Founding class of creative writers graduate from HSPVA

May 29, 2015, by

HSPVA Seniors 3259This week saw the emergence into the wider literary world of the first graduating class from the four-year Creative Writing program at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA).

When Judith Switek was appointed Director of Creative Writing in 2010, she also took on the challenge of designing the new writing curriculum.

croppedJudith Switek - main - 3273“I went to visit a couple of other fine arts schools,” she says, “and of course, I talked to the other art form department chairs at HSPVA to see how their programs were structured. For example, for the first two years in Art, they give the students a taste of lots of different styles. Then as juniors and seniors, they can decide what they want to focus on. I knew I wanted to do that with my program too. I studied playwriting at NYU without ever having written a play before, but if I’d never had the chance to try playwriting, I would never have known how much I loved it. This way, the kids are able to try everything out and see what they feel strongest in. Continue reading

Watchful Eye reading presents an evening of wonders

May 27, 2015, by

IMG_4531On May 13, I attended one of the most anticipated readings in Houston to date. From every corner of the city, people assembled in the lobby of the Menil Collection for the Watchful Eye reading of poetry and prose by select Writers In The Schools (WITS) students.

Families with young scholars, K-12, in public schools, private schools, and some alternative programs, such as one-on-one hospital visits, joined together to witness diverse talents and celebrate the joint powers of visual and literary arts. Many students were already familiar with the building and its collections, having visited as part of a WITS-organized school trip. These little ones were able to act as tour guides.

The evening began at 7 pm. Several students were still wearing their school uniforms. Some were outfitted in suits. Ribbons and patent leather shoes shone, and guardians tried vainly to comb over stubborn cowlicks before the short readings.

Long Chu, associate director and veteran employee of WITS for the past 18 years, introduced the program of around 50 students. He also gave a little history of the collaborative partnership between WITS and the Menil, which was established in 1989. He cited the Menil as “a true gift to the city of Houston,” and explained the organizations’ mutual objectives to instill “a passion for creative learning.” Karl Kilian, director of public programs at the Menil, also said a few words of encouragement, then introduced Dinorah Pérez-Rementería as the evening’s emcee.  Continue reading

Geoff Dyer and the Art of the Great Day

May 20, 2015, by

RM4_5819May 12th was balmy—not as hot as usual in Texas in May.  You could sit outside and feel the day slipping away. That is always a good feeling if you have done something interesting.

I mostly graded papers.  Some of it was interesting.  This is how it goes.  Still, I wanted a little more from my daylight buck.  I sat outside at Bayou Place looking straight at the Wortham Center waiting for seven o’clock to roll around.  It would be the final reading for the Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series.  I was excited:  nonfiction by the English writer Geoff Dyer.  I felt like I had read a lot of fiction during the day: “Gatsby enjoys socializing with the Buchanans and finds them so interesting!”

And, some of the English: well, dicey.

I thought: how do you grade writing anymore anyway?  I thought: how do you know if you have had a great day?  I thought: how do you know if you know what you are doing?  How do you know if you don’t?

It’s more about how you feel at that moment, right?  Well if you want to learn how to whip that up, and get it down, there are worse places to go than the writing of Geoff Dyer, and lucky for me, that is exactly where I went.  He read from his newish book Another Great Day at Sea: Life Aboard the USS George H. W. Bush.  Continue reading

A host of literary activities planned for Comicpalooza 2015

May 18, 2015, by

Comicpalooza 2015 logoFor those of us who have a passion for the written word, we think of the books we’ve read over our lifetime that helped inspire this passion in us. As kids we began reading classic children’s books, then moved on to middle-grade page-turners, and as adults we developed our own areas of reading interests.

For many of us however, the passion for good stories comes from a variety of sources, such as graphic novels, comics, screenplays, as well as short stories and novels encompassing a wide variety of genres.  Houston’s annual Comicpalooza convention—which returns for the sixth year to the George R. Brown Convention Center on Memorial Day weekend, May 22 – 25, 2015—celebrates this fact. This popular convention, which has a host of literary activities planned, is expected to attract 45,000 people.

We talked to Vijay Kale, the curator of the literary activities, who shared more information about the convention with us.

INPRINT: Vijay, what initiated Comicpalooza to add a literary track of activities? Was it someone on the planning committee, was it feedback you received from the public, or was it something you conceived of?

VIJAY: The George R. Brown Convention Center enables Comicpalooza to use 1.1 million square feet of exhibit space to offer a wide range of events and content.  The ability to provide more than 2,200 hours of programming allowed for a Literary Track to include more than 50 literary panels and writers. We are extremely proud of the local and national talent assembled, which includes many well-known Texas-based writers as well as national best-selling authors. This year’s guest list and programming is the best so far, and we hope to further improve by including more professional writers and local organizations. Continue reading

A Houston Conference for Emerging Writers, BoldFace 2015

May 14, 2015, by

Boldface 2015When we think of writing conferences, we always think they take place somewhere in the Northeast, along a beautiful coast, in a remote location, or in a popular tourist destination. Houstonians however do have access to one of the best writing conferences right here in Houston.

Boldface is a summer writing conference run by Glass Mountain, the University of Houston undergraduate literary journal. The journal caters to undergraduates across the nation, but the Boldface Conference is open to any emerging writer who is interested in signing up. Inprint blogger Sara Balabanlilar interviewed Joseph Roberts, the head fiction editor of Glass Mountain, to get more information about this year’s Boldface Conference. The visiting writers to the conference include poet Blas Falconer, non-fiction writer Gail D. Storey, and novelist Coert Vorhees. To register and learn more about the Boldface Conference click here. 

SARA: Tell us a little bit about Boldface.

JOSEPH: Boldface is a weeklong conference for undergrads and local emerging writers. The first Boldface was in June 2009. This year the conference will last from May 18th to the 22nd. The conference itself consists of various writerly things such as workshops (run by UH’s own Creative Writing Program graduates), Master classes (also run by grad students) where all sorts of different aspects of writing are taught or discussed, to visiting writers and open mics throughout the week. Continue reading

A Houston Independent Bookstore Day Celebration

May 11, 2015, by

IMG_4485On Saturday, May 2, perhaps your Facebook feed was filled with friends posting from their favorite bookstores across the country. It was a day to celebrate Independent Bookstore Day, honoring those special places that pull triple duty as retail stores, community centers, and performance venues.

Of course, there’s no team like the home team, and Brazos Bookstore scheduled a day of events to please every bibliophile. The inaugural celebration packed eight hours of special events, with an agenda including family-friendly story time and crafts, a drunk coloring part for adults in homage to the new book Hemingwasted: A Loving Look at Literary Lushes, a reception for the new Shakespeare-inspired mural on the front window of the store, and more.

Mark Haber, sales floor manager at Brazos, talked to me about the benefits and opportunities of the day’s activities. “Our bookstore is truly a community center,” he enthused. “Today, I’ve seen people who wouldn’t necessarily know each other rub shoulders. It’s just a great opportunity to talk about books and be around books.” Continue reading

What can we learn from Kimberly Meyer’s The Book of Wanderings?

May 1, 2015, by

A big congratulations to Kimberly Meyer, whose memoir The Book of Wanderings came out this March. Kim holds a PhD from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, where she received an Inprint Brown Foundation Fellowship and an Inprint Michener Fellowship. Her work has recently appeared in The Best American Travel Writing, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, Ecotone, The Oxford American, The Georgia Review, Agni, The Southern Review, and Third Coast. She teaches in the Great Books program at the University of Houston Honors College. Here, Sara Balabanlilar, Kim’s student (and Inprint’s newest blogger) talks about The Book of Wanderings and what we can learn from it.

cropped Kim Meyer GetInline-19Houston is a city filled with the angst of constant coming and going. Old buildings fall into disrepair and are easily replaced with three-story condos overlooking huge unused lots or old factories. Paved roads shift and crack in our sandy soil, which is persistent enough to keep any street too smooth for too long. The construction is endless here. All of these things lend to an air of constant change, of dissatisfaction with the space around us and the constant impetus to evolution and growth.

Meyer_TheBookofWanderingsAAt first, Kimberly Meyer’s The Book of Wanderings seems to be in a similar vein of longing. In the first few pages, she describes an early trip to a chapel in New Mexico: “The chapel became a sign of what we were seeking in traveling with our daughters: remnants of something genuine that suburban sprawl had not yet swallowed up in its ravenous maw.”

When Meyer’s small trips around the U.S. turn into a grander trip with her oldest daughter, Ellie, following the journey of a prolific medieval friar, her goal remains the same. She follows Felix Fabri’s journey as closely as she can, visiting chapels, churches, and pilgrimage sites just as he did. Her route starts near Fabri’s hometown of Ulm, then quickly moves into Italy, along the coast of eastern Europe, down through Greece into Israel and eventually Egypt. However, Meyer’s efforts to mirror Fabri’s tracks are undercut almost immediately, and regularly again throughout the trip. In Italy, she and Ellie get sick. Later, their guide through the desert turns out to have dubious plans for them. The idea of recreating perfectly a centuries-old pilgrimage path becomes imperfect. Continue reading