The Mexican Revolution at the Center for Big Bend Studies Annual Conference at Sul Ross State University

[[ WASHI & ULI, stop those suitcases! ]]

I have been visiting Alpine, Texas for the annual Center for Big Bend Studies conference to talk about Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual. Check out the conference, which is rich with archaeology and history and more on the Big Bend but also the wider region of West Texas and encompassing parts of the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Coahuila, here. 

UPDATE November 2017: The PDF of my paper, "The Secret Book by Francisco I. Madero, Leader of the 1910 Mexican Revolution," which is an expanded transcript of my talk about my book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual, can be downloaded here.  See also a brief video about four exceedingly rare books. In November 2017 I will be presenting "John Bigelow, Jr.: Officer with the Tenth Cavalry, Military Intellectual, and Nexus Between West and East." The link for that paper will be posted soon.

The keynote speaker was my amiga, M.M. McAllen, author of the extraordinary narrative history Maximilian and Carlota: Europe's Last Empire in Mexico. (Listen to our extra-bacon-on-top-crunchy conversation about the whole enchilada of Mexico's Second Empire / French Intervention for my "Conversations with Other Writers" occasional podcast series here.)

Funny, my Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution has zip to do with the Big Bend of Far West Texas. But the Mexican Revolution is a topic of perennial interest in this region; many battles and other incidents of the Mexican Revolution took place along the border in the Big Bend region, especially in the years after President Francisco I. Madero's assassination in 1913. 

UPDATE: Biographers International January 2017 Newsletter Q & A with Yours Truly about Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual. Read it here.

Moreover, it so happens that I am at work on a book about Far West Texas. It won't be a book of straight history, however, but an interweaving of personal narrative, history and reporting, and maybe the kitchen sink, too, in the style of my book about Mexico's Baja California peninsula, Miraculous Air. 

Herewith a batch of posts on this blog about the Big Bend:

The Strangely Beautiful Sierra Madre Astrobleme (What's an Astrobleme?)

Cyberflanerie: Solitario Dome Edition

A Visit to Swan House

We Have Seen the Lights

Over Burro Mesa

GIFs of Far West Texas

Xavier González (1898-1993), "Moonlight Over the Chisos," and a Visit to Mexico City's Antigua Academia de San Carlos

On the Trail of the Rock Art in the Lower Pecos

Plus you will find 20 of a projected 24 "Marfa Mondays" podcasts, mainly interviews, posted to date, including Charles Angell in the Big Bend; Lisa Fernandes at the Pecos Rodeo; Mary Baxter on Painting the Big Bend; Avram Dumitrescu, and Artist in Alpine; and Cowboy Songs by Cowboys and an Interview with Michael Stevens. >>> Listen in anytime.

More anon.

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here. 

Book review: 

Felix A. Sommerfeld, Spymaster in Mexico, 1908-1914 by Heribert von Feilitzsch

Book Review: 

The Comanche Empire by Pekka Hamalainen

Marfa Mondays #13

Looking an Mexico in New Ways: An Interview with John Tutino

Marfa Mondays #17

Under Sleeping Lion: Lonn Taylor in Fort Davis

A Banquet of Literary Translations for Travelers & ALTA Fabulosity

This post is dedicated to two of my favorite Spanish language translators, both ever and always the very souls of kindness and dedication and generosity, who could not be at ALTA this year: Cola Franzen and Margaret Sayers Peden. 

Dear reader, if you are at all interested in literary translation, whether you are the shyest of maybe-might-want-to-try-its or, shall we say, the Grand Poo-Bah of Literary Translation Theory Crunchiness, if you haven't already, take a look at the excellent work of ALTA, the American Literary Translators Association and their annual conference. For greater national coverage, the annual fall conference changes venue from year to year. In 2014 it was held in Milwaukee, last year, Tucson; this year, Oakland, California; next year (brrrrr) Minneapolis. 

Herewith, my recap of ALTA Oakland 2016:

[[ WHEREABOUTSPRESS.COM ]]

Voila, the historic Whereabouts Press editors photo taken on October 7, 2016 in Oakland, after the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) Conference panel celebrating the Literary Travel Companion series-- and a dangerously caloric lunch of fried chicken and waffles at Miss Ollie's. From left: Jill Gibian, editor of Argentina; Alexis Levitin, editor of Brazil; William Rodarmor, editor of France and French Feast; our guru, visionary founding publisher of the Whereabouts Press Travelers Literary Companion series, David Peattie; and, far right, Yours Truly, editor of Mexico. 

The Travelers Literary Companions paperbacks are not guidebooks, but carefully curated collections of writing about a country by writers from that country, many in English translation for the first time. If you are planning any travels, for real or via armchair, to any of these countries or, say, Chile, Costa Rica, Greece, Israel, Italy, Vietnam and so many more... any of one of these "travelers literary companions" deserves space-- and it won't take up much-- in your hand luggage.

> Listen in to my interview with NPR about Mexico: A Literary Traveler's Companion, and read some of the stories by Araceli Ardón's "It Is Nothing of Mine";  Mónica Lavín's "Day and Night" (both my translations) and Geoff Hargreaves' translation of Ricardo Elizondo Elizondo's "The Green Bottle" at 
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5317783


MORE ALTA FABULOSITY

[[ JESSE LEE KERCHEVAL'S LATEST
TRANSLATIONS OF URUGUAYAN POETRY ]]

The other highlight for me was the chance to see my amigas Patricia Dubrava and Clare Sullivan, among so many others, old friends and new:

Pamela Carmel; 

Ellen Cassedy, who has a new book out of translations from the Yiddish (more about that anon); 

Barbara Goldberg; 

Susan Harris of Words Without Borders; 

Jesse Lee Kercheval, who continues doing wonders for Uruguayan poetry; 

Dennis Maloney of White Pine Press; 

Amanda Powell; 

Jessica Powell; 

Mahmud Rahman; 

Carolina de Robertis;

Zack Rogow, co-author of the play Colette Uncensored and blogger extraordinaire at Advice for Writers (see his take on the Nobel Prize for Bob Dylan) ;

Alberto Ruy Sánchez;

Mark Statman; 

and, surely having left aside a football team's worth of excellent people, I must now conclude with the deftly brilliant translator of Mexican poetry Mark Weiss.

One especially memorable panel included the reading of works by the late poet Eduardo Chirinos by his translator, G.J. Racz. Check out Still Life with Flies, published by the elegant Dos Madres Press.

For the Spanish bilingual readings I read an excerpt from my translation "The Apaches of Kiev," a hot-off-the-blog short story by Mexican writer Agustín Cadena.

PS. TheBoxWalla.com guy said that where it's happening is Instagram. Oh well! 

> Read Patricia Dubrava's recap on the conference, "Only at ALTA"

MY EVER-GROUNDING TAKEAWAY

The longer I am at this "business" I find that behind all the kazoos and flutes and trumpets and drumrolls and Potemkinesquerie, literary translation is, in the end, a labor of love. It calls certain poets and dreamers, for a time. For some, literary translation becomes a lifelong path, a yoga. For others, their enthusiasm lasts until their illusions are peeled away and/or their energies are spent, and for most, that will be quickly. What I said in a previous blog post on literary travel writing also applies to literary translation:

I would tell any young writer getting started today that if you want the freedom to write things you will be proud of, first find a reliable alternative income source and from there-- always living below your means-- build and diversify your sources of income away from the labor market. (Getting an MFA so you can teach in a creative writing program? That might have made a smidge of sense two decades ago. Now you'd be better off starting a dog grooming business, and I am not joking.) Yes, if you are brilliant, hard-working and lucky, you might one day make a living from your creative writing. But why squander your creative energy for your best work worrying about generating income from, specifically, writing? Quality and market response only occasionally coincide. Jaw-dropping mysteries abound. 

(Did I mention, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize?)

In other words, barriers to entry in most of the arts are lower than a slug's basement, while those artists with staying power beyond a first book, first show, first whatever, prove to be few. The big hiding-in-plain-sight secret is that money may provide an advantage, but it's vital only at the bare, survival-level. Somehow, even billionaires with a yen to make art find their days and weeks and months and years gummed up with hithering and thithering; yet throughout the history of the book, writers with tremendous, even horrendous obligations and/or challenges, whether from work or family or health or in war-time, have managed to write, to make art. The War of Art, as Steven Pressfield titles his book, requires personal resources more powerful than mere money.

OK, but, dear reader, don't let this natter about love & yoga & the war of art stop you from buying a Whereabouts Press book from the Traveler's Literary Companion series!! I am proud to say that Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion is still in-print on its 10th anniversary and available from any one of a number of online and bricks-and-mortar booksellers. And here's hoping that Patricia Dubrava and I can put together the collection of our translations (some hers, some mine) of Agustín Cadena's short stories and find it the publisher he well deserves.

More anon.

*   *   *

MISC UPDATES FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF LABORS OF LOVE

Almost finished with my translation of a most unusual and poetic collection of short stories by Mexican writer Rose Mary Salum... And almost finished with Marfa Mondays podcast 21... Stay tuned... 

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Café San Martín: Reading Mexican Poet Agustín Cadena 

at the Café Passé in Tucson, Arizona

"Translating the Other Side":
Transcript of my Remarks for the 
American Literary Translators Association Conference Panel
Translating Across the Border:
Tucson, 2015

Why Translate? 
The Case of the President of Mexico's Secret Book

Santa Fe 2016: Women Writing the West and Allá

Dear reader, if you are a writer who has not yet attended a writer's conference, may I suggest that, whether you are a beginner or a battle-scarred multi-prize-winning veteran in this "business," a conference can be one of the best investments you make in yourself. Plus, if you have even a wee bit of extrovert in you, it's a gab fest.  

That said, over the years I've participated in so many writers' conferences, most blur together in a sort of schmoo of vaguely remembered panels and jostling in the corridors and too much coffee and overcrowded ladies rooms... I sometimes wondered, ho hum, what could possibly be new? 

Well, a couple of years ago it occurred to me that it would be both new and apt for me to look west; after all, the majority of writers conferences I had attended up until then had been on the East Coast, and I am at work on a book about Far West Texas. Plus, my agent, bless her heart, passed away, so I might need another one (whether I do or not remains an open question)-- the agent pitch sessions at a writers conference are always valuable if for no other reason than to practice pitching. 

After attending the 2014 Women Writing the West conference in Golden, Colorado, I learned so much and met so many accomplished and friendly and indeed, women-writing the-west writers, including several Texans, that I hoped to attend another. Finally this October it was possible, and that meant a journey to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

My participation this year was on the panel "Writing Across Borders and Cultures" with Dawn Wink and Kathryn Ferguson and I gave a workshop on "Podcasting for Writers." 

> Transcript of my remarks for "Writing Across Borders and Cultures" here.
> Handouts for the workshop "Podcasting for Writers" here and here.

PEYOTE EXPERT STACY B. SCHAEFER,  TACO MAVEN DENISE CHAVEZ, ACQUISITIONS LIBRARIAN ALICE KOBER, RIGHT-TO-WRITER JULIA CAMERON, NAVAJO POET LUCI TAPAHONSO, & MORE GALORE

One of the highlights for me was meeting anthropologist Stacy B. Schaefer, whose biography of Amada Cardenas, Amada's Blessings from the Peyote Gardens of South Texas (University of New Mexico Press) was a finalist for the Women Writing the West Willa Award for Scholarly Nonfiction. Of course my book in-progress about Trans-Pecos Texas will include some discussion on peyote, since its habitat, mainly in South Texas and Northern Mexico, includes a patch of the Big Bend, which is in the Trans-Pecos. Schaefer is one of the leading scholars on peyote and her story of the first federally-licensed peyote dealer Amada Cardenas is essential reading for anyone who would seek to understand the history and ritual of the Native American Church, as well as a vital part of US-Mexico border culture and history.


Another highlight was Denise Chavez's magnificently theatrical luncheon keynote, a reading from her book, A Taco Testimony. 

In the photo below, to the left of Chavez, in blue, sits acquisitions librarian Alice Kober, who later gave a talk entitled "Why Would Librarians Buy Your Book— Or Not?" (Oh dear, those "nots"...) 

Most writers' conferences offer a panel on book marketing. In my newly-forged opinion, ideally, all writers' conference panels on book marketing should feature an acquisitions librarian. Would that he or she could be half as wickedly excellent a speaker as Alice Kober.

[[ DENISE CHAVEZ TALKS ABOUT TACOS ]]

Another sparkling keynote, "The Right to Write," was delivered by Julia Cameron, and at the Willa awards banquet, Navajo poet Luci Tapahonso read her exquisite works.

Further entertainment was provided by this fine mariachi band.

[[ CARMEN PEONE AND
KATHRYN FERGUSON ]]

Apart from being entertained, noshing on buffet chicken, gleaning loads of practical advice, and selling books, a writers conference offers the chance to put faces to names. Among them: Amy Hale Auker, author of The Story is the Thing; Brenda Black; Kathryn Ferguson, author of The Haunting of the Mexican Border; Laurie Gunst, author of Born Fi' Dead and Off-White; and Lisa Sharp, author of A Slow Trot Home.

And among the many writers I was fortunate to meet back in 2014 and cross paths with again were Andrea Jones, Pam Nowak (who did so much to make this conference run so smoothly!), Jane Kirkpatrick, Cynthia Leal Massey, Carmen Peone, Heidi Thomas, Susan Tweit, and Dawn Wink. Susan Tweit and Dawn Wink, dynamic duo, not only gave a terrific jump-starter of a workshop on mapping stories, they also smoothly MC'ed the Willa Awards Banquet.

(One of my long-time goals was rekindled with this awards banquet: to read Willa Cather's complete works. It's in my Filofax for 2018. I made my hajj to her house in Nebraska back in 2014. More about the inestimable Willa Cather anon.)

How to join Women Writing the West and attend their next conference? You will find the whole enchilada o' info in their website here. 



PLAYING HOOKY ON THE PLAZA 

Alas, I did not have time to explore much of Santa Fe on this occasion, but for one afternoon session I skipped out for a chance to see the St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral, and so happened onto a rally in the Plaza for Gary Johnson, Libertarian Party candidate for US President! In a moment, candidate Johnson himself appeared, looking buff after his bike ride down from Taos, and, although I don't think the crowd was following him, he unleashed a stream of expialidocious-wonkaliciousness on Aleppo. I am not kidding. (In case you were wondering, dear reader, as far as politics go, this blog resides on Planet Uli Washi.)

[[ Not Planet Uli Washi ]]

Here is my photo— taken by my smartphone, which, alas, does it no justice— of St Francis of Assisi's unusual and very beautiful main altar:

HAJJITO TO ALLÁ

My one other escape from the conference was a hajj of sorts: a visit to Allá, the best Spanish language bookstore north of the border. So many writers and translators over the years have told me about Allá. (I mean you, José Skinner, Raymond Caballero, Patricia Dubrava...) I had heard that Allá was on the southwest corner of the Plaza, but on my previous visit to Santa Fe, I couldn't find it. This time, armed with the precise address, 102 West San Francisco St, and my smartphone's map app, I discovered that it is a little ways past southwest corner of the Plaza, and you won't find a sign on the street. However, as you can see in the photo below, there is a reference— Allá Arte- Libros - Música— pasted in between some steps on the stairs. So head on up to the second floor, hang a right, and there you may enter into the bright warren of rooms all filled with tesoros, both literary and scholarly—and if you're lucky, meet the owner himself, James J. Dunlap.

Yes, here you can find Mexican writers such as Agustín Cadena and Mónica Lavín. And bless his corazón, he had books on Mexico in English by my amigos, Bruce Berger and David Lida and... drumrrrrrrroll... he had two of my books sitting out on the table, Mexico A Traveler's Literary Companion and Sky Over El Nido, and he said he had just recently sold another title, Miraculous Air, my memoir of Mexico's Baja California peninsula. 

[[ JAMES J. DUNLAP, ALLÁ IN SANTA FE ]]

Speaking of miracles, my luggage accommodated the pile of books I hauled out of there, including some Mexican scholarly works on the Apaches and Comanches that, from Mexico City, I have been trying to hunt down for over a year. Somehow I also took home a fat hardcover first edition of a memoir of life among some indigenous people in Tierra del Fuego. Visit Allá at your own risk! If you dare, tell Jim that Mayo told you to ask about a-gogo and psícadelico. 



> Your comments are always very welcome. Write to me here.

The Harrowingly Romantic Adventure 
of US Trade with Mexico in the Pre-Pre-Pre NAFTA Era: 
Notes on Susan Shelby Magoffin and Her Diary of 1846-1847, 
Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico

Highlights from My Landing on Planet Austin

At the FIL or, the Mexican Megabookmashup

On Seeing as an Artist or, Five Techniques for a Journey to Einfühlung: Remarks For the Women Writing the West Panel on "Writing Across Borders and Cultures"

TRANSCRIPT (slightly expanded and now with a proper title) of C.M. Mayo’s talk for the panel “Writing Across Borders and Cultures”

Panel: C.M. Mayo, Dawn Wink and Kathryn Ferguson

Women Writing the West Annual Conference

Santa Fe, New Mexico, Saturday, October 15, 2016

ON SEEING AS AN ARTIST 
OR, 

FIVE TECHNIQUES FOR A JOURNEY TO EINFÜHLUNG

REMARKS BY C.M. MAYO

How many of you have been to Mexico? Well, viva Mexico! Here we are in New Mexico, Nuevo México. On this panel, with Dawn Wink and Kathryn Ferguson, it seems we are all about Mexico. I write both fiction and nonfiction, most of it about Mexico because that is where I have been living for most of my adult life— that is, the past 30 years— married to a Mexican and living in Mexico City. 

But in this talk I would like to put on my sombrero, as it were, as an historical novelist, and although my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, is about Mexico, I don’t want to talk so much about Mexico as I do five simple, powerful techniques that have helped me, and that I hope will help you to see as an artist and write across borders and cultures.

>> CONTINUE READING 

# # #

> See also A Reading List for Writing Across Borders and Cultures

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Free ebook [PDF]: 

My Recollections of Maximilian by Marie de la Fere; Introduction by C.M. Mayo 

(A rare eyewitness English-language memoir published as an ebook 

by permission of the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley)

A Conversation with M.M.McAllen about Maximilian and Carlota

(podcast and transcript)

See also my other blog, 

Maximilian and Carlota

Resources for Researchers 

of the Tumultuous Period of Mexican History Known as 

the Second Empire or French Intervention

Transcript of Keynote for Board of Directors meeting
Harry Ransom Center University of Texas Austin, April 22, 2010:
To Remember, To Understand: On Researching and Writing
The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire

Why Translate? The Case of the President of Mexico's Secret Book

(Transcript of my talk for the panel on "Why Tramslate?"

American Literary Translators Conference, Milwaukee, 2015)