Intern Post, David Klose: Up on the Mountain (Writer’s Conference Series)

If you are considering attending a writing conference sometime in the future, I hope this finds you well. Maybe you have heard of Bread Loaf. Maybe not. I hadn’t heard of it until one day, two fall semesters ago, when my Creative Writing teacher at Mesa Community College told me, in that way he always expressed his opinion, as if he were open to hearing your objections, not because they were valid, but because he believed there was value in standing up for yourself, that if I wanted to be a serious writer then I should attend a writing conference and if I was going to attend a writing conference, it might as well be Bread Loaf.

The name, which stands out in that vaguely preppy sense, of something old and prestigious and yet quite silly, comes from Bread Loaf Mountain, named because it was shaped like a loaf of bread. It is 89 years old and an off-shoot of the ridiculously small (my high school had just as many students) Middlebury College in Vermont.

I had reservations about attending. First, and sadly foremost, I have never felt comfortable around other writers. I find myself secretly hating them and wishing, when they talk of things like theme and the occasion of telling, that they would shut up or, at the very least, change the topic to something less troubling like religion or politics. Second, though a very close second, attending Bread Loaf, as I was invited to attend, sans fellowship, would clear out my savings and leave me broke. Third, going would mean stepping down from my Middle Management position at the company where I’ve worked for the past 5 years, because, of course, Bread Loaf dates coincided with blacked out days on the store manager’s calendar, meaning no time-off allowed.

I am telling you this up front, so, as you read my mixed thoughts, you will still believe me when I say that, if you love to write, then you should do whatever it is you can do to attend a writing conference like Bread Loaf.

Let’s go over the facts: To attend Bread Loaf it will costs around $3000 and that will include just room and board and your tuition through Middlebury College. That’s for your workshop, whether it be in Fiction, Poetry or Nonfiction, and for your shared room up on the Mountain in one of the Houses. You can, as I did, choose to stay off campus at a nearby Inn (there are two of them, one about 8 miles away and another about 16 miles away) or even look up cabins that are listed at a discount rate for Bread Loafers. If I had inquired a little sooner, I would have been able to stay in a four bedroom house with a full kitchen for only one hundred dollars a night.

To get to Bread Loaf, I drove North out of Burlington for a little over an hour and then passed through Middlebury, almost without realizing it, then drove up to Ripton, a town with one white Lutheran Church (that hosted a play based off of Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth while I was there), an old country store that sold turkey sandwiches wrapped in plastic wrap and worms for fishing, and The Chipmann Inn, where I stayed. After Ripton, you have to just go a little further up the Mountain, past the Homer Noble Farm where Robert Frost stayed before leaving with Homer Nobel’s wife. Then you are there, where the road plateaus and the view opens up.

Bread Loaf

Every other day you go to Workshop. When you are not at Workshop, you can attend craft classes, which cover things such as The Art of the Paragraph and Using Autobiographical Elements in Your Fiction. Every morning you pick up your copy of The Crumb, the Bread Loaf Newsletter, and it tells you what readings and talks are going on that day and who is coming to the Mountain and who is leaving. I got to listen to the editors of the New England Review talk about what they most looked for when accepting a piece of writing (they have to love it). And the preferences of the publishers of the small press Graywolf (they have to love it, and it has to be something they can see other people loving). And I heard from one wise editor, from an organization whose name I unfortunately can’t remember, speak about how he is finding more and more writers who are worrying about their social media presence, their Twitter followers, the way their book cover will be designed, but not worrying half that much about the quality of their work. The work, he said repeatedly, comes first.

Bread Loaf

If you do go to a conference and there is off-conference housing, I do recommend taking that option. I think I would have gone crazy spending 10 days up on the Mountain, surrounded by people like me. I escaped every night with my girlfriend to Middlebury, to one of its two bars that was open past 10. Sometimes I would skip out of Bread Loaf in the middle of the day, growing tired of readings and talks by editors, and we would shop around Middlebury and walk through Middlebury College. You have to leave writing eventually, I think, in order to keep finding things to write about.

After my story was Workshopped, and it was a good Workshop, I got, like everyone else, a one-on-one with my Workshop Leaders.

I met my first Workshop Leader, a woman with long black hair and a hard face, in the Bread Loaf Barn, where the dances were held and the Bar was open every night till 10ish. Because it was cold this summer, there was always a fire in the fireplace, and the night before I had almost fallen asleep there in front of it.

She and I talked about my story briefly. I didn’t have many questions. Then we talked about MFA programs and writers I should read. This was her sixth time teaching at Bread Loaf. She looked around the barn and talked about the stories she had heard in the earlier years of its existence. There was more drinking and sleeping around. A lot of older men writers invited up younger women. She said her favorite story was about Richard Yates, who got drunk or high or both and climbed one of the buildings and had a prophetic vision which ended with him shouting out that he was God.

She smiled and said that for a long time, people joked that it should be called “Bed Loaf.”

My next Workshop Leader was less comfortable talking. He had been that way in Workshop, too. He had good things to say and he would often lead the discussion, but it took him time to find the words and then even more time to find what order to place the words in.

We met out on the front porch of the main office and enjoyed the view, sitting on an old bench that creaked beneath us.

When he spoke, his hands were out in front of his chest and his fingers were tense, as if grasping at some machine with knobs and wires.

He had held a craft class on James Joyce’s use of epiphany in Dubliners; a craft class I had very much wanted to attend, but the time didn’t fit with the rest of my schedule. I have always felt like the epiphanies of my stories are never realized, that my characters are dancing around this great realization that would shatter the lives they had been trying so hard to live. But nothing ever resolved. It was the biggest critique of my story, that I didn’t allow my characters to grow and I should allow them to do more.

He spoke to me about taking time off in between undergrad programs and grad programs, about working a little, traveling a little. The next day was the end of Bread Loaf and I’d fly out with my girlfriend around four in the afternoon. He asked if I had any questions about my story and when I said no, he said “Good. You know what you need, you just need to. . . .” and he went quiet and scrunched up his face and held his hands out in front of his chest and contorted them into something like claws.

It took me nearly an hour to rearrange my luggage to include the books I bought/was given and my carry-on bag was replaced with a broken portable typewriter I bought from a small antique shop in Middlebury. It is still waiting for me to save the sixty dollars it is going to cost to fix it.

Writers@Work Conference 2012, June 6 – 10

Writers@Work, an organization for independent writers that “connects Intermountain area writers to the national publishing and writing scene,” is holding its 27th Conference at Alta Lodge in the scenic Wasatch Mountains east of Salt Lake City Utah from June 6 through June 10, 2012. Highlights of the conference include workshops, readings, and consultations with distinguished faculty.

Workshops are small, intensive, and limited to 16 participants. Led by expert, award-winning writers/teachers in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, workshops will meet from 9 a.m. to noon and from 3 to 5 p.m. on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of the Conference. Workshop faculty, genres, and topics include:

  • Steve Almond (non-fiction) – I am writing to break your heart. Steve was interviewed in Superstition Review’s issue number 2;
  • Pete Fromm (multi-genre) – Beginning with the beginning
  • Bill Harley (storytelling & song writing) – Talking your story through
  • Heather McHugh, with Timothy O’Keefe (poetry) – Shapes in wordscapes: Patterns beyond prosody
  • Debra Monroe (fiction and memoir) – How details build the story shape (SOLD OUT)

Consultations are 30-minute meetings with an editor or agent who has pre-read a submitted manuscript of no more than 7000 words. The manuscript must be double-spaced and in 12-point type and must be attached (as a .doc or .pdf file) to an e-mail sent to Jennifer@writersatwork.org no later than May 25th. The attachment will be forwarded to the consultant before the Conference.  No hard-copy manuscripts will be forwarded.

Consultation faculty includes Agents Kathryn Beaumont of The Kneerim & Williams Agency (Boston, MA) and Kit Ward of The Ward & Balkin Agency (Lowell, MA) and editors Margaret Dalrymple of the University of Nevada Press (Reno, NV) and Kate Gale of Red Hen Press (Los Angeles, CA). Consultation times are limited and will be assigned on a first-come/first-served basis. On-site consultation with an agent or editor is $25.00.

Readings will be held each evening at 7:30 p.m. and open mike sessions for attendees will take place after lunch on Friday and Saturday.

Conference tuition without on-site lodging is $575 and includes all meals Wednesday lunch through Sunday Brunch. Conference tuition with on-site lodging is $725 and includes shared room and all meals Wednesday lunch through Sunday morning.  A single supplement of $120 will be charged for those who do not wish to share a room.  Limited dormitory accommodations, 3-4 persons to a room, are available for $675.  Rooms are assigned on a first-come/first-served basis.

Crazyhorse Writing Conference: March 15-18

Crazyhorse is opening its doors to writers and literary magazine enthusiasts alike for their Crazyhorse Writing Conference.

The conference will take place March 15-18 on the College of Charleston campus, located in the heart of South Carolina. It will feature artists, speakers, faculty members, and writers from all walks of life. Don’t miss this great opportunity to meet fellow writers and explore an internationally renowned literary publication.

You can find more information on how to sign up on the Crazyhorse Writing Conference website.

Get Published in Crazyhorse and Win $2000. Deadline January 15th

Crazyhorse is accepting fiction and poetry entries for The Crazyhorse Fiction Prize and the Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize. A winner from each category will be eligible for a $2000 prize and publication in the Fall 2012 issue of Crazyhorse. Submissions can be uploaded online or mailed in with a $16 reading fee, which includes a one year subscription to Crazyhorse. Entries must be a maximum of 25 pages in length (for fiction) or three poems up to 10 pages in length (for poetry). Multiple submissions may be entered, but hurry. This contest is only open until January 15. You can find the terms and conditions, along with more information at Crazyhorse.

Also check out their upcoming Crazyhorse Writers Conference at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina March 15-18, 2012. Faculty members, literary artists, and readers will come together to discuss and present literature and celebrated pieces throughout the weekend. This is a wonderful opportunity for writers, readers, and literature aficionados alike.

Interview with Michael Croley

Michael Croley grew up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. He holds graduate degrees in Creative Writing from Florida State and the University of Memphis. In 2011, Narrative Magazine named him to its list of “Best New Writers.” He has won awards and fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Key West Literary Seminars. His first novel, After the Sun Fell, will be released as part of Narrative’s Library Series in 2012. He teaches at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. www.michaelcroley.com

SR: Your story “Two Lives,” published in Blackbird, contains two distinct stories: a metafictional narrative in which the narrator talks about his writing life (or lack thereof) and the actual text of the story this character wrote. When you began this story, did you set out with the intention of blending two narratives, or did the story evolve into its current form?

Michael Croley: I always remember how this story came to life because it was the first story I ever wrote that made me get out of bed to complete it. I started with the story’s first line, “You don’t know what it’s like to be in the bed as a child and feel the air of fall enter your room and hear the dishes in the cabinets of your home rattle, their doors slammed by some drunk looking for a fresh bottle of liquor.” I wanted the second person to implicate the reader, to say, “Dear Reader, you know nothing.” As I wrote the story and came to the end of the first space break, another voice entered my head with that line, “Years ago, I tried to write this.” Rather than fight the new voice, I went with it and suddenly I realized I was writing two stories inside of one. I’m not really into meta-fiction. I believe that a writer’s allegiance is to the reader, to guiding them through the story, and I don’t find this story to be of the smarty-pants variety, but even I knew this one had a weird structure as I was going through it but I didn’t let myself worry about it too much. I just knew both of these voices were speaking to me (and I hate putting that out there because it makes the writing process sound so new age-ish, but there is some truth to this concept) and I followed them through. As the story went on and I got near the end, I realized that both stories, both threads, had to have equal time on the page in order for the story as a whole to have maximum impact. So as I started revising, I actually cut and pasted all the second-person threads into a new document and made sure that both stories read like fully-formed, complete stories. Then it was just a matter of weaving the threads together at the right moments so that the reader would be doubly haunted by both the second-person story and the first-person narrative and how both of those ended.

I’d never written a story, structurally, like this before—and haven’t since—and one of things that I do pat myself on the back about in regard to this story is that the structure seems really unique to me. But I’m sure I ripped it off from somebody unconsciously because that’s what we do as writers. We steal. This is also the first story I ever had published and that was pretty damn cool.

SR: Your story “Insulation” in Blackbird is one of those rare short stories with a happy ending. The main character, Lynn, seems to get what she wants, and the marriage that seems on the verge of breaking up appears to actually be strengthened at the end. When you began writing the story, is this the ending you envisioned? Do you feel that there is a risk involved in writing so-called happy endings?

MC: Here’s an instance of when you give a story to the world, it is no longer yours to decide what it is to the reader or what it could be. I don’t know that I ever saw this couple on the verge of breaking up. I saw them as struggling, yes, but I never believed Lynn would leave him. In my mind, from the beginning, she was upset and frustrated and wanted her husband to stand up and take care of her but she loved him and wasn’t going to leave him. She loved him too much to do that. She wanted to push him to be more, to reach his potential and she takes that on as her task, as her role in this marriage. I wanted them to come to an understanding, for him to see her strength and resilience and for him to acknowledge that. Once Allen picked Lynn up from her job I knew they would go home and that the change, if we subscribe to the idea that all stories are about change, would have to come from him—and it does because he sees what the reader sees in her—and that’s what I had happen. But this is Lynn’s story, so we had to end with her and I lifted the image of her in the tub from a really bad poem I wrote (I still thought I could write poetry at the time), imagining a woman coming home at the end of a long day.

I don’t know if there is a risk involved with happy endings. I know my students often ask why all the stories I assign to read are sad, but I don’t think of an ending that doesn’t end with everyone getting what they want as sad. Not always. All I want is for a character to have some realization or knowledge he or she didn’t have when the story began. I often tell my students that the writer’s job is to make her characters hit that higher plane of knowledge then pull the ripcord on the story. Get out. You’ve done your work. Lynn realizes that Allen does love her. That he isn’t immune to her struggles and how she works herself like a mule for the both of them. When she sees that she is able to face her life in ways she couldn’t before and that’s more important than Allen’s change in behavior. And when that happened in the story, that’s how I knew it was complete.

As a side note, when I first workshopped this piece, it got really beat up by several women in the class who didn’t understand why Lynn remained with Allen to which the workshop leader (my mentor Richard Bausch) said, “Did you ever think she loves him?” I mention this because we are subject to overthinking this pursuit from time to time, to letting our own personal feelings about the way the world should be rather than it is invade our work and reading. But stories, at their heart, are about “news of the spirit” as the late George Garrett said, and what we do as writers is to imagine ourselves into that spirit without any judgments.

SR: Many of your stories take place in Fordyce, Kentucky. How does a sense of place impact the stories you choose to tell?

MC: Well, for me, it impacts everything. Fordyce is stand-in for my own hometown right down to topography and landmarks, but it has that fictional name so that I can blend different elements into the town from surrounding areas from time to time and because I didn’t want to be too constrained by the “facts” of Corbin, Kentucky, where I was raised. But place is something I’ve always been drawn to. Because my mother is Korean (my father grew up out in the country near Corbin) I think I always felt out of place there. I looked different from all my classmates. Corbin has a history of racism that’s pretty well-known throughout the state and I can only remember going to school with two other people of color growing up. So things weren’t always necessarily easy for my mother or my brother and me. I think that sense of identity that I received from that place has had a large effect on my work, especially in the two novels I’ve written. I never looked at things with strictly an insider’s viewpoint, though I like to think I have that viewpoint as well. I saw lots of good people in Corbin who were hardworking, blue-collar types and I admired their grit and what I saw as even-mindedness. Practical might be a good way to put it. And at the same time, a lot of my friends’ parents were bankers, lawyers, doctors, pharmacists. That’s one of the hidden truths about Appalachia, that not everyone is poor and backward. We’re not all the sons and daughters of miners and laborers.

I think that kind of place is ripe for storytelling because it’s relative smallness allows for the pecking order and machinations of the town to be clearly visible if you’re paying attention. Corbin isn’t so small that you know everyone but it is small enough that you probably know someone who knows the person you don’t. Because of that you’re never out of the reach of a story to be heard about So-and-so and what he’s doing. When I started writing as an undergraduate I was very conscious about honoring this place where I’d grown up and telling the stories that I thought were worth telling that I never saw in Esquire or The New Yorker. There’s a reason in the two stories you’ve mentioned that the characters are college educated. I was tired (and still am) of reading only about backward hillbillies in rural areas. My father was a man who worked his way through a good school and chose to come back to that part of the world. And at the same time, as I’ve gotten older, I see how the dual nature of ethnicity has played a large role in how I write my stories. My characters always seem in between worlds, pulled in different directions by different desires. So to answer your question briefly (and to stop going on), I think I’m trying to figure out in a lot of ways of how place shapes us. How does the place where we mature get into our bloodstream? I don’t think we ever escape our childhoods and a lot of what I see myself doing is exploring Fordyce as Corbin and asking the question, What has this place done to this character for good or ill?

SR: You published an “iStory” in Narrative – a new type of micro-fiction created by the magazine to coincide with their new digital App. These stories are all under 150 words. Do you find it more or less difficult to write micro-fiction like your story “One Such as This” than your longer pieces? Did writing with the digital App in mind change anything about the writing process?

MC: Well, first off I just want to say that Narrative has been a great venue to me. Very supportive of my work and I think the world of what Tom Jenks and Carol Edgarian are trying to do with literature in this electronic age. I think they’ve been very visionary and the idea of an iStory seemed gimmicky to me at first because I just didn’t think you could tell a story in such a small amount of space. That was/is the challenging part. It’s like “Name that Tune.” How many notes does it take to tell your story? Less notes, to me, is often better. So that’s what I tried to do and that was the challenge of it. A lot of times I have a great image but not a great story to tell. And because, as I mentioned earlier, I’m not a very good poet, I wanted to use this image I had of an alley in back of my favorite movie theater in Cleveland where I used to live. I just liked the idea of two people in this very dark alley making out and then moving them through the night and into the morning. So, in one sense, the piece was easier because there was less I had to do, but harder because the word limit magnifies your choice of diction, your details, and your sense of emotion in the piece.

I don’t often write micro-fiction because I’m interested in really playing the characters’ lives out as much as I can. As far as I want to go. For instance, neither character gets a name in that iStory, which gives me more observational distance and less attachment to seeing their lives come together or undone as you might in a longer piece. And the iStory seems to me to be less about narrative arc than a singular moment that lingers in the reader’s mind and imagination after what they’re done being a witness to the story.

SR: What are you working on at the moment?

MC: Well, I have an agreement with Narrative to release my first novel After the Sun Fell as part of their new Library Series. I’m really excited about that because everything they do is so good and I’m flattered that Tom Jenks wanted to first look at the novel then said he wanted to work with me on it. That book is based in small part on my mother’s move to southeastern Kentucky from Masan, South Korea after she married my father. An excerpt of it is up on Narrative as a contained story entitled, “Washed Away.” As long as Tom and I can find some time to work on this soon, I think that book will be released in 2012, but that’ll, ultimately, be up to Tom and I’ve learned to listen to him as much as possible.

And my agent is currently shopping my second novel around. It’s about a family that’s moved out of Fordyce to Memphis, Tennessee in 1968 right before the Sanitation Workers’ Strike, which indirectly led to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The book is narrated by Ben Hamlin who was 12 when his father moved the family to Memphis. A grown man now, Ben is looking back on that year when his family—and their hopes—began to unravel as their own personal tragedies get entangled with the Civil Rights Movement’s greatest tragedy.

My next novel is entirely in my head (though I think the opening scene is written) so I don’t want to say too much about it. But it will be, I hope, both an homage to and a retelling of All the King’s Men with the central figure being more of an LBJ type politician. This is mostly because I love All the King’s Men—I don’t think there’s a bad sentence in the book—and because I think LBJ was a fascinating politician and I think we live in a very politically fractious time, almost as fractious as the ’60s but we’re not quite there yet.

Meet the Interns: Kat Corliss, Blogger

With the semester picking up speed and things really starting to get done on the journal, we’ve come to realize that it’s also about that time that we ought to start introducing the interns working on Superstition Review this semester. We strive to be in touch with our reading audience and that includes letting you get to know our entire student staff. We feel it gives you perspective as the reader, especially when getting to know the personalities of our editors as they change each term with new faces every semester.

I suppose I should go first, though, since I’ll be the one writing the updates here for the next three-and-change months, and then introduce our team members as I interview them.

My name is Kat Corliss, and I’m serving on the Web Design team. I’m the Blogger. I’m a student of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, majoring in English: Creative Writing: Fiction, with a focus on Young Adult Literature. I am a Senior this semester and will be graduating December 2009.

Superstition Review: What do you do for SR?

Kat Corliss: I’m the Blogger for SR, which means I write tri-weekly posts about what’s going on with the production magazine in our blog. I’ve also kind of become the Social Networker, in a sense. I maintain our Facebook fan page and update our Twitter account. I make sure the public knows what’s going on internally with the journal, I announce calls for submission and deadlines, and I communicate local events pertaining to the literary and art world.

SR: How did you hear about or get involved with Superstition Review?

KC: I was introduced to our Editor-in-Chief, Trish, by a classmate of mine at the 2009 Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference at ASU Main. Trish had just talked on a panel about SR and it sounded really exciting and something fun to pursue so I submitted my application later that week.

SR: What is your favorite section of SR?

KC: Probably the art section because I’m a really visual person. I like being exposed to new artists all the time. Plus, the online delivery of our journal really allows for higher quality images to be published than a print magazine would.

SR: Who is your dream contributor to the journal?

KC: In writing, it’d be Manuel Munoz, a (now) local writer. He is absolutely amazing. I just read his Faith Healer of Olive Avenue this summer and it was breathtakingly well written, smart, and painful. For artists, I’d have to say Chris McVeigh. He’s just plain fun. His photography often involves LEGOs or Star Wars action figures and it’s just that little connection between passion for creating art and embracing childhood whimsy that I adore.

SR: What job, other than your own, would you like to try out in the journal?

KC: Definitely fiction editor. It’s what I’ve been doing in school for the last few years, it’s what I want to do with my life–edit young adult fiction–so that’d be fun to work on. I’m glad to have been given the opportunity to see the publicity side of journal editing, though, and I’m excited to work on the social networking aspect because it’s new and flexible, a lot of it experimental. I’m never bored with what I get to do for the journal.

SR: What are you most excited for in the upcoming issue?

KC: The changes we’re looking at in formatting. We’re updating our look a bit. We’re hoping it will be ready in time for launch so the Web Design Team has already been in a couple meetings discussing what we’d like to change and what’s working great for us.

SR: What are you currently reading?

KC: Loads of YA lit for a class and an independent study project I’m working on. I just finished a Goosebumps graphic novel–did you know they’ve started republishing the classic scary stories into visual format? How cool is that? I’m also in the middle of The Time Traveler’s Wife, something I picked up over a year ago and haven’t managed to sit down and finish. A stack of graphic novels and comic books. I’m about to start Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys.

SR: Do you write? Tell us about a project you’re working on.

KC: Yes, I do. One of my current projects is writing a full young adult novel under the supervision of Dr. Blasingame at ASU Main in an independent study. It’s a story that follows a 17-year-old girl on a trip halfway across the US in her search to find out more about her mother who committed suicide when the girl was a toddler. She ends up reconnecting with a family she didn’t really ever get to know since her father moved her away when her parents had gotten divorced and, in the process, learns a lot about what her mother was like and why she killed herself, and how she’s actually more like her mother than she thinks.

SR: What are some of your favorite websites to waste time on or distract you from homework?

KC: Oh, definitely Facebook. I love Twitter, too, especially since my favorite part of Facebook are the status updates my friends make, and that’s all it really is in my opinion. I also spend a lot of time on LiveJournal, especially in the Literary Tattoos, Trashy Eats, and Thrift Horror communities.

SR: What are some of your favorite literary links?

KC: I definitely follow Neil Gaiman on Twitter, read his blog, and sometimes even listen to his library on LastFM because it’s just plain interesting; he’s one of the authors who has jumped into every aspect of online life and is always just keystrokes away from connecting with fans, and that’s just cool in general, beside the fact that he’s a brilliant writer. I also read Fiction Circus blog posts, one of my favorite literary bloggers/literary magazines. I also enjoy the Australian site, Inside A Dog, created to promote reading to youth by the Centre for Youth Literature.

 

More intern interviews coming soon!