UPCOMING READING IN THE BIG FORMERLY-ROTTEN-NOW- SQUEAKY-CLEAN-BUT-STILL-SMOKEDELIC-APPLE: Mark you calendars and spread the word!!! Wednesday, September 13, 2000, at the swank National Arts Club, hosted by ever-sexy and talented FRAN GORDON (PAISLEY GIRL) -- I will be reading at the opening event of the NAC Reading Series, along with performance artist and writer JONATHAN AMES (WHAT'S NOTE TO LOVE: THE ADVENTURES OF A MILDLY PERVERTED YOUNG WRITER; THE EXTRA MAN; I PASS LIKE NIGHT) and another author TBA (keep checking back, but rumors are it may be the critically acclaimed AKHIL SHARMA -- AN OBEDIENT FATHER). The event starts at 8pm. Drinks at 7. Address: 15 Gramercy Park South, NYC. Please click on CALENDAR once September rolls around for more details. I will read new material, fresh off the brain's grill, and whet your appetite for book two. See you there!
GO WEST...NEWSFLASH: Last time I wrote about being scheduled to read at The Booksmith in the Haight up San Francisco way. That reading was a hit. GO WEST...jumped onto The Booksmith's Bestseller list! You can also order my author trading card (#371) from The Booksmith (http://www.booksmith.com/cards/cardlist.html).
RECENT PUBLICATIONS: "The Meat-Eaters of Marrakesh," short story, is out this month in CHELSEA 68. Check your newsstands!!! Issue filled to bursting with tales of toxic love. Also, The Book LA did finally come out and it looks good enough to eat. Check your local newsstands, and also the website: www.thebookla.com, and read quotes from women like funky actor Rosanna Arquette to Maria Martos, local busdriver, about what makes them feel powerful.
OTHER NEWSFLASHES, INTERVIEWS, ETC.: Always fun to get reviews this late in the game. The PAPERBACK (run out and buy a copy from your favorite indie bookstore, support indie bookstores! if you haven't gotten one yet -- plus, they make great gifts for everyone, including Grandma!!!) of GO WEST...has pulled in a few more reviews. One wonderful rave came out of the blue, otherwise known as Athens, Ohio, in Ohio University's THE POST: "Rachel Resnick's first novel, Go West..., is truly cinematic on the pages of black ink. Packed with rich language and poetic imagery, this novel is a superb reading experience." We love Holly Schreiber, and Athens, Ohio is my new favorite town!!! -- click on REVIEWS and then THE POST to get the full text of this latest review. Nice following on the heels of that wonderful Barcelona Review write-up: (http://www.barcelonareview.com/rev7_12/117_18.htm#)
Also, click here to read an article quoting me about my experience at the recent circus fest of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books: oops, gotta find it. Check back...
Dear wonderful readers, subscribers, browsers, friends, fans, foes!
BIG NEWS about getting the first fiction contest winners posted! Please click on PICK-OF-THE-LITTER! to check out the stories and details.
What I'm doing over my summer vacation: I am reading Michel Tournier's grippingly strange THE OGRE; I am also haunted by images from a Chinese flick called "Xiu-Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl"; helping edit the special January issue of Tin House on the intersection of film and literature, writing an interview for that issue with Andras Hamori, Hungarian defector and producer of such cool indie flicks like "Crash," "The Sweet Hereafter," "Existenz," and recently, "Sunshine,"'; pulling in more articles for that issue. So far, in addition to Ann Magnuson interviewing Jerry Stahl (PERV-- A LOVE STORY), Norman Klein (THE HISTORY OF FORGETTING), Jeffrey McDaniel (THE FORGIVENESS PARADE)...I've added in: Lou Mathews, author of LA BREAKDOWN and also of a helluva chiles rellenos recipe in this past Sunday's LA Times Magazine, check it out! -- interviewing the maverick director Alex Cox ("Sid & Nancy" etc.). Also Mia Taylor, my digital camera wizard, writing an elaborate and mysterious piece on Bulgakov's masterpiece The Master & Margarita and why it has mesmerized filmmakers for years but still hasn't made it to the screen. Deanne Stillman, author of forthcoming true crime MURDER IN TWENTY-NINE PALMS, with a desert essay on how her book came to be written, with some strange thanks to Hollywood. Chris Solimine, Andrei Konchalovsky's partner and co-adaptor of "The Odyssey" for TV, with a filmic Lost & Found about an obscure Mikhailkov flick. The world-renowned film historian and Columbia U lecturer Annette Insdorf on Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and the art of literary adaptation. And Anne Beatts, one of the original SNL writers, with the Last Word -- "Say It Again, Sam! Philosophy According to the Movies -- hysterically funny! Also possibly an acidsplash bit o' evil brilliance from Bruce Wagner...So stay tuned for this special Tin House. In meantime, I continue the life of the mind disrupted with arduous Topanga trail hikes and decadent socializing.
This'll be quick today -- though I may add more soon. Just wanted to update before summer was out. I'm busy writing so I can have new material for the National Arts Club reading in New York. So I'm in semi-monk-mode, and sinking deeper. Always have been a creature of extremes -- from limo-borne spudmistresses to desert solitude.
Thank you for your subscriptions, and keep 'em coming! I promise I'll post some writing tips, soon. Maybe they'll come off the class I'm teaching at UCLA Extension starting Wednesday, September 27th. And don't forget to enter Contest #2! Next time, it could be your work posted up there for all the world to see! Again, don't hesitate from giving me suggestions -- and keep checking CALENDAR for upcoming events -- and thank you again for visiting the site!
Over and out from the wilds of Topanga,
Rachel
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June 2000 Update: Hell's Angels, Rocking the Tin House, and More!