Educator | Writer | Coach
In 2014, my second book, Boogeyman Dawn, about to come out, I got a newsletter from Elana Bell, which welcomed me into an intimate learning about her practice as a poet and sound healer. I thought of the work of the newsletter as being not just about marketing; rather the primary goal could be in …
Continue reading "Coach: So you want to write a newsletter?"
A few days ago I started the process to get my daughter her passport. As with my son, I wanted to get her documents in order early. We turned in R's application when he was around 2 months old and so here we are again, at just about that same time in A's life. On …
Continue reading "Covid Chronicles: Another spelling of a name"
I haven't written a blog entry for a while. Just before my last post, I discovered that my journey with my partner to become parents again had officially begun. To have children, we need a significant amount of medical support. I had just taken the blood tests (two blood tests and several regular impatient pregnancy …
On the way to Vieques, Puerto Rico. Where do you envision your writing life taking you? Recently I taught a course with the Kearny Street Workshop: Futurecasting. It was their first online workshop. The premise of the course was for writers to engage in the practice of visioning their futures as writers, to write them …
I accept it now. I am writing a novel, one that I started back in 2014, if I'm being honest. I was in a MFA program as a poet with the requirement of workshopping one poem a week, which meant that I had to write a reasonably good poem a week. This was at the …
Coach: The Press Kit While I have been going on residencies or attending summer workshops since 2003, I didn't start streamlining my process until 2006. That was the year that I applied to 6 artist residencies and was granted 4. Not bad returns. What I did in that year was to start what I would …
Till residency at Smoke Farms You wrote the most beautiful and authentic artist statement and project proposal. You answered questions for the residency application about who you are as a community member and what the residency will mean to your artistic work at this time. You assembled your work sample. Over all of these documents, …
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Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash For the last few years, I've been teaching courses around the business and logistics of writing through The Speakeasy Project. The reality is that many MFA programs never talk about the work of living as a writer. Particularly for POC folks who may not have the mentorship support through a MFA program …
Soon after the birth of my son, I developed a hashtag, which has started to gain some traction among my friends: #ThisIsTheBeginningOfAnEssay. It was an acknowledgement that my energy to write an extended essay is truncated by the energy needed for mothering and partnering. I have been collecting snippets through Facebook especially, using the hashtag personally, …
Just a few days after my last One Quote Response, my family and I headed off to Berlin for new adventures, a living exercise, a pointed practice of living a dream. For several months now, Matteo and and I have been futurecasting, considering what our lives will look like in five, ten, and twenty years. We …
Raina J. León 