Getting to Know Us: A Look at the Leadership of the AWC
As the year gets underway, we over at AWC thought it would be a good time for some of our leadership to say hello. So, here’s a little more about who we are and what we are about. We hope to feature more leadership in the coming weeks.
CLAIRE DATNOW, RECORDING SECRETARY
What made you become a writer?
I have always devoured books as if they were the keys to a magical kingdom. Reading ignited my imagination, fueling my desire to become a writer. The stories I read opened doors and windows in my mind. No flashes of insight, no grand epiphanies, just a steady, mounting passion to create my own stories.
What is the work you’re most proud to have created?
My books are like my children. I cannot pick a favorite. However, my books that could stand the test of time are my memoir, Behind The Walled Garden of Apartheid: Growing Up White in Segregated South Africa, and The Nine Inheritors: The Extraordinary Odyssey of an Ancient Scroll. The most difficult books to write are my cli-fi adventures. The dire consequence of climate change must be portrayed without sugar coating, yet inspire young readers with hope.
If you had to pick three books that have influenced your work the most, which ones would you list? Why?
Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth series set in China. Buck’s stories paved the way for writing empathetic stories about diverse cultures and, incidentally, fueled my desire to travel across the globe.
Jean Craighead George’s environmental mystery series, including, The Case of The Missing Cut Throats, inspired my series The Adventures of The Sizzling Six.
Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief and All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr shine a light on the brutal consequences of war on individual young lives, paralleling the destructive force of climate change.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s Antarctica, which parallels, in my mind, my cli-fi trilogy, Red Flag Warning: A Climate Adventure (Book one), and The Gray Whale’s Lament (Book two) that I am currently working on.
What are your hopes for the AWC throughout the next few years?
I hope it will be possible for our member to get together in person, or virtually, for craft sessions, and possibly a book club that focus on critiquing a book from a writer’s P.O.V.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve received?
Writing is like the art of making fine wine or good cheese which takes time. To (mis)quote Orson Welles: “We will publish no books before their time.”
What are you working on now?
The second book in a climate change trilogy, The Gray Whale’s Lament.
BRADLEY SIDES, COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER
What is the work you’re most proud to have created?
I think my first short story collection, Those Fantastic Lives, is the work that I’m most proud of. I spent nearly a decade on it. The stories are a labor of love—and fear, too, I guess. Haha. Those Fantastic Lives did really well, and it made a few “best of” lists. It was covered in places I previously would’ve only ever dreamed of. I’m really fortunate to have had the experience.
If you had to pick three books that have influenced your work the most, which ones would you list? Why?
This question is a tough one because I like a lot of books. Mainly weird ones. If I can only select three, I’ll go with Karen Russell’s St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and maybe Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go or Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish or Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child. I don’t know. I would probably have a different list if asked tomorrow. I should probably sprinkle some of Bradbury’s stories over the top of this list because Ray Bradbury is a favorite for sure. Also, some of Kelly Link’s strangest and Alexander Weinstein’s best, too. Like I said, this is tough…
Each of these writers is special to me, and I just sincerely admire what they are able to do with—and within—their art.
What part of the state are you from? What are some of your favorite literary events in your area?
My wife and I live in Huntsville. We just moved from a different part of the state a few months back due to new (wonderful) jobs, so I’m still very much new to the literary community here. I haven’t seen a book festival in the area. If anyone wants to put one together with me, email me and let’s talk.
What are you working on now?
I just finished my next collection. Or at least I think I did. It’s tentatively titled Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood. Like my previous book, this one contains stories about loss and grief. These new stories are pretty experimental in form. There’s a manual, a letter, a game, and some other cool shapes. I also have quite a bit of flash in there. I’m excited about it. I hope my publisher will be.
I’ve also started a novel. That’s something I never thought I’d say. One of my previous stories is where I got the idea. It’s an expansion of a tale about a guy and his pond monster. And it’s actually going well!
JESSICA TEMPLE, CONTESTS CHAIR
What made you become a writer?
The short answer is my grandmother. My grandma was Bettye K. Cannizzo, who was a poet in Alabama and an active member of several writing groups in the state from the 1970s through the early 2000s. I can remember when she was the contest chair for ASPS and had folders full of poems spread across a table in the den. She had my sisters and me writing poems and submitting to contests from the time we could hold a pencil. I placed in a contest with my poem "Fuzzy," about a caterpillar I had caught, when I was five years old. I never considered writing as a career until my sophomore year in college, when I realized I didn't like math enough to be an engineer. The classes I had the best grades in and enjoyed the most were English classes, so I changed majors. With that, I got back into poetry and writing, and now I teach creative writing to college students, as well as being a writer myself. Grandma was very proud of me!
If you had to pick three books that have influenced your work the most, which ones would you
list? Why?
I'm picking only two because there are lots of books that are way up on the list, but these two are the clear frontrunners: To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) and Natasha Tretheway's Native Guard.
It might be strange to think of a novel influencing poetry (what I write the most), but I first read TKAM in middle school and have read it many times since. I have taught it in literature classes. I've also seen the movie multiple times and visited Monroeville to see the play (which I highly recommend!). I was always able to get lost in a book, but TKAM was the first book I can remember reading where I felt like I didn't have to immerse myself in it because I already was in it. Maycomb seemed so similar to Athens, Alabama, where I grew up, that I didn't need to use much imagination. My father was a lawyer. My mom had died. I felt like I was reading about the me of a previous generation! It made me realize that Alabama—the landscapes, the people, the history, good and bad—could be a setting and even be a topic for great literature.
Native Guard is another book set in the South. Trethewey blends personal history with public history so seamlessly that it has become a book (and an author—all of her books are wonderful!) that I keep coming back to for examples and inspiration. I also admire the way she moves between formal poems and free verse without the forms ever feeling forced or gimmicky. It's a very readable collection that manages beautiful imagery, heartbreaking storytelling, and a history lesson all at once.
What part of the state are you from? What are some of your favorite literary events in your area?
I live in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, now, but I moved from Huntsville just over a year ago. In Huntsville, I love the American Shakespeare Company's annual performances in February, sponsored by the Huntsville Literary Association. They are interactive and hilarious and have wonderful musical intermissions! Out Loud HSV's open mics are always a good time as well, with lots of variety in genres and style.
What are you working on now?
Anybody who has asked me this over the past seven years has gotten the same answer because I am still working on it! My next poetry collection is ekphrastic poems (poems written after works of art) that go with a series of Gordon Parks photos. In 1956, Time magazine photographer Gordon Parks traveled to Alabama (Mobile and Shady Grove). His task was to photograph the effects of segregation in the South. In 2015, I saw a traveling exhibit of these photographs in Atlanta. I was struck by the images—the colors, the smiles, the idyllic country settings, the small-town feel—as well as the insight they provided into the past, a past in which my parents lived in places very much like the ones in the images. However, Parks's photos are not like those of my parents' childhoods, or of my own in a small Alabama town. My current project is an ekphrastic series to complement Parks's photographs, interpreting them and translating them into language, with the intention of increasing awareness of Parks's segregation series, showing the realities of that era in Alabama's history for good or ill, and reminding us all how far we've come, may the distance be far or short. I am working through the photos methodically and researching the people and places depicted along the way.
T.K. THORNE, IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT
What made you become a writer?
I don’t know the answer to this other than I’ve always known it is my true self.
What is the work you’re most proud to have created?
You must know it’s illegal to ask which is your favorite child! In one sense, it’s my first published novel, Noah’s Wife, which required a trip to Turkey and four years of research about early religion, geology, ancient cultures, and what was known then as Asperger’s Syndrome. But I am also proud to have written two nonfiction books—Last Chance for Justice, the stories of the investigation of the 16th Street Baptist Church where four young girls were killed in a KKK bombing, and Behind the Magic Curtain: Secrets, Spies and Unsung White Allies of Birmingham’s Civil Rights Days.
If you had to pick three books that have influenced your work the most, which ones would you list? Why?
The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster, a tale about a little boy named Milo who tries to rescue the kidnapped princesses of Sweet Rhyme and Pure Reason held captive in the Castle in the Air. Only their release can restore order to the Kingdom of Wisdom. I read this book over and over for many years. It taught me that writing can be fun and layered with meaning.
Dune, by Frank Herbert, also was read many times, and each time the scope and depth of world building blew my mind and opened my mind to the extraordinary possibilities and power of writing.
Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel because it simmered in my subconscious for years and informed the writing of my first published book—Noah’s Wife.
What are your hopes for the AWC throughout the next few years?
I hope AWC can grow its membership and find new ways to help writers. That is our mission and a passion for me.
Tell us about your literary community.
I’ve never really thought about it, but my literary community is mostly online connections from across the country and across genres. Some are close friends as well. Recently, someone I knew only through a writing group came to visit and we did a wonderful Thelma & Louise road trip to a book event! How great is that?
What’s the best writing advice you’ve received?
Two things from the universe: The first is that whether writing is good or bad is the wrong question. The question is to ask is: Does it work?” The second is: The only way to ensure failure is to quit trying.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on expanding a short story called “The Old Lady” into a suspense novel. At least I think that’s what it is. . . .
SUE WALKER, PAST PRESIDENT EMERITA
What is the work you’re most proud to have created?
Golly gee – what might that be? I have published some twelve books – so – for poetry, perhaps Blood Must Bear Your Name, published by Amherst Artists and Writers Press, Amherst, Massachusetts. For critical work, it would be The Ecological Poetics of James Dickey: A Study in How Landscape Shapes the Being of Man that was awarded “The Adèle Mellen Prize for its distinguished contribution to scholarship.
What are your hopes for the AWC throughout the next few years?
To bring forth a zest for writing and to share the “best that has been thought and said in the world.” (Matthew Arnold, from the Preface to Culture and Anarchy.)
What part of the state are you from?
I am from the birthplace of Mardi Gras and before that from some red-rutted road in Tuscaloosa where my birth-mother gave me away. And I am from the foolishness, frolic, the fiber and flavor of Foley, Alabama. I am from the places I’ve called home.
Tell us about your literary community.
I teach Creative Writing every Wednesday at the Mobile Botanical Gardens. It is a gathering of talented writers who read each autumn in a program: Poetry by Moonlight. We call ourselves: WIN – Writers In Nature – and we read at Jodi Smith’s Mobile Literary Festival in March. I am a member of the Mobile Writers Guild and offer workshops on line. I also teach on-line courses via Zoom.
Alabama’s literary scene is always growing and evolving. What are some things you’d like to see come to the state?
Thanks to Ashley Jones, Alabama’s current Poet Laureate, to organizations such as the Alabama State Poetry Society, the Alabama Writers Cooperative, the Alabama Writers Forum and to the Creative Writing classes and events held at our colleges and Universities, I am proud to say that we are a Force – and will continue to be so.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve received?
Oh my – what is called Best? X. J. Kennedy once told me that I would never be a poet until I learned to write sonnets. It taught me to love poetry forms – and for my Wednesday Poetry Class we have explored poetry forms from A through Z. I introduce the A – forms, for example, then cite what we have learned from Master Writers and other writers from around the world (think the letter A). Ask me, if you want a sample.
What are you working on now?
I am working on a book on Craft because my students said: “This ought to be a book!” I am also working on a poetry book – and need to get the poems organized, and I am writing a hybrid book that may just be Hodgepodge at the moment.