Off to AWP I go…

Got word that my proposal to speak at the Association of Writing Programs’ annual conference in Chicago this March has been accepted. See y’all in the Windy City soon…. Here’s what I’ll be talking about, and a link to the blog that’s supposed to be supporting this idea: Writing Class: Representing Socio-Economic Realities in Your Work

As economic realities devolve the broader American Dream, writers are shaping a new U.S. life narrative. This panel collects contemporary authors’ responses to this socioeconomic shift by asking: will class-focused writing replace the American race and ethnicity paradigm? Can such a shift illuminate the differences in income and status and lead to greater understanding? Or will the money gap cut out most socioeconomic classes and usher in a new era of class appropriation in literature?

Samuel Beckett in Germany

Samuel Beckett’s special brand of post-modernism has long been in a hit in avant garde-loving Germany. It shouldn’t have surprised, then, to read that he spent some of his artistically formative years here. Interested in learning more, I wrote this latest culture story for Deutsche Welle. Though the article is broad-based, my interviewees spoke a lot about a trip that Beckett took through Germany in 1936 — fascinating stuff. James Knowlson’s autobiography “Damned to Fame” has more on it, as do the letters I’ve written about in the piece.

Wrapping Up Fashion Week

Designers around the world have been showcasing their Spring/Summer 2012 collections and I’ve been covering several of the shows for DHL, the Official Logistics Partner of the major Fashion Week events. Have a look at the website to see my blog postings and to get an idea of my corporate writing skills. Next on tap for the Brandworld site: The Volvo Ocean Race.

The Fifth Crime Against Peace

My latest article for Deutsche Welle on Polly Higgins’ proposal to make ecocide the fifth crime against peace is now live on their environment/development page.

Under the Rome Statute, which first entered into force in 2002, signatory countries are obligated to prosecute four hard-to-define crimes against peace.

These include genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes of aggression, and war crimes.

Higgins wants ecocide added to the list, as a base for international laws against the destruction of the earth.

I’ll keep my opinions on the proposal to myself — after all, a journalist’s supposed to remain objective — but I will say this: much of the media coverage she’s gotten thus far doesn’t do Higgins any justice. It focuses  a lot on the idealism this proposal reflects and not enough on the hard facts of it (how this proposal would actually fit into existing international law), which Higgins knows extremely well. Only wish I’d been able to include more of my Q&A with her in this piece.

Truce 2020

In honor of the International Day of Peace, my radio report on the London-based Truce 2020 Project ran on Deutsche Welle’s Pulse program this week. You can listen to it here, but just a note: the words are mine but that voice is not.

Germany’s Best Female Novelist

Covering the renewed interest in German novelist Irmgard Keun’s Weimar-era writing may have been one of my favorite assignments yet. The woman led a fantastic life and wrote several books that, thanks to being heavily censored in 1930s Germany have only now been translated into English. It took a lot to get through the heavy-slang of the German books but The Artificial Silk Girl drew a gritty, accurate portrait of life in a country rocked by Depression and inflation — and the ways in which, even when totally impoverished, we try to carry on with our dancing. Without being too saccharine, what I loved most of all about researching this was realizing that this woman who had numerous flaws and vices still gave up everything for her writing. Inspiration for a drowning novelist.

Pulling the Plug on Electronic Music

Revisited my youth for a new piece on the fading of the electronic music industry in Germany. Though you wouldn’t know it from the vibrations coming out of every Ford Fiesta in Cologne, techno music is actually in decline, at least financially…

Germany has long been home to some of the world’s leading electronic music producers – from the Dusseldorf-based electro pioneers Kraftwerk to the techno immigrants now flocking to Berlin.

But as music sales shrink around the world as a result of illegal downloads, those responsible for the sounds once considered “underground” have had to come out into the light to get help. In search of ways to earn a living as musicians without the sales revenues they once knew, artists and industry professionals have had to change their way of thinking about the way the music industry works.