A Writer's Moment: 'Unacknowledged Historians'

A Writer's Moment: 'Unacknowledged Historians':   “If you're a writer, you know there are ways in which we don't know what we're doing at all. We're working out mysteries i...

'Unacknowledged Historians'

 “If you're a writer, you know there are ways in which we don't know what we're doing at all. We're working out mysteries in a sort of poetic realm, and hoping that if a story is honest, if you're dragging the deep truth out of yourself, then something good and profound might come out of it.”—Colum McCann

 

Born in Dublin, Ireland on this date in 1965, McCann is the author of seven novels and three collections of stories.  He has been the recipient of many international honors, including the National Book Award, the International Dublin Impac Prize, and the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French government. His topics have ranged from homeless people in the subway tunnels of New York, to a poetic examination of the life and culture of the Roma in Europe.

 

Perhaps his best-known book is Let the Great World Spin, winner of the National Book Award in the U.S, Best Foreign Novel Award in China, and the International Impac Award, a literary award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  His work has been published in over 40 languages.  

 

Co-founder of the non-profit global story exchange organization, Narrative 4, he lives with his wife and family in New York City where he teaches at the MFA program in Hunter College.  

 

“In a certain way, novelists become unacknowledged historians, because we talk about small, tiny, little anonymous moments that won't necessarily make it into the history books.”

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: Poetry: 'Just Doing'

A Writer's Moment: Poetry: 'Just Doing': “With poetry no one has to show anybody really, and you don't have to tell anyone you're doing it.” – Roger McGough Born in ...

Poetry: 'Just Doing'

“With poetry no one has to show anybody really, and you don't have to tell anyone you're doing it.” – Roger McGough

Born in 1937, McGough grew up in Liverpool, England and started making a name in the writing world in the 1960s with the publication of his best-selling poetry book The Mersey Sound.   Since then he’s led a highly successful writing career as a performance poet, children’s author and playwright.  A broadcaster, too, he hosts the BBC’s “Poetry Please” show and still makes his home in the Mersey area of Liverpool.                      

 

  For Saturday's Poem, here is McGough's,            

                                    Sleeping In  

 

Our street is dead lazy
Especially in winter.
Some mornings you wake up
And it’s still lying there
Saying nothing.  Huddled
under its white counterpane.

But soon the lorries arrive
Like angry Mums,
Pull back the blankets
And send it shivering
Off to work.

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: It's Simply The Best

A Writer's Moment: It's Simply The Best:   “I still feel, as I did when I was six or seven, that books are simply the best way to experience a story.” – Philip Reeve Reeve, who...

It's Simply The Best

 “I still feel, as I did when I was six or seven, that books are simply the best way to experience a story.” – Philip Reeve

Reeve, who turns 55 this weekend, is the British cartoonist /illustrator of many books for kids, including the “Dead Famous” book Horatio Nelson and His Victory, and a number of books in the clever Horrible Histories and Murderous Maths series.  He also wrote the Buster Bayliss books for young readers, which includes Night of the Living Veg, The Big Freeze, Day of the Hamster, and Custardfinger.  

In 2007 he delved into historical fiction with his award-winning book Here Lies Arthur, an alternative look at the King Arthur legend.  

Reeve said he was always fascinated by the illustrations as much as the writing and has strived to make his illustrations as palatable as possible for young readers.   

“Even tiny children looking at a picture book are using their imaginations, gleaning clues from the images to understand what is happening, and perhaps using the throwaway details which the illustrator includes to add their own elements to the story,” he said.

As for his own pathway into his career, he said, “I'm sure it came as no surprise to my friends and family when I became an illustrator and then a writer because, from about the age of 5, I was one of those children who always had his nose in a book.”

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'Really A Way Of Thinking'

A Writer's Moment: 'Really A Way Of Thinking':   “Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic o...

'Really A Way Of Thinking'

 “Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.”—Toni Morrison

Black History is much more than a month and is reflective of us all each and every day.  None told this story better than Morrison, born in February of 1931.  As a novelist, editor and professor she shaped literature with the power of her epic themes, vivid dialogue and richly detailed characters, giving us such wonderful books as The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved.

 

 

She was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 capping a basketful of lifetime achievement awards, begun with a Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award, both for Beloved, and then the Nobel Prize for her life’s body of written work.  Hers was truly a craftsmanship that inspired other writers to reach deeper within themselves in hopes of emulating even a small part of what she achieved on the page. 

 

“If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet,” she once advised aspiring writers, “then you must write it.”

 

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A Writer's Moment: Writing 'Right' The First Time

A Writer's Moment: Writing 'Right' The First Time:   “A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again. ” – W.E.B. Du Bois As Black History Month winds down, what better perso...

Writing 'Right' The First Time

 “A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again.” – W.E.B. Du Bois

As Black History Month winds down, what better person to note and quote than the prolific author W.E.B. Du Bois, who was born in February 1868 and died when I was in high school in 1963.  

Du Bois’  collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, was a seminal work in African-American literature; and his 1935 magnum opus Black Reconstruction in America challenged the prevailing orthodoxy that blacks were responsible for the failures of the Reconstruction Era.   He also wrote one of the first scientific treatises in the field of American sociology and published three autobiographies, each of which contains insightful essays on sociology, politics and history.

And, he was a major advocate for education of African-American youth.   Concerned that textbooks used by African-American children ignored black history and culture, Du Bois created a monthly

 children's magazine, The Brownies' Book. Initially published in 1920.  It was aimed at black children, who Du Bois called "the children of the sun."

One of the founders of the NAACP, he was a longtime editor of that organization’s journal The Crisis, and as such published many influential pieces on African-American history and the struggle for Civil Rights.  A much sought-after presenter on Civil Rights, he worked tirelessly for what would become the Civil Rights Act, enacted less than a year after he died.   

 

“Read some good, heavy, serious books just for discipline,” DuBois advised.  “Take yourself in hand and master yourself.”

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: 'Judge Others, Judging Ourselves'

A Writer's Moment: 'Judge Others, Judging Ourselves': “If we judge others it is because we are judging something in ourselves of which we are unaware.” - John Camp   I fi...

'Judge Others, Judging Ourselves'

“If we judge others it is because we are judging something in ourselves of which we are unaware.” - John Camp

 

I first met Camp in 1985 when he was working on The St. Paul Pioneer Press.  He was part way through a series he was writing about a farm family in southwestern Minnesota – not that far away from where I had grown up on a farm in nearby South Dakota.  We had a pleasant talk and I asked him what he might be doing next after finishing the series – which ended up lasting that entire year.

“I want to write books,” he said.  “I like newspapers, but I think I’ve got a book or two in me.”  That next spring, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his farm series, a result I figured would keep him firmly in newspapering instead.

So, I was surprised when Camp left to change careers, and even more surprised when he not only wrote a book under his own name, but also started writing thriller/suspense/crime novels under the pseudonym John Sandford, about a non-conforming loner detective.

More than 50 novels later, he’s still going strong, the only sad result being that journalism lost a gifted voice writing on behalf of the underdog people he often liked to feature.  Today is Camp’s 76^th birthday and he still gets up and writes every day.  It's part of his formula to being a good writer.  “You have to show up.”

 

John Camp (Sandford)

Another part.  Write it as you see it.  “Just go outside and look at something and write it down and you’ll find it’s a very nice piece of writing.”  You can’t go wrong if it’s real.

 

 

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A Writer's Moment: A Leading Light for the Ages

A Writer's Moment: A Leading Light for the Ages:   “Let us forget such words, and all they mean, as Hatred, Bitterness and Rancor, Greed, Intolerance, Bigotry; let us renew our faith and pl...

A Leading Light for the Ages

 “Let us forget such words, and all they mean, as Hatred, Bitterness and Rancor, Greed, Intolerance, Bigotry; let us renew our faith and pledge to Man, his right to be Himself, and free.” – Edna St. Vincent Millay. 

  

St. Vincent Millay, who was born on this date in 1892, won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry – only the third woman to win the award in that category – in 1923.  And just to show that she wasn’t a “one hit wonder,” she won the Frost Medal for her lifetime contribution to American poetry 20 years later.  In between, she wrote many, many great poems and earned the accolade from fellow poet Richard Wilbur that “She wrote some of the best sonnets of the century.”

 

“A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down," said Millay.  "If it is a good book nothing can hurt him.  If it is a bad book nothing can help him.”  Millay wrote good books and plays.  And her poetry was even better.

 

 

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