Lightning! Music! Subtext!

If you like writing that's all about the drama, check out my new piece in The Grub Daily, an awesome blog for the whole writer.

I took my obsessions with music and brevity and in an experiment with the drama form created something fun, and retro and well...just go read it!

What are YOU up to?

Well, I'm up to a new and fun creative pursuit! Cooking! Well, more specifically indulging in the alchemical process of soup creation.

While I will still update this blog every so often with fun announcements about publications and such, please check me out at: Soup Alchemy where I'll be posting about my adventures making soup for the creative self (in a non-hippie way, I swear =P). I'll put together one soup a week and blog about it (the yummy, the not-so-yummy, and how the process of cooking can feed the creative well).

I may also blog about tarot and my new found love of Lenormand oracles.

So what are you waiting for? 

Fun Interviews, Horror Writing, and what would Thanksgiving be Without Lecter?

The past few weeks have been filled with all sorts of wonderful insanity.

Anna Clark, creator of the fabulous, NY Times-cited blog, Isak, interviewed me about writing, teaching, art and all sorts of fun stuff. Check it out here. And while you're at it, browse through Anna's astute and compelling posts on tales and truths. This girl really knows how to celebrate both the story and social justice.

I've also been having a blast teaching a wonderful 6 week workshop called: Writing Horror, Making Monsters at Grub Street, wherein a rag-tag band of motley horror writers (captained by yours truly) sails the seas of crafting short horror (and other dark genre works). Perhaps motley isn't the best word for them--these mateys (I'm sorry I have no idea where this pirate theme has come from) are off the plank (err...hook?) with their explorations of the deepest, darkest the human psyche can muster. Rest assured, you will be hearing more from these folks.

And what would the deep, dark be without my favorite doctor? Seriously. We parsed some early Lecter scenes from Silence of the Lambs this week in the aforementioned class and I was stunned at how amazingly and lovingly crafted our Lecter is. It reminds me that there are lots of folks out there who know how important it is to recognize the dark side and go there.

Like Jung said, if you repress the monsters, they'll find a way to come out anyway. You may as well fashion them of paper and ink than of your own flesh and blood. (Ok, Jung said it much more eloquently, this is just my paraphrase).

And with that: Happy Eating!

It's heeeeeeeere!

Hello comrades in darkness!

November days not grey enough for you? Need something dark and twisty and simply, the editor, Jennifer Hollie Bowles puts it: " an amazing place of sublime convergence?

Check out the brand new issue of The Medulla Review! It features some pretty kickin' work by lots of very talented writers (including yours truly)!

Be sure to keep a close eye on TMR. They are a space for beautiful and gritty speculation!

PS- I'm on Twitter now! Please stop by and say hi: @kl_pereira.

The Possibilities of the Fairy Tale

What? You expected a post right after my other post explaining my begging off blogging forever?

Greedy, greedy readers!


No excuses. Just writing. My new motto. After chatting with a friend at the Boston Book Festival and attending a kick-ass session on new fairy tales called "My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me" (a line from my favorite fairy tale, The Juniper Tree), I was inspired to re-commit myself to my flash fairy tale collection. Maybe it was the inspiring words of Kate Bernheimer, an idol of mine, admonishing the literary world for turning their noses up at fairy tales (more on this later), or maybe it was the brilliant words of fairy tale scholar Maria Tatar (who makes me want to disguise myself as a Harvard student so I can take her classes), or perhaps it was the sharp and fantastical (and utterly amazing) story and banter from Kelly Link, my favorite writer. Whatever it was it opened my goggled and life-befuddled mind to the possibilities that are latent and waiting in the fairy tale.

It was no coincidence that this all took place a mere two weeks before Halloween--the ending of one year, one season of life, bespeaks the opening of another.

Two Months! Two! Two!

Has it really been that long, readers? And why did I go away as if to never return?

Basically, I moved house (yet again) and started a new job. My recoup time is long as it is and blogging became something I just couldn't handle on the ever-growing list of things that had to be done yesterday.

What's with this TMI? Just to let you know that I thought of this space often, and now that I'm back, am looking forward to being mistress of the dark-quirky words (at least in my own mind).

And just for a treat (because you're reading this, you loyal dears, and it's Friday and well...there is grading to do) I'm posting this.

It's from my friend Greg, who has one of the best podcasts out there. Seriously. Check him.

Where do you find your inspiration?

This weekend I took part in a wonderful poetry retreat with my good friend and fellow poet, Kat Good-Schiff. We'd been planning this for months--two days of focusing on and nurturing our poetic processes in and around the Boston Metro area. We visited many places in hopes of coaxing couplets out of the dark recesses of our brains but the place that proved to be a goldmine for us, in terms of both inspiration and just plain beauty was the Ware Glass Flower Exhibit at the Harvard Natural History Museum.

Caught in a bygone age of Victorian taxonomy, these specimens are anything but boring or stuffy. The life-sized flowers and their magnified stamens, pistils, ovaries, flowers and fruit are so delicate yet strongly sensual and evoke all sorts of responses in nearly every person who passes by their glass casings. I left with two near-complete poems (and a whole lot of ideas).

Don't believe me? Check it out for yourself: The Glass Flowers. While you're there, read Mark Doty's amazing homage to the exhibit. You can find it in his collection My Alexandria.

Where do you find your inspiration? Leave a comment!