Writers in Unexpected Places

"Our being in the world is subtly influenced by all the people, creatures, landscapes, climates, luxuries and deprivations that surround us."
-- From my writer's notebook, September 2011, while at a national park
 
At the Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference last week, I had the pleasure of talking about non-traditional writers' residencies with two literary lights who deeply inspire me: Stephanie Elizondo Griest and Henry Reese. To read how a truly inspired writer finds her writing room, read this interview with Stephanie. To learn about a truly inspired residency program, read about Henry's City of Asylum / Pittsburgh. In fact, they both inspired me so much that I decided to bring my blog out of the deep-freeze that began with phase two of my No Word for Welcome book tour (a fifteen-state, five-month, thirty-event Atlantic-to-Pacific road trip) and seems to have continued into phase three (scattered events across the country).

Here's the short version of my presentation in Chicago last week:

Ragdale's garden, WLC, 2009

Traditional writers residencies (the perfection of the cottages at Hedgebrook, of the lake by Blue Mountain Center, of the sculpture garden at Anderson Center, of the  sleeping porches by the Prairie at Ragdale) have made my writing possible – especially beginning and ending huge projects. For that I'm eternally grateful. But these traditional retreats don’t necessarily feed my writing. My nonfiction is rooted in the real world, not in the cloister of an artist colony or retreat center. 

There are two kinds of writers’ residences: those that take you out of your daily world and those that immerse you in a different daily world. The latter is a form of “immersion journalism.” For a working immersion-writer like me, non-traditional residencies expand and deepen my understanding of my chosen topics.

American Antiquarian Society Reading Room, WLC, 2010

When I began writing about my experiences with grief and loss, after my mother died of cancer, I spent a month in residence at a historical archive in Massachusetts to learn about how our society dealt with death and loss early in our nation’s history. I learned about the role that the Civil War played in changing our death rituals. I also spent six weeks as Writer in Residence at Seattle’s public hospital, Harborview Medical Center, to spend time with people who were facing terminal illnesses. Harborview didn’t have a Writer in Residence program – I cajoled the hospital's art program manager for a year for the chance to spend time there. 

Though most of my writing about grief and loss is based on my family’s experience, my time at Harborview gave me a better sense of what was typical about my family’s story and what was atypical. I also found stories at Harborview that will become separate essays – stories more powerful than anything I could have imagined, than anything I've experienced in my own life. 

Writing in situ, WLC, Vermont, 2011

Right now, I’m in the midst of a new writing project that includes serving as Writer in Residence at national parks in all four corners of the United States.There are at least forty National Parks around the country that host Artists in Residence.

Going to a non-traditional residency is not the same as packing off for a month at Ragdale or Hedgebrook. Here are seven (for good luck) things to keep in mind as you consider a non-traditional residency:    

#1: When you apply (or propose – you can make up your own adventure), think very carefully about how the host organization will benefit. If it’s an established program, they will probably want you to include an outreach project in your application. This is really important. If you are making up your own project, as I did with Harborview, think through what the host organization might find useful. I did a series of writing workshops for patients on the locked psychiatric ward. Those workshops were not connected to my writing project, but met a need at the hospital. 

#2: Plan on a lot of communication with the host organization before you begin your residency. Your host may have little or no idea what you need to work effectively. There’s often an assumption that visual and performing artists have specific work needs, but a writer has none. Things I’ve had to specifically ask for include a desk (not a kitchen table or a dressing table), an office chair (not an easy chair), and an electrical outlet that won’t fry my computer (make sure to take a good surge protector). 

#3: If you are going someplace remote, be ready for anything. I take a sponge, paper towels and some cleaning supplies in a small plastic container. I have a tiny laser printer that fits in a carry-on bag. Preparing my workspace has included removing dead mice, covering furnishings with Mylar,  washing windows, and wiping dead bugs out of the fridge. (And that was just at one residency!)  

Apothecary's notebook at the American Antiquarian Society, WLC, 2010

#4: Make sure your hosts understand how much time you will need in a particular space, or with a particular person, or using a particular document, artifact, etc. I once spent a month convincing an art museum to let me see several items that were not on display. After finally getting the right person to pull the right string, I made the two-hour trip and showed up shortly after the museum opened in the morning. I planning to spend all day looking at and writing about the objects. I found a fabulous display of a dozen items -- prints, jewelry, items of clothing -- all carefully laid out in a gorgeous room. But it turned out the curator had scheduled a meeting in the space, so I had only had forty minutes with the items.

#5: Think carefully about how you will talk about your work to everyone you meet during your residency. People sometimes have weird ideas about writers; this is your chance to dispel them. Take examples of your writing, but make sure not to promise anything. Make it clear that you might use anything you see / experience, but you might notany of it – at least, not in a way that’s recognizable to those involved. 

#6: Develop a short writing workshop that you can offer at the drop of a hat. I have 15-minute, 30-minute and 60-minute series of free-writing exercises that I’m always ready to give, in case someone is curious. These exercises require only index cards and a pen, which I always carry with me. Many non-traditional artist residencies want the artist to share their process with the public. Watching someone paint or weave is far more interesting than watching someone write. Getting members of the public to write is far more effective than reading them some of your work.   

#7: Be thankful, thankful, thankful to your hosts. My richest and my most frustrating writing experiences have been at non-traditional residencies. Regardless, I have thanked people profusely, for reasons both practical and political. When people you encounter at these residencies show up in your writing, you want them to approach that work with a positive mindset. In the current publishing environment, we must do everything possible to encourage reading – whether of hardcover books or on iPhones. Giving a non-reader a positive experience with a writer is one of the best ways we can nurture a culture of reading.

Forests, Once and Future

"Between 1850 and 1900, 85% of Vermont's land was deforested."
-- Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller NHP Park Ranger

As July turned to August, I began a new writing project – spending time in, ruminating on, and writing about our National Parks. I’m taking advantage of the travel required for my No Word for Welcome book tour to explore our national parks and our relationships to them. Like many American childhoods, mine included a string of visits to national park service sites, from Sequoia to the Lincoln Memorial. Growing up in a military family and moving every few years, the National Parks were one of the few constants for my itinerant family.

I’m spending two months as Writer in Residence at Vermont’s only national park, a hilly woodland that is only slightly larger than two urban parks close to my heart: Seattle’s Discovery Park and Boston’s Franklin Park. At the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park (NHP), I’m beginning to seek answers to a question that has been knocking around my head and heart all my life: What does it mean to come from a place? As a military kid (a Navy Junior, to be precise) the idea of having a hometown has always been enormously foreign--and enormously attractive. Related to that question are two others:

What does it mean to be native to a place?  What does it mean to care for a place?



This historic bungalow where I work  at the Marsh-
Billings-Rockefeller NHP was built as the woodland
retreat of another woman writer in 1917.  

I spent much of the last dozen years exploring those questions in southern Mexico. The result of that exploration is No Word for Welcome. As I’ve settled into life here in Woodstock, Vermont, I’ve learned (to my surprise) that this area has quite a bit in common with Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Both regions are primarily rural; both regions were deeply changed by the construction of railroads and highways in the 1800s; both regions have suffered terrible deforestation. (You can read more about nineteenth-century isthmus history in this essay I wrote for the early American history journal Common-Place.) Vermont has passed through many economic eras: timber-cutting to clear land for farming, sheep-ranching to feed the textile industry of the Industrial Revolution, then skiing to feed the tourist economy. Through it all, Vermonters have struggled to maintain their homeplace’s rural character and restore its ecological health--after saws, sheep, and ski-lifts have destroyed it. 

It is somehow both inspiring and disheartening to find the same cycles everywhere: We arrive; we wreak havoc; we realize our mistakes; we endeavor to repair. Between 1850 and 1900, eighty-five percent of Vermont’s land was deforested. Now, the once-again green hills of Vermont give me hope for the increasingly bare hills of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

(And speaking of hope, I must give deep thanks to the K2 Family Foundation in Maine and 4Culture in King County, Washington, for making my new writing adventure possible.)

Words Across Borders: Translation and Interviews

 "Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn / The language of the trees."
--Howard Nemerov, from the poem "Learning the Trees"


Today, as it happens, I'm blogging on two other blogs. Catch my Q&A about doing radio interviews at Midge Raymond's The Writer's Block and my thoughts about translation in nonfiction writing at Lisa Carter's Intralingo: a culture of language and thought.

Hedgebrook • WLC • 2010

And while you're at it, make sure to check out the rest of Midge's and Lisa's blogs -- they are two of my favorites! One lovely quality that both their blogs share is refreshing honesty. For examples: check out Lisa's Monday-post-series on professional development for translators, which began on May 23 and has continued each Monday. And then read Midge's recent post on re-committing to writing, but not always meeting that goal.

I'm honored to work closely with both these writers. Lisa and I exchange mentoring (she offers me advice on literary translation and I offer her advice on creative nonfiction). Midge and I are about to launch a book tour together that will take us to Orca Books in Olympia this Friday, (July 15, at 6:30 in the evening) and then to the Port Townsend Writers' Conference for a week. In the fall, we'll visit a host of bookstores, writing centers, and colleges in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont in September, and read together at the storied Prairie Lights in Iowa City on October 18!

I'm a great believer in collaboration in writing, and very grateful for my collaborations with both these writers.

A Conversation with KPFK in Los Angeles

"No Word For Welcome is written with an attention to narrative and prose that is rare among non-fiction works."

A few hours after the Los Angeles Premiere of No Word for Welcome ended on Wednesday evening, I arrived at the Studio City offices of KPFK, the Southern California Pacifica station, for an interview with morning host Hamid Khan. He and I had a most enjoyable conversation about everything from grassroots organizing strategies to shrimp farms to immigration to the history of globalization. You can listen to the twenty-minute interview here.

I am grateful that Hamid Khan paid such careful attention to my book, prepared such thoughtful questions, and had such generous comments. On the KPFK archive of the show, he writes:

"Call’s new book, No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy, is the result of a decade of research.... It is not only highly informative, but also engaging and personal. In light of current attempts by the US government to enter into NAFTA-like free trade agreements with nations around the world, the people of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec have much to teach us about the human side of globalization."

I am very grateful for his words, and just as grateful for the words of Bertha Rodríguez, an istmeña writer, activist, filmmaker and organizer (who is the Communications Coordinator for the fabulous Oaxaca-California group FIOB, Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales), at the Los Angeles event: "I don't know why she called her book No Word for Welcome," Bertha told the audience, "We did welcome her there!"

Welcoming No Word for Welcome

"When the last tree has died, when the last fish has been caught, then we’ll understand that we can’t eat money."


Here in San Francisco the sun is finally out, the soy lattes mean serious business, and the independent bookstores are vibrant and welcoming. (And for a Seattle girl, each of those details is crucially important.) Tonight, one of those bookstores, The Booksmith, will host the official welcome of No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy.

My book’s official release date was June 1, but for the first couple of weeks I focused on emailing everyone I know (over eleven hundred people, I learned, by cobbling together address lists that span more than a decade) and getting a radio campaign rolling (five interviews so far), thanks to some generous friends and my brilliant publicists.

Isthmus residents tell Mexico's then-President, Vicente Fox,
"The Isthmus is not for sale" at demonstration in 2001 that drew
more than three thousand people. (WLC 2001)

Now it’s time to get started on the truly fun part: getting out and talking to people. Tonight’s book release is co-sponsored by International Development Exchange, IDEX, an organization that I’ve known and admired more than fifteen years. Before I began the work that led to No Word for Welcome, in the late 1990s, I worked for an Boston organization that might be considered IDEX’s Atlantic Coast sister: Grassroots International. I admired IDEX from afar, for the canny mix of solidarity and financial support that they offer grassroots organizations around the world. When I lived and worked on Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec (2000 to 2002), IDEX was an active part of a tri-national North American coalition that sprang up to support the isthmus organizations pushing back, as economic globalization pushed down on them.



The slogan of "The Collective"
Working Group of the
Isthmus," founded by a half-
dozen isthmus activists (and me)
in 2000. (WLC 2000)



(If you’re wondering what that’s all about, you can read the first chapter of No Word for Welcome at my publisher’s website, for an introduction. The short version of the story: as a saying usually attributed to the Cree puts it, "When the last tree has died, when the last fish has been caught, then we’ll understand that we can’t eat money.")

 I am grateful to share my official book launch tonight with two shining examples of my favorite kinds of institutions: an international grassroots organization and a local independent bookstore. Gracias, Booksmith and IDEX!

And tomorrow it’s on to Los Angeles!

Happy "National Short Story Month"!

"[Midge] Raymond's prose often lights up the poetry-circuits of the brain."

The Seattle Times had it precisely right when they described my friend Midge's short story collection, Forgetting English, this way. When the collection first won the Spokane Prize for Fiction and was published a couple of years ago, I devoured its delicate stories and gave several copies of the book  as gifts. Now, Forgetting English has been re-released (with some new stories!) by Press53 -- a publisher that is offering some fabulous fiction to the world this year.

Soon to come from Press53 is the novel Hustle, by my friend and former colleague Jason Skipper. Jason and I worked together at Pacific Lutheran University several years ago. But half a decade before that, our first publications in literary magazines appeared side-by-side in the University of New Mexico's Blue Mesa Review. Jason's short story "Buddy" and my essay "Learning to Distinguish Refrigerators and Bicycles."  Jason will celebrate Hustle at King's Books in Tacoma on Friday, June 24. I hope to be there -- and so should you!

Midge and I will celebrate our books together on several occasions, in five different states, in the coming months:

• On Friday, July 15 at 6 pm, Midge and I will read together at Orca Books in Oympia, Washington. And the following week we will both teach at the Port Townsend Writers' Conference at Centrum.
• On Sunday, September 11 from 3 to 5 pm, we will co-teach a writing workshop -- "Writing Global Stories with a Local Heart" -- at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vermont. 
• On the evening of Thursday, September 14, we'll offer that workshop again at RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. 
•  Also this fall, we'll offer a reading or two in Massachusetts as well as in Iowa -- stay tuned for details! 

My congratulations to Midge Raymond and to Jason Skipper for their beautiful books, and to Press53 for recognized gifted writing and sharing it with the world. Celebrate May by treating yourself to a new collection of short stories, or maybe a novel!

My Journey Through Words: Writing, Editing, Translating Them

“I have struggled to find a ‘perfect job’ that combines all of my passions, but hope was restored when I found your website and read about your adventures in the creative world.”

Chad Emery – a student of fiction writer Joe Schuster, whom I met at Vermont Studio Center a dozen years ago – wrote that to me a few weeks ago. Chad explained:

“I am a senior at Webster University, studying Media Communications and German Language and Literature. Your journey as a writer involves all aspects I hope to include in my journey, and I am hoping that you will be willing to help me learn more about the fields of writing, editing and translating, as well as educating.”

Below is the e-conversation that Chad and I shared.

Chad Emery: When did you realize you wanted to be a writer? I see that you have a BA in Biology, but an MFA in Writing and Literature. What were your original goals?

Friday Harbor Labs:
Where I studied marine biology
in 1989 and 1990.

WLC: I grew up wanting to be both a scientist and a writer. When I was seventeen, the latter seemed like a pipe dream, and the former, a rational career choice. I wrote “biology” on the “intended major” line of my college application and never reconsidered that choice. I probably should have. At the end of every semester of my college career, I received a strong urging to reconsider – in the form of a grade report that highlighted my facility in the humanities and mediocrity in the sciences. After college, I worked for three months as a marine biology field assistant. I loved the work, but realized I had no talent as a scientist. I took a job as a grassroots organizer and followed that career path for a decade. Slowly, my interest in social change organizing led me back to my childhood desire to be a writer.

CE: When and how did you learn Spanish? Have you lived abroad?

WLC: I began learning Spanish while working as a grassroots organizer in Boston. I collaborated with local Spanish-speaking groups and with organizations in Mexico and Central America. Basic Spanish was an essential job skill, so I enrolled in evening classes. Starting in 1995, I devoted my annual vacation time to a two- or three-week visit to Latin America. In late 1999 I applied for and received a two-year grant from the Institute of Current World Affairs, to live, work and write in Mexico. By the time I returned to the U.S. in 2002, I was able to work as an (unofficial) interpreter and translator and (thanks to editing help from Mexican friends) had published articles in Spanish.

CE: Please describe a typical day. Do you work eight straight hours or a couple hours at a time? How do you keep your projects organized?

WLC: I write in the mornings. When I’m teaching, I try to schedule my classes in the afternoons and evenings so I can keep to that schedule. When I’m not teaching, I devote my afternoons to editing projects, administration, marketing, and research. I create a fairly elaborate work plan each month to keep track of all my deadlines and works-in-progress.

Hedgebrook writing desk, October 2010.

I tend to work fifty to sixty hours per week, though I don’t have a particularly regular schedule. Because I’m a freelancer, at least one-fifth of my work hours are devoted to keeping myself employed and my writing projects funded. My daily writing time might be as little as 20 minutes or as much as four hours. I only write (and that includes revision) for eight hours in a day when I’m under extreme deadline pressure or at an extremely ideal writer’s colony.

 CE: How did you get your start in the nonfiction industry? 

WLC: I’m not sure I’m in the nonfiction “industry.” Only one year (2003) did I earn the majority of my income from freelance writing. I found I just didn’t have the right constitution for that job. Full-time freelancers must write quickly and be willing to write about almost anything – two attributes I lack.

That said, I do write nonfiction almost exclusively. My writing grew from my curiosity about the mechanisms of social change. I was trying to answer the question: What makes people set aside short-term, personal interests and work together for long-term, collective benefit? (I’m still trying to answer that question.)

CE: For which social change organizations did you work? Did your experiences working in these settings inspire your writing?

WLC: I was a staff organizer for the GE Boycott in the early 1990s. Then I worked for a Central America solidarity organization that campaigned against NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. After that, I was Communications Coordinator at Grassroots International for four years. My (very generous) boss at Grassroots International, Tim Wise, encouraged me to take workshops in creative writing and graphic design.

My first writing workshop was led by Louise Dunlap, author of the excellent book Undoing the Silence: Tools for Social Change Writing. Louise introduced me to the practice of freewriting – if it weren’t for that practice, I never would have begun writing creatively.

My work as an organizer has inspired all my writing. My first published pieces were about community organizing initiatives in Southern Mexico. I ended up writing a book on this subject: No Word for Welcome. 

CE: Is teaching a passion of yours? Did you always aspire to be a teacher or did your career guide you in that direction?

A writing workshop I taught in San Miguel
de Allende, Mexico in June 2008.

WLC: Though both of my parents were teachers, I never imagined that I would become one. I led several training programs in my years as a grassroots organizer, but I never thought of that as “teaching.” I was simply helping people discover what they already knew. I finally came to understand that’s what teaching is.

I “taught” my first creative writing class in 2006; I’m surprised by how quickly it became my primary profession. I greatly enjoy teaching – so much so that I consciously limit how much I do it. When I teach fulltime, I become so absorbed in the work and experiences of my students that I tend to push my own writing projects to the side. But if I’m not writing, what business do I have teaching it?

CE: When you started your writing career, was your talent the main selling point or, like most other industries, were connections and a résumé more important than your talent? 

WLC: I’ve always been short on talent and long on endurance. As my father likes to say, quoting President Jefferson, “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”

My first “break” as a writer was receiving a scholarship to work as a waiter at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 1999. I was so green that I had never heard of Bread Loaf; I applied because there was no application fee and I lived in Boston, so it was an easy drive. Had I known of Bread Loaf’s reputation, I never would have had the courage to apply. The application called for a work sample of “up to 25 pages.” I cobbled together the only 15 pages of vaguely “literary” nonfiction I’d ever written and sent it off. I had no connections and my “writing résumé” was empty.

I’d devoted all my vacation time and spare cash for three years to visiting a little known part of Mexico and writing about it. It just so happened that one of the people on the Bread Loaf selection committee knew that part of Mexico and liked what I had to say about it. It was nothing more than the intersection of hard work and dumb luck. Connections I made at Bread Loaf led to my two-year fellowship in Mexico, the writing partner with whom I shared my writing for a decade, cover blurbs for my book No Word for Welcome, etc, etc.

CE: How did you first start submitting your work to literary magazines? Did you formulate a plan or submit out of the blue? If you had a plan, what was it?

WLC: I sent my first submissions to literary magazines while I was living and working in Mexico, more than a decade ago. Most lit mags didn’t have websites then, and I didn’t have any way to buy copies, so it was definitely not a well-researched plan. I didn’t land any publications from that first round of submissions (unsurprisingly), but I received some useful feedback. I’ve had the most success submitting to magazines where I have some sort of connection – no matter how tenuous. That said, the most important thing is to make peace with rejection. I gave a talk at the 2011 AWP Conference titled “What Rejection Can Do for You,” and someone in the audience posted a summary of my comments at her blog.

CE: How did you start finding translation work? Are you a trained or certified translator?

WLC: I am not a certified translator and my sole training was a fabulous two-week summer workshop that I took in 2005. Mundo a Mundo is offered by the Universities of Oregon and Querétaro every other summer – I highly recommend it! The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) is also an excellent resource. I am rarely paid to translate; it’s more of an avocation for me.

My Mundo a Mundo desk, 2005.

I practiced literary translation in collaboration with a friend of mine, María Victoria, who is perfectly bilingual (which I most certainly am not) and writes her fiction in Spanish. I translate her work into English and she translates mine into Spanish. We read one another’s translations and suggest improvements; it’s an ideal learning experience.

 

You can read more about my current translation project at this blog post of mine and in an interview I did with the South Florida literary magazine New CollAge.

CE: How did you get your start in editing? What qualifications must one have to be a successful editor?

WLC: I started editing as a volunteer, working on the newsletter of the Northeast Organic Farming Association in Massachusetts, and as part of the Editorial Board of Dollars & Sense Magazine – one of the first publications to publish my writing. Eventually, I was hired to work on an enormous editing project that became the anthology Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide.

There are many qualities that help with editing work: patience, a decent command of English grammar, good time management, organizational skills, and diplomacy. I have found that the most important quality of all is an ability to recognize each writer’s individual voice. As a freelance writer, I’ve had editors insert sentences into my articles and essays that sound nothing like me. An editor with a good ear develops a sense of each writer’s personal cadence, vocabulary, and syntax, and doesn’t suggest changes that violate that personal signature. To the extent I have any talent at all, this is it.

Thanks to Chad Emery for asking questions that forced me to think through this journey I’ve been on for the last fourteen years.