Category Archives: On writing

Coming this summer – two worthy international conferences

Historical Novel Society North America 2021 conference

I’ll be presenting at the June 21-27 Historical Novel Society North America Conference, a full week of online activities where attendees can learn, share, connect, and inspire. Over 80 panels, presentations, and cozy chats, plus master classes, author spotlights, book clubs, conversation rooms, and social events. You can also sign up for agent pitches, query critiques, and the Blue Pencil Cafe. My topic is “All Is Not Lost: Making the Most of your Research.” Click here for the full program of events and offerings. Registration is now open.

2021 International German Genealogy Conference

Coming in July: International German Genealogy Partnership (IGGP) conference. I be presenting two talks: one on “Explore the Rhineland Palatinate,” the other — “Following the Trail: Emigrant letters of the 19th Century” with my German colleague Angela Weber. Held online in real time July 17-24, presentations will also be available to watch at home at your convenience for the next six months, through December. This conference is the third one offered by the IGGP. They’re well organized and have a great line up of offerings. Don’t miss out! Registration deadline May 1.

18th century Highland weddings and recipes

In researching my Highland Scots ancestors, I was excited to see this map again. This “Scotland of Old” map is cropped from a photo I took when visiting the Pacific Northwest Highland Games at Enumclaw back in 2016. (The event will be virtual this year. Check out info here.) 

When I was growing up, this map hung at the end of our bedroom hallway (as a child, it scared me — it looked like a witch flying through the air on a broom, her cape flying out behind her). My dad hung it in our hall because of his Patterson ancestry. His surname stemmed back through his paternal line to Highland Scots, Patterson being a sept of Clan Chattan, which also encompassed Mackintoshes, McPhersons, Nobles, and others in our ancestry too. Dad was descended of Gaelic-speaking Highland Scots who immigrated to Columbiana County, Ohio circa 1804.

I’ve been working for some time now on a deep dive into the 18th century world of these Highland Gaels in order to write a historical novel about their lives. As I attempt to re-create what life was like in those times, the tiniest of details hang me up, sometimes for hours. A simple wedding scene, for instance, becomes complex on many levels.

First, because the Scottish Highlands are not one cohesive culture. The designation of “Highlands” refers to the north and west on the map above, where the larger, spacious clan boundaries are found. (The denser areas to the south and east indicate the Scottish Lowlands, more commercially connected with England to the south, and much earlier to shift to English as the predominant language.) The Highlands topography to the north and west is rife with deep glens, lakes, and snow-capped mountains, so when it comes to weddings, superstitions, and lore, the remoteness of populations led to a variety of customs. So there’s no one right answer, other than, “it depends.”

It is my good fortune that Aeneas Mackintosh of Moy wrote an 18th century account of wedding traditions in the Strathdearn valley where my book is partially set. On the morning of the wedding, Mackintosh wrote, the celebrants leave for the church,

being dressed, the Bridegroom first (preceded by a Bag pipe) having a young man on each side of him, next comes the bride with her two Maids, proceed for church; when the ceremony is over, and the partys come out, pistols and guns are fired over their heads by their acquaintances who then join, and a Cake broke over the Brides head, when a great Struggle is made for a piece of it.

Glorious, right? Gunshots and a riotous melee? The scene is exuberant and what one might expect of the Highlands. But the mention of a Cake made me wonder. What kind of Cake? Certainly, the author did not mean the elaborate tiered cakes standard at weddings of today. The quest to learn more led me to a delightful find. At archive.org, I came across a recipe book — “Cookery and Pastry” — written in 1783 by Mrs. MacIver “Teacher of those arts in Edinburgh,” wherein I found a slew of 18th century Scottish recipes — for hare soup, for broiling pigeons whole, and yes, for a yeast shortbread cake that might even come close to the mark.

Free Ohioana Book Festival this weekend, and more

As fall approaches, so do a lot of on-line events that are a boon to readers, writers, and book lovers.

The Ohioana Book Festival is this weekend, Friday, August 28- Sunday, August 30.

Since its inception in 2007, the Ohioana Book Festival has given readers the opportunity to connect with their favorite Ohio writers. The 2020 Book Festival is being held online from Friday, August 28 to Sunday, August 30 2020. It is a FREE event open to the public. For the full schedule, click here: Ohioana Book Festival 2020.

I’m honored to be one of the many “Ohio” authors this year, for my memoir How We Survive Here: Families Across Time (Coffeetown Press, 2018). Check out the whole list of authors here. Books are being sold through The Book Loft in German Village, Columbus, Ohio. (Support independent bookstores, they’re set up for online orders. And, if you’re ever in Columbus, visit The Book Loft, it’s awesome!)

Friday morning the Festival kicks off with “The Story of a Life: Memoir”, a panel discussion, 10 a.m. EST, 7 a.m. PST. For this panel I am a participant alongside Ohio memoir authors Dan Cryer, Jill Grunenwald, and Erin Hosier. Nancy Christie is the moderator; she asks probing questions about the challenges of writing our own stories and digging into our pasts.

Following that kick-off panel discussion are three packed days of presentations, on writing books of all genres, a crowdcast on Black Stories, Black Voices, on picture book illustrating, and much much more.

I hope to “see” you there!

Getting the most out of writing conferences

It’s almost summer, and writing conference season is in full swing. As a past presenter at Write on the Sound (WOTS), I’m pleased to be the guest blogger this week for the WOTS blog on the subject of “Getting the Most out of Writing Conferences.” The Write on the Sound Conference will be held this fall, September 30-October 2 in Edmonds, WA, and they’ve just posted their conference schedule (see link above).

Speaking of which, here are links to regional writing conferences on the docket this summer and fall:

June 23-15, 2016: Chuckanut Writers Conference at Whatcom Community College in Bellingham, WA

July 28-31, 2016:
Pacific Northwest Writers Association Conference in Seattle, WA

August 12-14, 2016: Willamette Writers Conference in Portland, OR

October 20-23, 2016: Surrey International Writers’ Conference in Surrey (Vancouver), BC, Canada

November 4-6, 2016:
Kaua’i Writers Festival in Hawaii.

Have fun, and keep writing!

Making history

In the first decades of my life, I wasn’t a big fan of history. Dwelling on the past? What for? It’s best, I used to say, to look forward, to the future.

Since then, as this blog will attest, I’ve become a huge fan of the experiences and insights of those who have preceded us on this earth. If we’re willing to investigate our past, we learn a great deal to inform us regarding our future.

Which sentiment is not intended to override the importance of making history. In that light, I wish to extend huge applause to a brand new, first ever publication: The Best New British And Irish Poets 2016, judged and edited by Kelly Davio, Series Editor Todd Swift, published this year by Eyewear Publishing.

british and irish poetsThis chorus of new voices, those who have “not yet come under contract to publish their debut full-length poetry collection” at the time of submission for potential inclusion in the anthology, is an inaugural publication for the UK, in the spirit of “best of” anthologies that have been published in America for some time. These poems resonate with the voices of the era, with social engagement, relationships, the tough issues of 21st century lives, and ongoing dialogue with poets of the ages.

A recommended, delightful read. Cheers to history in the making.

Writing retreats and 21st century blacksmiths

I’m on Whidbey Island again for a writers residency. For MFA students (the program from which I’m a 2011 graduate), it’s a nine-day, intensive writing start to the 16 week spring semester. For non-MFA students like myself, it’s an opportunity to advance our skills, and connect with other writers in a vibrant community.

Case in point, I stood in the dinner line last night with poet Gary Lilley, the new poetry faculty at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts MFA program.

Somehow the conversation got around to blacksmithing (as it inevitably seems to, based on the subject of my historical novel The Last of the Blacksmiths). I mentioned how, while I was writing the novel, I came across an article about how blacksmiths are still hired by the City of New York maintenance department — one of their jobs being to forge basketball hoops for city parks.

This morning I googled New York City blacksmiths to verify what I remembered, and located the article. It appeared in 2010 in The New York Times here. What I’d missed in the ensuing years is that one of the four NYC positions for blacksmiths became vacant in 2014, a job that pays an annual salary of just over $100K. The write-up about the opening appears in the Brooklyn Magazine here. (Sorry I didn’t know back then, or I would have spread the word.)

As we talked, I learned that Gary has personal experience with these NYC custom-made hoops. An expression crossed his face I’ve seen often at writing conferences and retreats — the expression of a writer inspired. He confessed a poem had started to come to him. I completely understood.

It’s what makes these gatherings of writers so vital, where words and rhythms clang and vibrate like ghetto rims, called into being from the mysterious workings of language and the mind.