Happy Year of the Horse!

Happy Birthday Pinkie Pie!

"Rhymes & Adventures is a class where you can make supplies for your story. Everyone gets to pick their own story. Or you could pick your favorite cartoon or book and make a story of your own." -- Gemma

Rhymes & Adventures (ages 4 & up)
We will get a sense of the history and liveliness of literature by interacting with numerous versions of selected fairy tales, songs, and rhymes. We will explore the realms of fan fiction, narration, illustration, & dioramas. We will make our own versions of inherited stories and songs; we will envision sequels and extensions. We will read and play and make and write, creating and inhabiting our own rhymes and adventures. [This class incorporates, as they naturally come up, phonics, spelling, word play, parts of speech, grammar, and diagramming sentences.]

We begin Monday, February 3, and still have some space in Rhymes as well as in Works & Lives. Drop ins are also available for those new to Lark and wanting to try it out. Just please give me 48 hours notice.

Reviews of our classes are here.

I have been living in close quarters with a set of beautiful, compelling manuscripts for the last few months. It's been an honor and a pleasure and I am so thankful to their authors for allowing me to consider them for publication by Lark. It has buoyed me up tremendously to be sent such great work; it makes the whole endeavor seem to glow with possibility.

Because we are tiny, I could only choose one manuscript at this time, and it is one that I love so much: Sophie Mayer's kaolin Or, How Does a Girl Like You Get to Be a Girl Like You?

Sophie Mayer's kaolin Or, How Does a Girl Like You Get to Be a Girl Like You? invokes/transcribes the way our ancient mythologies continually play out inside our contemporary worlds/lives and are vastly, deeply beveled, and glowing; it does this in a grounded, specific way; and further it affirms the difficulty and the glory of growing up, of coming fully into ourselves despite/amid all the little and the big janky tyrannies. In celebration and lament it revels in our trashy, mundane ephemera, of which we can't help but make meaning because meaning is there and it is the stuff of our very lives. All this is naturally of a piece with the book's living comprehension of the multitudinousness of our linguistics, of our disciplines, and of our seas.

We will launch a year from now and we will publish a book or two a year after that. Look for us at AWP next month, sharing a table with Chax. We are also having a reading on the Friday midday with our sibling presses, Chax and Dusie. :)

I am beyond pleased to announce Lark's new alliance and collaboration with Studio Grand. Studio Grand is a gorgeous, wise, inclusive new space for the arts & humanities in Oakland, one which strives to reflect "the brilliant and diverse community we live in." Lark Books & Writing Studio is the fruition and integration of so much for me as a writer, citizen, and mother. I regard both ventures as sites of tremendous potential in terms of cultural healing, growth, and celebration. I'm honored by our alliance, and thank Holly Schneider and Amy LaCour of Studio Grand.

I will be leading youth and adult creative writing workshops at Studio Grand as well as curating a new reading series. Stay tuned and read on.

Lark Readings at Studio Grand
Lark Readings at Studio Grand presents readings and talks by vibrant practitioners of poetry, fiction, and cultural criticism and healing. Preceded by wine and treats; followed by music. Second Saturdays of the month, 8 pm. We launch March 8; details soon.

Materials & Cadence: creative writing & literature for young people
Saturdays, 2:30-5 beginning February 15th

Adult Poetry Workshop
Wednesdays, 7:30-10, beginning February 12th

Make your own nature, not the advice of others, your guide in life. –The Pythia, Oracle of Delphi

There is no master, there is no instructor, there is no person to tell you what you must do. –Krishnamurti

No compulsory instruction remains in the soul. –Socrates

Happy new year, everyone!


We should have quite a bit of Lark news to announce in the coming weeks. :)

"Make your own nature, not the advice of others, your guide in life."
--The Pythia, Oracle of Delphi