A Day at the Prefecture

Was re-reading our friend Robin Hemley's blog post A Day at the Prefecture this morning from last January. It's not only funny but also epitomizes the French bureaucratic nightmare.

Here's the beginning:

"Last week, I was told by Madame Loretz in Personnel at The University of Montpellier where I’m teaching for several months that I had been given the wrong visa by the Chicago Consulate. It’s actually NOT the wrong visa, but it was impossible to convince Madame Loretz of that..."

And thus started what Robin goes on to call the Monty Python-esque French "Go Away" merryground.

Open Studio - Kellyann Monaghan

They both left a few days ago for London and New York, but here's video of Kellyann Monaghan's cool art from the open studio she had here:



And here's Sarai Michelle Walker reading from her novel in progress "Dietland" which she was working on while she was at La Muse:



We'll also upload Rhea Tregebov reading her poems when we get a chance!

Mike Sacks

So happy for our friend Mike Sacks: he just sold a collection of his published short humor pieces to Tin House Books, to be released in the Spring of 2011, "Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason."

The book will contain pieces from The New Yorker, Esquire magazine, Time magazine, Vanity Fair , McSweeney’s, and other publications. We'll let you know more about it before it comes out!

If you haven't already you have got to check out Mike's CLASSIC photos of TV! Hilarious...

New York Times article

One of our artists in NYC, Dwight Cassin, just sent us this link to a New York Times article The Besieged and the Beautiful in Languedoc about the neighboring Cathar castles of Lastours and our friend Jean Marc Boyer's restaurant Le Puits du Trésor.

Great to see the Languedoc, especially our part of it, getting on the map:

Here's a link to the NY Times slideshow.

Apple ... Pear Tarte - Rhea Tregebov

Rhea Tregebov's AMAZING -

French apple or pear tarte:

Set oven to 425 F or gas 7

Crust:

7 oz or 1 1/2 cups flour
3 1/2 oz or 100g sweet (unsalted) butter, cold
2 pinches salt
4 tablespoons cold water

Crumble the flour and butter in a bowl with your fingers until it's thoroughly mixed. Add pinches of salt. Then add cold water. You may need to adjust this amount depending on how dry the flour is. Mix with your hands until the dough just forms a ball.
Roll out on floured board and lift into pie plate. Press against edges of dish.

Custard:

1/2 cup plain yogurt. (Pomiane calls for thick cream, which would also be nice, but I usually use yogurt)
1 egg (Pomiane calls for three egg yolks, but I never know what to do with the whites)
1/4 cup granulated sugar

Mix until blended.

4 apples or pears, or a mix of the two (which is very delicious)

Peel, quarter, and core fruit, then slice very thinly.

Pour custard base into pie crust.

Arrange fruit slices artistically in a circle on top of custard. This is a bit time consuming, but worth it.

Sprinkle some more sugar on top of fruit.

Bake for 35 minutes until custard is set and fruit begins to brown.

Very delicious served with creme fraiche.

Inspirational Video

We stumbled across this cool video today.

Check it out, the man really has some great things to say:

May Book Swap

First up after the crepes and dandelion jam was the American artist Kellyann Monaghan who lives in Williamsburg, New York. After showing us some of her cool, Hopperesque paintings of NYC - she loves to paint NYC at night because of the different "coloring" to the daylight - she donated Paul Auster's New York Trilogy because of its "mysterious gritty world" which she feels makes his work "timeless." Kelly also gave us Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. While at La Muse she's working on a series of oils based on the countryside around here.

Next came the Australian artist Kate McBride who, after showing us her wonderfully diverse and original works, talked about how she's inspired by Shazia Sikander, the Pakistani artist, showing us Sikander's work in the book she donated, edited by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. For a book where she's from she gave La Muse Markus Zysak's The Book Thief. Kate is here on a barter fellowship, and like Kellyannn is creating some beautiful oil paintings.

The American writer Sarai Michelle Walker brought La Muse Antonio Tabucchi's Pereira Declares "very political novel" and Cowboys Are My Weakness, a collection of short stories by Pam Houston who was Sarai's first fiction teacher and because it is a book that is representative of "the mountain West" where she comes from. Sarai is at La Muse working on a novel.

Last to present her books was the delightful Canadian writer Rhea Tregebov who donated her recently published novel The Knife Sharpener's Bell, a political novel put out by Coteau and a collection of her selected and new poems (alive). Rhea also gave a reading of a great poem: "Remembering History" from her poetry collection. To "represent what I do" Rhea also donated Carmine Starnino's This Way Out as well as Lisa Moore's collection of short stories Degrees of Nakedness. Based in Newfoundland, Rhea loves the stories for many reasons, one of which being because she loves "the way she writes about sex."

Thanks again to everyone that donated to our living library!

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University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program Fellowship

For the third time, La Muse is offering a three-week residency to an NWP (graduates of the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program) alumni. This year’s residency will run from October 12 to November 2, 2010.

Transportation and meals are not included. Robin Hemley and David Hamilton led a group here on an Overseas Writing workshop several summers ago. Prior recipients have been Tom Montgomery-Fate (NWP ’86) and Brendan Wolfe (NWP ’99).

You can read more about the retreat here and more about Tom and Brendan here.

To apply for the residency, please send a writing sample of no more than 3,000 words (preferably of a work in progress) to getaway@lamuseinn.com with a cc: to Hope Edelman at: hopedel@hotmail.com. Put “La Muse Writing Residency” in the subject line, and please include a cover letter describing the work you’d like to do during your time here. The deadline for submissions is May 20.

We will take part in the judging. A winner will be announced by June 15.

Freud Fraud

We just found this article on couch wars in France over Mr. Sigmund Freud.

Michel Onfray, who has come out with some great books before,  says Freud's successes were fabrications and that he was a drug addled misogynist homophobe obsessed with sexual abuse...

His book is called Twilight of an Idol, the Freudian Fabrication.

Donate to La Muse!

So, you can now donate to La Muse through gofundme.com here.

Here's an abbreviated version of what we have to say there:

Look online. There's nothing else like La Muse. However, without 50,000 Euros by December 2010 to make up for a two-year 40% shortfall in our revenue (due to the crisis), we will close La Muse (described by one attendee as "a service to humanity"). If we do make up that deficit with your donations, we will be able to make it through this phase, and pledge to continue to offer residencies, barters and fellowships to artists and writers and artisans at all stages of their creative lives.

If you are a former Muser or a friend to the arts (either an individual or part of an organization) please consider giving to La Muse so that other creative individuals can avail of the gift you give to take time away to concentrate on their work. Thank you!

Please visit our website for more information on becoming a member, or contact getaway@lamuseinn.com with any questions you might have about La Muse.

Cool Book Tour

Check this out: James Kaelan, author of WE'RE GETTING ON (the Zero Emission Book that grows into a tree), is touring his novel up the west coast this summer, from Los Angeles to Vancouver -- by bicycle.

What a cool way to do a book tour!