Writing From a Place of Understanding

By Linda Prather

“Who is the crafted person on the page? Is that person as well-rounded as the narrator? What is the intention of this piece?” Rachel Louise Snyder asked fellow writers last week during the second installment of George Mason University’s Visiting Writers’ spring workshop. Snyder, a recently tenured professor of Literature at American University, focused on the craft of the personal narrative and crucial concepts for memoir writing, specifically dual narration and intention, during her April 16 workshop.

Source: American University Faculty Pages

Snyder, who also works as journalist and has traveled extensively, often explores themes such as struggle, survival and social justice in her writing. She writes both fiction and nonfiction and is the author of two books, What We’ve Lost is Nothing (Scribner 2014) and Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade (W. W. Norton 2009). With regard to structure, Snyder says, fiction and nonfiction can develop quite differently. According to Snyder, fiction lends itself more to discovering the structure of a piece as evolves, whereas with nonfiction, it's important for writers to have some general idea of structure before embarking on the composition process.

Snyder draws her lessons in craft from a variety of sources, including author and poet, Grace Paley, who often doesn’t quite bring her stories full circle. By veering off course near the end, Snyder says, Paley’s stories are both surprising and memorable. During her workshop, Snyder also shared a “fill-in-the-blank” mantra for writing nonfiction—the thing about (subject) is (what)?—which she learned from fellow journalist and This American Life host, Ira Glass. If you can’t succinctly fill in the blanks then you don’t have your story clear enough in your mind, Snyder said, adding that the best nonfiction essays present an essential question with which the writer is grappling and that answering it is often beside the point.

What We've Lost is Nothing, Rachel Louise Snyder (Scribner 2014)

Snyder's more informal lesson took place in my car, as I navigated rush hour traffic, heading north on Chain Bridge Road. We were on our way to dinner at Dolce Vita in Fairfax when the conversation turned to the query letter and how a writer gets her nonfiction placed in such prestigious literary publications as The New York Times and The New Yorker, both of which have featured Snyder’s work. Here’s the formula that Snyder shared for shaping the ideal query letter:

• Paragraph 1: Write a brief narrative illuminating the issue that you plan to explore.
• Paragraph 2: Explain why it matters. Why tell this story at this moment?
• Paragraph 3: What are experts saying about this topic? Are there statistics you can site? Who will you interview?
• Paragraph 4: Why are you the best person to tell this story?

Herein lies the real value of the Visiting Writers program, as highlighted by Snyder’s impromptu lesson: the opportunity to chat informally with published authors outside of the classroom, to gain insight from an established author that students can then apply to their own writing lives. Now, for that query letter...

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Linda Prather is a nonfiction candidate in George Mason University's Creative Writing MFA Program and is slated to finish her masters in the spring of 2016. She has lived in Northern Virginia for the last eight years.

James Thomas to Mason MFA: “Get In, Get Out”

By Brittany Kerfoot

James Thomas, editor of the Flash Fiction and Sudden Fiction volumes of very short stories, was on campus March 24 sharing his advice with George Mason University MFA students on the form of flash fiction and several readings from his newest addition to the short fiction family, Flash Fiction International (W.W. Norton 2014) which hits shelves April 13.

Thomas, who completed his own MFA with Bowling Green State University in Ohio, opened the workshop with a reading from “A Fable," a story from the inaugural edition of Sudden Fiction (Gibbs Smith 1983); “The young man was clean shaven and neatly dressed,” Thomas read, the description a stark contrast to Thomas’ own thick, graying beard, gold necklace, and brown suede vest and T-shirt. His demeanor was laid-back and he was immediately approachable, frequently cracking jokes and encouraging conversation within the group.

As the afternoon moved on, Thomas proved to be a wealth of knowledge, detailing the appeal of short fiction (or “subway fiction,” as he put it): “People can get to know a character and even see that character change in a short amount of time, like during a subway ride." And with readers’ attention spans seemingly getting shorter and shorter, micro-fiction is increasingly growing in popularity. For those looking to try their hand at writing a very short story, Thomas advised that “flash fiction relies heavily on tension and metaphor. You can have a story without a conflict, but you can’t have a story without tension.”

Thomas read several stories from other volumes he has edited, all with an apparent shared theme: suicide and death. “We are as interested in sex and death in fiction as we are in life,” he said. “It’s something we’re both obsessed with and something we fear.”

Flash Fiction International, Ed. James Thomas, Robert Shapard, Christopher Merrill (W.W. Norton 2014)

When asked what advice he would impart upon aspiring writers, he had several shades of wisdom, including perhaps the most painfully obvious one for any young writer: “Chain yourself to your chair, because almost anything can tempt you away from writing.” Thomas warned about the importance of perseverance and, as most writers can attest, the necessity of revision: “It’s all about going there, doing it, and revision, revision, revision. If you feel you’ve got it on the first draft, you don’t.”

After a quick break for a bit to eat and a smoke, Thomas’ more formal reading began. Following a short introduction from friend and fellow writer Alan Cheuse, Thomas read from his newest collection, which he co-edited with Robert Shapard and Christopher Merrill. One of the stories he read detailed an insomniac who can’t sleep even after he commits suicide, while another, “The Light Eater” followed a woman who eats light bulbs to summon home her lost lover. Most of the pieces contained elements of magical realism, a genre that seems to be making a popular comeback, perhaps especially with the short form.

Thomas concluded the reading, quite appropriately, with a quote from Raymond Carver’s wise advice for short story writers: “Get in, get out. Don’t linger. Go on.”

Go on, indeed.

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Brittany is a third year fiction candidate in George Mason University's Master of Fine Arts program, where she also teaches English Composition, Literature, and Creative Writing. Her work has previously appeared in Paper Tape Magazine, Driftwood Press, Four Ties Review, and Cactus Heart Press. She resides in Washington, D.C. with her fiancé and their many pets.

An Afternoon With Lucas Mann

By Emily Heiden

Lucas Mann wears a humble smile as he passes out a story he wants us to read.  It’s not one that he has written – this particular piece is about a journalist who endangered his life during the Vietnam War in the name of a new kind of reporting. We discuss the ethics of such a piece and what it means to immerse oneself in a specific place in order to write about it.

Mann too has immersed himself in this way, except that his place was a small town in Iowa, where he watched a lot of men play (and lose) a lot of baseball, and sometimes he dressed up in a giant suit as the team’s mascot, ‘Louie the Lumberking’.   

Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere, Lucas Mann (Vintage 2014)

He talked with us about this type of reporting, or nonfiction – about “showing up somewhere and simply not getting turned away” – and what kinds of projects can take shape when writers are allowed to stay and really come to know a people and a place. Mann’s book, Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere (Vintage 2014), is a lovely example of what can emerge from hunkering down and observing a subject until a writer finds the story; that team, those men, that place.

Class A is an explication of what Mann observed in Clinton, Iowa: men imported from around the world to play baseball in one of the lowest-level leagues that exists; the people who populate the stands; the workings of the town itself.  It shows us an enigmatic factory on the edge of town that emanates a terrible smell, the train-cars filled with tons upon tons of corn being shipped out of the Midwest for processing and livestock feed, photos of players’ girlfriends – who the men call a “blessing” – and other instances of surprising humanity that tug at the heart.     

I learned a lot from Class A, from Mann’s decision to begin in medias res, in which he “enter[s] his torso” (code for pulling on his mascot outfit to become Louie the Lumberking) to the effective portraits he paints of both people and place.  His writing – and his teaching style – captured even this decidedly non-baseball-loving reader’s attention.

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Emily Heiden writes creative nonfiction at George Mason University, where she also teaches composition, creative writing, and literature classes.  She will graduate with her Master of Fine Arts degree this spring.  She holds a Master of Arts in Teaching from the University of Iowa and a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Connecticut, which is her home state.

Politics & Prose and Stillhouse Press Celebrate the Life of Local Writer, Wendi Kaufman

By Meghan McNamara

Photo Credit: Elizabeth Osborne, http://www.elizabethosborne.com

I have read Wendi Kaufman’s short stories again and again. When Stillhouse Press first selected her collection as its debut publication, I devoured them. When the books arrived in our offices the morning that we learned Wendi had passed, I found consolation in them. In the months that followed, as we organized an early release of Helen on 86th Street and Other Stories and fervently promoted the collection, I came to know her narrators intimately. Wendi never had the opportunity to complete an interview about her book, but her voice lives on—powerfully, enchantingly, painfully—in this voice-driven collection.

This sentiment was fondly echoed Jan. 25th at Politics & Prose Bookstore in NW Washington, D.C. at the event celebrating Wendi Kaufman’s life and work.  Stillhouse Press Editor, Marcos L. Martínez said of Wendi, “The same caring spirit that she possessed in life is vivid on the pages and focused on her characters; young women in difficult situations, always aware that the other shoe is about to drop, surviving and sharing their wisdom from story to story.”

Mary Kay Zuravleff, speaking Jan. 25 at the Wendi Kaufman Memorial Celebration

Mary Kay Zuravleff (Man Alive!), who penned the introduction to Helen on 86th Street and Other Stories, remembered Wendi’s ebullient energy, which had the power to inspire writers of all backgrounds, young and old, established and emerging. “She brought the party to the room,” said Zuravleff, who shared memories about informal literary salons on the Kaufman front porch and her work with the Changing Lives Through Literature Initiative, through which Wendi taught creative writing to female juvenile offenders. “My girls, she called them,” Zuravleff remembered warmly.

Scott W. Berg (38 Nooses)—a long-time peer of Wendi’s and co-founder of the Rotisserie Writers Group, which she and Berg and three other graduates of George Mason University’s MFA program maintained informally for the better part of 20 years—reflected on the early iterations of “Helen on 86th Street,” the title story in Wendi’s collection, which was first published in The New Yorker in 1997. “She caught lightning in a bottle with [that] story,” he said. “Helen on 86th Street” was easily Wendi’s most successful story, appearing in The Best American Short Stories, The Elements of Literature textbook, and later adapted into a play, before becoming the face of her full collection.

Helen on 86th Street and Other Stories, Wendi Kaufman (Stillhouse Press 2014)

During the event Jan. 25, Berg read from the final scene in the story: the pinnacle moment in which Vita, the 12-year old narrator, enacts the closing scene from her school’s rendition of “Helen of Troy,” secretly hoping to spot her absent father in the audience:

I’m supposed to hit my fist against my chest, draw a hand across my forehead, and cry loudly. Mr. Dodd has shown me this gesture, practiced it with me in rehearsal a dozen times – the last line, my big finish. The audience is very quiet. In the stillness, there is a hole, an empty pocket, an absence.

This scene—like so many in Wendi’s stories—resonates with the reader, because we find ourselves so completely drawn into the mind of the narrator. “Her voice in this collection of stories is a magnetic blend of strength, humor, and compassion,” said Martínez, reflecting on the power of Wendi’s narrative voice. And it’s true. These very elements are what initially drew me to her collection. As a young woman, I find so much veracity in her stories. They feel so true to life. They remind the reader that life is not without its ups and downs, its painful truths, which are made endurable with just the right balance of humor—a technique which Wendi so elegantly employs—and the compassion of others. Knowing this, I can’t help but feel the impulse to want to read Wendi’s collection all over again.

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Helen on 86th Street and Other Stories (Oct. 2014) can be found at: www.stillhousepress.org/helenon86. For more information about Wendi, please visit the “Authors” tab at the top of the screen. In an effort to share her stories with others, Stillhouse Press is open to arranging readings from her work. If interested, please contact: Meghan McNamara, media@stillhousepress.org.

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Photo Credit: Alexis Glenn, GMU Creative Services

Meghan McNamara is a third-year fiction candidate with George Mason University's Creative Writing MFA program. She serves as the Director of Media and Communications for Stillhouse Press and was one of the principle project managers for Wendi Kaufman's short story collection. She currently resides in Arlington, Virginia, where she is at work on a novel length work exploring addiction and relationships, told through the lens of a female protagonist.

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Bridge Street Hosts Release of Collected Poems of P. Inman

By Sean Pears

Photo Credit: Lieven Verbrugge, www.synapsedynamics.com

On December 7th Bridge Street Books hosted a reading for the release of Written (if p then q press 2014), the collected poems 1976-2013 of P. Inman. That the poet chooses to interrupt his own name with a period is mimetic of his poetics, which has been invested for decades in disrupting, erupting, and rupturing the normal flow of language. Consider these lines from his book ocker (1982): “cudb / ea,mlaw // (spill)theor) // blome // cullen,trenm,occlu (which each occur).” If you dismiss this type of poetry as concept-driven gibberish, you dismiss a major figure of what may be the only literary movement in recent history to put Washington, D.C. on the map: the avant-garde writers of the 1970s and 80s often uncomfortably elbowed into the category of Language Poetry. Inman is a poet about whom admirers and practitioners of Language Poetry get really excited; as Doug Lang put it in his introduction, “comparing Pete with the Language poets is like putting an astronaut in with cab drivers.”

Written, P. Inman (if p then q press 2014)

Written is a 728-page tome representing 38 years of work. It seems right that neither of these numbers is round. In a range of fonts and sizes, lines move right-left, down-up, and diagonally across the pages of Written. Discussing Inman’s Platin (Eclipse 1979), Craig Dworkin in the book’s introduction calls these poems “among the most linguistically drastic writing to have emerged from a period of notoriously radical lexical experimentation.” Having had a scattered exposure to Language poetry in general (and none to Inman’s work specifically), hearing Inman read these poems was…interesting. I sat upstairs at Bridge Street and, as he read, Inman moved in and out of my visual field. Sometimes I saw his face, then just the top of his head, then nothing at all. This strikes me as a workable metaphor for my experience of the poems. Images, gestures, registers would surface; then suddenly I would catch myself distracted by the titles on the Recent Arrivals shelf opposite where I sat.

The most pleasurable moments for me—not that “pleasure” is the point of this poetry and anyone genuinely interested in what the point is should buy the book and read Dworkin’s fine introduction—were those that seemed to aspire to the condition of music. The title of “OC,” which opened the reading and Written, refers to free jazz innovator Ornette Coleman. “An ice think,” the poem opens, “prosed/ trying to figure out the touch of things/ the pour gets meshed/ only or little to music/ makes of pepper.” This poem excites me. The humor, the play, the indeterminacy, the slippage in and out of meaning, in and out of self-reference. Written is a gift, an idiosyncratic window into some of Language poetry’s most radical possibilities.

After the reading I drove up to The Dougout, a venue in the basement of a small rented single-family home in Northeast D.C., for another release: Foulbrood, the new album from D.C. band Two Inch Astronaut. The band represents the legacy of a D.C. avant-garde movement contemporary to Inman: the postpunk scene of the 80s and 90s (look up videos of early Fugazi shows and you’ll get the idea). The show was everything that the reading was not—brazen, youthful, unapologetic, loud, emotional—though of course it missed some things that Inman offered too. As I stood sweating in the small wood-paneled basement packed with millennials re-living a movement we were all too young to have actually lived through the first time, it occurred me to that it is very clear where the D.C. avant-garde art movement has been. Where is it going?

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Sean Pears has lived in Boston and Chicago and currently resides in Washington, DC. As a third year poetry candidate with George Mason University's Creative Writing M.F.A. program, Pears is currently at work on a mixed genre exploration of his parents' decision to leave apartheid South Africa and his own experience coming of age in a "post-racial" America. Follow him on Twitter @Sean_Pears