NEWSFLASH!!! Just did a cover story interview with rock star Beck for Black Book Magazine. Will give you details that won't be in article. Issue coming soon. Will let you know. More info on Beck piece under Update. The new pic above, FINALLY, huh? was shot by Sandi Schultz (more info under Update) and is her first choice for Contributors' pic for the BB piece. I'll put the other choices from this new shoot throughout the website, replace the older ones.
NEWSFLASH!!! FICTION CONTEST #3 WINNERS AND HONORABLE MENTIONS TO BE POSTED IMMINENTLY!
HUGE THANKS TO ALL NEW SUBSCRIBERS! I will be emailing you shortly, with announcement that the Fiction Contest #3 winners are posted when I've done that, and with an exclusive unpublished excerpt from my book-in-progress EDUCATION OF A CUNT (tentative title -- it's a little tame I'm thinking) -- or maybe a section from the fetish erotica piece to-be-published -- something you get before nobody else. And also, might have reading appearances nailed by then and will also include those. IF THERE IS ANYTHING IN PARTICULAR YOU'D LIKE IN THE SUBSCRIBER LETTER, please advise. I haven't done an official one yet -- just sent notes telling people about readings and what-not -- so this'll be cool to brainstorm.
In the meantime, I want to invite all of you to go to their website at www.pen-usa-west.org and see if you can join up, either as a full-fledged member or as an associate member if you're still racking up publications, or as a student. They're offering new stuff like health insurance to all members at major discount (about time! what a great idea), and publicizing possibilities for books (crucial for most modern writers these days, who get caught without a publicity budget from their publishers -- that was my deal), a website-in-progress which will offer networking possibilities, contests, lectures, special events, education, and so forth. Well worth jumping in, and making this organization as vital as I believe the literary community is in Los Angeles.
UPCOMING READINGS/EVENTS:
Various UPCOMING READINGS in the works. Have been invited to read at Michael Datcher's Leimert Park weekly Anansi World Stage; at Spoken Interludes, DeLaune Michel's venue; at the Mimosa Cafe in Topanga with poet Gail Wronsky, possibly Judith Freeman (RED WATER), and others TBA; a publication reading possible for the Cleis Press OBSESSED: BEST FETISH EROTICA.
PUBLICATIONS, CURRENT AND UPCOMING:
I have been invited to write something for an anthology called the DICTIONARY OF FAILED RELATIONSHIPS, and am currently writing that piece. In the antho, I will join writers like: Anna Maxted, Pam Houston, Maggie Estep, Shelley Jackson, and others, edited by Meredith Broussard, a pal of Jerry Stahl's (thanks Jerry!) and a writer over at the cool Philly rag CITY PAPER. Will keep you posted.
Wunder-editor Cara Bruce's next project -- OBSESSED: FETISH EROTICA antho. I also couldn't resist joining forces with writers like JT Leroy (SARAH) and Jerry Stahl. This forthcoming story is called "MAN AND WOMAN, A STUDY IN BLACK & WHITE" and is way more graphic than the previous story. But it also explores touchy subjects like race, racism, fetishizing the Other, power dynamics and abuse, self-loathing -- you know, fun stuff! Not sure when that will be out, but soon I think. Cara just turned the proofs in yesterday! Will keep you posted.
STUDENT NEWS
After teaching at UCLA, and Antioch, Chapman, various private workshops for the last five plus years -- I've got a bunch of former students who are making the news with their publishing, MFA'ing, or general antics! PLEASE SEND IN NEWS TO ME IF YOU ARE A FORMER STUDENT, OR KNOW OF NEWS OF ONE! And click on back issues to see earlier news.
More to come!
Saturday, July 20, 2002
A shocking amount of time has gone by. This has been a fucked year for me, financially. I spend all my time scrambling for dough these days, doing the struggling artist dosey-do. So please forgive. It's been brutal. Here's cheers to all of you out there doing the same, and still keeping the faith. Haven't had the time to spend on the website I would like. Still promise to get those damn fabulous fiction contest winners up.
But I do have some news an breakthroughs. Just one week ago, thanks to the enormous generosity of Aimee Bender and Jerry Stahl, who both suggested me for this gig, I got to interview the hyper-cool mondo-prolific musican Beck. For the cover story, no less, for slick swank glossy Black Book Magazine. How cool is that? Have been on Planet Beck now for last week, solid. Round-the-clock, immersion. Heard I got gig three-thirty in afternoon last Wednesday and had to meet Beck the next day! No time to research. Sent out a help notice to all my colleagues and got excellent insights and questions back. Only had one hour with Beck at his cool, modest Silverlake pad in the hills overlooking the Reservoir. I went stocked with an extra large cafe con leche from the Cafe Tropical down the street where I used to hang out. Trippy going back to that neighborhood where I lived for so long and set my first book, now that I'm in Topangaland.
Then, had only one week to turn the piece in. We're talking major obsession and sleep-deprivation. Listening to his albums non-stop, absorbing the lyrics, researching tons on him, online, in reviews, etc. Transcribing the interview. And massaging it all into a piece. Super-talented actor Chloe Webb (who played Nancy Spungen in "Sid and Nancy") was the first to peruse my rough messy draft, while we did stairs over in Santa Monica up the street from Patrick's Roadhouse, and she gave me golden suggestions -- like, drop the fictionalized forced scenes, where I was trying to go gonzo and pay homage to Stahl style (did you catch his wicked interview with Benicio del Toro in same mag a while back, right before del Toro snagged the Oscar?) -- and stick to more of a transparent narrator. And the lovely precocious Emma Forrest, author of NAMEDROPPER and most recently THIN SKIN (which I'm just now reading and seeing some stuff that maybe, just maybe, I inspired her in -- you will see when I send the subscriber note -- how there are some overlaps possibly with my OBSESSED: FETISH EROTICA story and some sections of her new, dark, wildride of a book) -- Emma helped me out immensely. She's been doing rock criticism since she was, like, the obscenely young age of thirteen or something. And interviews tons of celebs. Had just done a piece on Ethan Hawke for Esquire she showed me, and then shared that her template is the classic Truman Capote interview of Marlon Brando in 1957. I found it, and fell in love. What an extraordinary piece of work. Course, ain't no way you can pull that off with one week and one hour of interview time.
Anyway -- I sent the first draft to them just yesterday, and am tweaking over the weekend. But I will post extra stuff on Beck, like more of the interview that got cut, and outtakes and such, if you're interested. If Beck fans are interested.
Also, if I can slide through summer financially, come fall I scored a much better paying teaching gig down in Orange County at Chapman University, where the head of the MFA program resigned so there's maybe some open space. I'll teach two advanced fiction writing workshops there. Also an intro to Novel Writing for UCLA, and a two-weekend gig reprise of "The Necessary Lie: Turning Life Into Fiction." Might have to take a short break from the privates until I sort out these new gigs.
Peter Harris, groovy PEN board member and DJ (I'll find out details) and poet, asked me, along with Jervey Tervalon, to be on a judging panel for this PEN Short Story Contest, coming up soon. More details when I get them. And I'm reading for DeLaune Michel at Spoken Interludes in September, along with Jean Harfenist, whose new book AFTER THE FLOOD, is getting kudos from everyone from Michiko Kakutani to Jonathan Franzen. Years ago we were in Lou Mathews' group together. Pretty wild. Don't miss her reading coming this Wednesday at Dutton's/Brentwood.
I'm sure I have lots more news -- oh, FINALLY, I have some new pics. Sandi Schultz, the kickass kickboxer/actor/musician and wife of actor John Savage, was kind enough to shoot a ton for the Black Book Magazine contributors' pic (I needed new) and I'll put one or so up here, and plant others throughout the website. The new scarlet macaw, Ajax, whom I rescued after the horrific and never-abating loss of my beloved Severe macaw Lima last July 1, 2001, is featured in these pics.
That's a start here for updating -- I will come back in and pad more with Beck info and etc.
More soon, I swear.
Yours,
Rachel
Click to get back issues of updates -- more gossip, ranting!
December 2001-January 2002: General Holidaze, & The Erotic Side of the Flu
September-November 2001 -- the 9.11 Spread, This New World Of Ours
September 2nd Update: Loss of Lima, and, other ramblings from the days before The World Changed
June-August 2001: Off the Rails at Track 16 Gallery & Other Tales
April/May 2001: Second Pick-of-the-Litter Winners! plus Snap and trash from Tin House bash
December/January 2001: Happy Kwanzaa Send-Off, Holidazing
November 2000 Update: Seven Deadly Sins Contest! Plus Bonus Political Rant
June 2000 Update: Hell's Angels, Rocking the Tin House, and More!
February 2000 Update: My Bloody Valentine