A Writer's Moment: Showing 'ordinary people in extraordinary moments'

A Writer's Moment: Showing 'ordinary people in extraordinary moments':   “I don't like poetry that doesn't give me a sense of ritual, but I don't like poetry that doesn't sound like people talkin...

Showing 'ordinary people in extraordinary moments'

 

“I don't like poetry that doesn't give me a sense of ritual, but I don't like poetry that doesn't sound like people talking to each other. I try to do both at once.” – Miller Williams

 

Born in Hoxie, Arkansas on April 8, 1930, Williams planned to become a natural scientist – especially working with animals – and earned a master’s degree in zoology.  But, ultimately, his love of writing got in the way of his planned career.  By the time of his death in 2015 he had produced nearly 40 books, created and read a poem at the Presidential Inauguration of fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton, and helped found The University of Arkansas Press.

 

He had his first collection of poems Et Cetera published while he was still an undergraduate student in biology at Arkansas State University.  His treatise on writing poetry, Making a Poem: Some Thoughts About Poetry and the People Who Write It, is regularly studied in colleges and universities around the world.   A critic once wrote that Miller had "a terrible honesty" and "(wrote) about ordinary people in the extraordinary moments of their lives."   

 

Among his many awards were the Porter Prize Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement in Writing, the National Poets’ Prize – for his collection Living on the Surface – and the National Arts Award for his lifelong contribution to the arts. 

 

“I respond to mood. I hear some phrase, or pick up a rhythm,” he once said of his writing style.  “I always have pen and paper with me.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Look through the eyes of another person'

A Writer's Moment: 'Look through the eyes of another person':   “Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.”...

'Look through the eyes of another person'

 

“Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.” – Barbara Kingsolver

 

Born in Annapolis, MD on April 8, 1955, Kingsolver intended to be a classical musician and, in fact, had a college scholarship to become one.  But, she said she realized that “only about 6 people a year get hired in that world.”  So she switched her focus to the study of science before trying her hand at writing.   Since 1988, the year her first novel The Bean Trees was published, she has written 18 books, including 2022’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Demon Copperhead and this year’s Partita.

 

A graduate of DePauw University in Indiana, Kingsolver makes her home in southeast Kentucky after living many years in Arizona. There, she wrote some of her most memorable works like The Poisonwood Bible and Pigs in Heaven, earning her a reputation as a writer who focused on topics of social justice and biodiversity, and the interaction between humans, communities and the environment.

 

Kingsolver said her readers seem to like that she puts herself inside her stories.  “The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Laborers of the word; passionate in presentation'

A Writer's Moment: 'Laborers of the word; passionate in presentation':   “I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.”  – Marguerit...

'Laborers of the word; passionate in presentation'

 

“I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.” – Marguerite Duras

 

Duras, a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker, was born in French Indochina (Vietnam) on April 4, 1914 and grew up there in poverty before running away from home as a teenager to live and write in France. 

 

While she was, indeed, a "passionate" journalist, she also was the author of many novels, plays, films and works of short fiction.  Her best-known tales recalled her affair with a rich landowner’s son while still living in Vietnam, led by the best-selling, fictionalized autobiographical work L'Amant, translated into English as The Lover.  That book won her the prestigious Goncourt Prize.   Variations on her teenage affair also appear in The Sea Wall, Eden Cinema and The North China Lover.

 

Awarded France's national theater prize, “The Grand Prix du Théâtre de l’Académie Française,” in recognition of her lifetime body of work, she also was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for her film Hiroshima mon amour.

 

Duras's many essays often spoke to human rights and issues of social justice.  “Journalism without a moral position is impossible,” she said.  “I believe every journalist is a moralist. It's absolutely unavoidable.”

A Writer's Moment: How to 'fortify your inner life'

A Writer's Moment: How to 'fortify your inner life':   “If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.” – Seamus Heaney   Born in Ireland in April o...