rebeccakuder

Several free workshops: Come play!

tree roots at the edge of the river
Inner Critic Workshop
Monday, October 22, 2018 (6:30PM – 8:00PM)
Yellow Springs Community Library
415 Xenia Avenue, Yellow Springs, Ohio
Virginia Hamilton Meeting Room

Rebecca Kuder is offering this engaging workshop that will allow people to rediscover and liberate a sense of play; unleash the creative spark; and demystify & disarm the inner critical voice that’s holding us back! Please wear comfortable clothing (always!). Please bring pen and paper.
This is NOT just for writers! This is for anyone who wants to tone down self-doubt and find more joy in life.

Creative Writing for Adults
Monday, October 29, 2018 (6:30PM – 7:30PM)
Beavercreek Community Library
3618 Dayton Xenia Rd, Beavercreek, OH 45432
Large Meeting Room

National November Novel Writing Month is right around the corner! Novelist Rebecca Kuder leads you in several creative writing exercises to help inspire your inner author. Please bring a pen and notebook.

Revision and Editing of Creative Writing
Monday, December 3, 2018 (6:30PM – 7:30PM)
Beavercreek Community Library
3618 Dayton Xenia Rd, Beavercreek, OH 45432
Large Meeting Room

Learn methods for revision and editing of creative work, and find out what steps you need to take to get published. Rebecca Kuder returns to answer your questions. Please bring a pen and notebook, though we will have some supplies on hand. Registration required. To register: https://preview.tinyurl.com/ycqwlkj9

About Rebecca

Rebecca Kuder’s short story, “Curb Day,” was chosen for reprint in Year’s Best Weird Fiction vol. 5. Her essays and stories have appeared in Tiferet Journal, Shadows and Tall Trees, Jaded Ibis Press, Lunch Ticket, and The Rumpus. In addition to leading community workshops, Rebecca taught creative writing at Antioch University Midwest, Antioch College, and The Modern School of Design. Currently she teaches at Stivers School for the Arts in Dayton. She served on the board of the Antioch Writers’ Workshop, and lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio, with her husband, the writer Robert Freeman Wexler, and their daughter. Rebecca holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles, is a recipient of an individual excellence award from the Ohio Arts Council, and blogs at www.rebeccakuder.com.

 

rebeccakuder

Year’s Best Weird Fiction vol. 5 available for pre-order!

year's best weird fiction vol. 5 trade paperback cover
(trade paperback, weird.)

Exciting news—Year’s Best Weird Fiction, vol. 5 (in which you can find my story, “Curb Day”) is available for pre-order. This is the final installment of YBWF from Undertow. (You will not want to miss it, because soon, you’ll really miss it.)

I’m exceedingly grateful to Robert Shearman and Michael Kelly for their support of my work, and for curating this anthology of endearing weirdness.

Please support this wonderful small press!

You can order the hardcover here, or the trade paperback here.

Or from Amazon.

year's best weird fiction vol. 5, hardback cover
(hardback, also weird.)
rebeccakuder

books & resources about puberty & adolescence & sexuality & harm reduction & drug use, oh my!

stream, red flower, and tree roots
Glen Helen

I’m keeping a list of books & resources that have helpful to me in raising a human person. I thought it would be helpful to share them here. Please preview to see if they will work for your family. :)

Puberty & Sexuality resources

BOOKS for pre-teens and teens

BOOKS for adults

 ONLINE:

Drugs & Alcohol education for teens (harm reduction model):

Want to talk to your kids about drugs? Take a look at this helpful, free brochure from the Drug Policy Alliance called Safety First. And here is their free curriculum.

rebeccakuder

Trauma (present tense)

child in vest
me, younger

I’ve been thinking about the hippocampus lately. I did a web search and found Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony. I’m pasting it below.

“Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter,” Ford says, her voice cracking. “The uproarious laughter between the two. They’re having fun at my expense.”

“You’ve never forgotten them laughing at you,” Leahy says.

“They were laughing with each other,” Ford replies.

“And you were the object of the laughter?” Leahy asks.

“I was underneath one of them, while the two laughed,” Ford says.

In an essay I wrote about my childhood sexual abuse, as I shaped and shaped the narrative, it became clear that most of the piece should be told in the present tense. I did this to replicate how trauma works in the memory.

The brain stem, the so-called lizard brain—the part of the brain that registers trauma—has no sense of time. The lizard-brain is the part that keeps us alive, eliciting a fight, flight, or freeze response. Because of the lack of time involved with the lizard brain, when long-ago trauma is triggered, it is remembered outside of time. The sensation is as if it is happening now.

Dr. Ford was questioned 36 years after she claims to have been assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh, but on September 27, 2018, when questioned, she says, “They’re having fun at my expense.”

Present tense.

A grammatical slip. But also true.

Because that’s how it feels.