heidisaman

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Writing male characters is not very difficult because there is a vast canon of male characters written by men, for men, for any writer starting out to draw from. Finding the voice of a male character is in so many ways what a Ph.D. in American literature trains you to do. What felt, to me, more challenging was to write female characters, and so I took a little bit of time to get there. Writing female characters is something that holds so much depth and interest for me. It feels almost inexhaustible.

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Can. Not. Wait. For. This. Book.

The best fiction resists binaries. Comedy and horror exist in one story. The main character is monster and hero, liar and truth teller.

-- Danzy Senna

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Each day I move toward that which I don't understand. The result is a continuous accidental learning which constantly shapes my life.

Yo-Yo Ma

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The most important lesson she learned from [James] Baldwin’s seminar, though, was how to show up, not just as a writer but as a human being. “What I received was how to conduct myself in the presence of spirit...You have to wrestle, tussle with the angels. I like writing because you get to hold the hand of the spirit.” 

-- Suzan Lori Parks via the NYT

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Julie Dash Tells the Story Behind the Making of 'Daughters of the Dust' on Vogue Video

Um, how did I not know that Kerry James Marshall was the production designer on Daughters of the Dust? 

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“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

James Baldwin

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I stumbled on this photo years before I’d seen Two for the Road (1967, dir. Stanley Donen) and realized it was taken on the set of that movie. At the time, I was in awe of Audrey Hepburn’s timeless style, more specifically how she wore those loafers with socks.  Still am. 

But after I saw Two for the Road, I found out Hepburn briefly left the film because she was pregnant. Stanley Donen considered re-casting her with Julie Christie, but then Audrey Hepburn returned to the movie after she had a miscarriage. 

This story made me look at this photo so differently. You never know what’s going on in someone’s life, how the work is touched by what someone is going through, or how someone’s style is influenced by what they’re experiencing in their body.  I found the photo and her style all the more compelling. 

H

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Georgia O’Keeffe Peach and Glass 1927

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Harris Savides’ note to Sofia Coppola on what a perfect film shoot would be like. Having just directed my second episode of television, I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit.  As stressful as a set can be, I think there are so many ways to make it less so -- and this list from Savides is a great start. 

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“Our primary function is to create an emotion and our second function is to sustain that emotion.”

-- Alfred Hitchcock on directing 

Still from The Birds (1963, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

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The peculiarity of being a writer is that the entire enterprise involves the mortal humiliation of seeing one’s own words in print.

Joan Didion

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Warren Rohrer  Settlement: Green to Violet 1981 oil on linen

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Sitting down to make an intimate drawing is a conversation, a way of listening to what’s grumbling inside my body, and an attempt to transmit, nonverbally, an experience of being. It’s a hopeful act: an attentive and often surprising exercise I forget to do for long stretches. But when the world concentrates so much violence, ignorance, and mind games into little digital devices we are compelled to carry, I am grateful to have this simple analog practice at my fingertips.

Kara Walker

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School Studies,  Horace Pippin  oil on canvas 1944

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“Different people tell the same event differently. Yet one person tells the event much more clearly, with much more meaning. It's because of his form. The form is what convinces you. Where he puts the silences, whether he looks at you or doesn't at certain points in the story, this is crucial. Somebody tells you a story in person, even if it is a very unimportant thing, if it is done well, you are very interested. They can make the thing really valuable for you. There is always something like that. The form has the ability to make the content more mysterious, more powerful, more real, more light, to imbue it with more truth. It's everything really.”

-- Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Still from Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011, dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan

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THE PARIS REVIEW: Your protagonist Esch obsesses over the myth of Medea, the Greek sorceress who slaughters her children to punish her husband for taking a new bride. Where do you see Medea in the book?

JESMYN WARD: ...Esch understands her vulnerability, Medea’s tender heart, and responds to it. It infuriates me that the work of white American writers can be universal and lay claim to classic texts, while black and female authors are ghetto-ized as “other.” I wanted to align Esch with that classic text, with the universal figure of Medea, the antihero, to claim that tradition as part of my Western literary heritage. The stories I write are particular to my community and my people, which means the details are particular to our circumstances, but the larger story of the survivor, the savage, is essentially a universal, human one.

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The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

William Faulkner