Maria Dahvana Headley
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AUTHOR OF THE YEAR OF YES
Female
32 years old
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
United States
Last Login: 2/11/2009
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Maria Dahvana Headley's Interests
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| General | Music. I can't play anything, but I can sing. Reasonably, anyway. And I like to write lyrics, some of which have made appearances in my plays. There's one that I like especially involving a sort of Marlene Dietrich take on a banana. I love singer songwriters: anyone who can tell me a good story can win me over in about three seconds flat. Bob Dylan, of course, falls deep into my early experience of this category. I love Tom Waits, Iron & Wine, The Be Good Tanyas, The Mountain Goats, Peter Mulvey, Micah P. Hinson, and about a million other people. Musicians are probably more influential on my writing than anyone else.
Theatre. I spent half of my teenage years sitting on the floor of the Boise public library, reading through the filing cabinet that contained the plays. I write plays still - they've been produced in random places all over the country. I love Theatre Complicite, if that gives you any idea. I like theatrical stuff. That doesn't mean I don't like naturalism, but theatre that is trying to be TV is not my thing. I like stuff that can only happen onstage. That's why theatre rocks. I also like weird cabaret. My real dream is to be part of a cabaret trio, singing strange little comedic songs and speaking in percussive accents. What can I say?
Books. Anyone who can really write. I like people ranging from George Saunders, Lidia Davis and Angela Carter to Sam Shepard. The thing I like best is creative use of language, and not only that, but playing with the language. In my own writing, I find myself rhyming (sometimes to the aggravation of other people)
I like to sew. I like to make my own weird clothes. Like to paint walls. Tattoos. I have three and no doubt will soon have more. Cooking. All the time. I like to throw things into pots and see what happens. Basically, that's how I live my whole life, writing included. | | Music | Tom Waits, Tom Waits, Tom Waits. The Mountain Goats, The Willard Grant Conspiracy (that should cover the grizzle-voiced guy category), Josh Ritter, from my homestate of Idaho, and thoroughly excellent too,The Magnetic Fields. Radio Citizen. Planningtorock (I wanna Bite you, a cannibal ballad, who doesn't love this?). Will Oldham (that song about fucking a mountain simply gets me where I live), the completely fantastic Micah P. Hinson, Michael the Blind, Joshua Radin, Edith Frost, The National, The Rosebuds, Shelley Short, Doveman, Reuben's Accomplice, Tracy Grammer and Dave Carter, Iron and Wine, KT Tunsdall, Feist, Joanna Newsom, Ryan Adams, Willie Nelson = forever, Johnny Cash, Matisyahu, Joni Mitchell, k.d.lang's Hymns to the 39th Parallel, and the occasional bout of Prince, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, EastMountainSouth, Damien Rice, Robert Johnson, Patty Griffin, Lyle Lovett, Kris Delmhorst, Peter Mulvey, Jeffrey Foucault (and all three of the previous together: Redbird), Chris Smither, Lambert Hendricks and Ross and about a million more. | | Movies | I have no memory for favorite movies, so I have to be forgiven for the fact that I can only remember the last few things I've seen. 8 1/2 - Fellini, Garden State, Walk the Line, Marat/Sade - the film of the Peter Brook production, The Quiet American (my husband was cowriter on that one, but I would've loved it anyway), anything with Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin. Anything. Capote, and anything with Philip Seymour Hoffman, early Hal Hartley stuff, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and all other Charlie Kaufman -script genius, anything Coen Brothers, can't think of anything else. Though I adore movies and see tons of them, I'm an amnesiac. | | Television | The Wire. It's the best thing I've ever seen on TV. A novel in TV form. Brilliant. | | Books | THE YEAR OF YES - yeah, I know, it's immodest, but I wrote it and it's my first baby, Joseph Mitchell, all of it, and if you don't know Joseph Mitchell, you should pick him up right now, anything by Michael Chabon, The Tender Bar by JR Moehringer, anything by Lorrie Moore, How to Breathe Underwater - Julie Orringer, Speak, Memory - Nabokov, Sonnets to Orpheus - Rilke, anything by Sam Shepard. I love his short stories especially. Tom Stoppard. I love Tom Stoppard. Why? Because Tom Stoppard loves language, and anyone who loves language is a friend of mine. Anything by Alice Munro, Shakespeare, all of him, FALLING THROUGH THE EARTH by Danielle Trussoni, I AM NOT MYSELF THESE DAYS by Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Tin House magazine, Susie Bright, Bulfinch's Mythology, A Wrinkle in Time, and that whole series by Madeleine L'Engle - those are books I wish I'd written, Leaves of Grass, What the Living Do by Marie Howe, Night Journey by Murad Kalam, and Murad's upcoming book which I'll say nothing about, just that when it comes out, you must immediately read it; it's brilliant - www.muradkalam.com, anything by Alec Wilkinson - New Yorker personality profile writer, Marguerite Duras - anything, but especially The North China Lover and Writing, Matthew Power -a journalist/essayist/genius friend of mine whose writing is endlessly fabulous and can be found at www.matthewpower.net, George Saunders' CivilWarland in Bad Decline, Donald Barthelme, Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale, David Mitchell's Black Swan Green and Cloud Atlas, Peter Orner's The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, Steve Almond, Robert Schenkkan's The Kentucky Cycle,as well as anything else he's ever written, Alice Munro, Lydia Davis, Mary Gaitskill, Dorothy Parker, anything by Brian K. Vaughan, who yes, I also know, but that's immaterial. He's a hell of a writer, and Y the Last Man gives me joy. (along with plenty of other people - Brian is basically a rockstar and has fans from all sectors of the universe. When I get to count Michael Chabon as one of MY fans, I'll be at maximum joy - Mr. Chabon has lauded Brian publicly and repeatedly, for good reason. ) | | Heroes | Anybody who gives love out without getting tangled up in their own ego and drama. Or, what the hell, people who do get tangled up, and give out their love anyway. Unconditionalists. That's who I admire. Second to love, I'll take a really kickass storyteller. |
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Maria Dahvana Headley's Details
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| Status: | Married | | Here for: | Networking, Friends | | Orientation: | Straight | | Hometown: | Boise, ID | | Body type: | 5' 3" / Slim / Slender | | Ethnicity: | White / Caucasian | | Zodiac Sign: | Gemini | | Children: | Love kids, but not for me | | Education: | College graduate | | Occupation: | Writer |
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Maria Dahvana Headley's Schools
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New York University
New York,New York
Graduated: 2000
Student status: Alumni
Degree: Bachelor's Degree
Major: Dramatic Writing
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1996 to 2000 |
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Maria Dahvana Headley's Networking
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Maria Dahvana Headley's Latest Blog Entry
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The Liar’s Diary!
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Modern Love Essay!
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Stories from My Teenage Years...
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In Case You're In Kentucky...
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THE NERVOUS BREAKDOWN!
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Maria Dahvana Headley's Blurbs |
About me:
I'm a writer...and, among other things, far lesser publicized, given that they are mostly lurking in my office in big, dangerously tilting piles, I wrote a book called
THE YEAR OF YES (Hyperion).
This book is the following things: funny, dirty, crazy, bitter, crackpot, brutal, eccentric, and forgiving of not only my own trespasses, but everyone else's too. Or at least that's how most people feel. The above adjectives were culled from a variety of reviews. , specifically linked here to Entertainment Weekly. Here are a few more. Hell, some people have whole other lists of adjectives to describe my book, and to describe me too, but since this is MY site, I'm not putting em up here. The book's about love. In all its incarnations. I don't have a very strict definition of love, because I think it can be both momentary and lifelong. I think both things are valuable. I believe in love, hard, and that's just the deal. Even though the book's about love, and there's been a ton of press that makes it seem like chick lit, it's not particularly chick-lit-ish. It appeals to some people who like chick lit, but not always. It also appeals to people who see the universe in their own skewed way, who are stubborn, who are searching, and who believe in changing their lives. It also appeals to people who like Tom Waits. Or, at least, god, I hope it does, because that's all I listened to the whole time I was writing it -and during the time I was living it too, and I personally am a very, very devoted Waits fan.
Here's a more absolute publisher-ish description of the book: It's a memoir of the year I (as a poverty stricken playwrighting student at NYU, and YES that means that there are literary references in the book. Some of you are gonna like em, and some of you aren't. If you don't, skip them. Yes, that's right. Skip 'em. They're mostly in chapter 1, and no, it's not cause I'm trying to convince you I'm smart, it's because in some respects, my book-borne logic was causing my love life to shrink into a shriveled little bitter thing, and that was important to the story) decided to say yes to dates with everyone who asked me. Yes, everyone. Including homeless guys, taxi drivers, subway conductors, women, old men, a reincarnated dachshund owned by my mom in the early 70's, a guy who wanted me to bite his private parts, and a whole bunch more...I lived in NYC, after all, and if you're a girl in New York, you've been hit on by your share of strange and sometimes wonderful. At the end of the year, I found love with a person I'd never have thought about.
The book's been all over the place in the past couple of months. I've been on TV (here's a link to my interview on THE TODAY SHOW ) and in print in a bunch of places, and have been dutifully going along with the whole marketing route. Now I'm looking for the kind of people I THINK should read the book.
In other news, I went to NYU Tisch School of the Arts for Dramatic Writing, and have been a playwright for the most part. Now I live in Seattle with two bengal cats, my fabulous husband, and two stepkids. I'm working on a bunch of stuff right now - a novel, another memoir, this one sorta a prequel, and some screenplay-ish stuff. I just sold the movie rights to Y of Y and am way excited about that too. Paramount Pictures and Dan Jinks & Bruce Cohen, producers of American Beauty, one of my most favorite movies. Life is good!
Please check out THE OFFICIAL TYOY WEBSITE for more info on the book.
I edited my profile with Thomas’ Myspace Editor V3.6!
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Who I'd like to meet:
William Shakespeare. Whoever he really was, he was brilliant. Also, new friends of all kinds, because I sit too often in my basement office making friends with the characters in my head, and ultimately, that doesn't work when you want to have a dinner party. Iconoclasts. That's what I like best. Also anecdotalists. Charm. Wit and a wicked sense of humor. Also: anyone who plays great music. By this, I mean, anyone who plays anything on my list to the left, or anyone who has their own story, sound and can rock a harmonica. I'm a music junkie. Even better if you can come to my house for the abovenoted dinner party, and allow me to sing harmony, which is all I can really do in that vein. If you got a random friend request from me, it's because I think you have great taste in either music or books, or because you have some life philosophy listed that appeals to me. I'm not adding at random. I'm adding people I'd like to have in my life, and in the group who've read my book. I like hearing from you, too. Nothing makes me happier than communication.
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