Save the Date!!

If you're going to be in North Carolina on Saturday, June 7, you'll want to get a copy of Our State magazine. There's going to be a coupon in the June issue for one complimentary admission to tons of tourist attractions across the state--museums, gardens, aquariums, Linville Caverns, Chinqua Penn Plantation.... Some of these places cost up to $30 to get in, so $4.95 for one magazine is a pretty good deal!

Here's a link to the magazine for more info:

http://www.ourstate.com/best/special_events.asp

Storytelling

Storytelling is big in the South. It seems to me that oral storytellers and writers have a lot in common--having to think of interesting plots, exaggerate or fictionalize the truth, keep the audience's attention, and have a flair for the dramatic. Of course, being a good storyteller doesn't guarantee you'll be a good writer, and vice versa. But I'd like to go to a storytelling festival one day, just to see how it is, and I bet I would learn some tips for my writing.

Here's one in Roswell, Georgia, June 27-28:

http://www.cvb.roswell.ga.us/storytelling.html

Interview: Marianne Wheelaghan, online inventor

Marianne Wheelaghan is a fiction writer and teacher. She used to teach Creative Writing for the Open University in Great Britain and for Edinburgh University. She's now developing new courses for her online writing school, http://www.writingclasses.co.uk/. While not from the American South, Marianne offers great insights about online learning, especially important in today’s world of cyber-degrees and virtual classrooms.

You earned your Master’s through a distance-learning program. Can you tell us a little about how that worked, logistically?

When I began to inquire about enrolling on a Master’s program I was running my own business and caring for my two children, who were still quite young. These commitments meant attending face-to-face classes on fixed days at set times in inconvenient places was simply not an option for me. On the other hand, online distance learning was perfect, I could ‘log on’ and download my course notes as well as meet my colleagues at a time that most suited me, and better still, from the comfort of my own home. And although my colleagues weren’t necessarily online at the same time as I was - the conference program we used was not asynchronous – when I logged on communication felt instantaneous and a very real ‘virtual’ community rapidly developed, which was both stimulating and supportive and conducive to learning.

Did you find it harder to write, not being in a classroom environment? For example, do you think it would have been easier listening to critiques in person?

No. I found – and still find - the physical classroom environment rather intimidating and not conducive to creativity.

As for giving and receiving feedback – well, I find taking and giving critiques much easier in the virtual environment. In the virtual classroom students have to write down their comments in black and white, this process tends to make the students better consider what they are saying. At the same time, for those who are receiving feedback, there is time to reflect on what is said and as a consequence one tends to react intellectually rather than emotionally to comments. Furthermore, everyone has an opportunity to have his or her say in the virtual classroom – there are no loudmouths hogging the floor, intimidating the less confident student.

Why did you decide to start your own online creative writing school?

I passionately wanted to teach creative writing, not just because I enjoy writing so much myself, but previous to doing my master's degree I had been on so many bad creative writing courses that I was determined to create a ‘good’ course once I’d qualified. And what do I mean by ‘bad’? Well, so many of my ex-tutors seemed to have had an ‘airy-fairy’ idea of to how to teach creative writing – especially those tutors on short courses. They invariably talked about being ‘gifted’ and brought ‘interesting’ objects into class to inspire creativity - usually something like a hideously large orange-brown ash tray in the shape of a dromedary, found in the back of a shed at the bottom of the tutor’s garden (where it should have stayed!). I found it frustrating not to be ‘taught’ specific writing skills, and was not in the least bit inspired by objects that meant nothing to me.

So, now that I have experience and amassed a good deal of writing ‘know-how’ I have created courses, which teach specific writing skills and techniques. Through the honing of these skills I encourage both beginner and emerging writers to discover the things that matter most to them and show them how to write creatively about these things.

What “challenges” have you had working online? For example, how do you encourage group interaction and the exchange of ideas?

The main challenge working online is to keep students logging on. It is too easy not to switch on, and the longer the student stays ‘away,' the more isolated the student feels and the more disengaged from the learning process. Students need to understand that participating online is not like attending face-to-face classes. Online participation is more fluid – students need to check in frequently but they don’t necessarily need to check in for a long time on every virtual visit. So students have to be both flexible and disciplined.

Once students get used to the idea of logging on frequently, group interaction and the exchange of ideas is more likely to follow – especially if the students have been given stimulating course notes and/or assignments, which give the student the opportunity to have his or her say.

What are some advantages to working online?

It’s convenient and flexible – you can participate at any time from anywhere. It cuts down on paper. There’s no travel time. It’s less confrontational than the face-to-face environment. Everyone is equal online. It’s more conducive to learning.

Tell us a little bit about the writing projects you working on right now.

I am writing a fictional account of my mother’s life. The first part is in memoir form. It covers the period from 1932 to 1946 and specifically looks at the way of life of an ordinary Lower Silesian family and how the Nationalist Socialist Party coming to power affected them. It culminates in disaster, when they are forced to flee their home at the end of WWII, when Silesia was handed over to Poland as part of the Potsdam agreement. Millions of Germans [...] were made refugees by this agreement. It is now acknowledged that a wrong was committed against the indigenous German population of the former Eastern districts, but specifically in Lower Silesia, where almost all the population was indigenously German. I want to tell the story of these German victims – one of whom was my mother.

What is your “guilty pleasure” reading?

The Inspector Montalbano Mysteries – by Andrea Camilleri

Build your vocab...

Okay, so this has nothing to do with Southern literature, but it is a way to build your vocabulary and help donate rice to the United Nations World Food Program. Plus, it's fun!

http://www.freerice.com/index.php

John Ehle

Another Southern writer who's often classified as "regional" is John Ehle, author of more than 15 fiction and nonfiction books in his 50 years of writing. Press 53 out of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, have republished three of his books: The Land Breakers, The Free Men, and Move Over, Mountain.

Worth checking out!

"Southern" vs. "Mainstream"

In his article, "Carrying America's Shadow," David Payne makes an interesting point...why is it that successful Southern writers, such as Lee Smith, don't seem to have the same fame and readership north of Washington, D.C. ? It's something worth thinking about...does the "regionalism" that distinguishes Southern writers and helps set us apart as something special also hinder us? As Payne points out, you don't often hear about "Northern" writers--they're called, instead, "national" writers.

The second half of Payne's article gets a bit labored, in my opinion, veering into racial stereotypes of "rednecks," etc... and isn't as well argued as the first half.

I think he makes a good point, though, that writers who've distanced themselves from the South seem to have done better nationally than writers who've focused on and celebrated their "regionalism." But is it worth it?

"Cormac McCarthy, after setting several novels in his childhood home of Knoxville, left the South, literally and figuratively, and gained attention writing about the West. Anne Tyler, though a Southerner, writes of a Baltimore with little native inflection. Barbara Kingsolver, who grew up in Kentucky, wrote for years of the Southwest, and then of Africa, and only late into the game, and from the vantage of success, returned to her Appalachian roots."

Virginia Festival of the Book

Here's another book festival...this time in Charlottesville, VA. Walter Mosley (not a Southerner but a pretty big name in crime fiction) will be the headliner. Wish I could go to this. Maybe the next one...

http://www.vabook.org/index.html

Affrilachian arts and culture...

There is a great article in Blue Ridge Country magazine by poet Frank X. Walker, a writer in residence at Northern Kentucky University. Walker helped start the Affrilachian Poets group and talks about how people tend to forget that ethnicities other than "white" exist in the Appalachian region, groups of people who have influenced music, literature, and national and Appalachian culture for generations. Nina Simone came from Tryon, North Carolina, for example. Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and spent summers there with her grandparents.

Walker is also the editor of Pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture, now on its second issue. Pluck! has a fresh, modern look and is full of interesting essays and dynamic poetry that is enjoyable to read--not a chore! It covers the Appalachian region from Mississippi to New York.

SIBA Book Awards

Each year, hundreds of booksellers around the South vote on their favorite books. Whether you agree with them or not, looking at the list of nominations is a good way to find out about Southern authors. Here's a few from SIBA's fiction list for 2008:

Capote in Kansas by Kim Powers
Cataloochee by Wayne Caldwell
Down River by John Hart
Effigies by Mary Anna Evans
One Fell Swoop by Virginia Boyd
Rhett Butler's People by Donald McCaig
The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish by Elise Blackwell
Thistle & Twigg by Mary Saums
Women of Magdalene by Rosemary Poole-Carter
Work Shirts for Madmen by George Singleton

Low-Residency MFAs...

Every so often, we'll be highlighting MFA creative writing programs across the South. I wanted to mention a couple of low residency MFA programs, since I know a lot of people would love to go back to school, if only they could keep working, or if the college was a bit closer...

Murry State University in Kentucky requires four 10-day residencies at the university. The rest of the hours can be obtained through distance learning -- submitting work to a mentor through email or snail mail -- and you can transfer (with approval) up to 9 literature hours from another grad. school, so it's not a bad plan... In-state prices ($3887 per semester) also apply to residents of many nearby counties in Tennessee, Illinois, and Indiana. And residents throughout the states of Missouri, Tennessee, Illinois, and Indiana benefit from Regional Tuition, which is below the usual MSU out-of-state rates.

Being from NC, I'd always heard of Warren Wilson, but I didn't realize that Queens University of Charlotte also has a low-residency MFA in creative writing. This program requires five 7-day residencies, and in the periods between residencies students complete online workshops with three or four other students and a faculty mentor for that semester. It's pricier than a state college at $5400 a semester (with a $1200 charge for the fifth graduating residency) but comparable to out-of-state prices...and still cheaper than Warren Wilson!