Jessica Barksdale Inclan's Blog
RSS
Apr.06.2011
Up to this moment on this lovely spring day, I've lived through only minor ecological and geological disasters. In my almost fifty years, I've been near, around, close to, and by floods, hurricanes, earthquakes. In 1989, I clutched my two children as we stood under a door jamb and rode out Loma...
Continue Reading »
Mar.26.2011
Now and again, I feel like Anders, the main character in Charles Baxter's wonderful short story The Disappeared. When I am truly feeling sorry for myself, I think of this description of poor Anders, a Swedish businessman trying to find his way in all ways, but unfortunately doing so in downtown...
Continue Reading »
Mar.16.2011
Just recently, I was staring at the third editing letter from an editor at a large publishing house. she loved my novel . . . but. We'd gone through two rounds of edits, had a phone conference with my agent, and she had one last huge round of edits before she was willing to make an offer.
After...
Continue Reading »
4 comments
Mar.09.2011
Around the time I was the mother of two children under 3, finishing up the last of my graduate studies, and trying to find a teaching job, I hit the despairing wall, the wall I went to to wail and moan and cry too often during a single day. The wall and I had developed a relationship because not...
Continue Reading »
2 comments
Mar.02.2011
When I was 12, I decided that I needed to see some castles. After all, I'd been reading about them in Gothic novels for years, and it was high time to get a map together of all the spots I needed to see. I brought out the family atlas and commenced to draw.
Never mind that my family wasn't...
Continue Reading »
Feb.23.2011
When you really aren't something unusual, often you try to find things that make you bigger and better. It's hard to craft a story around something perceived smaller by the general population. The Mexican grandmother becomes "Spanish," the itinerant, wastrel grandfather becomes a hobo,...
Continue Reading »
1 comment
Feb.16.2011
I never really thought about "Black literature" as I was growing up and that's probably because I didn't read much Black literature. Images of Black Americans came by stories told to me by white writers, such as Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Searching back in my mind for the...
Continue Reading »
2 comments
Feb.14.2011
(I've posted this essay for a couple of years now on Valentine's Day. Love always seems so amazing and impossible when looking at it from a long distance, and it's lovely to be right smack dab in the middle.)
Meeting Michael
Four and a half years ago, I stood on a sidewalk in Manhattan Beach...
Continue Reading »
2 comments
Feb.09.2011
In my life, I've scooped ice cream, taught swim lessons, been a lifeguard. There was that one terrible day at the diner. A waitress, I never would be. I typed, I helped a woman pack her house up for a big move, I took care of people's yards while they were on vacation. And then, thank god, I...
Continue Reading »
2 comments
Feb.09.2011
Once a current spiritual teacher told a group that I was in that luck really didn't exist. Luck was, he said, was "'opportunity meeting preparedness."
So there was nothing lucky or miraculous about getting the right job or book contract or mate. It was about us being prepared--having...
Continue Reading »
Feb.02.2011
Once years ago at the only gay/lesbian bar in Contra Costa County, I lost an earring. My friends and I were dancing (one of my students was a dancer at the club and asked me to come and he was dancing, too, but in far less clothing than we had on). It was crowded and hot, and we were having fun,...
Continue Reading »
Jan.26.2011
For a week during the summers of 1995 and 1997, I left my husband and two sons to go to The Flight of the Mind women’s writing retreat Mackenzie Bridge, Oregon. Back then, especially the first time, this was a hard, terrible thing for me to do. First, it was hard because we were so often broke,...
Continue Reading »
1 comment
Jan.11.2011
I have a friend who has a big book coming out. Don't ask me what a big book is. We've gone through this before. I have no clue. If I did, I'd be writing it instead of writing this blog. But instead, I'm looking at the advanced reading edition of my friend's book and it is big. And I mean...
Continue Reading »
1 comment
Jan.09.2011
Yesterday was the last day of my writing group's "poetry boot camp." While the thought of writing a poem a day and critiquing one might not seem like a big deal--and at least on the first day, I didn't think it was--it was. There is a certain mind set that is poem and not "novel....
Continue Reading »
Jan.07.2011
I was minding my own business, waiting behind a woman at the automated teller at the post office, when her phone rang. Despite the fact she was in mid-transcation and there were several people behind her, she answered the call.
"Thank you so much for calling," she said, loudly, her voice...
Continue Reading »
2 comments
About Jessica
Jessica Barksdale Inclán's debut novel Her Daughter's Eyes, published in 2001, was the premier novel published under New American Library's new imprint Accent. Her Daughter's Eyes was a final nominee for the YALSA Award for the best books of 2001 and best...
Connections
Causes Jessica Inclan Supports
Women for Women International Goodwill Industries Lindsey Wildlife Museum Freecycle.org
Jessica is a fan of
