Now. In person. Don’t wait. Don’t mail at this point (10/27). Double check everything. Be prepared to wait. To look for your polling place. Tell your friends and family even if you think they know. Thanks! See you on the other side….
Roads And Seeds, A Trace
Next post in my Dispatches From A Distance series is up over at Best American Poetry. Maybe you need an excursion to take your mind off things. Don’t worry, I’ll get you back.
Whose Woods
Next in my Dispatch From A Distance series is up at Best American Poetry. I interrogate the narratives of White hegemony, including my own. I hope you will read it.
Black Lives Matter
Period.
Hello from a Distance
I’ve begun putting together my thoughts on walking in the woods as a way to walk through this particular time on the planet. Best American Poetry is publishing them on their blog. There are photos, too!
And if you’re so moved, please tell me what’s helping you to get through these days, weeks, months…
A Thread
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.
The Long and Short of It
Going to AWP in Texas. Gonna talk about novels, how they come to be out of shorter things sometimes, how my current came out of nowhere, is out there somewhere, nearly ready for you to read. How now when I write I carry the body memory of that novel’s universe in me and everything that comes after feels like a phantom limb. Like a shark ate my homework. San Antonio, 2020.
Excerpt at The Brooklyn Rail
Thanks to the amazing Donald Breckenridge, I’ve got an excerpt of my current novel in progress (tho truth be told I am SO READY to have this baby out in the world, I’ve been in the third trimester with it for more than three months, just saying) up at the equally amazing publication The Brooklyn Rail. I think you should read it. What’s stopping you, really. It’s in hard copy but also free online right here.
From the description of the book I gave them: WHAT WOULD EMMA GOLDMAN DO? is an autobiographical novel set in late capitalism and climate crisis. The lead character considers her life and politics in comparison with historical and contemporary figures, notably anarchist Emma Goldman, in an effort to determine what would be radical enough to meet the moment. She is on a job search and lives with her romantic partner in a mortgaged house. Self-doubt and online petitions ensue.
What are you waiting for? Click away, my friends. Click away. Tell ’em Emma sent you.
Save the date – NYC 7/10
I’ll be reading from the current manuscript at KGB Bar in the East Village. The Red Room, of course. Red as in commie red, I imagine. Anyway, it’s in the Same Page reading series, which looks like fun. If you’re NYC area or going to be in town, comes say hi. Listen to us read. Mingle. There will be a flyer at some point, but until then there’s this:
Cara Benson 