Podcast appearances and mentions of Aimee Bender

Notes and Links to Vanessa Saunders' Work       Vanessa Saunders is a writer living in New Orleans. She teaches as a Professor of Practice at Loyola University New Orleans. She was the editor-in-chief of Helium Journal from 2013 to 2016. Her writing has appeared in Writer's Digest, Writer's Chronicle, Seneca Review, Sycamore Review, Los Angeles Review,  Nat. Brut, Entropy, PANK, Passages North, Stockholm Review of Literature and other journals.​​ She is at work on a novel of magical realism about whiteness and a book-length prose poem about the ethics of authorship.  Buy The Flat Woman   Vanessa's Website At about 1:45, Vanessa recommends places to buy her book, including Baldwin Books At about 2:55, Vanessa responds to Pete's question about her expectations for the Pub Day and beyond versus the realities At about 5:20, the two discuss Kafka's Metamorphosis and his parables and connections to Vanessa's The Flat Woman, as well as absurdities and allegory At about 9:30, Vanessa gives background on her early reading and writing, including her grandfather's and Sylvia Plath's influences, and Anne Carson's influence on The Flat Woman At about 13:30, Vanessa explains the unique British library system At about 15:25, Vanessa responds to Pete's questions about At about 16:35, Vanessa mentions Kelly Link, Sarah Rose Etter, Aimee Bender, and Hadriana in my Dreams as contemporary writers and writing that inspires him At about 18:20, Pete and Vanessa shout out the generosity and greatness of Aimee Bender, and Vanessa talks about meetings with inspiring writers At about 19:20, Pete shouts out Antonya Nelson's “In the Land of Men” for the 1,987,231 time in Chills at Will history At about 19:55, The two discuss the book's epigraph and seeds for the book At about 22:40, Vanessa expands upon stewardship and community and the environment in the formulation of her book At about 24:20, Pete wonders about Vanessa's decision to avoid naming her characters At about 26:40, Pete asks Vanessa  At about 29:10, the two discuss the lengthy “setups” that are chapter titles, or “headlines” At about 32:20, “leaky boundaries” and the family dynamic, including the absent father, are discussed At about 33:35, “Terrorism” and government cover-up in the book and its couching is discussed; Vanessa talks about birds as “indicator species,” as she learned from a group of “elite ornithologists” (!!!) with whom she lived At about 36:40, Vanessa talks about perpetual archetypes and storylines for “female villainy” At about 37:40, Bird grief and research and animals as stand-ins for humans as discussed in the book is explored by Vanessa At about 41:10, Vanessa, in explaining her views of animals and things and dominion, references a wonderful Louise Gluck line  At about 42:35, Pete and Vanessa discuss Bay Area history, anthropology. and its effects on their mindsets and writing At about 44:00, The two talk about the “patriarch[al]” POPS Cola, and the protagonist's early life after her mother is arrested and convicted  At about 45:45, Vanessa expands on the patriarchal society and the 2024 election's connections to the systemic misogyny on display in the book At about  49:50, The protagonist, depicted 10 years as “The woman,” and Part II are described, as well as the “chaotic aunt” and more ugly realities that confront the woman At about 51:45, Vanessa cites inspiration from an interview with Toni Morrison regarding family alienation  At about 53:10, Vanessa explores connections between humor and speculative fiction At about 54:10, The woman's earliest interactions with and attractions to the man are discussed At about 55:10, Vanessa responds to Pete's question about the man being drawn to Elvis, with a trip down memory lane of a San Francisco that may no longer exist  At about 59:20, Vanessa talks about setting the woman as working at the very company that has imprisoned her mother  At about 1:01:25, Vanessa responds to Pete's question about the grisly displays of hurt and dead animals, and the two discuss ideas of entertainment and willful (or not) ignorance about the brutality in Gaza and climate change At about 1:05:00, Pete complements Vanessa for humor on the page and asks if the man has “discovered the manosphere”  At about 1:08:35, Vanessa talks about social justice being “commodified” At about 1:10:40, Vanessa talks about initial hesitat[ion] in depicting the man as having some assorted wisdom, along with many horrible traits At about 1:11:40, Vanessa discusses a famous writer, who is not related to her :(  At about 1:13:00, Another Maurice Carlos Ruffin shoutout At about 1:14:20, Movie actors for the book's characters! At about 1:16:10, “You are hearing me talk”-Al Gore You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow Pete on IG, where he is @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he is @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and the podcast while you're checking out this episode.       Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. This week, his conversation with Episode 270 guest Jason De León is up on the website. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review.     Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl      Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting Pete's one-man show, his DIY podcast and his extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! This month's Patreon bonus episode will feature an exploration of the wonderful poetry of Khalil Gibran. I have added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show.    This is a passion project of Pete's, a DIY operation, and he'd love for your help in promoting what he's convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.     The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.     Please tune in for Episode 285 with The Philharmonik, Episode 58 guest, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, lyricist, music producer and genre defining artist. Recently, he has been nationally and globally recognized after winning the 2023 American Song writer contest and NPR's 2024 Tiny Desk Contest for his song “What's It All Mean?” The episode marks the one-year anniversary of his NPR Tiny Desk Contest win. This will be released on May 16.  

Host Meg Wolitzer presents two stories about selves obscured and revealed, by characters whose own identities are mysteries to them.  In Aimee Bender's “Un-Selfie, a woman reveals her extraordinary past to a stranger.The story was a commission for our 2022 Small Odysseys anthology, and is read by Alysia Reiner.  In our second story, “Best Western” by Louise Erdrich, a young wife struggles to maintain a romantic fiction, until the real world crashes in on her.  It's read by Patricia Kalember.

Humans are one species on a planet of millions of species. The literary collection Creature Needs is a project that grew out of a need to do something with grievous, anxious energy—an attempt to nourish the soul in a meaningful way, and an attempt to start somewhere specific in the face of big, earthly challenges and changes, to create a polyvocal call to arms about animal extinction and habitat loss and the ways our needs are interconnected. The book's editors, Christopher Kondrich, Lucy Spelman, and Susan Tacent, are joined here in conversation.More about the book: Creature Needs is published in collaboration with the nonprofit organization Creature Conserve. The following writers contributed new literary works inspired by scientific articles: Kazim Ali, Mary-Kim Arnold, Ramona Ausubel, David Baker, Charles Baxter, Aimee Bender, Kimberly Blaeser, Oni Buchanan, Tina Cane, Ching-In Chen, Mónica de la Torre, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Thalia Field, Ben Goldfarb, Annie Hartnett, Sean Hill, Hester Kaplan, Donika Kelly, Robin McLean, Miranda Mellis, Rajiv Mohabir, Kyoko Mori, David Naimon, Craig Santos Perez, Beth Piatote, Rena Priest, Alberto Ríos, Eléna Rivera, Sofia Samatar, Sharma Shields, Eleni Sikelianos, Maggie Smith, Juliana Spahr, Tim Sutton, Jodie Noel Vinson, Asiya Wadud, Claire Wahmanholm, Marco Wilkinson, Jane Wong.About the editors:Christopher Kondrich, poet in residence at Creature Conserve, is author of Valuing, winner of the National Poetry Series, and Contrapuntal. His writing has been published in The Believer, The Kenyon Review, and The Paris Review.Lucy Spelman is founder of Creature Conserve, a nonprofit dedicated to combining art with science to cultivate new pathways for wildlife conservation. A zoological medicine veterinarian, she teaches biology at the Rhode Island School of Design and is author of National Geographic Kids Animal Encyclopedia and coeditor of The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes.Susan Tacent, writer in residence at Creature Conserve, is a writer, scholar, and educator whose fiction has been published in Blackbird, DIAGRAM, and Tin House Online.Episode references:The Lord God Bird by Chelsea Steubayer-Scudder in Emergence MagazineThinking Like a Mountain by Jedediah Purdy in n+1Praise for the book:A thought-provoking and emotionally resonant read that stands out for its lyrical prowess and formal innovation, making it a significant contribution to contemporary literature as well as a key volume bridging the gap between the worlds of science and art.”—Library JournalCreature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation is available from University of Minnesota Press.

In this episode, Emma, Kynleigh, and Ashlynn talk about Aimee Bender's "Tiger Mending." In the story, a promising surgeon trades in her future career to work as a seamstress and is soon hired for a special job in Asia. Her sister, who is along for the ride, can't at first understand why she would leave everything for this strange new position. What is the nature of co-dependency? Do we ever hurt ourselves just so that others can put us back together again? We hope you enjoy.Email the show! carlilelcba@gmail.comMusic from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/bosnow/party-rock License code: 77JKG6ITA09KQZX0

Jessica Altina Lee Sanders's martial arts action comedy short “THE COCKTAIL PARTY” exploring female empowerment, premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival and won numerous international festival awards. The action packed, playful film tells the story of a cocktail party that turns into an unexpected martial arts action film. Jessica directed and produced the short film “End of the Line” which premiered at Sundance. The visual effects heavy film is based on a short story by acclaimed writer Aimee Bender, exploring themes of power and its abuse.  Jessica has tons of commercials we chat about and was hand-picked by Steve Jobs to launch Apple's Ipad. How cool is that? NEXT BOOTCAMP IS DECEMBER 14th, 2024 - SIGN UP NOW MY last in-person Bootcamp of the year is Saturday, December 14th in LA. Please take advantage of that last minute 2024 write-off. Limit 10 Filmmakers. MAGIC MIND MENTAL PERFORMANCE SHOTS The code is BRADY20 - try https://www.magicmind.com/BRADY20 chug it daily after your coffee. If you follow me on Instagram you know my geniune endorsment of this mighty mind power juice. You get 20% off for both one time purchase and up to 48% off if you choose a subscription like me. ONLINE COURSES Check out my Masterclass or Commercial Directing Shadow online courses. (Note this link to the Shadow course is the one I mention in the show.) All my courses come with a free 1:1 mentorship call with yours truly. Taking the Shadow course is the only way to win a chance to shadow me on a real shoot! DM for details. How To Pitch Ad Agencies and Director's Treatments Unmasked are now bundled together with a free filmmaker consultation call, just like my other courses. Serious about making spots? The Commercial Director Mega Bundle for serious one-on-one mentoring and career growth. Here's the Lbb Director's Playbook article sharing my pitch secrets. And my follow up that came out this week, How To Write Winning Treatments.  4+ NEW BEHIND-THE-SCENES I've uploaded more raw behind-the-scenes, with dailies, agency interaction, directing top talent and collaborating with my crew, all at Commercial Directing Masterclass. And you'll wanna check out the new courses, like Behind The Beard and Winning Director Treatments. Thanks to our editor Jake Brady We could not do the show without him and love this guy behind words. Need your pod spruced up? Check out his Podcast Wax. Thanks, Jordan This episode is just about 75 minutes. My cult classic mockumentary, “Dill Scallion” is online so I'm giving 100% of the money to St. Jude Children's Hospital. I've decided to donate the LIFETIME earnings every December, so the donation will grow and grow. Thank you. Respect The Process podcast is brought to you by Commercial Directing FIlm School and True Gentleman Industries, Inc. in partnership with Brady Oil Entertainment, Inc.

The multi-talented writer, comedian, and professor joins Joshua to talk about how authors like Joan Didion and Lorrie Moore helped open her eyes to the life experiences she could one day write about as a renowned short story author herself and soon to be published novelist. Books talked about include but are not limited to "Birds of America" by Lorrie Moore, "Play It As It Lays" by Joan Didion, "Sing To It" by Amy Hempel, "Why Did I Ever?" by Mary Robison "Willful Creatures" by Aimee Bender and "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain" and "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline" by George Saunders because Turek Books will begin and won't ever stop with Saunders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every crime scene hides a story. In this week's show, we hear about crime scenes and the stories they tell. Medical Examiner D.J. Drakovic, in Pontiac Michigan, explains how every crime scene is like a novel. (5 minutes)Act One: Reporter Nancy Updike spends two days with Neal Smither, who cleans up crime scenes for a living, and comes away wanting to open his Los Angeles franchise, despite the gore — or maybe because of it. (12 minutes)Act Two: Actor Matt Malloy reads a short story by Aimee Bender, from her book “The Girl in the Flammable Skirt," about what can be and cannot be recovered from a crime scene, or from anywhere. (12 minutes)Act Three: Sometimes criminals return to the scene of their misdeeds — to try to make things right, to try to undo the past. Katie Davis reports on her neighbor Bobby, who returned to the scene where he robbed people and conned people. This time, he came to coach little league. (22 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

Hoje não trazemos as recomendações do costume, mas sim uma lista de títulos que nos conquistaram, mesmo que não tenhamos lido todos. Fiquem com estes belos minutos de apreciação a palavras, e partilhem os vossos também! Livros mencionados neste episódio: - Astrid Parker Doesn't Fail, Ashley Herring Blake (1:35) - Encontro, Natasha Brown (4:15) - Penance, Eliza Clark (4:54) - You Made a Fool of Death with your Beauty, Akwaeke Emezi (10:40) - Call Me By Your Name, André Aciman (11:09) - A Insustentável Leveza do Ser, Milan Kundera (11:41) - História de Quem Vai e de Quem Fica, Elena Ferrante (12:59) - The Heart and Other Monsters, Rose Andersen (13:21) - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor (13:53) - In My Dreams I Hold A Knife, Ashley Winstead (14:31) - The Heart's Invisible Furies, John Boyne (15:04) - Have I Told You This Already?: Stories I Don't Want to Forget to Remember, Lauren Graham (16:26) - Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (17:17) - You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here, Frances Macken (17:55) - Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng (18:49) - Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel (19:24) - Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano (20:37) - How High We Go In the Dark & Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone, Sequoia Nagamatsu (21:08) - The Loudness of Unsaid Things, Hilde Hinton (21:51) - The Sun is Also a Star, Nicola Yoon (22:20) - How to Kill Your Family, Bella Mackie (22:43) - All the Lovers in the Night, Mieko Kawakami (23:08) - Swimming in the Dark, Tomasz Jedrowski (23:53) - Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love, Huma Qureshi (24:51) - Alone with You in the Ether, Olivie Blake (25:08) - On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong (25:15) - The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai (25:40) - Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan (26:14) - A gente mira no amor e acerta na solidão, Ana Suy (26:53) - We All Want Impossible Things, Catherine Newman (28:45) - All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (29:00) - These Precious Days, Ann Patchett (30:25) - Same Bed Different Dreams, Ed Park (32:00) - At Certain Points We Touch, Lauren John Joseph (32:15) - Stay True, Hua Hsu (32:42) - Tudo São Histórias de Amor, Dulce Maria Cardoso (33:51) - What We Kept to Ourselves, Nancy Jooyoun Kim (34:24) - Tudo Pode Ser Roubado, Giovana Madalosso (34:43) - If We're Being Honest, Cat Shook (35:08) - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, Elizabeth Smart (35:22) - Once Upon a Broken Heart, Stephanie Garber (35:52) - Enquanto o Fim Não Vem, Mafalda Santos (36:22) - I am, I am, I am, Maggie O'Farrell (36:45) - Pequena Coreografia do Adeus, Aline Bei (37:04) - What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver (38:09) - How to Love Your Daughter, Hila Blum (38:29) - How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water, Angie Cruz (38:54) - The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender (39:17) - Clap When You Land, Elizabeth Acevedo (40:07) - Apneia, Tânia Ganho (40:26) ________________ Enviem as vossas questões ou sugestões para livratepodcast@gmail.com. Encontrem-nos nas redes sociais: www.instagram.com/julesdsilva www.instagram.com/ritadanova twitter.com/julesxdasilva twitter.com/ritadanova Identidade visual do podcast: da autoria da talentosa Mariana Cardoso, que podem encontrar em marianarfpcardoso@hotmail.com. Genérico do podcast: criado pelo incrível Vitor Carraca Teixeira, que podem encontrar em www.instagram.com/oputovitor.

Sad news for all of us: producer Rachael Cusick— who brought us soul-stirring stories rethinking grief (https://zpr.io/GZ6xEvpzsbHU) and solitude (https://zpr.io/eT5tAX6JtYra), as well as colorful musings on airplane farts (https://zpr.io/CNpgUijZiuZ4) and belly flops (https://zpr.io/uZrEz27z63CB) and Blueberry Earths (https://zpr.io/EzxgtdTRGVzz)— is leaving the show. So we thought it perfect timing to sit down with her and revisit another brainchild of hers, The Cataclysm Sentence, a collection of advice for The End. To explain: one day in 1961, the famous physicist Richard Feynman stepped in front of a Caltech lecture hall and posed this question to a group of undergraduate students: “If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence was passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?” Now, Feynman had an answer to his own question—a good one. But his question got the entire team at Radiolab wondering, what did his sentence leave out? So we posed Feynman's cataclysm question to some of our favorite writers, artists, historians, futurists—all kinds of great thinkers. We asked them “What's the one sentence you would want to pass on to the next generation that would contain the most information in the fewest words?” What came back was an explosive collage of what it means to be alive right here and now, and what we want to say before we go. Featuring: Richard Feynman, physicist - The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (https://zpr.io/5KngTGibPVDw) Caitlin Doughty, mortician - Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs (https://zpr.io/Wn4bQgHzDRDB) Esperanza Spalding, musician - 12 Little Spells (https://zpr.io/KMjYrkwrz9dy)  Cord Jefferson, writer - Watchmen (https://zpr.io/ruqKDQGy5Rv8)  Merrill Garbus, musician - I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life (https://zpr.io/HmrqFX8RKuFq) Jenny Odell, writer - How to do Nothing (https://zpr.io/JrUHu8dviFqc) Maria Popova, writer - Brainpickings (https://zpr.io/vsHXphrqbHiN) Alison Gopnik, developmental psychologist - The Gardener and the Carpenter (https://zpr.io/ewtJpUYxpYqh) Rebecca Sugar, animator - Steven Universe (https://zpr.io/KTtSrdsBtXB7) Nicholson Baker, writer - Substitute (https://zpr.io/QAh2d7J9QJf2) James Gleick, writer - Time Travel (https://zpr.io/9CWX9q3KmZj8) Lady Pink, artist - too many amazing works to pick just one (https://zpr.io/FkJh6edDBgRL) Jenny Hollwell, writer - Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe (https://zpr.io/MjP5UJb3mMYP) Jaron Lanier, futurist - Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (https://zpr.io/bxWiHLhPyuEK) Missy Mazzoli, composer - Proving Up (https://zpr.io/hTwGcHGk93Ty)   Special Thanks to: Ella Frances Sanders, and her book, "Eating the Sun" (https://zpr.io/KSX6DruwRaYL), for inspiring this whole episode. Caltech for letting us use original audio of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. The entirety of the lectures are available to read for free online at www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu.All the musicians who helped make the Primordial Chord, including: Siavash Kamkar (https://zpr.io/2ZT46XsMRdhg), from Iran  Koosha Pashangpour (https://zpr.io/etWDXuCctrzE), from Iran Curtis MacDonald (https://zpr.io/HQ8uskA44BUh), from Canada Meade Bernard (https://zpr.io/gbxDPPzHFvme), from US Barnaby Rea (https://zpr.io/9ULsQh5iGUPa), from UK Liav Kerbel (https://zpr.io/BA4DBwMhwZDU), from Belgium Sam Crittenden (https://zpr.io/EtQZmAk2XrCQ), from US Saskia Lankhoorn (https://zpr.io/YiH6QWJreR7p), from Netherlands Bryan Harris (https://zpr.io/HMiyy2TGcuwE), from US Amelia Watkins (https://zpr.io/6pWEw3y754me), from Canada Claire James (https://zpr.io/HFpHTUwkQ2ss), from US Ilario Morciano (https://zpr.io/zXvM7cvnLHW6), from Italy Matthias Kowalczyk, from Germany (https://zpr.io/ANkRQMp6NtHR) Solmaz Badri (https://zpr.io/MQ5VAaKieuyN), from IranAll the wonderful people we interviewed for sentences but weren't able to fit in this episode, including: Daniel Abrahm, Julia Alvarez, Aimee Bender, Sandra Cisneros, Stanley Chen, Lewis Dartnell, Ann Druyan, Rose Eveleth, Ty Frank, Julia Galef, Ross Gay, Gary Green, Cesar Harada, Dolores Huerta, Robin Hunicke, Brittany Kamai, Priya Krishna, Ken Liu, Carmen Maria Machado, James Martin, Judith Matloff, Ryan McMahon, Hasan Minhaj, Lorrie Moore, Priya Natarajan, Larry Owens, Sunni Patterson, Amy Pearl, Alison Roman, Domee Shi, Will Shortz, Sam Stein, Sohaib Sultan, Kara Swisher, Jill Tarter, Olive Watkins, Reggie Watts, Deborah Waxman, Alex Wellerstein, Caveh Zahedi.EPISODE CREDITS Reported by - Rachael Cusick (https://www.rachaelcusick.com/)Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hi friends -- We've gotten so many great members for the accountability groups who are listeners of the podcast, but when people join they always say: this community is so much more than we expected! So we wanted to take a deep dive to explain everything the accountability workshop community offers. Even if you don't join us, there are great tips in this episode for how to keep your writing on track, so feel free to use as your own. A quick rundown of what we offer: a writing contract to keep your writing on trackbi-weekly group zoom meetings to share and get support monthly speakers zoom writing sessionsa slack groupand one-on-one coaching and brainstorming sessions. Oh, and a book club! Price: $150 a month, with a secret code for a discount on your first month. The discount is in the episode :) You pay as you go, and can drop out at any time.  Here's the Aimee Bender essay where it all came from: https://www.oprah.com/spirit/writing-every-day-writers-rules-aimee-benderMeeting times (every other week): Mondays: 1-2:30 pm est 8-9:30 pm estWeds:1-2:30 pm est8-9:30 pm estanniehartnett.com/workshop tessafontaine.com/accountability-workshopxo The Good Moms 

Vera Blossom, Aimee Bender, Ann Bohrer, and Mel Weisberger in conversation, moderated by Lorne Buchman. How do we experience the dynamic of the creative and the revelatory in our work and how do we parse the difference between the two (if at all)? Can the dynamic itself shed light on how we might “prepare for Revelation”?

Host Meg Wolitzer presents two stories about selves obscured and revealed, by characters whose own identities are mysteries to them.In Aimee Bender's “Un-Selfie, a woman reveals her extraordinary past to a stranger.  The story was a commission for our 2022 Small Odysseys anthology, and is read by Alysia Reiner.  In our second story, “Best Western” by Louise Erdrich, a young wife struggles to maintain a romantic fiction, until the real world crashes in on her.  It's read by Patricia Kalember.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://darsword.wordpress.com/2023/02/14/review-the-particular-sadness-of-lemon-cake-by-aimee-bender/

The Garden Of Sinners continues with a look back into the past, telling the story of the meet-cute that brought our heroes Mikiya and Shiki together! We're joined this time by guest Vivian Burning to talk about our favorite kimono-clad serial killer, some of our top things from last year, and some divisive sci-fi romance fiction.Next time we'll be covering Kara no Kyoukai: ever cry never life (Remaining Sense of Pain). For yuri teatime, we'll be discussing The Girl in The Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender, Soma, and the full run of Beauty And The Beast Girl.Link to Moon Archive Schedule Masterlist: moonarchive.art/scheduleSection Timestamps:yuri teatime - 4:39...and nothing heart (murder speculation part a) - 58:53outro - 2:46:53{LIST OF NON TYPE-MOON WORKS REFERENCED}Favs of 2022Shards of Honor by Lois BujoldLittle Ghost by Metal MotherThis episode carries content warnings for discussions of death, blood, gore/body horror, dismemberment, disability, and long term hospitalization, stalking, and serial killings.Featuring co-hosts Benn Ends (@bennends) and fen (@fenic_fox). Guest featuring Vivian Burning (@vivianburning)Email us at cryingrulesactually@gmail.com with questions, comments, and compliments.Cover art by Benn Ends, Intro music by Benn Ends, remaining music from Kara no Kyoukai.

Imaginem uma espécie de discos pedidos, mas com livros. Vocês deram-nos livros de que gostaram e nós recomendámos coisas dentro do mesmo género. Agora se nos dizem que já leram estes todos, vamos ter chatices. Estamos a brincar! Será que estamos?

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Recording of Off the Shelf Radio Show from WDLR with co-hosts George Needham and Nicole Fowles. Our guest this week is Warren Hyer, the Director of the Central Ohio Symphony. We speak with him today about all of the upcoming concerts. Our un-Recommendations include All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender, Year of Yes by Shaunda Rhimes, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Howard's End by E. M. Forster, and Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed. Read more about today's episode here. Listen live every Friday morning at 9 AM https://wdlrradio.com/program-schedule/off-the-shelf/  This episode originally aired on July 01, 2022

We joined novelist Aimee Bender for a phone call that turned into a backyard conversation over Zoom. You're going to hear the sound of California birds (and possibly the odd car) as we unpack the beautiful mundane — truly a joyful conversation, especially if you're a writer (or interested in the process of writing). We touch on using writing to capture the manifold reflections of reality, the strange in the mundane, knowing your own quirky brain, finding relief in failure, and letting go to experience amazing surprise and wonder in our lives.Aimee Bender is an American novelist and short story writer, known for her surreal stories and characters. Her first book was The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, a collection of short stories chosen as a New York Times notable book of 1998. Other notable publications since are her novel An Invisible Sign of My Own, which was named as a Los Angeles Times pick of the year, a collection of short stories, Willful Creatures, and the novel The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. Her most recent novel, The Butterfly Lampshade, was published in 2020. She lives and teaches in LA.Links:Fictionz, the podcast that did enacted episodes of Aimee's stories Off and Call My NameAimee Bender on Writing Without a Plan, Aimee's piece for Lit Hub that Nat mentions Intimations, Zadie Smith's book of essays Aimee mentionsTake a look at Aimee's website to see all of her writing in one place, and follow her on TwitterWe love hearing from our listeners! Leave us a voice message, write to the show email, or send us a DM on any of our socials.If our conversations support you in your own reframing practice, please consider a donation on our Patreon — where you can also hear bonus episodes. Subscribe to the Reframeables Newsletter. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram too.We love hearing from our listeners! Leave us a voice message, write to the show email, or send us a DM on any of our socials.If our conversations support you in your own reframing practice, please consider a donation on our Patreon, where you can also hear bonus episodes, or tipping us on Ko-fi. Subscribe to the Reframeables Newsletter. Follow us on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube too.

An introduction to your Here to Save You hosts Tessa Fontaine and Annie Hartnett. We share the details of the "writing accountability contract" we signed in 2018-- which is how we were able to write second books and also how we became friends. This contract we signed came from this Aimee Bender essay: Why the Best Way to Get Creative Is to Make Some Rules Books mentioned: Deep Work by Cal Newport I'll Show Myself Out by Jessi Klein Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett Bewilderment by Richard Powers Spoiler: You will meet our third co-host Ellen O'Connell Whittet in episode 4! Support the show

Aimee Bender is the author of six books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, which was a NY Times Notable Book, An Invisible Sign of My Own, which was an L.A. Times pick of the year, Willful Creatures, which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, which won the SCIBA award for best fiction, and an Alex Award, The Color Master, a NY Times Notable book for 2013, and her latest novel, The Butterfly Lampshade, which came out in July 2020, and was longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Award. Her books have been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and teaches creative writing at USC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Annie Hartnett, author of the 2017 novel Rabbit Cake, returns with what The Millions calls "One of the most anticipated books of 2022." Part mystical, part mystery, Unlikely Animals is filled with quirky characters, problematic animals, and chatty ghosts. Hartnett joins Marrie Stone to talk about the importance of following your obsessions and establishing a strong writing routine, as well as good tips on how to do it. (Hint: check out this article by Aimee Bender.) Hartnett also talks about mistakes she made in finding an agent and how to avoid them. Perhaps best of all, she shares some insightful tips for how to approach the revision process. Download audio.  (Recorded on April 7, 2022) (Broadcast on April 24, 2022)Writers on Writing is now available on Patreon. Check out our fun perks and special offers for members. For the first ten patrons who join, we're offering the benefits of the next highest tier for one month. Music and sound design by Travis Barrett Barbara DeMarco-Barrett: www.penonfire.com Marrie Stone: www.marriestone.com Travis Barrett: https://travisbarrett.mykajabi.com

Jackson (Kanahashi) Bliss is the winner of the 2020 Noemi Book Prize in Prose and the mixed-race/hapa author of COUNTERFACTUAL LOVE STORIES & OTHER EXPERIMENTS (Noemi Press, 2021), AMNESIA OF JUNE BUGS (7.13 Books, 2022), DREAM POP ORIGAMI (Unsolicited Press, 2022), the digital novella, DUKKHA, MY LOVE, & the newsletter, MIXTAPE. Born & raised in Traverse City, Michigan until the age of fourteen, he spent his adult life in SoCal, the Pacific Northwest, & the Midwest with stints in Argentina & Burkina Faso. Jackson has a BA in comp lit from Oberlin College, a MFA from the University of Notre Dame where he was the Fiction Fellow & the Sparks Prize winner, a MA in English, & a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from USC where he worked with Aimee Bender, Viet Thanh Nguyen, & TC Boyle. His stories & essays have appeared in the New York Times, Tin House, Ploughshares, Columbia Journal, Guernica, Longreads, Antioch Review, TriQuarterly, Fiction, Witness, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Vol.1 Brooklyn, ZYZZYVA, Joyland, Santa Monica Review, Juked, Quarterly West, The Daily Dot, Pleiades, the 2012-2013 Anthology of APIA Literature, Arts & Letters, Fiction International, Hobart, Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, & 3 am Magazine, among others. Jackson is the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bowling Green State University. He lives in LA with his wife and two stylish little dogs.Dream Pop OrigamiUnsolicited Press, 2022A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.Past Forward is a nonprofit organization dedicated to community building. As a public podcast service and distributor, our creative media is designed to amplify the voices of community leaders by providing a platform to share stories about civic engagement and cultural enrichment. For further learning, our book initiative provides access to millions of books at a discount price.

Episode 115 Notes and Links to Jennifer Fliss' Work        On Episode 115 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Jennifer Fliss, and the two discuss, among many other topics, Jen's early reading and writing and worldbuilding, her indirect route to professional writing, flash fiction's definition, the particular benefits and obstacles that come with flash fiction, and the profound and clever work in Jen's latest story collection.      Jennifer Fliss' flash collection, The Predatory Animal Ball, came out in December 2021. Her short story collection, As If You Had a Say, is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press/Curbstone Books in 2023.     She has a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin and a certificate in Literary Fiction from the University of Washington, and she's been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and she was selected for inclusion in the 2019 Best Small Fictions anthology. Her over 200 creative writing pieces have appeared in print and online in places like The Rumpus, PANK, The Washington Post, F(r)iction,The Kitchn, and elsewhere. She was the 2018/2019 Pen Parentis Fellow, and a recipient of a 2019 Artist Trust GAP award.   When not doing things associated with writing (this is rare), she can be found riding her bike, running, trying to learn the ukulele, pining for New York, intellectually sparring with her young daughter, and occasionally swinging on the flying trapeze (really.)   Buy The Predatory Animal Ball   Jennifer Fliss' Website   “LIFE AS A SERIES OF SMALL GESTURES: TALKING WITH JENNIFER FLISS” from The Rumpus, Dec. 2021   “Dandelions” Flash Fiction Story from Whiskey Paper   Jen's Article, "Flash, Back: Kafka's 'A Fratricide,' " from 2016 in SmokeLong Quarterly   The Predatory Animal Ball Review  At about 2:10, Jen talks about her lifelong love of trapeze   At about 4:50, Jen discusses her relationship with language and literature growing up, and books as “escape”   At about 7:25, Jen highlights a vivid example of her writing being unique and appreciated   At about 8:30, Jen details worldbuilding-maps, pictures, the whole deal!-at a young age   At about 9:40, Jen responds to Pete's questions about affecting literature in her adolescence, and Jen talks about the fluctuating importance of the “classics” in her reading life and a diverse reading list   At about 12:50, Pete makes a perhaps random Dave Matthews Band    At about 13:20, Pete and Jen opine on Kafka, especially The Metamorphosis, including how Kafka wrote flash fiction that was maybe unrecognized   At about 15:55, Jen discusses “ ‘Eureka' moments” in her path to becoming a professional writer    At about 21:00, Pete asks Jen what it was like and is like in creating characters who are their own entities    At about 22:45, Jen outlines her process of creating stories and getting ideas from disparate places   At about 24:40, Jen defines “flash fiction”   At about 27:40, Jen replies to Pete's question about contemporary writers and writing that thrill her-she cites Nnedi Okorafor's Akata Witch and Yōko Ogawa's The Memory Police, as well as work by Aimee Bender, Kelly Link, Carmen Maria Machado, and Karen Russell At about 30:35, Jen shouts out flash fiction inspirations-among them, Kendra Fortmeyer, Amy Barnes, and Megan Phillips; she    At about 32:00, the two discuss the power and greatness of the flash fiction (arguably) that is a major inspiration for the podcast title and the ethic of the podcast   At about 33:35, Pete wonders about any obstacles that may come up in flash fiction, and Jen expands upon ideas    At about 35:50, Pete asks Jen about dialogue's place and function in flash fiction   At about 37:15, Jen describes how her prior work in entertainment has informed her writing    At about 40:45, Pete cites interesting and unique titles for Jen's work and asks about the relationship between title and story material    At about 44:35, the two discuss the title story of the collection and ideas of “predators”; Jen illuminates the idea that so many of us are predators in different ways   At about 48:10, Jen gives background on the genesis of the collection's title story   At about 49:35, the two recount some themes from the collection, and particular stories and how predatory and loss of innocence themes come through   At about 51:00, “A Greater Folly is Hard to Imagine” and its incredible links to reality (see asterisk at bottom of story) are discussed    At about 53:00, themes of penitence and trauma and abuse in the collection are discussed   At about 54:05, Jen talks about ideas of show and undisclosed thoughts and feelings and these topics' effect on her story “Emily Beside Herself”    At about 57:20, the two discuss ideas of loss with regards to motherhood and moving with trauma, concepts that are referenced in multiple stories, and Pete asks Jen about any burden on her as writer of such heavy topics   At about 1:01:20, Jen describes an ethic of Judaism that directs her writing and her life   At about 1:04:20, Jen reads her story “Dandelions” from Whiskeypaper, and edited by the great Leesa Cross-Smith   At about 1:09:00, Jen gives out her contact info and social media information      You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode.  This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form. The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.      Please tune in for Episode 116 with Noel Casler, A STAND-UP COMEDIAN, ACTOR, MUSICIAN AND WRITER. His 25 years of experience in the industries, including working on The Celebrity Apprentice with The Former Guy, has informed his comedy writing. The episode will air on March 31.   

It's Infrastructure Week on Thresholds! Kind of! Jordan talks with Aimee Bender, author of The Butterfly Lampshade, about how developing a structure can change your writing life, about the paralysis of options, and creating the character of Francie in her latest book. Aimee Bender is the author of six books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) which was a NY Times Notable Book, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000) which was an L.A. Times pick of the year, Willful Creatures (2005) which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010) which won the SCIBA award for best fiction, and an Alex Award, The Color Master, a NY Times Notable book for 2013, and her latest novel, The Butterfly Lampshade, which came out in July 2020, and was longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Award. Her books have been translated into sixteen languages. Her short fiction has been published in Granta, GQ, Harper's, Tin House, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, and more, as well as heard on PRI's “This American Life”and “Selected Shorts”. She lives in Los Angeles with her family, and teaches creative writing at USC. For more Thresholds, visit us at www.thisisthresholds.com Be sure to rate/review/subscribe on your favorite podcast platform! -------------------------------- This episode is presented in collaboration with the 2021 Miami Book Fair. Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is just one of the many writers from around the world participating in the nation's largest gathering of writers and readers of all ages. This year's Miami Book Fair takes place online and in person from November 14th to November 21st. Please visit miamibookfair.com for more information, or follow MBF at @miamibookfair Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For novelist Aimee Bender, magic is not a limited resource. Nor is it something to be feared, coveted, mistrusted or monetized. In her view, rather, magic is an everyday occurrence woven into the fabric of our lives captured in fleeting moments of transcendence all too often overlooked.  No wonderment, however small, seems to escape Aimee's notice. And as her readers can attest, her comfort with uncanny occurrences can be found throughout her celebrated novels and essays. Whether she's writing about a child's ability to taste a parent's depression in her bestselling novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake or a young woman confounded by inanimate objects that spring to life in The Butterfly Lampshade—Amy's work gives voice and validity to the things we know and feel but can't explain.  Aimee and Lorne share an interest in exploring the unknown and making sense of it in their writing. For me it's best summed up by the subtitle of my book: from spaces of uncertainty to creative discovery. Whereas Aimee describes her connection to this terra incognita as a way of acknowledging “the presence of ghosts” and making room for a “different kind of thinking.”  Aimee is the rare artist whose warmth and gregariousness match her vast talents. And as you'll soon hear, this conversation was no exception. As she sought to illuminate the mysterious and sometimes tortured nature of the writing process, she regularly invoked her students with deep affection. So it should come as no surprise that her creative writing classes at USC are among the most popular in the program. Aimee and I also discussed the way creativity provides a “lab” for experimenting with uncertainty and how, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, writing, on a good day, can feel like dipping a cup into the river of ideas and delighting at the surprises discovered within it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Aimee Bender graduated from UC Irvine and teaches at USC. Her books have received accolades in all the major outlets: from the New York Times, LA Times, & MCSweeney's, to Oprah. Her latest novel, published July 2020, is The Butterfly Lampshade. When I was rattling off the list of Bender's books, Kate deadpanned, “So she's basically taken all the best titles from the universe.” In this episode, Bender reads from her latest novel. Of it, an astute reviewer wrote, “[it's] as if we'd shrunk to fit inside a Joseph Cornell diorama... we feel as Francie does: that anything and anyone might be a two-way street, capable of passing from our side into theirs by means of illustration—or from their side into ours by means of emanation...and after ‘slipping into being...we really ought not to be here.'” Listen as we discuss why exposing your kids to things like modern dance and The Blue Man Group is a good thing, how to keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on but also feel confident enough to vary your form as a writer, and remembering the mindless goodness (and potential writing prompt) in just staring at an object in space. (N.B. Your phone's screen does not count.)Honorable Mentions:Flannery O'Connor's reminder to us all:“There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once.” (from O'Connor's essay “The Nature and Aim of Fiction”) Best writer note to your younger self: “Write what you like, kid. Enough of this posturing.”Aimee Bender's Incredible Backlist:The Particular Sadness of Lemon CakeThe Girl in the Flammable Skirt: StoriesThe Color MasterAn Invisible Sign of My OwnWillful Creatures: Stories

Photo by Mark Miller. In this week's show, I talk to fiction writer Aimee Bender about the subterranean connections that literary fiction makes between one and oneself, and between one and others; the difficult epistemology of sanity; the possibility of fiction not driven by interpersonal conflict; and other subjects of interest.

Aimee Bender is the author of six books, including both novels and short story collections. Her latest novel, The Butterfly Lampshade, came out in July of 2020 and was listed by Publisher's Weekly as one of the best novels of the year. Bender joins Marrie Stone to talk about the book's inspiration and construction. In the process, she exposes the creative fodder that's gifted to us by our own childhoods. She talks about how imposing time limitations on her writing allows her access to scary places, and how to listen to words that "shimmer." Those words and phrases can be the keys that guide your book in the right direction. Bender teaches creative writing at USC, has taught several other fiction workshops, and written several essays on the craft. She brings that wealth of experience and reflection to this interview to impart a lot of wisdom for both beginning and advanced writers. Download audio.   (Broadcast date: September 1, 2021)

David Naimon is a writer of prose and poetry, as well as the host of the literary podcast Between the Covers. Victoria Buitron is a writer and translator with an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University. Aimee Bender is the author of six books of fiction including, most recently, the novel The Butterfly Lampshade.Continue reading "Naimon x Buitron x Bender" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Naimon is a writer of prose and poetry, as well as the host of the literary podcast Between the Covers. Victoria Buitron is a writer and translator with an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University. Aimee Bender is the author of six books of fiction including, most recently, the novel The Butterfly Lampshade.Continue reading "Naimon x Buitron x Bender"

I want to thank you for listening and for subscribing to Faster Than Normal! I also want to tell you that if you're listening to this one, you probably listened to other episodes as well. Because of you all, we are the number one ADHD podcast on the internet!! And if you like us, you can sponsor an episode! Head over to https://rally.io/creator/SHANK/ It is a lot cheaper than you think. You'll reach... about 25k to 30,000 people in an episode and get your name out there, get your brand out there, your company out there, or just say thanks for all the interviews! We've brought you over 230 interviews of CEOs, celebrities, musicians, all kinds of rock stars all around the world from Tony Robbins, Seth Godin, Keith Krach from DocuSign, Danny Meyer, we've had Rachel Cotton, we've had  the band Shinedown, right? Tons and tons of interviews, and we keep bringing in new ones every week so head over to https://rally.io/creator/SHANK/ make it yours, we'd love to have you, thanks so much for listening!  Now to this week's episode, we hope you enjoy it! —— Aubrey Hirsch is the author of Why We Never Talk About Sugar, a short story collection. Her stories, essays and comics have appeared in The New York Times, Vox, The Nib, American Short Fiction, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. You can learn more about her at www.aubreyhirsch.com or follow her on twitter @aubreyhirsch.  Today we're talking with Aubrey about Imposter syndrome, embracing criticism, and enduring the word “no”, amongst other sweetnesses of the creative life. This is a goody, enjoy!  —— In this episode Peter and Aubrey discuss:     2:14 - Intro and welcome Aubrey Hirsch!! 3:35 - Tell us about growing up, how you became a writer, and how you learned to embrace hearing the word “no”. 5:40 - On becoming a professional writer.  Ref:  Duotrope 7:40 - One is a number. Oh yes it is!  8:00 - How long have you been a full-time writer? Ref:  Aimee Bender 9:15 - On how it's still sort of a “This is how it's always been done” society. Ref:  “Black Boy” by Richard Wright  11:03 - On getting over the Sophomore jinx 11:52 - On her teacher Maureen McKeil's contextualizing rejection and keeping perspective 15:50 - Illustrations on Imposter syndrome  16:50 - How do you deal with rejection and Imposter syndrome? 19:24 - The story of Peter's first condo purchase 20:40 - On the battle between yourself- and You yesterday. 22:57 - How do you let yourself enjoy the successes you have achieved? 24:52 - What do you do to shut off, get away and unplug?   How can people find you?  @AubreyHirsch on Twitter  INSTA and via her website www.aubreyhirsch.com  Her book “Why We Never Talk About Sugar” is OUT NOW! 26:11 - Thank you Aubrey!  Guys, as always, we are here for you and we love what the responses and the notes that we get from you. So please continue to do that, tell us who you want to hear on the podcast, anything at all, we'd love to know.  Leave us a review on any of the places you get your podcasts, and if you can ever, if you ever need our help, I'm www.petershankman.com and you can reach out anytime via peter@shankman.com or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterThanNormal on all of the socials. It really helps when you drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse!  27:13 - Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits TRANSCRIPT:  — Hi guys. My name is Peter Shankman. I'm the host of Faster Than Normal.  I want to thank you for listening, and I also want to tell you that if you've listened to this one, you probably listened to other episodes as well of Faster Than Normal.  We are the number one ADHD podcast on the internet, and if you like us, you can sponsor an episode.  Head over to https://rally.io/creator/SHANK/ It is alot cheaper than you think. You'll reach... God about 25….30,000 people in an episode and get your name out there, get your brand out there, your company out there, or just say, thanks for all the interviews we brought you over 230 interviews of CEOs, celebrities, musicians, all kinds of rock stars all around the world from we've had... God, who have we had...we've had Tony Robbins, Seth Goden, Keith Krach from DocuSign, we've had Rachel Cotton, we've had  the band Shinedown, right? Tons and tons of interviews, and we keep bringing in new ones every week, so head over to https://rally.io/creator/SHANK/ and grab an episode, make it yours, we'd love to have you, thanks for listening.  Here's this week's episode, hope you enjoy it. Hey guys, Peter Shankman welcome to our episode of Faster Than Normal. I hope you've been enjoying the summer. FTN has taken a bit of a break uh, to really just sort of get our brains back and do some travel and, and, and, uh, get outside and get some fresh air. It feels like about 16 months since we've gotten some fresh air. So it's nice to have done that, but we are thrilled to be back. And so glad that you stuck with us, although you probably just, this probably just auto downloaded and you didn't really have a choice as to whether because I mean, who knows how to unsubscribe to a podcast, it's the most annoying thing on your phone; they just show up and you dismiss them because come on, we don't have time for that.    Anyway, either way. I am still thrilled that you're here and I want to welcome our guest this week. Aubrey Hirsch. Aubrey. I found Aubrey on Twitter because she's actually very, very funny. And she's one of the few people on Twitter who make me laugh without rolling my eyes and that is a feat of, uh, no small regard. So Aubrey is the author of Why We Never Talk About Sugar, which is sort of story collection and she's right. And she is a graphic artist. Her stories, essays and comics have appeared in the New York times, Vox the Nib, American Short Fiction, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She lives online @ www.AubreyHirsch.com She is on the interwebs @AubreyHirsch, and Aubrey is joining us today from California, where hopefully the weather is better, actually. It's getting sunny out. All right. So maybe the weather is the same. Welcome, Aubrey.  Thank you for taking the. Thanks for having me on. No. Cool. I was amazed. You responded, you responded so quickly to my, I was, I was DM-ing you? Um, when I, when I say to the DMS that, Hey, I'd love to have new podcasts. I was actually on the Peloton bike and so my endorphins and everything were like sky high, which is why I sent you like seven messages in a row. Each one continued just a little bit more info, as opposed to just sending you one with everything. So apologies for that. Um, but yeah, you responded really, really fast and I really appreciate you taking the time. Um, so w we're going to dive into imposter syndrome. The, the, the, the, the, the, our conversation is going to center on that, and I'm entirely in that.   It's going to be some of that. Tell me about your sort of growing up, becoming a writer per se. Writers and, and are right up there with salespeople as, as being, as at learning the word, no at a very early age and learning to deal with it. So, you know, I'm assuming you were in school when you were pitching and you were, you know, getting out of school and you sort of writing, you sort of pitching your stuff and you got, uh, When I was doing it in college, I'm probably a little older than you, I would get at least a courtesy of a reply. Cause we had to do these by mail. Right. We'd have to send out pitching for weeks by a mail. Now it's just email. So, you know, the, when they don't respond to, they say no it's much quicker and in your face and more hurtful. So talk about, uh, what it was like starting out and how you sort of learned to embrace it. Sure. Yeah, those were definitely some hard learned lessons for me. Um, like you, I started in the mailing era and how I got started is in college. I was actually was a chemistry major for the first couple of years and I took a writing class. Um, as a core requirement and for the final project of that writing class, our professor made everybody send a short story out to a literary magazine. So we had to learn the process. We had to put the cover letter together and we had to put it on an envelope and give it to her. She would look at it, you know, give us our grade and then she put them all in the mail. So I waited patiently as you do when these things happened by meal and definitely expected to know, you know, she told us everyone will get rejected, but that's how you are going to learn to get your first rejection. But, uh, I actually got an acceptance in the mail and was like, oh my God. You know? Well, this was like six months later. So it's like a different school year. And I told my professor and she was like, oh my God, you know, that's never happened before. That's so exciting. And so now of course, I feel like I'm some sort of genius, like who sells their first story that they've ever submitted. Like obviously, um, So, uh, I changed my major. I decided, well, maybe I hadn't better be scientists. I got some advice about, uh, getting an MFA degree, which is a degree I'd never heard of. And then of course I headed into like five solid years of nothing but rejections left and right. Like, not even like a positive thing where you get the rejection slip, but it appears that a human hand has touched it. There's like a little bit of ink on it somewhere. Or like, it's like the corners slightly bent and you're like, oh my God, like someone, uh, put this rejection and thoughtfully. No, it was all just like, we hate you. You have no talent. We wish you were dead. Don't ever talk to us again. It was like that. For many, many years, um, until I kind of figured out how to get like a little bit more strategic with it. And I found, um, do a trope, which aggregates statistics from writers who are accumulating rejections. And they'll tell you about like, Acceptance rates from different magazines and things like that. So I started targeting ones that had really high acceptance rates, figuring it'll just be good to have something in my bio because nobody knows these magazines. Like nobody knows them. All right. They don't know like one small literary magazine from another. Um, so as long as you just have something to say in your bio, I think that's helpful. I also started publishing poems. Um, because they're shorter. And so they take up less room in the magazines and magazines can publish more of them. So I published a couple of those. And then when I had a bio that started to look like maybe I was actually a writer, it became easier to get like generous reads, I think from staff. And then, you know, you can, like, I can remember seriously creating a course called pitching the strategy because that is. I've never. And I think that's probably the science side of you, uh, that, that comes in and looks at this as a, you know, as a, as a, as a, as an experiment, like, all right. My, my thesis statement is this, I'm going to test this.   I love that. But you went and looked at who has higher acceptance rates, and then use that. I remember. When I turned 30, uh, as I say, years ago, I wanted to, um, throw a party and I convinced a company, one company to sponsor it. And then on that strength, that one company, I send emails out to 100 different companies and said, I have a number of sponsors on the premise that one was a number and that's what you have to do. Right. And so, so it works.  That's awesome. It is.  So how long have you been to, how long have you been writing now and, and calling yourself a writer and, and pitching and getting kind of gets easier. I mean, over time you start to develop the relationships with the editors and things like. Definitely. Yeah, it gets easier. And people start to like, know you a little bit and you start to have people who ask you for work. Um, which is great. I, that's a good question. I mean, I, I always liked to write when I was little. I think I just, I thought, you know, because in school we, we never read writers who were alive. You know, until I got to college. So I kinda thought like, saying that you want to be a writer was like saying one should be like a blacksmith. Like, it would be fun, but you missed the window, right? Like that's, that's done now. The books have all been written. So you have her find something else to do and no more books to write, sorry, that's it it's over. And then when I was in college and I read like Aimee Bender and so I was like, oh, damn, like, oh, okay. Like chicks do this. Oh, that's cool. And then like, you could do this now and you can do it like, so it sounds like more interesting. And you're talking about like more, um, current topic. Like I know that like, sweet. Uh, so it started in like a more concerted way then, like in college. And then I went right from college to my MFA, which is a funny story also. And then, um, you know, it kind of went on. I think that's one of the problems that you've, you've touched on the problems is that is that we are still very much a that's the way it's always been done type of society.   Um, you know, I can list every single book that I was required to read in junior high or high school. And then on a much shorter list, I can, I can remember every single book I was required to read in junior high or high school that actually touched me. Um, you know, and I remember, uh, the, the one that did and still to this day does, was Black Boy by Richard Wright. And I have probably read that. A dozen times since I had to read it in high school. And, you know, I mean, I love Shakespeare and I read ByroN and things like that. But, but to look at, um, the stuff that we were sort of forced to read it, put, I think every student has, it's very rare to have a student that doesn't get that bad taste in their mouth because they're forced to do it. Right. And they're forced to do it. People that died 300 years ago. Any words that aren't spoken today? Um, you know, I remember, uh, when I was, I think it was in college when, uh, Bosler, mins, Romeo and Juliet came out with Claire Danes, Claire Danes, who now is the mother of my daughter's school friend, which is just weird shit because she's two and nothing else, but I'm in my head but you know, I remember watching that movie and hearing Leonardo DiCaprio speak in, in Shakespearian. Okay. Okay. Now it makes sense, right? Because when you're reading something by a 400 year old dead guy, everyone in there, no matter how, you know, Juliette was 13 by, she sounds like a 400 year old dead woman and so it takes that, you know, you have to sort of look, I don't think we're smart enough at that age to sort of put that into perspective. So, so you have been doing this for years and let's, let's move on. Let's talk about the concept of rejection because you said, yeah, I got my first hit and then nothing for fighting.   I mean, that's actually, I went out on my own for the same reason. My first job with America Online was fun. And when I got laid off from there, I got my second job, assuming it would be fun. And every job after that sucked and like, that's okay; you, you experienced the, not the norm to begin. So that knocks you around a bit because you're like, wait, this is supposed to be easy.   It was easy. The first. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely did have the, the very, very, very deep seated fear that like, oh, maybe I just only had that one bad story in me. Like, did I, did I peak? Did I write my one good story when I was 19? And then that's it. That's all I got. I got nothing. Um, and that, that was hard, you know, it didn't feel good, obviously. Luckily for me, I had a very, very good undergrad professor Maureen McKeil a science fiction writer. She's the one who had us do that final project to send out a story. And because she wanted to get out in front of it and insulate us from the terrible feelings of rejection, she put it into perspective. In a way that when I was teaching, it was like my only goal as a professor was to do that same, give my students that same gift of like contextualizing the rejection to say, this is not personal, this is not a comment on your talent, this is not a prediction of the future. This is one particular reader on one particular day. And that one particular magazine took a pass. You know, it's not that deep and you shouldn't take it like it is. That was incredibly helpful for me. And I think it allowed me to like kind of power through all those years. And I also think those years are really important too, because when I wrote that first story, I didn't have any foundational fiction writing education. I was just. Writing it, you know, I was just writing a thing that was in my brain and I put it on the paper. Right. Then I had the unfortunate experience of getting a lot of creative writing education. That were like you no, no, no, no. Showed on towel. Like, no, no, no. Not with that. You know, like this is too fast, this is too slow. Um, and also this like constant. Forcing into us of like the quiet domestic realism of the stories that you read in graduate school. Right. Of like the, the man at the bar smoking and like the, the guy in the unhappy marriage, uh, at home breaks his glasses. And that's the huge, like pivotal moment of the story, like the broken whiskey glass, you know, or whatever the thing is. And that was just not, I think what I was supposed to be writing, but I was trying, and it was not good. So it wasn't until after graduate school, when I kind of like. She was able to shake that off and no longer had to give my manuscripts to 10 other students who were in the same class and think about, you know, what they were going to say. It's like, you can almost run the workshop in your head and you're writing to those people. I was just writing it, you know, for myself that I kind of rediscovered the kinds of things that I wanted to write about. And that was when I started getting published. Freer. I mean, a lot of what I remember.  Uh, you know, when I first started, cause I have, I have a journalism background as well, I mean, I, I went to BU as a Journalism major, and I remember that a lot of what I was dealing with at the time was writing things in a very specific way that they wanted to see them, even if it didn't feel right. And when it didn't feel right, I had a really hard time getting it on paper. Um, I have my editors now for all of my books and they're like, We we know exactly what you want to say, we just need to clean it up a little bit, but you know, how did you, how did you come to the point where you just got it down? I'm like, I literally just, I, I booked a flight somewhere, sat down for eight hours and rode, I vomited out for eight hours and here's, here's the result. Um, but yeah, you, you, you are, you're taught, I think the same thing also as a kid in like math class. Showing my work was always horrible, but I was never going to show you my work, but I could get the right answer in my head and that should be worth something that's going to, if I ever start an education, like a cult, it's going to be even not having to show your work; that's something I think, um, talk for a second. So, so, you know, getting, and I'm sure you still get rejected from time to time, right? We all, we all have that, um, you know, going after a speaking gig, someone else gets it. I wanted it, whatever. So the teacher gave you that brilliant, brilliant insight, the concept of not taking it personally. And I wish someone had told me that the same way. I mean, it's still, uh, it still stings, right? It doesn't sing anywhere near as much. And I've worked really, really hard. And I, you know, with a wonderful therapist for like 20 something years, I'm about nine you're saying, but the concept of imposter syndrome is all too real no matter what you do, it is an existing thing. It, it exists. It's there. Um, It is. I find it's very easy. Uh, when it comes to imposter syndrome to go down a spiral where, you know, you start with one thing and then you happen to notice another thing and you happen to all of a sudden you've, you know, it's like when you see a red car and then you see 50 red cars, all of a sudden you've seen every single, uh, insult or, or, or response to a tweet or whatever. Um, you haven't seen any of the positive ones because you're not looking for them because you're so now focused. On the negatives and assuming you're the absolute worst person in the world. Right. So, and, and, and for guys, you got to see what, what, what, what Aubrey tweeted? Um, a couple of, I guess we, couple weeks ago it was from money Python. It was the, uh, oh, it's just a flesh wound. It's the, guy's getting his legs cut off in his arms, cut off. It's brilliant. And it's exactly that it is how you feel, but you get enough of those slush wounds and, and you're gonna die. Right. And so what do we, so what have you learned. That you can share with the audience in the world? How do you deal with it? Because you know, as talented as you are sometimes, we are not going to please everyone. Definitely.    I mean, well, like, first of all, for clarity, I definitely want to say it still feels terrible, you know, it's, it's always painful. It doesn't feel good. And I think especially now, like in the age of Twitter, you're on there for five minutes, get consumed with professional jealousy. You know, it's like here here's, everyone's like publisher's marketplace screenshots and oh, look, I'm an indie bestseller. And like, oh look, I'm a finalist for this award that you have never even heard of. And like, can't wait to go into my writing residency. Yeah. You know, whatever fancy it's, it's really hard. It's just, it's all in your face all the time. And of course not enough of us are talking about. The rejections alongside of those things. Like, it's not like here's my one tweet about my birthright writing residency, and here's my 15 tweets about the ones that rejected me for all these years. And some people do. And I always love seeing that, but you know, we have to like, keep that in mind for context also, I think like it's helpful to. I always think about the most insidious part of imposter syndrome being the kind of like moving goalpost. I did a panel at AWP one year about imposter syndrome and one of the questions they asked us is like, when did you start to feel like you belonged there? And I was like, um, I'm still waiting. I don't know. I remember going, I remember going there like as a grad student and being like, well, I, you know, I've only published one thing, so obviously I don't want it. Then once I'd published many things, it was like, okay. I post many things, but like, I, I don't have a book. I mean, you got to have a book. Right. And then I had a book and it was like, well, it's short stories. It's not a novel, you know, I haven't published a novel, so I don't really go on here. It's like, I have a teaching guide, but it's not tenure track. It's like, well, okay. I have a tenure track job, but you know, I'm not like the fit and you can't, you'll never get it. Like, it's always, the next thing is. I'm going to make you feel secure in your identity, your professional identity. And I think like the sooner that you can come around to that idea that it's not real, the easier it is to kind of live in the feeling of your professional identity that you have now. Um, and that kind of like makes me feel more comfortable. That's a brilliant way to think about it. It was funny when I sold my last company. Um, I've never told this story before, and I can tell you because you'll, you'll appreciate that reference. Um, I sold my company around the same time that someone, the person who owned media bistro sold hers. Um, and we all know who that is. Lovely, lovely person invited me. I had just sold my company and it was about a year later and I had just bought my apartment and we were in touch and she invited me over to her house or her apartment in the city was she had just bought as well. And I was all excited cause I had this, I bought this two bedroom condo and man in New York city a two bedroom condo means you've made it! And I walked in and she had bought a floor. And the top floor and it had roof access and she's like, oh, you gotta look at the outdoor shower… and when I got home I remember walking in and saying I hate this fucking apartment and just three hours ago it was the greatest purchase of my life. Yeah. And that is literally what we do. And, and, you know, I had someone, a friend of mine said, dude, there's always gonna be a bigger, yeah. He goes, where is the apartment you're in now bigger than the one you're in 10 years ago. He's like, start there, you know?    And that's, that's a good way to think of it, but you're right. There's always going to be someone. And, and what you mentioned about seeing everything online, of course, no, one's going to post their crap days.  I, you know, I'm training for a big iron man triathlon right now. And I post, you know, after every run, I, I post a great run with a great times as opposed, to the eight fucking two times I used to even stayed in bed all day. You know, we don't share that stuff. So I think that the battle has to be between you, and you yesterday. Between you and everyone else.  Yeah. I think that's a great way to look at it. And I also think we describe other of people's successes to like their talent and hard work.And we just, we describe our own successes to like a lucky break or like a weird, like, I remember when I would always read Modern Love in the New York Times and be like, oh my gosh. And I would see people Facebook status, like. I would be like, oh my God, I'd be like consumed with like jealousy and burning inside. And then I published a column in Modern Love and I felt very much like, oh man, I don't know how I snuck in there! Haha! Like, like no, and people would be like, oh my God, I'm so jealous. And I'm like, really? It's like, it was nothing, you know, it was just like a weird, random, like lottery draw. Right. But of course, when it's you, it feels like that when it's everyone else, it doesn't feel like that that's phenomenal. I mean, the story that I tell to everyone is every morning I wake up and I'm sure that today's gonna be the day that the New York Times has a front page story on how I'm such a fraud. And it's all love every day when they don't well obvious, obviously, because I'm not important enough because you know, time to do a front page story. It is literally every single day. And, and, and somehow we wake up and we put on the face and we, we, we, you know, Get dressed and we get out there and we do it again. But yeah, it is, it is brutal, um, in that regard because it is very, I think that the more success you have, the easier it is for imposter syndrome to reel its rear its head, because you just get there, the more success you have, the more you're surrounded by other successful people. And if you're believing that yours is the only one who's fake and everyone else is real, it's constantly become, why are they letting me to this club?   Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And there's always going to be the thing that's going to, you know, prove it to yourself. And then when you achieve that thing, the next thing is just right there. Just out of reach. So talk to me to two more questions. Talk to me. Number one about how do you let yourself enjoy the successes?   Yeah. Oh man. Yeah. That's that's tough one. I don't know. I mean, I definitely do. I definitely do enjoy them. You know, like whenever I have a piece go live, I get excited. It feels really good. You know, like I tweet it and then I, I like very excited to watch my notification. To get that sweet, sweet internet validation that we all need. Um, you know, I have gotten to a place like where I really truly hate to say this out loud because I sound like an asshole, but where I can kind of like see it for its own thing and feel good about having made it, you know, like all be like- I'm proud of myself because I made this thing and it looks really nice or like, oh, my drawing skills are getting better or like I'm getting faster. You know, that's the thing I've been working hard on too. It's like making a comic in a shorter amount of time and having the quality of it. And it's kinda, it's like a nice place to be where you can get like a little bit and, you know, don't worry. Like I still definitely run on Twitter likes, but I have like a little bit of, uh, internal validation happening.   That's phenomenal answer.    You know, it's the ones that I post that I don't, that I think are just whatever that wind up getting, you know, 15,000 likes. And then it's the ones that I really worked hard on to fight you. People are idiots, this is gold all the time. Totally. You can't predict it. Like there'll be a comic 30 hours making it and like, I've researched it like crazy and I think it's like so good and brilliant. And it's like 18 likes and two stars and then it's like you post a selfie in the car where the light is really good and it's like 3000 likes. You're like, what the fuck? What are we doing here?  Last question I want to ask you; I want to respect your time. Um, tell me about. What you do to shut down? What do you do to shut off? Where do you go? How do you get away? Cause it's it's it does seem like us like me like that. You're you're, you know, you live online. So when you shut down, when you shut off, where do you go? What do you do? How do you make that a part of it?    Hm. Um, yeah, that's a good question. Well, I don't have a ton of time to do that because I have two small children and as I'm sure, you know, there's still childcare crisis going on. Um, but I do like, I'll play like dumb games on my cell phone just to kind of like spend some time associating or I will, um, binge watch, terrible television. I have watched. I'm not too proud to say that I have watched two full seasons of Bachelor in Paradise from beginning to end, the whole thing I've watched. Um, yeah, it's really not. It's really not. Or like, I'll watch a movie that I've already seen before, you know, that's just like a comfortable place to be. And I know that I know exactly what it's going to do to me emotionally. It's not going to, there's no surprises there. You know, I can just like fold laundry and like, let that kind of wash over me.  Very cool. This has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you taking the time..    Guys talking to her Aubrey Hirsch. She's the author of Why We Never Talk About Sugar, a short story collection. Uh, you can find her at www.AubreyHirsch.com and she's on Twitter where I found her @AubreyHirsch  She's a very quick responder, I'll give her that already. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. This was wonderful.   Thanks so much for having me. Next time you have something to promote. You have a story out. We'd love to hear. Awesome.   Guys is always Faster Than Normal. If you like what you heard, we'd love it if you left us a review, everyone does, you should too. You don't want to be the one person who hasn't done it, but you can find us on www.FasterThanNormal.com you can find a single podcast. You can find us on Spotify on Amazon. You can even find us on Alexa. You can literally say Alexa, play fasterthannormal.. Crap. My Alexa is just totally gonna play that now click on the.. cancel!@ but it'll do it. And any way you want. And if you have a guest that you think would be as cool as Aubrey, let us know, you can send me an email. Peter@shaman.com DM @fasterThanNormal or @petershankman and we will get that guest on the air. Thank you so much for listening. Our producer is Steven Byrom. He is awesome. We love him. [He loves We too even though this transcript may not be 1million percent perfect]. Have a wonderful day. We'll see you next week, ADHD, and all neurodiversity are gifts, they are not a curse keep reminding yourself of that! Talk soon. —— Credits: You've been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I'm your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at petershankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you've heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were composed and produced by Steven Byrom who also produces this podcast, and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week. 

Joining us this week is special guest cat Bernie! We'll also have tales from the flood and a brief overview on the emotionally charged magical realism of author Aimee Bender.

durée : 00:41:43 - Par les temps qui courent - par : Marie Richeux, Jeanne Aléos, Romain de Becdelievre - Nous recevons la traductrice à l’occasion de la sortie de "Un papillon, un scarabée, une rose" d’Aimee Bender aux éditions de l’Olivier. Elle est aussi connue pour ses traductions de Maggie Nelson et Deborah Levy, qu’elle a contribué à faire découvrir au public français. - réalisation : Jean-Christophe Francis, Lise-Marie Barré - invités : Céline Leroy traductrice

durée : 00:41:43 - Par les temps qui courent - par : Marie Richeux, Jeanne Aléos, Romain de Becdelievre - Nous recevons la traductrice à l’occasion de la sortie de "Un papillon, un scarabée, une rose" d’Aimee Bender aux éditions de l’Olivier. Elle est aussi connue pour ses traductions de Maggie Nelson et Deborah Levy, qu’elle a contribué à faire découvrir au public français. - réalisation : Jean-Christophe Francis, Lise-Marie Barré - invités : Céline Leroy traductrice

Bookwaves/Artwaves is produced and hosted by Richard Wolinsky. Links to announced on-line events below program description   Bookwaves Richard Wolinsky and Dave Eggers. Dave Eggers discusses his novel, “The Parade” with host Richard Wolinsky. The author of several works of fiction and non-fiction, Dave Eggers is best known for the memoir “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is also the founder of McSweeney's publishing house in San Francisco, and is an acclaimed journalist who writes for The Guardian and elsewhere. “The Parade” takes place in an unnamed country as two contractors work to complete a road leading from a formerly rebellious part of the country into the capital city. In this wide-ranging interview, he also talks about Trump rallies and their surprisingly diverse audiences, and about his career as a writer and screenwriter. Recorded in the green room at KQED in San Francisco. Thanks to KQED and McSweeney's. Complete 34-minute Radio Wolinsky podcast.   Artwaves Suzanne Bradbeer, whose comedy “Shakespeare in Vegas” will be streamed as a Zoom reading with Broadway stars Karen Ziemba and Patrick Page, July 23, 6 pm -July 27, 2020, 6 pm on the TheatreWorks website, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky. Suzanne Bradbeer is the author of several plays, including “Confederates,” which played at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley during the 2016-2017 season, “The God Game,” and “The House That Jack Built.” She is a member of the Ensemble Theatre, a contributing writer at Speakeasy at Joe'd Pub (The Public Theatre) in New York, and a librettist for two musicals, “Cocus and Doot” from the Virtual Theatre Company and “Max and the Truffle Pig.” “Shakespeare in Vegas” is the story of an out of work classically trained actress who is brought to Las Vegas by a shady impresario to offer Shakespearean plays to a somewhat unusual audience, and hijinks ensue. Complete 32-minute Bay Area Theater podcast. Both photos: Jeff McMorrough   Announcement Links Central Works Script Club, where you read the script of a new play and send comments to the playwright. The July script is The Lady Matador's Hotel by Christina Garcia. A podcast with the playwright, hosted by Patricial Milton, will be posted to the Central Works website on July 28. Theatreworks Silicon Valley is presenting Shakespeare In Vegas, a new play by Suzanne Bradbeer, with Karen Ziemba and Patrick Page, directed by Giovanna Sardelli, streaming July 23-27, free. Book Passage. Conversations with authors features Mark Neepo on Saturday July 25 at 4 pm Pacific and Louise Erdrick on Sunday July 26 at 4 pm Pacific. Bay Area Book Festival. Various Unbound conversations available streaming. Aurora Theatre's Aurora Connects series of interviews, every Friday at 4 pm. July 17: Joy Carlin and Nancy Carlin. Other interviews in the series are available streaming. The Booksmith presents Anne Appelbaum and her book Twilight of Democracy on Monday July 27 at 12:30 pm and Aimee Bender on Wednesday August 5 at 5:30 pm Theatre Rhinolive performance July 23 conceived and performed by John Fisher on Facebook Live and Zoom at 8 pm is Growing Up: The World in 1976. The Death of Ruby Slippers by Stuart Bousel, available streaming. Shotgun Players.  The Niceties by Eleanor Burgess,has been extended with live performances July 28- August 3 through Zoom. A live stream performance of Quack by Eliza Clark, August 6 through 9. Registration required. San Francisco Playhouse. Zoomlet table read for Monday July 27 at 7 pm is Night Vision by Dominique Morrisseau, directed by Margo Hall. Registration required. Marin Theatre Company is presenting the second weekend of the Bay Area Playwrights Festival July 25-26. Go to website for tickets. Also. Lauren Gunderson's play Natural Shocks streams through Soundcloud on the Marin Theatre website. 42nd Street Moon. Live cabaret Fridays at 8 pm; Theatre quiz Sundays at 8 pm; Theatre talks Tuesdays at 8 pm, through the website. Kepler's Books presents Refresh the Page, on line interviews and talks. Registration required. Lincoln Center Live Through September 8, 2020: Carousel, with Kelli O'Hara & Nathan Gunn. Public Theatre: The Line streams through the website. A radio recording of Richard II is also available through the website.   . The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – July 23, 2020: Dave Eggers – Suzanne Bradbeer appeared first on KPFA.

In this week's episode, I interview bizarro fiction writer Tom Lucas, plus Dallas Woodburn writes about how reading Aimee Bender''s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake changed her life. TEXTS DISCUSSED Pax Titanus" target="_blank"> NOTES The Drunken Odyssey: A Podcast About the Writing Life presents another evening of verse inspired by that most poetic of film genres: horror! Featuring Mark Purcell Teege Braune Anna King Vincent Crampton Genevieve Anna Tyrrell Tom Lucas Susan Fallows & your host, John King. Absinthe ceremony to follow? October 28, 2015 Writer's Atelier (336 Grove Avenue, Winter Park, FL) See facebook event page here.

Head Case: My Brain and Other Wonders (Henry Holt & Company)  A spirited, wry, and utterly original memoir about one woman's struggle to make her way and set up a life after doctors discover a hole the size of a lemon in her brain. The summer before she was set to head out-of-state to pursue her MFA, twenty-six-year-old Cole Cohen submitted herself to a battery of tests. For as long as she could remember, she'd struggled with a series of learning disabilities that made it nearly impossible to judge time and space--standing at a cross walk, she couldn't tell you if an oncoming car would arrive in ten seconds or thirty; if you asked her to let you know when ten minutes had passed, she might notify you in a minute or an hour. These symptoms had always kept her from getting a driver's license, which she wanted to have for grad school. Instead of leaving the doctor's office with permission to drive, she left with a shocking diagnosis--doctors had found a large hole in her brain responsible for her life-long struggles. Because there aren't established tools to rely on in the wake of this unprecedented and mysterious diagnosis, Cole and her doctors and family create them, and discover firsthand how best to navigate the unique world that Cole lives in. Told without an ounce of self-pity and plenty of charm and wit, Head Case is ultimately a story of triumph, as we watch this passionate, loveable, and unsinkable young woman chart a path for herself. Praise for Head Case “Head Case is hilarious, moving, thought-provoking: it will change the way you think about what it means to move through the world, no matter the shape of your own human brain.  Cole Cohen's brain is unusual, and her voice is indelible: this is a wonderful book by a wonderful writer.  I can't wait to see what she writes next.”—Elizabeth McCracken "Terrifically readable, while still being piercing and honest about different kinds of struggle, some familiar, some utterly her own. Besides that, Cole Cohen's also really funny. And unafraid of being bleak. And funny/bleak. I so enjoyed being carried along by Cohen's voice."—Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake "Rich with yearning and ache, conveying a scrunched sense of claustrophobia and imagery of cinematic quality. . .The author also delivers flashes of humor to add levity to the proceedings. A beautifully wrenching memoir as piercing as smelling salts."--Kirkus (starred review)" "Head Case is funny, touching, acerbic, and emotional; it vividly evokes the world as she experiences it and leaves you feeling you have met an exceptional, tough, indomitable character. " --Susan Orlean "I'm delighted and inspired by Cole Cohen's Head Case, an account of herself that shines throughout with her particular brand of perseverance, humor, hard-won clarity and wisdom." --Maggie Nelson, author of The Art of Cruelty "Cole Cohen writes with poignant clarity about her life of continual disorientation--the result of a hole in her parietal lobe. I laud her persistence, her humor, her gracious prose, and most of all, her honesty - and, as the mother of a child likewise afflicted with an "invisible disability," I am grateful for this revelatory memoir. Cohen's challenges are as universal as their cause is unique, and Head Case, so raw and artful both, is an important book. Bravo!"--Robin Black, author of If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This "Cole Cohen writes with clarity, humor and honesty about her own unique brain, but Head Case is also about the very human journey of learning to navigate the big world from inside one's one mind. This is a fascinating and brave memoir."--Ramona Ausubel, author of No One is Here Except All of Us and A Guide to Being Born Cole Cohen graduated from the California Institute of the Arts MFA program in Writing and Critical Studies in 2009. She was a finalist for the Bakeless Prize and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs prize in Nonfiction and she has been a Yaddo Fellow. She currently lives in Santa Barbara, California where she works as the Events and Program Coordinator for UC Santa Barbara's Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

The Uncanny Reader: Stories from the Shadows (St. Martin's Griffin)  From the deeply unsettling to the possibly supernatural, these thirty-one border-crossing stories from around the world explore the uncanny in literature, and delve into our increasingly unstable sense of self, home, and planet. The Uncanny Reader: Stories from the Shadows opens with “The Sand-man,” E.T.A. Hoffmann's 1817 tale of dopplegangers and automatons—a tale that inspired generations of writers and thinkers to come. Stories by 19th and 20th century masters of the uncanny—including Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, and Shirley Jackson—form a foundation for sixteen award-winning contemporary authors, established and new, whose work blurs the boundaries between the familiar and the unknown. These writers come from Egypt, France, Germany, Japan, Poland, Russia, Scotland, England, Sweden, the United States, Uruguay, and Zambia—although their birthplaces are not always the terrains they plumb in their stories, nor do they confine themselves to their own eras. Contemporary authors include: Chris Adrian, Aimee Bender, Kate Bernheimer, Jean-Christophe Duchon-Doris, Mansoura Ez-Eldin, Jonathon Carroll, John Herdman, Kelly Link, Steven Millhauser, Joyce Carol Oates, Yoko Ogawa, Dean Paschal, Karen Russell, Namwali Serpell, Steve Stern and Karen Tidbeck. Marjorie Sandor is the author of four books, most recently The Late Interiors: A Life Under Construction. Her story collection, Portrait of my Mother, Who Posed Nude in Wartime, won the 2004 National Jewish Book Award in Fiction, and an essay collection, The Night Gardener: A Search for Home won the 2000 Oregon Book Award for literary non-fiction. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, AGNI, The Hopkins Review and The Harvard Review among others. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon. Aimee Bender is the author of the novels The Color Master, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake—a New York Times bestseller—and An Invisible Sign of My Own, and of the collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Willful Creatures. Her works have been widely anthologized and have been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in Los Angeles.

Walker on Water (Unnamed Press)  Join us for a very special event as one of Skylight Book's favorite local presses, Unnamed Press. A woman cultivates a knack for walking on water, but is undermined by her husband's brain, which he removes each night when he returns home from work; a couple overcomes the irksome mischief of the gods; a skeptical dragon wonders what sex is all about: this is the world of Kristiina Ehin. From the 2007 British Poetry Society Popescu prize winner for European poetry in translation: a series of comic, surreal adventures. Kristiina Ehin's quirky voice takes each story directly from the dream state, at times stubborn and resistant, at other times masochistically compliant. Ehin offers up modern folktales in which the very nature of our human identity is at stake-rampant with images and archetypes both new and old, and mediated by the abrupt changes we can only experience in dreams. Praise for Walker on Water "The pages drip in rich images and complex emotions in Kristiina Ehin's wildly imaginative and surrealistic collectionWalker on Water. It's Etgar Keret meets Aimee Bender meets Michael Cisco meets Aesop. It's three-headed twins, a woman who inadvertently bites the arms off her husbands, and a Life Story who has a pesky Brain's Monkey. It's a wholly original and revolutionary read."—Paul Tremblay, author of The Little Sleep and A Head Full of Ghosts "Wow! I love this book!"—Mark Mothersbaugh, lead singer of DEVO "Sharp, jarring, and darkly funny, the stories in Walker on Water move seamlessly and defiantly between the real and the surreal, reinventing folklore, redefining fiction, and daringly reexamining relationships."—Susan Steinberg, author of Spectacle Kristiina Ehin is the author of Walker on Water, out June 2014 from the Unnamed Press and translated from the original Estonian by Ilmar Lehtpere. An internationally renowned poet, her collection The Drums of Silence was awarded the British Poetry Society Popescu Prize for European Poetry in Translation in 2007, and her collection 1001 Winters has been nominated for the same prize in 2013.  In her native Estonia, Ehin has published six volumes of poetry, three books of short stories and a retelling of South-Estonian folk tales. She has written plays, as well as poetic radio broadcasts. She has won Estonia's most prestigious poetry prize for Kaitseala—a book of poems and journal entries written during a year spent living as a nature reserve warden on an otherwise uninhabited island off Estonia's north coast.

We Dropped A Bomb On You: A City and Its Stories: Los Angeles: The Best of Slake I-IV (Rare Bird Books) Cofounded by former LA Weekly editor Joe Donnelly and current Los Angeles Times Arts and Entertainment editorLaurie Ochoa, Slake is a literary journal that sets a new template for the next generation of print publications -- collectible, not disposable; destined for the bedside table instead of the recycling bin. It's a whole new way of looking at Los Angeles and the world. We Dropped a Bomb on You is a devastating compendium of essays, fiction, and photo essays from the first four issues of Slake. Featuring previously unpublished work by Aimee Bender, Mark Z. Danielewski, Dana Goodyear, Jerry Stahl, John Albert, Jonathan Gold, Lauren Weedman and many many more, this collection marks a return to storytelling with polished essay, memoir, fiction, poetry, and profile writing that is disappearing in a world of instant takes and unfiltered opinion. John Albert cofounded the semilegendary cross-dressing band Christian Death and also enjoyed a stint as the drummer in Bad Religion. He lives in Los Angeles and has contributed to LA Weekly, Hustler, and BlackBook, among others. He won the Best of the West Journalism Best Sports Writing Award in 2000, for the LA Weekly article from which Wrecking Crew derived.  Jonathan Gold is a food critic who currently writes for the Los Angeles Times and has previously written for LA Weekly and Gourmet. In 2007 he became the first food critic to win the Pulitzer Prize. He is also a regular on KCRW's Good Food radio program. Lauren Weedman made her television debut on Comedy Central's Emmy Award-winning THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART as a featured Correspondent.  It was at that same time that Lauren was a regular on NPR's national, political satire show, REWIND and appeared in her solo show, HOMECOMING, Off-Broadway at the Westside Theatre. The New York Times said of Lauren and HOMECOMING, “Like Bob Newhart in his early stand-up routines, she's particularly good at making her points – and making us feel clever.  Most important, she's just plain funny, physically and verbally.” Lauren has contributed short stories to Slake magazine, Swivel and her short story “Diary of a Journal reader” was included in Dave Eggars “Best of Non Required Reading 2007”.  Sasquatch Books released her first book, a collection of comedic essays, A WOMAN TRAPPED IN A WOMAN'S BODY (TALES FROM A LIFE OF CRINGE) which the Kirkus Review identified as one of the Top Ten Indy Books of 2007. Lauren currently lives and performs in Los Angeles.

The Color Master (Doubleday) One of Skylight Books' favorite authors returns with a fabulous new short story collection! You're not going to want to miss this reading. Truly beloved by readers and critics alike, Aimee Bender has become known as something of an enchantress whose lush prose is “moving, fanciful, and gorgeously strange” (People), “richly imagined and bittersweet” (Vanity Fair), and “full of provocative ideas” (The Boston Globe). In her deft hands, “relationships and mundane activities take on mythic qualities” (The Wall Street Journal). In this collection, Bender's unique talents sparkle brilliantly in stories about people searching for connection through love, sex, and family—while navigating the often painful realities of their lives. A traumatic event unfolds when a girl with flowing hair of golden wheat appears in an apple orchard, where a group of people await her. A woman plays out a prostitution fantasy with her husband and finds she cannot go back to her old sex life. An ugly woman marries an ogre and struggles to decide if she should stay with him after he mistakenly eats their children. Two sisters travel deep into Malaysia, where one learns the art of mending tigers who have been ripped to shreds. In these deeply resonant stories—evocative, funny, beautiful, and sad—we see ourselves reflected as if in a funhouse mirror. Aimee Bender has once again proven herself to be among the most imaginative, exciting, and intelligent writers of our time. Praise for Aimee Bender "Marvelous. . . . Few writers are as adept as Bender at mingling magical elements so seamlessly with the ordinary." "--San Francisco Chronicle AIMEE BENDER is the author of the novels The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake—a New York Times bestseller—and An Invisible Sign of My Own, and of the collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Willful Creatures. Her works have been widely anthologized and have been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in Los Angeles.

A Guide To Being Born (Riverhead Books) We are honored and excited to have Ramona Ausubel back for another book launch.  We hosted the launch for her stunning debut novel, NO ONE IS HERE EXCEPT ALL OF US, which was hailed by The New Yorker as "An absorbing and unpredictable novel . . . Ausubel's original voice combines fresh, clear observation.”  Join us to hear stories from her new collection, which is already gretting great buzz. “Ausubel has a gift of language so rich that even the most mundane events are invested with poetry, and many of her characters are in need of all the poetry they can muster.”--Kirkus “These stories reminded me of branches full of cherry blossoms: fresh, delicate, beautiful, expressive, otherworldly.  I eagerly read from one story to the next.”--Aimee Bender Whimsically beautiful and delightfully strange, A GUIDE TO BEING BORN charts the life cycle from Birth to Motherhood to Death.  Each of the eleven stories is organized around the stages of life—birth, gestation, conception, love—and the transformations that happen as people encounter deeply altering life events: falling in love, becoming parents, approaching the end of life.  Reminiscent of Karen Russell and Aimee Bender, Ausubel's imagination and humor are deeply moving and provocative, allowing readers to see the familiar world in new ways. Ramona Ausubel is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of California, Irvine. She has been published in The New Yorker, One Story, The Paris Review Daily, Best American Fantasy, and elsewhere, and has received special mentions in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Non-Required Reading. She was a finalist for the Pushcart Prize. Photo by Teo Gosse THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MAY 2, 2013. COPIES OF THE BOOK FROM THIS EVENT CAN BE PURCHASED HERE: http://www.skylightbooks.com/book/%5Bmodel%5D-237

ELDERS (Hogarth) Join us for LA author and Stegner Fellow Ryan McIlvain's debut novel about foreign Mormon missions. “A nuanced meditation on faith and commitment that has all the intensity of a stage play.  Elders is a powerful and deeply moving debut from a gifted young writer.” —T.C. Boyle, author of San Miguel “I've always wanted to read a novel about Mormon missions abroad, and McIlvain is the ideal writer to write it.  The framework he provides is layered and fascinating, and inside it, the complex human drama plays out beautifully—these are memorable characters, and McIlvain shows them to us with compassion and honesty both.” —Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake RYAN MCILVAIN grew up in the Mormon Church and resigned his membership in his mid-twenties. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many journals, including The Paris Review, The Chattahoochee Review and the Potomac Review. McIlvain received honorable mentions in the Best American Short Stories and the Best American Nonrequired Reading. A Stegner Fellow at Stanford from 2009 to 2011, he currently lives with his wife in Los Angeles. Photograph by Brinn Willis THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 13, 2013. COPIES OF THE BOOK FROM THIS EVENT CAN BE PURCHASED HERE: http://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9780307955692

Girlchild (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Debut novelist Tupelo Hassman will read and sign her novel Girlchild, which has already garnered rave reviews! "This amazing debut spills over with love, but is still absolutely unflinching and real. That is no easy combo to pull off, and Tupelo Hassman does it repeatedly with precision and grace. Rory D. is ebulliently alive on the page; she's really that kind of fresh new voice people talk about, leaving us with a completely memorable character." --Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake "I'm smitten by Tupelo Hassman's debut. The beauty of this story is how it plays: great turns in language, humor that points to sadness, and a structure that is messy and tidy all at the same time. Girlchild is overwhelming in an engaging and beautiful way.” —Salvador Plascencia, author of The People of Paper "If I were back on the staff of my high school yearbook I would vote Tupelo Hassman and her book Most Likely to Go Viral on Goodreads and Most Likely to Succeed in the Eyes of Critics." --Nicole Lamy, Boston Globe Tupelo Hassman graduated from Columbia's MFA program. Her writing has been published in Paper Street Press, The Portland Review Literary Journal, Tantalum, We Still Like, ZYZZYVA, and by 100WordStory.org and FiveChapters.com. Tupelo is a contributing author to Heliography, Invisible City Audio Tours' first tour and is curating its fourth tour, The Landmark Revelation Society. Tupelo will be keeping a video journal of girlchild's book tour for the short documentary Hardbound: A Novel's Life on the Road. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 6, 2012.

Black Clock 13 An amazing lineup of writers -- Aimee Bender, Janet Fitch, Jonathan Lethem, Susan Straight, and Lisa Teasley --  will read from their pieces in Black Clock 13, the latest issue of this great literary journal.  Author Steve Erickson, Black Clock's editor, will moderate. Aimee Bender is the author of four books; the most recent is The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, winner of the SCIBA award. Her short fiction has been published in Granta, Harper's, The Paris Review, Tin House, Black Clock and more, as well as heard on "This American Life" and "Selected Shorts." Janet Fitch is the author of Paint it Black and White Oleander, an Oprah's Book Club selection from which a 2002 motion picture was made starring Michelle Pfeiffer. Her fourth novel will be published next year. Fitch teaches writing at the University of Southern California. Jonathan Lethem has written eight novels, including Girl in Landscape and Chronic City, and four collections of stories and essays, including the forthcoming The Ecstacy of Influence. His monograph on John Carpenter's They Live was published in November last year. He's lived in New York, Vermont, Oakland, Toronto, and now Los Angeles. Susan Straight's new novel is Take One Candle Light a Room, named one of the best novels of 2010 by The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and Kirkus. Highwire Moon was a Finalist for the 2001 National Book Award, and A Million Nightingales was a 2006 Finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. Her short story "The Golden Gopher," a chapter in the novel, won the 2008 Edgar Award for best Mystery Story. She has published stories and essays in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Harpers, Salon, Zoetrope, McSweeneys, The Believer, Black Clock, and elsewhere. She was born in Riverside, California, where she lives with her family, whose history is featured on susanstraight.com. Lisa Teasley is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Heat Signature and Dive, and the award-winning story collection, Glow in the Dark, all published by Bloomsbury. Lisa Teasley is writer and presenter of the BBC television documentary "High School Prom," and currently teaches poetry and fiction at UC Riverside. Steve Erickson is the Editor of Black Clock. He is the author of eight novels, receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007. In 2010 he was nominated for the National Magazine Award for his film criticism and was the recipient of one of seven awards in literature given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His novel novel These Dreams of You will be published in early 2012 by Europa. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 13, 2011.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Doubleday) A little girl is able to taste sadness in her food. Her brother, who has become emotionally withdrawn, is able to turn himself into inanimate objects. Aimee Bender shows how by using the techniques of fairy tales, legends and magic realism, her novels and stories about family dysfunction are transformed into narratives about growth and change.

Every life has a scoreboard and how you choose to keep score is up to you. How are you measuring success? I've known men and women who measure success by their ability to attract the opposite sex. You've met these people, too, haven't you? Some people measure success by their ability to inflict pain in the lives of others. Bullies, vandals, website hackers, internet virus creators and bad policemen are tragic examples. The fact that they momentarily control our time, emotions and energy gives them a perverted sense of power. I know of no cure for this sickness. And then there are the many who measure success by the acquisition of things that cost money. I think this definition covers most of us. John Steinbeck gave us a way to identify the scoreboard we're using to measure our success. All one needs to do is ask oneself, “What are my plans for the future?” “A rich life is rich in plans. If they don't come off, they are still a little bit realized. If they do, they may be disappointing. That's why a trip described becomes better the greater the time between the trip and the telling. I believe too that if you can know a man's plans, you know more about him than you can in any other way.”– John Steinbeck, Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden LettersToday I submit these additional measurements of success for your consideration: 1. Am I sufficiently curious? “Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.” – Albert Einstein     2. How little do I need to be happy? “It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor.” – Seneca the younger, (3BC-65AD) 3. Have I proven that I care? “That's the thing with handmade items. They still have the person's mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone. This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. Nobody cooked that burger.” – Aimee Bender, from her short story, Tiger Mending     4. How many lives have I made better today? “In a completely rational society, teachers would be at the tip of the pyramid, not near the bottom. In that society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers, and the rest of us would have to settle for something less. The job of passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor anyone could have.” – Lee Iacocca, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? p. 217 Are you satisfied with the scoreboard you've been using to measure success? Remember, you alone get to choose. To measure success according to a scoreboard thrust upon you by another is tantamount to psychic slavery. Don't be anyone's slave. Measure success by your own scoreboard. The point of today's memo is to encourage you to choose your scoreboard consciously rather than unconsciously. When you've identified your personal scoreboard, http://wizardacademy.org/ (come to Wizard Academy) and we'll help you run up the score. Roy H. Williams