"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty

Posts tagged ‘Jessie van Eerden’

Monday Must Read! The Long Weeping by Jessie Van Eerden

 

JessieJessie Van Eerden is the author of Glorybound (WordFarm, 2012), My Radio Radio (Vandalia Press 2016), and most recently, her collection of portrait essays,The Long Weeping, just released from Orison Books.

A West Virginia native, Jessie holds a BA in English from West Virginia University and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in The Oxford American, River Teeth, Image, Bellingham Review, Willow Springs, Rock & Sling, Appalachian Heritage, Ruminate, and other publications. Her prose has been selected for inclusion in Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Fiction and Poetry from West Virginia(Vandalia Press); Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean (Ohio University Press); Red Holler (Sarabande); Dreams and Inward Journeys: A Rhetoric and Reader for Writers, Seventh Edition (Longman); Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical (Cascade Books); and Best American Spiritual Writing (Houghton Mifflin).

Jessie has taught for over fifteen years in college classrooms and in adult literacy programs. She lives in West Virginia where she directs the low-residency MFA writing program of West Virginia Wesleyan College.

Follow Jessie on Twitter: @jessievaneerden. To see what Jessie has been reading, visit her Goodreads page. To learn more about WV Wesleyan’s MFA program (#wvwcmfa), visit the program website.

Visit Jessie’s website: http://www.jessievaneerden.com/

Buy Jessie’s beautiful books!

The Long Weeping

My Radio Radio

Glorybound

Praise for The Long Weeping

“In these startlingly honest and imaginative essays, van Eerden enlarges the world around her, giving flesh to what is all too often flattened by the outside eye, anointing places and people and the throbbing spaces between them as she searches out and sings litanies to what she calls the “larger body I belonged to and could not leave.” Lush and razor-sharp, The Long Weeping shimmers with intelligence and grace. The truest essays I’ve read in a long time.”

—Sonja Livingston, author of Ghostbread, Queen of the Fall, and Ladies Night at the Dreamland

“Van Eerden is one of the best essayists working today if judged by her craft and intellect alone, but her gifts go beyond those: she is also one of the most honest. The Long Weeping turns a visionary eye and a laser mind on subjects often simplified or even scorned by contemporary culture: white poverty; mysticism; love of family; the wisdom of modest people. Van Eerden is brave enough to say the hard things. She’s strong enough to love the hard places.”

—Ann Pancake, author of Given Ground, Strange as This Weather Has Been, and Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley

More from Jessie Online

http://www.jessievaneerden.com/short-fiction-creative-non-fiction/

https://imagejournal.org/artist/jessie-van-eerden/

http://appalachianheritage.net/2015/09/09/interview-jessie-van-eerden/

http://cheatriverreview.com/jessie-van-eerden/

https://www.ruminatemagazine.com/blogs/ruminate-blog/works-with-soul-interview-with-jessie-van-eerden

http://memorious.org/?author=217

https://rockandsling.com/2011/03/30/an-interview-with-jessie-van-eerden/

https://web.tusculum.edu/tusculumreview/2014/05/14/jessie-van-eerden-2/

Hear Jessie Read

https://vimeo.com/217706875

 

Happy Reading, y’all!

xo

Mary

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, nonfiction, One Love, Writing

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Daily Prompt Catch-Up! Prompts for Days!

 

6/30/2016

“The human brain holds in its cradle its own strangeness”-Eric Waggoner Make art about the brain, the magic of the brain, its beautiful strangeness.

human brain on art

7/1/2016

“I could spend my life trying to distill the feeling of a summer porch”~Jessie van Eerden Make art about that summer porch.

summer porch snapping beans

7/2/2016

Make art inspired by this quote: “Who looks after the sensitive child?”~Nikky Finney

sensitive child

7/3/2016

“You have to let the Light in.”~Nikky Finney Make art about ways of letting the Light in.

7/4/2016

I wrote a poem today called “What Goliath Wants Us To Know.” Make art about what someone—real or mythical, living or dead—wishes we knew.

7/5/2016

Alton Sterling ❤

7/6/2016

Philando Castile ❤

7/7/2016

Dallas shootings ❤ Brent Thompson, Patrick Zamarripa, Michael Krol, Michael Smith, and Lorne Ahrens.

7/8/2016

I’m struggling to function in the sorrow of what we’re doing to each other. Keep singing a song I learned as a child, One Tin Soldier.

Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago
‘Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley-folk below

On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath the stone
And the valley-people swore
They’d have it for their very own

Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of heaven
You can justify it in the end
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away

So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill
Asking for the buried treasure
Tons of gold for which they’d kill

It came an answer from the mountain
With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain
All the riches buried there

Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of heaven
You can justify it in the end
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away

Now the valley cried with anger
“Mount your horses! Draw your sword!”
And they killed the mountain-people
So they won their just reward

Now they stood beside the treasure
On the mountain, dark and red
Turned the stone and looked beneath it
“Peace on Earth” was all it said

Make art about what matters.

7/9/2016

Thanks and Love to Eric Waggoner for his seminar at the West Virginia Wesleyan MFA residency on writing ugly topics. Robert Bly said, “Dare to do something ugly.” Do this. Take on something ugly.

7/10/2016

Garmin took us down some strange backroads today, as it does at times 🙂 Today it took us down a two lane road with no lines, through a series of unicorporated communities, one of which was particularly sweet, Batesville Virginia. As we entered this tiny crossroad community, we passed a stone pillar with the word Elysium carved into it. Love letters from the Universe?

According to Eustathius of Thessalonica, the word “Elysium” (Ἠλύσιον) derives from ἀλυουσας (ἀλύω) and means to be deeply stirred from joy, or from ἀλύτως, synonymous of ἀφθάρτως (ἄφθαρτος) incorruptible, referring to the incorruptible joy of a soul in this afterlife.

Make art about your idea of the afterlife.

elysian fields

 

7/11/2016

Finding peace in doing the daily tasks of being home: folding laundry; washing dishes; sweeping floors. Make art about those moments when the mundane intersects with the divine.

black cat broom

7/12/2016

Lost a feline family member today, Dobi. She ruled our home with the most regal feline disdain for ten years, and my heart is broken at her going. Make art about what our animal family means to us.

Dobi

7/13/2016

Coffee in the garden. Reminders of the cycles. Make art about what goes on, about what continues.

vine spirals

 

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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