fusebox wrap-up

Still recovering from the Fusebox art-and-talk marathon. It's given me so much to think about, and I can't wait to dig back into my own writing.

Just for completeness' sake, here are the last four blogs I did responding to various shows in this international hybrid arts festival.

Miriam & Sex Idiot: Excellent if lll-Planned Evening:

From the sublime (Zimbabwean choreographer Nora Chipaumire's extraordinary dance piece) to the sublimely goofy (Bryony Kimmings’ charming one-woman piece about her sexual misadventures) 

A photo from "Wind and Waves" at Zilker Park, part of Johnny Walker's Night Garder project for Fusebox.

Watch Me Fall, But Maybe Not Quite Far Enough: Mixed feelings about Action Hero's take on action heroes (were we just a dead house?)

Nothing to Declare: Crossing Borders: The Dictaphone Group's documentary piece about the abandoned Lebanese railway and about crossing borders.

Final Fusebox Four-Show Kaleidoscope: Rudely cramming together Poison Squad, Electric Midwife, Phone Homer, and Zen Songs and Prayers.

delicious delicious fusebox treats

I am still blogging faithlessly but unstoppably for the Fusebox Festival, and holy crap I've experienced some fantastic stuff this year, and written about most of it. The blogs so far:

The downtown alleyway "20 Foot Wide" installation.Forest of Future Pigs: Austin's multi-group collaboration River of Gruel, Pile of Pigs (they give you dried cranberries, pistachios, and lapsang souchong tea! and later miso soup! and later -- well, just see it), plus The Future Show and Motor Vehicle Sundown via the Edinburgh Festival's roguish twin, the Forest Fringe.PIg Pile attendees feted with tea and treats.

Sitting Inside Seven Dreams: Ant Hampton's fascinating three-day "Fantasy Interventions" workshop, about sparking a site-specific flash.

I Self-Flagellate Over Stop Hitting Yourself: in which I wrestle the the Rude Mech's marvelous and worrisome latest.

Deborah Hay: A View from the Security Camera: ergh don't ask, but some gorgeous dance

…oh my GOD I loved the Wellman….: Steve Mellor KILLS the Mac Wellman story Muazzez. (I forgot to send a title with this piece, so my editor took the title from the subject line of the email I sent it in. It is a good summary, I'll say that.

More to come, will post then, just so you don't think I'm being lazy about blogging. PS if you're in Austin, don't be ridiculous, go see some of the Fusebox. It runs through April 28. 

fusebox @ culturebot: Guest by Courtesy

Jenny Larson and Hannah Kenah in Guest by Courtesy.I have a wee piece up at Cuturebot.org about Guest by Courtesy, one of the Austin-based pieces in this year's Fusebox Festival It's a terrific piece of physical, clown-ish comedy about gender and class (with marvelous passages of slowed-down time that they call "durations," in reference to the Anne Bogart's Viewpoints work, which inspired them).

The piece was written by Hannah Kenah and devised in collaboration with Jenny Larson and Salvage Vanguard Theater, and is performed by Larson, Kenah, and Jason Hays. And it's all scored live by Graham Reynolds, what more do you want? This week only at the Scottish Rite theater, 3pm.

PS: My piece includes bonus reference to my youngest brother's pre-school, gender-based arguments for refusing to eat grilled cheese. 

playing war and creepy trees

It's the second Wednesday of the month, so it must be my new Cabinet of Curiosities post. This one is almost all in the voice of an 11-year-boy who is quite upset, and with good reason, after a game of war near a creepy tree goes badly & weirdly wrong. It was a nice reach back to childhood for me (I LOVED playing war), and I hope I reached far enough.

I also hope it gives you major creeps.

I took this with some ominous filter in McKinney Falls, a non-ominous state park.

What else I'm doing is preparing--though how can you really prepare?--for the Fusebox Festival, the international time-based arts festival held in Austin each spring. I'll be blogging for them again this year, and linking to those blogs here, and I hope something I write sends you to see something at Fusebox. It's insane that some of the most exciting theater, dance, music, and visual and performance art being made in the world today converges here every April. Come get your mind blown a tiny little bit. There are a number of free and free-ranging events, as well.

While I'm here, can't resist posting these two recent beautiful reviews of Summer and Bird. One's from a website called Girls Underground that tracks books and art about girls who travel Down. The other is from the blog of the Butler Children's Literature Center at Dominican University. Both of them made me so happy.

lucky lucky

New creepyish story up at the Cabinet of Curiosities, about a very lucky girl and the hideously unlucky people around her. This one is meant to be rather blackly funny as well, but you should be the judge of that.

It's also illustrated with this creepified photo of a perfectly lovely girl:

I wouldn't trust that smile.

unsettling valentine

Happy Valentine's Day! Yeah I know I have mixed feelings too. My husband and I usually leave each other several cards scattered around the house (refrigerator, washing machine, car windshield)--this year I bought some pretty paper and used my new alphabet stamps to MAKE CARDS. Childish, awkward cards, but still. 

(And yet sleepy husband was surprised to hear I'd made them. He actually thought I found a card that said "hey ken, nice hair gorgeous.")

Anyway: to further explore my mixed feelings about compulsory hearts & flowers, I wrote a creepy piece about the dark side of love for the Cabinet of Curiosities. If you'd like to add a little bitter to the day's unrelenting sweetness, check it out.

I stole this very nice black and broken heart from a place that sells t-shirts with this image. Click the image to go there and buy one so I won't feel guilty about using it.

cabinet of creepy curiosities

I have fallen in with a gang of writers of excellently creepy middle-grade fiction: Stefan Bachmann (The Peculiar), Claire Legrand (The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls), and Emma Trevayne (Coda, which is actually YA, but she has a middle-grade book coming soon).

We're playing around on a website called The Cabinet of Curiosities, with one of us posting a new short-short piece each Wednesday.

This month, the theme is "cake." My contribution went up today--take heed, those who do not like the taste of ginger.

An early Wunderkammer, courtesy of Wikipedia. That is JUST what it looks like backstage at our blog.

Tolkien hogged all the good ideas

What a horrible faithless blogger I've been. In my defense I was finishing a draft of my second book, and then immediately it was Christmas, and then immediately I had a wretched cold that lingered lovingly for weeks.

But I am awake and alive again! and just posted over on the Enchanted Inkpot about the question of fantasy and originality and why it seems so IMPOSSIBLE, but I think really isn't. Check it out. 

reading aloud

This is not a proper post but I wanted to let you know that Penguin has posted a couple of MP3s of me reading excerpts from Summer and Bird on their website. These are just little informal recordings, nothing posh. But man I do love reading aloud, and reading my own book aloud is a much greater pleasure than I ever guessed.

I should have realized how much fun it would be based on the few times I've performed short plays I wrote myself. Any actor will tell you that being able to surprise a laugh out of an audience, or make them hold their breaths, is pretty much the best thing ever. But to be able to do that when you wrote the words--no, that is the ACTUAL best.

A couple of weeks ago I read aloud and talked with the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders at the Girls School of Austin. The students were delightful, warm and enthusiastic and thoughtful. And when I read the first line of chapter 6*, and the whole room GASPED? For a moment I could not believe that this is my actual job, because it is the most splendid job in the world.

Oh! That reminds me -- this is not a reading, but it's a great cause, and chock full of writers more famous than me. Here's a triple play where you can do good, meet writers, and knock out some holiday shopping all at once on Saturday, December 8 at the Humanities Texas Holiday Book Fair.

See you there? Say yes.

It's at the schmancy Byrne-Reed House downtown and: free parking! I won't be reading aloud, do not fear, but I will be signing, as will Austin icon Sarah Bird, Newbery honor winner Jacqueline Kelly (with her new telling-forward of The Wind in the Willows), Texas Monthly editor Jake Silverstein, novelists Stephen Harrigan and Oscar Casares, and more. And home baked pastries. So please come!

*"The Puppeteer was full of dead birds."

past present future, but much less tense

LOOK AT ALL THE PEOPLE. Photo credit Pete Minda.I have kind and amazing friends, and BookPeople has a kind and amazing staff, and my book event Tuesday was a complete joy to me. Thank you, everyone.

And now it is now! The present! Past the big book event I could not see around for a while. The present has

• Digging back into my neglected-in-the-past-week Book #2
• Signing stock at BookPeople for all your holiday shopping needs HINT HINT
• Incredibly lovely review in the Austin American Statesman, my hometown paper.
• Cynthia Leitich Smith interviewing me for her Cynsations blog (see my office in all its random messy glory)
• iTunes/iBook store naming Summer and Bird one of their Best Books of October HURRAH.

And soon it will be: the future. What now swims before my eyes blocking out all else is the Texas Book Festival October 27-28. Besides stalking my favorite writers at various panels and parties, I will also be

• Signing books at the BookPeople/Penguin Booth (booth 314-315) from 11:30am-noon on Sunday, October 27.
  
• On a children's lit panel called "The World Turned Upside Down" at 1pm Sunday. This panel is moderated by author and Writing Barn-runner Bethany Hegedus. The panelists are NY Times bestselling writer Lisa McMann, award-winning Austin writer of boy-friendly books Greg Leitich Smith, and NY Times bestselling AND award-winning writer Catherynne M. Valente. And uh, me! So how can it not be awesome, not to mention upside-down.
• Signing books in the Children's Booksigning Tent at 13th and Colorado at 2:15pm Sunday, right after the panel.

So come stroll around the Capitol, bring kids, drop by the panel, or come to one of the booksignings--even if you don't need a book signed (you have to buy them there to get them signed there, FYI), come say hi, I will be glad to see you.

In: the FUTURE (cue theramin effect).