New Things Under the Sun

Last Thursday night, I had the privilege of being a part of the celebration for Josh Woods's new VERSUS Anthology. The party wasn't in NYC, and neither Paris nor Perez nor Page Six were in in attendance. Josh developed his totally fresh anthology idea when he was teaching at SIU's Young Writers Workshop last year and debuted it at this year's conference. Think classic enemies pitted in deathly conflict: Barbie vs. Stalin, Jesus vs. Thor, Kyle Minor vs. Else Richter(his terrifying 5th grade teacher), Orgo vs. The Flatlanders, and My Father vs. The Soap Lady.

The stories and essays are, by turns, wildly funny, horrifying, bizarre, and deeply affecting. And I'm not just saying that because my piece, Love vs. Lust, is included.

What I love about this anthology is its amazingly diverse elements: Orgo and Kyle Minor vs. Else Richter resemble comics, My Father vs. the Soap Lady is a horror story at its heart, Arthur Miller vs. Joe DiMaggio is a play and Margaret MacMullan's moving piece "Wrestling with Andy Kaufman" is non-fiction.

But even more fun was hearing the teenagers in the audience react to the work. This was no dry reading of delicate personal stories or inaccessible prose. The Versus stories are fairly raw and raucous, the kind of stories that are way too risky for the likes of traditional outlets like the Oxford Book of American Short Stories. They push boundaries, just like teenagers themselves.

Their energy was contagious. After the reading, they were brimming with exciting ideas and delighted that they'd been given permission to write whatever in the heck they wanted to. Not one student I spoke with was committed to one particular genre, or even to writing as their sole artistic discipline.

That's the same kind of freedom and experimentation that we try to encourage when we open up submissions for our Surreal South series. If boundaries aren't pushed frequently and with enthusiasm, storytelling becomes static and dull.

And speaking of pushing boundaries, have you seen this art installation project by Marco Brambilla? I picked it up from VSL today. It's rich and amazing and thought-provoking. Brambilla uses thousands of images created by others--many of which are very familiar--and relies on his deep cultural knowledge to make the piece successful. I'm mesmerized by it, and enchanted by the thoughts and stories it evokes inside me.

You can check out Brambilla's "Civilization" on YouTube as well as on the Motionographer site--Motionagrapher has better resolution.

Enjoy!

The Appalachian Writers Workshop (or, How I Met Pinckney)

In the spring of 1989, my life was a mess. The details aren't particularly important. But for the sake of this story, I'll tell you that by summer I was more than ready to leave it completely behind for a week.

I'd been taking writing classes and writing short stories for almost a year while working at my day job in sales promotion for the mega-beer company. Those night classes were my first real exposure to the literary world--beyond my own rather lame attempts to educate myself by reading random books that I knew to be classics. I subscribed to Writer's Digest, that wonderful cheerleader of a magazine that puts publishing stars in so many nascent writers' eyes. And that's where I found my dream come true: a list of writers' conferences that promised camaraderie, knowledge and, best of all, a week removed from the rest of the world.

There were probably a hundred conferences listed for that year. How did I choose? Location, location and price, of course.

The Appalachian Writers Workshop was (and is) at the Hindman Settlement School, in Hindman, Kentucky, many hours from where I was living in St. Louis. But my dad's people, the Philpots, were from that area and I always entertained extremely romantic notions about it. Growing up in Louisville, it seemed a faraway, inaccessible place. Perfect for making up stories about. The notion of going there comforted me, and it seemed liked a friendly sort of conference, if there is such a thing. Plus, it was quite inexpensive. I think I even managed to get mega-beer company to pay for it, though my boss probably approved it because he felt sorry for me (see Line 1, above).

So I sent in the check and registration fee and received, in return, instructions for travel, a schedule, and a bright green photocopied brochure with a picture of someone named Pinckney Benedict perusing a book (his own) on its cover.

What in the world might a Pinckney Benedict be? I asked myself.



The workshop was, indeed, a very friendly place. It was a summer camp for writers where we talked about books and stories and wrote during the day. The workshop format was familiar to me, but the encouraging staff there was a refreshing change from the arrogant baseball writer who had made fun of my "old fashioned" stories in the grad workshop I'd just completed. In the evenings, there was plenty of music, storytelling, gossip (ha!) and much partying in general, drinking in particular, for those who would. The surrounding mountains were beyond beautiful. It was a much gentler introduction to the world of writers outside the classroom than I ever could have anticipated.

And, well, there was that Pinckney Benedict guy. He kept trying to talk to me, and followed me everywhere! But then I discovered he just wanted to talk to me because he was the leader of the short story section of the conference, and that he and I were actually supposed to have a private meeting about the manuscript I'd submitted. Silly me!

We must have hit it off, because, here it is, almost exactly twenty years later and we seem to have collected a couple of children, several houses (not all at once), many pets and not a few gray hairs along the way (okay, one of us has--the other shaves his head so no one can tell). And at the end of July, we'll both be back at The Appalachian Writers Workshop in Hindman (July 26-31). This time I'll be teaching a novel section, and P will be doing short stories. Twenty years. Oh, my.

If you're looking for a workshop this summer, the workshop at Hindman is a very special place for many writers in the region--people who have it tucked away in their hearts because they found good teaching, good friends and lots of support for their work there.

A few folks on this year's staff: Silas House, Ann Pancake, Leatha Kendrick, Gurney Norman, Maurice Manning, and George Ella Lyon. Ron Rash is also making a special appearance.

Sorry, I can't promise you'll meet a potential spouse, but you never know!

**The portrait is of P and me just after Pom was born. It was taken by an amazing photographer named Arturo Patten who was doing a book of author portraits for the French publisher Actes Sud. (He was there to shoot P, but when he learned I was a writer as well, he kindly included me in this one and sent it to us.) Arturo died in 1999. I expect the copyright belongs to his estate. This is my very favorite picture of us.

Taking Ownership

I spent pretty much all of yesterday in my front yard, planting flowers. It's not much of a garden: a four-foot deep strip of dirt and mulch that follows the length of the house. When we moved in three years ago, it was edged with tacky scalloped bricks and contained two rose bushes and three clumps of ornamental grass. It was hardly inspiring. Add to that the fact that I'd left behind a flower and herb garden in Virginia that I'd tilled and planted myself and tended for almost eight years--well, you get the picture. I've felt pretty grim about it.

I've never transitioned well. I'm a pack rat at heart. I don't much like change, though I try to embrace it when it comes unbidden. But adjusting to life in Southern Illinois has been difficult. The Benedicts are not Midwesterners. Despite the fact that the midwest and west have been settled for a couple hundred years, they still feel new compared to West Virginia and the south.

Most of Illinois is extremely flat. We joke that one of the later glaciers that covered Illinois stopped right on top of Carbondale, the closest town to our house and land. The land around our house is as rolling as the area gets, with picturesque hills. If you squint, you can pretend that the clouds beyond the hills are real mountains. We have plenty of trees, too, which adds to the illusion. (Sadly, we have fewer trees after May 8th's inland hurricane--the piles of limbs we chainsawed were finally cleared yesterday.)

But a sea change has come over us lately. Maybe it's because Pom is leaving for college a year early, propelling us into almost-empty-nest syndrome. Maybe it's that we are tired of pouting about the unfamiliar feel of the house and the area. I don't know.

We've done quite a bit of work on the house, but it needs plenty more. I've decided to start with the garden. Next week I'm going to expand it into the grass-poor front yard and plant a real herb garden and plenty of sun-hardy perennials. A garden is a commitment. A creation. It's time. The other thing I'm doing is pruning back the plants that were there when we moved in. The ornamental grass has gone wild. I spent half an hour hacking at the roots of one planting, alternately stabbing it and lifting the root ball with a spade. I also cut back a blooming bush (it had finished blooming for the season), taking off at least four feet of growth and pulling up the leaders that had surrounded it.

Sometimes we have to prune back growth to continue growing. We have to move things and remake them to take ownership of them.

I've written one novel and almost finished another in this house. We're sending a child to college and learning new things about our nine year old, Bengal, every day. We've put in a new kitchen and celebrated nine or ten birthdays. We've chased a black snake and a hundred mice out of the house and raised a puppy. We already have roots here. It's time to let them grow deeper.