Jaime Green

[jaimealyse]

This discussion investigates our all-too-human desire to escape from the lives we lead, and the men and women desperate enough to lose their identities—and their families—to begin again. Events at The New York Public Library may be photographed or recorded. By attending these events, you consent to the use of your image and voice by the Library for all purposes.

This Thursday, October 6th, I’m interviewing Elizabeth Greenwood at the NYPL (Mid-Manhattan branch) about her book, PLAYING DEAD! We’re gonna talk about death fraud and writing and it’s going to be great.

[jaimealyse]

Best Books: Summer 2016

“The Girls” “Some Possible Solutions” “The Sunlight Pilgrims”-- we’re talking best summer reads of 2016.

Today at 11am I’ll be on WBUR’s On Point talking with some smart folks about our favorite books for this summer. !!!

[jaimealyse]

Reading For an Audience | Jaime Green

Jaime Green on the craft and entertainment value of live literary readings.

I wrote about why I love readings and what I’ve learned from them.

[jaimealyse]

Semifinals: Bats of the Republic v. The Turner House

I’m very excited to be a judge in this year’s Tournament of Books. I got to read and write about two great books, Bats of the Republic and The Turner House. And then I did this:

[jaimealyse]

“Remember, you’re a MOM” and “Remember, you have a mother” both mean “Remember, you’re a woman, and there are consequences.”

The Patronizing Questions We Ask Women Who Write -- The Cut

@meaghano, the best and wisest, as always.

[jaimealyse]

Sara Nović: Sign of the Times

Future of Language: The future of American Sign Language helps everyone but the Deaf

This is a brilliant essay from Sara Nović on Deafness and the imperiled future of ASL.

[housingworksbookstore]

The Catapult–Two Year Anniversary Show! Wednesday, March 9 at 7pm / FREE

Save the date! The Catapult is a podcast that showcases the best writing in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, bringing readings of great new work to listeners wherever they are. It’s been listed among Brooklyn Magazine’s Best of Brooklyn and Flavorwire’s 20 Best Culture Podcasts. Celebrate two years of exciting, beautiful, weird, smart, funny writing with readings from some of The Catapult’s past guests. Featuring KT Billey, Isaac Butler, Will Chancellor, Rebecca Dinerstein, Jaya Saxena, and more. Hosted by Jaime Green.

[housingworksbookstore]

Coming up soon! In just one week! RSVP on Facebook right right right here.

[housingworksbookstore]

Tomorrow night, we simply cannot wait to host:

KT Billey

Isaac Butler

Will Chancellor

Rebecca Dinerstein

Jaya Saxena

with host Jaime Green!

[jaimealyse]

This is tomorrow! Come here if I’ve gotten my voice back by then! Wheeee!

[jaimealyse]

I went to the Upper East Side today, to take myself on an ~art date~ to the Met. I worked at the Met the first year I lived in the city. My job didn’t pay enough to live on, so, after a summer working evenings telemarketing for a theatre (the same wonderful theatre where I now subscribe, but god, that was demoralizing), I found a job, through Craigslist, renting audioguides at The Met. Every Saturday morning I’d walk from my sardine-tin apartment through the fancier and fancier neighborhood to the museum. It was a lovely place to work.

Coming back to the Upper East Side today made me feel aware of wealth in a 21-year-old way again, very different from the awareness-of-wealth that I’m used to in Brooklyn. Women five years older than me strode out of Park Avenue co-ops like the ones I used to tutor in. A housekeeper walked a slow, fat pug. A Madison Avenue storefront of simple, neutral, drapey clothing told me, This is not for you, with a hint of and probably never, right?

After working for nine months at the Met, navigating mapless became a little party trick of mine, performed for myself or, once, a date (reader, I married him). I have most of it, still, enough not to take a map when I bought my admission, but not enough to avoid checking my phone a few times, zooming in on the museum’s outline in Google Maps until rooms and floor levels appeared. 

I visited a marble sculpture in the American Wing Courtyard that used to feel very meaningful to me, when I was about 25. Now I’m 33 and she seemed too frail, too delicate—instead I wanted to spend time with a new (to me?) statue against a wall of the courtyard, a monumental woman emerging from a block of stone, strong nose and strong arms and Art Nouveau robes draped all around her, flowing out of the stone. 

I visit all my favorites—the Buddhas,  Faustine Léo, the spot where Munch’s Vampire was when I worked there but hasn’t been since. I saw the girls who rent the audioguides now—over the last twelve years their dress-code has gone to mandated all-black and then to a branded polo shirt, but they’re back to wearing their own clothes now.

[housingworksbookstore]

The Catapult–Two Year Anniversary Show! Wednesday, March 9 at 7pm / FREE

Save the date! The Catapult is a podcast that showcases the best writing in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, bringing readings of great new work to listeners wherever they are. It’s been listed among Brooklyn Magazine’s Best of Brooklyn and Flavorwire’s 20 Best Culture Podcasts. Celebrate two years of exciting, beautiful, weird, smart, funny writing with readings from some of The Catapult’s past guests. Featuring KT Billey, Isaac Butler, Will Chancellor, Rebecca Dinerstein, Jaya Saxena, and more. Hosted by Jaime Green.

[jaimealyse]

This is happening!

[catapultpodcast]

Episode 48: Tony Tulathimutte & Belinda McKeon

This isn’t Valentine’s Day, but it’s also not safe for work or children. What it is safe for is adults who love readings from great new novels! Tony Tulathimutte reads from Private Citizens, Belinda McKeon reads from Tender, and you have a wonderful half-hour or so.

Also discussed: Maris Kreizman’s “Unlove Me: I Found Love Because I Got Lucky, Not Because I Changed Myself“ and Alanna Massey’s “Why you’re wrong to hate Valentine’s Day: a short list of rebuttals.” And this steam mop.

Download this episode from iTunes, subscribe on iTunes, or listen right here:

If you’d like to read more

by Tony

“What Kind of Name Is That” (The Paris Review)

“Proposals Toward the End of Writing” (The Believer Logger)

“Chris Farley and the Weight of Comedy“ (Vice)

by Belinda

“The Art of Going the Distance” (LitHub)

“Me, myself and I in an age of autobiographical fiction“ (The Guardian)

“The joy of rediscovering teen magazines as a grown-up“ (The Pool)

About the writers:

Tony Tulathimutte is the author of the novel Private Citizens (William Morrow, 2016). A graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has contributed to VICE, Salon, The New Yorker online, Threepenny Review, AGNI, The LA Review of Books, The American Reader, and other places. He has been selected for an O. Henry Award and a MacDowell Fellowship; his website is at tonytula.com.

Belinda McKeon, originally from Ireland and now based in Brooklyn, is the author of two novels, Solace, which won the 2012 Faber Prize and was named Irish Book of the Year, and Tender, which has just been published by Lee Boudreaux books and has been described as "a dead-on account of youthful obsession” by Christine Schutt in the New York Times. McKeon is also a playwright. She teaches at Rutgers University. belindamckeon.com

[jaimealyse]

The least safe-for-work thing I have ever made!

[jaimealyse]

On Opening Jars & Self Compassion

[I sent this as an email this morning to @merlin​ Mann & Dan Benjamin about recent episodes of their podcast, Back to Work. I want it to live here, too.] 

Hi Merlin and Dan. I've been thinking a lot about something you said, Merlin, on last week's Back to Work, and it just combined with something you said a long time ago in a really helpful way.

The idea from last week was that when we look back at our past selves with regret or frustration, we should remember—or at least consider—that we did the best we could. We did what we could. I've been struggling lately—i.e. my whole adult creative life—with focus. I lose time on twitter or trawling the internet, and then I get really mad at myself. Right now I'm working on a big writing project under a tight deadline, and this idea of "Hey, I did what I could" sounded, rather than resigned, very compassionate to me. (It's a good counter to the narrative that we procrastinate so that we can say "Well, it's not my best, but I finished it," to have an excuse for failure. Instead, this reminds me to say, "This was my best, and it happened the way it happened.")

This connects, for me, with another hugely useful thing you've said. It might not even have been a metaphor, but it's become a very important metaphor for me. It's your instructions for opening jars. Basically: don't just grip tighter, focus on your shoulder (or something), etc. This has become a guiding metaphor for me in thinking about habit-change. I can't just buckle down harder. That's often my instinct. NO TWITTER TODAY FROM 9AM TO 6PM. I do this—lots of us do this—with food, too. NO JUNK FOOD. SEVENTEEN SERVINGS OF VEGETABLES. TRY TO HAVE ONE PERFECT DAY, JUST ONE. And, duh. It. Does. Not. Work. Because we're just trying to grip the lid of the jar harder and harder and harder.

The thing I realized from putting these two ideas together is that sometimes our arms just aren't strong enough yet for a particular jar. If I can't lift a heavy weight at the gym, I don't get mad at myself for not being strong enough. But if I can't write for five hours straight, or if I long for twitter, I get mad at myself. I feel like a failure. But my brain-muscles just aren't there yet!

So, what are my options for opening this jar of focus? Focus on my shoulder instead of my grip—dig deeper to change the habits, change my approach instead of forcing it. Grab a grippy thing or run the lid under hot water—find other strategies that scratch the twitter itch but don't derail my writing. Build up my arm strength—meditate. Etc. And, through it all, be compassionate toward myself. Because I'm obviously not not-trying. I'm working really fucking hard. But working hard at being mad at myself and comparing myself to other people sucks and I'm going to keep trying to stop.

[jaimealyse]

I think first of two sparrows I met when walking home, / late night years ago, in another city, not unlike this — the one / bird frantic, attacking I thought, the way she swooped

I can’t stop thinking about this poem.

[jaimealyse]

Plimoth Plantation, Oct 2015

[catapultpodcast]

I think it’s weird and cool and lovely to read a book in the writer’s voice.

The Art of Commerce—Episode XLVIII: “They become more of a person, more of a presence”

I spoke with Andrew Lipstein about podcasts, readings, creative nonfiction, and what makes great readers great.

(via catapultpodcast)

(That’s me!)

[catapultpodcast]

Episode 46: Cara Parks & Paul Lisicky

On this episode we’ve got two nonfiction readings, about the big things that change your life—marriage, love, sickness, death—and the small things that make it matter—a cake, a meal, a friend dancing in her kitchen. Okay, those things aren’t small… and that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Cara Parks reads her essay, “I Dropped the Wedding Cake, and Other Confessions From a Wedding Caterer,” and Paul Lisicky reads the opening of his new memoir, The Narrow Door (out January 19).

Also discussed: “The Yellow Wallpaper,” “No Man’s Land,” “The Trouble With Wilderness,” “Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in L.A.,” Running in the Family.

Download this episode from iTunes, subscribe on iTunes, or listen right here:

And as always, if you’d leave a rating & review in iTunes, that counts as two of your vegetable servings for the day.

If you’d like to read more

by Cara:

“Instill Life” (The New Republic)

“Herd Historian” (Washingtonian)

“The Original Southern Peanut Was Thought To Be Extinct, But One Farmer Is Bringing It Back“ (Modern Farmer)

by Paul:

“The New Rhoda” (The Offing)

“Biology” (Storyscape)

“On The Fugue, Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother, DFW, and the Resistance to the One Thing“ (Essay Daily)

About the writers:

Cara Parks is a freelance editor and writer, as well as the Breakfast and Booze editor for Roads and Kingdoms. Previously, she was executive editor of Modern Farmer magazine, deputy managing editor of Foreign Policy, and the Huffington Post’s World editor. She’s written for The New York Times, Slate, The New Republic, Aeon, Foreign Policy, and Roads and Kingdoms, among others. caraparks.net

Paul Lisicky is the author of five books: Lawnboy, Famous Builder, The Burning House, Unbuilt Projects, and The Narrow Door, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in January 2016. His work has appeared in Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Ecotone, Fence, The Offing, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Rumpus, Unstuck, and in many other magazines and anthologies. His awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus Society, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he was twice a Fellow. He currently teaches in the MFA Program at Rutgers University-Camden, the low residency program at Sierra Nevada College, and at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. He is the editor of StoryQuarterly and serves on the Writing Committee of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

[farmweather]

Off to work.

[mydaguerreotypeboyfriend]

A.E. Parr, who would become director of the American Museum of Natural History in the early 1940s. 

Submitted by jaimealyse

[jaimealyse]

“In a world beset by hostility and want, the natural history museums have an opportunity, never before equalled, to serve the development of peace and of a better life for all by bringing their educational facilities and their scientific knowledge to bear upon the task of creating a better understanding of our own problems in relation to the country that surrounds us and supports us, and of the problems of other nations in relation to their natural circumstances, to one another, and to us.” (1947)

A.E. Parr is the absolute best and can also see into your soul.