Talent is Overrated: A Free Five-meeting Fiction Writing Workshop at CSUSB by Cati Porter

Join the Inlandia Institute and Cal State San Bernardino for a free five-meeting fiction writing workshop, “Talent is Overrated.”

Writing isn’t glamorous and it isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. With determination and hard work you can become a writer, but you have to choose to be one. Join Andrea Fingerson for a 5-meeting workshop where you will learn how to become a writer. (Note: there will be homework. Please be prepared to commit to the workshop.) The workshop will discuss what it means to be a writer, share strategies that will help you develop the necessary disciple, and review basic fiction techniques and strategies that will help you write a short story or picture book. By the end of this workshop you will have a completed and edited story that is formatted for submission. Writing is in your future. Let Andrea help you get there.

Workshop dates and times:

Sept. 25, 6-9 p.m.

Oct. 2, 6-9 p.m.

Oct. 16, 6-9 p.m.

Oct. 30, 5-6 p.m. (optional meeting)

Nov. 13, 6-9 p.m.

Nov. 20, 6-9 p.m.

All workshops will take place at CSUSB in the Pfau Library, room PL4005A (4th floor).

This workshop is limited to 15 participants. The only requirement is that only people who are sincerely willing to commit the time and effort take one of the places. You will essentially be writing, rewriting, and editing a short story in under two months. If you would like a place in the workshop email jvlong@csusb.edu, and include a phone number that she can reach you with. Reservations will be made on a first come, first served basis. If you are interested, please email today.

KIDLANDIA: Trout in the Classroom Time, Again!

I’m writing a little early again because tomorrow morning I’ll be helping teachers learn how to raise trout in their classrooms. Yes, I said trout. As some of you already know, my students and I have been raising trout in the classroom for close to fifteen years now. We have had a blast learning about the life cycle of trout, what their environmental needs are as they grow and change, and how we affect their environment. As students learn to care for and observe the trout they also learn to be good stewards of the earth. The Trout in The Classroom program has been developed by the Department of Fish and Game, locals to the Inland Empire, brought to teachers by the Deep Creek Fly Fishers Club. If you are interested in learning more about the program you can visit the Deep Creek Fly Fishers site. If you are a teacher who would like to be part of the Trout in the Classroom program, please come to the Isaac Walton House at Fairmount Park, Riverside, CA 92501 tomorrow, Sunday September 14, from 8am to 1pm and ask about how you can get trained.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Julianna M. Cruz is a teacher, an author, and an Inlandian.

The BIG READ at Corona Public Library – Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 by Cati Porter

This fall, the Corona Public Library is hosting an array of events related to the Big Read, featuring the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. The library will be handing out free copies of Fahrenheit 451 in anticipation of these events.

Join Inlandia Institute presenters in exploring this incredible book. Upcoming event dates:

September 10, 2014, at 7 pm join Lawrence Eby for a talk on the future of publishing.

September 23, 2014, at 7 pm join Suzanne Maguire for a book discussion.

October 1, 2014, at 7 pm join Jennifer Williams-Dean for a book discussion.

These events are free and open to the public. Stop by the library to pick up your copy of the book and we hope to see you there!

“The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.”

Poetry Called Present by David Stone

I stammer taking roll call the first day of a new school year. My multicultural classroom comes with a roster with names like those of the United Nations. After more than a decade at the same school, I have the advantage of having practiced a fair number of surnames, but the first name of a sibling can often leave me stuttering its first letter in a stall to determine which syllable to accent.

Jason McCall’s “Roll Call for Michael Brown,” published by Rattle on August 17, brought new meaning to roll call anxiety for me. His poem evoked my feelings of the inevitability of “honest mistakes ” but then led me to the “groans” of grief and the weight of responsibility as I came to identify my connection to the death of a young man who lived halfway across the country.

Attempting to make personal sense of Michael Brown’s death and the ensuing demonstrations and violence in Ferguson, Missouri, I found more in McCall’s poem than many of the news articles I read. I am convinced that America needs more poets to answer the roll call and write in response to events in the news. In the wake of advertisement revenues dispersing to an ever broadening array of media outlets, our nation’s newspapers falter. The number of reporters pounding the news beats of America dwindles. No wonder we turn to the archetypes of town criers, jesters, and troubadours.

I do not wish for a further demise of our nation’s longstanding fourth estate, the newspapers of traditional print journalism; however, I am grateful for our contemporary criers, the newer Internet news agencies, and our jesters, the comedic news shows that fill the expanding gap left by the thinning of America’s newspapers. I wish for more venues for troubadours, more poets to sing the songs of our evolving history.

Rattle’s new weekly “Poets Respond,” an online project that presents one poem about an event that occurred in the past week, joins New Verse News in what I believe is a small number of current-events poetry publications. James Penha has edited New Verse News since founding it in early 2005.

On Sunday, August 31, the Los Angeles Times ran a page of “opinionated poetry” for a second time as a result of the more than 1,500 poets who responded to last year’s call for current-events poems.

Southern Californians interested in poetry, music, and art promoting peace will find current-events poetry live at numerous venues on Saturday, September 27. Search the Internet for 100 Thousand Poets for Change to locate the nearest venue. Since 2013 the grassroots organization 100 Thousand Poets for Change annually organizes an international day of events.

Newspapers should seriously consider the regular inclusion of current-events poems. People still buy papers for the comics. I bet some would buy them for poems.

The poet and political activist Denise Levertov wrote for a 1967 symposium, “Good poets write bad political poems only if they let themselves write deliberate, opinionated rhetoric, misusing their art as propaganda.”

As much as current events are too important to be left to the bare recitation of facts or the fulminations of politicos and pundits, current-events poetry needs to be more than mere propaganda.

Levertov questioned whether the role of a poet should be “observer” or “participant.” I would argue we need both in our newspapers. Contemporary war poetry shows the power of both perspectives. Citizens need to read poems from soldier poets like Collin Halloran’s Shortly Thereafter and spouses like Elyse Fenton’s Clamor.

Well-written poems provide more than a sound bite.

No doubt, we need more poetry called present.

David Stone is a poet who teaches English at Loma Linda Academy.

As a Living Language, English is Malleable and Still Changing by Matthew Nadelson

When I think back about what I really learned in college, aside from the insights I received during a handful of fascinating lectures and conversations with excellent professors, the ideas I still remember today are the conclusions I came to myself regarding the material presented, much of which were based on material presented in other courses.

Looking back, I realize that it was the culmination of these courses that allowed me to observe alternative, and often opposing, viewpoints and arrive at my own conclusions.

Of course, I wasn’t just drawing on my experience from other college courses when I came to these conclusions, but my life experiences as well. And, the clearest material was the material I could most relate to personally. Now that I have taught for eight years, I understand that a similar personal connection to the material can be beneficial to the teacher as well.

Because of this, I think the best advice I could give any teacher (of high school and above), in addition to more obvious things such as letting students’ questions and comments direct the discussion, is that we not only must show the students how the material relates to their lives, but we also must present the material in a way that relates to our own lives.

When teachers don’t do this, students lose interest. And really, why should they care about something that they can’t imagine providing any practical benefit to their lives? Grades are rudimentary motivators at best.

Another problem I see is that too often too many teachers fail to place their subject matter in the proper context. They present it almost in a vacuum.

Here is an example: About five years ago, when we were both 30, an extremely smart woman I had grown up with, asked me whether it was OK to start a sentence with “and.”

She didn’t know whether it was ever OK to start a sentence with one of the most common words in our language. I don’t know where my friend went to school, but I’m pretty sure she has lived in Orange County all her life, and somewhere along the line, a college professor had told her it was never OK to start a sentence with “and.”

Of course, what this person had neglected to tell her was that in a college-level essay, it is generally not a great idea to start a sentence with “and” because it is informal (and it could be argued that the job of a coordinating conjunction such as “and” is to coordinate between independent clauses or … blah blah blah).

But this teacher had failed to explain to my friend the importance of audience, purpose and occasion in college writing, and how all these things determine the level of formality in the writing, and also the fact that English is a living language and English punctuation is only a few hundred years old and has changed radically in that short time.

For my money, the great American poet Walt Whitman said it best:

“Language, be it remember’d, is not an abstract construction of the learn’d, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. Its final decisions are made by the masses, people nearest the concrete, having most to do with actual land and sea.”

My friend’s anxiety over the use of “and” is not even the best example of this. One time an English tutor told me that he had been told by his teachers that the word “good” was never correct to use… ever – that “it should always be ‘well.’” He had no idea that “good” is the adjective and “well” is the adverb, meaning they are both good but should be used well.

Hopefully, this student wasn’t actually told this, but this is what he remembered … perhaps because he (or the instructor) couldn’t understand the practical application of such knowledge and therefore (perhaps even subconsciously) had no interest in really understanding the material.

Matthew Nadelson of Corona teaches English at Norco College and leads an Inlandia creative writing workshop every other Tuesday night at the Corona Library. Contact him at mattnadelson@gmail.com.

Inlandia’s Fall Creative Writing Workshops Set to Begin by Cati Porter

The Inlandia Institute’s Fall Creative Writing Workshops are set to begin. Led by professional writers and writing instructors, each workshop is designed to meet the needs of writers working in all genres at all levels. Currently there are six different workshop locations:

Ontario, led by Charlotte Davidson [*Closed: Full]; Riverside, led by Jo Scott-Coe; Corona, led by Matthew Nadelson; Idyllwild, co-led by Myra Dutton and Jean Waggoner; Palm Springs, led by Alaina Bixon; and San Bernardino, led by Andrea Fingerson.

Each workshop series is approximately 10 weeks long, meeting every other week unless specified. Workshops are free and open to the public but registration is required.

Please RSVP to cati.porter@inlandiainstitute.org. Registration forms will be emailed prior to and/or distributed during the first session.

And, while these workshops are free and open to the public, in order to keep them that way, we do ask that you consider an optional but suggested donation of $25 for the entire series. Information about why this is necessary is included in the registration packet.

Dates and times vary by location:

Ontario [*Closed: Full]

Led by Charlotte Davidson

6 pm – 8 pm

September 10 & 24, October 8, 22, and November 5

Ovitt Family Community Library

215 E C St

Ontario, CA 91764

Idyllwild

Led jointly by Myra Dutton & Jean Waggoner

2 pm – 4 pm

First Friday of every month

Idyllwild Public Library

54401 Village Ctr Dr

Idyllwild, CA 92549

Corona

Led by Matt Nadelson

7 pm – 8:30 pm

September 9, 23, October, 7, 21, and November 18

Corona Public Library

650 S Main St

Corona, CA 92882

Riverside

Led by Jo Scott-Coe

6:30 pm – 8:30 pm

September 25, October 9, 23, November 6, and 20

Riverside Public Library

3581 Mission Inn Ave

Riverside, CA 92501

Palm Springs

Led by Alaina Bixon

2 pm – 4 pm

October 8, 22, November 5, 19, and December 3

Smoke Tree Racquet Club

1655 E Palm Canyon Dr

Palm Springs, CA 92264

Free parking, accessible from E Palm Canyon or the Citibank lot on the corner of Sunrise/Hwy 111.

San Bernardino

Led by Andrea Jill Fingerson

3:30 pm – 5:30 pm

September 23, October 7, 21, November 4, and 18

Feldheym Library

555 W 6th St

San Bernardino, CA 92410

Alaina Bixon leads writing workshops, including Inlandia’s creative writing workshops in Palm Springs, edits books, and reads for the online journal The Whistling Fire. She is working on an article about women at MIT.

Jo Scott-Coe is the author of Teacher at Point Blank. Her essays can be found in Salon, Memoir, TNB, River Teeth, Hotel Amerika, Fourth Genre, and the Los Angeles Times. Jo is currently an associate professor of English at Riverside City College and the faculty editor of MUSE.

Charlotte Davidson received a Masters in English from Syracuse University followed by an MFA in poetry from UC Irvine. Her first book, Fresh Zebra, appeared in 2012. Charlotte leads Inlandia’s creative writing workshops in Ontario.

Myra Dutton is the author of Healing Ground: A Visionary Union of Earth and Spirit, which was a 2004 Narcissus Book Award finalist and a 2006 selection for “Ten Books We Love” by Inland Empire Magazine.

Andrea Fingerson has taught preschool, reading, and high school English. Currently, she teaches Child Development classes to teen parents. She received her MFA in Fiction from CSUSB. During that time she was a Fiction Editor for Ghost Town and the high school Outreach Coordinator for The Pacific Review. She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and is currently in the process of editing a young adult novel.

Matthew Nadelson teaches writing at Norco College and leads a creative writing workshop at the Corona Public Library (every other Tuesday from 6 pm to 8 pm) through the Inlandia Institute. He has lived and worked in Riverside County since 1997 (with the exception of a brief stint in San Diego at SDSU, where he earned his MFA in creative writing, from 2002 to 2005). His writing has been featured in more than 20 journals and anthologies, and he was recently featured on the Moon Tide Press website as their “Poet of the Month” for December 2013. His first poetry collection, American Spirit, was published in August 2011 by Finishing Line Press.

Jean Waggoner, a published fine arts reviewer, poet, essayist and story writer, has taught college English and English as a Second Language in Riverside County for the past thirteen years and co-leads the Idyllwild poetry and creative writing workshops for Inlandia Institute. Jean is an advocate for part time faculty equity and co-author of a book on the part-time professor experience, The Freeway Flier & the Life of the Mind.

* Charlotte Davidson’s workshop is now CLOSED due to maximum enrollment; please check back in winter to see if openings are available or join one of our other upcoming workshops that still have seats. San Bernardino and Corona both have openings.

KIDLANDIA: Six Degrees of Separation

It always amazes me when I meet someone who I think is a stranger and it ends up we are related in some way. I’m sure this has happened to you too. Well as weird as it sounds, it keeps happening to me. But not just with people—with situations, and even with food! Let me explain. I’ve been living with the belief that everything happens for a reason—whether that reason is divine intervention, or merely the choices one has made—one thing definitely leads to another. So, with that said, for the last month or so I have been having very powerful bouts of déjà vu. This déjà vu seems to be strongest with food, but situations in which I am meeting people are also strong. I wonder: am I really experiencing this again, or am I so focused on what I want to happen that everything is just falling into place? Let me make clear that things can’t just fall into place if you haven’t already created a place for things to land—usually through hard work and preparation. I know sounds like a philosophical ramble, but bear with me–you’ll see how it all falls into place.

For the last year, my incredibly talented husband, Curtis Cruz, has been attending the Riverside Community College Culinary Arts Academy. He left his teaching position at Redlands High School in order to pursue his passion, first he saved a year’s worth of wages in order to go without working. He recently graduated, with medals in Hot and Cold Food competitions, and the Outstanding Baking and Pastry Award. To say the least, I am very proud. So what is he doing now? That’s where I get that strange feeling about how I fit into the whole plan. You see, over the summer, I met a distant cousin, Mitzi, and she and I formed a fast connection. During a visit to her home and business in Redlands she introduced me to a friend, who sells olive oil at a shop in Redlands, and like I said before, things started falling into place. Energy just keeps flowing in the right direction—it’s amazing, and a little scary.

Curtis and I will be sharing her booth at the Redlands Farmers’ Market next Thursday night. Look for My Goodness, Artisan Breads together with Stone Wheel Olive Oil Co. next Thursday night. What a natural pairing of two great flavors! I hope that when you let that olive oil soaked sourdough touch your tongue that your eyes close involuntarily and you let out a little sigh of pleasure. Then, and only then, will you know that feeling that I’ve been having.

Hoping to see you all again.

Julianna M. Cruz is a teacher, an author, and an Inlandian.

Literature Conference in Riverside by Isaac Williams

The Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) is having its 2014 conference at the new Riverside Convention Center from Friday, October 31 until Sunday, November 2. Workshops are varied in focus and run the gamut from classical literature to new mediums, like webcomics. In addition, many workshops are based on literature’s connection with sociopolitical issues.

Registration for the conference at its regular price closes on September 10. Students from Riverside City College, La Sierra University, University of California, Riverside, Cal Baptist University, and Chaffey College can attend for free.

If you know of any other upcoming conferences or panels that are (relatively) local, please let us know!

Sonambulant Funambulist: Countenance by Maureen Alsop

Lisa Kiernan cordially invited my response to the following questions:

What are you working on?
I’m presently anticipating the release of my third full poetry collection, Later, Knives & Trees (Negative Capability Press). I’ve also been engaged in a response to poems through image.
Over the summer I started two projects: 30×30, in which I’ve been creating 30 second videos overlaying audio excerpts from Later, Knives & Trees. Also a bodily, organic response to collage: 27/24 which may extend itself. The premise of carrying a collage upon the body for 24 hours. What have you learned from the message, the unattached self before the self. Strange illusion. Mostly. Seeking the ‘cosmic countenance’ inside the countenance, asking or responding to the secreted self, “what do you want to do next?”

How does your work differ from others of its genre?

I’m not sure it does. Maybe it shouldn’t. It just is. I’m human, like a snowflake.

Why do you write what you do?

See Tab: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics: space before text.

From a lecture I gave on Peristaltic Googlism and the Metaphysics of Ephemera and a quote worth repeating:

“Once you’ve heard a Maytag wafuuoom-per, wafuuoom-per throwing its never erring voice across the back yard, you’ll understand a knack for making songs. You’ll understand what Hank Williams’ rhythm section was doing at the laundry mat in Texarkana all night, June 1948; the night Hank knocked up Windy Beauchamp after she auditioned as a dobro player. Birds speak dialects, as people do. Dolphins use sound as a weapon. Crickets won’t answer recordings of their own voices. Even a small fish like an anchovy can hemorrhage, hearing nothing, a silence finally loosing substance.” — Walter Lab

Whether it’s the Maytag’s wafuuoom-per or a hemorrhaging silence, disparate elements endlessly congeal to form the delicate architecture of a poem. Why ask why? Ask, why not.

How does your writing process work?
I’m not much of a cook. I seem to think there is only one heat level: HIGH. I write like I cook. Sporadically, intensely, quickly. I try to enjoy it. Always wish I did it more. I’m probably best around a fire pit. I’m comfortable with both the raw and refined.

For additional responses from incredible thinkers I’ve asked Sarah Maclay, Nikia Chaney, Elena Karina Byrne, Sparky Campanella, Nic Sebastian, Lauren K. Alleyne, Cati Porter, Christina Cook, Marcia LeBeau, Farrah Field, Jared White, Bethany Ides, Linnea Ogden, Cynthia Arrieu-King, Cindy Rinne, Prageeta Sharma, Anna Leahy and others.

David Stone

Creosote

I didn’t know how slow you grow, cloning
yourself in wider rings for thousands of years.

Seeking a skewer, I must have cut off thirty
years just to roast my hot dog.

I turned my meat, squatting like Pleistocene
man, focused on crispy skin and moist beef.

Yet before the last glacier melted, wiser
cooks knew to leave you alone and search for coyote willow.

I imagined dessert roasting
marshmallows on my reused stick.

But when acrid tar chokes my breathe,
I spit your toxic bitterness.

A Rare Night Air

I’m drawn to the window
by the low-pitched hacking chop
of a copter passing parallel.

I slide the glass to listen for its direction.
Is it headed to the hospital or circling
a criminal’s car on the north side of the 10?

This February’s air is too cool like the back
of the refrigerator’s top shelf
where the misplaced lettuce freezes,

but the scent is not of too long forgotten food
or summer’s hot bitter smog.
I feel a clean, unusually chilled, moist breeze.

I close my eyes and breathe
what must be the mountain trees’
release from the just melted snow.

On this rare night I will sleep
with the windows wide open
and dream the traffic’s drone

is the constant tumbling waves
lapping California Boulevard,
Redlands’ western most shore.

❧

David Stone enjoys cooking, linocut printing, and exploring Southern California nature with his wife and two children. A graduate of Atlantic Union College and La Sierra University, he teaches English at Loma Linda Academy. His poetry has most recently appeared in Identity Theory, Shuf, and the 2013 Writing from Inlandia.