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Life, Love, and Literature:      

Continuing the Conversation


October 2014

 

In This Issue
Read Intensely
Upcoming
Quick Links to Our Site



 The Grateful Read
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Dear Friends of Creative Writing,

 

When we lived in Iowa City, October was always a special treat for us California transplants. Our landlady had a cabin on the Cedar River and graciously included us in the annual harvest party among her fellow river rats. Everyone brought end-of-season produce to add to the gigantic cast iron cauldron simmering over an open fire on the beach.

 

Ever-changing guest and ingredient lists ensured a unique communal concoction that needed nothing more than a crusty bread to satisfy every taste. That same eclecticism guides our ARCology selections (and yes, they too go well with a hunky olive bread or sweet rustic baguette).

 

Most recently we've run excerpts from books as diverse as Alyson Richman's latest bestselling historical novel and Suzy Vitello's YA interweaving of characters from different times. Set in WWII Italy, Richman's The Garden of Letters is a music lover's romance-cum-mystery thriller bolstered by Resistance intrigue and life and death decisions.

 

Vitello's dual heroines in The Empress Chronicles lived 150 years apart, on a contemporary Oregon goat farm and in a castle, respectively. But their impact on each other is compelling, the stuff of good fiction.

 

Kate Gray's masterful Carry the Sky is set in an elite Delaware boarding school in 1983 but its themes are up- to-the-minute. Seems improbable that a debut novel could so brilliantly broach loss and loneliness and racism and homophobia and bullying and ever so much more without a single misstep nor hint of didacticism, but Gray is an award-winning poet. She paints with a different palette and custom brushes.

 

Fellow poet Roy Beckemeyer shared excerpts from his debut poetry collection, Music I Once Could Dance To. Pastoral titles disguise--and enhance--the grist of his subjects.

 

As if all this weren't enough variety, the books by our guest contributors' beds offered many delightful surprises. Leave it to a faculty member in an MFA program to keep--or at least covet--a stash of the likes of Bernard Cooper, T.C. Boyle, Padma Viswanathan, Colum McCann, and Jonathan Nossiter's Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters.

 

Another creative writing teacher keeps a veritable monument to place and the role it plays in great fiction.

 

A monument of another order in a different medium is the mini-documentary by Melanie Peters, "North Park Eclectic." Inspired by the neighborhood and characters and traumatic event in Bonnie ZoBell's linked novella and story collection, What Happened Here, the video eloquently captures the spirit and intent of the author. 

 

 

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May You Never Lose Your
Summer Reading Intensity!


 

Just back from a visit to Iowa, our intrepid designer Bill Girsch sent this for your autumnal enjoyment. He writes, "While I was there, I spent three days trout fishing and walking around the valleys of Allamakee County in the Driftless Area near the borders of Minnesota and Wisconsin. Fall colors were just beginning to show. I came across a bed of wild black-eyed Susans. The tips of the petals were beginning to lose their summer intensity." 
 

 

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Upcoming

End of the month will find Joe Haldeman at ICON, Iowa's longest-running science fiction and fantasy convention, in Cedar Rapids (Oct. 31 - Nov. 2). He'll be signing books at Barnes & Noble 10/30, Northland Square SC 333 Collins Rd. NE, Bldg. 1 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Then he's on several panels and readings at ICON at the Marriott throughout the weekend.


 

Geri Lipschultz has a piece in The Toast on her favorite artists' retreat and the importance of such sanctuaries, especially for women writers. Of course, OUR favorite part is the photo of proprietor Preston Browning reading We Wanted to Be Writers!


 

Our man of many islands Don Wallace has essays in this month's issues of Islands Magazine and Hana Hou!, the magazine of Hawaiian Airlines.

 


 

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We Wanted to Be WritersAbout the Book
We Wanted to be Writers is a series of conversations among nearly 30 writers-students and their teachers-who were at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in the mid-70s. In the book, we discuss what we learned in the Workshop-and what we didn't learn-and what we learned in the decades since about life, art, the creative process, teaching, the lit biz, and more.
 
Our goal is to provide advice, counsel and analysis, maybe some inspiration, and a cautionary tale or two. Along the way, we also hope to entertain with some good yarns and a little gossip....

Among the talents that emerged in those years-writing, passionately jousting, criticizing, drinking, and debating in the classrooms and barrooms of Iowa City-were the young versions of writers who became John Irving, Jane Smiley, T.C. Boyle, Allan Gurganus, Sandra Cisneros, Joe HaldemanJayne Anne Phillips, Marvin Bell, Michelle Huneven, and many others.

The book is available from Red RoomAmazon, Barnes and Noble, and other booksellers. Booksellers please order directly from the distributor, W.W. Norton. For special sales please contact Kathryn Mennone.

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Check Out Our Website
At our website (wewantedtobewriters.com), you can find out more about our contributors, read excerpts from the book, watch the book trailer, and link to a bookseller to order a copy. We also provide links to resources for writers and teachers of writing, including links to our contributors' websites.

Special features include:
  • For Teachers:  Most of us teach writing, or have taught it. Many of us have set up creative writing programs, or have headed them, or are heading them now. In the book, we discuss teaching, best practices, and of course that question that no one seems to tire of asking: Can writing be taught? On the site, we'll expand on the conversation in the book with a variety of materials on the topic.
  • Ask the Writers:  If you have any questions about writing, the creative process, teaching writing, the lit biz, or anything else having to do with writing, please send them in and we'll weigh in.
  • Resources:  For young writers just getting started, interrupted writers returning after other pursuits, and anyone else who's ever felt the irresistible lure/tyranny of the blank page.

We hope you find this site is a useful resource. We welcome your comments and suggestions.

small book cover
We Wanted to be Writers: Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers' Workshop � by Eric Olsen and Glenn Schaeffer � A Herman Graf Book � $16.95 paperback original (Can. $21.50) North America (X) � CQ 24 � ISBN 978-1-60239-735-4 � 5 �" x 8 �" � 320 pages � 24 b/w photographs � Reference � AUGUST
 
  
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