Clockshop’s MY ATLAS travelogue series this summer starts July 10th and will continue every Thurs. evening for 7 weeks. The series will present writers with travelogues in conjunction with a film, and a collaboration between Clockshop’s Julia Meltzer, filmmaker Courtney Stephens, and writer Sasha Archibald. “Men happen to own the archetypal explorer, and the seeker, and the philosopher of travel, the Jack Kerouac, and the flaneur, observe city life at a distance, and even the man of letters,” s

Clockshop and California State Parks are in plans to collaborate on an ongoing programming series over the next year at the Bow Tie Parcel, a hidden gem in the emerald necklace of the Los Angeles River greenway. Offering new perspectives on the Los Angeles River, the currently undeveloped 18-acre site is optimally positioned to become the 4th new urban State Park in the Los Angeles Sector. It is also the current site for artist Michael Parker’s sculpture, The Unfinished, and the location for the

Richard Russo is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist. Russo grew up in Gloversville, New York, a small upstate town that once produced ninety percent of the nation’s dress gloves in its factories. Much of his work is inspired by his experiences of small town, working-class life. He has published seven novels, two short story collections, and the memoir Elsewhere (2012). His novel Empire Falls won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, and was later adapted into an HBO miniseries based on his

In the digital age, there is an incessant drive to “share” what you’re thinking, doing, eating, writing, not writing, obsessing about. This starts to feel like a bright and shiny red alarm button, urging me to cast my words out into the world: comment on social media posts or online articles, rant about a television show in a blog post, and send a story, essay, or poem out to a publication before it’s ready, just to see if they’ll take it. I try and second-guess myself before I do anything too r

There was much debate around the PEN American Center’s decision to honor the satirical cartoon newsmagazine Charlie Hebdo with the Freedom of Expression Courage Award at its literary gala earlier this month in New York City. Critically-acclaimed writers who were scheduled as hosts declined to attend. A little over two hundred well-esteemed writers and poets signed a letter of protest against the award, including Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, Ben Lerner, Joyce Carol Oates, and Vijay Seshadri. They d

Gardening has always been on my aspirational to-do list (along with sewing, cooking, and playing the piano), but it’s also one of those self-enrichment activities that requires actual time investment to get the most out of it. For instance, you can’t just put a seed in a pot and watch it grow into a tomato, or throw some eggs in a pan and get a soufflé. There are specific steps involved, and finding a process to remember those steps by memory, as always, takes time. I probably have the opposite

The SXSW Interactive conference and festival was held in Austin, Texas last weekend, and I was lucky enough to attend for the first time. Among the chaos of thousands of people descending upon Austin—multiple trade shows, exhibits, meet-ups, bands, parties (free drinks!), food trucks (BBQ and tacos!)—were the educational panels. During a couple of panels I attended, there was wistful mention of wishing you could be in more than one place at once, as it was impossible to go to everything on the o

This past holiday season, instead of the customary trek to the Midwest from California by plane to visit my parents, my husband Dylan and I opted to stay closer to home. Since Dylan recently switched to a new job, in recent months his schedule had been unpredictable. Also, my December residency for the Antioch MFA Creative Writing program was scheduled later than last year, and finished up just a few days before Christmas. Considering these travel-planning idiosyncrasies, we opted to take a road