I am happy to see that Ploughshares is tied for #2 in Clifford Garstung this year. I have tons of essays to pitch after I finish my thesis in late August, hopefully to a good number of literary or scholarly journals.
https://cliffordgarstang.com/2024-literary-magazine-ranking-fiction/
For the PTA Writing Contest 2024, Olivia Lee won first place at the Briarcliff School, and then first place in the Westchester-East Putnam Region for her story “The Stars on her Eyes.”
She had also won the Briarcliff Award for the PTA Writing Contest in 2022, and was recognized for the following two works in “Stone Soup”:
Honorable mention for novel “Reunited” by Olivia Lee https://stonesoup.com/post/congratulations-to-our-book-contest-2021-winners/
My student Eileen Yoo just won a Silver Key for her story “Sunday Dresses” in Scholastic’s 2024 Writing Contest. Her earlier story “Midfielder” was published in Stone Soup’s June 2023 issue, and is linked here, along with her first Stone Soup story, “The Meadow” (published in 2022).
sue-lynn zan was born in Elizabeth, NJ and grew up in Edison and Ridgewood, NJ. She got closer to the pastoral life when studying at Cornell, then had her first introduction to the NYC publishing world as an intern at Sanford J. Greenburger for agents who discovered Nicholas Sparks that year. sue-lynn submitted a short story she wrote at 21 to a blind ad in the Village Voice that landed her a job interview at the New Yorker magazine office and words of praise from its staff.
After doing jobs in book inventory at Farrar Straus & Giroux in NYC and freelance journalism in China, sue-lynn completed an MFA in Filmmaking at NYU where she worked on approximately forty short film projects and a few features, in varying roles. Many of these won awards. Previous to that she had also worked on about ten other film projects in NYC and China.
sue-lynn later completed a Master’s in English Literature at Columbia, where Colm Toibin sponsored her thesis, and Edward Mendelson joined as one of her evaluators. In September 2024, she completed a 2-year Master’s in French Literature at Sorbonne University with a focus on 19th-20th century literature and cinema. She wrote two mémoires under the direction of Bernard Vouilloux and Christophe Pradeau, while Matthieu Vernet chaired her M2 thesis defense. sue-lynn hopes to publish these writings and more between teaching and developing new creative writing and film projects.
sue-lynn zan is the pen name of Wendy Cheng.
Recent articles:
https://www.cineaste.com/summer2020/from-minimalism-to-neorealism-boris-frumin-interview
Ridgewood, NJ
Eileen Yoo’s story “The Meadow” was published in “Stone Soup” earlier this year of 2022, and now I’d like to share the entire story since it’s no longer accessible at the magazine site. I believe we began work on the story at the end of Eileen’s sixth grade year, and it was accepted in September of her seventh grade year and posted in spring of her seventh grade year.
My student Olivia Lee started writing this story at the end of fourth grade, it was accepted in September of her fifth grade year, and it was posted on “Stone Soup” when she began sixth grade, this month of October 2022! I am posting all of the story here since it’ll only be up for two more days (it’s now October 30).
I had my first beginner ballet class in Paris (and thank God I stuck to my instincts about going back to beginner ballet rather than trying beginner-intermediate, as there are still many basics that are mysterious to me – I began in my late 30’s!) As I had a great and productive time, I wanted to share some insights.
As an amateur, I don’t believe I am spilling any industry secrets by writing in this blog, but rather sharing some positives about various teachers and how ballet is taught.
First of all, the two teachers I’ve been with most often in New York City are Finis Jhung and Heather Hawke (beginner to beginner-intermediate), and they both provide some very smart training that is particular to different skill sets that are equally important for any dancer to begin to develop. Finis is great at helping beginners develop strength, which I’ve noticed many other beginner teachers don’t emphasize. His beginners go up on their metarsals and have to balance all their weight in this position fairly early in the barre exercises for every class. Most other teachers wait longer to have the students réléver (lift up). Heather Hawke is excellent at improving coordination, as she implements complicated footwork, often with a step or two additional to the type of footwork other teachers may require in warmups. So anyone (like me!) who has been uncoordinated for most of their lives can start to build the neural connections between their brain and feet necessary to moving in ways they never dared try.
In my first class at Paris Marais with a teacher named Nathalie Bochanek, I’ve already learned something important that for some reason, none of my previous teachers ever emphasized as clearly. I had always noticed when looking at pictures and videos that the feet have to be angled outward before doing a pirouette in a way that seems unnatural or even impossible, but always thought that just meant some people were more flexible or were trained to stand that way from the time they were young, and thus I shouldn’t attempt to. Nathalie was the first teacher who ever said, “Your feet have to be angled outward from each other in a way that does not feel comfortable; if it feels comfortable, you won’t be able to do it.” So at once, I tried to angle them outward in a more extreme way, and guess what? I automatically had the balance I needed to land correctly on a pirouette. It was that clear and that important, and it had been communicated in a way that I understood.
There were two other things that I want to make sure to remember, things other teachers have told me before, but that I wasn’t ready to pay attention to until now. One is that my feet need to be tucked in toward each other much more closely when I’m standing in fifth position. I’ve always known that I don’t keep my extremities as tightly in position as I should, but when Nathalie placed my ankles in the correct position with her hands, it was much clearer to me. The other thing was that I am flinging my arms outward too much when doing a pirouette when I should just be following the line of the curve that my arms are already in. The way she said it was something like, “Just move starting from where you already are…” This is something I’ve been told before, but I felt readier to absorb it this time.
The other thing is that I can sense how the entire culture of the place and of the school lends to the ease of communication and understanding toward the subject. It just feels very organic, and Nathalie’s personality and sense of humor have a very marked charm, diversity, and flow. Our barre stretching exercises were extremely fulfilling for me because she took us through very specific barre stretches fairly quickly, whereas most of my teachers in NYC just expect students to know how to use the barre to stretch (and I never do!) Finally, I wanted to say that the entire class moved together in a more communal way when we did floor exercises, sometimes even changing places or slightly jostling each other, which is something I tend to do in NYC, while in NYC, no one else ever does that. People are extremely individualistic about their space, and to me, that feels a little unnatural. There is something very communal about dance, and I don’t see why people shouldn’t “move together,” or “switch places,” or sometimes even brush past each other – without actually bumping into each other – in ways that are very communal and free-flowing. So I feel kind of gratified that it was more like that here!
(Disclaimer: I am not saying that any of my previous teachers should change anything they do. Everyone is good at different things, and it benefits students to try different classes and to experience different cultures.)
Ok, that’s all for today and I will probably keep writing these notes, partially to remind myself how to keep the correct positions.
Ok. I did find a pdf with all the information about who is teaching the courses, plus course descriptions, on the website after my advisor sent me the link…
Another interesting thing is that we are contacted in a more individualized way by a registration administrator at the beginning of the process so that it almost feels like we have a personal assistant who can answer our questions while we are completing tasks. And the administrator can do things like add a new section to our online module if we request to upload an additional document. So not only does the communication feel personalized, the process can also involve personalized website restructuring and rebuilding. I found that very interesting and futuristic, while I still felt a little lonely at times because the part of me that was used to receiving paper letters wondered if anyone had forgotten about me (especially when I read very late into the process, at the end of a series of linearly-connected links, that I had probably missed a department introduction in early September!) All of these reactions put together are very paradoxical, but I suppose every experience abroad involves paradoxes of the sort.
Overall, the French system is definitely very resourceful, involves less paper waste, and requires what feels like a more tangible amount of faith and unity…
I’ve found that there are many good courses offered for the first semester (the image above shows only the first of about five large sections of choices). I am currently torn between choosing 19th-20th century related classes, as that’s my focus, and Renaissance-related classes, which I long for as foundation. (Being torn is an understatement, really. I’m all too aware of how short the two years here are going to be, which is fairly unusual as a reaction for me, and makes me wonder if I might want to find a way to stay longer). In any case, I think I’m going to try to do both classes I’m considering. Crossing fingers everything will work out fine. So far so good. Deep breath.
I’ve been rereading posts from the blog I wrote in from 2012-2021, when I spelled my pen name Sulyn Zan. I started this blog primarily to help myself get over being shy or insecure about my writing; it’s actually strange to me now how seriously I took that part of myself before this period of time began. It’s as if my writing and my voice somehow represented my entire self-worth, and I was terrified that if I shared these with people, I might be proven insubstantial or incapable. Therefore, I never shared any of the writing that I considered to be a *real* effort at writing in this blog, except perhaps my literary analysis. I felt it more expedient to accept my more spontaneous voice, and to test whether or not that in itself had value. It worked, as this was the voice I used to hobnob with Stephen Colbert’s writing team and a number of other people in film/TV/politics/books/music/journalism and other fields, on Twitter. Today I have no fear of famous, well-established people, of what they think of me. I can be dull or simplistic if I want to be because I have already proven to myself and others that I am not (not usually, or at least not always!) My flaws retain the portion of me justly allotted, and that is that. The flip side is that some of the writing done in this voice may be more appealing than that which I’ve done as a “concerted” effort in private. But I’m still excited to submit more of my formal writing to literary magazines soon…
Incidentally, the very final blog – the one that comes up as soon as you click on this link – is very off-the-cuff and not my best writing. The first of the “Breakfast Guy” blogs, however, is a better effort, not least of all because I was so inspired when first arriving in Athens.
