Maria Espinosa
Novelist, Translator, Poet.

Maria Espinosa's Blog

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May.22.2010

LEAVING

LEAVING It is Saturday evening, and in three weeks I fly to Mexico. The Pacific Coast. A dream job house sitting for a French Canadian friend for the summer in a tiny village that’s not even on the map. And then in the Fall I hope to stay on, finish the next book and the next..the next ..in a...

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May.22.2010

LEAVING

LEAVING It is Saturday evening, and in three weeks I fly to Mexico. The Pacific Coast. A dream job house sitting for a French Canadian friend for the summer in a tiny village that’s not even on the map. Then in the Fall I hope to stay on, finish the next book and the next..the next ..in a place...

Feb.04.2010

On Kafka's thoughts

Blogging has been difficult for me -- it began as part of promoting my last book, presented as a necessary kind of work in today's writing world. I am not relaxed or comfortable with it at all, and yet drawn to the ease with which it can be done. Half joking, I said to Ivory Madison at Redroom...

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Dec.24.2009

christmas in the desert

Growing up in suburban Long Island, I generally hated Christmas with its cold, miserable weather, artificial indoor heat, its frantic buying and giving and of presents, and the gluttonous meals. Some years ago, I went off to the California desert to spend time alone in a place called The Galaxy...

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Dec.22.2009

angst and tacos - tamo noonan

With appreciation to Tamo Noonan, my original website creator. I was terrified – whatever one posts on the Web can be viewed forever all over the planet, and God knows, perhaps beyond. As an office temp, I had stared hopelessly at the keyboard back in the Eighties before Windows became operable...

Dec.04.2009

NOTES FROM A DEMONSTRATION

“La senora tambien...” – words in rapid Spanish come from the two women sitting behind me on BART I strain to understand, but can only make out a little of what they are talking about. How difficult it would be to live in Mexico, I think. And how difficult for immigrants who come here speaking a...

Sep.01.2009

LEE CRONBACH'S MUSIC

MY BROTHER'S COOL JAZZ www.leecronbach.com When my brother, Lee Cronbach, was a teenager he played the piano in a way that haunted me because his improvisations seemed to echo something in my own spirit. He played with a driving rhythm, fusing elements of jazz and Middle Eastern music....

Aug.23.2009

RADIO INTERVIEWS

RADIO INTERVIEWS Over the past few months I’ve had phone interviews with radio show hosts based in different parts of the country such as Louisiana, Tennessee, Washington, DC, Colorado, and Los Angeles. All this has been in the course of publicizing DYING UNFINISHED, a tangled, edgy novel...

Aug.19.2009

the real taboo

THE REAL TABOO Today I talked to a book group. I talked about the complexity of human character, the mutability of emotion. One formidable woman in her eighties asked if I had ever fallen in love. What is love? I mused. She announced that she indeed knew what was to fall in love. Did you...

Mar.12.2009

MEXICO - Part 2

Things arise here almost as by design. The surf is rough outside the hotel, and on the third day I walk barefoot in the soft sand to the calmer west end of the beach. It’s still crowded with holiday visitors. Teenage boys are surfing with skim boards, and there are a lot of them. Heedless, I walk...

Mar.11.2009

Mexico in January - Part 1

I arrive at night after a long bus ride south from Puerto Vallarta. It’s dark, with glaring lights around the dingy bus station in the center of town. I take a taxi to the hotel, hoping that there really will be a room. Although I’d made reservations over the phone, it had been a...

Feb.14.2009

transitioning

I am going through an enormous shift- private to public. Too many unfinished works, which I lacked the courage to complete and submit. Example: I worked for months on reflections about an upcoming high school reunion. It was so painful to look at -- and then when I went, a kind of healing...

Feb.13.2009

Buddhism and Tennessee Williams

Back in the Sixties I began studying yoga with a guru in San Francisco who rather jealously promoted strict celibacy. Not untypically, he later became involved in a sexual scandal. However, I learned much from him, and to his credit he promoted my poetry and urged me to publish it. At the same...

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Feb.01.2009

Dying Unfinished

My fourth novel, DYING UNFINISHED, has just been published by Wings Press. It has gotten good reviews. I am excited about this birth of a literary child. I will be reading at various places in the Bay Area this spring.

Dec.09.2008

LSD Memories

Turney Street. Sausalito. 1965. My neighbors across the street were taking LSD. Mary, who lived downstairs, tried it a few weeks later. She paced back and forth in her living room, tall, bony, forthright, dressed in beige slacks and a red sweater. Her eyes glowed as she talked. “Hold my hand,” she...

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About Maria

MARIA ESPINOSA is a novelist, poet, and translator as well as a teacher. Her publications include four novels : Incognito: Journey of a Secret Jew, Dark Plums, Longing, which won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and Dying Unfinished...

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