Oct 13, 2010 | Events, Hiroshima in the Morning, The Writing Life
“Grub Street is thrilled to announce that Rahna Reiko Rizzuto has won our 2010 National Book Prize in Non-Fiction for her memoir, Hiroshima in the Morning, published by The Feminist Press.
“Rizzuto will lead a class on the craft of narrative non-fiction at the Muse and the Marketplace conference April 30-May 1, 2011. She will also lead a free craft class for members in our space.
“Head juror Grace Talusan described this wonderful book in these words:
“In her memoir Hiroshima in the Morning, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto explores what happens when a bomb finds its target. Initially, she’s in search of stories about Japanese Americans during World War II and survivors of the atomic bomb. Her husband and sons, ages 3 and 5, stay in New York as Rizzuto travels to Hiroshima, despite criticism that she’s a “bad mother” for leaving her family for months to write. She’s steeped in stories about fate and survival, about how someone survived because of a seemingly mundane and arbitrary move. She is collecting material for her second novel, including interviews with survivors of the atomic bomb named Little Boy, when a new ground zero is created in New York. The world around her as well as the world she’s created with her husband will never be the same. Her family pressures her to come home, but Rizzuto won’t leave Japan or her work. She writes, “So there is that moment, then; the last breath of before: when life is about to change, utterly and forever, into something we have no way to conceive of. When the trajectory is already being drawn and there is no way to stop it.” Using diary entries, emails, telephone transcripts, and oral histories, Rizzuto pieces together a masterful collage about Hiroshima, 9/11, ambivalent motherhood, a doomed marriage, and a writer trying to understand what narrative means amidst so many kinds of bombs hitting so many beloved targets.”
Thank you so much to Grub Street – to the jurors and staff and the whole community of writers. I look forward to meeting you in Boston in April.
Oct 11, 2010 | The Writing Life
Please bear with me. I know I disappeared after September 11th. This has not been proof of post-traumatic stress, or mourning (though we should all mourn) the beginning of the Afghan war, but rather something magical. A book is being born. It is a gift from God knows where, and maybe I mean that literally!, but all I know for sure is that I have to show up for it. I cannot remember a race to the end of a book like this, this kind of excitement. And we are almost there.
Come to the readings on the west coast, if you can, and I will tell you then if you ask.
Aug 19, 2010 | The Writing Life
“Extreme reading is like cannibalism. You take a book, like a piece of food, and eat it. For sustenance, for blood, if not to ritually ingest the soul or heart or power of your enemy or someone you loved. You take it in and chew and grind and tear it down to the smallish bits, to the things that you can swallow. You rid yourself of some of it and keep some of the rest. Sometimes you keep what may not be the best for you. Your body knows what’s good for you, but sometimes you don’t listen. The things you eat and keep become a part of you. You re-create inside yourself, with caverns, juices, processes you can and can’t control, a kind of meat.”
– Rebecca Brown, American Romances, City Lights Books, 2009
Mar 26, 2010 | Random Thoughts, The Writing Life
My blog on their blog again! Sorry you have to click the link this time, just trying to raise my voice. :-)
Here’s a sample:
It’s real. People are afraid. Not of what exists, but of the possibility that we aren’t actually sure what’s in front of us. It might be worse than we thought; there might be some underlying problem. We worry that we have something – it’s ours, it belongs to us! – and someone is going to take it away or ruin it. Danger, danger! Warning, warning! It is as if we are standing on the very edge of the cliff and are too afraid to step away in case we slip in the opposite direction and fall over.
Mar 2, 2010 | Random Thoughts, The Writing Life
I have been thinking recently about how to enter a book. The best way, I think, is just to step into it. Wrap the pages around you like a favorite blanket. Let the ink smudge your cheek, the words seep into your skin.
