Nancy Freund's Blog
September 30, 2018
Incroyable: Richard Russo and Crew in Switzerland
I am just home from the most unexpected three-day experience in Switzerland – sixteen years of living in this country – I’ve never seen anything quite like it. A literary festival featuring American writers in Oron-la-Ville – not far from Savigny, a rural area where I take my dog to stay when I travel. We are now a couple of hours, depending on traffic, from Geneva. To be exact: L’Amerique a Oron, Festival de Litterature Americaine en Terres Vaudoises, featuring...
July 6, 2018
Great stuff straight from Robert Olen Butler
A week ago in Portugal, I attended Robert Olen Butler’s workshop at the 15th International Conference on the Short Story in English. (Google it. Truly remarkable thing, every two years... ok, wait – here). He sat at the head of a large table in a University of Lisbon classroom – terrible temperature control, as is the case with all classrooms everywhere in the world – and as soon as everybody started scribbling notes, he said don’t bother it’s all in h...
February 24, 2017
Poetry is Conversation
Poetry, like music, is a conversation. I love a good, quiet one-on-one, whether it’s in the coat room near a busy party or a corridor outside a classroom, or sitting on a big slab of warm mountain rock after a hike, and all the others are settled in elsewhere with their open backpacks and bottles of water. Sometimes the most important things are said just outside the perimeter, the lovely periphery, and sometimes just in passing. Often, the important conversation is the one that follows...
February 19, 2017
The Literary Agent Gong Show
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I’ve got thick skin! After thousands of rejections on my way to various publications, I’ve developed a pretty good ability to constructively receive criticism of all kinds. I’m no scaredy cat. Still, every time you step up to ask for feedback on your creative work, you have to suck in a deep breath and prepare.
Literary agents are inundated with submissions, so they have to go rapidly through their slush piles. Very few published works find their agents or publishers t...
February 5, 2017
Then What the Hell's a Poem For?
Lufthansa Flight Home, Airport Lounge
Nancy Freund
Dried apricot, smoked Gouda
She let me wash her hands
Cabernet Sauvignon
When the water finally warmed,
she smiled and said ooh…
Big fat raisins
brie
Hugged my mom good-bye
she held me tight
her shoulder blades
her ribs
her hands clasped round my back
Fat-free angel cake
Here’s a poem I wrote. I write poems when I’m feeling something with an inescapable intensity, and I just don’t know how to otherwise deal with it....
December 31, 2016
Dreams, goals, and saving small lives
Last day of 2016 – time to throw in the towel. According to Goodreads, I’m four books shy of my reading goal, and although I’m actually in the middle of five books, I’m not going to rush to finish any of them. Having been whacked over the head way too many times recently by the word CONTENT, my New Year’s Resolution is now to avoid consuming content. Sorry Goodreads. It’s for good reason, at least, that I’m revising rather than accomplishing this year...
November 26, 2016
Distance, Disorder, Chaos, Connection and Gifts
Turkey Day. No turkey for me, but huge, humongous gratitude. First of all, I married my guy on Thanksgiving Day, 25 years ago, and that’s the utmost. He’s on his way home this weekend, and I’m grateful that he’ll be here, and grateful that we have figured out a way to make the distance work when there’s distance. Everybody has distance of one type or another, from their loved ones. Maybe yours is miles, or it’s politics, or it’s 80’s versus 70...
November 19, 2016
Conflation of Asides
Conflation of Asides.
I’ve been insane with abundance. I’ve got 20 minutes before my great friend, great writer friend, I might say, but great friend Michelle and her husband are due to pick me up to go out for Thai food at the place that once gave me all the purple orchids from their tables because it was my birthday, and I love that place, and it’s right next door to the King Size pub where Michelle’s college roommate and fellow study-abroad pal from Paris will be per...
November 17, 2016
TMI
For some reason my blog isn't syncing here anymore. The glitch is driving me crazy, so I thought I'd try a hyper-link until I find a fix. Here's a new blog post on teaching, writing, data, squirrels, TMI, oxymorons, and LOVE. Hope the link works this way, because we can all use a little more of all of the above in our lives, right? Maybe not so many squirrels.
xo Nancy
http://www.nancyfreund.com/apps/blog/...
November 16, 2016
TMI
Some people believe there’s no such thing as too much information, but I’d say it depends on the category. For example, I love a certain level of gross. Last week at my folks’ house in California we had Jake the awesome pesticide guy help us out with what we learned were pantry moths in my dad’s office. (Hidden stash of pistachios behind his computer – highly NOT recommended. I may never eat a pistachio again in fact, and they were previously my third favori...