Allen Berry is the author of four collections of poetry: Travel for Agoraphobics, Distractions and Illusions, Sitting up with the Dead, and Separation Tango. It was a pleasure to be able to talk to him about the Alabama Poetry Delegation, time, and his current work.

Bradley Sides: First off, Allen, congratulations on the recent news of you being named as one of the five poets to make up the Alabama Poetry Delegation. Sounds like a wonderful opportunity! Do you mind talking a bit about what the Delegation is—and also about your planned project for your region?

Allen Berry: Thank you so much. The Poetry Delegation is the brainchild of state Poet Laureate, Ashley Jones, to promote poetry around the state. The Alabama Poetry Delegation empowers five delegates to serve in five designated multi-county regions throughout Jones’ tenure as Poet Laureate (2022-2026). Delegates are tasked with crowdsourcing and creating events and programs for the regions that they serve and in which they live. Our region is Region number one, and we are given the freedom to create a program to increase the awareness about poetry in the public sphere. For my particular project, I’m going to resurrect a program I started with an excellent group of fellow poets back in 2001, the Limestone Dust Poetry Festival. The original festival ran for about ten years, taking a hiatus when my successor did as I had done a few years earlier and returned to school to pursue a masters degree. The goal of the original festival as well as Limestone Dust 2.0 is to bring together the various poetry movements for a day of celebration and sharing of one another’s work.

BS: I know you were born and raised in Alabama, so to be able to help grow the poetry community in your home state must be a really special feeling.

AB: Absolutely. There are a number of poets here in North Alabama just as there were some 20 years back; the various poetry communities are a bit insular, working, writing, inspiring one another, but rarely do they seem to come in contact with one another. The real joy, for me, is getting all these various poets together to share and appreciate each other’s art. Most folks know Huntsville as the Rocket City, and it is. It is also a hub for writers. The idea that we can raise awareness of that fact, even grow poetry as a community and a movement is very exciting.

BS: Let’s talk about your poetry. I’m always interested in how time shapes our work as writers—how pieces of our voice stay the same while other parts of us might transform entirely. You’ve had four poetry collections published throughout the past (almost) decade. In reflecting on your books, what elements of your work do you see reoccurring?

AB: Excellent question. I would have to say that the themes of loneliness and loss have pervaded the work, particularly my chapbook Distractions and Illusions, which explores the ways we hide the truths of the world from ourselves. I write a lot about the embarrassing business of being a human being, pursuing love, and the earnestness of that pursuit. The human condition, as painful as it can be, is also by turns noble, and heroic. As a good friend of mine once stated, “Poets have the gift of an extended goodbye.” Writing about love, loss, and about loyalty to those who have gone on, for me, have been the most fruitful topics for writing. I find myself returning to the same well time and again to drink from experience and craft new work.

We are born alone, often times we live alone, and yet that very loneliness unites us. There is a great nobility in the struggle, and I hope that through my poetry I will be able to reach those who feel that loneliness all too keenly. If I can offer even one of them the sense that they are seen and understood, I’ll have done what I set out to do and that maybe, to paraphrase Kerouac, my efforts will make our lot a whole lot lesser. On a lighter note, I try to incorporate a lot of humor into my work. Given the Human Condition, the only bulwark that we can raise against the indignities endemic in life is humor. Even the most serious of us can be funny, if only in our most guarded or vulnerable moments. My poetry laughs at the beautiful tragedy of humanity in a way that is not fatalistic, but intensely hopeful.

BS: In that same way, how has your poetry changed over the years?

AB: Hm… Much in the same way that you cannot see yourself changing in the mirror and don’t notice it until you compare your image with an old photograph, it’s difficult to say. I like to believe that the work has matured. When I was first writing anything that I dared share with the public, I rhymed more; something that is quite difficult to do well. I find rhyme, at least in my case, quite limiting. Not that it cannot be done and done quite well, I have colleagues who do wonderful rhymed poetry, but I’m confounded by rhyme. If anything, I would say that the work has matured in some ways. The tone is perhaps sadder but wiser. If you read the work of Catullus, the early works are in some cases like that of an angry teenager railing against those who have affronted him, but then toward the end of his works, particularly the elegy for his brother, there is a great beauty and maturity to it.

I like to think that my writing has changed in similar fashion, although hopefully not quite so dramatically. Most of my angry, adolescent, screed has been burned and the ashes buried at an undisclosed location.

BS: I read your latest collection, Separation Tango, last week, and I was quite moved by it. There is tenderness and loneliness and love and just a very honest kind of approach to capturing the emotional complexities of the human experience. A few of my favorite poems in your book are “Refuge,” “What I Remember,” and the titular work.

I won’t ask you which poem is your favorite (because it’s an impossible question for most of us writers), but I am curious which one is your favorite to read at events.

AB: Thank you for that. It was a long and personal work that took its form after the end of a particularly intense relationship. I had always been fascinated by the Tango, and its movements, particularly its inextricable relationship with romance. It occurred to me that a relationship, even the end and aftermath of a relationship is like the Tango. There are movements, slow and elegant, heartbreakingly beautiful that one goes through in the time after a relationship ends. I researched the movements and terms peculiar to the Tango and worked them in to the poem. To date it is one of my favorite works to read.

BS: How would you describe Separation Tango? What do you hope readers take away from it?

AB: I would describe Separation Tango as a love song to unspent tomorrows, the expression of the unused love at the end of a relationship, which is what ultimately encompasses the grief at the end of a love affair. If anything, I hope it offers something of a catharsis for the reader. I want, ultimately what E.M. Forster stated: “Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.” The book is a meditation and a love letter to all the unrealized tomorrows, saturated with love, crushed by disappointment, and plagued by confusion. The book is a love letter saying it wasn’t all for naught, just look at the beauty that came from it.

BS: What other poets inspire you the most?

AB: My greatest inspiration is a fellow Alabamian named Everette Maddox. He is mostly known as a New Orleans poet, but he was born and educated here before making the Big Easy his home. There is a rawness and daring to his poetry. He was a true master of the language. A colleague of mine studied under him at the University of Alabama, and he said something about Maddox that I have always marveled at and envied. He said “Maddox didn’t just write poetry, he WAS poetry.” No greater compliment could be paid to a poet, although his epitaph, “He was a mess,” is a close second.

I’m also a great admirer of the work of former Poet Laureate, Billy Collins. His deceptively simple conversational style is beautiful and extremely clever. He communicates the deep and powerful subjects that poetry has wrestled with, but does so in a fashion that is accessible, even playful at times.

I would be hard pressed to make a succinct list, as there are far too many luminaries to list here, but special mention should be made too of William Carlos Williams, whose minimalist, imagist style has long inspired me. Once in graduate school, during national poetry month, I slipped into the local Sears and posted his poem “This is Just to Say” –arguably the first refrigerator poem— on the door of a fridge in the appliance section. So much said in such a small space, the poem defines what is said by what is not said, and yet still has the illocutionary force of an apology without the force indicator. Such brilliance!

BS: Before I let you go, do you mind sharing what you are currently working on?

AB: Ha Ha, Ha! Well, I got married to my lovely wife back in October (of 2022), and given that much of my poetry was based on loneliness and heartbreak, the ultimate solitude of the human condition, I’m struggling to find a new direction. The beautiful trauma of this joining has left me somewhat without material. But it’s a problem I’m happy to have.

I had set out with the ambition of writing a poem a day for the entirety of the year 2023. I managed to write a poem for every day of January…. If not one on each day. I quickly abandoned my summit in favor of waiting on the generosities of the Muse. I’m sure she’s just busy, she’ll get back to me as soon she gets back into town.

If nothing else, I’ve participated in an April poetry marathon, that every year since roughly 2012 if memory serves. Hopefully, that will yield new work, perhaps even a new collection. Most of Separation Tango came from a previous marathon. In the interim, I will focus my energies on the Limestone Dust Poetry Festival 2.0.

BS: Thanks again for your time, Allen. Best of luck with your poetry and your work with the Alabama Poetry Delegation!

AB: It was my pleasure, thank you for you interest in my work and all the work you and the AWC do for writers here in our great state.

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Allen Berry was born and raised in Alabama, and is a 2013 Ph.D. graduate of the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. In 2001, he founded the Limestone Dust Poetry Festival in Huntsville, Alabama, and served as its director until 2009. His work has appeared in The Birmingham Arts Journal, What Remembers Us: An Anthology of Alabama Poetry, The American Muse Magazine and The Quint Magazine (Manitoba, Canada) additionally, he is a regular contributor to the Sundial Writer’s Corner on WLRH-FM. Dr. Berry teaches Composition, Literature, and occasionally Creative Writing at Calhoun Community College in Huntsville, Alabama. He is the author of four collections of poetry: Travel for Agoraphobics, Distractions and Illusions, Sitting up with the Dead and Separation Tango.

The Alabama Writers’ Cooperative will be presenting online workshops –“Freelancing Your Way to a Paycheck” and “How to Avoid the Slushpile and Land an Agent” by Karim Shamsi-Basha via Zoom on March 25 from 10 a.m. till noon. 

Since its inception in 1923, at what is currently the University of Montevallo,  the A.W.C. has worked to foster, inspire and promote all types of writing in Alabama. This will be the first of a series of events to celebrate the organization’s 100th. The events will culminate with an in-person conference Sept. 8-10 at the O’Neal Library in Mountain Brook, AL, outside Birmingham.

The upcoming freelance class will provide insights on how to write better story pitches as a freelancer and explore different markets for content. The class will be hosted by Karim Shamsi-Basha, who works as a freelance journalist, photographer, and author. 

Basha will also teach a workshop about query letters during the Zoom session. He’ll share the query letter that helped him get his agent, and talk about the elements that grab agents’ attention, he said.

In 2021, “The Cat Man of Aleppo” was awarded a Caldecott Honor as one of the top childrens’ books of that year – Basha co-authored it with Irene Latham, and illustrations were created by Yuko Shimizu. Basha referred to the book as “as one of my all-time greatest achievements.” 

His freelance work has appeared in a wide variety of publications from “Sports Illustrated” to the “Washington Post.”

Basha, who immigrated to the U.S. from Syria in 1984, writes full-time as the culture and food columnist for NJ.com and “The Star Ledger” out of New Jersey. The freelance portion will explore “effectively pitching magazines, publications and websites,” he said. 

A.W.C. President Jessica Langston said this workshop “should give prospective freelancers some valuable insights to help them in their pursuit of landing writing jobs. It will also help the many writers out there who are hoping to secure agents to get their manuscripts published. We are very pleased to have Karim offering his wealth of knowledge and expertise on both these subjects.”

The workshops will be held on Saturday, March 25 from 10 a.m. to noon. The Zoom session is free, but A.W.C. membership is required. The fee for annual membership is $25. Visit alabamawriterscooperative.org to become a member, and to register for the workshops. For additional information regarding Saturday’s events, please email Langston at  jjsayspoetryplz@gmail.com.

Details:

Karim Shamsi-Basha is leading this workshop about freelancing on March 25, from 10:00 AM - Noon. The event is free for all AWC members.

How to Register:

If you would like to register to attend, please complete the Google Form registration below. You will be emailed login credentials at the email address you provide during registration.

In my stories, there’s going to be something strange going on. It’s kind of my thing, I guess. My first collection was even billed that way–Those Fantastic Lives: And Other Strange Stories. One of my stories might introduce readers to a sneaky monster. Another might be set around a haunted house. The next one might occur during an apocalypse. One of the questions I’m most often asked as a writer of what can best be described as “Weird Fiction” is this: “Why do you write about such weird stuff?”

I try my best to answer as intelligently as I can, but my response essentially boils down to something pretty simple. I write about weird stuff because, to me, exploring the fantastical is the way that I best make sense of the real world.

My stories, like I’ve said, might include an otherworldly creature or revolve around a pretty-far-out-there event, but the stories aren’t necessarily about either of these things–not really, at least. Instead, my stories are about fear, loss, hope, and even love. For me, the weird is a vehicle to reach the emotional core I’m really going for. 

Earlier, I mentioned that I might write an apocalyptic story. I’ve actually written a lot of these kinds of stories. The one I’ll talk about is titled “To Take, To Leave,” which appeared in the Winter 2022 issue of Psychopomp. 

I formatted “To Take, To Leave” as a gameplay-style story. It follows an adult having to decide between letting someone die or allowing the apocalypse to begin. The gameplay element builds on the theme of choice because readers literally have to decide what will happen, but the fantastical elements also allow the story to build layer upon layer of choice. There is fire to possibly escape. There are things to save. There are lost people–and places and memories–that must be considered. There is the arrival of a child, falling from the sky, who breathes even more fire. The kid is dangerous and kind of scary, but do you risk it all to save this child? There’s also the obvious other layer of the literal apocalypse happening—and happening quickly. Readers have to make the choices rapidly or they know what’ll come. Really, the world is in their hands.

Going through “To Take, To Leave,” there are choices to make everywhere–both for the protagonist and for the reader. Without the magic–or terror, which might be a better word for what’s going on–the story wouldn’t land in quite the same way. The whole would lose its spark. 

When I teach writing, I encourage my students to journey into the unknown–to think of a theme they want to write about and to allow some element of the fantastical to help them reach their destination. 

How might a monster enrich a narrative?

What can the arrival of a ghost do?

Does introducing an apocalypse add a needed layer to your work?

Give it a try. Take risks. Mostly, have some fun. Honestly, at the end of day, writing Weird Fiction is just really, really fun…

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Bradley Sides is the author of Those Fantastic Lives: And Other Strange Stories. His recent fiction appears at BULL, Ghost Parachute, Psychopomp, and Superstition Review. He lives in Huntsville, Alabama, with his wife. On most days, he can be found teaching writing at Calhoun Community College. For more, visit bradley-sides.com.

The 2023 Mobile Literary Festival will take place on Saturday, March 11 from 9 AM - 4:30 PM at the Ben May Main Library. Admission to the event is free. Those in attendance can expect a great slate of presentations, with topics covered ranging from writing memoir and nonfiction to even engaging in a “pitch war.” Mobile’s own The Haunted Book Shop will have a pop up shop onsite for the duration of the Festival.

For more information, please check out the 2023 Mobile Literary Festival’s Facebook page.

Kathleen Thompson is the author, most recently, of A Tale of Three Women. It was a pleasure to be able to talk with Kathleen about her award-winning fiction, her MFA days, and, of course, her novella.

Bradley Sides: Thank you, Kathleen, for taking the time to answer a few questions for us over at the AWC. I want to begin by talking about your participation in our most recent Contests. You were one of the winners in the “First Chapter of Novel” category. 

For our readers who haven’t yet picked up a copy of the 2022 Awarded Writers’ Collection, which features your award-winning “Blame it on the Moon,” do you mind telling us what this opening chapter is about? 

Kathleen Thompson: This first chapter sets a detailed scene of a day in the life of a sharecropper family in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, in the 1950’s. Few readers will recognize such a scene, except perhaps from an old movie; however, the heart-stopping incident of a runaway mule hitched up to a wagonload of dried corn and all the consequences that such an incident might portend probably will not be lost on any reader. Pulling corn, picking cotton, reading by the light of a kerosene lamp—all paint a rather dark life for a fourteen year old and a family whose only means of transportation is a mule-drawn wagon and their water source, a well in the ground. Katie Lou Taylor wishes the Taylors weren’t so different. She wishes on the wings of a redbird, on the length of a pulley bone, on the half moon—whether the sickle moon is catching water, or pouring it out. What she really wishes is that the Taylors and their old sayings did not stick out like a sore toe.

BS: And the longer novel. You told me you’ve finished it, right? 

KT: Yes, the novel is finished. For now anyway. (I’m not so naive after earning an MFA in writing.  Anything sent to a publisher has to be edited. ONE. MORE. TIME.)

Even after all these years I have nearly finished an edit which would classify it as a coming of age novel for marketing purposes, and not just a young adult.

The initial story has a beard. I drafted it whole cloth after my first meeting with the Prattville Creative Writers in February, 1981. We had moved back to Alabama with my husband’s work after some ten years in Savannah. I had been actively dabbling in poetry and keeping a journal while teaching high school English. That first meeting set me on fire for writing. Prize-winning poetry and prose were both awarded and read. I can do this, I thought. And then I went home, immediately picked up my notebook and pen, and the story came gushing out. (BTW, that has happened only one other time. While I was earning the MFA in Writing from Spalding University, I had another story birthed whole: “Woman’s Wait.” It is published in an online magazine. Waypoints Issue 1.)

BS: You are a novelist, of course, but you are also a poet. For you, how similar are the two—novel writing and poetry writing? 

KT: (Ah-ha, she says. Very similar, but very different. It’s not for everyone. But here’s a chance to let my brevity shine.) 

My Ars Poetica, : )

Poem

A poem is writ in sweat and tears.

I write, my dears,

in sweat and tears

to quell my fears:

I will not knit.

A poem is writ in sweat and tears.

Seriously, for me the two genres are very close, so close that I could substitute the word novel for poem in my ars poetica. Poems can meander here and there and still hold together nicely if I begin with an apt image. My stories tend to be character-driven rather than plot-driven. Some days I couldn’t buy a plot. Now, a poem can happen when I’m not even looking. Sometimes it can sneak up on me unmentioned. But hardly ever whole cloth. Wherever in life there is a comparison, a metaphor, or just a simile, a poem is not far behind. I hunger for likenesses and differences in observing nature, and in human nature.

Sometimes I think my poems are prayers.

Writing is too hard to write about just any old thing; therefore, I write only about things important to me. That doesn’t mean I write myself into every character. How boring that would be. 

I’m currently writing nonfiction as I edit fiction. Some days, I wonder if I’m writing fiction or nonfiction. Arthur Gordon once told me in an interview in Savannah that good writing is full of lies that tell the truth. I’m looking always for the truth. I use whatever genre serves me best at the moment to get certain truths.

BS: You got your MFA at Spalding. Did the program cater to both sides of your writing life? Or did you have to choose either fiction or poetry as your focus?  

KT: My thesis for the MFA was a complete collection of short stories. That followed studying one semester of  poetry, and then switching over to fiction. 

The process you inquire about was the very core and beauty of Sena Jeter Naslund’s writing program and what it offered that others didn’t: a person could try two courses of study. When Sena came to sign Ahab’s Wife at Alabama Booksmith just after 9/11,  I asked her the same question.

And my stroke of good luck continued. Sena said a poetry applicant from overseas was not coming that initial semester because of 9/11. She invited me to apply for her spot. I had already bought Ahab’s Wife at the Monroeville conference. After that first meeting with Sena, and reading her first blockbuster, and attending the first residency, I knew life had forever changed for this little sharecropper, who had owned only one book in first grade. 

When my time was up with Sena at her signing that day at Alabama Booksmith, she offered this nugget roughly quoted, “Kathleen, it doesn’t matter which writing program you choose, you will excel in whatever genre or program that is. I can tell by your enthusiasm.” Such affirmation from a literary giant!

BS: I’m going to ask a very, very broad question: To you, what is A Tale of Three Women about? 

KT: This book is about a simple case of mistaken identity and how that alters forever the lives of three women and  one man. Most importantly, this could happen to “Everyman.” 

One of life’s little ironies is that when I went to Spalding, third residency was held at The Brown Hotel. (Talk about the high life. That and the previous semester at The Seelbach.) The Brown Hotel was a part of the legacy of Louisville’s “invisible benefactor”. Another irony is the town of Brownville was Brown Wood Preserving Company, a creosote plant, a pole yard, and houses built for men who worked at the creosote plant. All four of my brothers lived in Brownville with their families at one time or another. My daddy took a job there and we moved in when I was in ninth grade. 

Imagine my shock when I opened up the desk drawer in The Brown and discovered information of the owner and builder of this beautiful hotel: James Graham Brown. This was the man who founded the creosote plant in Alabama. His very plush life was written about by local Dorothy Park Clark. (Louisville’s Invisible Benefactor. The Life of James Graham Brown.)

This is the thing: as you keep writing, somehow the work comes to you in ways that help to  embrace and layer your writing. Just now I read a paragraph which just by chance I had opened to, this “life story” and that very page mentioned Brownville and the creosote plant. (The book had been presented to my brother-in-law upon his retirement of running the crane on the pole yard and my sister passed it along to me.) 

It reads, “In 1923 the Brown Wood Preserving Plant was built at Brownville, AL. This was the original site of the logging camp which had once furnished timber to Fayette. Here telegraph poles, barn poles, fence posts, and some lumber are treated with creosote or pentachlorophenol. Brownville is a “company town”  with a commissary, a meeting hall, and many houses available to rent for employees.” 

See my point? That little factual tidbit from this book lends many directions the plot of my novella might have taken had I only been aware at the time of writing. Reality of the situation was more engaging than anything I might have imagined.

BS: Parts of you are in this novel. How did you decide how much of your own life you wanted to include in these pages?  

KT: At first, I thought nothing of what the title might suggest beyond the literal, except perhaps a “menages a trois.” That I really didn’t want! My third semester Spalding mentor thought that it was just too much to swallow for two characters to have the same name. I wrote a whole page argument about how it could and did work. (I will save you from that.) Actually, my novella was birthed from two short stories, and one was named, “A Tale of Two Women.” Also within my Spalding critical thesis were several “will/free or not?” stories based on some version of family incidents as told to me by a rather free-wheeling nephew.

Long story short: A simple case of mistaken identity in A Tale of Three Women alters forever the lives of three women and one man.

I must also include something that I learned from my mentor and friend, Helen Norris Bell when I interviewed her for my MFA Critical Thesis for Spalding. It was learned by Helen from the famous imagist poet, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle). Someone asked H.D. how she wrote her story; and she said, “I do not write the story; the story writes me.” Helen was struck by that line, even though she declared H.D.’s novel “autobiographical and not very good.” Helen said, “At some point in the story in which you are deeply involved, the story takes hold of you. It writes what it wants to write, what it needs. You are at the mercy of the tale.” 

I embrace Helen’s (and H.D.’s) theory above all. 

BS: As we close, you have a book event coming up soon. Fill us in on the details, so local folks don’t miss out. 

KT: LOCAL AUTHORS DAY: 

Meet authors and readers. 

Seeing, Selling, Signing!

Autauga Prattville Public Library

254 Doster Street

Prattville AL 36067

Phone: (334)365-3396

March 2, 2023

5-7 p.m.

BS: Thank you again, Kathleen! I’ve enjoyed talking to you. Best of luck to you and your writing, and I hope you have a great event in Prattville!

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After our interview, Kathleen was kind enough to send along some extra content to share with the AWC. Here is a publicity video that gives a little more about Kathleen and her work:

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Kathleen Thompson holds a BS from the University of Alabama and an MFA in Writing from Spalding University. A former teacher, she is still trying to determine whether she is a vagrant poet who has fallen off the straight and narrow, or a writer who loves writing lies that tell the truth, or a nonfiction writer who makes much of metaphor. Neither her four poetry books, nor numerous award-winning stories published in journals, make the matter definitive, except to say she is a writer who loves to write in all genres. Most recently her novella, A Tale of Three Women, 2020, was published by Excalibur Press, Daphne, AL.

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.  

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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!

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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.

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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. . . .

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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.

The Alabama Writing Workshop is looking for two volunteers to help with their annual event, which is scheduled for Friday, March 10 from 8:30 am to 5 pm. The typical duties are simple and include helping at the registration desk, getting people checked in and running the pitch room. 

Volunteers get the opportunity to mingle with all the agents and speakers at lunch, which will be provided for free for volunteers.

Also, each volunteer will get one 10-minute pitch with an agent of his/her choice free of charge. AWC volunteers can speak to the entire audience for up to 5 minutes, promoting the AWC if they like. 

While the Alabama Writing Workshop only needs two volunteers, other members who want to attend get a discounted rate of $50 off registration.

For more information about volunteering, please reach out to Brian at 513-675-6538. And if you are interested in learning more about the 2023 Alabama Writing Workshop, please visit the website.

I think most of us wanna-be writers are - or were - readers.  It’s possible those of us who haven’t had as much publishing success as we would have liked have tried too hard to emulate “real” writers.  This tendency can leave your writing bereft of the value of the unique sights and sounds of the places where you were raised.  I want to remedy that effect in future offerings. 

Had I given more thought to this thesis earlier on, I would have more greatly appreciated the fact that Faulkner, Capote, Wolfe, and other wonderful writers were, like me, southerners.  The rural South was my stomping ground before I could stomp, and, although I got citified at the age of four or so, the rhythms of the South have stayed with me throughout the years, years in which I moved from backwoods Alabama to Baltimore, Maryland; Battle Creek, Michigan; and Atlanta, Georgia, all the while traveling farther afield to many other places, for both work and pleasure.

Add to the fact of various and sundry locales I have frequented that my mother had a Scottish brogue and a storehouse of lore and expressions that were not common even on the farms and in the mining camps where I grew up. And, to top it all off, six years after the death of my first husband, I married a New England Yankee who could “pahk his cah” with the best of ‘em.

At the time of my marriage to the Yankee, we were both 65 years old and I was writing “legally defensible decisions” for U.S. Administrative Law Judges, but my writing experience had begun while I was in high school. I wrote book reviews for J. R. Rothermel, then the book review editor for The Birmingham News, having been introduced to him by one of my English teachers. The News also accepted a feature or two from me, one concerning the wind that blew down a section of the brick wall that comprised Legion Field Stadium.  

Since my legal writing days, I have made a stab or two at creative writing, but have found myself somewhat stymied by the long experience of having to make only statements that could establish or qualify as findings of fact. Now that’ll throw a cog in your works right off. My idea of a solution to my problem is prospective because it has yet to succeed, but what I think Ima gonna do is write like I heard folks talk ‘way back when.

I have to start by lickin’ my calf - in other words, going back over past efforts at writing publishable material - I mean written thangs - and making those thangs say what they said to me when I thought about writing about them. If my mother saw some of my submissions following my retirement as a paralegal writer, she would say I had done s..t and fell back in it.  And if I dared disagree with her, she would order me to “quile in,” which I think means “coil in,” like a threatening snake, you see. My Yankee taught me things like “bubbler,” rather than water fountain and “common” rather than park. Besides he was a big union man as a mechanic and I was eventually in what we liked to call management in the government. Thus did sparks and colorful vocabulary fly in many of our conversations.

I promise I’m not going to spew forth an enormous bunch of stuff written in dialect, but I am going to do some practice pieces that I think will have the effect of lightening me up, so to speak.  Goodbye, legally defensible, hello, entertaining stuff (I hope).

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Alice Burns’ Bio:

I was born just after the Great Depression in Oneonta, AL, 9th child of a tenant farmer/mine foreman.  Our family moved to Birmingham when I was four so that the older children could get jobs in the booming steel mills.  I had wonderful teachers at Ensley High School who told me I had talent and encouraged me in many ways.  A 41-year career with the Federal Government eventually took me to a job writing decisions for U. S. Administrative Law Judges.  Because I was writing alongside attorneys, I thought I should at least get a college degree, which I did at the age of 49.  I then was promoted to a position in management, from which I retired in 1997.  

When I began writing in 2019, I read books and websites to learn how to get published. Some avenues to publication are easier than others. Genre publishers, for instance, have a voracious appetite for content (remain calm, genre authors—I said some avenues are easier, not easy). I write literary fiction and humorous essays. The competition for those forms is very stiff. I figured it would take years to get my work into print. I joined a local writers’ group and began working hard.

While I enjoyed the work, I craved immediate gratification. I wanted Ink. So I did what many citizens and also crackpots do: I started sending letters to my local newspaper. I had quick and repeated success. As good as that felt, I knew that this was a small paper with just a few subscribers, and that rising to the top of their slush pile was not going to win me a Pulitzer. Most letters don’t make you think, “Now there’s a writer!” Very few letter-writers are scratching a creative itch. For most, promoting their idea or agenda comes first and their letter is just how they plop it out there. Still, when you have zero publishing credits to your name, seeing a few letters in print is very encouraging.

After about a year of working locally, I went from writing letters to one local paper, then to the statewide paper, and I was eventually published in papers in all 50 states and most of the US territories. I set out simply to get published, but along the way I received a practical education in studying different markets, studying individual publications and their editors, being creative and resourceful, following guidelines, and doing what works as opposed to what you think should work. You can get all of that from how-to books, but I absorbed those lessons in a much more meaningful way by actually engaging with many papers, getting a pile of silent rejections (they don’t tell you they’re not going to run your letter—they just don’t run it), and eventually building up a pile of clippings. I got the Ink, and so much more.

You can do all of this by writing for contests and literary journals and magazines, but newspaper letters are a nice, short form (flash fiction alert: many papers have a 200-word limit), the feedback is quicker, and given the number of papers in the country the need for content is vast. You can turn all of local print media into your own writer’s sandbox in which you can practice many elements of writing craft, with a low bar between you and publication.

If you would like to try writing letters to newspapers, or you want to see how I did it and the resulting published letters, read my blog posts about my journey.

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Christopher Jay Jones is a retired computer programmer who lives and writes in Anniston, Alabama. He has been published in two Alabama Writers' Cooperative collections as well as the Bridge Bulletin magazine, and has a story coming out soon in The Birmingham Arts Journal. He also blogs a bit to indulge his tendency to overthink things, in an attempt to keep his short stories under 10,000 words. Look for "Christopher Jay Jones" and "Column Inches by Chris" and "Bridge, Out Ahead" on Substack.