Plans for workshops
Happy Spring!
I’ll be offering Heightening Stories again starting April 3, so please click on the Teaching link above for more info.
More classes will take place this summer, starting in June — including an online version – so please stay tuned!
Reading some things
Heightening Stories continued
Heightening Stories has been a great success: a supportive and creative community of writers from diverse backgrounds. Over the fall, eight folks read, talked about writing, shared their experiences with Sandy, got to know each other and produced new work. A few people will be taking a break when the workshop continues in January, so there’s an opportunity for a few people to join us. Please contact me at nancyagabian@yahoo.com if you are interested in applying. More info in the flyer below:
blog hopping around
Richard Jeffrey Newman, a poet, the host of the Jackson Heights Poetry Festival, and my neighbor, has generously invited me to Blog Hop: an internet, chain mail, q-and-a dance. I’m going to answer a series of questions about my book-in-progress and at the end I’ll list a few truly interesting, talented authors that I think you should check out. Thanks for stopping by from Richard’s blog, and thanks for investigating my friends! And thanks, Richard, for inviting me.
________
Q: What is the working title of your book?
A: The Fear of Large and Small Nations
Q: Where did the idea come from for the book?
A: I was keeping a blog during the year that I lived in Armenia on a Fulbright, where I was intending to interview artists, activists, feminists and queer people to find out how social change was progressing after the Soviet collapse. After a few interviews, I realized I needed a translator and interpreter to work with me in most cases, and such a formal interview format wasn’t conducive to learning deeply about people’s lives. I thought that I would have to live in Armenia for a few years to really learn the language and build trust with people over time in order to do the project. I soon realized the blog was more like the kind of work that I had hoped to do: understanding the place through simply living and relating to people. As I became romantically involved with someone, however, I realized there were some topics that I couldn’t immediately publish, so I started writing unpublished blog posts that I told myself I would save for the book.
Q: What genre does your book fall under?
A: It’s composed of blog posts, journal entries, memoir, and meta-writing, among other texts, so I am calling it nonfiction.
Q: Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
A: I can’t think of any short, middle-aged, prominent-nosed, salt-and-peppered actresses to play me. Maybe a younger Olympia Dukakis. (The sad thing is that I can’t think of any contemporary actresses with gray hair who aren’t actually elderly. Gray hair on actresses is now anathema in Hollywood.) For the romantic lead its easier: Gael García Bernal. These two examples just give an idea of type; I would choose unknown actors in Armenia and the diaspora.
Q: What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
A: I’m cheating with a semi-colon:
“The Fear of Large and Small Nations” is about the relationship between an older Armenian American bisexual woman and a younger iconoclastic Armenian man, scrutinized by their traditional families, progressive friends, and the Department of Homeland Security; their story serves as a metaphor for the complex contradictions between political ideals and personal liberation, in countries both large and small, powerful and vulnerable.
Q: Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
A: I’ll try to get an agent and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll submit to independent presses that I admire. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll self-publish. I would like to reach a diverse audience; even though the publishing industry is rapidly changing, I still think the best way to reach readers is to get published on a press with a respected name and marketing ability. Maybe I’ll change my mind, though, by the time I finish the manuscript in the next year or so.
Q: How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
A: Not counting the year that I wrote the blog from 2006-07, I started the manuscript in October 2009 and completed it in the late fall of 2011.
Q: What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
A: Cleopatra’s Wedding Present by Robert Tewdr Moss, which is a great book to read now, about a gay British man’s experiences in Syria. Stories I Stole, by Wendell Steavenson, on her years living in Georgia post Soviet Union. Cafe Europa, by Slavenka Draculic, about Eastern Europe, also following the collapse of Communism. The Romanian by Bruce Benderson, which is also centered on a love interest, a Romanian hustler he met in Hungary, also after the fall of Communism. All are both personal and political books: you discover the personality and life of the writer as they describe what they observe about a particular land and culture.
Q: Who or What inspired you to write this book?
A: I was inspired by Shushan Avagyan and Lara Aharonian. Shushan is a translator, publisher and a writer, and Lara is a writer and an activist who founded the Women’s Resource Center in Armenia. They are both outspoken and independent women who have made an incredible difference in Armenia – for women, for artists and writers, for everybody. At the same time that I was writing the blog, I was writing a book with them. We called it “In the (Un)Space”: we felt that the space we made among each other was the one place where we could truly be ourselves, and we wrote to each other about our lives. My portion was called “The Experiment”; the idea that going to Armenia was an experiment in feeling, experiencing and documenting how it changed me as a second generation Armenian American far removed from her homeland – and how I could possibly make a difference with my writing – has always stayed with me as I’ve been writing “The Fear of Large and Small Nations”.
Q: What else about your book might piqué the reader’s interest?
A: It’s a love story and an anti-love story woven together across borders: the different cultures influence the dynamics of the couple. One narrative thread describes a relationship progressing in Armenia, and the other describes the relationship falling apart in America. And yet the whole thing is about accepting oneself despite the land you live on.
Here are the writers whose work you should check out next:
A new writing workshop!
Testimonials
...I appreciated very much Nancy Agabian’s guidance of the workshop. She created a supportive and yet critically honest writing environment that I never imagined possible.
-Antonius Wiriadjaja
Nancy is wonderful at getting her students to rethink and find new ways to approach their own histories. Rather than making me feel like I was revealing my private life, she easily engaged us in conversation around the issues and topics that arise from writing about our personal lives.
-Sima Cunningham
Nancy sparked my interest for writing creatively while staying true to myself…I highly recommend taking her workshops! You will leave with a fresh perspective and a love for what is already inside of you.
-Diana Rosario
Nancy was able to make me feel comfortable enough to write and to share my writings with the group. She did an amazing job of fostering a supportive environment where we could share unfinished work and new ideas with each other. She is a good listener and very aware of letting the students bring their own ideas into the workshop. It was a workshop where we all felt very much a part of the process, not just passive participants.
-Deena Patel
Participating in [Nancy's workshop] gave me the sense of community I needed to find my voice as a writer. Our weekly meetings and writing assignments provided the structure I needed to become a more disciplined and reflective writer, while being able to give fellow writers the gift of honest feedback. Writing about cultural identity, immigration and my connection to my homeland enabled me to process the many experiences that have brought me to the place I am now. I feel more confident in my ability to write and I hope more classes like this are offered for Queens-based writers.
-Beatriz Gil
Nancy Agabian is an incredibly accomplished writer and teacher…She takes great creative care of her students. As a teacher she is challenging, nurturing, and provides safe support for any voice. Nancy Agabian is everything a writer can hope for.
-David Ciminello
Summer news: L.A., Armenia and Market Research!
Dear friends,
This summer I’ve been busy helping to draft and disseminate an historic human and LGBT rights petition in Armenia. Please read and consider signing, if you haven’t already: http://www.change.org/
I’m gearing up to attend the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Emerging Writers’ Retreat in Los Angeles next week. If you want to hear some great writers, please head to the American Jewish University in Brentwood, Colen Hall, Room 108 for our public readings on August 1 and 2, 7-9 pm. Thanks to the help of many generous donors, I’ve raised $1025 to attend the retreat: just $125 $75 to go! If you would like contribute, here’s the link to my Pay Pal site:
Finally, I’m thinking of starting a writing workshop in October from my home in Queens. I’m in the market research phase and request your suggestions and feedback. The workshop would be for creative nonfiction and autobiographical fiction writers, held one night weekly. If you are interested or have ideas in terms of how a workshop might help you with a project (i.e. developing new material, receiving guidance and feedback on a longterm project, reading and analyzing textual examples for inspiration, learning interview or research skills, etc.), please let me know. Also, for those of you not located in NYC, would you be interested in an online workshop? Please reply in the comments section below.
I look forward to your response, and I send you wishes of peace for the rest of the summer.
Nancy
Supporting LGBT Armenians
Hi friends,
May was a trying month: the LGBT community, their supporters, as well as artists and intellectuals in Yerevan have been under attack by gangs of self-proclaimed fascists who have been verbally supported by members of parliament. I have been involved with mobilizing the LGBT Armenian community here in the States to protest and also wrote a letter to the editor of The Armenian Weekly. Please email me to find out what you can do to help.
I recently learned that I’ve been selected to attend the Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writer’s Fellowship in L.A. from July 28-August 4. It will be a welcome opportunity to workshop my book-in-progress, “The Fear of Large and Small Nations”, which deals with these timely topics of gender identity and the need for social change in Armenia.
If you’re going to be in NYC, I have two readings coming up, from which I’ll be reading this work-in-progress:
QUILL (Queens in Love with Literature) at Queens Art Express
Saturday, June 16th
1-3pm
Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning http://www.jcal.org/
Jamaica, Queens
161-04 Jamaica Avenue Jamaica, NY 11432
On the theme of Home/Housing: with Panagiota Lilikaki and Camila Santos, my wonderful new colleagues from Queens College, AND from BYOB: a professional development program for writers sponsored by the Queens Council on the Arts.
and a reading that I’ve curated and produced as part of my Individual Artist’s Grant from the Queens Council on the Arts, with four talented writers also working cross-culturally:
Cultural Consonance: A reading of cross cultural literature between Queens and the world
Saturday, June 30
1:30 — 3:30 pm
Greater Astoria Historical Society
Quinn Building, 35-20 Broadway, 4th Floor, Long Island City, NY 11106
(near the R train at Steinway or the NQ train at Broadway)
with Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, Joseph O. Legaspi, Margarita Soto, and Sweta Srivastava Vikram
$5 suggested donation
Come hear five diverse writers whose work is centered in Queens (or NYC or the U.S.) and another location, as they consider how words can express the experience of traversing worlds. How can a writer provide cultural immersion for a reader through image and language? How does memory and history play a part in how we portray setting, location or place? And why is it important to convey such cross cultural experiences – artistically, socially, politically, or otherwise? The writers will read fiction, poetry and nonfiction that crosses borders, cultures and ideologies. They’ll also discuss their experience of incorporating history — personal, cultural, and/or geographical — as part of the writing process.
Writers’ Bios:
Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán is the author of Antes y después del Bronx: Lenapehoking (New American Press) and the editor of an international queer Indigenous issue of Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, and Thought. An American Studies Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University, he has completed a second book of poems, South Bronx Breathing Lessons, and is completing Yerbabuena/Mala yerba, All My Roots Need Rain: mixed-blood poetry & prose and Heart of the Nation: Indigenous Womanisms, Queer People of Color, and Native Sovereignties. His work appears in over a hundred publications in sixteen nations.
Joseph O. Legaspi is the author of Imago (CavanKerry Press), winner of a Global Filipino Literary Award. Recent poems appeared or are forthcoming in From the Fishouse, jubilat, World Literature Today,The Spoon River Poetry Review, Smartish Pace, PEN International and The Gay & Lesbian Review. A Queens, NY resident, he co-founded Kundiman (www.kundiman.org), a non-profit organization serving Asian American poets. Visit him at www.josepholegaspi.com.
Margarita Soto received her Bachelor’s in Social Work from Brigham Young University and her Juris Doctor from Rutgers Law School- Newark. She worked as a social worker and then prosecutor investigating and prosecuting child abuse and neglect for 10 years. A Peruvian American, she participated in the “Our Side” workshop for immigrant writers in 2009 and contributed her memoir, “Snowback” to their chapbook, A Home Calls My Name. As a full time mom to three children, she also manages a family homestead in central Pennsylvania where she and her husband raise pigs, cows, chickens, and grow over 100 varieties of fruits and vegetables. She writes about introducing her children to passionate eating at www.1800foodadventures.com
Sweta Srivastava Vikram is an award-winning poet, writer, novelist, author, essayist, columnist, educator, and blogger. Born in India, Sweta spent her formative years between India, North Africa, and the United States. She is the author of four chapbooks of poetry, two collaborative collections of poetry, a novel, a nonfiction book of prose and poems (upcoming in 2012), and a full-length collection of poems (upcoming in 2013). Sweta has won two Pushcart Prize nominations, an International Poetry Award, and nominations from Best of the Net and the Asian American Members’ Choice Awards 2011. She will be reading from her Pushcart-nominated chapbook of poems Kaleidoscope: An Asian Journey of Colors which presents the relevance of colors in a Hindu woman’s life, and her novel, Perfectly Untraditional, set in India and New York, about a modern day woman and 1st generation immigrant as she unravels the meaning of home, traditions, friendships, relationships, love, and loyalty. Sweta lives in Queens with her husband. You can follow her on Twitter (@ssvik), Facebook (Words.By.Sweta) or her website (www.swetavikram.com).
Books by the authors will be made available for purchase and signing.
The Greater Astoria Historical Society lecture hall/exhibit space is the unofficial public meeting space in the Long Island City/Astoria area. It is available for business meetings, seminars, conferences, fundraisers, media events, press conferences, and film shoots.
This reading is made possible (in part) by the Queens Council on the Arts and Poets & Writers, Inc., with public funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
Thanks as always for your support and for all you do for arts and activism.
Nancy
Breathing and reading
Hay fever season is ending just in time for me to clear my throat and partake in a few upcoming readings. If you feel like breathing in some fresh air at a literary event, please consider these!
Thursday, May 17
Boundless Tales
at Waltz-Astoria
23-14 Ditmars Blvd., Astoria, NY 11105
(near the NQ Ditmars stop in Astoria)
7:30 — 9:30 pm
with Joel Allegretti, Cassandra Faustini, my friend Yvette Perez in her debut, and Michael T. Young
$10 drink minimum
http://waltz-astoria.com
http://boundlesstales.blogspot.com/p/may-17th.html
I’ll be serving as hostess for this monthly series run by Aida Zilelian, now on a maternity break. Up last, I’ll be reading, too, from my nonfiction novel-in-progress, “The Fear of Large and Small Nations”.
Tuesday, May 22
World Poetry Movement: A New York Celebration
Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe
236 East 3rd Street, New York, NY 10009
(between Avenue B and C)
7 pm
with Amir Parsa, Sandra A. García-Betancourt, Lola Koundakjian, Vasyl Makhno, Alan Semerdjian, and Alhaji Papa Susso
$10
http://www.nuyorican.org/
http://www.facebook.com/events/286051604804050/
I’ll be hosting this inspired gathering of poets and perhaps reading a poem or two.
and further on down the line:
Saturday, June 30
Cultural Consonance: A reading of cross cultural literature between Queens and the world
Greater Astoria Historical Society
Quinn Building, 35-20 Broadway, 4th Floor, Long Island City, NY 11106
(near the MR train at Steinway or the NQ train at Broadway)
1:30 — 3:30 pm
with Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran, Joseph O. Legaspi, Margarita Soto, Sweta Srivastava Vikram
$5 suggested donation
http://astorialic.org/
This reading is made possible (in part) by Poets & Writers Inc., and by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. More details to come next month.
Springtime idea-seedlings
Suddenly I have little bits of news, all at once. It must be spring. I send this news to scatter around idea-seeds:
On March 1, I was one of the readers among a stellar lineup at Ancestors: Queer Writers of Color, 7 pm, at the Center on Halsted in Chicago. Sponsored by Lambda Literary Society and an off-site event of the Associated Writing Programs Conference: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/events/01/31/ancestors-a-queer-writers-of-color-reading/
On March 14th, 7 pm at Word Up Community Bookstore at 176th & B’way in NYC, I will be presenting with Shushan Avagyan the book Queered: What’s to be done with Xcentric Art, a book that documents the exhibitions and the correspondence of the Queering Yerevan collective of queer women in Armenia and its diaspora. Part of the InQbator reading series. You can purchase the book at Amazon or Abril Books.
I have an essay in the March 2012 issue of the Brooklyn Rail on racism, sexism and literary hoaxes: http://brooklynrail.org/2012/03/express/amina-arraf-a-queered-antidote
On Getaway Style, I’ve posted a recent article about permaculture houses, low-impact, environmentally friendly homes, built in accordance with surrounding ecosystems. Remarkably, they also resemble Tolkien’s hobbit holes: http://www.getawaystyle.com/content/article/hobbit_houses
Till then, I wish you a fruitful spring.
xoxox,
Nancy
Late fall update
This writing update comes to you slightly late, but contains news of books, upcoming events, and possible plans to move near you.
I’m excited and proud to be involved with the publication of Queered: What’s To Be Done With Xcentric Art, a book which documents the activities of Queering Yerevan (formerly WOW) for the past four years, including art and correspondence among a constantly shifting collective of queer-identified Armenian women activists, artists and writers. Read a great review here: http://www.ianyanmag.com/2011/
This summer, I completed five chapters of the first draft of “The Fear of Large and Small Nations”, a nonfiction novel which tells the stories of a marriage to a much younger Armenian man while offering social and political critique of corruption, conformism and social change in the U.S. and Armenia. Hear an excerpt from the new second draft at the Boundless Tales Reading Series, 7:30 pm on December 15 at Waltz-Astoria, 23-14 Ditmars Blvd in Astoria.
Though I’ve been inspired by the Occupy movement here in New York, I’m considering a move to pursue more in-depth work on “The Fear of Large and Small Nations”. I’ve been conducting a nationwide (and overseas) academic job search to find a stable teaching position that will grant more time for writing. Plan B could be teaching English abroad, doing more freelance and editing work and less adjunct teaching here in NYC, and/or cutting down on expenses by living in a tiny house. An article I wrote for Getaway Style inspired the latter option: http://www.getawaystyle.com/
I continued my work with writing on ethnicity, nationality, race, class, sexuality and gender in a topic-based English composition course on Cultural Identity which I designed for students at Queens College; several other professors have been using my course design as a resource for their sections. It’s been enlightening to explore with my students issues of weighing pride against discrimination, and openness against insularity, which I detailed on a personal level in my memoir Me as her again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter (available through aunt lute books).
As always, thank you for your support. Sending you good energy for peaceful change during this Occupy Fall.
Nancy
