Sarah A. Chavez's Blog

This weekend I went to this awesome new literary festival called Small Prestivus, books for the rest of us, a celebration of small presses. I had a BLAST! Fa-mazing writers, local food vendors, craft beers, and local music. The first day, all afternoon there were short readings on a stage ringed by the food vendors and author and press tables, then in the evening there was a featured reading with a group of writers punctuated by three musical performances. I love live music and two of these[image error]

I just recently returned from a little summer trip. It was not a vacation, as I spent the first nine days working (save for two travel days, which frankly, sometimes feels like work). If you are a teacher of something, check out Educational Testing Services Advanced Placement scoring opportunities. Part of your hope in the future of humanity dies in a way that may or may not grow back (depending on your natural level of positivity or ability to repress memories), but it pays decent, they foot

I’ll be the first to admit it: I’m a cheap-ass bitch. For real. Tight-fisted, frugal, not quite miserly, but maybe verging on the edge of stingy. A real hugger-mugger (of the 1860s variety – “one who keeps things hidden or in secret; a hoarder or miser”).​​   I’ve always been that person scheming for a new way to make a little side cash too. Whether it was selling loose cigarettes behind the 7-Eleven after school, painting a teacher’s home bathroom, taking another part-time job, or learning a

I have never before in my life, and will probably never again, write this sentence: I’m kinda glad for the atrocious mouth pain I experienced in the first 4-5 days after grades were submitted and the spring semester was finally over.    No, I’m not that sort of masochist, it’s only that there are few ailments that will lay me out flat, and mouth pain is one of them. Cold, flu, strep throat, sinus infection, I will stay home when I am contagious, but I will still lesson plan, write, grade; I

I totally forgot yesterday was National Poem in Your Pocket Day. I feel remiss as a poet that I somehow missed the industry-sanctioned accosting of strangers on the street with verse (which is indeed part of the goal of the day). More than that, as a teacher of poetry it saddens me I did not make accosting strangers on the street with the gift of poetry mandatory and a significant part of my poetry students’ grade. Sigh. Next year . . .     What I do have to celebrate this, the last day of

Today marks the 28th day of the Tupelo Press 30/30 poetry challenge fundraiser that I have been participating in. Wow. I kinda can’t even believe that I have written 28 poems that I am not loathing to share with the world. And they add up to forty-one (41) whole pages! That is at the top-most end of conventional chapbook guidelines (if not past), or the equivalent of half a full-length manuscript.       Along with wanting to do my part to help raise money for such a significant independent

I seriously cannot believe the month is almost over! It's gone by *so* fast and I've done SO MUCH. I took a trip to sunny Los Angeles where I got to stay with a writer friend, talk about writing, write, and participate in some amazing readings with cool people like Katie Manning, Wendy Oleson, and all the awesome writers at David Rocklin's Roar Shack Reading Series.   Here are some pics from my wonderings (I won't bore you with pictures from the readings -- just yet):                            

That sounds dramatic, but once, in a two-week visiting writer workshop at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Li-Young Lee (who might just be the most intense person I've ever met) leaned across the narrow table at the front of the room, then slammed both palms flat against the table and practically shouted, "I need your poetry to live!" Now that's dramatic. And I LOVED it!    At least for me, writing within an academic environment, one that is publish or perish (to use an oversued obnoxious

    I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home – Philip Levine   I never cry when famous people die. When Philip Seymour Hoffman died so young and in a way far too close to people I have lost in my own life, I felt sad, but didn’t cry. When Robin Williams tragically took his life this past year, people on Facebook and in the news talked about crying at such a tragedy, how he had been part of their growing up, was in their favorite childhood