How to Live in Ruins is featured in the Feb. 2019 issue of Cleveland Magazine. Here's a quote from the story:

“Cleveland is the kind of place where, if you grew up here, it stays with you and becomes the master narrative that shapes your experiences,” says the Cleveland State University graduate. “These poems get at the universal experience of living in the Rust Belt, a place that is dying and being remade at the same time.”

Read the full story here.

Here are some photos from last night's book launch at Loganberry Books. It was so much fun! Many thanks to Jim Garrett and Diane Vogel Ferri for their wonderful readings of their work. Pick up a copy of their poetry books, as well as How to Live in Ruins, at Loganberry or another bookstore. Support your indies! 

Last night, I attended my final event as executive director of Lit Cleveland, our annual holiday mixer at CLE Urban Winery (click on the image to the left to watch the video). Of course, as soon as we'd set the date I learned from a fellow board member whose kids attend the same school as mine, Campus International School in Cleveland, that our winter concert was the same night. After a series of emails to board members, as well as assigning new executive director Christine Howey her first task of "hauling shit," as she memorably put it, I delegated the event setup (something I normally would have done with volunteers) to them. Man, that felt good. And a perfect hand-off, in a way. Not that the job involves hauling a lot of shit ... well, yeah, it kinda does. OK, I guess it's actually the perfect metaphor for transitioning, since being director entails logistical behind-the-scenes magic-making to create events and programs (AKA "hauling shit").

I spent the night catching up with old friends, receiving compliments, and generally trying to avoid doing any work or talking shop. It was nice to see so many people (the room was full with about 60 people) and know that my work had made a difference in the community. Board member Aaron Schmidt stood on a chair (we also lacked a sound system) and feted my work over the past four years, and then I stood on the same chair and talked about what it's meant to me to help start a now-successful literary arts nonprofit in Cleveland and thanked everyone for their support. As I told folks at the event, I feel lucky to have been the vessel (wait, that sounds too religious -- vehicle? beast of burden? jalopy?) that has helped start and grow this community-supported organization. Now, others will help bring Lit Cleveland to the next level.

I have a feeling I'll write more about this later, but here are five takeaways I'd like to share about being a nonprofit executive director.

• To be successful as an ED, you have to not only understand the vision but also execute it as well. That's a cliche, but here's the point -- it's largely tactical. If I ever thought I'd spend my days dreaming up grand new program concepts or writing (and I didn't think that) I would have been disillusioned. I designed programs, yes, but that meant answering emails, fixing printers, updating databases, sending newsletters etc. In short, you don't know the true extent of "hauling shit" until you're knee deep in it. None of this is bad, and my previous nonprofit work helped prepare me for it. LOL!
• Working with a board is hard. Our board is great overall, it's the structure that's challenging. Imagine your desk is in the middle of a circular glass-walled room. Board members -- essentially strangers, since you don't necessarily interact with them on a daily basis -- come by and watch you work without really knowing what you're doing. Every couple months they offer you a bunch of pithy strategic thoughts and random bits of advice and then go away again. The good ones (which, to be clear, is most) attend committee meetings and pay attention to details. You have to translate their ideas into action. Once a year they also, supposedly, evaluate your performance. The trick is providing them enough information to do their jobs -- governance -- while gaining their support when you need it.
  
• Being self-motivated is critical. When board members go away, which they will because they have jobs, families and other responsibilities, doing the work requires not only a large amount of day-to-day decision making but also clear end goals. What does the organization want to accomplish? What do you personally want to accomplish? It can be lonely, frustrating and tough. I've had mountaintop moments and times when I thought, is this task ever going to end? I just want to get on the floor and play blocks with my kid. Again, the work is very satisfying but there's something kind of monastic about it -- and sometimes you just want to join the party and have a friggin' drink, instead of manning the registration desk.
  
• It's not a job, it's a marriage. This is something former PWLGC/The Lit director Darlene Montonaro said to me, and it's so true. I woke up and went to bed thinking about Lit Cleveland. When mistakes happened, they kept me up. When there were board issues I couldn't let them go. I can't complain because I also finished two poetry books in my off-hours while working as ED, but when the work began crowding out creative ideas then I knew I had to go. It's a weird combo of watching your baby walk for the first time and then feeling depressed that all you seem to do is exist to take care of it. As it grows it gets easier because you have more support, but harder because there's more to administer.
  
• If you want to be the person in the front of the room, either teaching, reading or performing, don't be ED. I'm not saying artists can't run nonprofits. There are cases where they figure it out. But I would argue that the most successful and long-lasting ED's are probably not full-time artists. Their primary desire is to work with the community to help build a successful organization, not write and publish and sell books. Although it's a much harder financial path to sustain yourself, it's what I want to do and I'm going to continue to pursue it (now with more time on my hands). I'm fortunate to have wonderful support from a fantastic partner, Katherine, and also a great family that helps sustain me.
  

One of my memories from last night's event were all the people who came up to me and said, we'll still see you next year, right?  It's satisfying to know that there's still a place for me here, if nothing else as a teacher. Next year, I'm looking forward to finding more balance in my life, helping with Lit CLE, and cheering on the next executive director. Onward!

I had time, albeit not as much as I wanted, to dig into some reading, watching and listening along with seeing friends and family and stuffing myself with turkey over Thanksgiving break. Here are some recommendations:

• On family and politics, Of Monuments, Arguments, Vampires and Thanksgiving by Maureen Dowd

• This weekend, I watched The Florida Project, which many critics felt was snubbed by this year's Oscars -- you gotta see it

• The White Album has been my favorite Beatles album since I bought it on vinyl at Record Revolution in the late 80s for a buck -- so seeing The George Martins play it live at the Music Box was a treat. Their next show is in Akron on Dec. 28th. Check them out on Youtube.

I got to meet one of my writing heroes, Susan Orlean, on Saturday at Cleveland Public Library. She did a Q&A with a group of Lit Cleveland members and other writers who had attended a morning workshop on How to Create Creative Nonfiction. One of the things she talked about was how to organize your writing: "You can be the most beautiful writer in the world, but if you can't organize well, it won't work," she said. Orlean writes ideas down on note cards and then moves them around in order to visualize how they'll be presented within the book. While writing The Library Book, which has four separate story lines, she began telling people about the book and listening to herself as she did it. "I talked about the stories out loud a lot to begin feeling out the organization," she told us. She also suggested studying other books you admire and love: "Look at other books as structural models. Learn from them."

When I was editor of Fresh Water Cleveland from 2014-2015, I worked closely with Nikki Delamotte on several stories. She was a rising talent then, of course, and everyone knew it. She readily agreed to serve on Literary Cleveland's board in 2016, and then jumped off when she landed her job at Cleveland.com later that year. A lot of us at Fresh Water cheered because we knew she'd bring a smart, youthful energy to the job and that she'd write about cool stuff happening in the city, which is sorely needed.

Nikki's tragic death earlier this week, which left many of us stunned and sad, made me want to pay small tribute by reading my favorite Fresh Water stories by her. I love these pieces on historic buildings being renovated in Cleveland, young hispanic business owners breaking out of the box, and people changing the conversation about Cleveland. (And man, it reinforces how kind she was that she took on these lengthy, sprawling stories at all -- any one of these business owners or individuals being profiled could have been a great story on its own.)

To donate to Nikki Delamotte's memorial fund to help her grieving partner and mother, check out the GoFundMe site.

Story Club Cleveland asked me to be a featured performer on Wednesday night at their west side show at Forest City Brewery. I'm glad I said yes (and hopefully they are too). I told a story about raising my daughter in the era of Trump, while others told stories about moving to Cleveland, traveling and running marathons. The other featured storyteller was Liz Ferro, who told her own powerful story of surviving foster care and sexual abuse and how it led to her amazing work with girls through her nonprofit organization Girls with Sole.

One of the things that struck me about the evening was how well-versed the crowd clearly was in the form, and how kind they were to each performer. The individuals who took the open mic slots had some ideas of what they wanted to talk about, but they were not reading from a script or their notes, and that made it all the more fun and interesting. I guess in our digital age, people feel the desire to gather over a glass of beer and tell stories to each other. Aw. Plus the beer is good and the venue is fantastic.

OCFB: When did you begin writing poetry?

LC:  I started writing poetry in high school. Although I was writing short stories in middle school, in high school I discovered poetry through my English teacher at University School, Kevin Kay. We completed a poetry unit in which I read poems like “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hadyn (a Detroit poet), “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio” by James Wright (an Ohio poet) and others. I fell in love with their lyrical voices and that was it for me.

As time progressed, I became interested in other genres of writing – songwriting, journalism and creative nonfiction. But I have always come back to poetry.

OCFB: Congratulations on the publication of How to Live in Ruins . Last year you published your first poetry collection, The Shape of Home and now your second collection will be released in November. Does the new collection expand upon the ideas present in the first?

LC:  My first collection braids together poems about growing up in Northeast Ohio with pieces about urban parenting, and the whole endeavor in set in a recessionary environment. I’m exploring themes of creating your own identity amidst the echoes and influences of the past. How to Live in Ruins tells the next chapter of the story – one couple moving into and raising kids in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood of Cleveland, a place that might appear “ruins” when viewed from the outside. The poems grapple with challenges facing urban neighborhoods like crumbling schools, homelessness, people losing their homes to foreclosure. They’re personal but also political.

Click here to read the whole interview and check out the work of OCFB.