August/September Book Swap

We had the book swap with wine last night and La Muse made off with a load of music scores and cool books...

Eibhlís Farrell, the composer, went first, donating a plethora of her older and newer scores. Eibhlís is our An Foras Feasa Fellow for 2009.

The scores included: "Time Drops," a solo piano work she wrote for David Quigley and the Northern Ireland Arts Council, "Exandi Voces," which was commissioned by the International Cork Music Festival, Arioso, composed in 1994 for a young jazz saxophonist for the first International Saxophonist Festival in Japan, and "Time and Space Died Yesterday," a solo instrumental that was premiered in 2007 at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. Eibhlís also donated 4 music CDs: "Cór Na nÓg: Caislean Ruairi" composed by Siobhán ó Dúbháin, a local author and composer from Eibhlís' hometown, Rostrevor, as well as the same choir in "Cór Na nÓg in Madrid 2005," and two CDs "Contemporary Music from Ireland Volume 8" and "Volume 2" from the Contemporary Music Centre in Ireland.

Next came Johanne Clyne who is here working on a non-fiction book related to travel this retreat. Johanne donated Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel and the BBC's publication Coast which depicts the village Johanne grew up in, Warsash, a village in southern Hampshire, England.

David Georgi, who is here this retreat on a barter working on a translation of François Villon's poetry (you can read an essay David wrote about François Villon here for the Chicago Review on Stephen Rodefer's translation of Villon) brought a Buffalo book about where he's from in upstate New York. The book, The Last Fine Time, follows a Polish family living on the Polish east side between 40s and 50s Buffalo.

David also brought along a novella, The Following Story, about lost loves, where the narrator, a travel writer, wakes up in Portugal pretty sure that he went to bed in the Netherlands.

Interview with Dean Olsher on mediabistro from La Muse

Dean Olsher, who was here last retreat writing his new book, gave an interview from his room in La Muse to blogtalkradio and Mediabistro's "Morning Media Menu" show via Skype. Dean is a thirty-year veteran of radio reporting, being host of "The Next Big Thing" among other things.

For the interview Dean talked about radio, news, satellite radio, the internet, and his great book "From Square One," a meditation on crossword puzzles with cool digressions.

You can also check out other interviews with Dean here.

Lillie Jayne's show: "Poppy! An Enchanted Evening With Poppy Bulova."

Lillie Jayne, a singer and writer who came to La Muse a few years ago and bought a house here to boot, will be putting her show up at the New York International Fringe Festival.

It's a funny, mostly musical and a little weird and it's called "Poppy! An Enchanted Evening With Poppy Bulova." It's a character piece. Lillie wrote and directed it as well as wrote the songs. Michael O'Dell made the piano arrangements. Lilly plays Poppy and Michael plays Fagen Beauregard.

She is humbly accepting donations of a penny or five dollars or ten dollars or more to help her get the show up. If you want to donate a penny or a million dollars or anything in between, you can go to the POPPY BULOVA page, and then click on GREEN ROOM and then click on CONTRIBUTE. Then you can press a magic button that goes to Paypal.

August Book Swap

So, didn't post this until our most recent August attendee, Alexa Smith, got here with her two books.

Alexa, a fiction writer from San Francisco who lives in Manhattan, brought along Edward P. Jones' debut novel The Known World, as well as Baghdad Burning a blog that was turned into a book by an Iraqi who writes under the pseudonym Riverbend. Once a computer programmer who had lots of personal freedom after Baghdad's fall, Riverbend finds herself out of a job and largely restricted to the safety of her family's house.

Another New Yorker this month, Dean Olsher, donated his book From Square One, a book about what drives 50 million Americans to solve crossword puzzles every week. Dean also gave La Muse Mary Cantwell's collection of memoirs Manhattan Memoir, which includes American Girl, Manhattan, When I was Young and Speaking with Strangers about where he comes from.

Two attendees who were here last year, Toni Frietas and David Trujillo-Farley, also brought along books about where they live. David, who is here editing his novel, brought along The Local's Guide to Edinburgh, a word of mouth travels book, edited by Claudio Monteiro and Owen O'Leary, and Toni donated the tartan noir novel The Sacred Art of Stealing by Christopher Brookmyre.

David also donated Silverthorn by Raymond E. Feist as an example of something like what he's trying to achieve in his work. Toni is working on jewelry this retreat so she also brought along Jewels: A Secret History by Victoria Finlay. Toni also gave La Muse a great book on France and food: Traveling Naturally in France by Dorian Yates.

Another returning attendee, the novelist Robert Olmstead, brought along his great book of short stories River Dogs and his memoir Stay Here With Me. We also brought out Bob's books from last year for the other attendees to read, his novels Coal Black Horse and A Trail of Heart's Blood Wherever I Go and his book on writing Elements of the Writing Craft. Bob is here working on the third novel of the series he started with Coal Black Horse. The second novel of the series, Far Bright Star came out in May.

Eithne Nightingale, who is working on a memoir this retreat and works for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London,

brought along Sulaiman Addonia's first novel The Consequences of Love, a political romance set in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 1989, and Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman, a fictional account of the Scottsboro case, in which nine black teenagers were accused of raping two white women told through the journalist character Alice Whittier.

Robin Chandler, an artist from Boston who teaches at Northeastern University in Boston, brought along The Papers of African Artists from the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian, as well as Impressos do Brasil, the catalogue of an exhibition of fine art Robin was featured in. Robin also donated Rainbow: Prints from Bob Blackburn’s (pictured above) Printmaking Workshop, a cultural presentation curated by Noah Jemisin.

La Muse GRADBritain article

Liza Filby, a writer from London and the Editor-in-Chief of GRADBritain, has written a lovely article, "Solitary Confinement," about her experience here at La Muse. You can check out the article by downloading the magazine here. Liza's article's on page 9.

Liza was here writing about Margaret Thatcher and God a few months ago. She is studying for a PhD on the relationship between Thatcher and the Church of England, at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. You can read an interview Liza gave to Caitlin Davies and The Independent newspaper here about her writing and Thatcher.

GRADBritain is a publication of Vitae, a researcher's portal for researchers, supervisors, research managers and employers.

The Seasoning of Lake Glass

You can check out a link to a recent piece of Tom Montgomery-Fate's book in progress here.

It just came out in the "Society and Culture" section of the Summer issue of Notre Dame magazine.

Tom was here on a La Muse/University of Iowa fellowship last year and has written a collection of essays called Beyond the White Noise and a memoir Steady and Trembling.

July Art Expo

So, we finally got around to having another expo, mainly because of all the help we got from the two great artists that showed, Dave Beazley (you can also check out Dave's blog here) and Andrea Simper! We'll upload video of the expo to Youtube soon and then upload it to the blog.

Andrea and Dave have been here on a residency as barters for six months working on jewelry (Andrea) and painting (Dave).

They both hail from the North Island of New Zealand, from the town of Whangarei. They will be going on to Sri Lanka and London soon, for the next three months.

We're really going to miss them!

Tom Montgomery-Fate on NPR

A previous La Muse attendee and Fellow, the writer Tom Montgomery -Fate, was recently on National Public Radio in Chicago, reading the introduction of the book he's writing right now.

Here's a link to the audio snippet of the piece. It's about Thoreau's Walden, relaxation and seeing things as they really are. You should check it out.

Tom is a professor of English at College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. You can check out his other books here on Amazon.

La Muse Interview with Anne Mini

A recent attendee and well known blogger, the writer Anne Mini, is running a week long interview, An Inside Look at a Formal Writing Retreat, with us on her great blog about La Muse.

The interview will run for the rest of the week in parts, so as to address all the aspects of what a retreat is and how it runs.

Anne was at La Muse last month working on a novel and we had a lot of fun answering her questions.

Thanks for taking the time to do the interview, Anne!

June Book Swap

So another retreat started and we got some more great books!

Andrea Simper was first to go with her books: Unclasped by Derren Gilhooley and Thrift to Fantasy by Rosemary McLeod, the latter about where she's from, New Zealand, and the former about contemporary British jewelry.








Andrea also showed us some of her great recent work, above.

Our University of Wisconsin-Madison Fellow Edward Porter was next up.

Ed told us about one of his mentor's Charles D'Ambrosio and his great book of short stories The Point.

He also introduced us to Joseph Mitchell's book Up in the Old Hotel. Mitchell was an American writer who used to write for The New Yorker and is well known for his descriptions of New York city characters.

Aron Taylor, a builder and designer from New Zealand, who is here on a barter talked to us about Chris Johnson McCandless "going Bush" in Jon Krakauer's book Into the Wild and about the "funny Pommy" Joe Bennett's A Land of Two Halves.

Nandi Szabo followed Aron with Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan's The Aritst's Way which she uses in the course she teaches at Sacramento City College in California.

Nandi is a writer and artist who works as a creative arts therapist. She also donated the Chilean-American Isabel Allende's novel Daughters of Fortune.

The artist Dave Beazley told us again - Dave and Andrea have been here almost six months now - about the art book Vitamin P - New Perspectives in Painting by Barry Schwabsky. Dave feels it's an essential resource for the contemporary painter. We also got to see some of his Dave's characters but unfortunately I don't have any photos of them. Until next time.....

Chalet for Sale in the Mountains

Below is a video of our friend's house/chalet which is for sale. Here's a link to a blog he set up to show you what it's like:

May Book Swap

First off was John Hunter who brought Anne Enright's Booker Prize wining novel The Gathering because it is set in Dublin in the New Ireland of the "economic miracle." John also donated Margaret Atwood's book of essays Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer on Writing. John was here to work on what he said people are now calling "life writing." His biography is about Samuel Smiles.

Next was John's wife Janet who donated I Never Knew That About Ireland by Christopher Winn, a book full of interesting asides on historical characters and places in Ireland. She also brought along Ken Hom's cookbook Ken Hom's Vegetarian Cookery.

Liza Filby who was here on the retreat before this one came next. She reintroduced Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim and Wynton Marsalis' road trip memoir Jazz in the bittersweet blues of life.

The Irish poet Tadhg Ó Dúshláine donated another of his great books of poetry Mallacht Famaire which he finished last year as well as a copy of some new work tentatively titled "Home and Away" or "Is Abhaile Againn."

Anne Mini, an American author, who has a great blog for writers that you should check out, who was also here last retreat, reintroduced Philip K. Dick's, Valis and F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise.

Lori Neville, a Canadian writer and artist who lives in California, donated The Virginia Woolf Writers' Workshop: Seven Lessons to Inspire Great Writing. Lori also donated Gary Snyder and Tom Killion's book The High Sierra of California. Killion did the illustrations from woodcuts, in what Lori called "a feast for the eyes" and Snyder wrote the poems and journals. The poet works where Lori works at University of California, Davis.

The South African artist Deborah Clarke, who lives in France, brought a photo memoir of her father JFC Clarke's book A Glimpse Into Marabastad which documents a township in South Africa back in the early 70s.