Western Book Roundup

University of Idaho Student’s Poem to Run in the New Yorker

Raise your hand if you’ve ever taken a creative writing class.  Keep your hand raised if you ever wrote a poem while in class that ended up being published in the New Yorker. Everyone’s hands should have gone down now except for that of one very talented University of Idaho MFA poetry student, Ciara Shuttleworth.

Robert Wrigley recently asked his MFA poetry students to study sestinas, which, according to Wikipedia, are “highly structured poem(s) consisting of six six-line stanzas followed by a tercet (called its envoy or tornada), for a total of thirty-nine lines.” Sounds complicated, but Ms. Shuttleworth and probably Eminem can do it.

Wrigley assigned his class to read a sestina by Lloyd Schwartz that consisted of only six words repeated in different patterns. After the class moved on to another poem, Shuttleworth wrote her own sestina, which also uses six words repeated seven times each.  She revised her poem, sent it into the New Yorker, and the editors accepted it for publication this fall. 

I am curious to read it, so I’ll look out for it and let everybody know when it turns up in the magazine.

• Benjamin Percy recently announced on Twitter that Iowa State’s MFA program in Creative Writing and the Environment just hired Rick Bass as affiliate faculty.  Percy, who also teaches at Iowa State, reported, “He’ll visit each year, serve as thesis advisor, and host students in Yaak.”

Also in the Roundup: The Tattered Cover in the news, how to read New West’s book page on your Kindle, and the new issue of Alaska Quarterly Review features some western writers.

New West Book Review

“God, Seed” Celebrates Nature and Laments Environmental Degradation

God, Seed:  Poetry & Art About the Natural World
By Rebecca Foust and Lorna Stevens
Tebot Bach Press, 85 pages, $20.00

God, Seed sings the delights of nature, from lovers in “the cricket-sung, grass-sweet dark” to “sunlight/churned by the bees,” and eating fruit, “where sun/has lain, juicy/with rain.” Rebecca Foust’s language is sensual and sound-rich—the words almost have texture in the mouth, like persimmons “with rich river pudding, plush and pulp/soft-slide swallow delight/and sweet, sweet.” Many of the poems are paired with Lorna Stevens’ images (twenty-nine, in a range of media). Like the poems, her images are vivid and precise.  They don’t so much illustrate the poems as complement them.

Western Book Roundup

Craig Childs’ “Finders Keepers” Hits Stores, and Childs Hits the Lit Fest Trail

Maria’s Bookshop in Durango, Colo. is gearing up to sponsor a number of literary events this fall.  First is the intriguingly titled writers’ workshop, “Back to the Loincloth: Hunting & Gathering Sustenance Through the Art of Story,” to be held on Saturday, September 18 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.  Craig Childs and Amy Irvine will lead the workshop, and as anyone who has seen these two writers speak will know, you won’t need to rely on coffee to stay awake.  They are as passionate about their subjects—the West, its wilderness, and its people—as it’s possible to be.  The workshop’s website describes it in this way:

“A good story is hard to find; both brutish stalking and careful harvesting skills are required.  And then there’s the challenge of transmission—the successful telling that conjures ancient archetypes while inspiring meaningful metaphors. Join award-winning Western writers Craig Childs and Amy Irvine for a day dedicated to seeking out the stories that both stir the soul and appease the appetite.”

Also in the Roundup: The Durango Public Library Literary Festival and the Moab Confluence Literary Festival.

New West Book Review

Princess, Meet Cowgirl: Two Books Offer Alternatives to Standard Princess Narrative

Do Princesses Wear Hiking Boots?
by Carmela LaVigna Coyle
Rising Moon, 32 pages, $15.95, ages 4-8

The Cowgirl Way: Hats Off to America’s Women of the West
by Holly George-Warren
Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 128 pages, $18, ages 9-12

If there’s a little girl in your life, perhaps you’ve noticed: the world has become infested with princesses.  According to Newsweek, Disney created its Princess line in 2000, packaging old princesses Belle, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, Jasmine and Ariel together and marketing them “as a team,” and since then it’s grown into a four-billion-dollar industry, producing everything from plastic dolls to wedding gowns for grown-up women.  I don’t mind the dress-up aspects of the princess philosophy, but I have to say that the literature is execrable.

A Moment to Remember, Volume 11 in the Disney Princess Storybook Library, entered my house through a birthday party gift bag brought home by my four-year-old daughter.  It stars Sleeping Beauty, better known as Aurora when she’s awake.  No specific author is credited; the story must have oozed forth from the collective brain at Disney Princess headquarters.  The plot: Aurora is frustrated because her handlers force her to plan too many fancy balls.  (I find Cinderella more relatable—being forced to scrub too many toilets, now that’s a problem I wrangle with daily.)

Western Book Roundup

Kevin Canty’s New Novel “Everything” Garners Strong Reviews

The new novel Everything, by Missoula’s Kevin Canty, who teaches in the University of Montana writing program, has been getting some great reviews.  Alan Cheuse praised it on NPR as an “understated and affecting novel about contemporary Montana life.” Vendela Vida, writing for the New York Times, admired the whole book, but particularly noted its strong ending:

“Unlike the endings to much of Canty’s previous work, the last pages are filled with hope. Yet Canty isn’t ignorant of the lives the characters still have to live, of the mistakes they still have to make. When I arrived at the end of ‘Everything,’ I, too, thought: That’s it. That’s it exactly.”

And The New Yorker enjoyed it too:

“Canty’s fourth novel chronicles a year’s worth of turmoil in the lives of five appealingly aimless Montanans…Canty’s urgent, at times impressionistic prose generates moment after moment of intense emotion, falling flat only occasionally, and his characters are self-aware enough to keep the story from sinking into melodrama. As their conflicts play out against the changing seasons of the increasingly encroached-upon Bitterroot Valley wilderness—with its larches, bluebirds, and streams full of rainbow trout—we come to share their bafflement at the passage of time.”

Okay, I’m sold.  I need to read Everything.  Hopefully I’ll review it here soon.  Kevin Canty will be at the Montana Festival of the Book from October 28 through 30.

Also in the Roundup: Rick Bass’s new novel and a report from a writing wilderness retreat with Gretel Ehrlich.

Literary Events

Book Festivals of the West

View 2010 Western Book Festivals & Conferences in a larger map
Each year readers and writers gather to celebrate the written word at book festivals, fairs, and writing conferences throughout the West. The offerings vary from those that concentrate on helping writers improve their craft, such as the Tin House workshop in Portland, to those that introduce writers to readers through panels, readings, and book signings, such as the Helena Festival of the Book.  The workshops charge a fee, but plenty of the festivals are free to attend, including the Montana Festival of the Book in Missoula and the Equality State Book Fair in Casper. 

New West Book Review

Boise Writer Explores the Power and Limits of Human Memory in “Memory Wall”

Memory Wall
By Anthony Doerr
Scribner, 243 pages, $24

Boise’s Anthony Doerr is the current Writer-in-Residence for the State of Idaho and he’s won just about every possible award for his short fiction.  It only takes a few sentences into his fascinating new collection, Memory Wall, to understand why he’s so acclaimed.  In these six stories, Doerr transports the reader from South Africa to China to Wyoming to Lithuania to Idaho in an exploration of the power and limits of human memory, an apt subject at a time when, as Nicholas Carr noted in The Shallows, many people are turning their memory functions over to the Internet. 

Doerr addresses this theme of using devices to aid with memory in the moving title novella, which tells the story of 74-year-old Alma Konachek, who lives in a suburb of Cape Town and is succumbing to dementia, her “house boy” Pheko, who cares for her and for his young son, and of the two men who are trying to mine her memories for fortune.  In this futuristic narrative, Alma, a wealthy white woman, has been fitted with a “remote stimulator”: “ports” in her head into which she can insert cartridges that play her lifetime of memories, one by one.  But Alma has deteriorated rapidly since the death of her husband, several years before the start of the story.  Pheko must do everything for her, and soon he will be dismissed so that Alma can be sent to a home, losing the income he depends on to raise his son.

Anthony Doerr will participate in Write by the River Writers’ Retreat on September 18 in Garden Valley, Idaho, and he’ll be at Wordstock in Portland, Oreg. from October 8 through 10.

Western Book Roundup

Mountains & Plains Indie Booksellers Host New Workshop for Writers

The annual Mountains & Plains Independent Book Award Trade Show includes a new component this year, a writers’ workshop called “Writers & The Independent Marketplace” on Saturday, September 25 at the Marriott Denver Tech Center.  According to the brochure: “The industry experts at this conference will prepare you to assess the publishing opportunities currently available and provide step-by-step guidelines that will help you get your book into print, into bookstores, and into the hands of readers.”

There will be sessions on pitching books to agents, “Getting Your Book Into Print,” “Getting Your Books into Our Stores,” and “Working with Our Stores to Reach your Readers.” Admission includes a ticket to the Author Banquet for Literacy, featuring Ian Frazier, Nevada Barr, and Connie Willis.  Writers can register at a discounted rate of $175 through September 1; after that the admission cost is $225.

New West Book Review

‘Trickster’ Pairs Native American Tales With Comic Book Illustrations

Trickster: Native American Tales: A Graphic Collection
Edited by Matt Dembicki
Fulcrum Books, $22.95, 232 pages

Trickster: Native American Tales: A Graphic Collection is a beautifully realized book that arose out of a good, original idea.  Comic book artist Matt Dembicki writes that he happened to find the book American Indian Trickster Tales by Alfonso Ortiz and Richard Erdoes at his local library.  “The stories were serious, funny, mischievous, naughty, allegorical.  I was hooked; I couldn’t put the book down.” Dembicki soon embarked on the task of recruiting Native American storytellers to share trickster stories with 21 different comic book artists. 

“Finding willing storytellers wasn’t that easy,” he writes.  “After all, there’s some heavy historical baggage between Native Americans and whites, and several people I approached about the project were unsure of my intentions.” Dembicki persisted, and eventually convinced a group of storytellers to collaborate with artists.  Each storyteller chose the artist he or she wanted to work with and approved the storyboards.  The results are delightful: a collection of illustrated tales that are by turns funny or sad, but are always inventive and surprising.