Feria del Libro Wrap-Up

Another successful Feria del Libro for Thursdays@Three has come and gone. The U.S. Embassy's stand setup was a excellent setting for our readings and the agenda provided a diverse, eclectic mix of talks and readings from writers for fair goers.

We were also were able to give two talks this year: "How to Write a Screenplay" and "How to Form and Maintain a Writer's Group", the latter of which was reviewed in Critica. Click here to read it.

Also, two members of Thursday@Three, Sharon Haywood and Maryann Ullmann, were interviewed by the English language program (RAE) on Radio Nacional Argentina about their experiences as expat writers living in Buenos Aires. They discussed the second Thursdays@Three anthology in addition to their individual writing projects.

Listen to the interview here:
Part I (20 minutes)
Part II (13 minutes)

If you haven't been yet to the Feria Internacional del Libro at La Rural, you still have a few more days. On May 12th the Feria will close its doors until next year. Be sure to stop by the stand to check out Thursday@Three's anthology.

Expat Writers in Buenos Aires to Release Anthology at 35th International Book Fair

Also to give public readings and panel discussions
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 23 April to 11 May, 2009 – English-speaking expatriate writers living in Buenos Aires will release a second collection of their work, Thursdays@Three: Expat Writers in Buenos Aires at the 35th International Buenos Aires Book Fair in the La Rural Exhibition Center. The anthology, published in English, features short fiction, memoir, essays and poetry, on everything from alpacas in England, funerals in Ghana, to buying underwear in Buenos Aires. The authors draw from their diverse travel experiences, memories of home, and living in Argentina. They will give public readings of their work and also present two panel discussions: How to Form and Maintain a Writers’ Group and How to Write a Screenplay. (Please see a schedule of events below.) Complementary copies of the anthology will be available at these readings and panels, as well as at the U.S. Embassy stand. Advanced copies available on request.

Authors whose work will appear in the collection are: Ambi Alexander, Amanda Fernandez, Sharon Haywood, Katharine Jones, Joanna Richardson, Tara Sullivan, Maryann Ullmann, and guest author Donald Ranard.

Schedule of Readings & Panel Discussions:

Readings by Authors (in English)
At the U.S. Embassy stand, Yellow Pavilion, Calle 35, Stand 2023:
Saturday, 25 April from 15:00 to 16:00
Maryann Ullmann and Ambi Alexander
Sunday, 26 April from 18:00 to 19:30
Amanda Fernandez, Katharine Jones, and Tara Sullivan
Friday, 1 May from 17:00 to 18:00
Amanda Fernandez and Maryann Ullmann
Friday, 1 May from 19:00 to 20:30
Tara Sullivan, Katharine Jones, and Ambi Alexander


Panel: "How to Write a Screenplay" (in Spanish)
Date & Time: Saturday, 25 April from 16:00 to 17:00,
Location: Sala D. F. Sarmiento, White Pavilion
Participating: Katharine Jones and Tara Sullivan
Description: Two members of Thursdays@Three, a writing group of English speaking foreigners living in Buenos Aires, will present key points to consider when writing a screenplay. Topics covered will include: 1. How to turn a "story" into a screenplay; 2. Screenplay structure; 3. Plot v. character driven screenplays; 4. What you want from each scene; 5. What makes dialogue work, and how you know when it doesn't.

Panel: "How to Form and Maintain a Writers’ Group" (in Spanish)
Date & Time: Tuesday, 5 May from 16:30 to 17:30
Location: Sala A. Storni, White Pavilion
Participating: Amanda Fernandez, Katharine Jones, Tara Sullivan, Sharon Haywood, Ambi Alexander, and Maryann Ullmann
Description: Many writers strengthen their craft by participating in writing groups, which differ in structure from the local "Taller Literario" format. Members of Thursdays@Three, a writing group of seven English-speaking foreigners living in Buenos Aires, will discuss how to form and run a peer-led writing group, including guidelines for critique, group structure, membership, and group goals.

For additional information, please contact Tara Sullivan or Maryann Ullmann, and see the website www.thursdaysatthree.blogspot.com (English) or www.juevesalastres.blogspot.com (Spanish). For further information about the Book Fair visit: www.el-libro.org.ar.

About Thursdays@Three – Thursdays@Three is a group of seven English-speaking expatriate writers that meet weekly to critique one another’s work and develop their craft.

Contact: Tara Sullivan
Thursdays @Three Writers’ Group
Phone: 6380 0450
Cell: 15 5403 6629
E-mail: sullivan.taraann@gmail.com

Secondary Contact: Maryann Ullmann
Thursdays@Three Writers’ Group & Writers in Buenos Aires
Cell: 15 6875 4407
E-mail: writersinba@gmail.com

Conkers

The most important thing at primary school was not what we were studying, or even what we were wearing but what craze was currently in: hopscotch, French skipping with elastic, marbles, stilts, hoops, you name it they all came and went. Most of these crazes were fleeting and unrelated to the seasons, but there was one craze that came round regularly every autumn: conkers.

The conker is the seed of the horse chestnut tree. A magnificent deciduous tree which has pink or white candelabra of flowers in spring and in autumn bears a curious fruit that looks as though it came out of book on mediaeval warfare. The conker hides inside a green prickly ball which is quite tough and almost leathery – it is difficult to peel open but well worth the effort, as once you manage to pry it out of its protective shell, there lies the conker, a luscious, dark-chocolaty shiny brown gem.

Although well worthy of being collected for their beauty alone, that was not what we wanted conkers for. Indeed we did use them in a kind of warfare. Once you had found and peeled your conker you had to see if it was a good one. This meant that it had to be hard, but not brittle, as it had to be pierced by a sharp instrument and then threaded onto a piece of string about 6 inches long, knotted underneath the conker. Many a conker did not survive this first test and had to be discarded when it split open at the skewering process.

Once the conker was threaded for combat we paired off to duel with our mediaeval flails. Each person held their conker like a ball on a chain swinging ominously. On the count of three both parties would bang conkers together, trying to split the other person’s open. The winner survived unscathed. Some conkers were invincible and those became our favourites and would rule the playground for days, only relinquishing when they, in turn were split by a new contender.

One particularly bounteous autumn the conker crop was so glorious that my sister Isobel decided not just to use them for warfare but to collect them. In a trunk my father had used to pack his belongings for boarding school, she hoarded away literally hundreds of conkers. To her they were jewels, lying in the chest winking and glowing like so many amber eyes.

I suppose she thought that they would retain their fresh autumn-lustre forever but of course they could not. When, a couple of months later, she opened the trunk to be confronted with a mound of withered opaque nuts, so acute was her disappointment that she threw a tantrum and tipped the contents of the trunk out of her bedroom window where they hailed down like cannon balls falling from the citadel of a mediaeval castle. Conkers are to be enjoyed in autumn, not kept for spring.

Joanna Richardson, May 12, 2008

Internet Resources for Writers

On May 7th, 2008 at the 34th International Book Fair in Buenos Aires, members of Thursdays@Three presented a workshop in conjunction with the U.S. Embassy entitled, "How to Launch a Writing Career Using the Internet." See below for resources referred to in this workshop, in addition to other useful web sites.

AWARDS, CONTESTS, & PUBLICATION RESOURCES:

Poets & Writers Magazine
www.pw.org
Searchable database of contests, residencies and retreats, magazines seeking submissions, and grants, mostly U.S.-based. Also has articles for a writing audience.

Funds for Writers
www.fundsforwriters.com
Grants, contests, magazines that pay for submissions, and other writing resources. Also possible to receive e-newsletter with updates.

First Writer
www.firstwriter.com
Agents, publishers, magazines, contests and advice.

Writers’ Market
www.writersmarket.com
Fee-based comprehensive service on writers markets in the U.S. Free 30 day trial.

ONLINE WRITING CLASSES:

Gotham Writers’ Workshop
www.writingclasses.com
Premier resource for online writing classes in any genre.

Writers College.
www.writerscollege.com
More online writing classes.

FREELANCE JOURNALISM:

Media Bistro
www.mediabistro.com
Freelance market hub for journalists.

Suite 101
www.suite101.com
Always looking for freelance writers to write on an endless variety of topics. Also has articles about writing at: www.suite101.com/writingandublishing/

Ground Report
www.groundreport.com
Citizen journalism website. Upload your articles and get paid by number of clicks.

Argentina’s Travel Guide
www.argentinastravel.com
Online travel guide to Argentina that accepts freelance articles.

GENERAL FREELANCE RESOURCES:

Guru
www.guru.com
Online freelance marketplace.

Elance
www.elance.com
Online freelance marketplace.

BLOGGING RESOURCES:

Blogger.com
www.blogger.com
Set up your own blog for free.

Technorati
www.technorati.com
Hub of blogs and blogger news.

WRITERS NETWORKS:

Craigs List
www.craigslist.org
Classifieds for everything organized by city. Click on “writing/editing” under “jobs” or “writing” under “gigs” for updated opportunities. Can also post to advertise opportunities, organize a local writers’ group, etc.

Coffehouse for Writers
www.coffeehouseforwriters.com
Online writing community with workshops, resources, advice and opportunities to chat with other writers.

Red Room
www.redroom.com
Online community of writers and news on the writing industry.

Society of Authors
www.societyofauthors.com
Online community of writers with staff available to answer questions about the business and grant award opportunities. Primarily for British authors.

More resources in Spanish are available at: www.juevesalastres.blogspot.com

Introduction

Suzanne LaGrande

It struck me when I visited the Writers’ Museum in Dublin, Ireland. With the exception of William Butler Yeats, most Irish writers, including George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, were expatriates. Would they have been able to write so truthfully had they stayed? Would they have written at all? Is it necessary to travel and to have some distance to be able to write about the place and the people you grew up with? How is one’s perspective as an artist enriched by the experience of childhood, but also by the experience of leaving and of living in a culture or place that is very different from the “home” that you are familiar with?
We can trace many literary movements to geographic areas where artists and writers of all kinds gathered to exchange ideas and to inspire one another: The Harlem Renaissance in New York in the 1920s, the Lost Generation in Paris in the 1930s, The Beat Poets in San Francisco in the 1960s. Is it a coincidence that many of the writers, poets and artists who met together were not native to those places, but from some other place? I think not.
And so in the tradition of expatriate writers, here is a collection of writings written by English speakers and expatriates living in Buenos Aires. In the spring of 2007, they came together to take “Creative Chaos”—a 12-week creative writing workshop I lead in English. The group was made up of all women, some from England, one from Canada, several from the United States, and one from Buenos Aires; some who were in Buenos Aires temporarily and some who had lived here for years, one for 23 years. Each week we met to share and critique one another’s work, read and discuss the work of contemporary writers, and watch as new works and new strengths evolved.
I created a context and a place for writers to gather. Week after week, each writer took risks to try something new, to give voice to thoughts and feelings and ideas that hadn’t found expression before. And they showed up despite the demands of work, of relationships, and of children (one was born while this book was being edited).
After the workshop was over they continued to meet, continued to share what they were working on, and continued to critique, rewrite and to battle—and it is a battle—for clearer expression of their material. Woody Allen says that 80% of success is about showing up. What you are about to read is the result, not only of these writers’ creativity, but their work and above all, their willingness to show up. I hope you enjoy these new works by expatriate writers in Buenos Aires and also marvel, as I do, at the commitment, courage and creativity behind the work that made these writings possible.

Homo Boludis

Joanna Richardson

A subspecies of homo sapiens, the common or garden homo boludis may be recognized by any or one of the following distinguishing features:
1. moves in small clusters, numbering from three to ten, depending on time of day;
2. small clusters are always same sex;
3. each sex has a clearly defined role: the female of the species congregates in small circles; common activities are preening and grooming or acquiring new garments; the male’s main activity is to toss a small round inflated object around, often made of manmade fibers, apparently according to a series of clearly defined rules. Both sexes clearly display for courtship purposes.
One of the most distinguishing features of the subspecies is its eponymous call: “Boludo/a” is the most frequently heard cry in its nesting sites. They appear to be unidentified specimens that only respond to this call—hence their scientific name, coined by the late animal behaviorist Magnus Magnusson.
Plumage: the male sports a mullet and wears low-waisted trunks. The female has long hair she tosses frequently and wears two narrow strips of cloth to cover breasts and bottom, which she tweaks at periodically.
Habits: a late riser which congregates on warm beaches in summer and is otherwise mainly nocturnal by nature, it drinks spirits abundantly, smokes nicotine sticks and grazes lightly. Not dangerous except to its own and rarely interacts with homo sapiens. Approach upwind with precaution.
Survival chances: while in no apparent danger of extinction, as this subspecies have neither offspring nor parents it is a mystery as to how it will fare in the future. Further research is required on this point.

Visit

Katharine Jones

We are walking on an old logging road in the New Hampshire woods. It’s a dry spring, and the river beside us that should be strong and roaring white is low and quiet this year. “Too many dried up days,” I say. My father smiles a bit and looks past me, past the hint of melancholy that makes him uneasy. He puts his hand to his forehead a moment and then begins pulling words out of his private storage in the air above. As if reading from a favorite tome he begins,
“‘Margaret are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving …’.” It is the first line of a Hopkins poem. He speaks by allusion in such moments. But still, he isn’t speaking, and won’t inquire further.
“‘Leaves, like the things of man …’,” I say, obediently offering the second line of the poem he’ll then delight in finishing. It’s the game we play once we’ve exhausted news about the neighbors, and stripped clean topical subjects like the war and the weather. It’s the way we deal with emotions: entertaining them into oblivion. We don’t speak like people with knowledge of the other’s dreams and failures; we speak like people on a literary quiz show.
The woods are thinning out and the trail becoming wider. He is on his third poem. I want to tell him what a year I’ve had. How nothing has worked out the way I dreamt it would. How the man I have loved for five years is afraid of everything in life, including me. How I want a child more than he ever did, and while he got five who could never be silent enough for him, never be invisible enough for him, I am alone in a house that begs for noise all day. I want him to know me as more than the daughter who shares his memory for language.
Slowing his pace a moment he finds the next poem. His choices are obvious, but I don’t think he hears them. Dramatically, under the pine branches, with his walking stick in hand—and perhaps because it is spring, perhaps because he doesn’t know how deep a note it hits—he begins in his lowest voice, “‘April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land …’.” I stumble on a rock and his arm is there to catch me. I want this moment to become us: him catching me, without hesitation. In that moment I gaze into his eyes and imagine everything is possible.
“Everything is a mess,” I say.
“No,” he says. “You know this one: ‘Mixing memory and desire …’.”
“Right,” I say, surrendering the line, “‘Stirring dull roots with spring rain’,” and wonder if I will ever prove to know enough for him.
That evening, confined to the house, we loiter in silence. It’s the night before I leave and we are waiting for the visit to end, the way people wait for a late train. “Did I tell you summer stage will be doing Lear next week?” he asks. Sitting across from one another, the large dining room, lined with bookshelves on two sides, feels suddenly small and cramped. But it is just the air between us, as tense as a tightrope. “You know, I saw Hamlet last year and it was as good as anything I’ve seen at Stratford,” he says. I nod my head and ask what day he’ll be going, who will join him. I ask like a reporter whose inquiries have been pre-approved. I want to ask him how to be a daughter he can speak to. I want him to tell me how to begin my life again. I wonder how a man who read King Lear a thousand times, who lectured on the finer points of it for 30 years to students who treated him like a god, can’t speak to a daughter begging to be heard.
Finally, stepping out from between the lines, I tell him, “Dad, I’ve had a bad year; I need to leave him.”
He clears his throat. “Well,” he says, uneasily. “Well.” And a still silence pours through each hole in the room faster than any word could stop it. He looks around me; he looks to the sides, as if something between us is obstructing his gaze. And, for a moment, I see him stretching for words and imagine he will stretch all the way across the table to find me. I imagine in this moment everything about us will change. I will tell him all the trouble and he will listen: eager, rapt. In this moment I will become the narrator at the performance he has waited all year to attend, reciting each painful moment in near perfect verse; setting down each disappointment in just the right words, paced just so, until it becomes the story he can’t get enough of, the story that haunts him at the moment of its telling and draws him back again and again. “I want to know more,” he’ll say. “Tell me everything.”
“Well,” he says, clearing his throat. “Well. We all have bad times,” he says. Then, tilting his head a bit, he begins, a needy actor whose talent can never be admired enough, “‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow …’,” he says, as the light comes up, nearly blinding.