Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 9
September 16, 2025
A Writer's Moment: 'A word appears . . . then another'
'A word appears . . . then another'
“My job as a human being as well asa writer is to feel as thoroughly as possible the experience that I am part of,and then press it a little further.” – JaneHirshfield
Born in New York City in 1953, poet,essayist, and translator Hirshfield was a member of the first class of women tograduate from Princeton University in 1973.
Her 14 books of poetry – often referredto as “sensuous, insightful and clear” – have received numerous awards, led by GivenSugar, Given Salt, named as a finalist for the National Book Critics CircleAward, and After, shortlisted for the United Kingdom’s prestigiousT.S. Eliot Prize. Her most recent book is2023’s The Asking: New and SelectedPoems.
”When I write, I don't know what isgoing to emerge,” she said. “I begin ina condition of complete unknowing, an utter nakedness of concept or goal. Aword appears, another word appears, an image. It is a moving into mystery.”
September 15, 2025
A Writer's Moment: 'It's a scaffolding for the imagination'
'It's a scaffolding for the imagination'
“The thing that most attracts me tohistorical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, usingthat as scaffolding, and then letting imagination build the structure thatfills in those things we can never find out for sure.” – GeraldineBrooks
Born in Australia on Sept. 14, 1955 Brooks started her writing career as a journalist, firsttrying her hand in creative writing in 2001 with the novel Year ofWonders. Set in 1666, themultiple-award winning bestseller is the story of a young woman’s battle tosave fellow villagers when the bubonic plague suddenly strikes. Immediatelydispelling any “one-hit wonder” talk, she followed it up with March,winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
March isinspired by her fondness for Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, whichher mother had given her as a child and leading Brooks to create a fictional chronicleof wartime service for the "absent father" of the March girls.
In the process, she also developed anewfound respect for religion. “You can't write about the past andignore religion,” she said. “It was such a fundamental,mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested inwhat religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatredand violence.”
Her most recent books are Horse,out in 2022, and the just-released nonfiction work Memorial Days: A Memoir.
She encourages all who are interested in history not to fear writing historicalfiction. “There's just so many great stories in the past that you can knowa little bit about, but you can't know it all,” she said. “Andthat's where your imagination can go to work.”
September 13, 2025
'It's where language starts'
“Poetry begins where languagestarts: in the shadows and accidents of one person's life.” –Eavan Boland
Born in Dublin, Ireland in Septemberof 1944, Boland was a multiple award-winning poet who had the rare distinctionof being inducted into both the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and theRoyal Irish Academy. Her best-known collections are The LostLand; A Woman Without A Country; and The Historians, releasedjust at the time of her death in April of 2020 (later that year it won theprestigious Costa Book Award). ForSaturday’s Poem, here is Boland’s,
This Moment
A neighbourhood.
At dusk.
Things are getting ready
to happen
out of sight.
Stars and moths.
And rinds slanting around fruit.
But not yet.
One tree is black.
One window is yellow as butter.
A woman leans down to catch a child
who has run into her arms
this moment.
Stars rise.
Moths flutter.
Apples sweeten in the dark.
A Writer's Moment: 'It's where language starts'
September 12, 2025
A Writer's Moment: Writing 'the hard, unromantic truth'
Writing 'the hard, unromantic truth'
"The realist . . . is really anoptimist, a dreamer. He sees life in terms of what it might be, as well as interms of what it is; but he writes of what is and, at his best, suggests whatis to be, by contrast." – Hamlin Garland
Born on a Wisconsin farm on Sept.14, 1860, Garland was named Hannibal Hamlin after Abraham Lincoln’s vicepresidential running mate (his parents were devotees of the new Republicanparty), but never much liked the name Hannibal and went byHamlin most of his life.
Novelist, poet, essayist and shortstory writer, Garland is best known for his tales about hard-working Midwesternfarmers – a reflection of his “growing up days” in Wisconsin, Iowa and theDakota Territory. His first success was a book of shortstories Main-Travelled Roads, inspired by his days on the farm. Hethen serialized a biography of Ulysses S. Grant in McClure's Magazine,publishing it as a book in 1898. Thatsame year he traveled to the Yukon to witness the Klondike Gold Rush, inspiringhis first bestseller The Trail of the Gold Seekers.
A prolific writer in many genres, itwas his work as a memoirist that brought him the most acclaim, beginning withhis autobiography A Son of the Middle Border. He followed that with his PulitzerPrize-winning sequel A Daughter of the Middle Border, then a numberof memoirs about farm life, the people, and the harsh land they strove to tame –cementing both his place in writing credentials and a chronicle of the time andplace.
“They are,” he said of his tales, “storiesof the hard, unromantic truth of pioneer life on the plains.”
September 11, 2025
'The most lovely thing of all'
“I used to feel defensive whenpeople would say, 'Yes, but your books have happy endings', as if that madethem worthless, or unrealistic. Some people do get happy endings, even if it'sonly for a while. I would rather never be published again than write a downbeatending.” – Marian Keyes
Born in Limerick, Ireland on Sept.10, 1963 Keyes is winner of The Irish Book Awards for several of her works, both novels and non-fiction. And, she is an award-winning BBC radio personality on Now You'reAsking, co-hosted with Tara Flynn.
Hernovels have sold over 35 million copies and been translated into 33 languages. Among the best known are Watermelon, LucySullivan Is Getting Married and This Charming Man, while hermost recent are Again, Rachel and 2024’s My Favourite Mistake.
Keyes started as a short story writer and while suffering from alcoholism. After successful treatment for the disease, she wrote her award-winning novel Watermelon. She alsohas written frankly about clinical depression, which left her unable to sleep,read, write, or talk. After a long hiatus due to severe depression,she wrote another bestseller Saved by Cake based on the experience.
“Writing about feeling disconnectedhas enabled me to connect,” she said, “and that has been the most lovely thingof all.”
