A quick and incomplete thread of things in the Cara Benson writing world for the year just past as this new year is upon us. It’s a brief, slightly annotated list, with pics and links.

A church, two kitties, and a podium walk into a thread…

In March, a fine place to start, I facilitated a panel at AWP called Listening to the Art. I was inspired to propose the panel based on the response I got to a post I’d written for Grub Street. Here’s a pic of the panel – we had fun!

As a result of that panel, HocTok reached out for an interview wherein I answered questions that made me squeamish, like what is my definition of happiness. Yeesh.

University of Rochester Decarceration Research Initiative commissioned a poem and that went live in May. The premise of the project was to use photos of the sky taken within close proximity to a number of correctional facilities in Western New York as prompts. The resultant art is intended to focus attention on the rampant carceral state the US has become.

In July The Brooklyn Rail published an excerpt of my novel in progress WHAT WOULD EMMA GOLDMAN DO?. The piece includes a political protest, an uninsured doctor visit, my beloved Jon, and Max Weber. That same month I read from a part of the excerpt at @KGBBarRedRm IN THE VERY ROOM EMMA HAD MEETINGS of her secret society of anarchists.

Somewhere in there I bought a church to live and write in. My writing sanctuary. There will be workshops and readings, too, at some point.

Here’s the sanctuary workshop table.

In late fall, I signed with @AEAkinwumi of Willenfield Literary Agency so that EMMA will get out into the world. Akin was up til 1 AM reading the ms.!! I’m working on edits now and definitely in the third trimester…

Then the always interesting Hobart pubbed a short of mine. Libraries, drinking water, internet. The usual suspects.

And now I’m juggling these two cuties while finishing up those revisions on the novel.