Story/Stereo - This Friday, October 8

I host the Story/Stereo series at the Writer's Center, in which we pair two writers (chosen through our Emerging Voices fellowship competition) with a major DC musical force. We ask the writers to read about 15 minutes each--short & sweet. We ask the musicians to elaborate a bit more on their process than usual--to make the connection between their craft and the Center's focus on composition. Also, we ask them to rock the house.

Our next guests are...

-Poet Jenny Browne, author of At Once: Poems and The Second Reason, both from the University of Tampa Press. A former James Michener Fellow in Poetry at the University of Texas-Austin, she lives in San Antonio and teaches at Trinity University.

-Memoirist Jessica Handler, author of Invisible Sisters, one of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s “Eight Great Southern Books in 2009” and Atlanta Magazine’s “Best Memoir of 2009.” Handler teaches creative writing in Atlanta, Georgia.

-DJ Will Eastman, co-founder of U Street Music Hall and renowned force behind "Bliss," the monthly indiepop dance party held at the Black Cat ten years running.

All this talent will be coming together this Friday, October 8. It's a free show at 8 PM. You should be there! Especially if you haven't seen a Story/Stereo yet, which the Washington City Paper calls "our favorite free live-music program not set in the summer months." (Translation: Ok, ok, we're no Fort Reno Park Summer Concert Series. But I'd point out that unlike Fort Reno, we've got indoor plumbing.)

Today! Yesterday. Onward~

Oh: I'm reading at the Writer's Center today! Free and at 2 PM, details here.  I'll be opening for Ron Slate--a superb poet in town from Massachusetts, whose latest book is The Great Wave. Thought I might mix it up a bit, and read some "Chronic Medea" sonnets as well as selections from I Was the Jukebox.


Also, thanks to Philip Belcher and Daniel Casey's Gently Read Literature for a kind review of I Was the Jukebox, which included the following:

If Sandra Beasley’s first collection, Theories of Falling, showed something of this poet’s promise, her second collection and winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize, I Was the Jukebox, makes clear that we are in the hands of a talented writer with a strong voice, a vivid imagination, and a bright future. This new collection is all about voice, and Beasley’s is unmistakable and clear.

Aw, I am blushing. You can read the whole review here.


I'll be posting at length about my recent trip to Pittsburgh, where I was a guest on "The Unemployment Show," hosted by my friend Dave English. Yesterday, Dave and I played hooky from our lives and went on a road trip. The destination: Frank Lloyd Wright's Kentuck Knob. Pictures don't really do the place justice, because Wright focused on seamlessly integrating structure and landscape. But here's a glimpse:

Afterwards they tried to tell us it was too late in the day to visit the Sculpture Meadow, but we were having none of that. Here we are, being one with the art:

Later, we stopped off in the small town of Ohiopyle. We watched the sun ebb over the Youghiogheny River. We ordered a couple of local-brew Troeg's Sunshine Pilsners, which were served to us in frosty mason jars. I was introduced to the concept of "French fry salad," which is apparently a concoction native to the Allegheny part of Pennsylvania. Happiness.

I Like the Way It Hurts

I am Best American Poetried! I sat next to Sharon Olds (sweetheart) and Thomas Sayers Ellis (sweet shoes). I experienced the verbal cat's cradle that is David Shapiro. I was hidden from the audience by Gerald Stern's hat. Here is a video of Amy Gerstler's intro to the evening, followed by my reading of "Unit of Measure."

Beforehand I was lucky enough to be treated to dinner by a quartet of fellow writers--Dylan Landis, Janice Shapiro, Susan Coll, and Joanna Smith Rakoff. There is something very special about women turning out to support each other. (They even sat together in the auditorium, cheering me on.) Afterwards, poet Tom Healy hosted a kickass reception in his Fifth Avenue apartment. I asked him if he'd been able to make the reading, having a vague sense that he'd just been...on the road. Somewhere.

"No," he explained apologetically. "I didn't make it. I just got back from mountain climbing with Russell Banks." All righty then. Best get-out-of-jail-free card, ever.

Now I am back home in DC, and up to my knees up to my neck over my head with edits to Don't Kill the Birthday Girl. This is the nature of it; trying to return to a text and tweak the rendering of facts and metaphor, all while maintaining tone. I feel so lucky Crown is excited about the memoir. While in for a meeting last week, my editor sent out a call ("Sandra Beasley is here--stop by and say hello--") that elicited appearances by five staff-members in the space of five minutes. Still, oof. 200 pages of edits I have to feel confident in by Wednesday.

So I am doing what I often do in moments of crisis: perusing music videos on YouTube. Lately I'd have an affinity for Eminem's "Love the Way You Lie," featuring Rihanna. I don't know which pains me more: that Megan Fox looks so young (she's six years younger than me) or that Dominic Monaghan looks a bit old (and he's only four years older than me). It's the eyes that give him away. "If you've lived well, your smile lines are in the right places, and your frown lines aren't too bad," Sophia Loren once said. But when you're an artist, what equals "living well"?