This year, AWP is in Boston, a short bus ride away from NYC, which gives me and Sona absolutely no reason not to go. I’ve never been to Boston, and the bits and pieces I do know of the City have made me want to go check it out: it has loads of bookshops (even one just for poetry), a subway system. Yep, that pretty much sums up the extent of my knowledge of the City. My instructor, Melinda Lopez, who I took an intensive playwriting workshop with at the Fine Arts Work Center last summer is from there and constantly raves about it, especially the Boston Play Marathon (come on, New York!). And my former creative writing professor, Steve Yarbrough, moved there a few years…
About two years ago, I wrote a blog post for The Langar Hall titled, Ik Si Chiri, Te Ik Si Kaan: The Slow Death of Punjabi Folktales where I talked about the watering down/Disneyfication of traditional Punjabi folktales to make them palatable to a modern audience. The version my parents used to tell me and my sister at bedtime or on Sunday mornings was filled with violence and caste undertones (and yet we turned out so well), but structurally it had a happy ending. The version my parents told was always told in Punjabi and it went something like this: “Ik si chirri te ik si kaan (roughly, “Once upon a time there lived a sparrow and a crow,” but a more literal translation…
We’ve officially returned for our second and final semester at the CUNY Writers’ Institute, and I must say that although I am sad it is almost over, I am also very excited about what will happen during the semester. Not only because of the forced deadlines and reconnecting with my classmates, but because of the instructors, and perhaps most importantly – the kinds of assignments we’re being asked to complete. It’s quite a change from last semester with Jonathan Galassi of FSG and Matt Weiland of W.W.Norton. This semester, we are taking workshops with John Freeman, Editor of Granta and Kent Caroll of Europa. And it is going to be intense, especially in Kent’s class. For John’s class, he’s already got reading assignments that…
Yes, it’s a little late. But I am ahead of those who are already seeing the doomed failure of their overly ambitious resolutions. That’s why “eat less cake” is not on my resolutions list. Besides, I still have 11 months and ten-ish days to follow through on my literary resolutions. Last year, I wrote a bit of a half-arsed resolutions post that wasn’t even titled a Literary Resolutions post – that’s how half-arsed it was. But I did make a reasonable attempt at more realistic resolutions. I only had three resolutions, two I didn’t accomplish, and one was so vague that any mild attempt made would be considered a success. So, yes, I was extremely successful in accomplishing Resolution #1. This year, I’m going…
Over the summer, I took an absolutely amazing playwriting workshop with Melinda Lopez at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and was excited to take part in a reading with an array of impressive talent from students in other workshops. Usually I get really bored at readings, but this was really nicely put together and organized by Cyndi Wish and the Summer 2012 interns. And I don’t say this lightly: there was some real heavyweight talent. We were all only allowed to read 1 page double spaced, which I thought was great because I didn’t have anything longer than that ready! The plays I had written all had American characters and I sound like a Texan or from the rural South whenever I put on an American accent. Plus, for my first reading since my MFA read, I wanted to keep it classy. I went a little overboard with swearing in my plays. But it was so much fun! I did, however, want to show everyone how classy and refined I am (this is where the inside joke of me being a gentleman writer began). And the best way to do just that was by wearing shorts and a Fresno State Bulldogs t-shirt while reading a story about a violent death. No swearing though.
This is a short story, “Beautiful Country,” that has undergone quite a lot of transformations, I find it amusing that I still kept the title. Originally, during my MFA when I first wrote it, it was the story of two guys – one of them was a student (sigh, yes in an MFA workshop) and he goes to meet a friend from China. Then, specifically for the reading, I drastically changed it to a man dealing with the death of his wife and suddenly he had two daughters by the second paragraph. I reworked it significantly, squeezing an actual story out of it for my first submission at the CUNY Writers’ Institute workshop with Matt Weiland, and added a layer with sections of the Cultural Revolution that Matt promptly called a structural, “mess.”
While I didn’t convince anyone I really was much of a gentleman, as I watched this video again I was quite impressed by how I managed to pronounce all of my ts! Stay tuned!
Our first semester at the CUNY Writers’ Institute officially ended with a reading at reading at the KGB Bar, where I read from the prologue of my novel, “Men With Beards.” It’s been a really fun and challenging semester, and even though I’m still not quite happy with the fact I even have a prologue (I rarely read them in novels), it’s a pretty huge deal that I’ve even gotten this thing moving in the right direction. If it hadn’t been for the CUNY Writers’ Institute, I’d still be dawdling about letting other things take priority. But really, if it wasn’t for my amazing wife, Sona, who forced me to apply as soon as I found out about it at a reading with John…
To mark the end of our first semester at the CUNY Writers’ Institute, a reading was organized at the KGB Bar. The most entertaining part of the reading at KGB Bar & Lit Journal last night was that some of the brown folk read towards the end of the night, and two other writers used the word “sisterfucker” in their pieces, after I had initially used it in my novel excerpt for Jonathan Galassi’s workshop. I’m not saying I own the copyright to this rough translation of a popular colloquial expression, but I’m going to have to find something equally as awesome next semester and can only hope to start another trend! Here’s a video of me reading from my rough draft below:
The venue was really nice. KGB Bar is all the way in the Lower East Side, which takes some commitment to get to, but I love all the old school Soviet propaganda posters plastered all over the place, and a really steep and narrow staircase that is definitely not conducive to the amount of imported Russian vodkas and beers they serve. The room we were in was a great space. It was a nice size, with several tables and chairs, seating near the bar, a podium in the corner and red mood lighting that dimly painted the entire room. You could hear the sounds of New York from outside: fire trucks, police sirens, people arguing, car alarms, and some sounds I couldn’t make out. But the crowd was dead silent when all of us were speaking. I felt like we should be snapping our fingers like beatniks instead of clapping, which is so bourgeoisie. But I also felt like a plonker being the only one. So, I clapped.
It was a really lovely way to end the semester, although the last classes with Jonathan Galassi and Matt Weiland were pretty epic. The MC for the night – Don – has become quite a good friend. We tweet at each other and I take any opportunity to start a twitter war with him. To say I’ve had an intense few months at the CUNY Writers’ Institute is putting it mildly. It’s been quite a shock to the system having not just deadlines, but deadlines to people like Jonathan Galassi, President of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, and Matt Weiland of Norton, as well as meeting with Patrick Ryan at Granta, who introduced me to the term “Post-Gay.” I’ll save my thoughts on the program so far for another post though. This post is about the reading and the culmination of an intense six months where things just fell into motion. Over the summer, I attended Sidak and learned a ton about Sikhism that I would never, ever, have learned anywhere else. I attended an amazing playwriting workshop at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown with Melinda Lopez. And since September, I have been immersed in taking all of the information and research for my novel over the past few years and weaving an actual narrative around it. Not my usual, let me give this outlining thing a go, or let me do some more research, character sketches, then get bogged down with anything else and end up changing the entire story anyway. Actual deadlines that are adhered to and honest, but very encouraging feedback from both the “instructors” and fellow writers.
For all of us, this was a pouring of soul into the writing. This reading at the Soviet themed literary KGB Bar & Lit Journal in NYC –thanks to Andre Aciman, an author himself and the director of the CUNY Writers’ Institute –was quite a momentus occasion for all of us in the fiction program at the Writers’ Institute. But for me, this was an especially moving moment because it actually feels like I’ve completed something real this semester. An actual chapter. Even if I significantly revise it, just the fact that I have it completed is a huge deal. And all those in the room at the reading were those I shared this very special moment with. The video above has the technical aspects in that the words were spoken by me. It’s the difference between the smell of a new book and downloading the same e-book on your iPad. There’s just a feeling that is missing.
The most important person there was hands down, my wife Sona, who has always supported my writing no matter how illogical the circumstances. And some of her friends from the New School MFA program she graduated from last year (2012) were also there, as were my CUNY classmates, who have seen me as I have seen them: at their most vulnerable during workshops, and have given me such a wonderful sense of community and feedback. And it was lovely seeing Erin Harris, an agent at Folio, who did an amazing job at a query letter clinic and opening lines workshop at the CLMP Literary Conference me and Sona went to in November. She also introduced me to gingerale and whiskey. My brother-in-law, Tarun and his girlfriend, Lisa, who skipped an exciting lecture on leeches in Brooklyn (That’s really what they had planned), and a special shoutout to a close friend who had a ton of stuff going on that night, but made a special effort to stay and hear me read –Hitha Prabhakar, author of “Blackmarket Billions,” who writes about two subjects you would think could not be fused: fashion and terrorism! She has an app for that.
And just because Kavya didn’t come to this one reading in no way diminishes her contribution. She was busy threatening people to come hear her Papa read, completely unprompted of course: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cns5c5C3h8.
The experience of being at the Writers’ Institute has been really transformative and is also part of the reason I even applied to the Seven Month Writing Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. If I didn’t have deadlines and such great feedback, I would still be dawdling about. Fingers crossed I get the fellowship! Stay tuned for the next reading . . . .
A few weeks ago, Sona and I went out for date night and went to the place nerds go to be romantic: the bookshop. Typically, we hold hands and look dreamily in each other’s eyes as we walk through the doors, then almost immediately mad dash it in opposite directions; Sona grabs a stack of writing magazines and the latest Young Adult novel, while I head straight for adult fiction. Eventually, we find each other again and sit across from each other at a table, occasionally lifting our heads up to talk to each other as we sip on coffee and carefully maneuver the pastry, fork, and the stacks of books and magazines we’ve piled up. And to us, it is incredibly exciting and…
As part of the fiction program at the CUNY Writers’ Institute, along with 16 other writers (read bios here), we meet two nights of the week to workshop our writing. One of those places is the conference room at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Yes, it is just as gangster as it sounds. Some of us are writing short stories, others are workshopping novels, and then there are writing exercises thrown in to keep us on our toes. The process of deadlines, reading and critiquing other writers’ work, as well as hearing their feedback, and of course the feedback from the editors we’re working with this semester, is really quite invigorating. Although you can’t tell from the image on the left, Matt Weiland is quite…
As we drove through Provincetown in Cape Cod to get to the Fine Arts Work Center, where I received a scholarship to attend a playwriting workshop with Melinda Lopez, I was immediately enamoured with the place. It is absolutely beautiful, with quaint, brightly coloured cottages lining the streets, and you can literally smell the seaside as you drive around. We turned down Pearl Street and pulled into our parking spot (#5!), checked into our apartment, and I promptly collapsed onto the bed for about two hours, before Orientation started downstairs. Doing the Cliff Walk and touring mansions in Newport, Rhode Island, as well as stuffing ourselves with clams in butter sauce at Antonio’s Restaurant was hard work. There are so many things I love…
