1. By all means visit St. Petersburg when (if?) the time is allows you to go safely. It is the city of Gogol and Dostoyevsky and Akhmatova. If you read Russian writers, you'll recognize some of the very sites that these authors describe in their most famous work. 2. I took a class from a young writer who celebrated her thirty-third birthday while we were there. Aimée Bender is the author of the imaginative The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, a collection of stories, and a novel called An Invisible Sign of My Own. The New York Times raved about the latter. Aimée also teaches at my alma mater, the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. If you enjoy literature that is slightly wacky and very original, you'll want to learn more about her.
3. Another instructor, Mark Halperin helped me struggle through the rudiments of poetry for one of my poetry books in progress. He teaches at Central Washington University and is the author of poetry volumes like Near and Far (with Robert Bixby). This man is a charmer, and you may want to look up his poetry if you don't already know it. 4.Robert Olmstead was there, too. He is the author of A Trail of Hearts Blood Wherever We Go . He writes prose like a poet. He is one hell of a conversationalist at places known to foster good chats in this city of white nights like The Mad Dog and The Idiot. 5.Robert Creeley [now deceased] spoke to the group and was a guest lecturer at one of my classes. I felt honored and edified. One of his recent books is a Review of Contemporary Fic tion: Brigid Brophy/Robert Creeley/ Osman Lins. He is known for his poem " For Love." 6. A few names to watch for in the literary world are: Matt Perez, David Beaty, Joyce Epstein, Jean Grant, Nina Roy and Carolyne Wright. Of course there were many more but, as I told you, my brain is in third gear. Classmates who were neglected will forgive me, I know."
85 PS: A lesson I take from this experience is to grab down opportunities as the universe presents them. This memory comes from a brief moment at the beginning of the new millennium. The world moves even more quickly than it did then. I am ever grateful for the places my love of books and writing took me. Many of my favorites are unavailable for travel for a variety of reasons in this year of 2023. Reading can be nearly as good. Of course if you read avidly or write go on a web treasure hunt to find more about composers, authors, and poets like Solzhenitsyn, Prokofiev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Nabakov, and Stravinsky. And art collectors like Catherine the Great who founded the Hermitage in 1764 and made it a world treasure by including great European artists of the time and maybe even more about this amazing writer's conference where attendees slept in spare Herzen University dorm rooms and stayed up at night to see they city where the night sky looks like malachite just before the sun sets at two a.m.
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