Blair Kilpatrick's Blog
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Feb.07.2010
I just got done putting up a craigslist SF post on behalf of my writing group. We rotate the task.
We always debate about this. Someone drops out, or starts to attend less regularly. The group starts to feel too small. On the other hand, it feels so cohesive. And everyone gets to submit work...
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Feb.04.2010
"It’s a long time since I’ve posted here. Even longer since I’ve sent an e-mail message to my much-loved and faraway Ms. Milena. But I refuse to apologize. I’m proud that I haven’t succumbed for—almost ten days. A record.
I am a writer, moving toward silence. It’s why I started this blog...
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Jan.26.2010
Another bookstore closing. They happen with mind-numbing regularity. It's not life-or-death. And this particular store, in Laredo, Texas, isn't one of those beloved independent bookstores. It's just a B. Dalton store in a mall. Part of the Barnes and Noble-owned chain that's getting shut down...
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Jan.22.2010
I don't tend to read short stories. I know this is a personal failing. But I think it's because I've never shaken my childhood view: a book should let me lose myself in another world. Preferably for a long time. A single story won't do that. Even now, if I read short stories, it's usually as...
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Jan.15.2010
Amidst the terrible images of destruction in Haiti, Edwidge Danticat reminds us of the rich literary and musical culture of her homeland in this Wall Street Journal article.
Thanks to my office mate and Red Room member Carol Williams for posting this on Facebook.
I leave tomorrow morning for a 3...
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Jan.15.2010
"I am perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder."
I painted the line on my bedroom bookshelf when I was a high school junior. It may have been the sixties, but I was nowhere near San Francisco. My liberal family had ended up in a conservative Chicago suburb. It was because of the...
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Jan.08.2010
First a psychologist, then a musician, now an author.
That was the opening line to one of my favorite reviews of Accordion Dreams, my Cajun music memoir. (Let the Good Times Roll, East Bay Express.)
It was more author profile than book review. The writer, Bay Area author Anneli Rufus, asked some...
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Dec.25.2009
Christmas was always a big deal in my family. We were nominally Protestant, so it wasn't an especially religious experience. But I wouldn't call it secular, because my parents considered it a celebration of family. We clung rigidly to our family traditions, many of them food-related. Making...
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Dec.17.2009
"I want to be a gypsy or a poet's mistress."
I actually wrote that in a diary I kept in my early teens. It's embarassing to confess this in public.
At the time, I was at the height of my artsy, self conscious phase, with a rich fantasy life that was all on the inside. On the outside...
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Dec.11.2009
My parents, children of immigrants, grew up during the Depression. They followed a typical path to success: education and assimilation. But their ambivalence about their ethnic roots weakened when the winter holidays approached.
I’ve always associated the winter...
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Nov.27.2009
Like so many Americans, my roots in this country don't go back very far. My family was part of that great wave of immigration that peaked in the early part of the twentieth century.
No Mayflower or D.A.R. for us. It was Ellis Island rather than Plymouth Rock, in the words of the Slovenian...
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Nov.06.2009
I’ve always loved independent bookstores, and Black Oak Books in Berkeley was a prime example. It had that perfect combination of classy and musty. New and used books. An academic flavor. Author photos on the wall. Readings. Coffee shops near by. Walking distance from my house.
Black Oak...
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Nov.04.2009
I felt a little sad on Sunday, the first day of November. Nostalgic, because it was also the opening day of National Novel Writing Month.
Last November, for the first time, I joined hundreds of thousands of aspiring novelists in that crazy, exhilarating NaNoWriMo marathon. I thought of it...
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Oct.23.2009
A timely blog topic in Red Room this week, to write about our favorite cities.
I started out in Cleveland, a city that inspires jokes. After that, things got better. I spent a good part of my life in Chicago, a wonderful and underrated place. I've come to love New York; my husband was born...
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Oct.09.2009
I'm getting set to present "Accordion Dreams" at my first book festival. How fitting that it's in Louisiana.
While the rest of my fellow San Francisco Bay Area authors will be Litquake-ing, I'll be letting the good times roll in Baton Rouge. (Too bad I can't be in both places. I did...
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A lyrical, deeply felt, and beautifully rendered memoir of a mid-life love affair with Cajun music that ultimately transforms a psychologist’s life, while enriching those of its readers.
”
—Doreen Orion, psychiatrist and author of "Queen of the Road"
About Blair
I am the author of a music memoir ("Accordion Dreams: A Journey into Cajun and Creole Music, University Press of Mississippi, January 2009) and the accordionist/vocalist in Cajun-Creole band Sauce Piquante. I live with my fiddler-husband Steve in the San...
Connections
Causes Blair Kilpatrick Supports
Louisiana Folk Roots, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, Habitat for Humanity/Musician's Village New Orleans, Doctors Without Borders