The Fruits--and Veggies-- of My Labor... and the Reading Room

In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death. ~Sam Llewelyn

Here's the sex part:
Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cukes, carrots, nasturtium, marigold. And I love the vibrant pallet-- sort of...moorish.

Here's the death part: The lone pumpkin I had was halfway there but the squirrels got it, and there's nothing but a pile of rinds and stems. Savage beauty sounds like a bodice ripper, but it's an apt description for my vegetable garden-- it manages to be both Darwinian and holy.

Makes one wonder if George Bernard Shaw was being ironic when he said:

The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there. ~George Bernard Shaw, The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, 1932

And now for something completely different:

Also a reminder of tonight's Reading Room, featuring Joshilyn Jackson and Katherine Min.
7 pm, The Handlebar, 304 East Stone Avenue, Greenville, SC 29601.

EMRYS READING ROOM featuring JOSHILYN JACKSON and KATHERINE MIN Today, 7:00pm Age Policy Tickets
	Published writers read from their works The season begins with blockbusters. Joshilyn Jackson’s short fiction has been published in literary magazines and anthologies including TriQuarterly and Calyx, and her plays have been produced in Atlanta and Chicago. Her bestselling debut novel, gods in Alabama won SIBA's 2005 Novel of the Year Award and was a No. 1 BookSense pick. Between, Georgia was also a No. 1 BookSense pick, making her the first BookSense author to receive No. 1 status in consecutive years. Her third novel, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, was published in March. Katherine Min’s short stories have been widely anthologized, most recently in The Pushcart Book of Stories: The Best Short Stories from a Quarter-Century of The Pushcart Prize. She received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her novel, Secondhand World, (Knopf, 2006) was a finalist for the PEN/Bingham Award. She teaches at the University of North Carolina at Asheville and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.
	Links: Joshilyn Jackson, Katherine Min, Emrys Foundation $2 for Emrys members, $4 for non-members

The Writing Room's New Schedule

The Writing Room's Fall 2008 schedule of workshops and seminars is up, and registration is running. Visit the website, www.emrys.org for details. (Emrys, a nonprofit arts foundation, sponsors our classes.) Curious? Read our students' testimonials.

Also visit us on Facebook.

We're kicking things off with a seminar from fabulous, hilarious, bestselling novelist Joshilyn Jackson:

Marketing Yourself on the Web at ALL stages of your Writing Career

Joshilyn Jackson

Whether you have just begun to draft your first short story or are currently shopping your third completed manuscript, there are things you could be doing, right now, to build a reader base and create a web presence. As writers we like to think of ourselves as artists, but in the publishing world, we are expected more and more to act as our own publicists and be savvy businessfolk. The Internet has opened up the world to anyone with a modem, and it can be a powerful professional tool for writers at all stages of their career. While the main focus of this seminar is prepublication (especially preparing for submission before one's first book first sale), we will also spend a little time on the crucial period between sale and publication. This seminar is for fiction and non-fiction writers, focusing mainly on those interested in placing book length manuscripts.

Level: All levels, Beginner to Advanced
Saturday, August 24
2:00- 5:00 pm
Location: Innovate Building Conference Room, 148 River Street, Greenville, SC
Fee: $50; $45 Emrys member

Joshilyn Jackson’s bestselling debut novel, gods in Alabama won the SIBA (Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance’s) 2005 Novel of the year Award and was a #1 BookSense pick. Her second novel, Between, Georgia was also a #1 BookSense pick, making Jackson the first author in BookSense history to receive #1 status in back to back years. Jackson read the audio version herself, winning a Listen Up award from Publisher's Weekly and making Audiofile's Best of 2006 list. Both books were chosen for the Books-A-Million Book Club. Her short fiction has been published in literary magazines and anthologies including TriQuarterly and Calyx, and her plays have been produced in Atlanta and Chicago. Joshilyn’s third novel, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, a national bestseller, was released in March of 2008. Visit www.joshilynjackson.com and Joshilyn’s popular blog, Faster Than Kudzu, for more information.

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

Joshilyn Jackson is on booktour to promote her third novel, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming. Here's her schedule, and an interview with Powell's, and her tremendously entertaining--and addictive-- blog, Faster Than Kudzu.