Chip Livingston

Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category

Reading under the Thunderbird

Welcoming a new class of fearless students into the IAIA Low-Rez MFA Program this July, I shared a few tales before Ken White and Toni Jensen took the stage. An amazing week of readings, talks and classes by terrific students, faculty, and visitors.

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Terrific night (and week) of readings at Regis U and at Book Bar,

which hosted me, Lori Ostlund, and Mario Acevedo in July. 

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I had three nieces able to attend and hear/see what Uncle Chip does

(so I kept the reading material PG-13 🙂 ) 

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. . . Each year the editors at CUTBANK,
feature a portfolio celebrating the work of GLBTQ writers and artists
ALL ACCOUNTS & MIXTURES.

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. . . . This year, they featured three short pieces of mine:
–  “A Faster Scalpel”
–  “Interview Questions for a Debut Novelist with Whom You May Have Fallen in Love While Preparing for the Interview”
–  “Piss & Vinegar.”

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Thanks, CUTBANK.

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TODAVÍA ….  Para Lauren y Fede

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Much love and happy memories in Cabo Polonio, Uruguay, with unknowing lovebirds.

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Many thanks to Jamie Figueroa, Yago Cura, Jim Heavily and others at Hinchas de Poesia for helping

this poem find a home in issue 18.

And while you’re there, make sure to read:

 –  “Ghosts” by Paige Buffington and

 –  “Compulsion” by Casandra Lopez

and to view:

 –   Guillermo Filice Castro’s “Reflections.“

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“You Would Have Killed Him Anyway”

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Many thanks to the publishers and editors of 

ABOUT PLACE Vol. IV for including my poem, “You Would Have Killed Him Anyway,” alongside such fine, beautiful writing.

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Visit the issue here and to go directly to my poem, enter here. 😀

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SWIMMING TO THE TEMPLE OF ISIS

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an essay/short memoir published on The James Franco Review.

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issue guest edited by the fantastic Elissa Washuta.

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You can read the full text here: SWIMMING TO THE TEMPLE OF ISIS.

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PALO BORRACHO …… Drunk Stick Tree

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a poem remembering two trees on Charrua in Montevideo and the birds that filled them.

… on the Academy of American Poets’ website.

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…………………….Prairie Schooner’s Winter 2015 issue was thoughtfully and beautifully edited by one of my favorite people and poets: the incomparable Natalie Diaz.

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…………………….I’m beyond honored to share the pages with fellow IAIA’ers, Joaquin Zihuatanejo, b. william bearheart, Joan Kane, Sherman Alexie,  James Thomas Stevens, Jon Davis, and Chee Brossy, among other favorites including Aaron Smith, Patricia Smith, Alberto Rios, Afaa Weaver, Cornelius Eady, Trevino Brings Plenty, Dean Rader, Dorianne Laux, Eileen Myles, Matthew Dickman, and Terrance Hayes, and more!

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……………………from the intro by Natalie Diaz:   ..“Like bulls we are. When yoked, we are beautiful. When refusing to be yoked, we are wild and whippable, butcherable. ...”

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Visit the journal’s website here: Prairie Schooner.

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LUCIA BERLIN: A STUDENT’S MIRACLE

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With the heralded publication this year of her selected stories, A Manual for Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin has been thrust into the literary spotlight more than a decade after her death. Because her stories are autobiographical, readers are peering into her past, following her many lives, and perhaps wondering about what’s left unsaid, unwritten between the lines. As Berlin’s former student and ardent friend, I can assure the curious that she wrote it all down. She didn’t leave anything out. She would have called that mystery inessential.

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Some of her other students spoke to me about what they remembered most about Lucia and her workshops.

LitHub published the memories here.

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AWP 2015 kicked off with a celebration of indigenous readers at Native Grounds Cafe in Minneapolis, MN.

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In the same room as — and sharing the stage with — Allison Hedge Coke, Linda Rodrigues, Orlando White, Sara Marie Ortiz, Bojan Louis, Trevino Brings Plenty.

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This was an event for the record books, and I hope someone recorded it for the audio files. Terrific!