All Together Now
Dear Simpsonistas,
The Simpson Literary Project sends loving thoughts to you. We all may be sheltering in place, but in our shared isolation, we are finding strength, however measured, in all our communities of caring.
Of course, we postponed indefinitely all our spring events: Laila Lalami’s residency at Cal and in Lafayette, Joyce Carol Oates’s appearances, and our fundraisers. Simpson Fellows were unable to meet with writing workshop students at Contra Costa Juvenile Hall, Girls Inc Alameda County, and Northgate High School. This is the new reality we face.
We have also hit the pause button on the 2020 Joyce Carol Oates Prize selection process for now. This is not the right time to proceed with business as usual. Yes, indeed, we will award the Prize at some point, but we just don’t know when.
It’s a good time to take up a good book. Netflix and other streaming have their charms and diversions, but a great work of fiction? Nothing beats that.
You might consider some—or all—of the latest works by our fantastic 2020 Finalists. Rare delights and extraordinary insights await. And your local bookstores will be grateful as well:
www.newliteraryproject.org/2020-jco-finalists
If you feel like chatting with me and discussing these books and these wonderful authors, who are stellar humans, feel free to write me directly, please. It occurs with increasing force that each of these books seems strangely, remarkably timely.
And consider getting Simpsonistas Vol 1 or Simpsonistas Vol 2.
www.newliteraryproject.org/simpsonistas
In my introduction to Simpsonistas Vol 2, published last year, I wrote:
In the 14th century, Giovanni Boccaccio, wrote a great book called The Decameron. Ten young people flee Florence for the countryside. In the city, chaos has broken out—citizens are in abject panic over the plague, in fear of their neighbors and friends and family. And these ten storytellers converge to do something quite radical and ultimately sensible: they compose and tell each other over ten days a hundred stories of love and adventure and heroism…. In his book’s first line he writes: “Umana cosa è aver compassione degli afflitti." That is, it is (an essentially) human (thing) to have compassion for those in distress. But how to express compassion, sympathy, empathy under such dire circumstances? For Boccaccio, it was to tell and attend to stories. History and literature have proven him and his book prescient. Storytelling is not an escape from the grimmest realities, but the subtly shifting, fluid foundation of our mutual humanity, which stories are uniquely positioned to illuminate—and fashion.
The Simpson Literary Project will be here. We must be, for the sake of the kids in our workshops. For the sake of writers and readers we celebrate. For the sake of stories that enrich our lives. For storytelling that is the foundation of a literate, democratic society.
With all sincerest wishes for your sanity and well-being,
Joe
Chair, Simpson Literary Project