Breakfast in Bed

Poems from DESAYUNO EN LA CAMA

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:15:23 GMT

There's a selection of 7 poems (in the Spanish original) from DESAYUNO EN LA CAMA online in THE BARCELONA REVIEW.

CFS

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:46:22 GMT

A flash fiction anthology that might be of interest to some of y'all:

http://www.robertswartwood.com/?page_id=8

Hint Fiction

hint fiction (n) : a story of 25 words or less that suggests a larger, more complex story

_________________________________

Anthology Guidelines

Tentatively scheduled for the fall of 2010, W.W. Norton will publish an anthology of Hint Fiction. What is Hint Fiction? It’s a story of 25 words or less that suggests a larger, more complex story. The thesis of the anthology is to prove that a story 25 words or less can have as much impact as a story 2,500 words or longer. The anthology will include between 100 and 150 stories. We want your best work.

It’s possible to write a complete story in 25 words or less — a beginning, middle, end — but that’s not Hint Fiction.

The very best Hint Fiction stories can be read many different ways.

We want stories we can read again and again and never tire of. Stories that don’t pull any punches. Stories that make us think, that evoke some kind of emotional response.

Take a look at the winners and honorable mentions of the Hint Fiction Contest for examples.

Payment is $25 per story for World and Audio rights.

Reprints? Sure, but unless you’re one hundred percent confident in the reprint, why not try to write an original piece?

For formatting purposes, you must include a title (which actually works in your benefit, as the title helps give a better “hint” of the overall story).

Writers can only submit up to two stories, both embedded in the same e-mail. Don’t worry about a cover letter. We don’t care where you’ve been published or what graduate program you’ve attended — all author identification will be stripped by a third party so we will only see the stories and nothing but the stories.

To make everyone’s lives easier, embed the stories like this:

TITLE

Story.

TITLE

Story.

Your name.

Submissions will open August 1 and close at midnight Eastern time August 31. A submissions e-mail address will appear on this page on August 1 — DO NOT SUBMIT TO ANY OTHER ADDRESS BEFORE THEN.

Please note that due to the expected volume of submissions, we will be forced to respond with form letters.

Thank you, and good luck.

***For a limited time, if you link to these guidelines on your blog or Twitter, you can submit a third story. These must be posted between July 1 and August 15. Include the link at the end of your e-mail. If you don’t include a link, the third story will be deleted unread.***

:-) From an interview with Cecilia Tan

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:51:46 GMT

PVN: I love the character Lawrence from Mind Games. Would you describe him?

Cecilia: Lawrence is a quirky character in my head. I knew I wanted my heroine, Wren, to have a best friend she could confide in, but I felt like having a female best friend was going to turn it too much into a "chick lit" book, and it's so definitely not in that style. Lawrence kind of tapped me on the shoulder and said, "um, hello? I'm her downstairs neighbor." I named him Lawrence as a little bit of a nod to the writer Lawrence Schimel, who is gay, and who was the person whose shoulder I cried on back in the day when I was starting out as a writer. He was always a great reality check, and that's what the Lawrence in the book is for Wren, too.

This entry was originally posted at http://desayunoencama.dreamwidth.org/373192.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

TV again

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:14:49 GMT

Last night I was on the 9pm news on Channel 1 here in Spain, very briefly, talking about writing both children's books and gay lit, and the way this is received in Spain and the US. :-)

While I speak poorly (garbled, lots of errors, I get so nervous doing these things!) you can see it online here:
http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/player/533947.html

I'm at minute 28.

TV appearance

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:42:34 GMT

Numerous friends have sent me SMS, emails, or messages on facebook to say they just saw me on TV, on Channel 2, in this documentary on Spain as a gay destination, where evidently (I haven't seen it yet, and don't have a TV) I talk about writing children's books and also gay lit and the problems that causes in the US versus it not being a problem in Spain.

Very seldom do I think that having a TV might be nice. But these few minutes will pass, and eventually the show will (I hope) be available online.

The eternal gay literature debate (in Spanish)

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:30:27 GMT

This article from HOY about gay literature, whether it exists, how it's defined, etc. uses a lot of quotes from me (plus the photo).

:-)

Annie Leibowitz

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:53:03 GMT

Annie Leibowitz
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

Last night I got a call at 19:50 asking if I wanted to go along to the opening for Annie Leibowitz' photo exhibit here in Madrid (which started at 20!).

Luckily, it was just around the corner.

Impossible to see the photos with so many people, but she was very elegant and gracious despite being jet-lagged and exhausted.

Second Person Queer reviewed in XTRA

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:35:47 GMT

Second Person Queer
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

Jim Bartley reviews SECOND PERSON QUEER for Canadian mag XTRA:

"In 2007 we were treated to a delightfully eclectic and candid anthology, First Person Queer, offering intimate queer voices drawn from pretty much every personal camp and socio-political niche. It remains an essential document of in-your-face diversity. Editors Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel now offer the inevitable sequel, Second Person Queer, shifting the tone from soul-baring personal “I” to the more challenging — and more oracular — “you.” "

Browse through the author bios and you’ll find about an even mix of US and Canadian writers, with a soupçon of off-continent voices. Settle to reading and the flood of queer identities quickly negates borders and national distinctions.

To read the rest of the review...

Omnivoracious plug

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:25:48 GMT

Fortune's Lover
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

Jeff VanderMeer gives a lovely review of Rachel Pollack's FORTUNE'S LOVER (and general plug for A Midsummer Night's Press, including my own FAIRY TALES FOR WRITERS) and also her story collection THE TAROT OF PERFECTION from Magic Realist Press, over on Omnivoracious: http://tinyurl.com/mmh72s

Reading at the Teatro Principal

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:48:05 GMT

Reading at the Teatro Principal
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

This photo (or similar shots) of Martí Sales reading was what appeared in all the papers, since Martí read first and they had to make their printing deadlines so the journalists didn't stay for the entire event.

(This one comes from the Diario de Mallorca, which had an article about the event.)

We had nearly 400 people who showed up for a multilingual poetry reading, something which is amazing and heartening.

The Festival published a lovely anthology with 10 pages of poetry from each participant in the original language and translated into Catalan.

We also gave readings at a bar, a sound recording at the ACA Foundation, and a reading our last morning at the penitentiary, for a group of some 150 prisoners who'd signed up to come listen to us.

Onzè Festival de Poesia de la Mediterrànea

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:40:47 GMT

Onzè Festival de Poesia de la Mediterrànea
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

Oh dear. I've been remiss in blogging. Partly the fault of Facebook, since I'm microblogging more than anything else.

This past week I was in Palma de Mallorca for the Onzè Festival de Poesia de la Mediterrànea, one of 14 poets in many different languages (Danish, Maltese, even Esperanto).

This photo comes from this article in the Diario de Mallorca, where I'm just an anonymous New York poet living in Madrid, even though I do appear in the group photo.

The paper Ultima Hora did send an English-speaking journalist to the press conference to talk to me, although we wound up chatting in Castillian (they didn't know beforehand that I live in Spain). Not that my soundbytes are particularly interesting.

The Festival was just lovely: an interesting mix of international (and national) voices, and some chance for dialogue among all of us: it was fascinating to listen to Maltese, for instance, which looks so guttural on the page (all those Qs and Ghs) but is mellifluous when spoken.

The organization was very warm and attentive. They had made sure the restaurant knew about my dietary difficulties, so when everyone else had little tapas entremeses of sobresada or somesuch, I had a vegetarian tapa on gluten-free bread.

Mine! All mine!

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:51:26 GMT

¡Es mío!
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

Today I just got my author copies of my newest children's book, ¡ES MÍO!, which is published by Bruño in their Chiquicuentos imprint.
:-)

Giant Squid in Madrid!

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 10:46:15 GMT

Giant Squid in Madrid!
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

On Gran Vía.

Poetry

Fri, 22 May 2009 19:15:17 GMT

Lawrence 21 may 09
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

Last night, on my way home from giving a poetry reading in Spanish in Lavapiés, someone on the street gave me a wooden yo-yo. So I gave him a book.
:-)

The reading was small, and quick. I need more practice reading in public, especially in Spanish.

So lately I've been saying yes to everything. It's also nice to be asked a lot lately.

With the excuse of the reading, I wrote two new poems in Spanish yesterday (or took the raw materials and shaped them into poems) and am finally happy with how they turned out.

Beforehand, I met up with my friend Ariadna to go to the presentation of the First Poetry Prive from RNE at La casa encendida. This is a slightly-blurry shot of me from when we were having a drink with Susana just before the event started.

(My friend James took photos of the reading, but his batteries died midway through, so not sure what made it or not, and he hasn't had a chance to download them and email them to me yet.)

Desayuno en la cama - some reviews

Mon, 18 May 2009 09:56:56 GMT

Desayuno en la cama - FrontCover
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

One in English: http://www.ambiente.us/05009Desayuno.html

and one in Spanish: http://aunquetalvez.blogspot.com/2009/05/desayuno-con-lawrence.html

Carnaval 1999

Sat, 16 May 2009 11:14:24 GMT

Carnaval 1999
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

El otro día estuve tomando un café con el poeta Pepe Infante, que ha preparado un libro de la poesía reunida de Leopoldo Alas, fallecido el año pasado. Entre sus efectos, encontró unas fotos de mi del Carnaval de 99 que me entregó.

Earlier this week I had coffee with the poet Pepe Infante, who's recently prepared the collected poems of Leopoldo Alas, who passed away last year. Among Leopoldo's effects, he found these two photos of me, from Carnaval 1999.

Doctorow on Copyright

Thu, 14 May 2009 11:14:12 GMT

Great essay by Cory Doctorow in THE GUARDIAN about how copyright law champions negative/critical responses and hinders positive ones</>. An excerpt:

But that's not what this column is about. What I want to ask is, how did we end up with a copyright law that only protects critics, while leaving fans out in the cold?

Some background: copyright's regulatory contours allow for many kinds of use without permission from the copyright holder. For example, if you're writing a critical review of a book, copyright allows you to include quotations from the book for the purpose of criticism. Giving authors the right to choose which critics are allowed to make their points with quotes from the original work is obvious bad policy. It's a thick-skinned author indeed who'd arm his most devastating critics with the whips they need to score him. The courts have historically afforded similar latitude to parodists, on much the same basis: if you're engaged in the parodical mockery of a work, it's a little much to expect that the work's author will give her blessing to your efforts.

The upshot of this is that you're on much more solid ground if you want to quote or otherwise reference a work for the purposes of rubbishing it than if you are doing so to celebrate it. This is one of the most perverse elements of copyright law: the reality that loving something doesn't confer any right to make it a part of your creative life.

The damage here is twofold: first, this privileges creativity that knocks things down over things that build things up.

buzzed again

Tue, 12 May 2009 20:52:08 GMT

Lawrence buzzed may 09
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

This morning I decided to shave my head again. So much easier to take care of!

I met my friends James and Marian at midday, they were having a drink at a terraza nearby and they took this photo for me, and then James and I went shopping for poetry books.

A pleasant afternoon, before having to deal with work again. :-)

Recital en La Buena Vida

Mon, 11 May 2009 15:14:11 GMT

Recital en La Buena Vida
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

Last night I read from DESAYUNO EN LA CAMA in La Buena Vida, a lovely bookstore-café in Madrid, with Spanish poet Luis Martinez de Merlo.

en fila

Thu, 07 May 2009 12:58:59 GMT

en fila
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

Dozens of storks all in a row on top of the Cathedral in Valladolid.

taking flight

Thu, 07 May 2009 12:58:19 GMT

taking flight
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

Urueña was full of cigueñas.

Here's a shot I managed to snap of a stork taking off from the nest.

Peacock unfurled

Thu, 07 May 2009 12:56:59 GMT

Peacock unfurled
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

It's so easy to get great shots of peafowl.

Although closeups like this always remind me of Flannery O'Connor's MYSTERY AND MANNERS...
:-)

(That might be a generational reference to the edition I had when I was in high school, but I believe it was a very well-known cover.)

LOLCOCK?

Thu, 07 May 2009 12:54:24 GMT

??
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

Doesn't this just beg to be turned into a LOL-PEAFOWL?

the future is woof

Wed, 06 May 2009 10:03:14 GMT

the future is woof, originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

Hotels

Wed, 06 May 2009 10:02:51 GMT

Hotels
Originally uploaded by desayunoencama.

Was amused that there was a hotel Amadeus next to a hotel Mozart. Are they run by the same family? Do they get along? Was there a fight and one brother or cousin created a competing hotel nearby? It's a story prompt all by itself. (Anyone should feel free to use it!)