Illuminating Fiction

Description

Illuminating Fiction contains nineteen interviews with fiction-writing luminaries including Edward P. Jones, Julia Glass, Amy Bloom, Jill McCorkle, Margot Livesy, Ron Carlson and Steve Almond.  The interviews contain questions about narrative, voice, character, place, point of view, arc of the story/novel plot, and revision; questions about the writing process; questions about the trajectory of the writer’s career; questions about the role and importance of writing courses and mentoring; and also questions that Ellis has drawn from the text of the authors’ work.  Authors describe the challenges they have faced.  The reader is able to gain an intimate and specific understanding of the authors works, and the authors thought process as they created their novels and short stories.

Sujets

• Writting
• Disciplines
• Language Arts

Informations

• Publié par: Red Hen Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781597091954
• Langue: English

Extrait

Illuminating Fiction

Illuminating Fiction A Collection of Author Interviews with Today’s Best Writers of Fiction Edited by Sherry Ellis
 Red Hen Press | Los Angeles, CA

Illuminating Fiction
Copyright © 2009 by Sherry Ellis
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.
Cover art:
Edward Hopper 1882-1967
Soir Bleu, 1914
Oil on canvas, Overall: 36 x 72in. (91.4 x 182.9cm)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York;
Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1208
© Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper, licensed by the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Photography by Jerry L. Thompson
Layout by Sydney Nichols
ISBN: 978-1-59709-068-1
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2009924820
The Annenberg Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the James Irvine Foundation partially support Red Hen Press.
Published by Red Hen Press
www.redhen.org
First Edition
Acknowledgements
With heartfelt gratitude to my agent Jenoyne Adams, whose dedication and determination helped me bring this book to fruition, and to my editor Kate Gale, whose attention to detail assisted me in making this the best book it could. With thanks to my niece Laurie Lamson, who conceived of gathering these interviews into a collection; to my sister Phyllis Shinder, who in the very beginning helped me develop the form for these interviews; to Sarah Anne Johnson, whose workshop I took on conducting author interviews; and to my loving and supportive friends Sharon O’Halloran and Maeve Moses, who encouraged my efforts and were always there to help me along the way.
Some of the interviews collected in this book were previously published in the following publications: Agni online: “Creature of Habit,” Interview with Jill McCorkle (2003), “Blindfolds, Hypnotism and Chairs,” Interview with Lise Haines (2003); the Bloomsbury Review : “Coming to Elvis,” Interview with Chris Abani (Vol. 25, Issue 1, Jan/Feb 2005); Glimmer Train : “What I Will Follow,” Interview with Mary Yukari Waters (Issue 57, Winter 2006), “Novels as Omnivores,” Interview with Matthew Sharpe (Issue 58, Feb 2006); the Iowa Review : “Memories That Reach Back into Consciousness,” Interview with Lan Samantha Chang (Vol. 36, No. 2, 2006); the Kenyon Review (online edition): “A Little in Common,” Interview with Margot Livesey (Nov 2005); New Millennium Writings : “A Palette of Words,” Interview with Julia Glass (2005/2006); Post Road : “Mistress of Ceremonies,” Interview with Elizabeth Searle (Issue 8, Spring/Summer 2004); Provincetown Arts : “A Chat with Paul Lisicky,” Interview with Paul Lisicky (2003/2004), “Growing the Story,” Interview with Fred Leebron (2004/2005); and the Writer’s Chronicle : “Imagined Worlds,” Interview with Edward P. Jones (Vol. 37, No. XX, December 2004), “An Inventory of Ron Carlson,” Interview with Ron Carlson (Vol. 38, No. 6, May/Summer 2006), “Revealing Your Characters,” Interview with Steve Almond (Vol. 39, No. 6, May/Summer 2007).

This book is dedicated to the memory
of my beloved mother Jeannette Sokoloff
Introduction
As a child, my weekly pilgrimages to the local library were among my favorite parts of the week. I loved reading books of fiction and when I was only four years old I tried to get my first library card. As I grew older I continued to be an avid reader.
The next step in my fiction pursuit began when I was in my mid-forties. I wanted to write a fictional account of a family that I worked with in my role as a social worker. Never having studied writing before, I began to take summer workshops led by well-known writers. At that time I never imagined I would conduct interviews with several of the authors who led these workshops.
My fascination with the study of fiction writing expanded. The idea to conduct author interviews was spawned one day when I decided to take an author interview workshop. I had already spent the last twenty-five years conducting interviews in my role as social worker, with substance abusers and families in need. I thought that perhaps my already existing skills as an interviewer would transfer, in part, to the role of author interviewer. While there are key differences between the two types of interviews, the ability to ask pertinent questions and give focused attention to detail is similar.
At first I requested interviews with authors with whom I had studied: Jill McCorkle, Ron Carlson, and Paul Lisicky. As I developed confidence in my interviewing abilities my circle widened. I had the wonderful fortune to secure interviews with other such highly renowned authors as Edward P. Jones, Julia Glass, Arthur Golden, Amy Bloom, Yiyun Li, Chris Abani, Steve Almond, and Lan Samantha Chang, as well as several other writers.
It has been a unique and marvelous experience to peek into the minds of these writers. As you read these interviews I hope you will enjoy learning about their work habits, how they conceived of their novels and stories, how they refined and enhanced them, how they developed their styles, what they consider to be their strengths and weaknesses, and who their mentors are. As a student of fiction I learned that every writer is different and that there is no one path to becoming an author. What is essential is to have drive and tenacity, a commitment to developing your authentic voice, a good story, and self-empowerment.
All of the authors I interviewed were generous with their responses and their time. I thank them all for gracing the pages of Illuminating Fiction .
A Note About the Order
The interviews in Illuminating Fiction are organized with the goal of emulating the vigor and flow of a gripping novel or short story. Interviews with well-known authors are interspersed with interviews with writers who are newer to the literary scene, to form a complete whole. Rather than handpick authors from an alphabetical listing, it is hoped that the reader will be interested in all of the interviews in Illuminating Fiction and read the book from beginning to end.
Foreword to Early Draft from The Known World , by Edward P. Jones
It is with great delight and appreciation that I introduce the following excerpt from an early draft of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Known World , by Edward P. Jones. This early section is included in Illuminating Fiction with the objective of showing not only the importance of the art and craft of fiction writing, but the importance of revision and the sculpting of a piece of work. One of the many things I’ve learned through conducting author interviews is that what an author chooses to keep in his work, the editorial path that he or she chooses, is as essential, if not more so, than the author’s initial vision.
Jones initially planned on having a very long piece in The Known World about the character Stamford and Stamford’s life after slavery. In this section Stamford would live in Richmond with his wife Delphie and they would run an orphanage for black children. A poor German couple would perish in a fire and leave their infant daughter behind. No white family would take the baby in and Stamford and Delphie would care for her. They would ultimately travel to Germany to bring the child to relatives too poor to travel to America. Jones intended to concentrate on Stamford’s emerging sense that he was put on the earth to care for children. One can only imagine how The Known World would have been altered if Jones had chosen to include this passage and develop Stamford’s life in this manner.
I thank Mr. Jones for his generosity for contributing this early draft of The Known World to Illuminating Fiction .
Stamford A Short Story by Edward P. Jones
The day and the sun all about him told that was true. Now, it mattered not how long he had wandered in the wilderness, how long they had kept him in chains, how long he had helped them and kept himself in his own chains; none of that mattered now. He saw Ellwood turn onto the street where he had business, the same street he would come back on to get to the Richmond Home for Colored Orphans. No, it did not matter, Stamford told himself. It mattered only that those kind of chains were gone and that he had crawled out into the clearing and was able to stand up on his hind legs and look around and appreciate the difference between then and now, even on the awful days when the now came dressed as the then. He was standing now on the very corner where more than a hundred years later they would put that first street sign—STAMFORD AND DELPHIE CROW BLUEBERRY STREET.
HERE IS WHERE HE BEGINS TO SING TO THE BABY.
The white child, having found the safety of sleep, released Stamford’s little finger. He would miss the little darling and he would worry that the place they had waiting for her in Germany would not make her happy and healthy. If the money could be found, he might have to send Delphie back with her to see what kind of place that Germany was. He might have to go himself. It was a pity that the child herself was not old enough to write back a letter that he would have to get someone to read, a letter saying, “I have found home, Papa Stamford, and I am settled in at last.” So somebody else would have to investigate how Germany treated her children.
Delphie turned and sighed in her sleep. Stamford stood, waited to make certain she was fast asleep and then placed the child in her crib. He knew how much s