Pie School

Cookbooks, Compost Heaps, and Poetry Booby Traps: A Conversation with Poet and Pie-maker Kate Lebo

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:37:00 -0400

Cookbooks, Compost Heaps, and Poetry Booby Traps: A Conversation with Poet and Pie-maker Kate Lebo:

Ali Shapiro and I talk about reading pies/eating poems on the Ploughshares blog.

smiller555: Kate Lebo for the Hedreen Gallery photos by Steven...

Fri, 03 May 2013 17:32:02 -0400

smiller555:

Kate Lebo for the Hedreen Gallery

photos by Steven Miller

From a Tree day 8 - Tarragon: The belief that a plant’s...

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:36:53 -0400

From a Tree day 8 - Tarragon:

The belief

that a plant’s name

reflects its possible uses…

(more on Ink Node)

From a Tree day 6 - Chanterelles: Lookalikes can make a person...

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 22:52:00 -0400

From a Tree day 6 - Chanterelles:

Lookalikes can make a person very ill.

The most recognized chanterelle comes

from the Greek

kantharos

meaning cup…

(more on Ink Node)

From a Tree day 5 - Marionberry: For the former mayor,...

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 13:03:00 -0400

From a Tree day 5 - Marionberry:

For the former mayor, breeding is a cross

between a large spine and a deep thaw…

(more on Ink Node)

From a Tree day 4 - Kohrabi: For the moth, almost...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:35:41 -0400

From a Tree day 4 - Kohrabi:

For the moth,

almost anywhere

resembles its origin…

(more on Ink Node)

From a Tree day 3 - Pluot: Amigo: a hint of bleeding Tropical...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:36:00 -0400

From a Tree day 3 - Pluot:

Amigo: a hint of bleeding

Tropical Plumana: red-spotted, red juicy…

(more on Ink Node)

From a Tree day 2 - Green Garlic: Ancestry is a difficulty of...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:30:00 -0400

From a Tree day 2 - Green Garlic:

Ancestry is a difficulty of descent…

(more on Ink Node)

Rhubarb on Ink Node

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 13:40:42 -0400

Rhubarb on Ink Node:

NOT FOOLIN’: Every day in April I’m going to publish a bit of from FROM A TREE, an erasure series I started for the Seattle Weekly’s Voracious blog last summer. Each of these poems started life as a Wikipedia entry. I’m calling the lot of them a “lyric grocery.” If I do this every day I will finish the manuscript, so friends, please hold me to this! Thank you for reading! Thanks to Ink Node for providing a cool space to self-publish! Happy National Poetry Month!

Stringbean Productions let me say the f-bomb in a Pie School...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:01:00 -0400

Stringbean Productions let me say the f-bomb in a Pie School video! That’s not how they captured the ethos of this project better than any other video interviewer, but it certainly helped. Pie might be a sweet subject, but wholesome is not the whole story. We’ll make more mini pie documentaries this spring and summer, so stay tuned!#

The Next Big Thing: a Cookbook!

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:11:00 -0400

Happy International Pi(e) Day! This year I’m celebrating by telling y’all some BIG NEWS. Ready?

I’m having another ba—ahem, book. It’s a cookbook! Due fall 2014 from Sasquatch Books. I feel like I should take a picture of myself with a bunch of paper and whisks and rolling pins shoved under my shirt to better emphasize the proud-mother feeling I’m having, but all I have is a photo of a coconut chess pie guarded by Swiffer, Pie School’s butter-loving mascot.

Friend and fabulous poet Erin Malone tagged me in the Next Big Thing, a literary internet chain letter that will conveniently let me tell you everything you want to know about your new favorite pie cookbook. Here goes!

What is the working title of the book?

Pie School: the Cookbook.

The colon makes it feel a little more badass. Like Die Hard: With a Vengeance. Like Jaws: the Sequel. What do you mean those movies don’t have colons in their titles? That is such a cake thing to say.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I love good food writing. I hope Gabrielle Hamilton writes another 30 books so I can love them as much as Blood, Bones, and Butter. But food magazines (except for Gastronomica), many food blogs, and a fair number of cookbooks drive me totally crazy with their tired culinary bromides. In my research for this book proposal, I read about grandma’s apronstrings, home, comfort, and “everything that is wholesome and good” maybe five times for every seven cookbooks. Grandmas are awesome and often make awesome pie while wearing aprons, but there is more to say about pie than those easy-as, American-as cliches. Wholesome is not the whole story.

I want to write a cookbook that inhabits the domestic and feminist spheres without putting them in opposition to each other. I want to celebrate pie as a rich, regional tradition that has become a symbol of America, femininity, harvest, and home. I want to figure out what it is about pie that makes people freak out, and teach readers how to wield that sugary superpower.

Good pie is the missing chapter in “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” It’s the reason coffee tastes best in a thick ceramic mug. It’s my favorite dessert, and yours too, so let’s make some, shall we?

What genre does your book fall under?

Cookbooks. My first book, A Commonplace Book of Pie, will fit in the poetry and the cookbook sections, but this next book is a cookbook all the way.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

This question feels a little more meta than it’s probably supposed to because I’m actually in a movie about Pie School right now. You can watch the first in a series of short documentaries about the pie/writing life here.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Pie School: the Cookbook chucks easy-as-pie cliches in favor of innovative, seasonal recipes and smart, conversational essays that figure the best thing about pie—even better than eating it—is making it.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

That’s so hard to say. I’ve been writing pie recipes for half a decade, nonfiction about food for nearly that long. I haven’t written the draft so much as had years of preparation for writing the draft. Now that rhubarb will soon be in season, I’ll start writing and testing recipes in earnest. By the way, I’m looking for recipe testers.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My Aunt Peg. The last time I saw her, she gave me two unforgettable bits of advice. Imagine these quotes coming from a retired nursing school professor with a Massachusetts twang and a purse to match every outfit:

1. “When you’re ready, and only when you’re ready, Match.com is a perfectly acceptable place to find a husband.”

2. “Katie, you’ve got to write these recipes down. You could have a cookbook!”

She passed away last October. This book will be dedicated with much love to her and a couple more of my dearest teachers.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The photos! Helllllllo food porn! On the subject of photos, those of you who have seen my photologue of pies from afar can now make those very same pies without having to get on a plane or come over to my house on Sunday. That said, you’re still invited to come over for pie on Sunday.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Sasquatch Books will publish Pie School: the Cookbook in Fall 2014. Just in time for a very special Pi(e) Day, 3/14/15 (to match 3.14159265359….)

You’re it!: I’m tagging two more crazy-good writerbuddies Elissa Ball and Kristen Millares Young so they can tell you all about their Next Big Thing. Thanks for reading!

Rachel Belle (KIRO 97.3) and I riffed on boyfriends, sneaking...

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:02:37 -0500

Rachel Belle (KIRO 97.3) and I riffed on boyfriends, sneaking meat to vegetarians, and the trouble with dating the gluten intolerant when you’re in head over heels for flour.

The Living Room Workshops Presents "Five Courses: a Multi-Genre Feast"

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 14:01:30 -0500

Like food? Like to write about food? Ever think about eating a tulip? Whaddya say we eat and imagine and write together in my living room for five weeks this spring?

Five Courses: A Multi Genre class

Wednesdays 7-9 pm

May 8- June 5

5 weeks–$205 cost includes class text

Class meets at instructor’s home in Ballard (northwest Seattle, Washington)

Food is personal. Food is universal. Food is never just about food. Who knows that better than a bunch of hungry writers? For five weeks (one course a week, so to speak), we’ll use what we grow, cook, and eat to find new routes into an everlasting meal of poems and non-fiction pieces. We’ll find the sweet spot where public and private lives collide in the kitchen, explore the synesthetic impatience of wanting to eat a tulip or lick a Rothko, and discover the secret to packing a fat little blackberry so full of metaphor it can carry the weight of an entire being. Expect to read a little, write a lot, and leave this class hungry for more. Class price also includes the class text, The Hungry Ear, which will be distributed on the first day of class.

To register, e-mail corinne.manning@gmail.com.

For more information about The Living Room Workshops, click here.

If I had a million dollars I’d buy myself two ovens and...

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 12:02:00 -0500

If I had a million dollars I’d buy myself two ovens and spend the rest at Horseshoe Boutique in Ballard. A couple Mondays ago we teamed up for a sweet photoshoot. For more style & sugar, click on the collage.

The Racine family in Snoqualmie, Washington saw my little bit on...

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 20:31:00 -0500

The Racine family in Snoqualmie, Washington saw my little bit on King 5’s Evening Magazine and thought, “Hey, we want to go to Pie School. But we want to go to Pie School in our super amazing gorgeous huge kitchen. How ‘bout a Friday night? Grandma and Grandpa can come too, and Mike will make chili. We’ll make a night of it.”

Okay, maybe all they thought was “cool” and then e-mailed me. But whatever inspired them, I lucked out and got to spend a Friday night baking with father-daughter team Mike and Maddie, plus family friends Kasey and Mindy, while Grandma and Grandpa cheered us on. My family’s version of this was ordering to-go pizza and watching Star Trek re-runs on Saturday nights. Nothing like circular food to bring the generations together, right?

The only oven more impressive than High 5 Pie’s monster convection oven-that-spins must be the Racine’s double-oven-stack that perfectly browned our creations while we enjoyed some of Mike’s chili. “You could put this in a pie,” I said. If he figures it out, I hope he’ll let me know so I can share it here.

Thanks Mike, Maddie, Kasey & Mindy for a lovely night of pie in the land of Twin Peaks. Like Agent Dale Cooper said, “this must be where pies go when they die.”

Registration for Hugo House’s spring quarter of creative...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:35:06 -0500

Registration for Hugo House’s spring quarter of creative writing classes started today, including sign-ups for a poetry seminar with yours truly. Hope you’ll join us!

(Un)Conventional Poetry

“Writing a poem is like having your way for too long,” says Chelsey Minnis. In this class we’ll write poems, but we won’t get our way. We’ll do the opposite—we’ll explore contemporary poetry forms and use the conventions of those forms to generate new work. You’ll try your hand at erasure, persona, food, and “five-paragraph” narrative poems, among others. Over the course of our six weeks we’ll break old writing habits, speak with different voices, experiment, and surprise ourselves. We’ll also emerge with a handful of new poems and a better appreciation of contemporary poetry.

Class meets on Wednesdays from 7-9 starting March 20, ending April 24.

More information about Hugo House classes and how to register here.

The deadline for scholarship applications is February 26. Get on that!

wavepoetry: Today is the last day for the Free Book Incident...

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 20:21:28 -0500

wavepoetry:

Today is the last day for the Free Book Incident at Olson Kundig Architects’s [storefront] project! If you’re in Seattle, stop by to get a free copy of our political anthology, Franck Jamme’s New Exercises, and whatever else you can carry!

This is what the King of Cool and a cowboy look like.

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 18:49:41 -0500

This is what the King of Cool and a cowboy look like.

This is what a 41st century astronaut looks like.

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:30:00 -0500

This is what a 41st century astronaut looks like.

This is what a writer looks like.

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 21:03:16 -0500

This is what a writer looks like.