Larry Burns

Questions provide answers…and empathy

Beneath the surface of anything we love lies a good story. I love public parks for the physical and mental health benefits they provide. Park use cuts across many cultural divisions, providing encounters with those normally outside our bubble. I appreciate the exposure to new stories as much as I enjoy the physical activity and vitamin D. Our connection to the people and things we love can be…

If You Give a Kid a Library Card...My final advice to writers on how to use the library: Get involved. Become a volunteer. Make suggestions. If you don’t find a service you want, help create it. Writers have a unique and necessary perspective.

Libraries sparked my early love affair with books. My second grade teacher at E. J. Marshall Elementary School held reading contests to keep bookworms like me busy over the summer. A favorite childhood memory is Mom taking me to the Chino Library. I’d arrive with reading list in hand and check out the maximum, ten books, with my Junior Library Card. I can close my eyes and see that light oak card…

Anyone who has written to a deadline while raising a child or caring for an aging parent understands the full-contact nature of writing. Life slaps your notebook out of your hands, steals your pen, and generally talks to you incessantly.

Could you spot a writer in the wild? How do we write? The traditional montageincludes someone typing merrily away on a keyboard, behind a closed door, with nothing to interrupt the transmission. Like clockwork, or an assembly line, the finished prose goes from mind to fingers to screen to an audience in a smooth series of fortunate events, all predicated on the writer getting enough peace and…

We will always have the art of conversation

In the span of twelve hours, I managed to have three distinct, important, and meaningful conversations. I accomplished this feat without leaving the confines of Riverside CA no less!

This was the liveliest, and thankfully the one recorded live by Hey Riverside. Feel free to jump around and catch a snippet or two worth a laugh or a derisive tsk-tsk. It’s much like my new book, Secret Inland…

When writing about place, you are writing about people. More importantly, you are writing about who belongs. And who does not. So, who are the people of the Inland Empire?

I recently completed a book about the rich cultural landscape of the Inland Empire. That book, Secret Inland Empire, provided a way for me to share stories about the Inland Empire, illustrating our rich and diverse cultural landscape.

In college I took a course called LA Literature, exposing me to Mike Davis’ City of Quartz and sparking my quest to identify a similar literary canon for the Inland…

Part-time writing humor for your part time reading pleasure - Secret Inland Empire provides the stories behind the wildest, wackiest, and most wonderful people and places of the IE.

Part-Timer Paradox

The #part-timer qualifier finds it’s way into most of my job titles. Sometimes it’s thesaurus-ed into #adjunct or #visiting or #temporary or acting. I’m a part-time writer, part-time teacher, part-time stay-at-home-dad, part-time spouse. These made up words balance quite a load on that little hyphen. Hyphens as meaningful signifiers, as key to comprehension as the period.…

Why can’t they all be Gary Gnu?

I’ve removed the political feeds from my inbox and replaced them with poetry from places like Rattle Magazine. Not only does it calm my mind, it keeps it in a creative place.  Instead of encouraging me to yell and scream about things I cannot control, it makes the creation of new poetry likely, even little scratches in the dust like this.

I’ve been thinking a good deal lately about the inevitable…

All You do to Me is [TED] Talk, Talk Getting someone to accept your POV rarely happens organically.  I might someday come to the conclusion that the best higher education is delivered by non-humans. But that's a blog for another day.

Not to brag, but I teach at three colleges. It’s a cold hard fact of the college professor lifestyle.  One is a traditional community college where I teach in the classroom.  Another is a non-profit liberal arts college operating mostly online.  My third and longest employer was a publicly traded for profit college that went into the hands of private for-profit investorsin 2016.  I teach here in…

Two trees with a good deal of personal history continue to bring happiness in 2017.  Along Academy, in Canyon Crest this morning, I had a stop and chat with two old friends.  I recently finished a nature writing class through Inlandia Institute, which gave me the inclination to scan the tree tops, newly cleared by Fall, a season that runs from the Veteran’s Day to Thanksgiving around the Inland…

An Interview with a Tree Fairy

Thursday brought some morning clouds, making a trip to Andulka Park (5201 Chicago Avenue, Riverside 92507) for an AM romp a no-brainer.  This marks the first time since the end of Spring I pulled a long sleeve shirt out for E.M. She loved the bright graphics and rough texture of the thermal top – I loved the fact that I could keep the sunscreen in the trunk.  But we hauled the sand toys because…

What We Could Be

This week, journalist and photographer David Bacon sledgehammers a hole in the wall, revealing the 750,000 farm workers in California hidden from view.  Their labor is performed away from where most of us work; few of us sleep in their conditions, but they are still our neighbors.  Through storytellers like Bacon, it is possible that we, us and them, could be so much more.

Nearly ¼ of those farm…

I teach motivation as part of my coursework in my Intro to College course, and I sprinkle it into many of my Critical Thinking classes.  The other day I faced a pile of dirty dishes.  That moment clarified just what each of us faces when it comes to finishing a task.

This short post goes out to all my fellow procrastinators.  By the way, I stopped to write this while in the middle of finishing my…

What I wish I knew before I paid to advertise.

If you are like me, when you think about the writer’s life, it involves power, paper, ink, coffee, late nights, early mornings, and feeling like you may never finish that next project.  But there comes a time when you put the pen down, and pick up the phone, metaphorically. It’s the date the book is done and now it must be sold.  This requires buyers, and they need to be reached.  How?

Back in…

Drafting readers for your draft

With some time before my first traditionally published book, 100 Things to do in Riverside Before You Die, is due to my publisher Reedy Press, I sent a draft off to three readers. And waited.  The wait gave me time to consider why I asked these three to read for me in the first place.  Sharing this here, my hope is that you will consider similar reasons when you reach that point in the process.

S…

“FUR” Play Project, See the Last Night, Free

NOW

Facebook. Of all my thoughts on the subject, arts promotion and community engagement never came to mind. However…when I joined a poetry workshop managed through Facebook, it forced me to rethink what it was good for.  This single event caused me to “luckily” find great new art in my community –  I am from the Inland Empire, Inlandia, The IE, Inland SoCal – and, in the process, rediscover…