Like a Llama Through a Quipu Knot

“Hace tiempo me preguntaron quienes eran mis maestros, aun hoy lo tengo claro: Me educan todos los días personas anónimas.” / "Some time ago they asked me who my teachers were, even today it’s clear to me: The anonymous ones educate me every day."

 --Eduardo Galeano (3 September 1940 - 13 April 2015)

Nine years ago, Eduardo Galeano visited the Seattle Public Library. He leaned back in his chair to look up at us, hundreds of admirers, and said slowly, “In English they have called my book Voices of Time.” He paused and gave the barest hint of a shrug. “It is okay. The voices are the intimacy of trees, of rocks, of stones.”

Seward Park, Seattle, 2014, WLC

Several months later, I showed off Seattle’s famed Elliott Bay Book Company to Mark Fried, Galeano's translator, who brought Bocas del Tiempo’s 341 pages into Voices of Time (though he also disagreed with the English title). We hunted the bookstore for his book, finally finding it in the Biography section.

“Why is it here?” I wondered.

“That’s what the publisher wanted,” Mark said. “They decided they had to market it as a memoir.”

A what?

Because some of the entries are autobiographical, Mark explained to me. I suppose in some cosmic way that’s true. Galeano’s rich life (one truly well-lived) included many discussions with trees and rocks and stones; his mind seems to work on the scale of evolutionary time, taking in everything from blue-green algae to smart bombs. The book’s English subtitle, A Life in Stories–invented by the publisher, Henry Holt–is slightly more accurate than the translated title. It’s only one letter off: the book is about life in general, not just one life.

Many of Voices of Time’s short, mostly true stories originally appeared in Latin American newspapers. I first encountered one in August 2000, in Mexico City’s La Jornada. Titled “The Shrimp,” its 175 words appeared on the front page. Es la hora de los adioses del sol. – “It’s the hour of the sun’s goodbyes,” it began, then concluded: “From the looks of them, no one would imagine that these whiskery creatures harbored such a poetic bent. But from the taste of them, any human would swear to it.” What the hell is that? I thought at the time. Still, I was impressed: a prose poem on the front page of a major, national newspaper. It was Galeano at his best, inserting art into quotidian life.  

Language lesson on Radio Huave,
Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 2007, WLC

It is the quotidian, on the smallest and largest scales, that occupied Galeano. In his books, people with household names and people whose names no one ever knew are given equal time. For Galeano, they were equally important, equally ephemeral. Three moments from Voices of Time:

“Every afternoon, Paulo Freire snuck into the movie theater in Recife’s Casa Forte neighborhood to see Tom Mix.”

“There she was born, there she took her first steps. / When Rigoberta returned, years later, her village was gone. Soldiers had left nothing alive in what had been called Laj Chimel….”

“At noon, in a beer hall on the docks of Hamburg, two men were drinking and talking. One was Philip Agee, the former CIA station chief in Uruguay. The other was me.”

Only a handful of Bocas del Tiempo’s stories are about Galeano and even those are “about him” in the way that “Song of Myself” was “about” Walt Whitman.A 1942 anthology titled A Concise Treasury of Great Poems English and American From the Foundations of the English Spirit To the Outstanding Poetry of Our Own Time With Lives of the Poets and Historical Settings Selected and Integrated offers a few of the tamest lines from “Song of Myself,” noting that the critics of Whitman’s time “were revolted not only by Whitman’s use of the vernacular, but by his egotism. They failed to realize that Whitman’s ‘I’ was a symbol representing the common man and that, when he seemed to celebrate himself, he was celebrating all men.”
Times have changed (is there anything beyond the ‘I’ these days?), but the marketing staff for Voices of Time made the same mistake: they failed to realize that Galeano’s ‘I’ represented not himself, but all people.The first time I read Bocas del Tiempo, Whitman’s poem came to mind again and again. Reading Mark Fried’s translation and “Song of Myself” side by side, they braid together. 

I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
Galeano begins by telling the reader, “We are made of time.” He goes on to explain, “Then one fine day, a day that lasted millions of years, some blue algae decided to turn green. And bit by tiny bit, the green algae begat lichens, mushrooms, mold, medusas, and all the color and sound that came later….”

A child said, What is the grass? Fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
Like Whitman, Galeano understands the wisdom of children; he listens to the answers they give to questions no one bothered to ask them. A three-year-old girl – “a young researcher,” Galeano calls her – thinks about immigration and then declares: “Poor people are the ones they close the door on.”

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, …Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic.
Galeano decodes bits of the earth’s hieroglyphics for us, noting those individuals that have figured them out. He writes of the Shibo people, who “avoid drowning whenever the Ucayali River wakes up in a bad mood and rolls its white-capped waters inland over everything in its path.” How do they know? “Snails give warning. Before each calamity, they lay their eggs on tree trunks above the line where the water will crest. And they never get it wrong.”

Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and be ceremonious?
God does not appear often in Voices of Time, but when he does, it’s without reverence. On Christmas Eve a young child overhears her aunt, recently widowed, declare, “They say we have to love God. I hate him.”

Fishing lantern, San Francisco del Mar,
Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 2003, Chris Treter

The friendly and flowing savage, who is he? Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?
Galeano tells us about the U’wa people of the Samoré Mountains in Columbia, whose land was drilled over and again by Occidental Petroleum, to no avail. They couldn’t find the oil they had been sure was there. “The U’wa proved once more that the earth is not deaf. She heard their pleas…. In their language, U’wa means people who think.”

Unlike Walt Whitman, Eduardo Galeano does not seem optimistic, though he’s surely hopeful. Both are eyes-wide at the wonder of the human spirit. But if Voices of Time (and perhaps, all of Galeano’s work) has an overarching theme, it’s a tsk tsk at the train wreck of modernity and a nod to those who (still) know better. In Voices of Time’s 160^th story, “Are You There?”:

Two trains crashed into each other just outside London’s Paddington Station. / A fireman fought his way on board with an ax and stepped into a car tipped on its side. Through the smoke, which added fog to the fog, he could see passengers strewn about like mannequins smashed to pieces amid the splintered wood and twisted steel. His flashlight moved across the debris searching in vain for some sign of life. / Not a moan could be heard. Nothing broke the silence except the ringing of cell phones, calling and calling and calling, from the pockets of the dead.

And yet, as Whitman reminds us, The smallest sprout shows there really is no death. Galeano leaves us with this final line in his book: “Do birds announce the morning? Or by singing, do they create it?”

Four Years, Two Inaugurations, and Richard Blanco’s “One Today”

“The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains / mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it…”

-- Richard Blanco, January 21, 2013

As I tuned in the presidential inauguration today, I was most looking forward to the poem. 

At Othello Station, Southeast Seattle, 2012

It is the only part of today’s event about which I could feel unequivocally optimistic. I’m not a fan of winner-takes-all voting and I realize that President Obama never promised to be anything but a centrist (those who felt disappointed by his first term perhaps weren’t truly listening to him during his campaign).

But I was thrilled to hear that Richard Blanco would be the inaugural poet. Richard and I are both members of the Macondo Writers’  Workshop, have many mutual friends, and are the same age. Hearing that he had been chosen as the inaugural poet felt like a sweet success for several interwoven movements for social justice, movements that have defined my generation. And the simple brush with fame amazed me: I knew (ever so slightly) someone who was now a member of a very small club that included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou.

President Obama's speech was an excellent warm-up act for the inaugural poem. For the first time in my life, I actually agreed with more than a few words of an inaugural speech. I felt the hard work of so many, who have struggled for so long, acknowledged in the President’s words:

“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began.  For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.  Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”

Our journey will not be anywhere near complete then, but we will be a bit farther down the path.

I held my breath as Richard Blanco took his place behind the podium. He opened and closed his mouth twice before he began speaking. I imagined all that might tumble from his mouth: a scream, a sob, a shout of victory. A second of silence and then his poem: a gift of collective images and private moments, a mirror held up to reflect many of us, lines of simple elegance:

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love

Fir forest, Whiteley Center, San Juan Island,
January 2009

Four years ago, I sat in a forest cottage at an island writers’ residency, watched President Obama’s first inauguration on my laptop, and traded FaceBook notes with high school classmates I’d not seen in two decades and would likely never see again. Most of them, like me, had not voted for Obama. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for a candidate who supported two unconscionable wars, rather than universal health care and marriage rights. I’d gone Green while my long-ago classmates had gone to the elephants. But on that day, for a few minutes, we all felt proud of our country.

Rock pineland forest, Everglades National Park,
January 2013

Today, I sat at a picnic table in a pineland forest of the Everglades, watching the inauguration on my phone. We are closer to some of us having access to health care. We are closer to equal love under the eyes of the law. Civilians are still dying from the wars we wage. I yearn for Maya Angelou’s riverside.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,

If you will study war no more. Come,

I can see Richard Blanco, and so many others, yearning for the riverside. I hear our collective breath, as expressed by our Inaugural Poet:

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,

the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:

equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,

the “I have a dream”we keep dreaming,

We will keep dreaming, imagining, questioning, solving.

Writers in Unexpected Places

"Our being in the world is subtly influenced by all the people, creatures, landscapes, climates, luxuries and deprivations that surround us."

-- From my writer's notebook, September 2011, while at a national park

 

At the Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference last week, I had the pleasure of talking about non-traditional writers' residencies with two literary lights who deeply inspire me: Stephanie Elizondo Griest and Henry Reese. To read how a truly inspired writer finds her writing room, read this interview with Stephanie. To learn about a truly inspired residency program, read about Henry's City of Asylum / Pittsburgh. In fact, they both inspired me so much that I decided to bring my blog out of the deep-freeze that began with phase two of my No Word for Welcome book tour (a fifteen-state, five-month, thirty-event Atlantic-to-Pacific road trip) and seems to have continued into phase three (scattered events across the country).

Here's the short version of my presentation in Chicago last week:

Ragdale's garden, WLC, 2009

Traditional writers residencies (the perfection of the cottages at Hedgebrook, of the lake by Blue Mountain Center, of the sculpture garden at Anderson Center, of the  sleeping porches by the Prairie at Ragdale) have made my writing possible – especially beginning and ending huge projects. For that I'm eternally grateful. But these traditional retreats don’t necessarily feed my writing. My nonfiction is rooted in the real world, not in the cloister of an artist colony or retreat center. 

There are two kinds of writers’ residences: those that take you out of your daily world and those that immerse you in a different daily world. The latter is a form of “immersion journalism.” For a working immersion-writer like me, non-traditional residencies expand and deepen my understanding of my chosen topics.

American Antiquarian Society Reading Room, WLC, 2010

When I began writing about my experiences with grief and loss, after my mother died of cancer, I spent a month in residence at a historical archive in Massachusetts to learn about how our society dealt with death and loss early in our nation’s history. I learned about the role that the Civil War played in changing our death rituals. I also spent six weeks as Writer in Residence at Seattle’s public hospital, Harborview Medical Center, to spend time with people who were facing terminal illnesses. Harborview didn’t have a Writer in Residence program – I cajoled the hospital's art program manager for a year for the chance to spend time there. 

Though most of my writing about grief and loss is based on my family’s experience, my time at Harborview gave me a better sense of what was typical about my family’s story and what was atypical. I also found stories at Harborview that will become separate essays – stories more powerful than anything I could have imagined, than anything I've experienced in my own life. 

Writing in situ, WLC, Vermont, 2011

Right now, I’m in the midst of a new writing project that includes serving as Writer in Residence at national parks in all four corners of the United States.There are at least forty National Parks around the country that host Artists in Residence.

Going to a non-traditional residency is not the same as packing off for a month at Ragdale or Hedgebrook. Here are seven (for good luck) things to keep in mind as you consider a non-traditional residency:    

#1: When you apply (or propose – you can make up your own adventure), think very carefully about how the host organization will benefit. If it’s an established program, they will probably want you to include an outreach project in your application. This is really important. If you are making up your own project, as I did with Harborview, think through what the host organization might find useful. I did a series of writing workshops for patients on the locked psychiatric ward. Those workshops were not connected to my writing project, but met a need at the hospital. 

#2: Plan on a lot of communication with the host organization before you begin your residency. Your host may have little or no idea what you need to work effectively. There’s often an assumption that visual and performing artists have specific work needs, but a writer has none. Things I’ve had to specifically ask for include a desk (not a kitchen table or a dressing table), an office chair (not an easy chair), and an electrical outlet that won’t fry my computer (make sure to take a good surge protector). 

#3: If you are going someplace remote, be ready for anything. I take a sponge, paper towels and some cleaning supplies in a small plastic container. I have a tiny laser printer that fits in a carry-on bag. Preparing my workspace has included removing dead mice, covering furnishings with Mylar,  washing windows, and wiping dead bugs out of the fridge. (And that was just at one residency!)  

Apothecary's notebook at the American Antiquarian Society, WLC, 2010

#4: Make sure your hosts understand how much time you will need in a particular space, or with a particular person, or using a particular document, artifact, etc. I once spent a month convincing an art museum to let me see several items that were not on display. After finally getting the right person to pull the right string, I made the two-hour trip and showed up shortly after the museum opened in the morning. I planning to spend all day looking at and writing about the objects. I found a fabulous display of a dozen items -- prints, jewelry, items of clothing -- all carefully laid out in a gorgeous room. But it turned out the curator had scheduled a meeting in the space, so I had only had forty minutes with the items.

#5: Think carefully about how you will talk about your work to everyone you meet during your residency. People sometimes have weird ideas about writers; this is your chance to dispel them. Take examples of your writing, but make sure not to promise anything. Make it clear that you might use anything you see / experience, but you might not use any of it – at least, not in a way that’s recognizable (or, perhaps, pleasing) to those involved. 

#6: Develop a short writing workshop that you can offer at the drop of a hat. I have 15-minute, 30-minute and 60-minute series of free-writing exercises that I’m always ready to give, in case someone is curious. These exercises require only index cards and a pen, which I always carry with me. Many non-traditional artist residencies want the artist to share their process with the public. Watching someone paint or weave is far more interesting than watching someone write. Getting members of the public to write is usually far more effective than reading them some of your work.   

#7: Be thankful, thankful, thankful to your hosts. My richest and my most frustrating writing experiences have been at non-traditional residencies. Regardless, I have thanked people profusely, for reasons both practical and political. When people you encounter at these residencies show up in your writing, you want them to approach that work with a positive mindset. In the current publishing environment, we must do everything possible to encourage reading – whether of hardcover books or on smart phones. Giving a non-reader a positive experience with a writer is one of the best ways we can nurture a culture of reading.

A Conversation with KPFK in Los Angeles

"No Word For Welcome is written with an attention to narrative and prose that is rare among non-fiction works."

A few hours after the Los Angeles Premiere of No Word for Welcome ended on Wednesday evening, I arrived at the Studio City offices of KPFK, the Southern California Pacifica station, for an interview with morning host Hamid Khan. He and I had a most enjoyable conversation about everything from grassroots organizing strategies to shrimp farms to immigration to the history of globalization. You can listen to the twenty-minute interview here.

I am grateful that Hamid Khan paid such careful attention to my book, prepared such thoughtful questions, and had such generous comments. On the KPFK archive of the show, he writes:

"Call’s new book, No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy, is the result of a decade of research.... It is not only highly informative, but also engaging and personal. In light of current attempts by the US government to enter into NAFTA-like free trade agreements with nations around the world, the people of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec have much to teach us about the human side of globalization."

I am very grateful for his words, and just as grateful for the words of Bertha Rodríguez, an istmeña writer, activist, filmmaker and organizer (who is the Communications Coordinator for the fabulous Oaxaca-California group FIOB, Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales), at the Los Angeles event: "I don't know why she called her book No Word for Welcome," Bertha told the audience, "We did welcome her there!"

Welcoming No Word for Welcome

"When the last tree has died, when the last fish has been caught, then we’ll understand that we can’t eat money."


Here in San Francisco the sun is finally out, the soy lattes mean serious business, and the independent bookstores are vibrant and welcoming. (And for a Seattle girl, each of those details is crucially important.) Tonight, one of those bookstores, The Booksmith, will host the official welcome of No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy.

My book’s official release date was June 1, but for the first couple of weeks I focused on emailing everyone I know (over eleven hundred people, I learned, by cobbling together address lists that span more than a decade) and getting a radio campaign rolling (five interviews so far), thanks to some generous friends and my brilliant publicists.

Isthmus residents tell Mexico's then-President, Vicente Fox,
"The Isthmus is not for sale" at demonstration in 2001 that drew
more than three thousand people. (WLC 2001)

Now it’s time to get started on the truly fun part: getting out and talking to people. Tonight’s book release is co-sponsored by International Development Exchange, IDEX, an organization that I’ve known and admired more than fifteen years. Before I began the work that led to No Word for Welcome, in the late 1990s, I worked for an Boston organization that might be considered IDEX’s Atlantic Coast sister: Grassroots International. I admired IDEX from afar, for the canny mix of solidarity and financial support that they offer grassroots organizations around the world. When I lived and worked on Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec (2000 to 2002), IDEX was an active part of a tri-national North American coalition that sprang up to support the isthmus organizations pushing back, as economic globalization pushed down on them.



The slogan of "The Collective"
Working Group of the
Isthmus," founded by a half-
dozen isthmus activists (and me)
in 2000. (WLC 2000)



(If you’re wondering what that’s all about, you can read the first chapter of No Word for Welcome at my publisher’s website, for an introduction. The short version of the story: as a saying usually attributed to the Cree puts it, "When the last tree has died, when the last fish has been caught, then we’ll understand that we can’t eat money.")

 I am grateful to share my official book launch tonight with two shining examples of my favorite kinds of institutions: an international grassroots organization and a local independent bookstore. Gracias, Booksmith and IDEX!

And tomorrow it’s on to Los Angeles!

My Journey Through Words: Writing, Editing, Translating Them

“I have struggled to find a ‘perfect job’ that combines all of my passions, but hope was restored when I found your website and read about your adventures in the creative world.”

Chad Emery – a student of fiction writer Joe Schuster, whom I met at Vermont Studio Center a dozen years ago – wrote that to me a few weeks ago. Chad explained:

“I am a senior at Webster University, studying Media Communications and German Language and Literature. Your journey as a writer involves all aspects I hope to include in my journey, and I am hoping that you will be willing to help me learn more about the fields of writing, editing and translating, as well as educating.”

Below is the e-conversation that Chad and I shared.

Chad Emery: When did you realize you wanted to be a writer? I see that you have a BA in Biology, but an MFA in Writing and Literature. What were your original goals?

Friday Harbor Labs:
Where I studied marine biology
in 1989 and 1990.

WLC: I grew up wanting to be both a scientist and a writer. When I was seventeen, the latter seemed like a pipe dream, and the former, a rational career choice. I wrote “biology” on the “intended major” line of my college application and never reconsidered that choice. I probably should have. At the end of every semester of my college career, I received a strong urging to reconsider – in the form of a grade report that highlighted my facility in the humanities and mediocrity in the sciences. After college, I worked for three months as a marine biology field assistant. I loved the work, but realized I had no talent as a scientist. I took a job as a grassroots organizer and followed that career path for a decade. Slowly, my interest in social change organizing led me back to my childhood desire to be a writer.

CE: When and how did you learn Spanish? Have you lived abroad?

WLC: I began learning Spanish while working as a grassroots organizer in Boston. I collaborated with local Spanish-speaking groups and with organizations in Mexico and Central America. Basic Spanish was an essential job skill, so I enrolled in evening classes. Starting in 1995, I devoted my annual vacation time to a two- or three-week visit to Latin America. In late 1999 I applied for and received a two-year grant from the Institute of Current World Affairs, to live, work and write in Mexico. By the time I returned to the U.S. in 2002, I was able to work as an (unofficial) interpreter and translator and (thanks to editing help from Mexican friends) had published articles in Spanish.

CE: Please describe a typical day. Do you work eight straight hours or a couple hours at a time? How do you keep your projects organized?

WLC: I write in the mornings. When I’m teaching, I try to schedule my classes in the afternoons and evenings so I can keep to that schedule. When I’m not teaching, I devote my afternoons to editing projects, administration, marketing, and research. I create a fairly elaborate work plan each month to keep track of all my deadlines and works-in-progress.

Hedgebrook writing desk, October 2010.

I tend to work fifty to sixty hours per week, though I don’t have a particularly regular schedule. Because I’m a freelancer, at least one-fifth of my work hours are devoted to keeping myself employed and my writing projects funded. My daily writing time might be as little as 20 minutes or as much as four hours. I only write (and that includes revision) for eight hours in a day when I’m under extreme deadline pressure or at an extremely ideal writer’s colony.

 CE: How did you get your start in the nonfiction industry? 

WLC: I’m not sure I’m in the nonfiction “industry.” Only one year (2003) did I earn the majority of my income from freelance writing. I found I just didn’t have the right constitution for that job. Full-time freelancers must write quickly and be willing to write about almost anything – two attributes I lack.

That said, I do write nonfiction almost exclusively. My writing grew from my curiosity about the mechanisms of social change. I was trying to answer the question: What makes people set aside short-term, personal interests and work together for long-term, collective benefit? (I’m still trying to answer that question.)

CE: For which social change organizations did you work? Did your experiences working in these settings inspire your writing?

WLC: I was a staff organizer for the GE Boycott in the early 1990s. Then I worked for a Central America solidarity organization that campaigned against NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. After that, I was Communications Coordinator at Grassroots International for four years. My (very generous) boss at Grassroots International, Tim Wise, encouraged me to take workshops in creative writing and graphic design.

My first writing workshop was led by Louise Dunlap, author of the excellent book Undoing the Silence: Tools for Social Change Writing. Louise introduced me to the practice of freewriting – if it weren’t for that practice, I never would have begun writing creatively.

My work as an organizer has inspired all my writing. My first published pieces were about community organizing initiatives in Southern Mexico. I ended up writing a book on this subject: No Word for Welcome. 

CE: Is teaching a passion of yours? Did you always aspire to be a teacher or did your career guide you in that direction?

A writing workshop I taught in San Miguel
de Allende, Mexico in June 2008.

WLC: Though both of my parents were teachers, I never imagined that I would become one. I led several training programs in my years as a grassroots organizer, but I never thought of that as “teaching.” I was simply helping people discover what they already knew. I finally came to understand that’s what teaching is.

I “taught” my first creative writing class in 2006; I’m surprised by how quickly it became my primary profession. I greatly enjoy teaching – so much so that I consciously limit how much I do it. When I teach fulltime, I become so absorbed in the work and experiences of my students that I tend to push my own writing projects to the side. But if I’m not writing, what business do I have teaching it?

CE: When you started your writing career, was your talent the main selling point or, like most other industries, were connections and a résumé more important than your talent? 

WLC: I’ve always been short on talent and long on endurance. As my father likes to say, quoting President Jefferson, “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”

My first “break” as a writer was receiving a scholarship to work as a waiter at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 1999. I was so green that I had never heard of Bread Loaf; I applied because there was no application fee and I lived in Boston, so it was an easy drive. Had I known of Bread Loaf’s reputation, I never would have had the courage to apply. The application called for a work sample of “up to 25 pages.” I cobbled together the only 15 pages of vaguely “literary” nonfiction I’d ever written and sent it off. I had no connections and my “writing résumé” was empty.

I’d devoted all my vacation time and spare cash for three years to visiting a little known part of Mexico and writing about it. It just so happened that one of the people on the Bread Loaf selection committee knew that part of Mexico and liked what I had to say about it. It was nothing more than the intersection of hard work and dumb luck. Connections I made at Bread Loaf led to my two-year fellowship in Mexico, the writing partner with whom I shared my writing for a decade, cover blurbs for my book No Word for Welcome, etc, etc.

CE: How did you first start submitting your work to literary magazines? Did you formulate a plan or submit out of the blue? If you had a plan, what was it?

WLC: I sent my first submissions to literary magazines while I was living and working in Mexico, more than a decade ago. Most lit mags didn’t have websites then, and I didn’t have any way to buy copies, so it was definitely not a well-researched plan. I didn’t land any publications from that first round of submissions (unsurprisingly), but I received some useful feedback. I’ve had the most success submitting to magazines where I have some sort of connection – no matter how tenuous. That said, the most important thing is to make peace with rejection. I gave a talk at the 2011 AWP Conference titled “What Rejection Can Do for You,” and someone in the audience posted a summary of my comments at her blog.

CE: How did you start finding translation work? Are you a trained or certified translator?

WLC: I am not a certified translator and my sole training was a fabulous two-week summer workshop that I took in 2005. Mundo a Mundo is offered by the Universities of Oregon and Querétaro every other summer – I highly recommend it! The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) is also an excellent resource. I am rarely paid to translate; it’s more of an avocation for me.

My Mundo a Mundo desk, 2005.

I practiced literary translation in collaboration with a friend of mine, María Victoria, who is perfectly bilingual (which I most certainly am not) and writes her fiction in Spanish. I translate her work into English and she translates mine into Spanish. We read one another’s translations and suggest improvements; it’s an ideal learning experience.

 

You can read more about my current translation project at this blog post of mine and in an interview I did with the South Florida literary magazine New CollAge.

CE: How did you get your start in editing? What qualifications must one have to be a successful editor?

WLC: I started editing as a volunteer, working on the newsletter of the Northeast Organic Farming Association in Massachusetts, and as part of the Editorial Board of Dollars & Sense Magazine – one of the first publications to publish my writing. Eventually, I was hired to work on an enormous editing project that became the anthology Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide.

There are many qualities that help with editing work: patience, a decent command of English grammar, good time management, organizational skills, and diplomacy. I have found that the most important quality of all is an ability to recognize, to truly hear, each writer’s individual voice. As a freelance writer, I’ve had editors insert sentences into my articles and essays that sound nothing like me. An editor with a good ear develops a sense of each writer’s personal cadence, vocabulary, and syntax, and doesn’t suggest changes that violate that personal signature. To the extent I have any talent at all, this is it.

Thanks to Chad Emery for asking questions that forced me to think through this journey I’ve been on for the last fourteen years.

Out in the Silence

“We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re going to show a film in your library.” Those are the words of a movement in the making.

All over America, local LGBTQI-rights organizations are going into their local libraries, explaining that they have a documentary film about LGBTQI rights in rural America, and saying they would like to hold a showing. All over America, the film Out in the Silence is ending the silence. On Tuesday, February 2, this film will open the 2011 DC Human Rights Watch film festival. And as I am packing my bags for a week in DC, I will be there!

A bit of backstory:
Around the time I started writing No Word for Welcome (that is to say, one long decade ago), a friend of mine began, as he put it, “playing around with a video camera.” Joe Wilson is now (along with his husband, Dean Hamer) the producer-writer-director of Out in the Silence, an enormously important and inspiring documentary film. Joe and Dean have done far more than build a good film, they have honed a powerful tool for social change. And that film is helping to build a movement.

"Libraries are a great bastion of participatory democracy," Joe says. For books. For film. For all of us.

Read more at the film’s website and watch the trailer for the film:

No Word for Welcome leads to Many Words for Welcome

On June 1, 2011 University of Nebraska Press will publish a book I wrote called No Word for Welcome. It's about three villages in southern Mexico, and how the people who live in those villages have dealt with the global economy. They have not had an easy time of it, hence the book's title. When I started No Word for Welcome -- a very long time ago, in the late 1990s -- I worked as a grassroots organizer. (Thanks to President Obama, I no longer have to explain what that is.) When I finished writing that book, more than decade later, I'd become a full-time writer and editor. A word worker. A story smith. I have always been a book binger. Since long before kindergarten. In spite of my book's title, I love words. Here, at "Many Words for Welcome," I will share some of the words that fascinate, agitate, or just plain stop me  in my tracks.