of falling which won the new issues poetry prize in 2018 i served as the editor for vinegar and char verse from the southern foodways alliance i am also the author of a disability memoir don t kill the birthday girl tales from an allergic life which doubles as a cultural history of food allergy my prose has appeared in the washington post the new york times poets writers and multiple anthologies www sandrabeasley com view my complete profile my books prose online i am cat lady virginia quarterly review to catch a sunset the american scholar big break a multiple choice test grist entering the whirlpool american poets the power of claiming my identity as a disabled writer lithub flexing the form contemporary innovation in the sestina american poets calculated risks virginia quarterly review people say washington dc isn t a creative place for artists they re wrong washingtonian flint and tinder understanding the difference between poetry of witness and documentary poetics poetry northwest what it s like dining out with extreme allergies and dietary restrictions washington city paper when even one drink could kill you washington post tony rice guitar hero new york...