In Search of Yarn, Stitched with Color

By Ellen Blum Barish
Posted on July 1, 2016

“Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.” W.S. Merwin

The spindle of June has turned, allowing me to catch up on Thread submissions, update the site and rev up for my new publishing project within a publishing project, Stitch.

Stitch celebrates the short-form essay, otherwise known as flash non-fiction. It’s a magnificent mix of personal narrative and poetry; a challenging hybrid to write, but oh so satisfying to read. I’m choosing the 100-words-or-less variety and today, July 1st, I’m opening up the site for submissions, hoping to publish at least one new piece each month.

How do we define flash nonfiction? Because it’s art, there’s very little agreement. But I offer two articulate attempts:

In the introduction to The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction, (2012), editor and essayist Dinty Moore writes that flash nonfiction is “individual, intimate, exploratory, and carefully crafted using metaphor, sensory language, and precise detail.”

Essayist Bernard Cooper writes that short nonfiction requires “an alertness to detail, a quickening of the senses, a focusing of the literary lens … until one has magnified some small aspect of what it means to be human.”

I especially love Cooper’s line about being human. This idea is central to my essay sensibility. Thread explores the moments that expose and connect us and what it means to be human.

I was over the moon when Thread was reviewed recently and the writer noted this, saying that the pieces “describe every day events kissed by a haunting sense of larger meaning.” Yes! That’s exactly what Thread is going for.

So have a sensational summer, but don’t stray too far. I’ll be keeping you posted in my blog (you can subscribe for free here) and on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo by Ellen Blum Barish. Copyright 2016.

Life’s Imprint

By Ellen Blum Barish
Posted on June 22, 2016

A handful of out-of-town family members and two friends were in town recently and they all insisted that we visit the Art Institute of Chicago.

So we went. Three times in one week. I spent more time there than I had in years.

On that second visit I noticed that I was taking the art in differently. It wasn’t simply that I was viewing pieces for a second or third time. I was seeing them in a deeper way. Like I had been absorbed into them and was viewing them from the inside out.

The painting above is a great example. I was mesmerized by it. So crafted and chaotic at the same time. It conjured up the memory of a subway wall I saw in New York City a few years ago:

Which is all chaos and no craft, but beautiful nonetheless. Just a wall. Exposed to the elements.

A few days later at the Chicago Botanic Garden – I know where to take out-of-towners – I saw this rock:

How amazing is this? It got me thinking about how life makes its mark. Not only on rocks and walls, but on us, too. In ways we can see like our scars, wrinkles, freckles and bruises. But also in ways that’s harder to see: The weather system of feelings and emotions that live inside us.

These moments made me grateful for art, nature and out-of-town visitors. But it also deepened my appreciation for personal narrative. For the process of getting it onto the page and the gift of reading or hearing it.

Which left me with this thought: That the lines and curves in the letters that make up the sentences that constitute our essays and memoirs are the writer’s art. The visible marks of life’s imprint on us.

Photos by Ellen Blum Barish. Copyright 2016.

On Not Writing

By Ellen Blum Barish
Posted on May 17, 2016

I’m about halfway through my inhale year – twelve months with no writing outside of periodic blog posts and social media updates – and I thought I would let you know how it’s going.

Quick recap: In January, I made the bold – and perhaps bizarre – decision to take a year away from writing so that I could concentrate on my writing workshops, private writing clients, submissions to my literary publication Thread, and other aspects of my professional life. (You can read my EBB & Flow post on the subject here.)

I can’t say I am recommending it just yet, but these past six months have been interesting, to say the least.

Right from the get-go I noticed that I had more available time. It was a bittersweet reminder of how lost I can get in a writing project, to be so full of concentration so as not to sense the hours passing was a confirmation of how much I love working in the form.

I wondered about the frequency of thoughts-that-become-stories. Would they slow to part time? Vanish completely? Neither. They are as active as they’ve always been. Which is very. I’ve since started a long and colorful list of ideas on my cell phone to address in my exhale year. My writerly approach to the world, even when I’m not writing, seemingly has stayed intact.

Third, and by far the most challenging during this year without writing, was that something was missing. That some essential part of me, something that separated me from others and made me feel unique, was either in a deep sleep or … gone. I didn’t feel like I was fully present. Now that I’ve identified myself as a writer – which in itself took many decades (see my essay on this subject here) – I seem to very attached to the label, making me feel a bit anchorless without it.

Which strikes me as not such a good thing.

So I’m looking at the rest of this strange, self-imposed experiment as an opportunity to mull on two profound questions of artistic identity:

Who am I if I’m not writing?

And,

Do I feel like a writer even when I’m not getting my work published or telling a story on stage?

At the end of the year, I promise to let you know how it all turns out.

Maybe I can help save you from squandering a perfectly good year. Or perhaps this hiatus, in combination with some personal discovery, will be well worth sharing.

Photo by Ellen Blum Barish. Copyright 2016.

Lit Life

By Ellen Blum Barish
Posted on April 25, 2016

Writing and reading tend to be solitary pursuits, but when you bring writers and readers together at bookstores, libraries, and universities, you are creating a lively, flesh and blood community.

Which is why I am overjoyed to be part of the second annual Evanston Literary Festival that runs from May 4-14.

My part puts me at Bookends and Beginnings on Sunday afternoon at 3 pm on May 8, Mother’s Day, for “Mamapalooza,” an event that the bookstore’s owner Nina Barrett calls “a nonsentimental celebration of motherhood.”

Barrett, also an author on the subject, invited “ten of the most eloquent, articulate chroniclers of mothers and motherhood around for a reading extravaganza centered on motherhood as it really is: its joys and headaches, its laughter and tears, its unexpected rewards and disappointments, and of course, its infuriating tendency to lead to screaming by both the mother and the mothered.”

Definitely territory I covered, as well as few other topics, in my book of essays, Views from the Home Office Window: On Motherhood, Family and Life. This year marks the tenth anniversary of its completion. It was published in 2007.

I’m also honored to be part of this group that also includes Julia Sweeney, Michele Weldon, Toni Nealie, Barbara Mahany, and Freda Love Smith.

Here’s the schedule so you can plan to attend the readings around your Mother’s Day brunch or dinner:

1–2pm | Pamela Ferdinand (Three Wishes) and Gili Sherman (Music From Our Windows)

2–3pm | Freda Love Smith (Red Velvet Underground), Barbara Mahany (Slowing Time: Seeing the Sacred Outside Your Kitchen Door), and Toni Nealie (The Miles Between Me)

3–4pm | Nina Barrett (Her Own Accord: American Women on Identity, Culture, and Community), Michele Weldon (Escape Points: A Memoir), and Ellen Blum Barish (Views From the Home Office Window: On Motherhood, Family, and Life)

4–5pm | Julia Sweeney (If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother) and Julia Claiborne Johnson (Be Frank With Me: A Novel)

After the reading, light refreshments will be served and there will be time to chat with the authors. The reading is free but tickets for the reception are $15 and can be purchased here.

The Evanston Literary Festival is a joint production of Chicago Book Expo, Bookends & Beginnings bookstore, Northwestern University’s Creative Writing Program, and the Evanston Public Library. It was founded by Lynn Haller and John K. Wilson to draw attention to Evanston’s authors, independent bookstores, and literary culture.

More than 50 free events will be taking place at venues around Evanston, including readings and talks by the likes of Audrey Niffenegger, Aleksandar Hemon, Blair Kamin, Amina Gautier, Alexander Chee, and Anne Elizabeth Moore, as well as a newly-produced play, poetry readings, storytelling opportunities, children’s story times, and panel discussions about writing and publishing.

For the full schedule with many more literary events, including times, venues, and descriptions, go to the Evanston Literary Festival site. Events are free and open to the public.

Art in the Afternoon

By Ellen Blum Barish
Posted on April 4, 2016

I didn’t know this would happen when I launched Thread in December of 2014, but it turns out that my literary publication has two very distinct identities.

The first, which takes most of my time, is as a high-quality literary publication that is released three times a year. I LOVE the process but it involves only me, a few writers and photographers, a graphic designer and programmer. I couldn’t do it without them, but outside of production, it can be a lonely business being a solo editor-preneur.

Its second identity is as a live reading series. I host two a year, in the Spring and Fall, and this is when Thread gets to unfurl its spools. The event celebrates the local writers whose work is published in Thread of course, (Sheri Reda, John Hahm and Ellen Hainen), but their essays are embroidered and embellished with food and drink (from The Curragh Irish Pub), guitar-harmonica-and-vocals (by Bar None with Lori Wyatt), storytellers (including Jill Howe, Alan Neff, Bobbie Scheff and David Barish) and … an audience!

Which turns Thread into a community maker by way of the arts.

Which is what happened at yesterday afternoon’s Spring Thread Reading. An afternoon of art, offering a rare window of time to gather for lots of folks, but especially art-loving sports fans. It was the day before the start of baseball season, a day off for the NCAA basketball championship players, and the event was scheduled AFTER the Chicago Blackhawks game and BEFORE the Chicago Bulls game began! So a lot of people came. Somewhere around 70!

Which put people in just the right mood in spite of the fact they were pushed together like sardines and we had to turn a few folks away. (Those folks have been offered a seat at the next reading as Thread’s guest.)

Titanic thanks to everyone who helped make yesterday so memorable as an arts event and community connector. You can see how it went through these photographic highlights supplied by Emily Barish, Nina Kavin, Jill Howe and Frances Freedman. (And mark your calendars for the next reading, tentatively scheduled for October 16th.)