I'm here!

Ladies, gentlemen, and those who do not fall into either category, I have arrived! I finished City of Refuge on the way here.

City of Refuge by Tom Piazza
This story follows two men and their families living in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. SJ Williams lost his wife many years ago, but is more active in the lives of his troubled sister Lucy and her son Wesley than his daughter, who is married with children in North Carolina. Craig Donaldson loves everything about New Orleans, but the insistence of his wife, Alice, that the crime-filled city is not where they should be raising their children, Annie and Malcolm, is filling their family life with unbearable tension. When the hurricane hits, the Williamses stay put, figuring this storm can't be any worse than the ones they have this time every year--advice to evacuate is hardly new to a resident of New Orleans, and many of them don't have the money to leave town every year. Their house floods, and before they know it, the Williamses are scattered across the country. The Donaldsons manage to find their way out, and hole up in Chicago when it becomes clear that the city won't be safe to live in for a while, but Alice's ideas about moving, previously only ideas, suddenly become serious possibilities, and familial tensions skyrocket as Craig mourns the losses of his city. The two families are tied only by a lemonade, a photograph, and a deep, enduring love of the city they call home.

Artfully handled. It didn't completely enthrall me (I can only read about devastation for so long at a time), but it did pull me forward, making me want to know what happens, what the families decide. Piazza's narration dips at turns close to the action, following the movements of not only SJ and Craig, but Alice, Lucy, and Wesley as well, and then out again, showing the city as a whole, giving us the picture that no individual perspective can. It handles race and class differences well, showing us the differences between the experiences of white, middle-class Craig and black, working-class SJ without shoving it down our throats. 4.5/5

I mentioned in my review of A Change of Climate that I'd been to Norwich, England before. The reason is that my best friend, whose pseudonym has always been Lily, lives there. What was an amusing coincidence is now almost breathtaking. Although I've never been to New Orleans, Atalanta has family there, and considers it her city. It's actually more appropriate than if the book had been about her current hometown. New Orleans and Norwich are worlds apart, one undoubtedly American in spirit, one quintessentially British. What could possibly unite them? My workshop leader, apparently. And me. Lily and Atalanta are my two anchors, and I cannot give them enough credit for how they have affected my life. It feels like a sign, these being the two books that were assigned to me.

So, I feel like I should give a short explanation of what you're going to be seeing here for the next few days. This conference allows participants to workshop fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. There are two authors here for fiction, and one each for creative nonfiction and poetry. Each author will give a craft talk, a reading, and a lecture. These will be interspersed throughout the week alongside roundtables on publishing and time in our individual workshops. I need to write 200 words on each event except the workshops, which I will likely post here. I'm also planning on taking plenty of notes at the workshops and quotes if they crop up (they probably will). The course guide also says I need to turn in my original submission and the revised version, but this being a novel course and designed to work on the whole piece, we only had to turn in submissions in order to gain access to the conference (prove our worth, as it were.) I, as a returning author, submitted nothing. Furthermore, it says we need to turn in written responses to the submissions in our packet. This being the novel course, we got no packet! So we'll see if there's a substitute for that. There's also a ten-page reflection paper due next month.

Reading checklist:
Actually assigned:

• A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel
• City of Refuge by Tom Piazza
• 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them by Ronald B. Tobias
• "The Progress of Love" by Alice Munro
• http://www.darcypattison.com/revision/opening-lines/ 

Not actually assigned:

• Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora by Lawrence La-Fountain-Stokes
• Sirena Selena vestida de pena by Mayra Santos-Febres and Debra Ann Castillo
• Transgender Voices: Beyond Women and Men by Lori B. Girshick and Jamison Green
• Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man by Chaz Bono
• The Lives of Transgender People by Brett Genny Beemyn and Susan R. Rankin  

Other random things:
The alpha mother sent me a bunch of links, this is my self-reminder to look through them all!