susanstinson

I just noticed that an excerpt from Noah's Ark, Judith Frank's novel-in-progress, is up on the NEA site.

Judy is a lovely person, with a life that keeps getting fuller and fuller in such gorgeous ways. She brings heart, nerve and ambition to her writing, taking on the most charged subjects and insisting on the complexity of her characters. And she's generous with her critical eye -- she's brought such passion and nuance to the critiques she's given Spider in a Tree.

This taste of her novel-in-progress this morning made me want to praise her.

I met Judy Frank because we were both having books published by the same publisher: her Crybaby Butch, which won a Lambda award, and my Venus of Chalk. We both live in Western Massachusetts. Getting to know Judy has been one of the best gifts that writing Venus of Chalk has brought me.

Judy teaches at Amherst College and she's got a great eye as a critical reader of unfinished manuscripts. She has also done extensive academic work in the eighteenth century (she's written a book), which is one of the things that make her a really wonderful early reader for my novel. (I am ridiculously happy that she says the feeling for the period in my novel is "fantastic.") She gives critiques that are encouraging, direct and useful. When she read an early section of the novel I'm working on in November of 2004, she suggested changing the point of view from first person to third person: from "I" to "she, he, they." My first three novels were all written in first person, and I was resistant, but Judy was passionate about it, and made a great case for the power of third person in being able to convey degree and subtlety of self awareness, in making transitions between characters, and in avoiding a sense of competition between the various voices. When I tried it, I found the power and flexibility of third person to be enormously freeing, just really wonderful to work with, and crucial for the nature of this book.

She told me to let it roll. She told me to think big. I had already been trying to do those things, but it was so helpful to have encouragement in the right direction, towards where I wanted to go.

So I took it very seriously when Judy let me know that I needed to get new work to her for critique before she left for Israel for spring break to see family and do her research on her own novel-in-progress. She said if I didn't give it to her then, she wouldn't have time to read until summer. I was getting close to finishing a draft, but didn't think that I could get something done in time to show her. But, I wanted to very much, pushed very hard, and I did. The ending is rushed and needs revising, but it's a shape.

As it turned out, Judy had a very bad week that week. Still getting over a cold, she took the train and then a shuttle to Newark (from Western Massachusetts, this is a long haul!), only to find that her flight was snowed in. She couldn't reschedule until the middle of the week, which was too late for her to go. She had to spend the night in New York, then go back to the airport so that her luggage didn't leave the country without her, and then take the train home again. Later in the week, she had a car accident. She's okay, no one was hurt, but it was a very, very bad week.

One of the ways she used that time was to give me a very specific, engaged, excited, profoundly useful critique of the last 200 pages of my book. Comments on the manuscript and general comments as well. On two hundred pages. Within a week.

That is a beautiful thing. It is a very direct act of writerly generosity and of friendship. I don't want to forget it.

Judy Frank just sent me this article in the London Review of Books. It's by Terry Castle (whose work I'm going to be keeping my eye out for), and is pretty dishy, and also human and funny. I liked reading it a lot. I think the writer probably shouldn't have waved her nametag in the air when Laurie Anderson glanced her way at dinner, but I've surely been enamoured of some of the great (mm, and also some possible nonhall-of-famers) players on the Female Mind team, myself.

I mean, the culture rewards the manipulation of images that telegraph brains/beauty. Who doesn't want a good outfit, after all? And if you know French language and culture (and other language and cultures) for real instead of lifting a tiny piece from a John Updike title and hoping it kind of works (see the subject title of this post), why wouldn't you include them in the things you refer to and react to and love? Erasing the humanity of those who don't meet a particular standard of fabulousness is very obnoxious, but it's as common as dirt, by which I mean that it happens a lot, in all sorts of settings. And still, and still, it really is, it's a beautiful gift to spend time with accomplished people whose work borders on unthinkably good. The glimpses of ridiculousness in their behavior makes that level of work seem more within reach, and the glimpses of discipline or intensity or current concerns or habits of mind can suggest paths to follow in other work, other circumstances, other ambitions. Deep, fervent admiration is bound to go to everybody's head, at least a bit, but if the heart of it is a response to something truly powerful and important, the silly stuff gets burned off in the light of that.

But if -- hey, a writer can dream, can't she? -- Toni Morrison or Adrienne Rich should ever send me a note about my work, I'd be gushing like Old Faithful back in in its glory days. And then, really, I'd do my best to uncloud myself from giddiness and infatuation before I wrote back, because to honor them and be a person with them the way I'd want to, I'd need my full self.

*When Susan Sontag died in December, I wrote about her here and here.

OOOOOOOOOOOOO! I'm so excited!!!

They've just posted the list on the Lambda Literary Award site, and Venus of Chalk is a FINALIST!!! in the lesbian fiction category!!!!!

This is just so fabulous!! YAY!!

Crybaby Butch by Judy Frank and Dish It Up Baby by Kristie Helms are nominated under Lesbian Debut Fiction!!

Up All Night, which Stacy Bias co-edited, is nominated under Erotica, too!!!

And Name All The Animals by Alison Smith!!!!!! Oh, I'm going to have a good time at the awards dinner. It's June 2 in New York City -- that's when the winners are announced!!!

Thanks everybody who suggested the book!!

Here's the list of finalists!

All three of the novels that Firebrand published this year have been nominated for Lambda Literary Awards.

That's Dish It Up, Baby
Crybaby Butch
(which I read not long ago and got all stirred up about. It's got a lot of toughness and beauty and went deep into butch identity and power and sex and reading and mourning. It's lingering with me.)
and mine, Venus of Chalk.

So, first the novel was suggested to be nominated -- by many of you -- thanks again. And now it's on the list of nominated books. Then they choose five finalists, and then there is a winner, announced in June in New York City at a big dinner awards ceremony. I'm picturing a whole table of fatshionistas, rocking the queer literary world. Somebody would teach me how to measure correctly, and I would finally get a strapless bra for the occasion. (A fat girl can dream, can't she?)

You know, I've judged literary awards and prizes. I know that there are lots of variables (including the judges' moods, health and sheer reading fatigue) that influence these choices, and that, even under ideal conditions, they can be pretty arbitrary. Sometimes I think the choices are great and sometimes I've thought that they were biased, bland or insensitive. There's no money that comes with this. But my beloved books have never been among the finalists, and it would make me very deliciously happy if this one were. It would be even more fun to be on these lists with friends. So, knocking on wood, fingers crossed, and don't forget to get your black-eyed peas now to eat for prosperity on New Year's Day. (I've just learned that collard greens are for health and cornbread is for happiness, too.)