Key West Literary Seminar: February 2008 Archives

Silas House reads from his in-progress novel, Yvonna Darling, "about a woman who kidnaps her own child after custody is unfairly taken away from her." Ominously full of the slow summer sounds of cicadas, willow trees, and the song of a whippoorwill, this desperate passage is brought to vivid life by House's rich, Appalachian baritone. (12:03)

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As KWLS Board Member Bob Richardson says in his introduction, Maggie Nelson is "intimately acquainted with the night". Nelson reads from and discusses her books "Jane: A Murder" and "The Red Parts: A Memoir". Both concern Jane, who was Nelson's mother's younger sister. Jane was murdered shortly before Nelson's birth, and the books are harrowing explorations of the circumstances surrounding her death in prose and poetry, as well as soulful imaginings of the aunt she never met.

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In a seminar devoted to New Voices, an interesting perspective was that of Daniel Menaker, who for many years was a fiction editor at The New Yorker. His job was to find those new voices. He spoke warmly and knowledgeably about the challenge for fiction writers: "You must create an appetite for your writing in people who had no idea that they were hungry for it," he said. "And to do that, there must be something new and different in your voice." In this talk from the 2008 seminar, he spoke about how he recognized talented new writers, using as examples some early stories from now-established writers like George Saunders ("old new voices," he called them). Menaker discusses the craft and the art of these stories in a talk that is technical but highly accessible.

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NEW VOICES SPECIAL: Vestal McIntyre read at the 2008 Seminar from his collection of short stories, "You Are Not The One". In "ONJ.com" a woman is delighted with her new sophisticated and witty gay friend, but during a night of progressive party-crashing it becomes clear that he is not as wonderful as she had initially thought.

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Lee Smith gave the annual John Hersey Memorial Address to open the second session of the 2008 Seminar. In a talk that was both extremely funny and unexpectedly moving, Smith recounted her development as a writer when, as a young girl, she would write herself into Nancy Drew and Bobsie Twins adventures. Smith talks about how, after her initial obligatory autobiographical efforts, she discovered that she could find her voice though the creation of the wide variety of characters that she would imagine and create. Smith goes on to talk about the consolation and the re-birth that writing offered in the aftermath of terrible personal loss. Lee's subtle balancing of humor and pain, leavened by her warmth and her sturdy, both-feet-on-the-ground sensibility, is truly affecting--this one kicked off the session with a lot of energy and soul.

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As a bonus track, we went back to Lee’s talk from the 2005 Seminar on Humor. Smith’s tale of her high school English class re-enactment of Huckleberry Finn and Jim’s journey down the Mississippi (in a raft of their own construction which they built in a lumber yard in Paduka, Kentucky) and became outlaws, folk heroes and local media celebrities is astonishing, absurd, inspiring and altogether delightful.

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