Study at Berkeley

So I'm teaching this summer at Berkeley with my old friend Camille Dungy, my old classmate Tony Swofford, my old friend & classmate Shane Book, and my new BFFs (though they don't know it), Daniel Alarcón and Justin Torres! Fun!

6-Week Creative Nonfiction Workshop with Faith

Berkeley Summer Creative Writing Program

May 21-June 28, 2012, University of California, Berkeley

Apply here

Our unique 6-week program offers aspiring, practicing and experienced writers a sustained community in which to create, network and live the writing life. Make lifelong connections while enjoying master classes with renowned authors, meeting with agents, and attending and participating in panels. Specialized intensives such as novel writing and preparing the MFA application portfolio will also be offered. Classes meet Monday through Thursday morning.

Submit to VONA Anthology 3/30!

Have you heard? Thread Makes Blanket Press, in conjunction with VONA, will publish a perfect-bound anthology of writing from past VONA (Voices of Our Nations) participants. Work can be previously published as long as author can obtain permissions. Proceeds will go to support VONA's summer workshops for writers of color. Deadline is March 30th. Get on it! http://threadmakesblanket.submishmash.com/submit

Submit to Colors of Nature Teaching Guide

The editors of the groundbreaking anthology on people of color and nature, The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World (Milkweed Editions, 2011), are looking for contributions for a higher education online teaching guide with lesson ideas, questions, prompts, and resources that teachers of literature, environmental studies, multicultural studies, American Studies, geography, and other pertinent fields would find valuable for teaching the book.

The provocative writings in The Colors of Nature exist at the intersection of cultural identity and ecological awareness, featuring work from more than 30 contributors of widely diverse backgrounds—including Jamaica Kincaid, Joseph Bruchac, Yusef Komunyakaa, Kimiko Hahn, Nikky Finney, bell hooks, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Francisco X. Alarcón and me, Faith.  This anthology explores the relationships between culture, place, “race,” and identity, which historically have been overlooked in traditional environmental writing.

Timetable and Submission Guidelines: Please let us know of your interest as soon as possible.  The deadline has been extended for receipt of lessons or class ideas, plus resources, to May 30, 2012.  Read the call for more detail on the next page of this blog.

Lauret Savoy lsavoy @ mtholyoke . edu Alison Deming  aldeming @ aol . com

"A Lot Like You" film is a lot like me

Talk about a coincidink! This documentary film by a Seattle-based woman with a Tanzanian father and Korean mother was playing at the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival last week. So I loaded up about 10 Africans and their friends and checked it out. They kept leaning over and telling me, “This ‘A Lot Like You’ is a lot like you!” Indeed, with filmmaker Eliaichi Kimaro‘s situating of her parents within African independence movements, it felt like a longer a version of My Journey Home. Perhaps even some of the same B&W Civil Rights footage appears.

But hers has an added surprise twist of domestic abuse. I was gratified that the African men in our group thought the film was fantastic. And they also noted that her parents were together – still – and make a lovely presence on screen. I’ve never seen my parents together. My favorite artistic bit happens around 0:26-0:28, where the filmmaker’s further mixed daughter staggers out of the grandparents’ traditional thatched hut, into a sunlight doorway, and disappears.

Afterwards, I introduced myself to Kimaro and told her my hope – that we could be a double feature at the Mixed Roots Fest this summer in Los Angeles. Wouldn’t that be cool?!

http://vimeo.com/alotlikeyoumovie/trailer

Filmmaker Eliaichi Kimaro and her Tanzanian father and Korean mother