Bathsheba Monk Explains Everything

Can you break up with friends?

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Tue, 22 May 2012 17:46:15 GMT

A friend of mine....let's call her D....came to the Memoir Writing Conference. We had some time to talk--we rarely see each other--and she said that she had made a decision in her life to drop anyone who didn't contribute something positive. The criteria is this: if she can spend 15 minutes with a friend and she decides the conversation is a waste of time, she tells them she is freeing them up to pursue more meaningful relationships. Harsh or realistic? And is the other person, now known as the dumpee, supposed to feel hurt or freed up? Has anyone actually done this to good effect?

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

Now It Can Be Told!

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:22:53 GMT

The Memoir Writing Conference was last Saturday and it's taken me till now to get it together to say thanks to people who made it to the Conference despite great personal odds. I think we should vote and give an award, but, nah, I really don't want to hear from anybody for about a month. So, we'll give out big awards and I'll vote by myself: First blue-ribbon award goes to Dr. Micah Sadigh, and I don't know what it is about Micah that makes people want to follow him around and skip lunch and everything. Maybe he's a secret hypnotist. But I think his charm is that he tells you what you want to hear and everyone in the room was seduced by that, and who wouldn't be? And, of course, the delightful Karolyn Vreeland Blume, who was so at home behind a microphone, telling people that they can write about anybody they want and that the onus is on the plaintiff to prove libel...well, that's kind of refreshing to a group of people writing memoirs, isn't it? And then there is the gritty Susan Straight who missed her daughter's prom--but as she pointed out and rightly so, it was her daughter's fault for not being asked sooner!--and anyway, Susan is my personal hero-novelist. Pat Badt mesmerized the crowd talking about color and Scott Sherk same thing with sound, and Cat Cappel warmed up the crowd with Yoga for creativity and Bill White was so funny talking about being funny in writing and of course, everyone was glad to have a chance to talk to literary agent, Betsy Lerner, and I don't think she dashed anyone's hopes per se, but it's nice to get a reality check, and more later on all of this.

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

Henry James

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 11:46:45 GMT

“Autobiography may be the preeminent kind of American expression.”
Henry James

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

Faye Moskowitz

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:24:27 GMT

“For who will testify, who will accurately describe our lives if we do not do it ourselves?”
Faye Moskowitz, And the Bridge is Love

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

Saul Bellow

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 17:29:05 GMT

“Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.”
Saul Bellow

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

Sugar Heart

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 13:18:25 GMT

I was in Israel a long time ago, engaged to a Jewish boy who wanted to live there--to jump to the end, the boy and I didn't last--and it was Valentine's Day on the kibbutz and I was running around like a moon infected crazy delivering tiny candied hearts to people in the communal dining room who didn't know what a valentine was and didn't care and threw the tiny hearts engraved with inane love messages over their shoulders, shrugging. I was breathtakingly young and dumb and REALLY thought these people should be educated on the elevating power of love, not even considering that St. Valentine was a Christian saint. But what did it matter? Isn't love always a good thing? Nowadays, a bunch of people in my family are evangelical Christians and so Valentine's day is lost on them too, as, they have educated me, St. Valentine was a Catholic saint, and evangelical Cs don't pay homage to saints. They don't send cards, give flowers, receive assurances that they are someone's special love--all this with a sour fervor in order to deny a saint's power--when it would be a lot more fun to just go ahead and have a heart.

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

Pre-Holiday Discount for Memoir Writing Conference 2012

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:22:54 GMT

The Memoir Writing Conference being held in Bethlehem, PA, April 28, 2012 is offering a twenty dollar discount until December 3. It's going to be a good time and, for a short time, just a little bit cheaper. Happy Holidays.

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

Gary Cooper, Gary Cooper

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:46:37 GMT

G. Bruce Boyer, one of our fabulous presenters at the Memoir Writing Conference 2012, has a new book coming out now. The book is called Gary Cooper, Enduring Style. A book signing will be held in NYC on November 15, the invitation is enclosed. I hope to see you there.

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

Memoir Writing Conference 2012 Spotlight on Susan Straight

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:33:10 GMT

I am so pleased to be hosting with ArtsQuest the Memoir Writing Conference in April 2012 at the Steel Stacks in Bethlehem, PA. We have a tremendous line-up of talent and experts to help you get your memoir in shape to send it out into the world or to just get it started. Award-winning, best-selling author Susan Straight will lead the session on place in memoir. Susan is the author of, most recently, Take One Candle Light a Room. Here is a link to her site where you can read about her and her books. Here is a link to the website where Susan writes about her beloved piece of earth--California. And here is a link to the Memoir Writing Conference 2012 website where you can sign up for both the conference and the limited-seating dinner the night before with Susan, Betsy Lerner and Micah Sidagh.

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

Secret Weapon

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:47:45 GMT

I've been really critical of the Spider Man fiasco...I mean, how much time and money do you need to put on a musical? The way it works with me is that I am a complete judgmental jerk then I hit the same obstacles I was so critical of which is what happened with my musical-in-development, Lois's Wedding. I am going to be one really smart old lady, all this wisdom. Anyway, after much development, the composer, the brilliant and talented Mike Krisukas and I decided to blow it all up and start again. Himmel Gott! But now I got a secret weapon in the person of Jeff Weiss, who you may know as the Obie-winning playwright-actor who just happens to live three blocks from me and who has taken an interest in Lois's Wedding, lucky for me. Did I mention he was brilliant? And not just because he thinks I'm brilliant, hahahah. More later, but the official word--from me-- is that Lois's Wedding is on track and preparing to explode on the scene.

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

High Wire Acts

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 14:57:05 GMT

Spider sliding down his five foot stand of silk, which traverses the roof of our giant porch to the tip of the Dusty Millers in vases on our old oak table, then working his way back up like a mountain climber on his life line; squirrel tiptoeing across the cable line with a chestnut in his mouth. It's worth the effort to get up before eight o'clock and hang out on the back porch to see how others live..

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

Dana McGowan, Jennifer Apple, Tom Kelleher, Josiah DeAndrea, and Chelsea Mojallali...Nude Walker street performers

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 19:20:00 GMT

The Nude Walker street performers wonderfully tell the tale of Max Asad and Kat Warren-Bineki, Duck Wolinsky and Jenna Magee and the feisty Houda Asad. Our New York City gig is over now, but look for us in the fall in NYC and Philadelphia.

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

NUDE WALKER STREET PERFORMERS YIELD TO GAY PRIDE PARADE....

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 20:12:53 GMT

....AND MAZEL TOV. SEE YOU NEXT WEEKEND IN CENTRAL PARK, LOCATIONS AND TIMES TO BE ANNOUNCED.

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

The Nude Walker Street Performers in NYC

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:33:08 GMT

The Nude Walker Street Performers and moi were in NYC this past Sunday. June 19th from noon to two we will be on the High Line in NYC. From two-thirty to four we will be in Washington Square Park. See you there. Pics taken by Spanish fashion photographer Franklyn Espinal who just happened to be walking by and was taken by the Nude Walker characters played by Jennifer Apple, Tom Kelleher, Josiah DeAndrea, Chelsea Mojallali, and Dana McGowan. Vanessa Lancellotti, director of the theater group, Punch, put it all together.

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

Is that YOU in there....

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Thu, 19 May 2011 14:55:28 GMT

Did an informal poll of friends and acquaintances and the results are that 95 percent of them are on anti-depressants. So are their pets. So, am I friends with Abilify or Zoloft or Prozac or Betty Sue? What is all this stress everyone can't deal with...I think that's called life which is messy and confusing and disappointing at times and joyous and wondrous a lot and heartbreaking more often than not and I'm not just talking about the personal heartbreaks of interpersonal feuds and finding out your kid deals and does heroin but the major heartbreaks of nuclear reactors run amok and societies waking up from a stupor and saying "I am a man" and getting mowed down with machine guns for their trouble and finding out that the ONE MAN who could apparently save the world economy is a rapist and then where are we going to be? Pass the pills.

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

Live and Lowdown at the Nighthawk

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Sun, 15 May 2011 14:43:00 GMT

Bruce (yes, that Bruce) sent his regrets and isn't that just like someone truly great to communicate that he had other plans but was there in spirit? Everyone else was there...standing room only, must have been spillover from the Rutgers graduation and St. Georges Greek festival...but who knows how this stuff gets started? Gracious host Steve Hart closed the doors to keep the spillover inside...although some Indian guy was selling boxes of mangoes in the back room and Indians kept coming in and everyone would point to the back room, racial profiling at its finest, but the fact is they didn't want books they wanted mangoes...friend Nick DiGiovanni brought lovely Mary...and I did my stand-up then read Chapter two--a Barbara Warren-Bineki chapter--and the questions were mostly about how did I know so much about mental illness and there was real concern--people seem to think that they have the only family with a couple of cracked eggs in the carton although my personal observation is that there are more cracked than not in most cartons with the cracked showing up in surprising places, usually in positions of control over your life hahahahaha-and a lot of discussion about the future of publishing and everyone there was starting their own imprint for god's sake--and why not, I guess. My hand cramped from signing best wishes then Steve threw everyone out and Nick and Mary and Paul and Steve and I opened some wine, Mary went home to retrieve linens and silver while the men fetched some Greek food from the festival and in the middle of a candle-lit dinner Steve regaled us with tales of working on the Hometown News which was an annoying line item on the Forbes ledger and going to a fancy dinner at the Forbes residence and making small talk with Henry Kissinger and Jerry Hall and how some woman started stealing all their swag (Tiffany bowls and leather bound books) and they didn't realize until she left what she had done and Steve did his Walter Cronkite impersonation, which was excellent, and the Indians kept coming in and we kept saying "back room" until we went back there to see for ourselves just how good a mango could be.

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

The New York Times says this about Nude Walker

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Fri, 13 May 2011 18:21:00 GMT

Dodging I.E.D.’s in Afghanistan might seem a logical, if not inevitable, destiny for the alienated youth of Warrenside, Pa., a moribund steel town where crack dealers and strip clubs beckon the unemployed, everyone owns a hunting rifle and junior warriors dress “in Kmart camouflage.” For Kat Warren-Bineki and Max Asad, the ill-fated lovers and Afghan war veterans in Monk’s mordant novel, an added incentive is the chance to escape their oppressive families. Kat returns to an embezzler dad and an unhinged mom with a penchant for parading naked in public. Max awaits a dreaded arranged marriage and a future managing the empire of his Lebanese father, an erstwhile scholar whose devotion to humanism has been replaced by a drive to amass a real estate empire. Virtually everyone in Monk’s precision-choreographed subversion of American myths is looking to swap the cards they’ve been dealt, most notably the local country club’s neighbor, Wind Storm, a self-styled Indian “Love Shaman” who has thrown off the Scandinavian half of her Swedish-Lenape heritage in favor of an earth-motherly identity, hunting and gathering stray golf balls in the woods. Jan Stuart, Fiction Chronicle. March 31, 2011

My Mom Likes It

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 17:17:00 GMT

So, I don't know what means more to me, the New York Times Sunday Book Review of Nude Walker, or the fact that my mother said she liked it...and it made her cry. Thanks, Mom.

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

Bread and Butter Note

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 14:40:00 GMT

Rob and Harvey of Clinton Book Shop hosted me last Saturday, as I signed my book, Nude Walker, and talked with real live readers, the reward for all those months of solitary writing. Clinton Book Shop is right on the main street in Clinton, in the heart of the a cool little berg that has coffee shops, boutiques, the Hunterdon Art Museum and a bakery with possibly the best brownies I ever ate. Visit them and buy lots of book or download books from them. Cheers.

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk

That Barry Girl rides again....

bathshebamonk@hotmail.com (Bathsheba Monk) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 13:58:00 GMT

My great good friend, Fanny Barry, has just spiffed up her website, her life and...is that a new hat, kiddo? Hang out at her site for a while www.thatbarrygirl.org and see if you don't get a hankering to visit Tulum.

copyright 2010 Bathsheba Monk