Writing About Lives

A few days after my birth in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, my parents drove 27 miles south and east to Grady, the town where Mama grew up in the Mississippi Delta. I weighed 8 pounds and 6 ounces and was 21 inches long, tall for a newborn back in 1966. Mama pulled the sheet back and presented me to her mother, Madea: “Most women have a pretty baby, but girl you sho have brought home an ugly ass child. He looks like a little Thimble, doesn’t he?”

This is a tiny excerpt from “Thimble, from Grady” available on a website called Postcard Memoirs.

For the rest of this essay click here http://www.postcardmemoirs.com/post/802626469/thimble-from-grady

This is my reading from the Spring of 2010 at the San Francisco Public Library:

This has Youtube footage of my section of the reading held at the San Francisco Public Library. There were almost 40 readers that day. We were each allotted 4 minutes. I guess I went over. Again, thanks to Rowena, Jennifer, Philip, Lane, Orlando, Dan and Cupcake for all showing up to support me. It turned out to be an incredibly special day.

Congratulations to a good buddy of mine who wrote this at Columbia. Way to go Dan!

FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY…..

The Cactus Eaters: How I Lost My Mind—and Almost Found Myself—on the Pacific Coast Trail
Dan White. Harper Perennial, $14.95 paper (384p) ISBN 978-0-06-137693-1

Traversing broiling deserts, snowy mountain passes and dank rain forests on its crooked way from Mexico to Canada, the Pacific Coast Trail is an epic challenge for die-hard backpackers. White and his girlfriend, Melissa, set out, late in the season and bereft of experience, to tread all 2,650 miles of it, leaving behind lousy reporting jobs and hoping to find self-definition and a deepened relationship. (They call their trek the Lois and Clark Expedition.) Hilarious greenhorn misadventures ensue—including the author’s ill-advised chomp, while dizzy with dehydration, into a reputedly moisture-laden prickly-pear cactus—that tested their survival skills and commitment as a couple. The trail becomes less an itinerary than a world unto itself, full of squalor, discomfort and majestic scenery, and peopled by charismatic misfits and an austere cult of ultra-light speed-hikers, as the couple rely on arcane camping gear and bizarre gummy-bear-and-marshmallow diets. The wilderness authenticity the author seeks proves elusive; all journey and no destination, the story itself eventually trails off with the hero even more callow and confused than when he started. Still, White’s vivid prose and hangdog humor make readers want to keep up. (June)

“A good memoir does more than dredge up secrets from the writer’s past. A
good memoir filters a life through resonant narrative, and in doing so must
achieve a balance between language and candor. It was not the subject matter
of my memoirs that I hoped would be startling, but rather language’s
capacity to name what was nameless, to define what had once been vague and
chaotic. The chief privilege of writing a memoir was the opportunity to go
back and make sense of events that left me dumbstruck, mired in confusion,
unarmed with the luminous power of words.”

~ From Bernard Cooper’s essay “Marketing Memory.”

When I first arrived at The San Diego Union-Tribune in 1998, I immediately got acquainted with Caitlin Rother, a serious-minded investigative reporter who made certain public figures quake when they heard the words, “This is Caitlin Rother,” on their telephone. In the course of getting to know her, I learned that every Sunday for eight years she wrote her novel, while holding a full-time reporting job. There was no publisher on the horizon. We bonded over writing, took a class on writing the nonfiction book proposal, and the rest is history.

Almost ten years later, Caitlin’s first book, a true crime story Poisoned Love, received a tremendous boost when the E! Entertainment Network featured Caitlin and her book on a documentary “Women Who Kill.” Her first novel, Naked Addiction, comes out this month. Her first hardback work, Twisted Triangle, a nonfiction crime story comes out next spring. She has already started writing the fourth book, Killer With a Conscience, and, in her spare time, is working on another novel. There’s no stopping this woman.

1. Congratulations on publishing your first novel, Naked Addiction. I know how difficult fiction can be. What motivated you to work on this for so many years without any promise it would ever be published?

Thank you. I almost had an out-of-body experience when I first heard it was going to be published. Writing fiction has always been one of my passions, which I fed by writing short stories long before I became a journalist. I’ve always felt a certain indescribable freedom and joy from delving into my imagination and playing out the what-ifs. I also gain a deep feeling of satisfaction when I am able to articulate a truly esoteric vision, especially when I manage to do it — often after many rewrites, I might add — in an artful way. In the 17 years leading up to the publication of this book, I managed to find enough hope in the small victories — I am also a very goal-directed person — that I was able to continue to improve it. For a long time, I wanted to publish a book more than anything else in the world and every time I thought it wasn’t going to happen, I’d see another sign that maybe, just maybe, I shouldn’t give up just yet. I believe that persistence and the ability to pick myself up after each rejection were the two keys to getting published.

2. People always want to know where novelists draw their inspiration and motivation. Where do you find yours?

I find inspiration in many places. With Naked Addiction, the original inspiration came from a crime story I wrote for the Springfield Union-News. I barely remember the details now. But I do remember this: a young woman, who happened to be an old friend of my then-boyfriend, was murdered in New York City and my boyfriend took me to her wake. That true-crime story worked as a creative catalyst that led me to create the character of Tania, the first murder victim, and the plot built from there. As I continued to rethink the characters and rewrite various scenes over the years, I drew from my own feelings, experiences and spiritual discoveries that happened along the way. Also, because I’m writing in a crime genre, I also drew from my growing investigative reportorial knowledge as well as news events and trends going on in the world around me. I have a few favorite themes that seem to make their way into my fictional stories and also play a part in the non-fiction stories I choose to write about. Those include drugs, sex, suicide, mental illness, addiction and ethical conflicts. Yes, I know, all very uplifting topics.

3. How did you get interested in writing fiction?

Growing up as an only child, I told myself stories, talked to myself in the mirror as different characters, and read lots of fiction and comic books to keep myself amused. Later, I added movies into the mix. I just love stories and storytelling. I started writing fiction before I was a journalist, as a hobby, really. It became more important about two or three years into my newspaper career because it provided a creative outlet, a therapeutic one if you will, because it provided some relief from the analytical thinking and fact-finding that was draining my life energy at the newspaper. I thought that after writing as many as four stories in a day that I did not have the time to spend any more time writing at night or on weekends. But I was wrong. Writing fiction energized me, keeping me up late at night, as the plot for what ultimately became this novel unfolded on my notepad. It was like a drug. I enjoy writing nonfiction, too, but for some reason, perhaps because I worked for 20 years as a newspaper reporter, the intoxicating high it produces is not quite as strong.

4. And how does the writing process differ from when you’re writing nonfiction?

With both kinds of writing, although more for fiction, I find myself in “the zone” if I am having a good day. By the same token, it is much harder to write fiction in spurts because I lose my train of thought and I can forget where I’m going with the plot or a character’s motivation. Both forms of writing require a lot of thinking before I can even sit down at the computer. Deciding how to tell a story, what parts in what order, is always difficult. Nonfiction is more challenging in some ways because it requires so much research before I can determine the best way to present that information in a narrative form. With nonfiction, I usually know where the story ends, but with fiction, I often seem to end up somewhere different than I’d planned — regardless of any outline I might make — because the characters often take over and go in their own directions. Some of them can be pretty headstrong. That’s how I get my twists and turns. Most of them aren’t planned; they’re as much a surprise to me as they are, hopefully, to the reader.

5. It has been said that most writers have an inclination toward one genre. What are your leanings and why?

To be honest, I can’t even choose between fiction and nonfiction let alone between genres within those larger categories. For the moment, I’m focusing on true crime stories and mysteries/thrillers, but in the future I hope to branch out in other directions. I’ve always lived in a world of gray, a world where, thankfully, I have many choices. I guess I’m lucky in that way. I enjoy doing both fiction and nonfiction, and so, for as long as I am able — and I mean that from a practical, financial standpoint and what the market tells me — I’m going to try to publish both. I know I would miss one if I just focused on the other. After covering a lot of politics and government, corruption and the spin cycle of campaigns as a watchdog journalist, writing thrillers seems a bit less relevant to society at large. Commercial fiction may be geared more toward entertainment purposes, but I do try to incorporate some deeper messages. I’ve heard the opinion that journalists who write about true crime are “predators,” preying on the tragedy of families or glorifying violence, but I believe I have a higher calling. I chose the nonfiction stories that illustrate the psychological aspects of the human condition and the extremely important issues of life and death, trust, betrayal and the utter devastation a crime can cause, not just to the victim’s family but to the criminal defendant’s as well. To me, all of this is just as meaningful and relevant to society, if not more so, than some city council race. I think I can touch on these issues in my fiction as well.

6. Your background as a journalist provides a wealth of stories and the wherewithal to verify information. What are the hurdles in making the journey from newspaper writing to fiction?

It seems much easier for me to write about things that are based on truth, things I know, events I’ve experienced or witnessed, rather than stories or characters that are based on fantasy, pulled from my imagination. I guess that’s where the adage comes from, “write what you know.” The good thing about being a journalist and a fiction writer is that if I don’t know what a character would do in a certain situation, I’m well-versed in finding the right person to ask. I guess the biggest challenge for me is to let go of the “truth” and to be purely creative. Sometimes I feel like I’m scared to go deep enough because we journalists are taught to keep our own feelings out of what we write. That is one of my personal and professional goals: to encourage myself to go deeper toward a larger truth, the one that is inside me, the one that I was not allowed to express overtly as a reporter. Being a journalist is safer, frankly, because you’re quoting what other people think and feel. But with fiction, everyone knows that you must’ve come up with that idea or experience somehow or other. It can leave me feeling, well, naked.

7. In a very short amount of time you’ve written three books with a fourth one on the way. What is your time management secret?

Have no life. I’m joking, but I’m also not joking. I’ve only just realized lately that I’m a workaholic. Apparently I’m the last one to know because it was obvious to everyone else around me. I’ve had to work very hard to get where I am. Holding down a full-time job as an investigative newspaper reporter was at times very stressful and draining, both physically and emotionally. Writing fiction on the weekends and then later working on book proposals and promoting my first book was essentially a second job. Eventually, when the workload forced me to make a choice, I had already choreographed the first and possibly second years of my new career by planning ahead and setting in motion a number of contingencies. I don’t want to say I sacrificed a personal life, but I haven’t had as much of one as many other people I know. I’ve always enjoyed working. It’s fun for me. But I’m also learning that having a more balanced life will be necessary for me to continue from here on out. I’m actually working very hard to relax and slow down (yes, pun intended) because this is a marathon, not a sprint. The more concrete answer to your question is that I make lots of lists and I spin many plates at once, coordinating many tasks according to the time needed, so that I can meet all of my deadlines. I would make the analogy that coordinating the researching, writing, copyediting and then the promoting of books is like cooking a complicated meal. You have to be careful not to let anything burn or get soggy and to make sure that the food is served on time so that your guests want to come back.

8. What’s the biggest misperception about someone who writes books full-time?

Some people have told me I’m living their dream because of all the freedom I have and because I can do what I love while working for myself. Much of that is true, but there is a flip side. Yes, I can come and go as I please. I have “offices” at the bagel place and at the pool at my gym. I can take a walk on the beach or around my neighborhood and consider it part of my work day because I get some heavy thinking done during those strolls. But the truth is, this new career I’ve chosen is an extremely isolated existence. I’ve had to completely rebuild my support system and I’ve lost connections with friends I’ve had for years. I also have been under constant deadlines, many overlapping for different projects, and frankly, I am a much tougher boss and taskmaster than most bosses I’ve had. And when I tell myself not to work so hard, I run the danger of feeling guilty that I haven’t gotten enough done or fast enough. With a newspaper job, you’re often on deadline, but it’s only for a short time and then it’s over. You get a break. But when you write a book, you have a deadline hanging over your head every minute, for months at a time, until you hit the SEND button. Maybe that’s not a misperception for other people, but it’s certainly been a discovery to me.

9. Knowing what you know now about making a career switch, what would you do differently?

Nothing. My philosophy is to live life, if possible, without regrets, which means I try to think long and hard before I make a decision and once I do I deal with it. The only thing I will do differently in the future is try to pace myself better so that I don’t have to juggle so many projects at once. One of my editors told me I was crazy to do what I was doing, but I had no way of knowing how much work I would be faced with until it was on my plate in front of me. I could never have predicted some of the things that happened to me over the past year since I left the newspaper — good and bad — partly because I’m still learning about the publishing world, partly because I don’t have a crystal ball, and also because every project is different and comes with its own set of personalities and unique challenges.

10. Which job is the hardest, being a reporter or author?

Apart from the constant deadline pressure, I find that my short-term memory these days is clogged pretty damn full of details, many of which will never even get into the book. I’m also keeping track of the tasks I need to complete and problems I’m trying to work out in my head. I didn’t have that problem as much when I was a reporter until and unless the investigative stories started stacking up. I think being an author is harder in many ways, but I was definitely at the point in my life when I was ready to make the switch. I don’t think I could have become an author without spending all those years as a reporter, gathering knowledge and experience and improving my writing, speed and organizational skills. I don’t regret a minute of any of it. Onward.

For more information on Caitlin and her books, go to http://caitlinrother.com/

I’m an interesting, talented artist but I can’t take the rejection!

I know it’s part of the game, but it’s beginning to defeat me.

By Cary Tennis
Salon Magazine

Aug. 13, 2007 | Dear Cary,

I’m an artist — it’s the thing I’ve had since childhood, the thing I took for granted.

So I took it for granted and followed other paths — writing fiction and filmmaking.

I went to grad school, I published some books and many articles (nonfiction). I wrote (and sold) some screenplays. I directed some films and produced some TV shows.

So I’m sorta successful, but I still feel that “artist” is my life’s calling. It’s what I’m best at and what I love. And yes, I go through all the crap too — the stress, the inaction, the procrastination and so on, but I really feel it’s what I was born to do. People like it — smart people, the people I’d hoped would like it, and they like it for the right reasons. I sell enough out of my studio to counter my expenses (not huge but significant nonetheless). I’ve been selected for juried shows by curators of major museums and been waitlisted on grants and residencies that are awarded to emerging contemporary artists — exactly where I’d hope my artwork would fall within the giant spectrum of the art world.

But it has yet to pay off with true success: representation by a gallery, which is the equivalent of getting an agent and all that that would hopefully bring.

In the meantime I have to work as a producer (lucrative, challenging, creative but I sublimate my own interests to be “mainstream” enough to be functional in this world) and then, while I’m working on freelance producing jobs, I have to get the rejection letters from things I’ve applied to. I realize I can’t get accepted to everything I apply to, but each time I get rejected, it takes me down a notch, if only for that day. And then I recover (or forget) and go back to making art, and I’ve realized that this whole creation/rejection dichotomy actually creates the sort of manic-depressive (or bipolar) worldview that artists are known for: You get all excited about some idea and work in a creative frenzy and then you get a rejection notice and feel like “What the fuck am I doing anyways?”

My problem right now is that I don’t get the “manic” highs of creation because I’m doing a freelance producing job which is very, very time-consuming (and creativity-consuming), so I can’t make my own art at the moment and yet I am getting the “depressive” rejection letters that send me into a downward spiral for which there is no “manic” corrective. And I start to think, maybe “producer” is all I get to be; after all, I worked hard to get to be that too!

I don’t think that I should give up on the artwork (I don’t think I can, literally. I think I’d be miserable. It’s pretty much my higher purpose in life). But how do I deal with the rejection during these periods where I can’t make up for it with creative zeal? Because it’s so fucking easy to get a rejection notice in the middle of the day at work on the cheesy TV show and think, “Who the fuck am I to think I am an artist?”

- S.

Dear S,

I’m glad you wrote this letter. The problem you describe is important. The best way I can respond to it is by talking about my own experience.

I am a very critical person. This is a problem in my life. I have high expectations. If you are doing something and I am watching, I will have a different idea how you should do it, and I will take you apart and not even realize I am doing it until I have ruined your experience. Then I will apologize. I will say I was just trying to help. Then I will go deeper and admit I am a destructively critical person. So I have this. I am critical of you and I am also critical of me.

Now, I also have high expectations. I have experienced literature that opened the skies for me, that made the earth tremble, that proved the existence of a world right alongside ours, so far superior to ours that one might as well commit suicide. I have had these experiences with literature. So I expect a lot when I read. I have high expectations.

But that means I have high expectations for myself as well when I write. Every time I write I think I am required to make the skies open. I think I have to make the earth tremble. I think I have to reveal the existence of a dazzling universe quietly superseding our own, right next to us in another dimension.

That is of course impossible — as well as being destructive. Realistically speaking, maybe once in my life I’ll write something pretty good. Maybe twice.

So I have unrealistic expectations of myself and of other people.

So naturally I fail every day. And so does everyone else in my eyes. That is not a very comfortable world to live in, where I am failing every day, and everyone around me is failing every day too.

It became clear to me a while ago that if I went on writing in this kind of hell I would not last. If you have a voice in your head that is telling you every day that you suck and you can’t write, because the heavens are not splitting open and the earth is not trembling, you’re not going to last long. You’re going to find yourself depressed. You’re going to be paralyzed, unable to send out manuscripts.

You need constant encouragement and reinforcement in order to keep going. It’s not even about feeling good so much. It’s just about keeping going.

I began to think about athletes. I thought, what do athletes do? Are they rejected every time they perform? A batter gets a hit maybe every four or five at bats. So that’s pretty tough.

How would an athlete deal with all that rejection?

In sports there is rejection and pain. But there is also joy and encouragement. There are coaches. There are teammates.

Those of us who work alone trying to make the heavens open up and the earth tremble, we need regular encouragement. We need coaches to say, Hey, good game. We need hand slaps and high-fives. Without support we will stop sending out our work. (Most of us, anyway. There are some who are like diamonds inside, brilliant and hard and unreachable. But most of us, we’re sensitive.)

So, having never been, by temperament or upbringing or cultural leaning, a workshop person, and having had only the worst experiences in graduate school workshops, I nevertheless began looking for some organic forms of support. The only thing I knew in terms of groups was support groups for addiction and alcohol. I thought something along that line might work, but I had no idea what. I just knew that the unconscious needs to be cradled and encouraged.

So browsing in Borders last fall before a long plane ride, I saw that book “Writing Alone and With Others.” I liked the title. It was sufficiently descriptive and exact. It did not promise me that I could write a novel in 30 days. It did not address problems of self-esteem that I did not have. It spoke to me.

So I read it and became convinced that the workshop method it outlines could help me and others improve our relationships with our own creative selves and with each other as creative people. So last week I completed a weeklong workshop with the author of that book, Pat Schneider, and was reinforced in my belief that this is the way to go.

We critical types are hard on ourselves. I have been very hard on others but I have believed it was OK because I was also very hard on myself. Others have been hard on me as well, and I have sort of invited that. I have said, That’s OK, give it to me straight, I can take it. Actually, I couldn’t take it. But I would say I could. I believed in the interest of telling it like it is that everybody had to be hard on everybody else and on themselves. That would ensure that we were all aesthetically honest and pure.

Well, so now I am thinking, what good does that do if we become so embittered and afraid of rejection that we can’t continue our work? I think what we need is more acceptance and more love. But how do I become more accepting of myself? Well, if being hard on others and being hard on myself are so closely linked, perhaps being accepting of others and accepting of myself are also linked. So what if I were start being easier on others, and then eventually perhaps easier on myself? That is what happened in this workshop. We sat around and talked only about what we liked and what we remembered. We didn’t tear each other up. Dangerous things were allowed to be said, and were said. They were said well. It was an atmosphere in which the dangerous and difficult things could be said. I was pretty amazed. It produced good work, to my mind, because the good work is the difficult work. It is the work that says things on the edge of acceptable.

So to you, fellow sufferer, I would say that you must build into your life some support systems. You may say that you know you are good. That is fine. I know I am good too. Still, I need to hear it every day. You may know that you are loved as well. You still need to hear it every day. You need to be told. And you need to tell others.

Another thought that prevented me from participating in workshops was this: Well, I’m a professional. I’m different. I’m better.

What I found was that as a professional I had certain things I could contribute. But it did not make me any better than anyone else. Rather, I stood in surprised awe. I said, What, you are not publishing? My God! It was astonishing.

So now in spite of my long-cultivated anti-workshop bias and my pride and my ego and my defensiveness and my well-suppressed desire to crush all other artists, in spite of my debilitating expectation that every word ought to split the sky or make the earth tremble or hint at the existence of a fantastic other world, in spite of my fear and my anger and my feeling of hopelessness and despair, I believe in the workshop.

It’s what you have to do. Something inside you needs it.

There is much more to be said about this, but I think that is enough for now. There are cultural and political implications. There are spiritual implications. But that is enough for now. It’s about the workshop. It’s about finding structured support. It’s what you have to do.

By the way, one practical way to avoid the crushing futility of never-ending rejection is to have a friend send out your work for you. This little tip came to me from Pat Schneider. The trick is to work with a friend. You send out your friend’s work, and your friend sends out yours. Your friend gets the rejections but doesn’t tell you. You don’t need to know. When something encouraging happens, then your friend gives you the news.

Thanks to all of you who have emailed me about my blog. Right after finishing my classes at Columbia and then the immediate trip to Austria and Germany, I decided I needed to take a break from blogging and ponder a few changes. This will continue to be a personal blog but will increasingly become a resource and reference page for writers – mostly nonfiction in focus. I will post stories on writers and writing, the publishing industry and any other things that strike my fancy. I want to preserve my own creative writing energy for projects that I’m working on. Long blog entries can be tedious and there’s only so much water in the well.

We will kick off the blog with an interesting story about Oprah Winfrey getting blasted about the way she treated James Frey on her show.

Samuel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Publisher blasts Oprah over James Frey controversy
Sunday, July 29, 2007 11:49 PM

BY MICHAEL MERSCHEL
The Dallas Morning News
GRAPEVINE, Texas—Publisher Nan A. Talese took up a fresh defense of A Million Little Pieces this weekend, defending the “essential truth” of the discredited memoir — while criticizing Oprah Winfrey and her fans.

Asked about the book during a session at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Writers Conference of the Southwest on Saturday, Talese said her experience with author James Frey had not changed the way she handled memoirs.

“I’m afraid I’m unapologetic of the whole thing,” she said. “And the only person who should be apologetic is Oprah Winfrey,” who she says exhibited “fiercely bad manners — you don’t stone someone in public, which is just what she did.”

Calling Winfrey’s behavior “mean and self-serving,” Talese said that readers should be able to decide for themselves about whether to believe an author, and that Frey was clear about how believable he was.

“When someone starts out and says, ‘I have been an alcoholic. I have lied, I have cheated’ … you do not think this is going to be the New Testament.”

A Million Little Pieces was Winfrey’s Book Club selection for September 2005. In January 2006, after The Smoking Gun Web site revealed that parts of the book had been fabricated, Talese and Frey were subject to Winfrey’s on-air wrath, and Frey acknowledged that his book was not the literal truth.

Saturday evening, Talese spoke up in response to an audience comment during a question-and-answer session with keynote speaker Joyce Carol Oates, who had been discussing the nature of truth in memoir writing.

Talese said that when producers invited her to Winfrey’s program, they told her she’d be sitting on a panel with Richard Cohen of The Washington Post and Frank Rich of The New York Times to discuss “Truth in America.” But moments before the live program aired, she says, she was told program would be called “The James Frey Controversy.”

“James was told, ‘It’s going to be very rough, but at the end there will be redemption,’ ” Talese said. (She heard this thirdhand, she clarified on Sunday.) “And she verbally flayed him in public.”

She continued, “And at the end of it she pulled James aside and said, ‘I know it was rough, but it’s just business.’ (Sunday, she clarified that this was relayed to her by Frey.) And so I really, really am bothered by the sanctimoniousness of Oprah Winfrey.”

Winfrey’s publicists could not be reached Sunday. On her broadcast, Winfrey, who had stood by the author in the early days of the scandal, told her audience: “To everyone who has challenged me on this issue of truth, you are absolutely right.” She angrily told the author, “I feel really duped. But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers.”

In May, Random House agreed to pay $2.35 million in refunds to readers who purchased the book before that interview.

In interviews Saturday and via e-mail and phone from California on Sunday, Talese explained why she was speaking out about the incident now.

She says people have asked, ” ‘Do you mind talking about it?’ as if it were some sort of disgrace. And I’ve said, ‘No I’m fine.’ I published the book, I’m proud to publish the book. … I think it has helped a lot of people.”

She described the Oprah audience as “holier-than-thou” and discussed being on the show as Frey amended his account of one character’s suicide.

“Oprah kept saying, ‘Did she kill herself? Did she cut her wrists?’ And he said, ‘No, she hung herself.’ And the whole audience went, ‘Boo! Boo!’ It was like being in the Roman circus. And after I said to them, ‘The tragedy is not how she killed herself, it’s that she killed herself,’ they all looked like a treeful of owls — no expressions at all. It was awful.”

Asked about the book’s veracity, she said: “I believe he overblew his character, which he has admitted in his new author’s note to the book, and I agree with what Oprah said initially when she championed the book. The essential truth is very powerful. The only difference between us is I have not gone back on the statement.”

Talese, publisher and editorial director of Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, is an industry legend who has published the likes of Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan. Her husband is author Gay Talese, a prior Mayborn participant.

The conference draws writers from across the country to discuss the practice of narrative journalism and nonfiction writing.

In the summer of 1997, when I was working for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I went to Arkansas to visit my relatives for our annual Fourth of July family reunion in Grady. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, but as I drove away I got the distinct feeling that I needed to write about these people and this place. It was a deep and abiding feeling that has never left me.

Five years later when I resigned from newspapers, my first instinct was to write about them. I remember sitting in the living room at a friend’s house early one morning. I pulled out a pad of paper and started writing long hang about my mother’s “sanctified” sister and her twelve children. It was only five or six pages. I felt so overwhelmed by it because it meant so much to me and I wanted to do it justice.

I’m convinced those raw, awkwardly constructed pages are what got me into Columbia’s MFA program. I always thought I would write about later in life but the story seems to want to come forth now. At school there were hints of my mother’s sister Freddie Mae saying this or that. Finally I gave her her own essay “The Last Sanctified Lady.” Each time I’ve written about her in workshop, people can’t seem to get enough.

Last night was the final reading for the 2007 Columbia MFA Thesis group. I read a 3 page condensed version of the piece. I’m there worst judge of my own material. I stumbled a few times. The glare of the lights made it impossible to see the audience. I was nervous and felt I’d botched it completely. The crowd, however, had a different experience. They roared at one point when I was reading in the voice of how she stood up and testified in church on Sundays. Afterward I must have have 30 people come up and tell me how much they enjoyed it.

As a journalist I’ve written about world famous people who’ve earned millions of dollars and touched the world with their art or community activists who’ve have compelling narratives. It seems that the stuff that’s in your gut or instinct or intuition that seems to touch people the most.

What’s so remarkable about the writing division at Columbia is how the faculty encourages our unique voices. Everyone who read over the last three nights is in such a different place as a writer than two short years ago. I simply cannot believe my Columbia experience is over. But then again, since it has led me back to where my heart was all along but more capable, then I am just getting started.

I am very pleased to announce that my essay “The Last Sancitified Lady,” got honorable mention in the University of New Orleans Study Abroad Writing Contest in the nonfiction category. Had I won I would have spent July taking creative writing classes in Madrid and living in the dormitory for free. I attended the UNO program in Madrid in the summer of 2004 and it was fantastic. My participation in that program paved the way for me to get into Columbia’s MFA program.

Although I did not win, an honorable mention shows me that my material has improved dramatically and caught the editors’ attention, something that NEVER happened before in contests. And hopefully that means I’m on the right path.

Congratulations to all the winners. If you want to read more about it go to http://lowres.uno.edu/contest.cfm

Cheers!