Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Reading Series Night 2! (and Staff Apps)

Hey R2ers!

On Thursday, April 8 from 7 to 8 PM we will have our second of a series of readings in the Kelley Lounge of the RMC. Published authors from this year's R2 will be reading their work and there will be FREE food, so you should definitely come check it out!

If you're feeling brave and want to read your own creative writing, send us an email at r2mag@rice.edu before Wednesday, April 7.

See you there!

P.S. Don't forget: staff applications for the 2010-2011 editorial board are due April 5 by 5 PM! Check the website for more details.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Awesome Reading by an Amazing Writer!


Please join us for a reading by

Elizabeth McCracken


March 16, 2010
7:00pm
Brazos Bookstore


http://www.elizabethmccracken.com/


To read exerpts of her writing, go here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=M86PhpoehBAC&dq=giant's+house&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=uu6OS9bdJdDulAf9juy6DQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false


The Rice Department of English and Fondren Library's Cherry Reading Series continues at your neighborhood bookstore with the fantastic Elizabeth McCracken. She is the author of The Giant's House, which was nominated for the National Book Award; Niagara Falls All Over Again, winner of the PEN/Winship Award; and Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry?, a collection of stories. Her most recent book is a memoir titled An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination about the loss of her first child in the ninth month of pregnancy, called by McCracken "the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending."

"Reading it is a mysteriously enlarging experience. It could pair neatly with Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking: it's hard to imagine two more rigorous, unsentimental guides to enduring the very bottom of the scale of human emotion." Lev Grossman

"Alert to every nuance of feeling, McCracken writes with such clarity and immediacy that we hope anyway. 'It's a happy life,' she says, 'and someone is missing.' That these statements can both be true is the mark of great emotional maturity, and of a writer who rises to the human complexity of grief with all her powers, and all her heart." Mark Doty

"In An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, Elizabeth McCracken does not howl out her loss. She is devastatingly calm and in this matches measure for measure her own fine writing. By the end of this memoir you will have held a beautiful child in your hands and you will have acknowledged him. This book is an extraordinary gift to us all." Alice Sebold

Things to do when you're stuck writing that short story/poem/essay



"If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to ¬music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient."
—Hillary Mantel

"Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ¬being satisfied."
—Zadie Smith

"The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-it on the wall in front of my desk saying "Faire et se taire" (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as "Shut up and get on with it."
—Helen Simpson

"Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils."
—Margaret Atwood

"Write slowly and by hand only about subjects that interest you."
—Annie Proulx

"Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ¬internet."
—Zadie Smith