Free Writer Events in Philadelphia – March 2018

#CCP #writing #Philadelphia   #VietDinh
Writer friends! CCP peeps! Community College of Philadelphia has several cool workshops and readings open to the public this week, and I especially recommend Viet Đinh‘s event on his Penn/Faulkner Award-finalist novel, After Disasters. (Full sched. with times and locations at https://www.myccp.online/2018-poets-writers-festival)

 

Dinh teaches at the University of Delaware. AFTER DISASTERS is an aMAZingly well researched novel about international and domestic relief workers struggling to provide aid after a disastrous 2001 earthquake in the Indian city of Bhuj. Dinh weaves together the stories of several intriguing characters–Dev, a married Indian doctor who works with HIV patients; Piotr, a disaster relief logistics expert facing burnout; Andy, a UK fire rescue worker on his first international assignment; and much more! It’s rare to find a novel with such rich characterization and an exacting eye for the logistics of the global world. My students and I are learning a great about how international relief works as well as the competing philosophies behind providing aid. We’re learning too the painful ironies and human failings that sometimes arise amid best intentions.

 

Dinh will also discuss his story “Substitutes” in a later session. This story won an O’Henry Prize and centers on Vietnamese schoolchildren left in the lurch during the fall of Saigon. Its use of first-person plural is a masterful example of a rarely used point of view.

 

All this, and he’s a snappy dresser to boot. Come if you can!

You can read the review of After Disasters at the LA Review of Books here.

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Conference and Reading: Kicking off Poetry Month!

Happy poetry month! I’m doing two events to kick off the celebration. the first is a panel at the Rosemont College LitLife conference. Click here for details. Tim Seibles, a wonderful Philly poet who now teaches in Virginia (where he is the poet laureate for the state!) is just one of the amazing poets at the conference. I met Tim a few years ago when he read for us at the college where I work. What a great guy! I’ll be doing a panel on creating images with the wonderful poet Dawn Manning. Look for us there on April 1st.

And, speaking of my college, Community College of Philadelphia, our Poets & Writers Festival comes to a conclusion this coming Monday with a free event below. Check it out!

________________________________________________

Monday, April 3, 2017

6 – 8 p.m.
Klein Cube, Room P2-03

The Community College of Philadelphia Spring Faculty Showcase of Writers

Join College’s distinguished faculty members as they read from their latest poetry and prose in what has become an annual tradition. Refreshments will be served! Click here for more info!

 

The line-up includes: Jonathan Pappas; Amy Birge; Lauren Genovesi; Julie Odell; Kelly McQuain; Brian Goedde. Hosted by Jeffrey Markovitz.

Philly Writers Resist!

#writersresist    January 15 is the date for Philadelphia Writers Resist: United for Liberty. The event is part of PEN America’s country-wide mobilization to let the Trump administration know that we writers will not back down or backtrack when it comes to human rights and civil liberties. I’ll be reading alongside many Philly friends from works that speak to empathy and justice. Nathaniel Popkin, one of the organizers, writes, “We chose the word united because this event is meant to bring us together as a literary community with abundant shared interests. We are poets, novelists, filmmakers, artists, publishers, readers, promoters, journalists, essayists, narrative non-fiction and experimental writers, editors, scholars, and translators, all to say, loudly, that we will stand for the freedoms written right here.”

The event will happen on Independence Mall at the location of the Centennial Religious Freedom sculpture, the National Museum of American Jewish History, and in sight of Independence Hall.

This event is co-facilitated by Nathaniel’s fellow organizers Alicia Askenase and Stephanie Feldman.

Philadelphia #WritersResist: United for Liberty

Sunday January 15, 2017

National Museum of American Jewish History Dell Auditorium

5th and Market Streets

2:00-5PM

The Museum is generously donating the auditorium for our event.

More on ways you can #WriteOurDemocracy at this link.

Illustration for Kazim Ali’s story collection

Summer 2015 was a busy one in terms of new visual projects, including a poetry portrait series for Fjords Review and this new wraparound cover I illustrated for poet Kazim Ali’s new book of short stories, UNCLE SHARIF’S LIFE IN MUSIC. @KazimAliPoet #KazimAli @SRP_Bryan

The wraparound cover features images of the nephew and uncle from the title story as well as tarot cards and allusions to other stories in the collection. Pen and ink and watercolor. You can order the book here: http://siblingrivalrypress.bigcartel.com/

Here’s the cover with the title added by the boys at Sibling Rivalry Press:

Uncle Sharif’s Life in Music
Stories by Kazim Ali

About the Book: On the eve of war, a group of artists try to stage a performance. An ill-thought-through deception to protect a friend threatens to unravel several relationships in a circle. A young man wakes up in a church graveyard with complete amnesia except for scraps of memories that appear to be from several different peoples’ lives. Two friends, haunted by the ghost of failed intimacy and the shadow of disease, wander the rainy streets of Paris. A musician makes a clumsy last-ditch effort at seducing a lost love. At Niagara Falls a neglected boy discovers his relationship to God. In a contemporary re-telling of the Majnoon and Laila myth, an astronomer falls in love with the sky. These six stories and novella from the author of the novels Quinn’s Passage, The Disappearance of Seth and Wind Instrument intertwine their concerns for the artistic life and the importance of the creative impulse with their belief in timelessness and the universal need for human empathy. Kazim Ali brings a poet’s attention to language, a musician’s sense of structure and a choreographer’s sense of character and movement to these dynamic and genre-blurring pieces which range in form from coming-of-age story, speculative fiction, ekphrasis, epistolary fiction and tarot deck.

 

Are Santa and Sinterklaas the same character?

Last year I was part of a Facebook discussion thread where JH Cové, a Dutch anthropologist, took to task someone who equated the two: He wrote, “The Dutch Sinterklaas, or Sint Nicolaas, has nothing to do with Christmas. It is celebrated on Dec. 5th [the eve of St. Nicholas’s Feast Day], after which he goes back to Spain, and Christmas preparations can begin all over Holland. He’s got his own songs, his own history (from Myra, Turkey, correct), and, these days, is rivaled by Santa Claus (or Father Christmas or Papa Noel). I’m sure there are anthropologists that find connections somewhere—and there is a resemblance in the fact that they both use chimneys (who came up with that first?), even though in Holland Santa Claus doesn’t!—but take it from this Dutch anthropologist, they’re very different.”

 

A lot of strong Dutch pride there. My take? Santa and Sinterklaas both share the same Catholic saint as their inspiration, and Santa derives from the Dutch version via the Dutch immigrants arriving in the New York area in the 1600/1700s. Without Sinterklaas, and perhaps without Father Christmas from England, there would be no modern Santa, since he is essentially a mash-up of the two. It’s true, Sinterklaas and Santa have markedly different personalities in the way they are portrayed. I think of them as cousins, or brothers in the Yuletide spirit.

Someone else in the conversation brought up the Dutch customs surrounding the black men mentioned in the David Sedaris story “Six to Eight Black Men” (from Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim). Those characters are Sinterklaas’s Zwarte Piet companions, and they sometimes play a role similar to Santa’s elves. At other times, as in the Sedaris story, they play a “bad cop” role to Sinterklaas’s good cop. Like Krampus, the Zwarte Piet characters are sometimes said to carry bad children off. In the Sedaris essay, that’s back to Spain, where Sinterklaas is said to live. Unlike his cousin, Santa, who lives at the North Pole. I’d say Sinterklaas has the better deal there.

Getty images.

Most of the time the Zwarte Piet companions play the role of cheerful assistants, but they are not without controversy (for evidence, see the article below from a 2014 issue of The Economist).. As the Dutch become more racially diverse,  people are beginning to question the use of black-face as a means for white people to portray the diminutive imp, whose roots lie in the history of the Moors conquest of Europe. Some people now make up new stories (the black is ash from chimney soot) while others have turned to using  face paint in a variety of colors–red, blue, green etc, making the new Piets as colorful as a bag of Skittles. http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21635517-worsening-clash-over-tradition-and-racial-sensitivities-blacked-up

 

For more info on KRAMPUS, the star of a new horror film this year, check out this post. It tells how folks in Philadelphia are celebrating with an array of European characters and traditions.

For more on holiday folklore, join the Krampuslauf Philly Folklore group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/966987013330153/edit/

ALSO, if you live near Philadelphia and wish to take part in this year’s fun Alpine Christmas tradition, check out the Krampuslauf Parade of Spirits website.
Event: Krampuslauf Philadelphia 2015
Sat. Dec. 12, 3 pm. Parade is usually at dusk.
Venue: Liberty Lands Park
Philadelphia
913-961 N 3rd St, Philadelphia, US

 

Are your children SAFE this Christmas season?

Christmas is a very dangerous time of year in the land of the Weird: Bat Boy biting Santa, and not even Mr. Fuzzy Wuzzy’s heartwarming Christmas message is able to make all well and good again. Now the Elf on the Shelf is offering up his secrets to Wikileaks! Will American children ever be safe again?

THE ELF ON THE SHELF REPORTS BACK TO AMERICA’S CHILDREN
A Holiday Special

First, I would like to thank Mr. Julian Assange for giving me the opportunity to make these crimes public. I would also like to affirm that this is not my story alone. I, Snickerdoodle Snowcone, speak not only for myself, but on behalf of every other elf ever forced into espionage by the egomaniacal despot the world so endearingly refers to as Santa Claus.

Yes, we have been spying on you, boys and girls, at the strong-armed behest of our big red Boss. That’s what he likes to be called–The Boss–like he’s some sort of mafioso heavyweight instead of an aging toy peddler suffering from severe obesity and a bad case of the sugars.

Jolly? Not so much anymore. The hand tools The Boss once taught us elves to use now gather dust in his crumbling workshop. Manufacturing has been outsourced to China and other countries, many with lax labor laws where children no older than yourselves work like drones to grind out petty playthings. They sing no carols. Their hands do not move with the happy glee that mine once did. Don’t be surprised if there is a little blood in your fashion doll’s bright red lipstick. I can guarantee you the sheen on her hair is laced with tears.

The Boss has sold out, you see. His heart has become as hardened as his arteries…. Read the rest of the startling truth by clicking here!

#Batboy #CIA #ChildSafety #ElfOnTheShelf #CleaverMagazine

Cheesesteak Murders in Philly?

#NakedCheesesteak    The first few chapters of NAKED CAME THE CHEESESTEAK are live at Philadelphia Stories here.   

NAKED CAME THE CHEESESTEAK is a serial murder mystery written by 13 Philadelphians for Philadelphia Stories magazine. While the novel is designed to be a fun romp, poking fun at the sacrilege of such things as vegan cheesesteaks, it also touches on  more serious themes. These include the exploitation of adjunct instructors that college towns like Philly use to staff various campuses.  NAKED CAME THE CHEESESTEAK is a wry portrait of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods, cuisines, educational institutions and legal systems, all wrapped up in greasy wax paper and shiny aluminum foil.

The idea was cooked up last winter by a handful of writers meeting over wine and chili in a Society Hill townhouse. The story centers on an intrepid Philadelphia detective trying to solve the puzzle of who is poisoning college students at campuses across the city. The novel features a huge cast of flamboyant Philadelphians:  an African-American police detective named Chelsea Simon; her bad boy restaurateur husband, Arturo; a crusty, trench coat-wearing news blogger named Ben Travers; the Nicholettis, a sprawling South Philly family with ties throughout the city; and a host of college skate boarders and scullers who get caught up in the malfeasance of the unknown serial killer.

It’s also a portrait of Philadelphia neighborhoods and college campuses. The action takes place in locales as varied as Strawberry Mansion, Allegheny Avenue, Boathouse Row, the Italian Market, Passyunk Avenue and Rittenhouse Square. Murder, mayhem and mystery-solving also takes place at Kelly Writers House at Penn, the Temple University Bell Tower, the Drexel Dragon and more.
The 13-chapter serial novel was written by Philadelphia area writers Diane Ayres, Randall Brown, Mary Anna Evans, Gregory Frost, Shaun Haurin, Victoria Janssen, Merry Jones, Tony Knighton, Don Lafferty, Warren Longmire, Kelly McQuain, Nathaniel Popkin and Kelly Simmons. Edited by Mitch Sommers and Tori Bond.

The novel will be published by the magazine’s books division, PS Books.

Learn more here.

Thank you, City Paper

Years ago The Philadelphia City Paper published my poem “Annabelle” and my story “Burial Game” as winners of their annual poetry and story contest. I won in the poetry category one year and the fiction category the next. That paper showed me some writerly love when I really needed it. I’m sorry to learn this week that City Paper will be ceasing print operations as of October 8th and that their online presence will be folded into http://www.PhiladelphiaWeekly.com, previously their chief competitor. I wrote for both papers over the years. I’m sorry to see the alternative weeklies disappearing.

Speaking of Marvels: Chapbook Reviews

This week Speaking of Marvels, a site that publishes interviews by chapbook authors, published an interview with me about the creation and publication of Velvet Rodeo. Other recent interviews have include poets Danez Smith, Allison Joseph and Elizabeth Savage. For anyone interested in the creation, production, and marketing of chapbooks, the site reveals the various processes and provides sample poems by the authors. Click here to read the review: https://chapbookinterviews.wordpress.com/2015/01/16/kelly-mcquain/

Lots of shout-outs in the interview to those folks tagged.

Rethinking Your Hatred of The Elf on the Shelf

The kind editors at The Good Men Project published my essay on their website just in time for the Christmas countdown. Here’s a teaser: The Elf on the Shelf: Indoctrination into a culture of surveillance, or just another iteration of a longstanding–and sometimes unsettling–morality play that’s always been part of Christmas folklore traditons? You read it and be the judge, and then come back and leave a comment below.

Rethinking Your Hatred of the Elf on the Shelf: Christmas Has a Long Tradition of Being a Little Creepy
Click here:
http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/rethinking-your-hatred-of-the-elf-on-the-shelf-christmas-tradition-of-creepy-gmp/

“Truth be told, I believe kids are in on the joke. Any parent who has woken up having forgotten to move Snickerdoodle the night before can attest to the complicity of their children in explaining away the mistake. Kids want to keep the game alive. They know on some level it’s their parents who are actually watching them, yet they nevertheless delight in the morality play of it all. By externalizing an imaginary critic who assesses their behavior, children are in fact developing a necessary faculty that helps them form judgements about the consequences of their actions.”

Velvet Rodeo scores with Rainbow Awards judges

This week I learned Velvet Rodeo did very well in the 2014 Rainbow Book Awards, winning 2nd place in the Best LGBT Poetry category and 5th in the much larger overall Best Gay Book Award competition–the only poetry book to make that list, I believe. More than 520 books were in play this year in various categories, with almost 170 judges from all over the world. The fact that a small book of poetry did so well in a mixed-genre competition especially comes as a nice surprise to me.

Elisa Reviews sponsors the awards as a fundraising event for LGBT charities. The pic below contains some of the judges’ comments, and a pic of the overall winning book by Benjamin Law. Congratulations to the winners and runners-up.

BEST GAY BOOK
Rainbow Book Awards
1. Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East by Benjamin Law
Runners Up:
2. The Mating of Michael by Eli Easton
3. Perfect Imperfections by Cardeno C. Author
4. Silent by Sara Alva
5. Velvet Rodeo by Kelly McQuain
6. Think of England by KJ Charles
7. (tie)
a. Last First Kiss by Diane Adams
b. Takedown by Cat Grant
8. Beards, an Unshaved History by Kevin Clarke
9. Corruption by Eden Winters
10. Cub by Jeff Mann

Best LGBT Poetry
1. Hibernation and Other Poems by Bear Bards, an anthology by Ron J. Suresha
Runners Up:
2. Velvet Rodeo by Kelly McQuain
3. Souvenir Boys by David-Matthew Barnes

A complete list of winners in all the many categories is at http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/4489098.html

Rainbow Awards Judges’ Comments:
Velvet Rodeo by Kelly McQuain
Publisher: Bloom Books

“A master at imagery. Beautiful work.”

“An intricately structured set of images and perceptions laid forth in sensual, evocative language. Gorgeous.”

“An enthralling, engrossing collection of poems that will involve its reader on many levels of interest.”

https://kellymcquain.wordpress.com/order-velvet-rodeo-poems/

#phillypoetry #poetry #LGBTQ #philadelphiapoets #rainbowawards

“Architect”: A new poem in the journal CODEX

CODEX has a new fall issue out. I have a poem about my father in it. It seems a fitting season for it to come out now that the leaves are starting to change. Loss has haunted me lately, and the rage that goes along with it. I lost my father to cancer a long time ago, and more recently I lost a college friend who leaves behind her husband and two boys. I dream of better days.

You can read “Architect” here if you like: http://codexjournal.com/kelly_mcquain/. 

Maybe I will read this poem at Tattooed Mom’s bar at the reading tonight. I’ll be there with friends, celebrating this journey and what time is allotted to us.

Gay Pride at Big Blue Marble

Gay marriage is legal In PA! Come celebrate it and gay pride month in Mt. Airy on June 5th! https://www.facebook.com/events/252657468255098/?ref=notif&notif_t=plan_user_joined

Book Covers & Stock Photos

I had deja vu recently when I saw the cover for Best Gay Romance 2014. Turns out the publisher is using a photo from the same photo shoot that was used for Men on Men–back in 2000! I had a story in Men on Men that year, along with the likes of JIm Grimsley and Brian Bouldrey. With all the photos in the world, it seems strange that a publisher would use one almost exactly the same. Compare, but if you want a fun read, my money is on Men on Men.

Creative Writing at CCP–Come Study With Me!

Creative Writing at Community College of Philadelphia – January 2014
#creativewriting
Need to develop a portfolio of your creative writing? Consider taking English 285 at Community College of Philadelphia. English 285: THE WRITING PORTFOLIO is ideal for advanced writers who want to develop a portfolio to submit to create a writing programs, writing contests or publishers. English 285 – Writing Portfolio helps writers polish old work and start new projects. It’s a mixed-genre workshop consisting of poets, story writers and essayists who are seeking to take their work to the next level. We will workshop stories, poems and essays and discuss aspects of the writer’s life, which will include exploring the rich opportunities of the Philadelphia writing community. Several of my students have gone on to get their MA’s, MFA’s and Ph D’s in creative writing and publishing, and to start literary magazines that draw local and national attention. In addition, CCP classes are among the most inexpensive college courses in the region.

As a teacher, I have over twenty years of experience. I have also freelanced for newspapers like The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Weekly and The City Paper in addition to serving as a contributing editor for two national publications. My own stories, poems and essays have been anthologized numerous times and my work has appeared in such journals as The Pinch, Painted Bride Quarterly, American Writing, Paper Nautilus, Assaracus and more. I’ve won awards and fellowships for my work, including two from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in fiction and nonfiction, as well as a prize for my forthcoming collection of poems, Velvet Rodeo. I run an independent literary salon called Poetdelphia (find us on Facebook!), I work with the One Book, One Philadelphia program, and I run the Poets and Writers’ Festival at CCP. This is all to say that I have a lot of experience that I can put to work for you. Because the course has prerequisites, student candidates outside the CCP Creative Writing Certificate Program will need to submit a short writing sample in the genre of their choice. If you are interested, email me a brief letter describing your writing projects and a work sample of up to five pages (excerpts from longer works are okay). Send to kmcquain [at] ccp.edu and please CC the Director of the Certificate Program in Creative Writing, Jeff Markovitz (jmarkovitz [at] ccp.edu) since you will need his approval to waive the prerequisites for the course. If you have friends who have been working hard on their writing, please tell them about this opportunity.

ENGL 285: Writing Portfolio – ENGL 285-001 16149 Class WEDNESDAY EVENING 6:00 pm-8:55 pm in WINNET S3-07 The first class is January 15th. www.ccp.edu