A Writer's Moment: 'Hurling words into the darkness'

A Writer's Moment: 'Hurling words into the darkness':   “Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.”  – Richard Wright   Born in Roxie, Miss., o...

'Hurling words into the darkness'

 

“Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.” – Richard Wright

 

Born in Roxie, Miss., on this date in 1908, Wright authored at least two American literary classics – the novel Native Son, published in 1940, and his autobiographical Black Boy in 1945.   Self-taught as a writer, his works have been studied and held up as “keys to helping change the conversation about race relations in the United States.”  

 

Much of his work focuses on the discrimination and violence suffered by African Americans during the late 19th to mid-20th centuries.   Over the course of his relatively short life (he died in 1960), Wright authored hundreds of journalistic pieces, many short stories, 17 novels and nonfiction books, poetry, and dozens of hard-hitting essays.  In the process he won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship.  In 2010 he was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. 

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo,” Wright said.  “And if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.”

A Writer's Moment: 'A writer, not a talker'

A Writer's Moment: 'A writer, not a talker':   “Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.”  – Wendell Berry   Born in Louisville, KY in August of 1934, ...

'A writer, not a talker'

 

“Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.” – Wendell Berry

 

Born in Louisville, KY in August of 1934, Berry died this past Monday after an extraordinary life as an environmental activist, cultural critic and farmer who also just happened to be one of America’s most prolific authors.  Through his essays, short stories, poems and books (both fiction and nonfiction), his writing served as an extended conversation about the pastoral life he valued and lived in his native Kentucky.

 

The “good life,” Berry said, included sustainable agriculture, appropriate technologies, healthy rural communities, connection to place, and the pleasures of good food.   “All people should be interested in farming,” he said, “because eating is an agricultural act.” A longtime leader for Earth Day (which brought the two of us together at an event in Northfield, Minn. back in the mid-1980s), Berry wrote one of the key texts of the environmental movement, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture.  

 

Berry received both the National Humanities Medal and the prestigious Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement.   He was the first living writer (in 2015) to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.  Active until the end, his last book was 2025’s Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story, the ninth novel in his Port William series.  He wrote more than 50 books and hundreds of essays, poems and short stories.

 

“Well,” he said, “I’m a writer more than I am a talker.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Writing the books that endure'

A Writer's Moment: 'Writing the books that endure':   “ I hope to be remembered for writing books about social justice that also have enough aesthetic value to endure as works of literature.” ...

'Writing the books that endure'

 

“I hope to be remembered for writing books about social justice that also have enough aesthetic value to endure as works of literature.” – Jonathan Kozol 

 

Born in Boston in September of 1936, Kozol is best known for his books on public education in the United States starting with Death at an Early Age about his first year as a teacher in the Boston Public Schools.  Winner of a National Book Award the book has been continuously in print since its publication in 1968.selling more than 2 million copies in the U.S. and Europe alone.

 A graduate (with highest honors) from Harvard, he was selected for a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University and then “self-studied” writing with accomplished authors like William Styron, Richard Wright and other American expatriates living and writing in Paris at the time.  

 

After returning to the States he tutored children, worked on his writing technique, and then did the year teaching that led to his multiple award-winning first book. 

 

His book Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America also earned multiple prizes including the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and the Conscience-in-Media Award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors.   Still going strong, he published his 18th book, The End to Inequality: Breaking Down the Walls of Apartheid Education in America, in 2024.

  

“I don't know if anything I write will endure," Kozol said. "But I do try to write it as a narrative that will not only challenge but also entice the reader into the lives of children.” 

A Writer's Moment: 'A Writer's Best Mindset: Be Unafraid'

A Writer's Moment: 'A Writer's Best Mindset: Be Unafraid': “As a writer, the best mindset is to be unafraid.”  – Malcolm Gladwell   Born in Fareham, England on Sept. 3, 1963, Gladwell (who grew u...