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Rainstorm Press has accepted my NY-noir crime novel, Nobody Wakes Up Pretty, estimated pub date May 29, 2012. Please click on the title for more info.
I'm back from the snowy Midwest where buildings are heated (unlike my apartment) and it was heaven to walk around my hotelroom in Chicago naked, ah, warm air on my skin! And where I did writing for social justice workshops at the Valparaiso University (Indiana) celebration for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and for interested adults at the University of Chicago's Graham School. Hoping to have time to complete blog entries about the week--including Hector's work, the new documentary Beneath the Blindfold (about torture survivors) by Kathy Berger and Ines Sommer. Got to get this done before I leave for...Bolivia!
Edson Quezada of the NGO Educar es fiesta has invited me to Cochabamba, Bolivia to share my techniques. Educar es fiesta works with street kids and others who don't have safe housing as well as with parents and local teachers. Many of the families are Quechua-speaking. They've arrived in the city driven by poverty and seeking work but lack urban skills and education. My workshops are aimed at getting people to write who think they can't, often because they've been told they can't or have even been labeled
illiterate.I
The Cochabamba project will reprise the Spanish-language workshops I offered in May in Barrancabermeja, Colombia where I joined artists and activists from all over Latin America and other parts of the world. It was a wonderful time enjoying and learning from performances and discussions and even leading a series of workshops at the Festival Internacional de Teatro por la Paz. Hector Aristizabal performed Viento Nocturno, the Spanish-language version of our play, Nightwind, and led a Theatre of the Oppressed workshop along with Till Bauman who flew in from Berlin. You can read my article about the festival and the role of theatre in peacemaking here. And about women in the crossfire as well as more background on some of the people mentioned in that piece here.
My short story, "Sin-Tra-La!", appears now in Willow Springs along with a feature profile. My lengthy essay on the juvenile in/justice system is available on-line, published April 15 by Connotation Press (and reposted in August in the special compilation issue). You can read it here.
A condensed and simplified version of my play "God's Flea" took on Arizona's anti-immigrant legislation as part of New Carpa Theater Company’s “Performing 1070: A Short-Play Festival”, on March 30, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., at the Annual Border Justice Conference at ASU West, and on March 31, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., on the House lawn of the Arizona State Capitol after rabid State Senator Russell Pearce didn't succeed in banning the performance. Doug Glover published the full-length version here. And another of my immigration plays, Termitary, set in a detention center, was named by The Internationalists in NYC as a finalist in the global playwriting competition on the subject of Boundaries. In another production by The Internationalists, Lorenzo Montanini performed my short interactive play, Ave Atque Vale, via Skype from his home in Rome for an audience in NYC on November 12. (And Lorenzo, who is a terrific actor, was kind enough to perform for me before the big event.)
The Blessing Next to the Wound, co-authored with Hector, received Honorable Mention from the International Latino Book Awards and was a reading selection chosen in 2010 by the Amnesty International book club in Pasadena. In September 2011, Amnesty International US headquarters included it in a list of suggested readings for Banned Books Week. The Blessing Next to the Wound is Hector's true story of surviving civil war, torture, and more in Colombia and how he has worked to heal himself and others by engaging the imagination through activism and art. Hector himself has been chosen to receive the 2012 Rene Otto Castillo Award for political theatre. His nonprofit organization, ImaginAction, takes his methods around the world. Our book is available from Lantern Books or your favorite bookstore or on-line bookseller. It is also available in e-book format:Amazon's Kindle: All other readers:
Do check out the Books page for information on my past books (esp. fiction) and links to stories of
mine that can be read on-line-- and the Coming Up page for events and recent publications. Workshops and Teaching will give you information about the programs and manuscript critiques I offer. A quick link to my blog is here. (The Wordpress blog, started for the upcoming publication of Nobody Wakes Up Pretty, has similar blog posts.)
Thanks!
contact me: DianeLefer@gmail.com
Rainstorm Press has accepted my NY-noir crime novel, Nobody Wakes Up Pretty, estimated pub date May 29, 2012. Please click on the title for more info.
I'm back from the snowy Midwest where buildings are heated (unlike my apartment) and it was heaven to walk around my hotelroom in Chicago naked, ah, warm air on my skin! And where I did writing for social justice workshops at the Valparaiso University (Indiana) celebration for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and for interested adults at the University of Chicago's Graham School. Hoping to have time to complete blog entries about the week--including Hector's work, the new documentary Beneath the Blindfold (about torture survivors) by Kathy Berger and Ines Sommer. Got to get this done before I leave for...Bolivia!
Edson Quezada of the NGO Educar es fiesta has invited me to Cochabamba, Bolivia to share my techniques. Educar es fiesta works with street kids and others who don't have safe housing as well as with parents and local teachers. Many of the families are Quechua-speaking. They've arrived in the city driven by poverty and seeking work but lack urban skills and education. My workshops are aimed at getting people to write who think they can't, often because they've been told they can't or have even been labeled
illiterate.I
The Cochabamba project will reprise the Spanish-language workshops I offered in May in Barrancabermeja, Colombia where I joined artists and activists from all over Latin America and other parts of the world. It was a wonderful time enjoying and learning from performances and discussions and even leading a series of workshops at the Festival Internacional de Teatro por la Paz. Hector Aristizabal performed Viento Nocturno, the Spanish-language version of our play, Nightwind, and led a Theatre of the Oppressed workshop along with Till Bauman who flew in from Berlin. You can read my article about the festival and the role of theatre in peacemaking here. And about women in the crossfire as well as more background on some of the people mentioned in that piece here.
My short story, "Sin-Tra-La!", appears now in Willow Springs along with a feature profile. My lengthy essay on the juvenile in/justice system is available on-line, published April 15 by Connotation Press (and reposted in August in the special compilation issue). You can read it here.
A condensed and simplified version of my play "God's Flea" took on Arizona's anti-immigrant legislation as part of New Carpa Theater Company’s “Performing 1070: A Short-Play Festival”, on March 30, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., at the Annual Border Justice Conference at ASU West, and on March 31, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., on the House lawn of the Arizona State Capitol after rabid State Senator Russell Pearce didn't succeed in banning the performance. Doug Glover published the full-length version here. And another of my immigration plays, Termitary, set in a detention center, was named by The Internationalists in NYC as a finalist in the global playwriting competition on the subject of Boundaries. In another production by The Internationalists, Lorenzo Montanini performed my short interactive play, Ave Atque Vale, via Skype from his home in Rome for an audience in NYC on November 12. (And Lorenzo, who is a terrific actor, was kind enough to perform for me before the big event.)
The Blessing Next to the Wound, co-authored with Hector, received Honorable Mention from the International Latino Book Awards and was a reading selection chosen in 2010 by the Amnesty International book club in Pasadena. In September 2011, Amnesty International US headquarters included it in a list of suggested readings for Banned Books Week. The Blessing Next to the Wound is Hector's true story of surviving civil war, torture, and more in Colombia and how he has worked to heal himself and others by engaging the imagination through activism and art. Hector himself has been chosen to receive the 2012 Rene Otto Castillo Award for political theatre. His nonprofit organization, ImaginAction, takes his methods around the world. Our book is available from Lantern Books or your favorite bookstore or on-line bookseller. It is also available in e-book format:Amazon's Kindle: All other readers:
Do check out the Books page for information on my past books (esp. fiction) and links to stories of
mine that can be read on-line-- and the Coming Up page for events and recent publications. Workshops and Teaching will give you information about the programs and manuscript critiques I offer. A quick link to my blog is here. (The Wordpress blog, started for the upcoming publication of Nobody Wakes Up Pretty, has similar blog posts.)
Thanks!
contact me: DianeLefer@gmail.com
