2011 Memphis Creative Nonfiction Workshop

>Happy Mother’s Day

Susan Cushman — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:17:00 +0000

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I’m about to hit the road to visit my mother in Jackson (Mississippi). I’m taking a Mother’s Day card and some peanut M & M’s. That’s it. I took her some new clothes recently, and she no longer reads, so it’s hard to find gifts that she will enjoy, especially as her Alzheimer’s progresses. She mainly enjoy sitting on the patio at Lakeland Nursing Home and watching the birds and talking about the flowers, so that’s what we’ll do today. And maybe I’ll take her a handful of wild flowers. She was an artist at arranging flowers for most of her life. (That’s me with Mom, circa 1954.)

I just found this post from two years ago, “Guilt-Free Mother’s Day,” which you might enjoy if you didn’t see it.

How fun it is to imagine my daughter celebrating her first Mother’s Day on Sunday, when Gabrielle Sophia will be almost 3 weeks old. I thought of her yesterday when I read this quote:

“Making the decision to have a child—it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” – Elizabeth Stone

This is true whether your child is “home hatched,” as my friend, Nancy Mardis says, or adopted, like my three children. Holding Gabby every day during the first two weeks of her life felt a lot like holding Beth when she first arrived from South Korea… except that she was almost three. But like Stone says, there goes your heart….

Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers, and have a great weekend.

>Circling Faith Event July 12 at Burke’s Books!

Susan Cushman — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:39:00 +0000

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CIRCLING FAITH: Southern Women on Spirituality(2012, University of Alabama Press, editors Jennifer Horne and Wendy Reed) is a collection of essays by 20 Southern authors (including Mary Karr and Alice Walker) that encompasses spirituality and the experience of winding through the religiously charged environment of the American South. Three of those women—two Memphians and one from Oxford—will be reading from their essays at Burke’s Books in Cooper Young at 5 p.m. on July 12. Come and enjoy a glass of wine and enjoy readings by all three authors, who will be available to inscribe a copy of this anthology for you or as a gift for someone else.

MARILOU AWIAKTA is a poet, storyteller, and essayist who weaves her Cherokee and Appalachian heritages with science in her books, Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountain and Atom Meet (poetry) and Rising Fawn and the Fire Mystery(novella). Her nonfiction book, Selu: Seeking the Corn Mother’s Wisdom, has been widely studied in colleges and universities. Her life and work are profiled in the Oxford American Companion to Women’s Writing in the U.S. Marilou lives in midtown Memphis.

SUSAN CUSHMAN’s essays have been published in First Things: The Journal of Religion, Culture and Public Life, the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Journal, the Saint Katherine Review, and other publications. She was co-director of the 2010 Oxford Creative Nonfiction Conference, Director of the 2011 Memphis Creative Nonfiction Workshop, and a panelist at the 2009 Southern Women Writers Conference (Berry College, Rome, GA). Susan lives in Harbor Town, where she is currently finishing her first novel.

BETH ANN FENNELLY directs the MFA program at Ole Miss and lives in Oxford with her husband, Tom Franklin (author of New York Times best-selling novel,Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter), and their three children. She has published three full-length poetry books and a book of nonfiction, Great with Child. Her work has three times been included in the Best American Poetry series. As a contributing editor to The Oxford American, she frequently writes essays on Southern food, music and books.

If you can’t make it to the event, just call Burke’s at 901-278-7484 and order an autographed copy to pick up after July 12.

(P.S. I’m having problems with the new Blogger… can’t move pictures around and control the layout… will be changing to WordPress eventually… sorry if it looks messy.)

Circling Faith Event July 12 at Burke’s Books!

Susan Cushman — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:39:00 +0000

>Southern Sin

Susan Cushman — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:44:00 +0000

The Creative Nonfiction Journal is holding a contest for their spring 2013 issue, “Southern Sin.” I’ve been thinking about it for months now, but haven’t been able to put pen to paper. Not sure why… growing up in Mississippi in the ‘50s and ‘60s where almost everyone’s family seemed to be “dysfunctional,” and then being part of a cult-like religious group in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I certainly know enough about sin—my own and others’—to write this essay. (And I’ve got two book-length memoirs on a shelf that I haven’t been ready to publish.) The first short story I wrote as an adult, shortly after moving to Memphis in the late 1980s, was called, “Southern Sinners and Shakespeare.”

When I was nine years old, I answered all 107 questions in the Westminster Shorter Catechism by heart when asked by the Session (elders) at Covenant Presbyterian Church in order to become a communing member. Number 14 is forever etched onto my soul:

Q. What is sin?

A. Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.

As Flannery O’Connor says:

“The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable character. Drama usually bases itself on the bedrock of original sin, whether the writer thinks in theological terms or not. The Christian novelist is distinguished from his pagan colleagues by recognizing sin as sin.” (Mystery and Manners)

The deadline has been moved from May 31 to July 31, so maybe I’ll make a stab at it. If you’re interested in submitting an essay, rules and details are here.

Southern Sin

Susan Cushman — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:44:00 +0000

>Bucket List and Then Some (Leaving Denver)

Susan Cushman — Sat, 05 May 2012 00:27:00 +0000

One month ago today I posted my “Denver Bucket List” where I described 9 things I wanted to do while visiting Denver. As I pack to leave tomorrow, it’s fun to look back and see that I not only did all 9 things on the list (and several of them many times) but I added a few more during my 5-week stay, including speaking/reading at the Boulder Writers Workshop’s monthly Literary Salon on April 21.

But mostly I loved hanging out with my kids and grandkids. It was such a joy to be here long enough for Grace and Anna to scream excitedly, “SuSu’s here!” each time I visited them, and to allow me to stay with them several afternoons while their folks were at work. And to be with my daughter during the birth of her first daughter, Gabby, on April 23. And then to have 10 days to bond with her before flying home to Memphis tomorrow. I’m sure there will be tears shed tomorrow morning when I leave.

So, tomorrow I return to my busy life in Memphis, where I look forward to working with a web designer on my first web site, meeting with a freelance editor and doing final revisions on my novel before querying agents, driving to Jackson to visit Mom, and, two weeks from today, flying to New York City with my husband for the annual American Society of Hypertension Meeting. Thanks for reading and helping me feel in touch even while away from home for so long. Have a great weekend, everyone.

Bucket List and Then Some (Leaving Denver)

Susan Cushman — Sat, 05 May 2012 00:27:00 +0000

>Authors’ Notes and Historical Accuracy in Fiction

Susan Cushman — Wed, 02 May 2012 08:05:00 +0000

My recently completed novel manuscript, Cherry Bomb, was inspired somewhat by Michael Cunningham’s 1998 Pulitzer-Prize-Winning book, The Hours. I’m fascinated by the way he weaves the lives of three women—one historical and two fictional—from three time periods and geographic locations into a brilliant story line.

In 2005 Cunningham published Specimen Days, in which the main characters find themselves in three different sub-plots in the past, present and future. Here’s an interesting interview where Cunningham discusses his reasons for using this unique structure.

I picked up a copy of Specimen Days at The Tattered Coverbook store in downtown Denver a few weeks ago, and I was interested to see an Author’s Note in the front of the novel. Cunningham uses the note to explain a bit about the book’s structure and historical foundation to the reader, including these words:

“Biographers and historians may be required to account for all those missed trains, canceled engagements, and long periods of lassitude; the fiction writer is not necessarily so constrained. Novelists must usually decide what degree of slavish accuracy would make their stories more alive, and what degree would make them less.”

This is so helpful to me as I’m about to begin my final round of revisions of my novel. I’ve struggled with questions of historical accuracy as I’ve fictionalized the lives of several historic people and intertwined them with totally fictitious characters. I’ve done a good bit of research to make each scene believable—whether it’s about a 1980s MTV video of Blondie and Fab 5 Freddy, graffiti writers, or the life of a fourth century prostitute in Alexandria, Egypt.

As Cunningham continues in his Author’s Note for Specimen Days, “It’s semi-accurate. To the best of my ability, I’ve been true to historic particulars in the scenes I’ve set in the past. But it would be a mistake on the reader’s part to accept any of it as literal fact. I’ve taken especial liberty with chronology and have juxtaposed events, people, buildings, and monuments that may in fact have been separated by twenty years or more.”

I’m wondering why Cunningham found it necessary to write this Author’s Note for Specimen Days. He wrote no such note for The Hours. Shouldn’t our writing be clear enough without us having to explain it on the front end? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing him (he won the Pulitzer, remember?) but rather wondering whether my novel should also have an Author’s Note at the beginning….

Authors’ Notes and Historical Accuracy in Fiction

Susan Cushman — Wed, 02 May 2012 08:05:00 +0000

>”The Geography of Consolation” by Alexis Paige

Susan Cushman — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:02:00 +0000

Alexis Paige, who attended the 2011 Memphis Creative Nonfiction Workshop last September and blew us all away with her talent, has published one of the best essays I’ve read in a long time. Get a cup of coffee and hold onto your seats for this one:

“The Geography of Consolation” in the May/June issue of Ragazine.

This is how you do it.

This is how you write creative nonfiction.

So if you want a short course in the genre, or if you want to be inspired, moved, awed, or humbled, read this essay. I had all sorts of responses to it, but I have to admit that my overriding thought on her essay was, “I wish I could write like this.”