upcoming grant deadline: 05/15/2024

upcoming grant deadline: 05/15/2024

Gloria Klaiman

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2003 Seedling Award

I recently wrote a nonfiction book of interviews with artists from several disciplines at various stages in their careers about how they balance the making of their art with the need to earn a living. Although I am currently concentrating my writing efforts on a novel and collection of short stories, the themes that ran through my conversations with those artists remain the major focus of my work. These themes include an examination of how the individual nurtures the creative and spiritual in his or her art, personal relationships, and community when our fast-paced and materialistic society often devalues the contemplation, experimentation, impracticality, and passion that are necessary to create. In addition, I am interested in the challenges that people are faced with as they try to discover their own unique visions, ideas, and perceptions; the complex ways in which they succeed or fail; and how these outcomes influence their interactions with the world around them.

I have spent most of my life working as a writer and editor. Much of the writing, as with most writers, was done during found time while doing other work and caring for my family. In my professional life I have worked primarily as an editor of academic and medical books and journals, which led me to my current position as the managing editor of a clinical web site for physicians. My writing has been enriched by printmaking and painting, which deepened my appreciation of how messy artistic mistakes can suddenly reveal the unexpected and beautiful. I write and make messes, artistic and otherwise, in an old row house, where I live with my husband David and our cat Sophie. We travel often to Washington, DC, to visit our two grown daughters Tamar and Danielle.

 

    Gabrielle tries to provoke Jacob into making one of his sarcastic remarks. "Think that new resident's cute?" "Have anything edible for breakfast?" she asks. But with all the toxins swimming around in his brain, Jacob either mumbles a quiet answer or demands unreasonable things - a hammer or a plane ticket to Detroit. Mostly he sleeps, his snoring adding to the drone of his ever-present radio and the hums and clicks of the hospital monitors. He likes the shades drawn, and the yellow and green lights of the screens flickering in the darkened room remind Gabrielle of an aquarium.

    Recently, she saw a photograph in the newspaper of a sea creature that had just been discovered far below the ocean's surface. She was drawn to the fragile animal, suspended as it was in watery space, its papery fins and thin, elegant tentacles floating beneath it.

    Gabrielle feels as if she too is submerged in liquid. Everything around her is fluid; people and objects wash up against her and then slide away so that she cannot hold onto them. Words sound muffled and distorted. She remembers as a child having contests to see who could hold their breath underwater the longest and now feels the panicked tightness in her chest she forced herself to experience then.

    The hospital room is filled with Charlie Parker's "Night in Tunisia." Since he became ill a year ago, Jacob has insisted on playing the radio constantly. He keeps it tuned to the local National Public Radio station, falling asleep at night to the classical music program. Every night Gabrielle became accustomed to drifting off to a Mozart symphony or a Bach requiem, but at 2 or 3 in the morning, reporters with assorted accents began transmitting news from around the globe, infiltrating her dreams with riots, fires, falling stock prices, and revolutions.

    Sometimes she jolts awake, heart racing, already composing a letter to the newspaper or a foreign embassy, outraged at bulldozed orange groves and kidnapped journalists. In the morning, even if she remembers her anger, she is too busy or feels too ineffective to dash off the diatribes that she composed in the dark.


- from Transplantations

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Window of Opportunity Grant

The Window of Opportunity (WOO) grant provides financial assistance of up to $1,500 to Leeway grant and award recipients to help them take advantage of imminent, time-sensitive opportunities to support their art for social change practice. The Community Care Fund (CCF) provides financial assistance of up to $1,250 to Leeway grant and award recipients to support with immediate and essential emergency needs. [read more]

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Upcoming events
04/025:30 pm - 7:00 pm

4/2 Transformation Award (LTA) Awardee Panel + Info Session (In Person)

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04/185:30 pm - 6:30 pm

4/18 Transformation Award (LTA) Info Session (Virtual)

Have questions about the application process for the Leeway Transformation Award?

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