This year I’m working on poetry for the first time ever and revising my manuscript and Facetiming my long-distance critique partner and organizing this summer’s CABIN READS with the Lost River Writers’ Retreat. I’m also taking a lot of daffodil photos because they are vain like that. Happy reading. Happy writing. Happy Spring.
Join me as I host CABIN READS again this year. I’ll introduce some of my favorite people to the tiny Appalachian town of Wardensville in the eastern panhandle of WV when the authors of the LOST RIVER WRITERS’ RETREAT read from their works in progress at the LOST RIVER TRADING POST on AUGUST 2nd at 6pm. UPDATED with photos of this event.
Then, on OCTOBER 6th, join us at the WARDENSVILLE GARDEN MARKET in partnership with the MD/DE/WV Regional Chapter of the SOCIETY OF CHILDREN’S BOOK WRITERS + ILLUSTRATORS for a free WV CREATORS’ CAMP on the farm, a writing and sketching event for SCBWI members or for those interested in learning more.
I’m so excited to be the recipient of a 2018 Individual Artist professional development grant from the West Virginia Division of Culture and History, and the National Endowment for the Arts, approved by the WV Commission on the Arts. Getting tangible help and positive feedback on my writing and community-building efforts is just amazing. Thank you to all the arts organizations who are still pushing ahead with a mission to give resources and support to artists and writers of all kinds.
THE BOOK OF DUST, by Philip Pullman, is another amazing journey from one of my all-time favorite authors, this time with baby Lyra and new and old characters to protect her. I love this series, forever and ever.
THE RIVER, by Gary Paulsen, a fast-paced survival story that follows his amazing story, HATCHET. I read it in one sitting!
1973 Newbury winner JULIE OF THE WOLVES, by naturalist Jean Craighead George. “‘Change your ways when fear seizes,’ he said, ‘for it usually means you are doing something wrong.’” I now feel I can survive the tundra. I already know how to live with wolves.
I vividly recall my kindergarten teacher handing us a form to indicate what we wanted to be when we grow up. There were different careers listed in the boy column vs. the girl column. (It was 1970.) The closest thing I could find that matched me was in the boy column, so I nervously picked it: Cowboy. I have definitely been fighting stereotypes ever since. Because no child should feel uncomfortable being who they are, my Read #3 is FLYING LESSONS & OTHER STORIES, fullof diverse authors and protagonists, just as it should be. My favorite so far is Tim Federle’s Secret Samantha, with a protagonist I would have loved as a kid. #weneeddiversebooks #representationmatters
CABIN READS returned this summer – now in partnership with the nonprofit, youth-powered farm WARDENSVILLE GARDEN MARKET – with a second annual reading by the LOST RIVER WRITERS’ RETREAT. Participants in this year’s loveliest of readings were:
MATTHEW ALBERSWERTH is a recent graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA for writers. He currently lives in his hometown of Washington DC.
JOHN COPENHAVER’S debut novel, Dodging and Burning, will be published by Pegasus Books (Pegasus Crime) in March 2018. For three consecutive years, he has been awarded an Artist Fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In 2015, he won the Larry Neal Writers’ Award for short fiction, judged by Alice McDermott, and launched a new crime fiction column for the Lambda Literary website called “Blacklight.” His fiction has appeared in various literary magazines, including Glitterwolf and Gaslight. He is Lambda Literary Fellow and received his MFA in fiction from George Mason. He chairs the 7-12 English Department at Flint Hill School in Oakton, VA. He lives with his husband and two insanely photogenic dogs in Washington, DC.
ERIKA NICHOLS-FRAZER is an MFA student in Fiction at Bennington College’s Writing Seminars, as well as the Communications Manager of the Children’s Literacy Foundation. She writes fiction, poetry, and the occasional essay, and her work has appeared in Runaway Parade, Haggard & Halloo, and Please Do Not Remove: A Collection Celebrating Literature and Libraries, as well as in several of the Best of the Burlington Writers Workshop’s anthologies. She also served as the poetry editor for that publication’s debut issue. Erika holds a Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Waitsfield, Vermont with her husband, dogs, and chickens.
KAREN SOSNOSKI’S fiction and nonfiction, most recently in Argot Magazine, Sunlight Press (pending) and on Romper, explores what happens when people face their limitations through disability, illness, sports, or other intense encounters (such as art). Her work has also appeared in the LA Times, Poets and Writers, Word Riot, Grappling, Bitch, Radioactive Moat, decomp, Identity Theory, Chaffee Review, Yellow Mama, Psychology Today, Camroc Review and on Studio 360, This American Life and Boundoff. Berkeley Media distributes her documentary film, “Wedding Advice: Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace.” Her story “Too Sweet” is published in the seventh anthology (Fall 2016) in the Grace & Gravity series of fiction by Washington, DC-area women. A mother, disabilities advocate, and Special Ed PTA board member, Karen is working on a novel Elizabeth Hillman’s Teeth about a poorly connected, adjunct English instructor who disavows her life-long meekness to avenge a famous artist she believes has stolen her destiny.
ROSS WHITE is the author of How We Came Upon the Colony and The Polite Society. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Tin House, New England Review, and other literary journals. He serves as the Poetry Editor for Four Way Review and Director of Bull City Press. The winner of the 2016 Larry Levis Postgraduate Fellowship from Warren Wilson College, Ross teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
CABIN READS episode 2! It all went down with the arrival yesterday of debut picture book author and all around great human being, Dori Kleber. She visited our little WV town to read her much-lauded book MORE-IGAMI, followed by a craft session where she taught about twenty little ones and their parents how to make a hopping origami frog. Dori happens to be the perfect person for this because she’s an amazing teacher and instructor, and she has more patience than about 125 of me put together. Thanks for the visit, Dori!
Last night I launched CABIN READS, a recurring WV literary event here in my new hometown of Wardensville. Situated between North Mountain and the Cacapon River, our region is a stunning example of West Virginia’s best. Our first event was hosting a reading by the six authors of the LOST RIVER WRITER’S RETREAT. We heard heartfelt poetry, hilarious middle grade, compelling nonfiction, historical crime fiction, and riveting adult fiction. I love writers. I love how clever they are when they’re reading their work or when they’re choosing their stories over dinner. Thank you Retreat Founder John Copenhaver, DeMisty D. Bellinger, Jessica Hendry Nelson, Noah Stetzer, Kara Waite and pictured, Kate Hattemer. Our next CABIN READS event will be with my SCBWI friend and critique partner and debut PB author Dori Kleber. The schedule can be found right here.
