May 26th, 2009 / 4:31 pm
Word Spaces
Word Spaces (12): Amelia Gray
Amelia Gray is the author of AM/PM (featherproof) and Museum of the Weird (forthcoming from FC2). She recently won the FC2 Fiction Prize. I’ve linked to a page on her website that lists many publications online that you may read over. Also, here’s an audio recording of Amelia’s reading from AM/PM in Tucson for a reading thing at Congress, I think.
Various information about her and her work can be read here:
AM/PM reviewed at Literary License
Amelia Gray’s favorite novellas
Below is her word space. Enjoy.
My desk is actually a credenza, given to me by some friends who couldn’t fit it into their new place. I never got into those lightweight Ikea desks that break apart when you try to move them anywhere. In college I had a desk made of solid oak from an office sale of the First National Bank of Wichita in 1951. It was so heavy, it nearly killed the guys who tried to move it out down a flight of stairs.
You wouldn’t know at first glance but my credenza desk is the heaviest piece of furniture on the planet. It is heavier than the banker’s desk. I could dance on it without it budging. That is the sign of a good desk.
This coffee mug was a gift from my mother. The poem is attributed to Jack Piatt and is copyrighted.
On the windowsill is a lemon I took from my parents’ house in Tucson. They have a lemon tree in the backyard and if there’s fruit when I’m visiting, I’ll come home with thirty or forty lemons. I juice and freeze most of them but this one escaped and gets to perch on the windowsill for the remainder of its days.
This is what the lemon sees. There’s a great tree right outside my window that is home to lizards and squirrels and all manner of birds. Once I saw a squirrel eating a pancake there. Last week, there was a baby cardinal who hung out there for a couple days while his feathers dried. This week, three baby doves. All the baby birds hang out in this tree and ask me if I’m making the right choices in life.
This is what happens when you get into writing fiction, kids. You have to sit in a broken chair you found on the side of the road. Let this be a lesson.
____
That is all. Thanks, Amelia.
You can order AM/PM from featherproof here.
Tags: am/pm, amelia gray
i want to know more about the lemon.
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she’s too good
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might have a crush on amelia gray.
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May 26th, 2009 / 9:30 pmMatthew Simmons—
Pretty sure HTMLGiant as a whole has a crush on Amelia Gray. Readers and writers alike.
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May 27th, 2009 / 12:54 amKen Baumann—
Yep.
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October 23rd, 2009 / 4:19 pmRichard—
for sure
I want to know more about that pancake eating squirrel.
There’s a lot that goes into imagining a squirrel eating a pancake. First it’s hilarious. Then kind of frightening (for some reason), then hilarious again. And when you realize that when you watch squirrels, they stop and look at you… man…
Some day her house is gonna be famous.
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Always lovely, I think.
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now i can’t stop thinking about Lemon by Lawrence Krauser
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Man, this workspace makes me feel disgusting. My keyboard rests in a pile of cigarette ashes, weed dust, bottle caps, dog hair, and cocaine residue. There are actually a couple of cigarettes extinguished on the desk itself. The keys on my keyboard look like I dip my hands in glue before typing. This gives me hope for change.
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May 26th, 2009 / 9:58 pmpr—
Gian, you saw my space? I posted it here. I’m a pig, But God bless the not pigs. And god bless us, the pigs! It’s all good.
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May 26th, 2009 / 11:14 pmHTMLGIAN—
Yes, I did. We need to trash a bar soon the way we trash our workspaces.
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May 27th, 2009 / 11:28 ampr—
yes!
Love this. Thanks for posting! The lemon is priceless, and the chair is a shocker there at the end.
Amelia, great arches!
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[...] posted my Word Space over at HTML Giant. Sam Pink wanted to know more about the lemon so I took some more pictures of [...]
You all are the absolute end. Molly made my arches blush.
Hi Sam, I posted more pictures of the lemon on my blog.
Thanks again Ryan, this was fun. Hi everyone
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June 3rd, 2009 / 4:08 pmRyan Call—
hooray
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[...] evolve — a much more resonant emotional experience than one might expect from flash fiction. Gray’s longer work is equally distinctive; a collection of that, Museum of the Weird, is due out next year [...]
[...] HTMLGIANT profile of the author Michael Kimball profile of the author Orange Alert interview with the author The Scowl interview with the author [...]
Good to see you’re doing some research to fill in the ???
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netbooks
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Threatening Services
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