I just found out today that The Book of Dead Birds was chosen as a Notable Book by the Kirayama Prize, an international literary award dedicated to promoting literature of the Pacific Rim. What a cool surprise. It is quite mind-boggling to be on the same list as Jhumpa Lahiri, Mario Vargas Llosa and Kenzaburo Oe.

First of all, I want to thank Eula Palmer for her beautiful update of my website. Now you can see my gorgeous paperback covers on my home page!

The paperbacks will be out in a couple of weeks. If you would like to help me spread the word, please send me an email at bmcg at pe dot net, and I'll send you some postcards to distribute (they're in the process of being produced and should be available soon.) Also, sign up for my Notify list (you can find a link to it on my home page), and I'll keep you posted about my upcoming events.

Starting in July, I'll be teaching Novel Writing I: Writing the First Novel online through the UCLA Writers Program. Budding novelists, please join me--it should be a lot of fun!

Here is another lovely review of Fruitflesh, brought to me by Google Alert. Thank you, Story Circle!

I'm sorry I've been lax about posting about Santa Cruz and the Brandeis Women's Luncheon. Both were utterly beautiful, magical experiences. I'm not sure I can do justice to them by trying to wrap words around them. Needless to say, I am still glowing with appreciation.

I am now part of the Readerville Author Gallery! For those of you unfamiliar with Readerville, it is a fabulous forum for readers and writers. Lots of lively, intelligent conversation (beware, though--it's addictive!)

Another drive by posting...

You can get a sneak preview of what I'm doing with my thigh book--this little essay will be part of a very cool project entitled If Women Ruled the World. They are open to submissions until April 1st, if you'd like to contribute something about how the world would be different if women were at the helm.

Google Alert alerted me to this lovely review of Fruitflesh yesterday. I don't know who wrote it, but I'm very grateful.

And until I have time to write about my experience in Santa Cruz, I'll share some pictures instead (taken by the melodious Melody!) I'm the one in the crazy Celtic black and white pants.

More to come...

Just a brief update before I run out the door...

I will be on KPBS tonight at 6pm, not 6:30, as I mentioned before. Tune in if you can.

When I have time, I will tell you more about my amazing weekend in Santa Cruz (and my wonderful Brandeis Women's event in Palm Springs last week.) Thanks to all of you who were there--my heart is still brimming.

What a magical time I had at the National Association of Women Writers conference in Texas last weekend. I am so grateful to Sheri' McConnell for organizing the event (and the Association!) A day full of so much inspiration. Thanks to all of you who were there. It was great to see Jill Badonsky, who wrote the incredible book, Nine Modern Day Muses and a Bodyguard. We're going to try to teach some workshops together in the future--stay tuned!

I recently found out that The Book of Dead Birds was chosen for the March Book Club of the Air at KPBS, the San Diego NPR station. Very exciting! I'll be in the studio to discuss the book (with a special mystery guest!) It will be aired March 15th at 6:30pm. I think you can listen online if you're not in the San Diego area.

My review of Trader Joe's Unsulfured Three Flavor Guava (Sweet/Hot/Salty) is up at McSweeney's today.

I thought I should put my mailing list sign-up window closer to the top of this page again in case any one is looking for it. I had a fantastic time at the Southern California Writers Conference this morning; thanks to everyone who attended my "Embodying Your Characters" workshop.

It was quite an amazing day--I went directly from there to the Johnston reunion, where I taught a Fruitflesh workshop and caught up with wonderful old friends. Johnston made such a huge difference in my life; if you know any college-bound kids who would thrive in a very self-directed, creative program, check it out (it's the alternative program within the University of Redlands. I created my own degree program there--"Poetry and Movement: Arts of Expression, Meditation and Healing.")

If you'd like to stay caught-up about my events, sign up for my "Live Birds" list, and I'll keep you in the loop...

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Because I've been having trouble breathing for the last couple of weeks (due to a seemingly never-ending bout of asthma and bronchitis), I thought now would be a good time to highlight Drawing Breath, my piece on the connection between breath and writing.

I am hoping to find some inspiration from this current state of breathlessness, but it is getting pretty old. I hope everyone is breathing freely (and I hope I'll be breathing freely enough to attend the events below!)

Hi everyone! I wanted to let you know about some events I have coming up.

This Thursday, February 12, The Corona Public Library will be hosting a discussion of The Book of Dead Birds at 7pm. I did an event with their writers' group last month; it's a beautiful library.

Friday, February 13 and Saturday, February 14, I will be at the Southern California Writers Conference in San Diego , teaching a workshop on "Embodying Our Characters." We'll really get under the skins of our characters, and should have a lot of fun.

I'll be teaching a similar workshop, and giving the keynote address, at the National Association of Women Writers Conference in Arlington, Texas on February 28

March 9, I will be speaking at the Author/Celebrity Luncheon sponsored by the Brandeis University National Women's Committee Desert Chapter at the Marriott Rancho Las Palmas Resort in Palm Springs. Even though I am not related to Brandeis University in any way, it tickles me to be doing one of their events. The Brandeis Used Book Sale was always a pilgrimage for me when I lived in Chicago; it was great fun to whip out my checkbook and wait for the response when someone saw "Brandeis" written there. For more information, contact Carol Fryer at
760.360.8166.

I will be also be teaching at the Early Spring in California Conference sponsored by the International Women's Writing Guild from March 12-14 in Santa Cruz. It should be a lovely retreat; Ellen Bass, whose poetry I deeply admire, will be teaching there, as well

The paperbacks for both Fruitflesh and The Book of Dead Birds are coming out May 1st. I'll be touring in Chicago, Denver and Southern CA, and will share my schedule when I know it myself.

I hope to see some of you as I make my rounds!

I am cover mama of the month over at The Philosophical Mother. Click on the "current issue" link (it's a pdf file, so you'll need Adobe Acrobat to read it.) The photo of my family was taken about a year and a half ago, during the trip I talk about in my essay. It's amazing how much my kids have changed since then, especially Arin. Now he's taller than me, a lanky, long-haired, teenager. How does that happen so fast?!

Happy new year! I hope everyone is having a great start to 2004. The energy of the new year--new chances, new beginnings--has inspired me to start a new project (to juggle with the other ones I have in the air already.)

I have decided to embark upon researching and writing a cultural and personal history of the thigh. I have been delving into how thighs have been portrayed in myth, art, literature, advertising, etc., and am finding some fascinating stuff (I had no idea so many mythical/religious figures, including Dionysus and Buddha, were thigh-born!) So many of us (myself included, despite all my body awareness work) have complicated relationships with our thighs, and I thought that such a study could help us make peace with our most problematic body part.

I have put together a survey to catalog people's relationships with their thighs; if you'd like to participate, please email me at thighbook at hotmail dot com and I'll send you the survey. I want to incorporate as many voices as possible (male and female; my focus will be women's thighs, but I want to include guy thighs, too.) Thanks so much!

Thanks to the brilliant advice of Kevin Smokler (thanks, Kevin!), I have created a mailing list, "Live Birds". Now I can send everyone updates about my readings and publications and other juicy stuff on occasion. Let's see if this works...

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It does work! Yay! Send me your emails and I'll keep you up to date (and I promise not to bombard you or share your email with anyone--these messages will just be sporadic bits of info.)

Jenny Dressell at Mostlyfiction.com listed my novel as one of the best of the year (and we don't even know each other!) You'll probably never read this, but thank you Jenny Dressell! And three of my friends made other reviewers' top picks on the same site--Brian Malloy's book, The Year of Ice, was chosen by Kam Aures, Anne Ursu's book, The Disapparition of James, was chosen by Judi Clark, and Amanda Eyre Ward's book, Sleep Toward Heaven, was chosen by Cindy Lynn Speer (all are wonderful books, definitely among my top picks for the year.)

I read so many amazing novels this year, but the one that thrilled me the most, I think, has to be The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Inventive, beautiful, and a real love letter to my sweet home Chicago. It has been haunting me ever since I finished it, sobbing. So has another MacAdam/Cage book, St. Ursula's Girls Against the Atomic Bomb by Valerie Hurley (which I had the honor and pleasure of blurbing). MacAdam/Cage, which also published Sleep Toward Heaven, is publishing some of the most incredible new fiction around.

I just happened upon a real surprise at Amazon--my paperback cover for Fruitflesh! I had no idea it was going to be so different from the hardcover. I have to get over my shock before I'll know how I really feel about it--I had no idea a new cover was even in the works, so it was a very unexpected thing to find it online--but I think I like it. I think I like it a lot. I like the lowercase font for the subtitle. I like the notebook feel of the background. I like the watermelon (although the knife is a bit troublesome.) I like the freshness and lightness of it, such a contrast to the deep dark mysteriousness of the hardcover. Both are luscious in their own ways.

I'm looking forward to holding the paperbacks for both books in my hands. They come out May 1, 2004. May Day. A day to celebrate new life. I hope my books--which have been so lovingly, but so quietly, received--will find new life in their new form. Thanks to those who have read my books and have been so generous in your response. I am very grateful.

Happy Thanksgiving! There is so much to be thankful for.

CaliforniaAuthors.com just posted my essay about having author photos taken (which, I should add, was a very trippy experience for me.)

I've decided to take the NaNoWriMo challenge again this year--50,000 words in 30 days. I'm about 4/5 there, but the rest of the month is not going to allow for much writing time, so I'm not sure whether I'm going to make it to the finish line. I'll let you know what happens.

Hi, it's me again, ten days later! I crossed the finish line at 10:45 am today, November 26th. I haven't finished the story yet, but I reached 50,000 words. Phew! I hope I won't lose this momentum now--I probably have about 20,000 words to go to finish this most extremely rough first draft. I got a nifty "Winner" icon, but I can't figure out how to post it here. Imagine a lovely little square with some pages that say "The End" on them. But this isn't the end. Not by a long shot. Revisions are on the horizon...

I think I forgot to link this before--I was a guest at my friend Wendy's luscious site, Earthly Delights a while back. Her writing always makes my mouth water.

I am so happy to be part of the launch issue of Literary Mama, a wonderful new mama-centric lit journal put out by a group of amazing mamawriters. You can find one of my short stories, "Eyes in the Back of Her Head" there, along with the interview that originally appeared in Philly Mama, plus some fabulous prose and poetry from other mamas (including a gorgeous story by my friend Susan Ito.)

Okay, I guess I have one more contribution to fire lit. Hip Mama has posted my essay, Smoke Inhalation. Happily, things are much better today. It may even rain.

Southern California is on fire. The skies are tinged a strange orange-gray; the air is heavy and flecked; ash is caked in the cracks of the sidewalk outside our house. The fire, thankfully, is not near us, but the smoke continues to saturate our neighborhood. I send my thoughts out to everyone affected by this raging. And I send this story out, too, my own small contribution to the literature of fire.

CaliforniaAuthors.com, a great site dedicated to California literature, just posted my essay about the process of writing The Book of Dead Birds.

The whole story feels almost mythical to me now, but while I was living it, the process was so full of frustration and stops and starts (plenty of blissful moments, too). I need to remember that as I thrash around with my new novel; I find myself wanting it to be perfect straight off the bat. I need to remind myself that it is the thrashing about, the not-knowing, the period of discovery, that is often the most fruitful and fun. I wonder what stories I'll have to share once this novel is done (if that ever happens...)

A blushingly lovely review of my book is in the October issue of January Magazine.

If you'd like a sneak peek of the paperback cover, mosey on over here.

Peace,

gayle

Hey, guess what? I'm Bad Girl of the Month over at the fabulous Bad Girls Press website. Bad girls unite!

Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. It has been four months since my last blog. A very intense and wonderful and horrible four months. An eternity. But here I am.

I wish I could encapsulate the last four months for you. My dinner with Barbara Kingsolver (we ate Nepalese and Tibetan food! Ping noodles and butter tea! And she is the loveliest, most generous woman. When she introduced me at my reading, she said she felt like she wasn't giving the world a book, she was giving the world an author. I still get chills when I think about it.) My book tour, where I met so many warm and wonderful people (thanks to all of you!) and stumbled upon so many wild, sometimes goosebump inducing, moments of synchronicity (when I read in Boulder, I met a woman who had heard my radio interview in Santa Cruz the week before. A bird crashed into her windshield and, sadly, died, while she was listening to me talk about dead birds!) The deep sadness in our family when two relatives died unexpectedly within weeks of each other. We are all still reeling. Life continues to be full of surprises--so much beauty and pain and neverending wonder.

I started writing a memoir this summer, which is something I never expected to do. It came to me in a dream, and when I woke up, entire chapters were clambering to be written. I'm about half way done with it now (at least the first draft of it)--it's been a healing and surprisingly amusing endeavor. The glimmerings of a new novel have also started to spark.

I will try to stay in better touch. In the meanwhile, here's a recent interview. Hope everyone is doing well!