Sophfronia Scott's Blog: Sophfronia Scott, Author, page 24
July 9, 2018
Wide-Open Country and Romantic Dreams: An Interview with Sophfronia Scott
At Fiction Writers Review:
“We tend to think of being an artist in terms of inspiration, but we also need to know how to work”: Author Kali VanBaale chats with Sophfronia Scott about misbehaving characters, what writers can learn from Bruce Springsteen, writing across genres, and Sophfronia’s new novel, Unforgivable Love, published from William Morrow.
Go here to read the full interview.
Kali VanBaale is the author of the novels The Good Divide and The Space Between. She is the recipient of an Eric Hoffer Book Award, American Book Award, an Independent Publisher’s silver medal for fiction, and a State of Iowa major artist grant. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Midwestern Gothic, Numéro Cinq, Nowhere Magazine, The Milo Review,Northwind Literary, Poets & Writers, The Writer, and several anthologies. Kali holds an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a faculty member of the Lindenwood University MFA Creative Writing Program. She lives outside Des Moines with her family.
July 3, 2018
What Happened On June 21, 2018
What happened on June 21, 2018? A lot! And you’ll get to know so much of it thanks to a fascinating project launched by Essay Daily. The editors of the website devoted to a particular form of creative nonfiction, the essay, asked writers from all over to write about their day on a single day, June 21st. “It’s the solstice, so in theory it has more day than any other day this year, which is why we picked it,” they said. The website is publishing the results daily through the coming weeks. Already there’s been remarkable reading from Sonya Huber, Melissa Matthewson, John Proctor, Dinty W Moore, and many, many more. The range of experiences is amazing to see at once. You can read more about the project at this link. Once you start reading the missives you won’t be able to stop!
My entry ran this week. June 21 for me turned out to be a mini-odyssey of returning to Connecticut after being away for several days teaching and speaking at the Publishing in Color Conference in New Jersey at the New Brunswick Seminary. “…the rose campion flowers have bloomed in my absence. Their winking pink faces welcome me home.” Check it out by going here. I hope you’ll enjoy it and think about how many things large and small can happen on these long summer days.
June 30, 2018
‘The Write of Your Life’ Sept, 2019
via ‘The Write of Your Life’ Sept, 2019
The cat is officially out of the bag: I’m teaching a very special writers retreat in Italy next year! If you have an adventurous spirit and a desire to inject renewed energy into your writing life, consider this my personal invitation. I hope you’ll join us! All the details are here. #Grateful to my dear friend Janet Simmonds of Educated-Traveller for helping me design and arrange this dreamy voyage.
For details use the link above to access our write up at Educated-Traveller.
June 14, 2018
Discovering the Amazing Pauli Murray
For the “learn something new every day” files…
My friend, Yale lecturer Stuart Semmel
This week I connected with a college classmate, Stuart Semmel, who lives on the campus of Yale University. His wife, Professor Tina Lu, is Head of College of Pauli Murray College and he’s Associate Head as well as a senior lecturer in history and the humanities. When he first mentioned this information I had to ask, “What’s Pauli Murray College?” He replied that its one of the two new residential colleges at Yale (the other is Benjamin Franklin College) and that he’d be happy to give me a tour. By the way, a residential college is akin to the houses at Hogwarts—it’s a student’s home base for all four years of their Yale experience.
I didn’t ask, “Who’s Pauli Murray?” I should have because I didn’t know, but at that point I was distracted by thoughts of what sort of modern concrete and glass behemoth had been plopped down amid Yale’s beautiful Georgian and Gothic structures. I assumed that’s what usually happens with new construction on historic campuses.
During my visit with my classmate I was delighted to make these two discoveries:
1.) Pauli Murray College is a gorgeous gothic style stone and brick construction. Robert A.M. Stern Architects designed it. I marveled over the old world touches, especially the intricate stone work which, Stuart pointed out, features a variety of symbols and quotes meaningful to Yale and to Pauli Murray.
“I thought they didn’t build like this anymore,” I said in wonder.
Stuart explained that stonemasons had actually been brought out of retirement to help with the construction by training a new generation of builders. I was thrilled to learn this brand of magic won’t disappear from existence.
2.) I did ask, at last, “Who’s Pauli Murray?” and learned, with even more amazement, that this residential college at Yale had been named for an African American woman and a fierce one at that. But I’d never heard of her.
What I’ve learned about Pauli Murray so far is absolutely fascinating. A Salon article by Brittney Cooper refers to Murray as “the most important legal scholar you’ve likely never heard of.” That’s a compact way of describing an impressive list of Murray’s trailblazing accomplishments. Here’s how NPR.org laid them out in a 2015 story:
She was arrested in 1940 for refusing to move to the back of a bus, protesting a Virginia law requiring segregation on public transportation — 15 years before Rosa Parks’ similar protest sparked a bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala.
In 1944, Murray graduated at the top of her class from the Howard University School of Law, where she encountered gender discrimination from faculty and fellow students. It was there that she coined the term “Jane Crow” to refer to sex discrimination — the sister of Jim Crow.
Mademoiselle magazine named her “Woman of the Year” in 1947.
The NAACP, then led by Thurgood Marshall, used arguments from a law school seminar paper by Murray as part of the organization’s legal strategy in Brown v. Board of Education. He later called her book States’ Laws on Race and Color“the Bible for civil rights lawyers.”
She was appointed to President John F. Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women.
In 1965, Murray became the first African-American to receive a J.S.D. degree from Yale Law School. She wrote scholarly works such as “Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII” and “Roots of the Racial Crisis: Prologue to Policy,” both of which provided incredible insight into the pressing civil rights issues of the time. Following law school, she served as council for civil rights cases, working to challenge discrimination via the court system. [This information comes from Yale’s website.]
She co-founded the National Organization for Women in 1966.
She was the first African-American woman to be ordained a priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1977.
She received an honorary degree from the Yale Divinity School in 1979. [This information comes from Yale’s website.]
In 2012 she was welcomed into Episcopal sainthood, more than 25 years after her death.
The article adds, “A black feminist lesbian who ‘favored a masculine-of-center gender performance during her 20s and 30s,’ she dedicated her work to challenging preconceived notions of race, gender, sexuality and religion.”
You can see symbols reflecting this aspect of Murray in this Yale stonework (right) that also features an incredibly true and beautiful line from one of her poems: “Hope is a song in a weary throat.”
I say this is what I’ve know so far because I plan to keep reading about Murray and I hope you’ll want to do so too. Here are a few links. Enjoy and keep learning!
Articles
An American Credo, an essay by Pauli Murray.
The Many Lives of Pauli Murray, by Kathryn Schulz, published in The New Yorker.
Books
Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage by Pauli Murray (Liveright).
Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray by Rosalind Rosenberg (Oxford).
June 9, 2018
The Times Literary Supplement Reviews Love’s Long Line
The London-based Times Literary Supplement, published a review of Love’s Long Line, written by Jennifer Schaffer. “Sophfronia Scott’s calm confidence in her craft and her generosity with her subjects give consistent pleasure.” An excerpt from the review can be found at this link. The page includes instructions on how to subscribe to TLS to read the full review.
Brevity Reviews Love’s Long Line
Author Renée E. D’Aoust writes, “Sophfronia Scott’s collection of essays Love’s Long Line reminds us that a life lived with hope is a life full of possibility. While walking in New York City’s Central Park or visiting her emotionally absent mother in Ohio, Scott shows us what it means to find faith.”
Sophfronia Discusses Essential Fiction for The Christian Century
From The Christian Century: “We asked some of our favorite novelists and poets to tell us about three recent works of fiction that they found especially moving, helpful, challenging, or beautiful and that speak to them in a deep way.”
Sophfronia Scott says of her choices, “…three books have moved me to see anew the beauty of our world and our humanity in all our brokenness and grace-filled hope.”
Midwestern Gothic Interview with Sophfronia Scott
Midwestern Gothic staffer Marisa Frey talked with author Sophfronia Scott about her book Love’s Long Line, solitude vs. loneliness, love and faith in everyday life, and more.
Motherhood and Words Reading Featured on Mom Enough Podcast
Since 2007, author and writing teacher, Kate Hopper, has invited a select group of women writers to read from their work at her annual Motherhood & Words Reading at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Kate’s mission is, in her own words, “to highlight the amazing writing out there by women about motherhood.”
As in years past, Mom Enough is proud to bring you this year’s event, featuring: Erin O. White, writing instructor and author of Given Up for You: A Memoir of Love, Belonging and Belief; Kaethe Schwehn, recipient of a Minnesota Book Award, writing teacher and author of The Rending and the Nest, Tailings: A Memoir, and Tanka & Me; and Sophfronia Scott, former writer and editor for Time and People, author of Love’s Long Line and Unforgivable Love: A Retelling of Dangerous Liaisons and co-author of This Child of Faith. Have a cup of tea, kick back and prepare to be amazed by these talented writers and mothers.
This Child of Faith Reviewed by Evangelists for Social Action
“Sophfronia Scott and her son, Tain Gregory, have a compelling story to tell. In December 2012, Tain was a third-grader at Sandy Hook Elementary, the school that became synonymous with the tragedy of school shootings when 20 first-grade children and six adult staff members were killed at Sandy Hook in a massacre that took only moments. Tain’s friend, Ben, was among those killed, as was the school’s principal, a woman who had only months earlier warmly welcomed Tain to his new school. Sophfronia and Tain tell their story in the book This Child of Faith: Raising a Spiritual Child in a Secular World.
This was not the only loss Tain had experienced in his young life. In that same year, his aunt—Sophfronia’s sister—died from complications following surgery. His best friend’s father was killed in a traffic accident. His beloved grandmother passed away. In the midst of overwhelming grief, Tain and his mother turned to their nascent Christian faith and their religious community for comfort and support, acknowledging that while God did not cause these events, God’s presence—expressed through the love of friends, family, and the church—would carry them through.”
