Susan Stinson

12:51 pm: Big Fat Voices in Cambridge

10:28 am: Plum Interview
Here is an interview with me up at the new Plum Literary Journal. Plum, out of Greenfield Community College, is just up today, and looks great.  It was a big pleasure to do the interview with Erik Risinger.  He was thoughtful, prepared and very present.  He also told me a lot about new developments in computer science that I find really fascinating.  He is doing a series of interviews with people who love their work, but he was really interested, too, in what happens when things get difficult.  It's wild to be talking about hard times in the course of writing Spider In A Tree at this moment when I'm so deeply happy (really, can hardly believe with luck) with having landed with Small Beer Press.  If you'd like to pre-order the book, the title link takes you to the page to where you can do it at Small Beer, which is much appreciated by the press and by me.

If you've ever wondered about connections between movement and my writing process, we talk about it some in the interview.  Here's a small excerpt:

ER
It sounds like when your intellectual realm didn’t hold up, you turned to a kind of somatic exploration. You turned to your body, basically–

SS
That’s right. That’s right.

ER
–for a fuller explanation of how to move forward.

Tags: dance, gcc, jonathan edward, plum, small beer, spider in a tree, susan stinson, writing

03:47 pm: Exuberant Goodness
I was dancing in Child's Park today with my movement teacher Terre Parker, Grace LeClair, Sky Elizabeth Halm and one other. A small green worm came floating through the air and attached itself to me by a thread, still floating and wriggling in air. I danced it down to a grass blade, thinking of Jonathan Edwards. The other dancers had been watching it, wondering how it was moving through the air, which is what young Jonathan Edwards made scientific speculations about in regards to a spider in his Spider Letter.

I love JE's sketches in the letter, which you can see at the link.  Here's my favorite line: 

"Corol. 2. Hence the exuberant goodness of the Creator, who hath not only provided for all the necessities, but also for the pleasure and recreation of all sorts of creatures, even the insects."

Tags: dance, jonathan edwards, northampton, spider in a tree

11:07 am: Upcoming Events in May and June.
I'm part of  four events coming up in the next month or so, so thought I'd list them here.

Next Wednesday, May 15, I'll be going to the launch of the very first issue of Plum, the new student-run, faculty-guided literary magazine from Greenfield Community College.  Erik Risinger did an interview with me that I think will be in this issue, and I'll be giving a very short, blink-and-you-miss-it reading at the launch.  Erik was seeking out people who love their work, and he was a true pleasure to talk with.  Plum, advised by poet and publisher Maria Williams-Russell, has a cool mission statement and is open to submissions. MacLeish Room, 3rd Floor, near the library entrance.   3-4 pm.  Free.

On Friday, May 24, I'll be joining Hanne Blank and Lesley Kinzel  in Cambridge for reading in which we will, as Lesley says "be fat at you."  My first four books all centered on fat lesbians, and my upcoming book does not, but, believe me, fatness still comes up on a regular basis in my external and internal life.  It'll be pretty wild to be getting on the Peter Pan Bus, limp, luggage, cpap machine and all, and go to the big city to read in the context of these two very high-powered writers and thinkers about fatness, whose work is so different from mine.  I haven't read in the Boston-area in AGES  (the panel I was on recently at the MLA wasn't a reading), and that's were I lived when I first moved east from Colorado in 1983.  Hanne, Lesley and I have never read together as a group before. And, yeah, my writing life has been largely in the land of 18th century Calvinists for nearly a decade.  (Well, but Venus of Chalk came out during that time, so not entirely.)  This has come together on very short notice, since Hanne is about to relocate south.  But, writing about fat and lots of emotional intensity to back it up in a reading?  I've got it, it's pleasure to have it called for, and in such company.

7:00pm-9:30pm,
$10-$20* sliding scale at the door
Athenaeum Building
215 First St., Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA
Books for sale and to be signed by the authors 
More about the event, including bios, at Hanne Blank's blog.

Then, on Sunday, June 2nd, 5-9 pm, I'll be part of the Shape&Nature Fundraiser/​Party at Bishop's Lounge in Northampton.
Loads of great writers and musicians, including Amy Dryansky and Jed Berry. Plus, there's a raffle, and Small Beer has donated some of their fantastic books.
I'm reading at 6 for 15 minutes
$10 door.
Performance Schedule and details here.

Finally,  Wednesday, June 5, 7-8:30 pm, we're having the third annual reading from the Writing Room! Every Wednesday and Saturday morning from 9:30- 12:30, writers of every description -- novelists, poets, memoir writers, essayists, journalists, translators, performance artists and more -- join me for companionable writing time.   The Writing Room has been open for three years, so we're celebrating with a reading.   We end our writing time together with the option of sharing a quick taste of our writing, and now we're offering a sampler to the community. Very short readings: 3.5 minutes each!

Join us to hear:  Sally Bellerose, Carolyn Cushing, Bernadette Giblin, Kat Good-Schiff, Cynthia Hinckley, Grace LeClair, Philip C. Maurer, Rick McNeil, Ellen Meeropol, Mary Nelen, Megan Nolan, Shane Sinclair and me.  There's a whole lot of fabulousness and belovedness in that list.  Read more about the writing room here and here.

Tags: boston, cambridge, carolyn cushing, ellen meeropol, fat, grace leclair, hanne blank, lesley kinzel, library, maria williams-russell, northampton, plum, reading, sally bellerose, shape&nature, susan stinson, writing room

06:23 pm: At The Table
Here's a short essay I wrote  about having a poem up in the Nourish the Body/Feed the Soul poetry project.  It's on the door of Bela, a small, warm vegetarian restaurant that's been part of my life for a long time.  The poems will be up in restaurants all over Northampton through May 15. It's a project by Northampton Poet Laureate Rich Michelson.  The essay is posted on The Public Humanist blog, hosted by the Valley Advocate.  There a picture of Moffat, a charismatic donkey I know who lives in Chesterfield, and a picture by Jeep Wheat of me in front of Bela with my poem on the door.  Plus, the poem.  Yay!

Tags: bela, ben sollee, donkey, garden, northampton, poems, posted writing, rich michelson, susan stinson

10:14 am: State of the Book in a Digital Age panel, Massachusetts Library Association Conference


Talking with librarians after a panel on the State of the Book in a Digital Age at the Massachusetts Library Association Conference panel in Cambridge Friday.  Michele Brennan of Bridgeport National Bindery, Gavin Grant of Small Beer Press, Nancy Felton of Broadside Books, and me.  The photo is by Dee Michel, who came up with the whole idea for the panel, gathered the speakers and moderated. It felt great to talk about all of the changes and possibilities (okay, and worries).  I always love talking with librarians.  They engage in such thoughtful ways that clearly are coming from working lives immersed in both community service and books. 

Tags: books, broadside books, dee michel, gavin grant, library, massaschusetts, michele brennan, mla, nancy felton, small beer press, susan stinson

04:15 pm: Library Tenderness/ "Best Pieces of Service"
I wrote about the Boston Public Library, which I love. Here it is in the Daily Hampshire Gazette

Tags: boston, daily hampshire gazette, john adams, library, northampton, published writing

08:10 pm: More about the cover
Elisabeth Alba blogs about drawing the cover for Spider in a Tree.   It's cool.  She posts sketches and the 18th century watercolor that Small Beer Press found to use as inspiration.

Tags: elisabeth alba, jonathan edwards, novel, small beer press, spider in a tree

10:45 am: Disappears
I got this late yesterday, in praise of Spider in a Tree.  It's a wonderful thing. 

"With dazzling poetic prose, Susan Stinson conjures the sensibility of a world three hundred years distant from our own. She captures the drama of heart and the idiom of spirit in 18th century New England. Like a great actor, Stinson disappears into every unique character she portrays and thus offers up the range of our humanity. (And then there are the quivering June bugs and dancing spiders!) She weaves the contradictions, blessings, and revelations into a vibrant, compelling tale of faith, freedom, and slavery in an elusive god’s marvelous creation."

Andrea Hairston, Redwood and Wildfire

Tags: andrea hairston, jonathan edwards, northampton, small beer press, spider in a tree

01:48 pm: Looking Out The Windows

Part of movement class today was thinking about the face as just another part of the body, like the elbow. That took off in all sorts of fascinating directions. We molded each other's faces like clay, then moved the rest of the body into the expression. The opening movements always take me through -- oh, it's hard to even describe it. I'm on the floor, listening to simple instructions, hitting the pain in my joints, following an elbow, keeping a hip heavy on the floor, learning another vocabulary of the body, with the specific accent of this body, what the knees won't bear, where the belly will be. I exhaust myself with how strongly I feel about all this, or with the mechanics of it, of needing to build some muscles, and, then, it becomes something else. A stretch opens up my side. I find another way to let a movement ripple through me. I get to, literally, move somewhere else with the feelings, with this one body, get to move with others. Get to dance, as just who I am, with some things shifted. Today, when we talked about it a little, we were looking out the windows, not at each other. Strange, what those small shifts of proximity and positioning create.

Tags: daily life, dance, fat, terre parker