Author: Jennifer
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The Henfield Prize
From Library Journal The Henfield Prize is something extraordinary; recognition and support for unknown and unpublished writers, chosen from outstanding students in U.S. writing programs. This anthology of the finest winning pieces since the award’s inception in 1980 includes well-known authors Sue Miller, Harriet Doerr, Mona Simpson, and Ethan Canin. Libraries may already own the…
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Don’t Have to Do Nothin’ No More, No More
After two years and six months, the revised novel is finally out the door. In the damn mail, dude. You’d think I feel an enormous sense of relief. You’d be so wrong. I’m still waiting for the elation. I’m not even close to feeling it. Maybe I haven’t internalized that the enforced morning march to…
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Wearing the White Carnation
Been thinking a lot about China lately. The earthquake, most particularly. But, my friendship with my Shanghaiese neighbor and cardio-walking partner—heightened now that she’s on the brink of moving to the South Bay—has also pulled China into a unique kind of focus. At the end of our morning walk, Fei-Fei and I stop in a…
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Naked in Public
Wow, you guys. Thanks for all your very flattering emails about my piece “[tag]Blue Black Berry[/tag],” newly published in [tag]Fringe Magazine[/tag]. Isn’t it supremely paradoxical that a piece so flagrantly autobiographical—vintage photos and all—should butt right up against my blogged denial that my current novel is sheer fiction? “Blue Black Berry” is all me. Fiction…
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No, Really. It’s Not Meeee!
Tell the truth. When you read a novel, is the protagonist the author on the back cover? I’m asking, because more than three times already, someone has slipped and called me by the name of the main character in my new piece, “Grace Notes.” Oops. Okay, she’s a Jamaican woman who lives in Park Slope,…
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Beggars Would Ride
I, of course, should be slashing and tightening and tweaking the 420 pages of the novel. But, what am I doing? Squandering an hour or more making an avatar of myself. As we say in Jamaica, cu ya (look at this): It made my husband laugh–he thought it was cute. I only WISH I looked…
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Rainin’ in Rio!
Rio de Janeiro feels more familiar to a babe like me who knows from tropical Christmases. Heat, sweat at the hairline, linen clothes, palm trees, coconut water. And at breakfast papayas, pineapples, oranges, mangoes, guavas fruits, full-flavored bananas and jack fruit. Yes, yes, yes. Adding to my throb of nostalgia is that the street trees…
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Wild Waters of Iguassu
No, I’d never heard of the Iguassu Falls before this trip either. It’s the Eighth Wonder of the World, don’t you know. Impressive and thunderous, it straddles both Argentina and Brazil. These falls come in only second to Africa’s Victoria Falls. With more than 200 separate cascades, it’s taller than Niagara Falls by far. In…
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Cry For Me, Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires, as you might imagine, is a smart, cosmopolitan city. Walking about, there’s a nagging feeling of familiarity. Even mildly jetlagged, it’s easy to forget where in hell you are. For it looks like any European city—Paris, Milan, Madrid. New York, even. Except there are purple-flowering jacaranda trees, Banyan trees with their elephant-foot roots,…
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Two Asses. Photo, Too
So, yah, I know. I haven’t written here since last Christmas. Thanks for wanting to know what’s up with me. I’ve been writing, basically. Pulling prose and chaffering with myself. And avoiding the pull of writing here—which is infinitely easier. And a bleeding thief of time. But, look. It’s September, and after 130 new pages,…
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Athens
I never read the guidebooks before we travel. To me it’s like opening presents early. Plus I feel I don’t really need to know too much beforehand—the beloved drools over the planning, the books, the maps. All I need do is show up and make sure I don’t have a derisive amount of stuff packed.…
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The Sum of It
…Stumbling upon this link was like being kissed hard… This week I was doing research for my novel, and all of a sudden I had tears on my face. One of my fictional guys is Terrence Yee Fat. He’s a biracial, bisexual Jamaican man mostly because I need him to represent the kind of duality,…