Recent Publications by Jan McDaniel
Articles by Jan McDaniel
2020
2020
- "Roses of the Glen" - Winner of Rockvale Writers' Colony first Flash Fiction Contest - "Power of Words"
- "What Do I Do Now?" - Mindfulness & Grief Institute
Jan's current AOH blog columns: https://allianceofhope.org/author/jan-mcdaniel/
older AOH blog column samples
This New Life: Seasons of Grief
Alliance of Hope for suicide loss survivors (2017)
October. The turning season. This autumn is the tenth one without my husband. I have entered a new kind of “after.” The seasons seem to insist on moving on; the protective shock, pain and active grieving I experienced for a decade are different now, too. This new path is leading me to new places.
I feel like an old oak tree. My gnarled branches reach out further than I ever expected. My leaves that sheltered growing children have turned different colors and fallen to the ground though grandchildren still adore those interesting, crackly playthings.
The many layers of grief I’ve moved through once compelled me to focus on suicide, the causes, the effects, the questions with no answers, and the most difficult work of manufacturing hope. I felt like my life was the “suicide channel,” all suicide, all the time. After that, I found the place on the map where I had to confront the depths of the loss itself and grieve the many parts of that.
I’ve passed through periods of numbness, forgetfulness, and uncertainty when making decisions – even big, life-altering decisions that came to be filed under the category of “had to be done, ready or not.”
Through all of it, for better or for worse, I found my husband’s memory and his love were still there. They traveled with me. The love we shared was still alive in my heart, even when I came to a place called Acceptance. Oh, I danced around the edges of that spot a great deal before making some kind of peace with the entire situation.
But now, I no longer feel the need to talk about suicide with new friends or old. I drift on the sea of new life, aware that the opportunity to comfort someone, somewhere will come again. And I do consider it an opportunity now, an honor. Meanwhile, I live. Not like I would have lived if suicide had not entered my life. No. Not like I would have grieved another kind of loss. But with hope that has taken root and grown up all around me, supporting me in the darkness of night, celebrating with me in the coolness of the morning.
I have unpacked some of the things I used to hold onto and cast them aside. I’ve made new priorities. That doesn’t mean I love my husband any less than I did on the day he died. What it does mean is that I’m healing from the terrible hurt and trauma of losing him to suicide or at all.
When I remember my husband, it is with a comforting closeness. Sometimes that’s not enough, but his death has given me a new awareness of life, its precious nature, its gifts. We still walk along side by side, he on his side of the universe and I on mine. There is contentment there…and sometimes pain. If I am the only one carrying that love, that’s okay; that’s an honor and an opportunity for me to share what he meant to me.
Life – anyone’s life – is like that, full of opposites. Loss – anyone’s loss – is a challenging path through the wide unknown. Sometimes, we have to watch the seasons turn before we are ready, and sometimes the day feels like it will never get done. Sometimes, we don’t even have anywhere to live, anyone to hold onto.
I’ve been in all those places. And beyond. I don’t know what other layers there are yet to find and work through, but I can only try to meet their challenges, one day at a time. Just as I did at the beginning.
Losing a Spouse: Love Outlasts Pain
Alliance of Hope for suicide loss survivors (website - Beyond Surviving Series)
I can only tell you what I have experienced. I have seen the darkness of great loss and heard the agonies of others who lost precious loved ones to suicide. I have touched and been touched by the changes sorrow makes to the human heart. I have tasted the difference between tears of joy and tears of grief. And I have re-awakened to the scents of life in a way I never knew before my husband died.
Now, almost seven years from the greatest loss I’ve ever known, I still feel the love we shared. I’ve found a new way to keep my husband in my heart and to make his life continue to count. For a time, though, the love that had lasted a lifetime was invisible to me. At some point, I realized the terrible pain of losing Ron had covered up that love, had covered everything. I thought I had lost it all.
Those were dark days. Survivors who share that kind of darkness understand. I struggled forward, struggled to live, just to survive. And I thought my life was over.
It was. And I did not want the new life that was suggested.
I would not be able to hold onto the old life. Realistically, I knew that, but I was not ready for a long time to accept it. The struggle this situation caused in my heart increased the pain. I felt anger each time someone well-meaning tried to draw me into the present. I did not want to leave the past behind, but the hands on the clock kept turning.
Have you ever watched a clock, measured the seconds as they pass? They seem to fly so quickly and, what’s worse, they are unstoppable.
After life-changing loss, there is a period when we are trying to stay with our lost loved ones, a place between death – where they have gone – and life, where we are supposed to be. Somehow, we must find our way back to life, if only for the simple reason that we are, technically, living.
We find reasons to carry on. Practical reasons such as crying babies who need to be fed and changed and loved. Bills must be paid. Jobs don’t wait forever. Then other reasons motivate us. People in our lives need us. We feel the instinctive pull of life. We need to do something with the new compassion and wisdom we’ve found.
The visual that came to my mind back then was a virtual house. There was a hole in the floor, a huge hole. All I could see was the hole in my life, the absence of the one I loved, the one who meant so much to me, whose life mine centered around.
The first step, I believe, is connecting with other survivors. In your darkness, watch for the tiny lights they offer. Grab onto the hope and help you find, no matter how small.”Gradually, I began to see parts of the floor in my visual aid that had not been torn away. The jagged edges of the flooring around the hole. I liken this visual and the progression I’m describing to what was happening in my life. At first, I could see nothing but my loss, feel nothing but pain.
As time went on, and as I interacted with other survivors and emptied myself of some of the pain by telling my story and responding to the stories of others in pain, I began to see more and more of the room my life was in. Slowly, piece by piece, I became aware of the entire “house” that represented my present life. I began to see things other than the pain.
The hole was still there, but it seemed smaller as my world vision grew. I saw blessings I had left in my life. Miraculously, I began to see and feel my husband’s love again. It came first in dreams and then in my waking moments. I grew stronger.
As I recalled more and more of the good memories I had of my husband and family, I realized those were not gone forever, as I had thought. They had only been covered by the pain. Surprised that the love was still there, I felt joy again. I did not have to let my life with Ron go.
My life still has a hole in it. So does my heart. But there is much more there, too. I am surviving and even thriving. I made my way to that new life and found it a haven instead of the hell I had expected. I never thought I would feel joy or happiness again, but I did. And you can too. Maybe not today or next week. The first step, I believe, is connecting with other survivors. In your darkness, watch for the tiny lights they offer. Grab onto the hope and help you find, no matter how small. Build your new life. Try.
Yes, you have lost so much. But the love you shared is still there. It is a forever kind of love. Use it to rebuild. Treasure it. Thrive.
Originally published on the Alliance of Hope Blog, Feb. 26, 2014.
This New Life: Seasons of Grief
Alliance of Hope for suicide loss survivors (2017)
October. The turning season. This autumn is the tenth one without my husband. I have entered a new kind of “after.” The seasons seem to insist on moving on; the protective shock, pain and active grieving I experienced for a decade are different now, too. This new path is leading me to new places.
I feel like an old oak tree. My gnarled branches reach out further than I ever expected. My leaves that sheltered growing children have turned different colors and fallen to the ground though grandchildren still adore those interesting, crackly playthings.
The many layers of grief I’ve moved through once compelled me to focus on suicide, the causes, the effects, the questions with no answers, and the most difficult work of manufacturing hope. I felt like my life was the “suicide channel,” all suicide, all the time. After that, I found the place on the map where I had to confront the depths of the loss itself and grieve the many parts of that.
I’ve passed through periods of numbness, forgetfulness, and uncertainty when making decisions – even big, life-altering decisions that came to be filed under the category of “had to be done, ready or not.”
Through all of it, for better or for worse, I found my husband’s memory and his love were still there. They traveled with me. The love we shared was still alive in my heart, even when I came to a place called Acceptance. Oh, I danced around the edges of that spot a great deal before making some kind of peace with the entire situation.
But now, I no longer feel the need to talk about suicide with new friends or old. I drift on the sea of new life, aware that the opportunity to comfort someone, somewhere will come again. And I do consider it an opportunity now, an honor. Meanwhile, I live. Not like I would have lived if suicide had not entered my life. No. Not like I would have grieved another kind of loss. But with hope that has taken root and grown up all around me, supporting me in the darkness of night, celebrating with me in the coolness of the morning.
I have unpacked some of the things I used to hold onto and cast them aside. I’ve made new priorities. That doesn’t mean I love my husband any less than I did on the day he died. What it does mean is that I’m healing from the terrible hurt and trauma of losing him to suicide or at all.
When I remember my husband, it is with a comforting closeness. Sometimes that’s not enough, but his death has given me a new awareness of life, its precious nature, its gifts. We still walk along side by side, he on his side of the universe and I on mine. There is contentment there…and sometimes pain. If I am the only one carrying that love, that’s okay; that’s an honor and an opportunity for me to share what he meant to me.
Life – anyone’s life – is like that, full of opposites. Loss – anyone’s loss – is a challenging path through the wide unknown. Sometimes, we have to watch the seasons turn before we are ready, and sometimes the day feels like it will never get done. Sometimes, we don’t even have anywhere to live, anyone to hold onto.
I’ve been in all those places. And beyond. I don’t know what other layers there are yet to find and work through, but I can only try to meet their challenges, one day at a time. Just as I did at the beginning.
Losing a Spouse: Love Outlasts Pain
Alliance of Hope for suicide loss survivors (website - Beyond Surviving Series)
I can only tell you what I have experienced. I have seen the darkness of great loss and heard the agonies of others who lost precious loved ones to suicide. I have touched and been touched by the changes sorrow makes to the human heart. I have tasted the difference between tears of joy and tears of grief. And I have re-awakened to the scents of life in a way I never knew before my husband died.
Now, almost seven years from the greatest loss I’ve ever known, I still feel the love we shared. I’ve found a new way to keep my husband in my heart and to make his life continue to count. For a time, though, the love that had lasted a lifetime was invisible to me. At some point, I realized the terrible pain of losing Ron had covered up that love, had covered everything. I thought I had lost it all.
Those were dark days. Survivors who share that kind of darkness understand. I struggled forward, struggled to live, just to survive. And I thought my life was over.
It was. And I did not want the new life that was suggested.
I would not be able to hold onto the old life. Realistically, I knew that, but I was not ready for a long time to accept it. The struggle this situation caused in my heart increased the pain. I felt anger each time someone well-meaning tried to draw me into the present. I did not want to leave the past behind, but the hands on the clock kept turning.
Have you ever watched a clock, measured the seconds as they pass? They seem to fly so quickly and, what’s worse, they are unstoppable.
After life-changing loss, there is a period when we are trying to stay with our lost loved ones, a place between death – where they have gone – and life, where we are supposed to be. Somehow, we must find our way back to life, if only for the simple reason that we are, technically, living.
We find reasons to carry on. Practical reasons such as crying babies who need to be fed and changed and loved. Bills must be paid. Jobs don’t wait forever. Then other reasons motivate us. People in our lives need us. We feel the instinctive pull of life. We need to do something with the new compassion and wisdom we’ve found.
The visual that came to my mind back then was a virtual house. There was a hole in the floor, a huge hole. All I could see was the hole in my life, the absence of the one I loved, the one who meant so much to me, whose life mine centered around.
The first step, I believe, is connecting with other survivors. In your darkness, watch for the tiny lights they offer. Grab onto the hope and help you find, no matter how small.”Gradually, I began to see parts of the floor in my visual aid that had not been torn away. The jagged edges of the flooring around the hole. I liken this visual and the progression I’m describing to what was happening in my life. At first, I could see nothing but my loss, feel nothing but pain.
As time went on, and as I interacted with other survivors and emptied myself of some of the pain by telling my story and responding to the stories of others in pain, I began to see more and more of the room my life was in. Slowly, piece by piece, I became aware of the entire “house” that represented my present life. I began to see things other than the pain.
The hole was still there, but it seemed smaller as my world vision grew. I saw blessings I had left in my life. Miraculously, I began to see and feel my husband’s love again. It came first in dreams and then in my waking moments. I grew stronger.
As I recalled more and more of the good memories I had of my husband and family, I realized those were not gone forever, as I had thought. They had only been covered by the pain. Surprised that the love was still there, I felt joy again. I did not have to let my life with Ron go.
My life still has a hole in it. So does my heart. But there is much more there, too. I am surviving and even thriving. I made my way to that new life and found it a haven instead of the hell I had expected. I never thought I would feel joy or happiness again, but I did. And you can too. Maybe not today or next week. The first step, I believe, is connecting with other survivors. In your darkness, watch for the tiny lights they offer. Grab onto the hope and help you find, no matter how small. Build your new life. Try.
Yes, you have lost so much. But the love you shared is still there. It is a forever kind of love. Use it to rebuild. Treasure it. Thrive.
Originally published on the Alliance of Hope Blog, Feb. 26, 2014.
Articles on writers and writing
A Report on the Southern Women Writers Conference
by Jan McDaniel
The Internet Writing Journal
The Southern Women Writers Conference held its fourth biennial session at Berry College in Rome, Georgia. This gathering, with a specific focus on women writers from the American South, carries a different theme each year. The theme was "Remembrance." According to the conference brochure, "Speakers and presenters will explore the ways in which memory informs and is represented in the works of southern women writers."
The conference offers a "forum for examining the unique perspectives and concerns of southern women writers of the past and present". Hosted by the college where it was created, a place noted for another unusual feature (a 28,000 acre campus), there could be no better location. Memories of college founder Martha Berry surround the present-day campus.
The rich history and legacy of this amazing woman, who worked alone to start a small school for isolated mountain-dwelling children, is evident in the original log cabin structure that was used as her school. Her playhouse sits near-by and the white-columned family home, Oak Hill, houses a museum filled with memorabilia collected through the years. Run by students at the college, which is work-centered in its philosophy, the museum showcases crafts made in early classrooms as well as mementos from some of Martha Berry's influential friends and supporters. Oak Hill also hosts readings during the conference and opens its doors and gardens to visitors throughout the year with a special Christmas event taking all present back to earlier days when Martha herself turned no one away.
One of her supporters, Henry Ford, donated more than trinkets to the college. He believed in Martha Berry's work so much that a whole complex of castle-like buildings bears his name. These include dormitories, an auditorium, a dining hall and a chapel. His donations, along with those of others outside the rural Georgian landscape, illustrates the impact Ms. Berry had on those around her.
The Dream House, a hill-top retreat built by students for their beloved teacher, is surrounded by the countryside she loved. With open arms she welcomed visitors here as she spent her entire life building what is now a respected institution of higher learning. She is buried on the campus near the main chapel.
Do they remember Martha? The answer is yes. Today's graduating classes carry lighted candles in her honor during their processionals. It is said that her protective presence still guides.
What kind of conference takes place in such a setting? In addition to the scholarly papers and networking opportunities traditionally expected, this conference highlights new talent by incorporating an Emerging Writers Competition into each conference year and presenting work by the winning writers on the events schedule.
An enthusiastic Director, Emily Wright works with co-directors Katherine Powell and James Watkins to create something special for attending writers and scholars. Along with current Writer-in-Residence June Spence, the staff planned an outstanding slate of sessions, speakers, panel discussions, and ground-breaking entertainment this year. The roster was packed with talent:
Spence herself received the Willa Cather Award in 1995 for an early manuscript of her short story collection Missing Women and Others (1998). In 1999 she received the Mary Ruffin Poole Award for First Work of Fiction from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Society and is presently working on a novel.
Lee Smith, featured speaker, is the author of nine novels and two short story collections and has received eight major writing awards, including the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Award (1995-97), the Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction (1991) and the O. Henry Award (1979 and 1981). She is professor emeritus at North Carolina University.
Nikki Giovanni, poet, writer, lecturer, activist, and educator has been named woman of the year by three different magazines and has received numerous honorary doctorates and awards, including the Langston Hughes Award and the NAACP Image Award for Love Poems. She is currently a professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Musicians and singer-songwriters Matraca Berg and Marshall Chapman, made this conference much more than a literary event. Berg, a Nashville-based musician, has written songs for some of the biggest names in country music. In 1997 she won the CMA Record of the Year Award for "Strawberry Wine," recorded by Deana Carter. Chapman, a native of Spartanburg, South Carolina, is a songwriter whose recordings span two decades. She has recently collaborated with Berg, Lee Smith, and Jill McCorkle on the musical titled Good Ol' Girls which was presented in an evening performance during the conference. The musical, an adaptation based on characters in some of Lee Smith's novels, is Broadway-bound and lots of rip-roaring fun! More information can be found on Chapman's website at www.tallgirl.com.
Though Jill McCorkle was unavoidably detained in Boston (where she teaches writing at Harvard University and Bennington College). Another glitch left interviewer Rose Mary McGee short an interviewee when illness kept Sally Fitzgerald at home. McGee carried on by presenting some of her taped conversations with Fitzgerald who is the editor of The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor and Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose of Flannery O'Connor, as well as the author of numerous articles and reviews.
Despite such obstacles, and a little rain, the conference offered high spots such as luncheon speakers, Mary Louise Weaks and Carolyn Perry. These talented collaborators, both professors of English, have edited works of their own. From Rockford College in Illinois, Weaks co-edited Talking with Robert Penn Warren before joining Perry (Westminster College, Missouri, editor of The Dolphin Reader) in a massive undertaking titled Southern Women's Writing: Colonial to Contemporary. The duo will pair up again to complete the forthcoming History of Southern Women's Literature.
The variety of presentations was endless at this year's conference. Children's book author George Ella Lyon, who presented thoughts on her poems, essays and novels as well as her picture books, is a multi-talented, award-winning native of Kentucky and a fascinating speaker. Editor and author Peggy Prenshaw, of Louisiana State University, is a distinguished Eudora Welty scholar. Her work as editor and reviewer added yet another dimension to the three-day conference.
Panel members Lorraine Johnson Coleman and Brenda Marie Osbey offered up intriguing insights into their writing as well as delivered wonderful readings. A Georgia native, Lorraine Johnson-Coleman is the author of Just Plain Folks, a collection of short stories and essays documenting African American folk life. Her forthcoming The Wisdoms of the Baabah Tree will find her making use of a strong sense of family and persuasive story-telling skills. She is a guest commentator on National Public Radio's Morning Edition and was recently featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Brenda Marie Osbey has authored four volumes of poetry, the most recent of which--All Saints: New & Selected Poems (1997) received the American Book Award in 1998. She is a native of New Orleans and has written essays on her hometown for The American Voice, the Georgia Review, BrightLeaf, and Creative Nonfiction.
Writer, teacher, musician, and editor Susan Ketchin (author of The Christ-Haunted Landscape: Faith and Doubt in Southern Fiction as well as many reviews, articles, and essays) teaches at Duke University and is presently working on a book about the role of traditional music in southern literature. Her in-depth interview is scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of The Internet Writing Journal.
From this brief look at those who shared their work and their lives for three days in northwest Georgia, it is easy to see how important this relatively new conference has become. In a few short years (since 1994) Berry College has established its conference as a cultural center of southern studies in literature.
While earlier conferences here brought such names as Dori Sanders, Shay Youngblood, Mary Hood, Janice Daugharty, Ellen Douglas, and Virginia Lanier, to name a few, it is the future that beckons and challenges readers and writers alike and allows us to look forward to what is to come in 2002.
Bringing together the best authors and scholars of the region, the Southern Women Writers Conference remembers the oral traditions of the past, sets the stage for the study of an often overlooked segment of great American literature, and opens the way for the creative accomplishments of the future.
This year's conference is over. In the end, papers were presented, books were signed, contacts were made and inspiration garnered. Among the sounds and memories taken from the place, a rich tapestry by anyone's standards, it is the voices--all of the voices--which linger.
Links for further information:
by Jan McDaniel
The Internet Writing Journal
The Southern Women Writers Conference held its fourth biennial session at Berry College in Rome, Georgia. This gathering, with a specific focus on women writers from the American South, carries a different theme each year. The theme was "Remembrance." According to the conference brochure, "Speakers and presenters will explore the ways in which memory informs and is represented in the works of southern women writers."
The conference offers a "forum for examining the unique perspectives and concerns of southern women writers of the past and present". Hosted by the college where it was created, a place noted for another unusual feature (a 28,000 acre campus), there could be no better location. Memories of college founder Martha Berry surround the present-day campus.
The rich history and legacy of this amazing woman, who worked alone to start a small school for isolated mountain-dwelling children, is evident in the original log cabin structure that was used as her school. Her playhouse sits near-by and the white-columned family home, Oak Hill, houses a museum filled with memorabilia collected through the years. Run by students at the college, which is work-centered in its philosophy, the museum showcases crafts made in early classrooms as well as mementos from some of Martha Berry's influential friends and supporters. Oak Hill also hosts readings during the conference and opens its doors and gardens to visitors throughout the year with a special Christmas event taking all present back to earlier days when Martha herself turned no one away.
One of her supporters, Henry Ford, donated more than trinkets to the college. He believed in Martha Berry's work so much that a whole complex of castle-like buildings bears his name. These include dormitories, an auditorium, a dining hall and a chapel. His donations, along with those of others outside the rural Georgian landscape, illustrates the impact Ms. Berry had on those around her.
The Dream House, a hill-top retreat built by students for their beloved teacher, is surrounded by the countryside she loved. With open arms she welcomed visitors here as she spent her entire life building what is now a respected institution of higher learning. She is buried on the campus near the main chapel.
Do they remember Martha? The answer is yes. Today's graduating classes carry lighted candles in her honor during their processionals. It is said that her protective presence still guides.
What kind of conference takes place in such a setting? In addition to the scholarly papers and networking opportunities traditionally expected, this conference highlights new talent by incorporating an Emerging Writers Competition into each conference year and presenting work by the winning writers on the events schedule.
An enthusiastic Director, Emily Wright works with co-directors Katherine Powell and James Watkins to create something special for attending writers and scholars. Along with current Writer-in-Residence June Spence, the staff planned an outstanding slate of sessions, speakers, panel discussions, and ground-breaking entertainment this year. The roster was packed with talent:
Spence herself received the Willa Cather Award in 1995 for an early manuscript of her short story collection Missing Women and Others (1998). In 1999 she received the Mary Ruffin Poole Award for First Work of Fiction from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Society and is presently working on a novel.
Lee Smith, featured speaker, is the author of nine novels and two short story collections and has received eight major writing awards, including the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Award (1995-97), the Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction (1991) and the O. Henry Award (1979 and 1981). She is professor emeritus at North Carolina University.
Nikki Giovanni, poet, writer, lecturer, activist, and educator has been named woman of the year by three different magazines and has received numerous honorary doctorates and awards, including the Langston Hughes Award and the NAACP Image Award for Love Poems. She is currently a professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Musicians and singer-songwriters Matraca Berg and Marshall Chapman, made this conference much more than a literary event. Berg, a Nashville-based musician, has written songs for some of the biggest names in country music. In 1997 she won the CMA Record of the Year Award for "Strawberry Wine," recorded by Deana Carter. Chapman, a native of Spartanburg, South Carolina, is a songwriter whose recordings span two decades. She has recently collaborated with Berg, Lee Smith, and Jill McCorkle on the musical titled Good Ol' Girls which was presented in an evening performance during the conference. The musical, an adaptation based on characters in some of Lee Smith's novels, is Broadway-bound and lots of rip-roaring fun! More information can be found on Chapman's website at www.tallgirl.com.
Though Jill McCorkle was unavoidably detained in Boston (where she teaches writing at Harvard University and Bennington College). Another glitch left interviewer Rose Mary McGee short an interviewee when illness kept Sally Fitzgerald at home. McGee carried on by presenting some of her taped conversations with Fitzgerald who is the editor of The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor and Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose of Flannery O'Connor, as well as the author of numerous articles and reviews.
Despite such obstacles, and a little rain, the conference offered high spots such as luncheon speakers, Mary Louise Weaks and Carolyn Perry. These talented collaborators, both professors of English, have edited works of their own. From Rockford College in Illinois, Weaks co-edited Talking with Robert Penn Warren before joining Perry (Westminster College, Missouri, editor of The Dolphin Reader) in a massive undertaking titled Southern Women's Writing: Colonial to Contemporary. The duo will pair up again to complete the forthcoming History of Southern Women's Literature.
The variety of presentations was endless at this year's conference. Children's book author George Ella Lyon, who presented thoughts on her poems, essays and novels as well as her picture books, is a multi-talented, award-winning native of Kentucky and a fascinating speaker. Editor and author Peggy Prenshaw, of Louisiana State University, is a distinguished Eudora Welty scholar. Her work as editor and reviewer added yet another dimension to the three-day conference.
Panel members Lorraine Johnson Coleman and Brenda Marie Osbey offered up intriguing insights into their writing as well as delivered wonderful readings. A Georgia native, Lorraine Johnson-Coleman is the author of Just Plain Folks, a collection of short stories and essays documenting African American folk life. Her forthcoming The Wisdoms of the Baabah Tree will find her making use of a strong sense of family and persuasive story-telling skills. She is a guest commentator on National Public Radio's Morning Edition and was recently featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Brenda Marie Osbey has authored four volumes of poetry, the most recent of which--All Saints: New & Selected Poems (1997) received the American Book Award in 1998. She is a native of New Orleans and has written essays on her hometown for The American Voice, the Georgia Review, BrightLeaf, and Creative Nonfiction.
Writer, teacher, musician, and editor Susan Ketchin (author of The Christ-Haunted Landscape: Faith and Doubt in Southern Fiction as well as many reviews, articles, and essays) teaches at Duke University and is presently working on a book about the role of traditional music in southern literature. Her in-depth interview is scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of The Internet Writing Journal.
From this brief look at those who shared their work and their lives for three days in northwest Georgia, it is easy to see how important this relatively new conference has become. In a few short years (since 1994) Berry College has established its conference as a cultural center of southern studies in literature.
While earlier conferences here brought such names as Dori Sanders, Shay Youngblood, Mary Hood, Janice Daugharty, Ellen Douglas, and Virginia Lanier, to name a few, it is the future that beckons and challenges readers and writers alike and allows us to look forward to what is to come in 2002.
Bringing together the best authors and scholars of the region, the Southern Women Writers Conference remembers the oral traditions of the past, sets the stage for the study of an often overlooked segment of great American literature, and opens the way for the creative accomplishments of the future.
This year's conference is over. In the end, papers were presented, books were signed, contacts were made and inspiration garnered. Among the sounds and memories taken from the place, a rich tapestry by anyone's standards, it is the voices--all of the voices--which linger.
Links for further information:
The Authority of a Writer: An Interview with Nikki Giovanni
by Jan McDaniel
The Internet Writing Journal
Award-winning author, poet and activist Nikki Giovanni is the author of Racism 101 and more than fourteen volumes of poetry, including Black Feeling Black Talk, Black Judgement, Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day, My House, The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni, and, most recently, Love Poems. A professor of English at Virginia Tech, Ms. Giovanni reads her work all over the country.
She is the recipient of an NAACP Image Award, holds the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry and has been named woman of the year by Mademoiselle, Ladies' Home Journal, and Essence. She holds a B.A. from Fisk University, as well as numerous honorary degrees, including an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from Delaware State University, an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from Smith College, an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Widener University, an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Allegheny College, and an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Fisk University. Her work has been called intimate, edgy, and unapologetic. In a career that has spanned three decades, Giovanni has created an indispensable body of work and earned a place among the nation's most celebrated and controversial poets; Gloria Naylor calls her "one of our national treasures." She is the mother of one son, and enjoys gardening and the blues music.
Meeting Nikki Giovanni reminded me that a writer's words are meant to last. Throughout a long and prolific career, she has tackled almost every form of the written word and has successfully published each time. Her calm, yet distinctive, style comes across in her personal life because life is writing, for Nikki Giovanni, and writing is life.
She was browsing in the university bookstore when I spotted her. After I introduced myself as the interviewer who had arranged to meet her, she waved a t-shirt on a hanger in the air, debated the color selection, and settled the purchase with great satisfaction. A gift for a friend, the cloth and thread almost seemed to hold her together. She had received word of another friend's death shortly before it was time to catch her flight to the writers conference, and that news was what was on her mind.
Loss and glory interwove themselves throughout our interview. Her thoughts touched on death, mixed with the everyday concerns of the living, and wandered from the innocence of children to the radical injustices of the past. Getting to the heart of this compact and energetic woman was easy because of her warmth and compassion . . . hearing the strength behind her words was harder because, if there is one thing I learned about Ms. Giovanni and her life, it is that she never veers away from the truth.
From a look at your website, it's easy to see what a prolific writer you are. Out of all of your writing activities and creative ideas, how do you decide which ones to pursue or develop?
Well, I think writing poetry is largely a case of the heart. I don't have any question about that . . . but it's also a big head case because your heart gets interested in things, but if your head doesn't know about them, you end up with this trite crap. I'm a big fan of the black woman and so I'm always looking at aspects of the black woman--what she's doing and how she does it.
Coming to a conference like this was always right down my alley. When I was invited, there was just no question about it . . . I wanted to be here. I want to be here. We had a death in the family not long before I was to leave, but I still thought I should be here. It makes me really sad, of course, because this was an older couple. I cook for them twice a week (several of us on the faculty cook for them), and I had the pots on the stove when I found out. Death is always a surprise. This conference is all about remembrances, so it wasn't just that I had committed. I thought being here would make me feel a little better.
I do a lot in remembrance. I was asked recently what makes me an Appalachian writer. I was trying to think about it because this is actually not a term I would use--I think of myself as an urban writer. My Appalachian roots come out because of my sense of independence. My Southern roots come out because of my sense of remembrance, and I do see the difference between how Appalachia and the South handle independence . . . or individuality, I should say . . . and remembrance.
There is very little individuality in the South. There is such a herd mentality, you wish you could just crack that egg and break it through. There is such a fierce, personal independence in Appalachia. I do see how that works in a black girl from Knoxville, Tennessee, who grew up in Cincinnati. It's what you're constantly dealing with . . . remembrance but also what is your individual responsibility.
You asked about my activities. I do what brings me an amount of pleasure. I have a writer's workshop, and I enjoy cooking for friends and family. The things I do bring me great pleasure but also satisfy my sense of responsibility as an individual. I think you should do what you can do. People overlook that and always want to do something way bigger than they can. You are capable of making lamb stew, for example, or frying some shrimp. You don't do that because you want to tilt windmills. Someone once said to me, "You're Quixotic." But I'm not Quixotic. I don't tilt at windmills. I don't fight battles I can't possibly win.
You only have so much time. There are things you stand up for because it's right. That's not a battle that you're losing. You're just adding your body and your best wishes to a fight that has to be won.
If you could start your writing career over, would you make any changes?
I'm a very practical person so that level of contemplation doesn't work for me. There are probably things in my career that could have been more financially beneficial. I had some opportunities to be in commercials and things like that, but it just didn't seem like that's what you did with poets, so it wasn't really that I lost money. I just didn't make it. I think my integrity means a lot.
"Nothing takes the place of curling up in bed with a book. In my opinion, nothing takes the place of the smell of the paper. Now that people like me say that, they may come up with a way to make the e-books smell like that."
Probably what I'm most proud of is that this is a thirty year career. If you had asked anybody but me, thirty years ago, if I would still be here, everybody would have said, no, she won't maintain. I'm very pleased that it's been a good career, a solid career. For a word that I don't like the way people use, I think I had the right values.
I think I had the values of integrity in the work. I'm perfectly willing to take the work just about anywhere. I've read for just about all groups and places because I figure the work is the work and you have to get the work around. I think the work has been wonderfully and almost magically consistent. I keep learning things, and you keep adding what you're learning, but it's been good. I don't even know where the last thirty years went. Over there at the bookstore, what you're looking at is a thirty year output which averages out to a book a year or something like that.
There is a poem there I'm going to read tonight called "What He Missed". I was laughing with the editor of Essence Magazine because she needed the poem quickly. I said, "I am prolific, but I am not quick." It takes a little longer when you're putting the work together.
If I were advising someone on a writing career, the deal is this: write. If you get it published, good. If somebody pays you, better, because you have to eat, but the deal is you have to write.
You see people who say, "I want to have a writing career." If you ask them what they are writing, they say, "Well, I'm not working on anything right now." No, no, no . . . that's not the way. You have to write.
My work is not that different now than it was when I was starting out. People want to see big changes sometimes, I think. My early work was . . . I think the term was incendiary, but I don't trust people who make big changes. What you say has been said. You keep trying to say what you're learning and keep sharing it with your audience.
I think I've been remarkably lucky. I haven't lost a lot of people, and I haven't gained a lot of people. The people who used to read me in the 60's are still reading me. I think that's kind of wonderful because that's a consistency that changes. It's like stirring the pudding, and the pudding has to be a certain way. It means that I've grown. I didn't dig a hole some place. I'm not God: I wasn't trying to be. I'm not trying to tell people what to do or what to think or none of that. I'm not a leader. I'm not a guru. I'm just a poet looking at the world.
People know they can bring their grandchildren, and I can read Genie in a Jar or something from The Sun is So Quiet. They can hear it and tell their grandchildren, "I heard that thirty years ago." I love what Chris Raska (the illustrator for Genie in a Jar) did in developing the little girl. Of course, I'm a big fairy tale because that's all of life; that's anybody. Don't prick your finger because when you prick your finger, you fall asleep. They all did, you know. Snow White, eating those apples. That's all you're saying to the kids. It's, "Okay, careful, Baby." I'm totally fond of that and very happy that we were able to get that illustrated children's book.
Do you feel that the online world has or will have a great impact on the world of writing and publishing?
I'm at Virginia Tech which is probably one of the most wired places in the world, but I am a writer and we are a part of a throw-back, in many respects. Frankly speaking, I don't think anything can ever take the place of books. I know they're trying to make the e-books more like pages and asking themselves how can they make these computers more like a book. At some point, when you hear that, you have to say to yourself why are you making it more like a book? Why not do a book?
We could think about doing something like erasable paper. We could use the Internet and, instead of using a non-renewable source, we could scan again and again on the same paper. Nobody wants to think like that right now. Nothing takes the place of curling up in bed with a book. In my opinion, nothing takes the place of the smell of the paper. Now that people like me say that, they may come up with a way to make the e-books smell like that. I'm not hostile to the electronic world, but I also think that in this rush to make things quicker and better there are no real time-saving devices except maybe the dishwasher. The vacuum cleaner is not even a friend. Now everybody expects your floor to be perfect. You're always on call. The electronic age is not perfect but must be approached with some caution.
What advice would you give to young writers today?
Let's own it. This is mine. This is how I feel about it. The catchword I use with my classes is: The authority of the writer always overcomes the skepticism of the reader. If you know what you're talking about, or if you feel that you do, the reader will believe you. That's why we believe Frank Baum. Who would believe Dorothy and a house and a dog up in a tornado? We believe it because the author believes it. We believe Peter Rabbit because Beatrix Potter believes it. You have to.
The authority of the writing will always overcome that. You can't hedge your bets. If you do, people will say, "Hmm. Where did you get that from?" You can't do that. Just don't do it.
by Jan McDaniel
The Internet Writing Journal
Award-winning author, poet and activist Nikki Giovanni is the author of Racism 101 and more than fourteen volumes of poetry, including Black Feeling Black Talk, Black Judgement, Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day, My House, The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni, and, most recently, Love Poems. A professor of English at Virginia Tech, Ms. Giovanni reads her work all over the country.
She is the recipient of an NAACP Image Award, holds the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry and has been named woman of the year by Mademoiselle, Ladies' Home Journal, and Essence. She holds a B.A. from Fisk University, as well as numerous honorary degrees, including an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from Delaware State University, an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from Smith College, an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Widener University, an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Allegheny College, and an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Fisk University. Her work has been called intimate, edgy, and unapologetic. In a career that has spanned three decades, Giovanni has created an indispensable body of work and earned a place among the nation's most celebrated and controversial poets; Gloria Naylor calls her "one of our national treasures." She is the mother of one son, and enjoys gardening and the blues music.
Meeting Nikki Giovanni reminded me that a writer's words are meant to last. Throughout a long and prolific career, she has tackled almost every form of the written word and has successfully published each time. Her calm, yet distinctive, style comes across in her personal life because life is writing, for Nikki Giovanni, and writing is life.
She was browsing in the university bookstore when I spotted her. After I introduced myself as the interviewer who had arranged to meet her, she waved a t-shirt on a hanger in the air, debated the color selection, and settled the purchase with great satisfaction. A gift for a friend, the cloth and thread almost seemed to hold her together. She had received word of another friend's death shortly before it was time to catch her flight to the writers conference, and that news was what was on her mind.
Loss and glory interwove themselves throughout our interview. Her thoughts touched on death, mixed with the everyday concerns of the living, and wandered from the innocence of children to the radical injustices of the past. Getting to the heart of this compact and energetic woman was easy because of her warmth and compassion . . . hearing the strength behind her words was harder because, if there is one thing I learned about Ms. Giovanni and her life, it is that she never veers away from the truth.
From a look at your website, it's easy to see what a prolific writer you are. Out of all of your writing activities and creative ideas, how do you decide which ones to pursue or develop?
Well, I think writing poetry is largely a case of the heart. I don't have any question about that . . . but it's also a big head case because your heart gets interested in things, but if your head doesn't know about them, you end up with this trite crap. I'm a big fan of the black woman and so I'm always looking at aspects of the black woman--what she's doing and how she does it.
Coming to a conference like this was always right down my alley. When I was invited, there was just no question about it . . . I wanted to be here. I want to be here. We had a death in the family not long before I was to leave, but I still thought I should be here. It makes me really sad, of course, because this was an older couple. I cook for them twice a week (several of us on the faculty cook for them), and I had the pots on the stove when I found out. Death is always a surprise. This conference is all about remembrances, so it wasn't just that I had committed. I thought being here would make me feel a little better.
I do a lot in remembrance. I was asked recently what makes me an Appalachian writer. I was trying to think about it because this is actually not a term I would use--I think of myself as an urban writer. My Appalachian roots come out because of my sense of independence. My Southern roots come out because of my sense of remembrance, and I do see the difference between how Appalachia and the South handle independence . . . or individuality, I should say . . . and remembrance.
There is very little individuality in the South. There is such a herd mentality, you wish you could just crack that egg and break it through. There is such a fierce, personal independence in Appalachia. I do see how that works in a black girl from Knoxville, Tennessee, who grew up in Cincinnati. It's what you're constantly dealing with . . . remembrance but also what is your individual responsibility.
You asked about my activities. I do what brings me an amount of pleasure. I have a writer's workshop, and I enjoy cooking for friends and family. The things I do bring me great pleasure but also satisfy my sense of responsibility as an individual. I think you should do what you can do. People overlook that and always want to do something way bigger than they can. You are capable of making lamb stew, for example, or frying some shrimp. You don't do that because you want to tilt windmills. Someone once said to me, "You're Quixotic." But I'm not Quixotic. I don't tilt at windmills. I don't fight battles I can't possibly win.
You only have so much time. There are things you stand up for because it's right. That's not a battle that you're losing. You're just adding your body and your best wishes to a fight that has to be won.
If you could start your writing career over, would you make any changes?
I'm a very practical person so that level of contemplation doesn't work for me. There are probably things in my career that could have been more financially beneficial. I had some opportunities to be in commercials and things like that, but it just didn't seem like that's what you did with poets, so it wasn't really that I lost money. I just didn't make it. I think my integrity means a lot.
"Nothing takes the place of curling up in bed with a book. In my opinion, nothing takes the place of the smell of the paper. Now that people like me say that, they may come up with a way to make the e-books smell like that."
Probably what I'm most proud of is that this is a thirty year career. If you had asked anybody but me, thirty years ago, if I would still be here, everybody would have said, no, she won't maintain. I'm very pleased that it's been a good career, a solid career. For a word that I don't like the way people use, I think I had the right values.
I think I had the values of integrity in the work. I'm perfectly willing to take the work just about anywhere. I've read for just about all groups and places because I figure the work is the work and you have to get the work around. I think the work has been wonderfully and almost magically consistent. I keep learning things, and you keep adding what you're learning, but it's been good. I don't even know where the last thirty years went. Over there at the bookstore, what you're looking at is a thirty year output which averages out to a book a year or something like that.
There is a poem there I'm going to read tonight called "What He Missed". I was laughing with the editor of Essence Magazine because she needed the poem quickly. I said, "I am prolific, but I am not quick." It takes a little longer when you're putting the work together.
If I were advising someone on a writing career, the deal is this: write. If you get it published, good. If somebody pays you, better, because you have to eat, but the deal is you have to write.
You see people who say, "I want to have a writing career." If you ask them what they are writing, they say, "Well, I'm not working on anything right now." No, no, no . . . that's not the way. You have to write.
My work is not that different now than it was when I was starting out. People want to see big changes sometimes, I think. My early work was . . . I think the term was incendiary, but I don't trust people who make big changes. What you say has been said. You keep trying to say what you're learning and keep sharing it with your audience.
I think I've been remarkably lucky. I haven't lost a lot of people, and I haven't gained a lot of people. The people who used to read me in the 60's are still reading me. I think that's kind of wonderful because that's a consistency that changes. It's like stirring the pudding, and the pudding has to be a certain way. It means that I've grown. I didn't dig a hole some place. I'm not God: I wasn't trying to be. I'm not trying to tell people what to do or what to think or none of that. I'm not a leader. I'm not a guru. I'm just a poet looking at the world.
People know they can bring their grandchildren, and I can read Genie in a Jar or something from The Sun is So Quiet. They can hear it and tell their grandchildren, "I heard that thirty years ago." I love what Chris Raska (the illustrator for Genie in a Jar) did in developing the little girl. Of course, I'm a big fairy tale because that's all of life; that's anybody. Don't prick your finger because when you prick your finger, you fall asleep. They all did, you know. Snow White, eating those apples. That's all you're saying to the kids. It's, "Okay, careful, Baby." I'm totally fond of that and very happy that we were able to get that illustrated children's book.
Do you feel that the online world has or will have a great impact on the world of writing and publishing?
I'm at Virginia Tech which is probably one of the most wired places in the world, but I am a writer and we are a part of a throw-back, in many respects. Frankly speaking, I don't think anything can ever take the place of books. I know they're trying to make the e-books more like pages and asking themselves how can they make these computers more like a book. At some point, when you hear that, you have to say to yourself why are you making it more like a book? Why not do a book?
We could think about doing something like erasable paper. We could use the Internet and, instead of using a non-renewable source, we could scan again and again on the same paper. Nobody wants to think like that right now. Nothing takes the place of curling up in bed with a book. In my opinion, nothing takes the place of the smell of the paper. Now that people like me say that, they may come up with a way to make the e-books smell like that. I'm not hostile to the electronic world, but I also think that in this rush to make things quicker and better there are no real time-saving devices except maybe the dishwasher. The vacuum cleaner is not even a friend. Now everybody expects your floor to be perfect. You're always on call. The electronic age is not perfect but must be approached with some caution.
What advice would you give to young writers today?
Let's own it. This is mine. This is how I feel about it. The catchword I use with my classes is: The authority of the writer always overcomes the skepticism of the reader. If you know what you're talking about, or if you feel that you do, the reader will believe you. That's why we believe Frank Baum. Who would believe Dorothy and a house and a dog up in a tornado? We believe it because the author believes it. We believe Peter Rabbit because Beatrix Potter believes it. You have to.
The authority of the writing will always overcome that. You can't hedge your bets. If you do, people will say, "Hmm. Where did you get that from?" You can't do that. Just don't do it.
Faith and Doubt: an Interview With Susan Ketchin
by Jan McDaniel
The Internet Writing Journal
Susan Ketchin is a writer, teacher, musician, and editor. She is the author of The Christ-Haunted Landscape: Faith and Doubt in Southern Fiction (University Press of Mississippi, 1994) and co-editor with Neil Giordano of Under 25: Fiction (W.W. Norton/DoubleTake Books, 1997). She is currently writing a book about traditional southern music and the creative spirit with a Fellowship in Literature from the North Carolina Arts Council to be published by the University Press of Mississippi.
Ketchin has taught creative writing, American literature, and religion in Southern fiction at Duke University, at North Carolina State University, and elsewhere over a teaching career of twenty-five years. In the spring of 1999, she was a Visiting Professor at Duke Divinity School where she is teaching a seminar in Religion in Literature of the American South.
In the spring of 1996, Ketchin served as Co-chair of the Eudora Welty Chair of Southern Studies at Millsaps College, Jackson, MS. She has been Associate Editor at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill and fiction editor at St. Andrews Review, Southern Exposure and DoubleTake Magazines. Most recently, she served as fiction editor at the University Press of Mississippi.
Her work includes many reviews, articles, and essays in literary and trade journals. Ketchin also performs and writes music with the Tarwater Band (since 1975) named after Flannery O'Connor's "backwoods prophet") and The Angelettes (since 1993), a bi-racial, all-women jazz, blues, and gospel group.
Like many Southern authors, Ketchin contemplates the past. Her fascination with how oral history is affected by stories and songs has evolved into two volumes of author interviews. The format of her books give a unique insight into contemporary writers' personal beliefs and into what they and Ketchin, herself, see as the beliefs of those around them.
Each of the twelve authors included in The Christ-Haunted Landscape: Faith and Doubt in Southern Fiction gave permission for excerpts of their work to be published alongside their interviews. These excerpts, which relate specifically to the topic, and Ketchin's introductory comments about each author, provide a full-bodied range of emotions and thought patterns seldom accessible to the average reader. This format lends interest to Ketchin's book as well as a deeper level of understanding to the original works displayed. The twelve authors are: Lee Smith, Reynolds Price, Larry Brown, Sheila Bosworth, Sandra Hollin Flowers, Will Campbell, Doris Betts, Randall Kenan, Mary Ward Brown, Harry Crews, Clyde Edgarton, and Allan Gurganus.
Exploring fiction is part of the writing -- and living -- process. In her introduction to the book, Ketchin says, "Many southerners have heard countless stories about the people they know and those they are connected to, past and present; these stories form the invisible sinews that hold family, community and land together over generations."
Drawing on earlier Southern writers, Ketchin compares the similarities contemporary writers share with those who have come before them and the differences changing decades have brought to a region historically fraught with such upheaval. She notes, as others have before, that all writers and not just those from the South must face the challenge of telling the old, old story of human yearning and desire in a modern world whose structure is in a state of flux.
Her two most recent themes, religion and music, often go hand-in-hand in the South or anywhere else. The kinds of questions she asks are those that will always be asked, and they hint at the heart of who we are and why we feel compelled to connect with others. These questions boil down to a central essence when she asks, "Does the writing -- or the reading -- have the power within itself to be redemptive?" In the interview below, Ketchin discusses this issue and others relating to writing and her work.
What was it that made you become interested in writing?
Flannery O'Connor, through her work, inspired me. She had known my mother. The two of them went to school together and even worked on the school newspaper, so I heard stories about her life from the time I was very young. Another writer who encouraged me a great deal was Eudora Welty. I met her about fifteen years age, and she has been a continuing source of inspiration and help.
Do you think technology has influenced the area of literary criticism and, if so, how?
I've enjoyed reading the reviews of my book on the Amazon.com website, so I believe e-mail and access to information are great benefits of technology. This kind of review pleases me because these reviews are written by readers, and that makes me feel more connected to them.
In your opinion, what makes Southern women writers unique?
Southern women are caught in a potent kind of culture . . . or a potent dilemma in an extreme culture . . . more so than writers in other parts of the country. I think it makes you strong and tough, and I'm proud to be a southerner. The movie Thelma and Louise came to mind. It may portray the idea better than Steel Magnolias.
In your book, The Christ-Haunted Landscape--Faith and Doubt in Southern Fiction, you interview both male and female authors. How did you select these twelve individuals, and was the number "twelve" significant (as in the twelve disciples)?
The coincidence was not intended, but it worked out rather well. I chose these authors based, first, on their writing. They all had been consistently concerned with issues of theology in their work.
When you approached these authors, what did you hope to reveal through the interview format that your own research could not provide?
Had I analyzed the material myself, I wouldn't have known whether I was right or not. I wanted to find out what they thought about religion in their own work. The interview is really an oral history which makes the material lively and immediate.
This project explored the role of religion in literature. Do you agree with Lee Smith's assessment of writing as a kind of salvation experience?
She does think of writing in this way, and many of the other authors did. Their work represents and reflects serious struggles with faith and doubt.
You say of Harry Crews, another author you interviewed for this book, that he "creates fiction as art in one powerfully compelling metaphor--the writer as shaman." Do all writers use storytelling for the same kinds of curative purposes?
Some authors do. The redemptive and healing purposes are not just for the writer. They are for the reader as well.
Considering the Deep South is still known as the "Bible Belt," have you received any criticism or negative press as a result of writing this book?
"Southern women are caught in a potent kind of culture . . . or a potent dilemma in an extreme culture . . . more so than writers in other parts of the country. I think it makes you strong and tough, and I'm proud to be a southerner."
I was surprised at how few negative comments I received. By far the most common reaction was one of support and encouragement. I think people recognized the questions I was asking and were dealing with the answers in their own lives.
Do you think Southern writers will continue to juxtapose religious and everyday life experiences in their work? If so, is the primary reason to provide a "catharsis" for them and their readers?
Guilt continues. It's a part of everyday life, and so the use of these subjects may even grow stronger. With religion or music, the old traditional demons will continue to rise and will continue to be themes in literature.
What are your future plans? Will you be working with authors again?
Yes, I use the same approach, and the interview again, as I speak with Ms. Welty, Charles Fraiser, Lewis Norton, Lee Smith once more, and Mary Hood. I will interview Rita Dove. Robert Morganfield, who is the half-brother of Muddy Waters, is another musician who will be included. This new book will be published by the University of Mississippi, as the last one was.
What advice would you give young writers today?
The same advice that Lee Smith and Eudora Welty gave to me. Keep believing and keep doing -- no matter what. Nothing you do like this is a waste of time.
Susan Ketchin delves into what can be discovered about human nature when it is unveiled. Here are some of my favorite quotes from a few of the authors she interviewed in her book:
Larry Brown--" . . . my fiction is about people surviving, about people proceeding out from calamity."
Reynolds Price--"I'm attempting to write about those portions of creation which present themselves to me as important and worthy of communication to my fellow creatures."
Lee Smith--"The link for me between my own religious feelings and creativity is that with writing, you go out of yourself--but you know you can come back."
Sheila Bosworth--"When I was little we used to read and read, and my sisters and I would say, Oh, is that a good food book? Does it make you hungry?"
Shelia Bosworth and the others are right. Good fiction is like good food. It makes us hungry for emotional connections and leaves us wanting more.
by Jan McDaniel
The Internet Writing Journal
Susan Ketchin is a writer, teacher, musician, and editor. She is the author of The Christ-Haunted Landscape: Faith and Doubt in Southern Fiction (University Press of Mississippi, 1994) and co-editor with Neil Giordano of Under 25: Fiction (W.W. Norton/DoubleTake Books, 1997). She is currently writing a book about traditional southern music and the creative spirit with a Fellowship in Literature from the North Carolina Arts Council to be published by the University Press of Mississippi.
Ketchin has taught creative writing, American literature, and religion in Southern fiction at Duke University, at North Carolina State University, and elsewhere over a teaching career of twenty-five years. In the spring of 1999, she was a Visiting Professor at Duke Divinity School where she is teaching a seminar in Religion in Literature of the American South.
In the spring of 1996, Ketchin served as Co-chair of the Eudora Welty Chair of Southern Studies at Millsaps College, Jackson, MS. She has been Associate Editor at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill and fiction editor at St. Andrews Review, Southern Exposure and DoubleTake Magazines. Most recently, she served as fiction editor at the University Press of Mississippi.
Her work includes many reviews, articles, and essays in literary and trade journals. Ketchin also performs and writes music with the Tarwater Band (since 1975) named after Flannery O'Connor's "backwoods prophet") and The Angelettes (since 1993), a bi-racial, all-women jazz, blues, and gospel group.
Like many Southern authors, Ketchin contemplates the past. Her fascination with how oral history is affected by stories and songs has evolved into two volumes of author interviews. The format of her books give a unique insight into contemporary writers' personal beliefs and into what they and Ketchin, herself, see as the beliefs of those around them.
Each of the twelve authors included in The Christ-Haunted Landscape: Faith and Doubt in Southern Fiction gave permission for excerpts of their work to be published alongside their interviews. These excerpts, which relate specifically to the topic, and Ketchin's introductory comments about each author, provide a full-bodied range of emotions and thought patterns seldom accessible to the average reader. This format lends interest to Ketchin's book as well as a deeper level of understanding to the original works displayed. The twelve authors are: Lee Smith, Reynolds Price, Larry Brown, Sheila Bosworth, Sandra Hollin Flowers, Will Campbell, Doris Betts, Randall Kenan, Mary Ward Brown, Harry Crews, Clyde Edgarton, and Allan Gurganus.
Exploring fiction is part of the writing -- and living -- process. In her introduction to the book, Ketchin says, "Many southerners have heard countless stories about the people they know and those they are connected to, past and present; these stories form the invisible sinews that hold family, community and land together over generations."
Drawing on earlier Southern writers, Ketchin compares the similarities contemporary writers share with those who have come before them and the differences changing decades have brought to a region historically fraught with such upheaval. She notes, as others have before, that all writers and not just those from the South must face the challenge of telling the old, old story of human yearning and desire in a modern world whose structure is in a state of flux.
Her two most recent themes, religion and music, often go hand-in-hand in the South or anywhere else. The kinds of questions she asks are those that will always be asked, and they hint at the heart of who we are and why we feel compelled to connect with others. These questions boil down to a central essence when she asks, "Does the writing -- or the reading -- have the power within itself to be redemptive?" In the interview below, Ketchin discusses this issue and others relating to writing and her work.
What was it that made you become interested in writing?
Flannery O'Connor, through her work, inspired me. She had known my mother. The two of them went to school together and even worked on the school newspaper, so I heard stories about her life from the time I was very young. Another writer who encouraged me a great deal was Eudora Welty. I met her about fifteen years age, and she has been a continuing source of inspiration and help.
Do you think technology has influenced the area of literary criticism and, if so, how?
I've enjoyed reading the reviews of my book on the Amazon.com website, so I believe e-mail and access to information are great benefits of technology. This kind of review pleases me because these reviews are written by readers, and that makes me feel more connected to them.
In your opinion, what makes Southern women writers unique?
Southern women are caught in a potent kind of culture . . . or a potent dilemma in an extreme culture . . . more so than writers in other parts of the country. I think it makes you strong and tough, and I'm proud to be a southerner. The movie Thelma and Louise came to mind. It may portray the idea better than Steel Magnolias.
In your book, The Christ-Haunted Landscape--Faith and Doubt in Southern Fiction, you interview both male and female authors. How did you select these twelve individuals, and was the number "twelve" significant (as in the twelve disciples)?
The coincidence was not intended, but it worked out rather well. I chose these authors based, first, on their writing. They all had been consistently concerned with issues of theology in their work.
When you approached these authors, what did you hope to reveal through the interview format that your own research could not provide?
Had I analyzed the material myself, I wouldn't have known whether I was right or not. I wanted to find out what they thought about religion in their own work. The interview is really an oral history which makes the material lively and immediate.
This project explored the role of religion in literature. Do you agree with Lee Smith's assessment of writing as a kind of salvation experience?
She does think of writing in this way, and many of the other authors did. Their work represents and reflects serious struggles with faith and doubt.
You say of Harry Crews, another author you interviewed for this book, that he "creates fiction as art in one powerfully compelling metaphor--the writer as shaman." Do all writers use storytelling for the same kinds of curative purposes?
Some authors do. The redemptive and healing purposes are not just for the writer. They are for the reader as well.
Considering the Deep South is still known as the "Bible Belt," have you received any criticism or negative press as a result of writing this book?
"Southern women are caught in a potent kind of culture . . . or a potent dilemma in an extreme culture . . . more so than writers in other parts of the country. I think it makes you strong and tough, and I'm proud to be a southerner."
I was surprised at how few negative comments I received. By far the most common reaction was one of support and encouragement. I think people recognized the questions I was asking and were dealing with the answers in their own lives.
Do you think Southern writers will continue to juxtapose religious and everyday life experiences in their work? If so, is the primary reason to provide a "catharsis" for them and their readers?
Guilt continues. It's a part of everyday life, and so the use of these subjects may even grow stronger. With religion or music, the old traditional demons will continue to rise and will continue to be themes in literature.
What are your future plans? Will you be working with authors again?
Yes, I use the same approach, and the interview again, as I speak with Ms. Welty, Charles Fraiser, Lewis Norton, Lee Smith once more, and Mary Hood. I will interview Rita Dove. Robert Morganfield, who is the half-brother of Muddy Waters, is another musician who will be included. This new book will be published by the University of Mississippi, as the last one was.
What advice would you give young writers today?
The same advice that Lee Smith and Eudora Welty gave to me. Keep believing and keep doing -- no matter what. Nothing you do like this is a waste of time.
Susan Ketchin delves into what can be discovered about human nature when it is unveiled. Here are some of my favorite quotes from a few of the authors she interviewed in her book:
Larry Brown--" . . . my fiction is about people surviving, about people proceeding out from calamity."
Reynolds Price--"I'm attempting to write about those portions of creation which present themselves to me as important and worthy of communication to my fellow creatures."
Lee Smith--"The link for me between my own religious feelings and creativity is that with writing, you go out of yourself--but you know you can come back."
Sheila Bosworth--"When I was little we used to read and read, and my sisters and I would say, Oh, is that a good food book? Does it make you hungry?"
Shelia Bosworth and the others are right. Good fiction is like good food. It makes us hungry for emotional connections and leaves us wanting more.
