Maker, Mentor, Muse Writing Salon: Small Seed, Big Harvest with Elizabeth Costello
Sun Feb 9, 2025 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM PST
Online, Zoom
Description
Maker, Mentor, Muse & Alta Mesa Center for the Arts Presents
Small Seed, Big Harvest
led by Elizabeth Costello
Sunday, February 9th - 4pm-5:30pm PDT
Zoom
Is there an image or an idea that comes to you when you ask yourself "What is the story of my family?" Perhaps there is an object, a fragment of cloth, a tchotchke on the mantel, a line in a letter that you found in a drawer. A gift that was given when you were a child that you have been unable to part with. Such objects or images or even ideas have tremendous power for you, they might be a kind of chorus in the song of yourself that you are always singing, consciously or unconsciously. So how can they serve you in your work as a writer? How can you share that power? In this salon, we’ll work together to turn the small potent things that mean so much to us into plotlines or throughlines for stories and poems (or songs or dances or...). Let’s get together and make a big batch of soup from these symbolic soup starters!
Price for this salon is on a sliding scale: $15-$45.
About Elizabeth Costello
Elizabeth Costello is a writer and arts organizer living in Portland, Oregon. She works (remotely) as editor for UC Berkeley. She holds a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Barnard College, an M.F.A. in writing from the University of San Francisco, and a teacher training certification from the Yoga Room in Berkeley. She has traveled widely and served as a writing advisor for graduate students and young people incarcerated in San Francisco Juvenile Hall. In recognition of her creative work, she has been a finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship and the Pirate’s Alley William Faulkner Award, and has twice been offered a scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. She has written about dance, film, theater, and poetry for SF Weekly, 7x7, and, more recently, for an exhibition catalog for painter Kristen Diederich’s show with Portland’s after / time collective. Her poetry has been published in venues including Crab Orchard Review, Fourteen Hills, and Colossus: Home, an anthology that supports the Oakland-based fair housing organization Moms4Housing. With painter Ruth Meijer, she co-founded the Ekphraestival, which brings visual arts and poets together to create and share new work during April, National Poetry Month. Her poetry chapbook, RELIC, is available at Bird and Beckett Books in San Francisco. Her debut novel, The Good War, (pub date January 28, 2025) is available now for preorder. Publishers Weekly calls The Good War “dark and intense…lyrical…Moody and atmospheric, this gritty tale is worth a look.” Find out more at elizabethscostello.com or follow her on Instagram @mameozenfant or Facebook @Elizabeth Costello.
About Elizabeth Costello's The Good War: In 1948, Louise Galle, a chemist and former Rosie-the-Riveter, is pursued by a mysterious veteran who brings a question from her deceased husband, with whom he was a prisoner of war in the Philippines. In New York City in 1964, Louise’s daughter Charlotte eschews a conventional path — falling for the butch lesbian next door and discovering an undeniable call to make art. The Good War unfolds over the course of watershed summers in the lives of two very different women who share a desire to make it new, even as they reckon with painful truths. Atmospheric, lyrical, and psychologically astute, The Good War is for anyone who knows that there is always more to the story of what America was and is.
Maker, Mentor, Muse is a teaching platform founded in 2022 by Mary Volmer, Maw Shein Win, and Dawn Angelicca Barcelona. Hailing from three distinct backgrounds, generations, and spiritual traditions we believe community is essential to building a satisfying and sustainable literary life and that true success requires balancing all three artistic roles: maker, mentor, muse. In collaboration with Alta Mesa Center for the Arts, sponsored by Orinda Community Church, we are building a place where artists embrace practices that honor process, spiritual growth, connection, and ongoing community with other writers.