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by Sarah Benjamin

Since as far as I can remember, premier literature has always been acclaimed with awards and honors. In many ways, a book without an award or recognition of some kind, will never reach the ears and eyes of many people. But obtaining these accolades takes years, the perfection of craft and a dedication to the art of writing. It is with these lofty goals in mind that many English Writing majors, like myself, push their minds to the limit, constantly reshaping and editing sentences and words until we can recite them by heart. It's not only college students that have this obsession, but also anyone that understands that writing is an art form that demands passion and dedication.

Not all of us are granted the leisure of writing for a living, however, and have to fit it into the daily routine of family and work obligations. That's why when I found out about National Novel Writing Month, I was thrilled and encouraged. A deadline was the perfect fire to keep my writing going. But as I sat down and continued to be awed over this, my thoughts expanded to the hundreds of thousands of people who were participating around the world.

In some ways, this was awesome – all these people who want to write! The written word was still alive! But then a horrible thought hit me that continued to linger well into November.

It was probably all crap.

Okay, so I am not so full of myself that I don't realize that I haven't written crap before. All writers probably have written something they would never let the light of day shine on. But I have spent money and time over four years to mold my craft. In my free time I write and read. My icons are not sports players, celebrities or even my parents for that matter. They are novelists, craftsmen and women, writers. They are people such as Margaret Atwood, Raymond Carver, and Virginia Woolf. I do not see writing as an enjoyable hobby I do in my free time. Writing is a lifestyle that many people just don't understand.

“So what do you do for a living?”

“I am a writer.”

“No, really. What do you do for a living?”

“I write.”

So at the end of the month, when all those thousands of people crossed the finish line of 50,000 words, there will be a certain distinction among them months later. There will be those that think they wrote 50,000 words and think it's the best piece of written work they will ever hope to achieve. It may or may not be bound and sold, but inevitably in a few years, there will be something that smells faintly sour in bookstores. Not completely definable or traceable, but present nonetheless.

Then there are those people that crossed the finish line and will look at their work and think, “This is utter crap. I need to fix it.” And months later, years later, they might still be tweaking words and sentences to get it just right. They will have added and taken away. And eventually, when their editor or friends can no longer stand the, “I just want to fix this one thing...just this one thing”, they will grab it from their hands and send it to a publisher. It may take a few rejections before the acceptance, but it is those books that will make it to the award panels. It will be those books that people quote from years later. It will be those books that will beckon other readers to the open arms of the bookstore, their clean, crisp scent warming the blood of the faithful.

National Novel Writing Month is not the end all; to a writer it is only the means to an eventual end. It is the necessary catalyst that writers need to get words on the page. It is what happens after the time is up and the hype dies down that will distinguish a writer from a person who writes.

For more information about how you can participate in National Novel Writing Month or support their community initiatives, go to their website at www.nanowrimo.org.

By Patrick Van Gorder

It could have been taken verbatim from an Orwell novel, or from a George Romero movie. It could have been 1992 Belfast, or 1969 Prague, under the full weight of the Iron Curtain. But it was Pittsburgh, in 2009, with the Democrats in control of Congress and Obama in the oval office. For two days last month, Pittsburgh, my Pittsburgh, was transformed and fortified into a totalitarian police state.

Despite the shiniest brass and brightest stars of the international political community, mass civil repression was not a good look for the Burgh.

Under the pretense of protecting the world leaders meeting downtown for G-20 summit, 5100 police and National Guard from across the nation were brought in to police the generally peaceful streets of metropolitan Pittsburgh. They were armed with the latest, most effective crowd-suppression weaponry, and clothed in the most advanced, most ominous riot armor money could buy. Because We the People were footing the bill, no expense was spared.

Here’s the thing; they weren’t here to prevent a terrorist attack – that’s the job of the Secret Service and the FBI, and you can bet your ass they were in town too. The police were here to discourage protesters, and when necessary suppress them. And suppress them they did, dear reader, with gusto.

I understand that protests can turn violent, and that no one wanted a repeat of the 1999 Seattle WTO debacle. But let me tell you something about the protesters, the hardened cells of dedicated anarchists who were rumored in the media to be squatting anonymously in abandoned buildings, meticulously stockpiling their own feces and AIDS-tainted blood for deployment against the people of our city: they were kids. For the most part, they were passionate, idealistic, disenfranchised kids. A lot of them were University of Pittsburgh students whose crime was to be in the wrong part of their own campus at the wrong time. One Pitt undergrad was arrested for letting her fellow students out of the clouds of tear gas, into the safety of her dormitory.

I’m not saying that that there shouldn’t have been a police presence, but in this case the crackdown did not fit the crime. Despite all the hubbub, a paltry $50,000 of damage was done, almost half of it by one 21-year-old jagoff from California. This is a ridiculously small amount when compared to the millions spent by the city to stifle the protests. It also doesn’t quite justify the arrests, the manhandlings, or the pepper spray. It doesn’t justify the prolonged exposure of the protesters, journalists, and bystanders alike to the LRAD sonic cannon, a weapon designed for use against Somali pirates and Iraqi insurgents. Thursday was the first time it had ever been used on American citizens.

What I would like to know is why almost 200 people were arrested in essentially non-violent protests of the G-20, while only 68 people were arrested in the “festivities” following the Superbowl victory in February of this year. At the football riots, the crowds were much larger and much more destructive: I saw mobs rush police lines, tear down bus stops, break windows, start fires, even flip over cars.

What’s at stake here is larger than the tainted records of those arrested, or the shattered windows of Pamela’s Diner: what are at stake are constitutional rights central to the liberty that we associate with being American citizens. As those who were arrested for failing to disperse from what the Police labeled as “unlawful assemblies,” will testify, rights are not rights if they can be revoked when convenient.

We live in sophisticated and uncertain times, in a world rife with crime, violence, pestilence, and inequality. We need the police, to protect us from the coldblooded brutalities that people have always committed against one another.

But the strength of a society can be measured in its tolerance of dissent, and we need the protesters too, the radicals; we need the pacifists, the anarchists, the communists, the environmentalists, and all the other –ists that collectively compose the vibrant portrait of American intellectual freedom and expression. We need them to give voice to the voiceless, and as our President is so fond of saying, “speak truth to power.”
We need them out there to remind us that the world is far from perfect, and that there are more important things than Superbowl rings. We need them out there, fists raised rebelliously in the face of tear gas and billy clubs and sonic cannons, a defiant, flesh-and-blood measurement of the force we as a society are willing to use against our own in the name of security.

Email me at Patrick.vangorder@gmail.com

It’s as simple as a broken baguette with goat cheese. Sautéed eggplant smashed with roasted garlic, basil, and sundried tomatoes. Bright yellow curry vivid against a white porcelain bowl. It is a smoothed tablecloth, the snapping of a plum’s skin under your teeth, your mother’s hands. It is sensation, communication, sociology. It is me remembering you every time I bite into a grilled cheese sandwich.

Food has the ability to open lines of communication, comfort, heal, and nourish. As famous French epicure Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said, “Tell me what you eat, I’ll tell you who you are.” What we eat and how we eat it is symbolic of where we came from, our value system, our personality, even how we relate to others. I write about food because it is a comfort and a pleasure, and because writing about food is writing my memory.

I’ve been putting pen to paper for as long as I can remember. I recently found a notebook of some of my earliest stories, and even then, my future writing faults and strengths peek through misspellings and story lines which read like Nancy Drew on vacation with the Boxcar Children. I’m a sucker for commas in a series and alliteration. I may edge on excessive, Dickensian sentences. I’m horrible at plot and worse at dialogue. But description. Exposition. Rhythm. Words and the way they sound together. You’d think I would have settled for poetry, but too much exposure to bad poetry at an early age turned me off. And though short fiction is the genre closest to my heart, at the painful rate of maybe two completed short stories a year, it didn’t seem like a reliable life option.

As a young writer, finding your niche can be as easy as knowing that you need to breathe, or as complicated as knowing that you love to write and need to write but don’t know what it is you like writing best. I used to joke that my three favorite things in life were eating, writing, and traveling, and I wanted a job that would pay for all three. I made this joke for so long that when the time came to start thinking about what I wanted to do after college graduation, I didn’t seriously consider food writing as a legitimate pursuit. It was the job I’d do if I didn’t have to worry about money (though for a long time, there was a toss up between food writing and starring in Cats). I didn’t think about the fact that in High School I had a subscription to Saveur rather than Cosmo, that my favorite thing to do in other countries was go to the grocery store, that at the age of thirteen I lectured a friend on the demerits of hot dogs. And especially that most of the memories I had were centered around food, in some form or another.

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why I couldn’t actually pursue my dream job. Food writing is a niche, certainly, but a growing one both high- and low-brow, as demonstrated by the infiltration of celebrity chefs into our daily lives. The growing niche is nice, because it means that someone out there wants to read what I want to write. So I started a blog, an experiment for a class on food writing I created with a friend of mine for a senior year independent study. My first entries were rough. Very factual. Very essayistic. And the professor leading our independent study noticed. I may not get her admonishment exactly right, but abridged it reads, “There’s no soul.”

Earlier that day I had made an absolutely perfect lunch, toasted baguette with butter and chili-infused sardines. It was so good and so perfect for the moment that I thought—maybe I could write about this—but dismissed the idea, because I wouldn’t have enough to “say” for a blog entry. On the short walk back to my dorm room after our meeting, I realized that writing about food is capturing the memory of sense, not detailing facts. So I wrote how I felt about that sardine toast: “It was exactly what I wanted without knowing that I'd wanted it. The softness of the sardines, their saltiness, that quick, subtle hit of chili and the richness of melted butter on crisped bread—sigh. It was delicious.”

Clearly nothing profound. But it was a breakthrough for me in my relationship to food writing. As I began to explore writing my visceral response to food, I saw that food connected people, and food writing interpreted the memory of that relationship. Food writing, however, is incomplete without the food reader. When I write about food, I want to share a part of myself with that anonymous reader, who I hope will be able to see what I see, feel what I feel, and taste what I taste. In a more abstract sense, then, food writing, like food, brings people together.

I love people who love food, because people who love food love living inclusively. They are open to new tastes and experiences, linger over dinner like conversations, and value the present as a flavor never to be recreated quite the same way. I choose to write about food because I want to remember each experience and share it with those I love most. The word companion, after all, means those who break bread together.

Check out Lyz’s food blog: http://eatmeanddrinkme.wordpress.com/

This week, SterlingHouse Publisher author Carlotta G. Holton was awarded third place in the Best Book category by the National Federation of Press Women for her third book Vampire Resurrection. NFPW is a nationwide organization of professional women and men in careers across the communications spectrum. This is the second major award Carlotta has won this year. In January, Vampire Resurrection was awarded first place by the New Jersey Press Women’s Association. The NFPW is part of the coalition founding the National Women’s History Museum, is an active participant in the Council of National Journalism Organizations and is part of the coalition supporting the Library of Congress Center of the Book Reading Promotion Partners. Congratulations Carlotta on winning this prestigious award! To view the book trailer for Vampire Resurrection, click here. To purchase Vampire Resurrection, click here.

Karen Bence, author of Midnight Revelations, was awarded the 2008 bronze award for Horror from ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards. Winners were announced last Friday on the floor of BookExpo America. To order Midnight Revelations click here. To view the book trailer, click here. Congratulations, Karen! More information on ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards can be found by clicking here.

Cliff Fazzolari, author of several novels including his newest release Blind Spot, has been awarded an Honorable Mention at the 2009 Beach Book Festival for his nonfiction title Counting on a Miracle. Counting on a Miracle is the true story of Cliff’s son, Jake, and the medical emergency that threatened to tear Jake’s family apart. To purchase Counting on a Miracle and other books by Cliff Fazzolari, click here. Congratulations, Cliff!

Ron Janson, author of the Red Money and the 2009 release What Is Hers, has been awarded an Honorable Mention at the 2009 Beach Book Festival for the thriller What Is Hers. If Miram’s ex-husband thought he could get away with dumping his wife for a younger, more beautiful version of herself, he was wrong…very wrong! To find out how Miriam gets her revenge, click here to purchase What Is Hers. To view the video book trailer for Ron’s first novel Red Money, click here. Congratulations, Ron!

A full list of 2009 Beach Book Festival winners may be found by clicking here.