Nancy and I are very excited that Kristinha M. Anding will be joining us for our Grand Lake “Flash Fiction Summer Camp” in August. Kristinha is a fascinating person and I very much enjoyed our chat.
Hi Kristinha! First, have you been to Colorado before?
I did a wilderness vigil last year in Colorado. I spent four days and four nights alone on a mountain, fasting and leaning into the slow, resilient conversation of stone and pine and sky. I came away feeling humble and heartbreakingly welcomed.
Wow, that sounds amazing and so beautifully put. And what do you most look forward to at our retreat at Shadowcliff Lodge?
I am eager to listen to the work of others and co-create the shelter of a temporary human writing community, informed and supported by the larger ecological community of the Rockies.
Yes. I love the sorts of connections that are forged in this way, too. It’s one of our “missions” for these retreats actually.
So in your reading life, what sort of stories so you find yourself drawn to?
I love stories that involve mythic sensibilities and seem to emerge from the deep-time dreaming of the land, stories where you can feel the pulse of what Clarissa Pinkola Estés calls el rio abajo rio, the river beneath the river. Terry Tempest Williams, Jay Griffiths and Sylvia Lindsteadt are a few of my favorite writers. As we are in dire times climate-wise, I find myself increasingly drawn to works of fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry that touch ecological themes in some way.
What is your favorite story of your own?
I write a lot and had a past life as a journalist, but admittedly stink at submitting my creative work. Here is something I did manage to get published:
http://unbrokenjournal.com/2018/04/deer-crossing/
Oh wow, I’m so struck by the rush of feeling in this piece. So beautiful and haunting:
“It doesn’t make sense Renee and I said barely meeting one another’s eyes and the couple behind us stopped now asking if we needed help telling us they had seen you too without them I wouldn’t have known this was real their witness the only thing keeping me from believing you had been a ghost at the edge of the road staring me in the eye before choosing collision teaching me something I have barely begun to hear leaving me holding nothing and everything.”
Thanks for sharing that, Kristinha. Is there something about you that you’d like to share that is surprising/funny/endearing/strange whatever?
I don’t know why, but this completely random tidbit comes to mind: I used to have an unusually deep belly button. How deep, you ask? Well, there is a cave in Ireland called Oweynagat, whose engulfing maw is said to be a portal to the Otherworld. About that deep. Removing lint felt like an archeological dig. That deep. I held a severe interiority.
But that changed after my pregnancy with my second son, who extruded my abdomen and then emerged from me, 10 pounds of raw, reaching human. As my postpartum body settled into its new shape, I realized with a shock that my hallowed umbilical cave was gone. My child and this tectonic shift of motherhood had erupted me into an “outie.” (I think I’m still adjusting to that.)
Ha, I love it! Can’t wait to meet you in person in Grand Lake, Kristinha. Thanks so much for sharing!
Note: A few spaces remain for “Flash Fiction Summer Camp” in Grand Lake in August. More information HERE.
Costa Rica is wild. And although there are resort towns and luxury hotels, Peace Retreat was neither situated in a resort town, nor was it a luxury hotel. And we didn’t want that anyway. We wanted, well, peace. We wanted to retreat somewhere that our group felt like it largely had the place to themselves (except for a handful of yoga students and teachers and some volunteers, we did). We wanted to feel immersed in a peaceful, exotic setting surrounded by nature. We got that. Each day, I woke up just before dawn, to the sound of the birds and the howler monkeys. For the first few days, the wind was powerful. We were surrounded by trees. We spotted iguanas, bright green parrots, horses along the road. A young piglet even came up to greet us on our walk to the beach. 
Definitely a slower pace. Incredibly delicious meals. Fruit so bright and juicy and sweet it was like eating candy. Fresh vegetables and salads, fish, goat-milk dairy, rice, beans, eggs, and freshly baked bread. All of the Peace Retreat staff were so wonderful and kind. 
What a wild adventure! We saw iguanas, parrots, scorpions, hermit crabs. We heard the eerie, hard-to-describe sounds of the howler monkeys, saw a lunar eclipse, and watched the sunset on the ocean almost every evening. We got to take part in a traditional cacao ceremony, walked along the beach looking for a bonfire (didn’t find it!), and met the locals who set up a spontaneous bazaar at the Peace Retreat. We ate wholesome and fresh food 3 times a day and some us us did yoga in the mornings. I slept like a baby in my screened-in cabina, immersed in the sounds of the jungle.
Nancy and I are excited that writer, editor, and publisher Jason Lee Norman will be joining us for 
If you’ve been waiting for Kathy Fish to release a new book, the wait is over! In Wild Life: Collected Works 2003-2018 (Matter Press, 2018), we get the old and the new and the best of both worlds: some of her favorite and most loved stories like “Space Man” or “Margaret and Beak Discuss Jazz For the Last Time” alongside her newer pieces, like “Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild”, which opens the book and was chosen for Best Small Fictions in 2018. Think of Wild Life: Collected Works as a digitally remastered greatest hits collection with bonus, never before heard tracks!
If you are new to Kathy Fish this is an amazing introduction to curated works spanning more than 15 years of her prolific career. And if you are already a fan you’re going to want to add Wild Life: Collected Works 2003-2018 to your Kathy Fish collection pronto.
Open Your Art Writing Retreats 