Welcome

Hello! You’ve landed on the website of author, critic, and teacher Rachel Howard. I’m currently working on interconnected short stories about models and artists, revising a novel, and serving as the 2011-2012 Joan Beebe Teaching Fellow at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. I am not updating this blog much at the moment, but I will have more book reviews appearing in early 2012. In the meantime, I invite you to look around this site (you’ll find a navigation menu to your right) for information on my memoir about my father’s unsolved murder, The Lost Night, for links to my dance and book reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications, and for more on my past teaching at my Bay Area home base, the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto.

You can always email me at rachel at rachelhoward dot com.

Thanks for visiting!

Shannon Cain’s Addictive “Behaviors”

I reviewed Shannon Cain’s addictive story collection, “The Necessity of Certain Behaviors,” over at The Rumpus:

“In the title story of Shannon Cain’s The Necessity of Certain Behaviors, a single woman from the city gets lost on an “ecotourism trek” only to discover a hidden tribe whose villagers enjoy a blissful system of bisexual polyamory. In “The Steam Room,” the mayor’s wife gets caught masturbating at the YMCA. And in “I Love Bob,” a girl with an androgynous love interest stakes out “The Price Is Right” because she thinks Bob Barker is her father.

The hip, quirky scenarios of Cain’s debut collection, which won the 2011 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, partly explain why her work stands out among debut short fiction, but they don’t explain why these stories are so good. The satisfaction they offer has less to do with Cain’s (wonderfully bewildered) characters or (satisfyingly non-gimmicky) plot developments, I think, than it has to do with her dead-accurate sardonic tone. And given how delicious that tone is, I’m surprised Necessity didn’t attract more attention last year. In these stories, the characters and the narrator both speak in “the flat tones of their urban language,” as one story names it, with an effect of subtle but satisfying irony.”

Click here to keep reading.

Novelist Frederick Reiken on “Day for Night”

I interviewed the always mind-expanding novelist and teacher Frederick Reiken for The Rumpus:

“Frederick Reiken’s third novel, Day for Night, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, alongside Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad.

Day for Night should be just as famous as those other two books. I’m biased in saying that, because I spent a semester as Reiken’s student in the Warren Wilson College MFA program, in 2009. Rick’s letters to me that semester left my brain pleasantly staggering. He would send back ten single-spaced pages analyzing my fiction with the rigor of a physicist, not a line of filler. In Day for Night, one of the characters talks about “mean people”: People who say only what they mean, and mean everything they say. Rick is one of those mean people. He’s also a master of point of view. His essay on the “author-narrator-character merge” has become a must-read for anyone who writes third-person fiction.

Rick directs the MFA program at Emerson College in Boston, and lives in the mountains of Western Massachusetts with his wife and toddler daughter. Day for Night is just out in paperback.

***

The Rumpus: The intricate connections between the ten narrators of Day for Night boggle the mind—but I think you said it all began as a story that ran in the New Yorker and then became chapter six, “The Ocean.” That chapter is told by a boy having his first sexual attractions to a girl in the Bahamas, while facing that his father—a marine biology researcher—is dying from leukemia. That’s substantial material already, and the chapter reads in a self-contained way. How did it first start to spin out into more? When did you realize you had a novel?

Frederick Reiken: I originally wrote “The Ocean” as a story, and I expected that it might develop into something more. But when I first tried to expand, it just wasn’t taking off. The initial plan was to continue the story chronologically, once the father dies and once the boy, Jordan, is living with his new adoptive family. It should have worked but it didn’t, perhaps because I was falling into the coming-of-age novel territory of my first two books, and I didn’t have anything new to add to that.

So, for a while I just let it sit. I wrote a second story about the same family, and I was hoping the New Yorker would publish it, but the editor who had taken “The Ocean” had left the magazine by then, and then the editor who looked at this second story declined it, with the comment that it seemed more like the first chapter of a novel. I wound up publishing the story elsewhere, and for a long time the project idled. For about five years I barely thought about it, but one day I started considering whether that story could, in fact, be the first chapter of a novel, as that editor had suggested.

Then I saw it – how the whole thing could work, though as a more unconventional novel than what I had envisioned previously. I wrote what became chapters two through five in a matter of weeks, inserted “The Ocean” as chapter six, and realized I was halfway there. It felt like a miracle.”

Click here to keep reading.

Jo Ann Beard’s “In Zanesville”

I reviewed Jo Ann Beard’s long-awaited new novel over at The Rumpus:

“Ten years ago, when I was first attempting to write a memoir, another aspiring writer said I really should check out this new-ish book by Jo Ann Beard, called The Boys of My Youth. I got a paperback copy and fell in love with the sentence “That deer had legs like canes, feet like Dixie cups.” I underlined “Pink geraniums grow like earrings on either side of the porch” and “My aunt’s chin turns into a walnut, and then she’s crying too.” In Beard’s writing, the ordinary life was extraordinary—and it read with the vividness of fiction. I began mimicking her attention to middle-class American detail, her intensity of staying in scene. As it happens, a whole lot of other young writers were falling in love with The Boys of My Youth and doing the same thing. Thirteen years after its publication, The Boys of My Youth has already reached canonical, genre-redefining status, held up in classrooms across the country as an example of all the lines “Creative Nonfiction” can cross.

Because aside from “The Fourth State of Matter,” nothing conventionally dramatic happens in the connected essays that make up The Boys of My Youth. Even in “The Fourth State of Matter,” the emphasis is daringly on the ordinary. On the surface, the story is about a horrific office-rampage in Iowa by a deranged shooter, which Beard was spared witnessing only because she left work early that day. Beard’s brilliance was to parallel the build up to the shooting with the last days of her failed marriage—and to make the climax not coming to terms with her officemate’s deaths, but finally accepting the split from her husband. Offensive to readers who find it galling that a writer should place her private drama on a plane of equal importance with lives lost. But: truer to life.

Beard once again takes the strangely subversive tack in her new novel, In Zanesville. The stock descriptor “long awaited” feels inadequate; “long labored over” might be right, but mildly put. You can see the results of that anguished laboring in the details of the new novel, and the details of this novel are everything, because once again Beard stakes her aesthetic on making the texture of an almost defiantly ordinary experience painstakingly precise and true. Like The Boys of My Youth, In Zanesville is about, well, boys—or really, the difficult achievement of maturity that comes from dealing with boys. The main character narrates in a present-tense voice that stays convincingly adolescent yet is subtly infused with super-adolescent insight. She never gives her name, but she bears remarkable resemblance to the Jo Ann of The Boys of My Youth, though the setting now is Illinois. She has a sidekick, Felicia, who goes by Flea. (Other girlfriends go by last names like Luekenfelter and Maroni, while the cheerleaders are Patti, Cindy.) The narrator and Flea are “late bloomers,” as the narrator’s mother puts it—and then, enter the boys.

Of course, there are also men at the margins—most notably, the narrator’s father, who is a drunk. Here is where Beard’s daring comes in.”

Keep reading here.

McGregor’s “Chroma” at SF Ballet

I reviewed programs six and seven for the San Francisco Classical Voice:

“Wayne McGregor’s Chroma made a sensation when it premiered at England’s Royal Ballet in 2006: ticket lines down the block, a swift appointment of McGregor to choreographer in residence, a sudden clamor by companies around the world to commission his dances. But Chroma is making a more tepid impact in its premiere performances at San Francisco Ballet, at least to judge from my own reaction and the audience temperature at Saturday’s matinee.

Perhaps that’s because McGregor’s movement is less startling on SFB’s gutsy, go-for-broke dancers than on those of the far more conservative Royal, whose style is typically controlled, gracious, polite. True, McGregor’s movement is still extreme in any context: Raised on European modern dance, he favors sharp, splayed legs; violent head-jutting; and squiggling spines. He has a special fetish for the feet together in fifth position, the knees bent in plié so that the thighs spread, the back arched so that the butt sticks out. The swift and energetic San Francisco dancers devour such a vocabulary. And yet in Chroma it doesn’t seem put to much meaningful use.

The most interesting elements of the work are its sets and costumes — a bright white room, with a huge cut-out rectangle on the back wall about two feet off the floor, and unisex camisoles and underwear of subtly varying shades of white (slightly green-tinged, slightly pink).”

Click here to keep reading.

Paul Taylor Dance Co in SF

I reviewed Wednesday and Sunday’s programs for the San Francisco Classical Voice:

“Paul Taylor is 80, and his Paul Taylor Dance Company is in its 56th season, and because of these facts — well, and because of his instantly recognizable muscular yet sunny movement style, his broadly inclusive musicality, and his singular way of seeing the world as alternately bizarre and tender — seemingly everything written about him drives home the dread that we might not have him with us much longer.

The Taylor Company itself has begun to engage in prematurely posthumous-like framing, in the program materials accompanying its latest San Francisco Performances engagement, introducing Taylor as “one of history’s most celebrated artists” and labeling his works with opus numbers. Yet Taylor himself simply goes on making new dances. Over three programs at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Novellus Theater last week, his 16-member troupe brought us two recent creations.

My favorite by far (which I found absolutely ravishing) was 2009’s Brief Encounters, set to Debussy’s Coin des Enfants, in an orchestration by Andre Caplet. The rich backdrop of a monastery-like hall and costumes of black bikinis and briefs are by the frequent Taylor collaborator Santo Loquasto; the ambiance and the movement draw on the primal lushness of Debussy’s score.

The 11 men and women in this dance are deeply sexual, yet deeply innocent in their sexuality; they skip, prance, snatch at each other as they run through the halls, cavort, dash off again. As usual, Taylor’s structural response to the music is loose and yet rich, because he creates an emotional progression that plays both with and against the score’s. ”

Click here to keep reading.

Balanchine’s Coppelia at SFB

I reviewed for the San Francisco Classical Voice:

“Coppélia arrived at the War Memorial Opera House Saturday looking like it has always belonged there.

And it’s true that this 1870 ballet — with its long-lost original choreography by Arthur Saint-Léon, and its long-beloved score by Léo Delibes — has deep connections to the San Francisco Ballet of today. Coppélia was the first full-length ballet that S.F. Ballet founding father Willam Christensen staged here, back in 1939 when the company was the San Francisco Opera Ballet. It’s also a ballet dear to current Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson, who danced Franz in the version of the work choreographed by George Balanchine and Alexandra Danilova in 1974. Tomasson had long wanted to bring that Coppélia to San Francisco, but he assumed the Balanchine Trust would require reconstructing the 1974 sets and costumes, making the project too expensive. Then another former New York City Ballet dancer — Peter Boal, now head of Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet — called and said he’d been told new sets and costumes were permissible, and would S.F. Ballet like to share the production and split the costs?

Answering “yes” must have felt as natural as it has proven smart. Saturday’s premiere, staged with keen attention to detail by Judith Fugate, was delightful from start to finish. If audience reaction seemed warm rather than wild, that speaks to Coppélia’s mood of gentle enjoyment and its ease of fit on these dancers.

With all the emphasis on Balanchine as a “plotless” choreographer, dance lovers often overlook the gift that powers the inherent drama of his larger oeuvre of abstract ballets: his skill as a storyteller.

In this Coppélia, which he and Danilova based on her memories of Marius Petipa’s 1884 version at Russia’s Maryinsky Ballet, the first thing our heroine, Swanilda, does after her entrance is deliver an extensive passage of mime.”

Keep reading here.

Rory Hohenstein at Diablo Ballet

I reviewed for the Chronicle:

“Ah, the conditions ballet dancers will work with to popularize their art. Watching Diablo Ballet at Walnut Creek’s Shadelands Arts Center Auditorium, I thought of the greats who used to appear on the “Bell Telephone Hour”: Rudolf Nureyev, Maria Tallchief, Erik Bruhn, their outsize talents crammed onto a cheesily decorated TV show soundstage. Except Friday night it was Rory Hohenstein, easily one of the country’s finest male dancers, ignoring Shadelands’ cramped performing space and cafeteria-like surroundings, radiating enough charisma to fill an opera house.

The reasons for Diablo Ballet’s engagements at Shadelands are clear: This resourceful chamber ensemble, just celebrating its 17th anniversary, has smartly downsized its season by packaging two programs as “Inside the Dancers Studio,” offering an hourlong sampling followed by audience Q&A.

Hohenstein’s reasons for appearing with Diablo Ballet are less obvious: He’s a former San Francisco Ballet principal who left that troupe just as his career was taking off and has since been seen with Christopher Wheeldon’s now-disbanded troupe. But I’ll take him wherever I can see him.

He was masterful Friday in “Dancing Miles,” delivering Kelly Teo’s cute and competent jazz-inflected choreography with every muscle of his catlike body, leaving no opportunity for phrasing untended, teasing out long pauses at the end of effortless pirouettes. He was also gorgeous in Tina Kay Bohnstedt’s “The Mirror,” to Erik Satie, playing Mayo Sugano’s reflective alter ego with sensuous androgyny. (One of these days, he ought to dance Nijinsky’s role in “Spectre de la Rose.”)”

Keep reading here. (The amateur photograph accompanying the article seems appropriate.)

Spring Grotto Classes

We’ve just announced our Spring classes at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, and it’s quite a menu this season. I’ll be teaching an all-levels memoir intensive and an intermediate/advanced memoir workshop–info below. To see the full lineup of Grotto Classes covering everything from film criticism to food writing to fiction and much more, go to www.sfgrotto.org/classes.

Fact Is Not Truth–Memoir and the Art of Honesty
Instructor: Rachel Howard
Contact: rachel.howard@gmail.com
Number of sessions: 3, with optional 4th session for workshop critique
Meeting times: Monday evenings, 6:30-9:30, May 2-16. Optional workshop session 6:30-9:30, Monday, May 23
Course fee: $195; optional critique session $75

Description: You want to tell your story and you want to tell the truth. But how does truth differ from mere fact in memoir? And how do we find and give form to the deeper truths that compel readers to compulsively turn pages?

Memoir poses a contract with the reader: “This really happened.” Whether your story is outrageous or ordinary, riveting memoir need not depart from facts. But it must dig beneath them to unearth a deeper emotional honesty.

In this class, we’ll use Vivian Gornick’s craft book The Situation and the Story to help examine the personal story you’re trying to tell, and how you can best tell it. We’ll look at excerpts from memoirs by writers such as Jo Ann Beard, Alexandra Fuller, and Susan J. Miller, and do lots of in-class writing which we will share and discuss. We’ll explore how memoirists use fiction techniques to transport the reader beyond surface factuality, and we’ll find the truth that can drive your personal story. Each student receives private feedback on his or her writing between classes, and individualized writing assignments. Plenty of time reserved for practical Q and A. Ethical quandaries–”What will my family think if they read this?”–welcome.

In the optional fourth session, participants submit up to 20 pages of their memoirs-in-progress for in-depth group discussion and a detailed letter of personal critique.

*Please note: This class is for students already at work on a memoir, as well as those just starting out. It serves as an introductory class for students interested in continuing on to Intermediate/Advanced memoir workshops.

Instructor Bio: Rachel Howard is the author of the memoir The Lost Night: A Daughter’s Search for the Truth of Her Father’s Murder, one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Books of 2005. Her personal essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and O, the Oprah Magazine. Her advice is quoted extensively in The Autobiographer’s Handbook: The 826 National Guide to Writing Your Memoir. She received her MFA from Warren Wilson College.

Memoir II: Intermediate/Advanced Workshop
Instructor: Rachel Howard
Contact: rachel.howard@gmail.com
Number of sessions: 8
Meeting Times: Tuesday evenings, 7 pm to 9:30 pm; April 12-June 7 (no meeting May 31)
Course Fee: $475

Description: This combination seminar and workshop provides ongoing craft discussion, support, and critique for committed memoir writers. During the first half of each class we’ll examine published memoirs, with an eye to guide and inspire your own writing. What is your story really about, and how can your evolving understanding power the writing process? How can you keep opening up parts of your story that feel too hot to touch? We’ll balance an awareness of the emotional process behind memoir writing with the practical study of technique, talking about building tone and style, finding lines of tension, and thinking about theme to discover new layers of meaning that can shape your larger work. Weekly writing assignments (returned with weekly private instructor feedback) will keep you experimenting and producing new pages.

Then we’ll turn to your workshop submissions, aiming to reflect back to the writer what has been communicated, and to describe further opportunities we see. We’ll point to strengths, and offer ideas for substantive revision in a thoughtful environment. Every writer will have the opportunity to submit to workshop twice during our eight weeks together. Ultimately this class will help you gain greater perspective on your work by listening to others. But my deeper goal is to help you build a strong personal writing sensibility by encouraging you–amidst the flurry of feedback–to listen foremost to yourself.

*Please note: This class requires completion of an earlier Grotto memoir class, or instructor consideration of a writing sample, to ensure correct placement.

Instructor Bio: Rachel Howard is the author of the memoir The Lost Night: A Daughter’s Search for the Truth of Her Father’s Murder, one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Books of 2005. Her personal essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and O, the Oprah Magazine. Her advice is quoted extensively in The Autobiographer’s Handbook: The 826 National Guide to Writing Your Memoir. She received her MFA from Warren Wilson College.

Remembering Victor Martinez

Friday was an emotional day at the Grotto, as we received news that our friend and role model Victor Martinez had died in the early morning hours, from cancer.

Victor was the author of a fiercely beautiful novel, Parrot in the Oven, which won the National Book Award for young adult literature. He also wrote two not-yet published novels, and many poems of uncompromising honesty and passion.

Victor’s friend Francisco X. Alarcon has posted a remembrance of Victor here.

In the last year of Victor’s life, Writers’ Grotto member Elizabeth Bernstein coordinated a rota of Grotto writers to drive Victor to medical appointments. For all of us who participated, it was a privilege to have time alone with Victor during the driving and the waiting in hospital rooms, just to hear his wisdom on writing and life. During one of these hospital trips, I told Victor how much I looked up to him as a “real” writer, and he was horrified, protesting that he hardly made any money from writing, and didn’t care about publishing, and I said yes, exactly, that’s what I meant–the way he stayed true to the work for its own sake.

Elizabeth circulated within the Grotto some of Victor’s thoughts on how writing changes you, how “just the working itself has value, I think.” I’m so tempted to share more of Victor’s candid correspondence, but I know those emails were intended for an audience of friends, and despite their eloquence, I know Victor often made apologies for the writing in his emails. But I hope his words will keep emerging, and that more and more people will read them. He lived in truth.

The Grotto has posted a photo and a tribute to Victor here.

UPDATE: Victor’s obituary in the LA Times.