Writers, “Writers,” and Writers(?)

Several years ago, I was doing some archival research on the history of literary groups, associations, and the like in Richmond. At the time I was serving on the Board of Directors of James River Writers, the largest and most prominent literary organization in Central Virginia, and I’d gotten curious about where and how these groups preserve their histories. I didn’t expect to be personally attacked in the process, and yet—!

In the course of reading, I ran across a letter between two members of a bygone organization, talking about the value of different authors’ works. One said to the other that, in essence, people who publish academically are not real writers. An interesting claim, and one that makes more sense, given the letter was from many decades ago, back before creative writing put down… not merely roots, but taproots in the ivory tower.

To be fair, these correspondents weren’t discussing scholarship, much of which is just not created to be read for pleasure, with artistic goals in mind, or both. My publications over the last fifteen years have encompassed all of the above, though the last few years have seen a decrease in my fiction credits as I’ve turned my attention toward novels. For better or worse, that meant more careful allocation of my time, which led to less time reading and writing short fiction. It hasn’t, however, cut so much into my academic writing. Some of that’s professional stuff about my work as a librarian that is probably of no interest to most people reading this, but not entirely.

To wit, yesterday I got my (aforementioned) contributor’s copy of Fantastic Cities: American Urban Spaces in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. It includes my chapter “Olympia, Wilderness, and Consumption in Laird Barron’s Old Leech Cycle.” Viz:

This essay had a long gestation period, as is not uncommon in the humanities. I’m grateful to the editors that it’s out in the world, and I hope it finds readers! While I don’t have the same artistic ambitions with it that I do have with my fiction, I tried to write it well, and I tried to offer some perspectives that might be interesting to other readers of weird fiction, and Laird Barron’s fiction in particular.

Other than that? With March here, it seems like Omicron might be behind us, even if the world is unquiet. I’m still thinking about next steps on the novel I wrote about a couple posts back. In the meanwhile, I’m 10,000 words into a new novel, one that involved as detailed an outline as I’ve ever created, along with 25,000 words of preparatory character sketches. Sometimes new books need new methods, or so I’ve heard. Happy Spring!

Whenworldscollide: Special Edition

One of the categories on this here blog that consistently gets attention, even after individual posts have fallen off most people’s radars, is “whenworldscollide.” That’s where I stick the stuff that lives in the Venn diagram of creative writing, scholarship, librarianship, and academic stuff. 2021’s been busy with that kind of stuff.

Early next year, my essay “Olympia, Wilderness, and Consumption in Laird Barron’s Old Leech Cycle” will be published in Fantastic Cities: American Urban Spaces in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. Likely not the rubric most people use for thinking about Old Leech, but it worked for me because I kept thinking about how very well Laird Barron does both Olympia and Washington, and also how little academics have yet written about either Barron or fiction set in Olympia. I probably wouldn’t have tried to write this piece back when I was first a librarian, trying to wall off different parts of my life and never really thinking about literary scholarship, but here we are.

Last week I moderated a lively discussion about the future of speculative fiction for James River Writers, the Central Virginia writing org on whose Board of Directors I served some years ago. Our conversation roamed over many topics, but I wound up juggling my writing hat and my library hat a bit, in particular on the question of genre labels and taxonomies. A tough issue that continues to get tougher as readers’ tastes solidify and specify. Many U.S. readers have no nearby bookstore they can happily browse, and many factors (not least the pandemic) have continued to drive book buyers to online sellers. In that environment, what a book is classified as can at times matter far more than it used to… to the reader, writer, publisher, OR library.

Finally, back in May I had the distinct (and new for me!) pleasure of serving as a keynote speaker at a symposium hosted by the University of Calgary, “Integrating Library, Archives and Special Collections into Creative Writing Pedagogy: An Experiential Symposium.” It was an honor and super-invigorating to present and help plan with the organizers and my fellow keynoter, David Pavelich. This event was some years in the making and had to be shifted online due to the pandemic, which put a damper on some facets and allowed for new ones, including broader attendance. None of it could have happened without the indefatigable efforts of my Canadian colleagues, Melanie Boyd, Aritha van Herk, and Jason Nisenson. Lots of great “whenworldscollide” moments here, but I have to say that it was a particular delight to talk about the research practices of various folks in horror and weird fiction.

integrating-libraries-into-creative-writing-symposium-final-scheduleDownload

TONIGHT! The Writing Show: Novel Ways to Organize Your Research

Tonight’s the night, folks! If you live in Richmond or nearby, you are welcome (as always) to attend the James River Writers Writing Show. This month I am moderating a discussion about Novel Ways to Organize Your Research, featuring panelists Bert Ashe, Harrison Fletcher, and Jennifer Hughes. Bert is the author of Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles, Harrison is the author of Descanso for My Father: Fragments of a Life, and Jennifer works at Literature and Latte on Scrivener, the word processing software.

$12 members | $15 non-members | $5 students
Social: 6pm | Show: 6:45pm
THE FIREHOUSE THEATRE
1609 West Broad Street (free parking at Lowe’s)

“Write What You Research”

This weekend I have the pleasure of moderating a panel at the James River Writers conference here in Richmond. The panel I’ll be moderating is entitled “Writing What You Research,” and it’s all about research for writers. If you’re able to make the conference, this panel will be on Sunday, October 19th, from 10:15 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. We’ll be talking about everything from the “aha” moment in research to what happens when your research takes a surprising turn. You’re going to get to hear from panelists writing in very different genres, with different (or are they similar?) research needs…

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Tarfia Faizullah

Born in Brooklyn and raised in west Texas, Tarfia Faizullah is the author of Seam (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014), winner of the 2012 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems appear in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter,New England Review, Washington Square, and anthologized in Poems of Devotion, Excuse This Poem, The Book of Scented Things, and Best New Poets 2014. A Kundiman fellow, she is the recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Project Award, a Ploughshares Cohen Award, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Copper Nickel Poetry Prize, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, scholarships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Sewanee Writers’ Conference, fellowships from the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop and Vermont Studio Center, and other honors. Tarfia is a poetry reader for New England Review and is a contributing editor for Four Way Review, Failbetter, and Asian American Literary Review. She lives in Detroit, where she is a writer-in-residence for InsideOut Literary Arts and co-edits the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Press & Video Series with Jamaal May. In Fall 2014, she will join the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program as the Nicholas Delbanco Visiting Professor of Creative Writing in Poetry.

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Hugh Howey

Hugh Howey: “Born in 1975, I spent the first eighteen years of my life getting through the gauntlet of primary education. While there, I dabbled in soccer, chess, and tried to write my first novel (several times).

Out of school, I became fascinated with computers, repaired them for a brief stint, then moved to Charleston, SC and attended college. To save money, I purchased a small sailboat to live on, and nearly got myself killed bringing it down from Baltimore with a friend.

After my junior year of college, possibly out of fear of the real world, I left my safe little harbor and sailed South. I hopped around the islands for a while, went through two hurricanes, and spent the last of my cruising funds re-stepping my mast. It was time to head back to the States, where I began a career as a yacht captain.

This began an exciting phase of my life, traveling all over the East coast and Caribbean, from Barbados to Chicago. I worked on boats in New York, the Bahamas, even Canada. One of these adventures brought me together with my wife, who was able to lure me away from my vagabond ways, dropping anchor and buying a house.

Physically settled, my mind continued to roam, concocting adventures and whisking me off to fantastic places. Some of these tales seemed worth sharing, so I tapped into my love of books and decided to write them down. My first stories detail the life of a character that I’ve been mulling over for quite some time. Her name is Molly Fyde, and she draws inspiration from the awesome women in my life.

My Wool series became a sudden success in the Fall of 2011. Originally just a novelette, the demand from Amazon reviewers sent me scurrying to write more tales in this subterranean world. The resulting Omnibus has spent considerable time in the Amazon top 100, has been a #1 Bestseller in Science Fiction on Amazon, and was optioned by Ridley Scott and Steve Zaillian for a potential feature film. The story of its success has been mentioned in Entertainment Weekly, Variety, and Deadline Hollywood among many others. Random House is publishing the hardback version in the UK in January of 2013.

When I’m not writing, I like to go for hikes with my family, take a stroll on the beach, and keep up with my reading. I currently live in Jupiter, Florida with my wife Amber and our dog Bella.”

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Brian Jay Jones

New York Times bestselling biographer Brian Jay Jones spent nearly two decades as a public policy analyst and speechwriter, before turning to biography full-time in 2007. He presently serves as president ofBiographers International Organization.

Brian’s most recent book, Jim Henson: The Biography (Ballantine, 2013) was a New York Timesbestseller, and chosen as the Best Biography of 2013 by Goodreads, as well as one of the year’s Top Ten books by CNN viewers. The first full-length biography of the iconic creator of the Muppets, Jim Henson: The Biography was hailed as “illuminating” (The Atlantic), “insightful” (Parade), “masterful” (Kirkus) and “compulsively readable” (The AV Club).

Brian’s first book, Washington Irving (Arcade, 2008), was praised as the definitive biography of American literature’s first popular author and pop culture icon. The Associated Press deemed it “authoritative,” the Washington Post called it, “engaging, clearly written, and well researched,” while the New York Times summed it up simply as “charming.” Which pretty much made his year.

In 2010, Brian was awarded the St. Nicholas Society of New York’s Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence, joining David McCullough, Ron Chernow, Christopher Buckley, and William Zinsser on the list of medal recipients.

Born in Kansas and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Brian has a degree in English literature from the University of New Mexico, which he immediately parlayed into a brief career as a manager of a comic book store before getting into politics and writing.

For nearly ten years, he worked as a policy advisor in the United States Senate, serving in the office of U.S. Senator Pete V. Domenici, and then on the U.S. Senate HELP Committee for Chairman James M. Jeffords. He has also served as an associate state superintendent of education for the state of Arizona, and a policy analyst for a county councilmember, officially giving him the government service hat trick.

Brian now lives in Maryland with his wife and a very excitable dog. His daughter is presently away at college, majoring in physics–or, as Brian calls it, “foreign language.” He is presently at work on a biography of filmmaker George Lucas for Little, Brown, to be published in 2016.

 

 

Tarfia Faizullah: a Conversation Between the Internal and External

Tarfia Faizullah

The 2014 James River Writers conference happens this weekend here in Richmond, Virginia. If you haven’t registered yet, there’s still time. Among the many authors, poets, editors, agents, and other publishing industry experts you’ll have the opportunity to hear there is Tarfia Faizullah, a rising star among poets, whose first book, Seam, won the 2012 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her list of accomplishments is already formidable, with a host of impressive publications, fellowships, and scholarships to her name. This year she is the Nicholas Delbanco Visiting Professor of Creative Writing in Poetry at the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program. I had the pleasure of conversing with Tarfia this summer, talking about what makes her tick. She had this to say about the impact of the James River Writers Conference and Richmond as a city had on her as a writer…

I’ve spent a good part of my life longing for spaces in which I wasn’t a weirdo, and when I finally decided to apply to graduate school, it was that longing that ultimately took me to Richmond to attend VCU. I remember driving down Broad for the first time, further and further away from the ubiquitous corporate strips housing the usual Best Buys or fast food restaurants, and closer and closer to the heart of Richmond’s downtown. Nestled there was an unexpectedly rich and welcoming community of arts and letters where I would learn from and grow inside of as both a writer and an artist.

My first year at VCU, I was fortunate enough to receive a scholarship to attend the James River Writers Conference. There, I sat in rooms beside them listening intently to panels of authors share what they had learned from their own joys and failures, from dedicating a life to the work of the word. I was too half-formed at the time to understand what a gift the scholarship truly was: I was too impatient, too ready to charge forward with my own poems. But I wasn’t so impatient that I wasn’t moved by a panel with local poets Brian Henry and Elizabeth Seydel Morgan. They discussed poetry with verve and thoughtfulness in such a way that made me realize that poetry could vibrate the universe, if we wanted it to. If we let it. Yes, I thought. Let it.

Your description of Richmond, and transitioning from the corporate zone to the heart of Richmond’s downtown, is striking and matches how I remember coming to the city. What part does arrival—does gnosis—play in your poetry?

I want to both understand and appreciate mystery, and I ask my poems to do the same work. In this way, To me, the practice of poetry is arriving—at some version of myself I was heading towards but didn’t know I would become in a world that seems different than the day before. In Seam, I’m always arriving somewhere both geographically and spatially new: a hotel room in a village in Bangladesh, in a kitchen in Richmond, Virginia, along a highway in west Texas.

Do you see this fundamental change—becoming a version of yourself in a world that seems different—as something internal, or as coming from change in the world?

I see it as a conversation between the internal and external—I’m affected by the external, but I try not to let it dictate my feelings completely or for very long. I suppose in a way, I vacillate between feeling anxious about the world’s difficulties and exuberant over its beautiful mysteries.

The urgency you describe with respect to your poetry is understandable, but it seems at odds with the poems themselves. Your lines are so solid, and the women at the core of your first collection, Seam, don’t have stories that feel like they can be rushed. How do you balance urgency and craft?

That’s a great question—one that I consider each time I wrestle with a poem. Sometimes, I can carry a poem with me for a long time: there is the gathering of the materials, considering the connections between them, articulating those connections. My first reader and co-editor Jamaal May and I can take a good long while considering and wrestling with the tiniest components of a line or sentence: we call this getting a poem past-done. Other times, a poem will come as though summoned, and it only takes an edit or two before it gets to that past-done place. Regardless, I always take the time to let a poem rest. To let my eyes rest from it, so I can see it more clearly the next time I look at it.

Your approach to writing and editing sounds deliberate and rock-solid. In addition to these craft steps, what else do you feel is necessary for poetry that, in your words, can vibrate the universe? Can we even quantify that?

Seamus Heaney draws a distinction between craft and technique in his essay “Feeling Into Words.” It’s a terrific distinction, because craft are the tools you can learn such as meter and sound, the processes you can employ, and technique is voice and perspective. You can put the words together with craft, but you need the heart—its myriad concerns, its pulse, its erratic behaviors—to hold them there.

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Read Tarfia Faizullah’s Seam to see this brilliant poet at work, and come hear from her this weekend at the 2014 James River Writers Conference.