Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 58

A Writer's Moment: 'Continue dreaming and believe in dreams'

A Writer's Moment: 'Continue dreaming and believe in dreams':   “We have to think big. We have to imagine big, and that's part of the problem. We're letting other people imagine and lead us down...

'Continue dreaming and believe in dreams'

 

“We have to think big. Wehave to imagine big, and that's part of the problem. We're letting other peopleimagine and lead us down what paths they want to take us. Sometimes they'revery limited in the way their ideas are constructed. We need to imagine muchmore broadly. That's the work of a writer, and more writers should look at it.” –  AlexisWright

Born in Australia on

 Nov. 25, 1950 Wright is an Indigenous writer and land rights champion forthe native Australian people. 

 

An award nominee for many of her writings, she haspublished both fiction and nonfiction and is a noted essayist as well asnovelist.  Her major nonfiction books are Take Power, ananthology on the history of the land rights movement, and Grog War onthe introduction of alcohol restrictions in her native Tennant Creekarea. 

 

But it is her fiction that has earned her top accolades. Her 2006 book Carpentaria, based on the interconnected stories of several inhabitants of the fictional town ofDesperance on Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria, won both the Miles Franklin Award (Austrailia’s premiere writing prize) and the StellaPrize, an annual award recognizing the best book by a female writer in anygenre.

 

This year, she repeated both honors for her 2023 novel Praiseworthy, a dystopian tale set in a fictional northern Australian community.  She is thefirst Australian author to win both awards twice.   

 

 “My role as a novelist is to explore ideas andimagination,” Wright said.  “Hopefully that will inspire people frommy world to continue dreaming and to believe in dreams.”

'Everyday life's inspiring moments'

 

“(I) . . . see something in everyday life that inspires me. And . . . Everyday life is where I get my inspiration.” –Kevin Henkes

Born in Wisconsin , in November, 1960 Henkes is a leading light in the Children’s Book world.  He has won numerous awards, including both a Caldecott Honor Book Award and a Geisel HonorBook Award for his book Waiting, only the secondtime in publishing history that an author won both awards for the same book.

Asan illustrator, Henkes earlier won the Caldecott Medal for Kitten'sFirst Full Moon and a Caldecott Honor for Owen.  Forhis writing he earned Newbery Medal Honor Book Awards for both Olive'sOcean and The Year of Billy Miller.   All told, he has authored and (mostly) illustrated more than 50 bestselling books.

 And in 2020, he won the Children’s LiteratureLegacy Award honoring a U.S. author or illustrator whose books have made a"significant and lasting contribution to literature for children." 

“Ilike examining the ordinary,” Henkes said, “and by doing so, one hopefullyreveals the extraordinary nature within.”

A Writer's Moment: 'Everyday life's inspiring moments'

A Writer's Moment: 'Everyday life's inspiring moments':   “(I) . . . see something in everyday life that inspires me. And . . . Everyday life is where I get my inspiration.”  – Kevin Henkes Born...

'Out of which miracles leap'

 

“Apoet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck bylightning.” –    JamesDickey

             

Born in Atlanta in 1923,Dickey was a U.S. Poet Laureate and multiple award winner for a wide range of hisworks.  Despite his success as a poet, he might be best known for histaut novel Deliverance, also a successful movie. Dickey’s first book of poems – Into the Stone and Other Poems – waspublished in 1960.  His second, Buckdancer'sChoice, earned him a National Book Award for Poetry.  

            All 331 ofhis poems can be found in The Complete Poems of James Dickey.   ForSaturday’s Poem, here is Dickey’s,

                                         AtDarien Bridge

                                  The sea here used to look
                                  As if many convicts had built it,

                                 Standing deep in their ankle chains,
                                  Ankle-deep in the water, to smite

                                  The land and break it down to salt.
                                  I was in this bog as a child

                                  When they were all working all day
                                  To drive the pilings down.

                                  I thought I saw the still sun
                                  Strike the side of a hammer in flight

                                  And from it a sea bird be born
                                  To take off over the marshes.

                                  As the gray climbs the side of my head
                                  And cuts my brain off from the world,

                                  I walk and wish mainly for birds,
                                  For the one bird no one has looked for

                                  To spring again from a flash
                                  Of metal, perhaps from the scratched

                                  Wedding band on my ring finger.
                                  Recalling the chains of their feet,

                                   I stand and look out over grasses
                                  At the bridge they built, long abandoned,

                                  Breaking down into water at last,
                                  And long, like them, for freedom

                                  Or death, or to believe again
                                  That they worked on the ocean to give it

                                  The unchanging, hopeless look
                                  Out of which all miracles leap.

 

A Writer's Moment: 'Out of which miracles leap'

A Writer's Moment: 'Out of which miracles leap':   “ A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning. ” –      James Dickey                  Born in Atla...

A Writer's Moment: 'The important work of moving the world forward'

A Writer's Moment: 'The important work of moving the world forward':   “It’s never too late to be who you might have been.”  – George Eliot    Born in England on this date in 1819, Mary Ann Evans realized ...

'The important work of moving the world forward'

 “It’s never toolate to be who you might have been.” – George Eliot

 

 Born in England on this datein 1819, Mary Ann Evans realized early in her career that if she was going tobe taken seriously as a novelist she needed to change heridentity.   While women did write under their own names duringher lifetime, she said she used a male pen name to escape the stereotype ofwomen only writing lighthearted romances. She also wished to have her fictionjudged separately from her already extensive and widely known work as an editorand critic. 

 

 So, she becameGeorge Eliot, regarded as one of the best novelists of the 19th Century,authoring such classics as Mill on the Floss and SilasMarner – known for their realism and psychologicalinsights.   Self-taught, she was the first female writerfor The Westminster Review, starting in 1850 and becoming assistanteditor in 1851.   By the time she started writing novels she waspretty much running the magazine, contributing many essays and reviews,something she continued even after her success with creative fiction.

 

“The important work ofmoving the world forward," she said, "does not have to wait to bedone by perfect men.”

'A treasure house of self-knowledge'

 

“One thing that makes artdifferent from life is that in art things have a shape... it allows us to fixour emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heartand mind and tongue and tear.” – Marilyn French

 

Born in Brooklyn on thisdate in 1929, French began her writing career in journalism while still incollege, although she hoped to become a musician andcomposer.   After marrying and having two children, she wentinto teaching for several years, earned both her Master’s and Doctorate degreesin English, and returned to writing.  While she was an essayist andsometime short story writer, her biggest impact came through her novels.

  

French's first andbest-known novel, The Women's Room, follows the details and livesof Mira and her friends in 1950s’ and 1960s’ America during the dawning andsubsequent impact of militant radical feminism.  The 1977 novel soldover 20 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 20languages.      

 

 Shortly before herdeath in 2009, she was asked what advice she might give beginning writers, andshe said to capitalize on things that might seem to get in your way, such asfear of failure.  

 

“Fear is a question,” shesaid.  “What are you afraid of and why? Our fears are a treasurehouse of self-knowledge if only we explore them.”

A Writer's Moment: 'A treasure house of self-knowledge'

A Writer's Moment: 'A treasure house of self-knowledge':   “One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the mome...