We are excited about our upcoming reading at Seattle's Richard Hugo House on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 7 pm for a few reasons.
The first is that we have an outstanding group of readers who will be their work:
Kathleen Alcala
Jim Bertolino
Ronda Broatch
Kathleen Flenniken
Marjorie Manwaring
Kay Mullen
Monica Schley
Monica Schley is also a harpist who will be playing a few selections during the evening as well.
The second is the generosity of these writers:
Nin Andrews
Barbara Crooker
Holly Hughes
Tom Hunley & his press Steel Toe Books
Jennifer Lawrence
Jennie Shortridge
who have all donated books and literary items to be part of a drawing at the reading. We want to give them our deepest thanks for supporting our journal.
So not only does the reading have a spectular group of poets, but we are also having drawings throughout the event for some wonderful literary items below--
Signed novels by Jennie Shortridge including Riding with the Queen, Eating Heaven, Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe
Signed books from Tom Hunley of Steel Toe Books
Jenifer Lawrence's signed copy of first edition One Hundred Steps From Shore
Holly Hughes' broadside & signed chapbook, Boxing the Compass, winner of the Floating Bridge Chapbook Award
Signed book of poems from Barbara Crooker
Signed books from Nin Andrews
Editors' Bundle featuring signed copies of In the Convent We Become Clouds by Annette Spaulding-Convy, Small Knots by Kelli Russell Agodon, Becoming the Villainess by Jeannine Hall Gailey, Love is a Weed by Lana Hechtman Ayers, and Shedding Our Skins by Ronda Broatch.
And of course, with Hugo House there is always wine and coffee available, so please mark your calendars for Wednesday, October 22nd so you can join in the literary festivities with us.
So please join us--
Crab Creek Review Reading: Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Contributors from the Spring/Summer '08 Issue
read their work Oct. 22, 2008 at 7 pm
Richard Hugo House
1634 11th Avenue
Seattle, WA
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Monday, September 1, 2008
Notes on Writing “Stuck Inside”
Dear Readers,
We are beginning a series here at our Crab Creek Review blog that will feature some of the poets we have published in previous issues talking about their work, the writing life, and other creative and literary topics.
I'm pleased to announce our first poet-blogger in this series will be Julene Tripp Weaver whose poem "Stuck Inside" was featured in our current issue.
Below you will find her poem and her thoughts about writing and how her poem came to be.
We hope you enjoy this new series!
Kelli Russell Agodon
__________________________________
Stuck Inside
A little man bucking and barking fights with a ceiling built over his head but, one inch shorter than he is. His neck bent he paces complaining of the short wall and the people who built it.
He doesn’t have enough money to redo the wall. It should have been built right to start with.
He sits and can only think of his too low ceiling.
He goes outside and stretches, but outside he is not inside and it is cold, so he goes back into
his house where he feels trapped.
He cries, empties his pockets, takes off his shoes, crawls on his knees but nothing will help, nothing.
His girlfriend really doesn’t understand, she’s fine in his space, but she’s five inches shorter than him.
She says, “Oh Honey, lets lie down in bed and stretch out, I’ll bring you some relaxing tea.”
He continues to fume about the wall height.
They hardly have fun any longer because he is preoccupied with the ceiling.
“Perhaps you could move,” she says. She’s said it before.
“I can’t move, I can’t afford to move,” he says, his gritted teeth in his tilted head look like fangs of a wolf.
She shivers and says, “We could go to my place,” wondering if he’d be happier living with her at her apartment. But inside she doesn’t want him there. He’s grumpy and she wonders what he would find to rail against.
“Your place? Fine, if I want to roast my body like a cashew over a fire,” he says, his voice a growl.
“Honey, I think I’ll go now, I need to stop by my mother’s with some cabbage,” she says gathering her coat.
He hardly notices when she leaves.
by Julene Tripp Weaver
from Crab Creek Review, Spring/Summer 2008
* * *
Notes on Writing “Stuck Inside”
When the editors at Crab Creek Review asked me how I came to write “Stuck Inside” I answered, “Sometimes the little people sit in my head and tell me stories—this is one of them.” This poem captures a mindset of someone unable to see outside their own story. In my work with people living with AIDS I watch people spin the same stories repeatedly; I am continually confronted with the confirmation of how tightly each of us are wrapped in our own belief systems. Our thinking moves in set groves to what we tell ourselves, and the more we repeat it without change, or at a faster speed the more set it becomes. AIDS now has a new story, yet many are unable to change their story of what AIDS means.
One way of changing a story is by slowing it down, interrupting the pattern by changing it ever so slightly. Gertrude Stein was a master at this repetition that is always changing. In her view each repetition has a different insistence with subtle changes, like a birdcall.
I’ve been obsessed. As an adolescent one of the books that changed my life was Jane Roberts’ The Nature of Personal Reality. It opened my mind to the understanding that our lives are what we make them by what we believe is possible. There is a mirror-like paradox in how we see ourselves when we are locked inside a reality we do not know can change. The quandary of self-perpetuating beliefs, how we only see what we can see, has hounded me for decades as I’ve lived my life experimenting with how I make change.
Since reading this channeled book, I’ve explored many realities and played with edges—intentionally wondering how deeply I could tip the balance of one worldview into the next. I’ve wondered about getting stuck in the mundane, and the repetitive mass of cultural norms. I slip in and out of the roles of observer, listener, describer, in my work, my writing, and my life. I love William Stafford’s writings on writing—his idea of picking a strand, a thought wave, or a sensory impulse in the moment, and letting it lead.
Emilie Conrad[1] is one of my personal icons. In the many intensive workshops I’ve taken with her since 1988, she has been a guide in my quest to identity and how we create change; an example is her process of founding Continuum Movement. Emilie and Rebecca Mark[2] create a container and lead an experiential process for hand-to-page exploration at yearly workshops combining Continuum Movement and language. This involves a slowed down process using sound, movement, and pauses to create interruption and perturbation of the senses. These intensives have helped me come to a place in my writing where I write fluidly. Rebecca has taught me there is no such thing as writers block, and there is no separation between movement and writing. Now when a voice, or a sensation, rings through me I write easily. This poem came in the particular voice of a young woman with a boyfriend who felt trapped. He is like so many obsessed in whatever life trauma they are living out.
In The Triggering Town Richard Hugo says, “Never want to say anything so strongly that you give up the option of finding something better. If you have to say it you will.” My poem “Stuck Inside” found me after many attempts to write about people stuck in their own stories. I was in a conversation with a friend about a topic we’d discussed many times, and the voice started; my friend suddenly was a man in a house too small. I grabbed my pen and started writing. Like William Stafford, one line led to the next as I attended to the story this new voice gave to me. All my earlier failed poems around this topic are now superseded.
Julene Tripp Weaver
http://www.drizzle.com/~newroots
__________________________________
[1] Emily Conrad is author of Life on Land, in which she talks about founding Continuum.[1] Rebecca Mark is a tenured professor at Tulane University and author of The Dragon’s Blood: Feminist Intertextuality in Eudora Welty’s Fiction.
* * *
Read more work from Julene and learn about her projects at her website: http://www.drizzle.com/~newroots
We are beginning a series here at our Crab Creek Review blog that will feature some of the poets we have published in previous issues talking about their work, the writing life, and other creative and literary topics.
I'm pleased to announce our first poet-blogger in this series will be Julene Tripp Weaver whose poem "Stuck Inside" was featured in our current issue.
Below you will find her poem and her thoughts about writing and how her poem came to be.
We hope you enjoy this new series!
Kelli Russell Agodon
__________________________________
Stuck Inside
A little man bucking and barking fights with a ceiling built over his head but, one inch shorter than he is. His neck bent he paces complaining of the short wall and the people who built it.
He doesn’t have enough money to redo the wall. It should have been built right to start with.
He sits and can only think of his too low ceiling.
He goes outside and stretches, but outside he is not inside and it is cold, so he goes back into
his house where he feels trapped.
He cries, empties his pockets, takes off his shoes, crawls on his knees but nothing will help, nothing.
His girlfriend really doesn’t understand, she’s fine in his space, but she’s five inches shorter than him.
She says, “Oh Honey, lets lie down in bed and stretch out, I’ll bring you some relaxing tea.”
He continues to fume about the wall height.
They hardly have fun any longer because he is preoccupied with the ceiling.
“Perhaps you could move,” she says. She’s said it before.
“I can’t move, I can’t afford to move,” he says, his gritted teeth in his tilted head look like fangs of a wolf.
She shivers and says, “We could go to my place,” wondering if he’d be happier living with her at her apartment. But inside she doesn’t want him there. He’s grumpy and she wonders what he would find to rail against.
“Your place? Fine, if I want to roast my body like a cashew over a fire,” he says, his voice a growl.
“Honey, I think I’ll go now, I need to stop by my mother’s with some cabbage,” she says gathering her coat.
He hardly notices when she leaves.
by Julene Tripp Weaver
from Crab Creek Review, Spring/Summer 2008
* * *
Notes on Writing “Stuck Inside”
When the editors at Crab Creek Review asked me how I came to write “Stuck Inside” I answered, “Sometimes the little people sit in my head and tell me stories—this is one of them.” This poem captures a mindset of someone unable to see outside their own story. In my work with people living with AIDS I watch people spin the same stories repeatedly; I am continually confronted with the confirmation of how tightly each of us are wrapped in our own belief systems. Our thinking moves in set groves to what we tell ourselves, and the more we repeat it without change, or at a faster speed the more set it becomes. AIDS now has a new story, yet many are unable to change their story of what AIDS means.
One way of changing a story is by slowing it down, interrupting the pattern by changing it ever so slightly. Gertrude Stein was a master at this repetition that is always changing. In her view each repetition has a different insistence with subtle changes, like a birdcall.
I’ve been obsessed. As an adolescent one of the books that changed my life was Jane Roberts’ The Nature of Personal Reality. It opened my mind to the understanding that our lives are what we make them by what we believe is possible. There is a mirror-like paradox in how we see ourselves when we are locked inside a reality we do not know can change. The quandary of self-perpetuating beliefs, how we only see what we can see, has hounded me for decades as I’ve lived my life experimenting with how I make change.
Since reading this channeled book, I’ve explored many realities and played with edges—intentionally wondering how deeply I could tip the balance of one worldview into the next. I’ve wondered about getting stuck in the mundane, and the repetitive mass of cultural norms. I slip in and out of the roles of observer, listener, describer, in my work, my writing, and my life. I love William Stafford’s writings on writing—his idea of picking a strand, a thought wave, or a sensory impulse in the moment, and letting it lead.
Emilie Conrad[1] is one of my personal icons. In the many intensive workshops I’ve taken with her since 1988, she has been a guide in my quest to identity and how we create change; an example is her process of founding Continuum Movement. Emilie and Rebecca Mark[2] create a container and lead an experiential process for hand-to-page exploration at yearly workshops combining Continuum Movement and language. This involves a slowed down process using sound, movement, and pauses to create interruption and perturbation of the senses. These intensives have helped me come to a place in my writing where I write fluidly. Rebecca has taught me there is no such thing as writers block, and there is no separation between movement and writing. Now when a voice, or a sensation, rings through me I write easily. This poem came in the particular voice of a young woman with a boyfriend who felt trapped. He is like so many obsessed in whatever life trauma they are living out.
In The Triggering Town Richard Hugo says, “Never want to say anything so strongly that you give up the option of finding something better. If you have to say it you will.” My poem “Stuck Inside” found me after many attempts to write about people stuck in their own stories. I was in a conversation with a friend about a topic we’d discussed many times, and the voice started; my friend suddenly was a man in a house too small. I grabbed my pen and started writing. Like William Stafford, one line led to the next as I attended to the story this new voice gave to me. All my earlier failed poems around this topic are now superseded.
Julene Tripp Weaver
http://www.drizzle.com/~newroots
__________________________________
[1] Emily Conrad is author of Life on Land, in which she talks about founding Continuum.[1] Rebecca Mark is a tenured professor at Tulane University and author of The Dragon’s Blood: Feminist Intertextuality in Eudora Welty’s Fiction.
* * *
Read more work from Julene and learn about her projects at her website: http://www.drizzle.com/~newroots
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Hugo House Reading, Wednesday, October 22nd
Along with a great reading at Hugo House, we'll also have a raffle and some of the items will include--
Signed books from Nin Andrews including Sleeping with Houdini and the Book of Orgasms
6 signed novels by Jennie Shortridge including Riding with the Queen, Eating Heaven, Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe
Books from Tom Hunley of Steel Toe Books
Jenifer Lawrence's first edition One Hundred Steps From Shore
Holly Hughes' broadside & signed chapbook, Boxing the Compass, winner of the Floating Bridge Chapbook Award
Signed book of poems from Barbara Crooker
Editors' Bundle featuring signed copies of In the Convent We Become Clouds by Annette Spaulding-Convy, Small Knots by Kelli Russell Agodon, Becoming the Villainess by Jeannine Hall Gailey, Love is a Weed, by Lana Hechtman Ayers, and Shedding Our Skins by Ronda Broatch.
* * * *
We dearly thank our authors
Nin Andrews
Jennie Shortridge
Tom Hunley
Barbara Crooker
Holly Hughes
Jenifer Lawrence
who generously their donated books!
Signed books from Nin Andrews including Sleeping with Houdini and the Book of Orgasms
6 signed novels by Jennie Shortridge including Riding with the Queen, Eating Heaven, Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe
Books from Tom Hunley of Steel Toe Books
Jenifer Lawrence's first edition One Hundred Steps From Shore
Holly Hughes' broadside & signed chapbook, Boxing the Compass, winner of the Floating Bridge Chapbook Award
Signed book of poems from Barbara Crooker
Editors' Bundle featuring signed copies of In the Convent We Become Clouds by Annette Spaulding-Convy, Small Knots by Kelli Russell Agodon, Becoming the Villainess by Jeannine Hall Gailey, Love is a Weed, by Lana Hechtman Ayers, and Shedding Our Skins by Ronda Broatch.
* * * *
We dearly thank our authors
Nin Andrews
Jennie Shortridge
Tom Hunley
Barbara Crooker
Holly Hughes
Jenifer Lawrence
who generously their donated books!
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Press Release: Oct. 22nd Hugo House Reading
Writers from Crab Creek Review’s Spring/Summer ‘08 Issue
Read at Richard Hugo House in Seattle
Seattle, Washington, August 22, 2008—Crab Creek Review celebrates its Spring/Summer ’08 Issue with an evening of poetry and fiction. Writers James Bertolino, Kathleen Flenniken, Kathleen Alcala, Marjorie Manwaring, Kay Mullen, Ronda Broatch, Brendan McBreen and Monica Schley will read from their work on Wednesday, October 22nd, 7pm, at Richard Hugo House in Seattle. The celebration will include musical selections from poet and harpist Monica Schley and drawings for signed, first edition books. The event is free and is open to the public.
Bellingham poet James Bertolino is the author of nine volumes of poetry published by Copper Canyon Press, Carnegie Mellon University Press, the QRL Award Series, among others, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2007 Jeanne Lohmann Poetry Prize. Co-editor of Floating Bridge Press, Kathleen Flenniken is the author of Famous, which won the 2006 Prairie Schooner Book Prize and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Bainbridge Island writer, Kathleen Alcala, author of five books and co-founder of The Raven Chronicles, teaches in the Whidbey Island Writers Association MFA Program. Poet and freelance writer, Marjorie Manwaring is an associate editor for the online journal, DMQ Review, and author of Magic Word (2007). Kay Mullen is the author of two full length poetry collections, Let Morning Begin (2001) and A Long Remembering: Return to Vietnam (2006). Kingston poet Ronda Broatch is the author of Some Other Eden (2005) and Shedding Our Skins (2008). Brendan McBreen is a member of Auburn’s Striped Water Poets and is published in various places, including Leading Edge and Bellowing Arc. Monica Schley is a poet, harpist, and performer whose poetry has appeared in Burnside Review and The Raven Chronicles, among others.
Celebrating its twenty-fifth year in the Pacific Northwest, Crab Creek Review is an independent literary journal with a national readership. Publishing poetry and short fiction, Crab Creek Review has recently welcomed new head editors, Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy, both Seattle area poets. Founded by Linda Clifton, the journal is proud to have been managed by women since 1983.
Annette Spaulding-Convy
Read at Richard Hugo House in Seattle
Seattle, Washington, August 22, 2008—Crab Creek Review celebrates its Spring/Summer ’08 Issue with an evening of poetry and fiction. Writers James Bertolino, Kathleen Flenniken, Kathleen Alcala, Marjorie Manwaring, Kay Mullen, Ronda Broatch, Brendan McBreen and Monica Schley will read from their work on Wednesday, October 22nd, 7pm, at Richard Hugo House in Seattle. The celebration will include musical selections from poet and harpist Monica Schley and drawings for signed, first edition books. The event is free and is open to the public.
Bellingham poet James Bertolino is the author of nine volumes of poetry published by Copper Canyon Press, Carnegie Mellon University Press, the QRL Award Series, among others, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2007 Jeanne Lohmann Poetry Prize. Co-editor of Floating Bridge Press, Kathleen Flenniken is the author of Famous, which won the 2006 Prairie Schooner Book Prize and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Bainbridge Island writer, Kathleen Alcala, author of five books and co-founder of The Raven Chronicles, teaches in the Whidbey Island Writers Association MFA Program. Poet and freelance writer, Marjorie Manwaring is an associate editor for the online journal, DMQ Review, and author of Magic Word (2007). Kay Mullen is the author of two full length poetry collections, Let Morning Begin (2001) and A Long Remembering: Return to Vietnam (2006). Kingston poet Ronda Broatch is the author of Some Other Eden (2005) and Shedding Our Skins (2008). Brendan McBreen is a member of Auburn’s Striped Water Poets and is published in various places, including Leading Edge and Bellowing Arc. Monica Schley is a poet, harpist, and performer whose poetry has appeared in Burnside Review and The Raven Chronicles, among others.
Celebrating its twenty-fifth year in the Pacific Northwest, Crab Creek Review is an independent literary journal with a national readership. Publishing poetry and short fiction, Crab Creek Review has recently welcomed new head editors, Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy, both Seattle area poets. Founded by Linda Clifton, the journal is proud to have been managed by women since 1983.
Annette Spaulding-Convy
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Save the Date! Crab Creek Review Reading
YOU'RE INVITED!
Crab Creek Review Reading
at Seattle's Richard Hugo House,
Join us Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 7 p.m.
*
Dear friends,
As the new editors of Crab Creek Review, we're having a celebration reading on Wednesday, October 22nd at Seattle's Richard Hugo House at 7 p.m. and we would love for you to join us there.
Not only will there be incredible readers including
Jim Bertolino
Kathleen Flenniken
Kathleen Alcala
Marjorie Manwaring
Kay Mullen
Ronda Broatch
Brendan McBreen
and Monica Schley
But one of our readers, Monica Schley is a harpist and will be performing as well.
We will also be having drawings for some great literary prizes including signed books, t-shirts, and free copies of Crab Creek Review! And of course, with Hugo House there is always wine and coffee available, so please mark your calendars for Wednesday, October 22nd so you can join in the literary festivities with us.
It looks to be a great night of poetry, a bit of fiction, and some wonderful music!
We hope to see you there!
warmly,
Kelli & Annette
Crab Creek Review Reading
at Seattle's Richard Hugo House,
Join us Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 7 p.m.
*
Dear friends,
As the new editors of Crab Creek Review, we're having a celebration reading on Wednesday, October 22nd at Seattle's Richard Hugo House at 7 p.m. and we would love for you to join us there.
Not only will there be incredible readers including
Jim Bertolino
Kathleen Flenniken
Kathleen Alcala
Marjorie Manwaring
Kay Mullen
Ronda Broatch
Brendan McBreen
and Monica Schley
But one of our readers, Monica Schley is a harpist and will be performing as well.
We will also be having drawings for some great literary prizes including signed books, t-shirts, and free copies of Crab Creek Review! And of course, with Hugo House there is always wine and coffee available, so please mark your calendars for Wednesday, October 22nd so you can join in the literary festivities with us.
It looks to be a great night of poetry, a bit of fiction, and some wonderful music!
We hope to see you there!
warmly,
Kelli & Annette
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Postcard from a Literary Journal
We have set down our luggage and are now starting to unpack. I may have tripped walking up the stairs, but it was with the excitement of arriving. So yes, it's official, Annette Spaulding-Convy & I have keys to the place and will be the new editors of Crab Creek Review.
The Crab Creek Review website has been updated and our submission guidelines are up. Poetry submissions start September 1st, so get your envelopes ready, we look forward to reading your work. There's also a fiction contest going on right now.
We'll be blogging about the writing life here every once in a while and will have some guest bloggers that will hopefully entertain you if not make you smarter.
If you haven't checked out our website, please do. Otherwise, I have a lot of unpacking to do and a little sightseeing too. I have hope this will be a good trip.
Wishing you good work and good writing,
Kelli Russell Agodon
The Crab Creek Review website has been updated and our submission guidelines are up. Poetry submissions start September 1st, so get your envelopes ready, we look forward to reading your work. There's also a fiction contest going on right now.
We'll be blogging about the writing life here every once in a while and will have some guest bloggers that will hopefully entertain you if not make you smarter.
If you haven't checked out our website, please do. Otherwise, I have a lot of unpacking to do and a little sightseeing too. I have hope this will be a good trip.
Wishing you good work and good writing,
Kelli Russell Agodon
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Crab Creek announces
With this our Anniversary year, we are celebrating 25 years of publication supported by a host of dedicated editors. By this August, Crab Creek Review will be guided by the talented poets Annette Spaulding Convy and Kelli Russell Agodon. I could not ask for two more capable co-editors to lead this already dynamic collective.
Thanks to all the contributors, editors, fellow publishers, subscribers, donors, booksellers, venues, and of course--current and past staff who've made these past couple of years at Crab Creek an incredibly valuable experience for me.
Cheers!
Natasha Moni
Thanks to all the contributors, editors, fellow publishers, subscribers, donors, booksellers, venues, and of course--current and past staff who've made these past couple of years at Crab Creek an incredibly valuable experience for me.
Cheers!
Natasha Moni
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Welcome to the New Crab Creek Review Blog!
Dear Readers,
Welcome to the new Crab Creek Review blog!
Crab Creek Review has been publishing the best poetry and fiction for 25 years. It is a literary journal that was born in the Northwest and reaches poets, writers, and readers across America.
This blog will be a place to see featured work from our published writers as well as unique essays and thoughts on the writing life and the writing process. Check back here in the next few months to meet our editors, our writers, and see what's going on at Crab Creek Review as well as in the writing world.
Thanks for visiting.
Welcome to the new Crab Creek Review blog!
Crab Creek Review has been publishing the best poetry and fiction for 25 years. It is a literary journal that was born in the Northwest and reaches poets, writers, and readers across America.
This blog will be a place to see featured work from our published writers as well as unique essays and thoughts on the writing life and the writing process. Check back here in the next few months to meet our editors, our writers, and see what's going on at Crab Creek Review as well as in the writing world.
Thanks for visiting.
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