Hi.
It’s snowing like a mofo out there again in Brooklyn. I’ve officially dubbed this The Winter That Killed Winter For Me. If you even hear me complain about 90 degrees this summer, feel free to slap me.
So, let’s recap.
First off the kind folks at This Zine Will Change Your Life were kind enough to give my poem Garage Sale a home. Many thanks to Ben for being so kind. And then, if that weren’t enough, the equally wonderful folks at Mad Swirl were nice enough to give my poem Reason Number 17 a place to be. As always small press editors are the best.
This past weekend I was in Pittsburgh which was great. Aside from chilling with some family members I got to hangout with some people that I really do miss. It’s a great city and every time I leave, I’m sad about it.
On Friday I met up with the very cool Renee Alberts to record a half hour poetry show called Prosody on WEYP. Prosody is a great show, with an amazing history. I was so completely honored to be invited to read my stuff and talk to Renee about poetry. Renee and Lisa, Prosody’s engineer, were both wonderful. Nice and funny and down to earth and kind enough to not comment on how nervous I was.
Basically I read a few poems and then Renee talked to me about writing.
It went something like this:
Renee: “So Ally, I noticed that in your work, you mainly write from the first person and your work has a very strong narrative I. Can you talk a little about that?”
Ally: “Yeah sure….<long pause>….Um……<longer pause>….it’s because I….. <something stupid>…… and then…… <something dumb>….. but not without…… <something even dumber>….basically without…… <make up a word here>….so yeah.”
Ahem. The good news is that Lisa is going to edit this down and make me sound not so dumb and not so much like someone who makes up words on air. OR, she’s not and you can all have a good laugh.
The show is going to air this Saturday at 6 am. So for you early birds out there, you can listen to here: http://www.wyep.org/listen-live
Otherwise, it’ll be podcasted eventually and I’ll share it then so we can all have a nice laugh.
So after that, there was a reading hosted by the always fantastic Don Wentworth of Lilliput Review. (If you haven’t read that blog, please do so. It’s amazing). I was totally honored to read with Sara Ries, Chuck Joy, Dianne Borsenik, John Burroughs, John Grochalski, Maggie Glover, Heather McNaugher, Kristofer Collins & Don Wentworth.
It was a stellar line up and so much fun and I can only hope I managed to hold my own with such a great line up.
I’m going to have some book news soon but for now, let’s just say that my novella is currently morphing into a novel. Apparently I fed it after midnight and spilled water on it. You know how these things go. So if I manage to write my little fingers off, I’ll have something for you to read come June or so. It’s called THIS IS SARAH and it’s my accidental novel…..hopefully. I’m shooting for 1K words a day. So far so good but it’s still early.
Peace Love and Starbursts,
Ally
Ally Malinenko 