Davy Rothbart, creator of FOUND Magazine, has made a career for the last decade of collecting submissions of found notes, letters and photographs and publishing them in FOUND’s annual issue. With the release of his first memoir essay collection, My Heart is an Idiot, the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based writer reveals in tale after madcap tale that is own life is actually quite a lot like an issue of FOUND.
Posts Tagged: Literature
Author Has Advice For Zen Skeptics
When Rachel Neumann says “skeptic,” she means skeptic. “Reverence is difficult for me,” admits the author of ‘Not Quite Nirvana: A Skeptic’s Journey to Mindfulness,’ who will speak at Bookshop Santa Cruz Oct. 11.
Why TED Is a Viral Sensation
I met TED at a time in my life when everything felt at once possible and unattainable. It was my second year of college, and I was jaded. I had spent the year before immersed in my classes, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I had the power to make a mark. But with all the negativity in the news, and too much political spin in my volunteer experiences, I ended up feeling more powerless and ineffectual than ever. Like so many bright-eyed younguns, I wanted to make a change, but didn’t even know where to start—or if it would even matter in the end. I needed help believing in humanity again.
Local Poets, Local Inspiration: Kelsey Forest
Santa Cruz writer Kelsey Forest inaugurates the return of ‘Local Poets, Local Inspiration.’
Dickens Universe at UCSC
The Dickens Universe brings together around 300 Dickens scholars and fans for one week of full-time Dickens immersion, focused on a different Dickens novel each year. Daily lectures and scholarly discussions are a staple of the event, as are tea parties, parties hosted by graduate students and even a Victorian dance party that, last year, featured three costumed Miss Havishams (the wealthy spinster in Great Expectations).
A Labor of Love
“I got my first copy of Be Not Content in 1972, shortly after taking a job as an assistant professor at a small college in upstate New York,” writes cyberpunk novelist Rudy Rucker, who’s reissuing Billy Craddock’s opus. “I quickly began to idolize Craddock. I had my own memories of the psychedelic revolution, and when reading Be Not Content I felt—’Yes. This is the way it was. This guy got it right.’”
‘The Best ’60s Memoir Ever’
There was little to suggest that the relaxed and easygoing guy behind the cash register at the motorcycle shop on Mission Street would be rediscovered 30 years later by a major author and hailed as one of the most important voices of a pivotal era.
Excerpt From ‘Be Not Content’
“The night was all joyous discoveries, many of which brought me almost to the point of tears, to laughter and astonished wows regularly. Whole new horizons. I felt humble and honored to be in a room with and listening to such enlightened powers. I felt in flash after flash that I’d never been so high before, never so aware and never—at least not since a long, long half-remembered time ago—so hopeful and happy.”
Santa Cruz Bird Whisperer Tells All
The Westside is foggy and cold when Jon Young and I meet on Delaware Avenue, at the back entrance to Natural Bridges State Beach, for a morning lesson in bird language. With him is Josh Lane, a mentor at Young’s Bonny Doon–based 8 Shields Institute, a nonprofit promoting connection with nature.
The Creative Process Gets Its Closeup, Unretouched
What impulse drives people to create? And who chooses such an (often) unappreciated, solitary voyage in the first place? These are two of the central questions explored over a 12-year period by essayist and author Tom Bissell, whose new nonfiction collection, Magic Hours: Essays On Creators and Creation (Believer Books, $14), highlights a cross-section of writers, artists and filmmakers —from the relatively obscure to the relatively famous—all connected by their ability to produce something from nothing.
