{"id":90,"date":"2010-02-20T14:21:47","date_gmt":"2010-02-20T22:21:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=90"},"modified":"2010-02-20T14:21:47","modified_gmt":"2010-02-20T22:21:47","slug":"my-writing-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=90","title":{"rendered":"My Writing Community"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">A fat issue of <em>Poetry Flash<\/em>, the literary journal and calendar out of Berkeley, CA, arrives in the mail. I&#8217;m pleased to see that the listing for our upcoming <a title=\"Mendocino Coast Writers Conference\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mcwc.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mendocino Coast Writers Conference <\/a>made it in.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I have a special fondness for <em>Poetry Flash<\/em>, from when I lived in the Bay Area and was responsible for submitting announcements for the Waverley Writers readings in Palo Alto. As I skim the &#8220;Some Information&#8221; column by editor Joyce Jenkins, I smile as I see familiar names: writers I have met and worked with, writers whose work is familiar from readings or books.\u00a0 <em>Poetry Flash <\/em>now has an extensive <a title=\"Poetry Flash\" href=\"http:\/\/www.poetryflash.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">online presence<\/a>, but its purpose is still the same: to build community through literature.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I browse one of the lead stories, an interview with Nigerian poet and novelist <a title=\"Chris Abani\" href=\"http:\/\/www.chrisabani.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Abani<\/a>, and am struck by a comment he makes: &#8220;You shouldn&#8217;t try to write with any kind of community in mind. You should just write. And if you strike the right balance in your work, a community will assemble around it, and the community will be something you never expected.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This is what I never expected: that I would feel so connected to a community of writers, here on the Mendocino Coast, in the Bay Area, and even throughout the world who share my joy in the uses of language.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A fat issue of Poetry Flash, the literary journal and calendar out of Berkeley, CA, arrives in the mail. I&#8217;m pleased to see that the listing for our upcoming Mendocino Coast Writers Conference made it in. I have a special fondness for Poetry Flash, from when I lived in the Bay Area and was responsible [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[73,72,74,71,75],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/92"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}