From Obscurity to Oprah: - Alabama Writers' Forum

FIRST DRAFTThe Journal of the Alabama Writers’ Forum VOL. 6, NO. 2 SUMMER 1999

MELINDA HAYNES 1

LITERARY ARTSAWARDS WINNERS 2

ALABAMA WRITERSSYMPOSIUM 3

“WRITING (&PHOTOGRAPHING)OUR STORIES” 5

From Obscurityto Oprah:Melinda Haynes & thePower of the Word

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In this issue of First Draft, wesalute a number of Alabama writ-ers who have achieved excellence.

Their age range is broad and they hailfrom every quarter of the state, andbeyond.

Works by some of the youngwriters who were recently honored aswinners in the 1999 High SchoolLiterary Arts Awards andScholarship Competition begin onpage 11. With a record number ofentries this year, we increased thenumber of awards given. As a result ofgrowing statewide interest in our con-test, we are approaching corporatesponsors to make an expandedLiterary Arts Awards possible.Recently, we were encouraged to learnthat Brooke Lowder, a 1998 scholar-ship recipient who now serves on herfamily’s foundation, has requested thata gift be given to the Forum to fund ascholarship in the 2000 competition.What a wonderful thank-you, Brooke.

Even as we wrap up this year’sLiterary Arts Awards winners, we arecompiling the anthologies for“Writing Our Stories,” now in itssecond year at the Lurleen B. WallaceSchool in Mt. Meigs and in its firstyear at the Sequoia School inChalkville. Following the encouragingpopularity of Open the Door, theseforthcoming books by young men andwomen in the Department of YouthServices system are bound to be bestsellers among juvenile justice profes-sionals, teachers and others workingwith young people to help themtoward a productive life.

During the spring we alsohonored two Alabamians for theirwork in the literary arts and scholar-ship. Novelist Madison Jonesreceived the second annual Harper LeeAward for the Distinguished AlabamaWriter and American literature scholarPhilip Beidler was named the EugeneCurrent-Garcia DistinguishedAlabama Scholar. The Forum deeplyappreciates the commitment of

Alabama Southern CommunityCollege to these prestigious awardsand would like to thank this year’saward funders, the Alabama PowerCompany Foundation for the HarperLee Award and George Landegger ofParsons and Whettemore for theCurrent-Garcia Award. Please see therelated story on page 3

Also in Monroeville we wel-comed home an Alabama writer whohas distinguished himself among hispeers in ways that few can hope to ina lifetime. Hearing Rodney Jones, anative of Falkville, Alabama, read hispoems reminded me that there arethose of us who began writing asyoung people in Alabama, and byhook and crook managed to find ourvoices. Rodney now teaches inCarbondale, Illinois, a long way fromthe red dirt and cotton fields of hisnative Morgan County. But his tieshere are deep, and his recent Elegy forthe Southern Drawl (reviewed on page19) recalls the farm country of hischildhood where inexplicable thingshappened that he continues to mull inpoems of humor and regret.

We are trying, row by row, toplow the field and plant the seed forour young writers in Alabama. We aretrying, crop by crop, to harvest thebest of Alabama’s contemporary adultwriters. The literary life in Alabamaflourishes among its sister arts. Mayyou be nourished by and grow withinit as well.

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTORALABAMAWRITERS’

FORUM1998-99

Board of Directors

PresidentBrent Davis(Tuscaloosa)

Immediate Past PresidentNorman McMillan

(Montevallo)

Vice-PresidentRawlins McKinney

(Birmingham)

SecretaryJay Lamar(Auburn)

TreasurerEdward M. George

(Montgomery)

Writers’ RepresentativeRuth Beaumont Cook

(Birmingham)

Writers’ RepresentativePeter Huggins

(Auburn)

Priscilla Cooper(Birmingham)

Bettye L. Forbus(Dothan)

William E. Hicks(Troy)

Jean P. McIver(Mobile)

Nicole Mitchell(Tuscaloosa)

Kellee Reinhart(Tuscaloosa)

Rick Shelton(Sterrett)

Frank Toland(Tuskegee)

Randall Williams(Montgomery)

Executive DirectorJeanie Thompson

(Montgomery)

ASCA LiaisonRandy Shoults(Montgomery)

Book Reviews EditorJay Lamar

Editing/Graphic DesignWordcraft, Inc.

Rodney Jones and Jeanie Thompson during theAlabama Writers Symposium.

“There is a power in the written word,”said Melinda Haynes, quietly but fervently.“Words have the power to take me away fromsomething, to lift me away from myself.” As areader Haynes found strength and healing; as awriter she has been struck by a lightning bolt ofgood fortune that has amazed and overwhelmedher.

The story is legend, but told again withfresh wonder by Haynes and her husband Rayat a Montgomery book signing on June 29. Ray sent thefirst hundred pages of Mother of Pearl to agent WendyWeil after reading about her in Poets & Writers. Weil’sassistant, by chance, pulled the manu-script out of the middle of a stack,read some, and handed it to Weil witha strong recommendation. Theprocess of immediate recognition andrecommendation continued down theline through Weil, who called Hayneswhen she reached page 57 to take heron as a client, to Martha Levin, thenan editor and now president ofHyperion, to Hyperion CEO BobMiller, who hand delivered galleys toOprah Winfrey. “Oprah read it andcalled Toni Morrison,” said Haynes,shaking her head in disbelief.

Mother of Pearl was named thesummer selection for the Oprah BookClub in early June. A whirlwind tripto Chicago for an “Oprah” tv appear-ance followed. (A flight was alreadybooked for the following day when Haynes got the call.)“It’s all happened in a month. It hasn’t really sunk inyet,” said Ray Haynes.

An initial press run of less than 10,000 copies wasset to launch Haynes’s first novel; a modest regionalbook signing tour was planned. But Oprah’s imprimaturblew that plan out of the water. The June 21 PublishersWeekly reported that Hyperion had 710,000 copies inprint. Haynes makes a return visit to the “Oprah” show

around Labor Day, and there’s talk of a 12-citynational tour. The paperback rights have sold,also audio rights, Australian rights, and thelarge print edition. Negotiations are underwayfor the screen rights and names like MorganFreeman and Kathy Bates are being tossedabout.

It’s hard to know what’s reality and what’simagination and which is more unbelievable. “Ilook back and say ‘what if’ this or that hadn’t

happened. What if I hadn’t gone to get my hair cut thatday that Sue Walker (University of South AlabamaEnglish department head) sat next to me and told me

about Poets & Writers? What if...somany things,” Haynes voice trailedoff.

What is real, unmistakably, for heris the writing. “When I’m insidemyself writing the only rule is to behonest to my characters,” she said, andher voice rang with strength and deeplove for the beings she conjured fromthe depths of her soul.“I tried to writewith a dictionary by me, but thatdidn’t work. I worried too much aboutthe external world and I had to givethat up. I had to write the story forme,” said Haynes, “whether or notanybody else ever read it.”

Many, many people will readMother of Pearl. Haynes and her char-acters Even Grade, Valuable Korner,Joody Two Sun and the others have

burst on the scene like Fourth of July fireworks. ButHaynes is a steady, resourceful woman who worked hardto write her first book, and started the second “totallydifferent” novel when the first was two-thirds done.Maybe she hadn’t been north of Atlanta before she flewto Chicago to talk to Oprah, but she’s lived a rich life,much of it in books. First others’, now her own.

“You’re for real, aren’t you,” Wendy Weil said toHaynes. And she is.

Summer 1999 FIRST DRAFT 1

Oprah Picks a SummerBlockbuster–Melinda Haynes’s

Mother of Pearl

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M E L I N D A H A Y N E S

Melinda Haynes

In its fifth year AWF’sLiterary Arts Awardsand Scholarship Com-

petition for high schoolstudents received 900 entries,up from 500 the previousyear. “The growth of ourawards program coincideswith an increased awarenessin Alabama of the impor-tance of writing skills andcreative expression amongstudents. Prizes, scholarshipsand recognition show that wevalue excellence in the liter-ary arts,” said JeanieThompson.

Creative Nonfiction was judged byMichael Martone, director of theProgram in Creative Writing at theUniversity of Alabama and author ofSeeing Eye, Pensees: The Thoughts ofDan Quayle, and Alive and Dead inIndiana. Fiction entries were judged bynovelist Carolyn Haines, author ofTouched, Summer of the Redeemers, andShop Talk. Haines was a 1998 recipientof a literature fellowship from theAlabama State Council on the Arts.

Drama entries were judged byBarbara Lebow, whose play Lurleen(page 8) is showing at the AlabamaShakespeare Festival. Poet PeterHuggins, Auburn University instructorof English and author of Hard Facts,judged poetry.

Five $500 college scholarships werepresented to seniors who submitted out-standing portfolios of work. JohnKingsbury, professor of English at theUniversity of North Alabama (UNA)judged the portfolio competition.

The winning poetry and several fic-tion pieces are printed in full in thisissue of First Draft (page 11). Selectedworks show a wide variety of interestsand styles. Look for more informationon entering next year’s competition inthe fall First Draft.

SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS

Blaire Rebecca Newhard, student ofDenise Trimm, Alabama School of FineArts (ASFA), Birmingham

Casey Moore, student of DeniseTrimm, ASFACharles W. Johnson, student of MaryAnn Rygiel, Auburn High SchoolShana Markham, student of SusanDeas Reeves, Sidney Lanier HighSchool (LAMP), MontgomeryCamille Henry, student of DeniseTrimm, ASFA

LITERARY ARTS AWARDSBY GENRE

First place winners received $150; sec-ond place winners received $75;“Judges Special Recognition” winnersreceived a certificate. A plaque with thenames of winners and teachers is pre-sented to each winner’s school. Winnersalso receive books by the judges.

CREATIVE NONFICTION

First: Betsy Childs, student of JonCarter, Briarwood Christian School,BirminghamSecond: Chris Lafakis, Cindy Hudson,Hoover High SchoolJudge’s Special Recognition:Joyce Selina Momberger; student ofDiane Frucci, Sidney Lanier HighSchool (LAMP)Josh Bradford, student of Sue AnnRushton, Stanhope Elmore HighSchool, MillbrookLindsey K. Elmore, student of DianeR. Weber, Jefferson CountyInternational Baccalaureate School,BirminghamLucinda Marie Hill, student of SusanLancaster, Hokes Bluff High School

DRAMA

First: Joseph Halli, student ofMartina Holt, Central HighSchool-West, Tuscaloosa

FICTION

First: Casey Moore, student ofDenise Trimm, ASFA Second: Blaire RebeccaNewhard, student of DeniseTrimm, ASFAJudge’s Special Recognition:Casey Moore, student of DeniseTrimm, ASFAJohn Seay, student of MelindaCammarata, Mountain Brook High

School, BirminghamMatt Barron, student of Martin Hames,The Altamont School, BirminghamPeter Davenport, student of KristiByrd, Homewood High SchoolJoy Fields, student of Amanda Beason,Clay-Chalkville High School, Pinson

POETRY

First: Amethyst Vineyard, student ofDenise Trimm, ASFASecond: Shiloh Booker, student ofAnne-Wyman Black, ASFAJudge’s Special Recognition:Casey Moore, student of DeniseTrimm, ASFAAdele Austin, student of RebeccaGregory, Baldwin Junior High School,MontgomeryKate Hazelrig, student of MelindaCammarata, Mountain Brook HighSchoolJosh Lovvorn, student of TracyPeterson, Hoover High SchoolMeredith Johnson, student of Anne-Wyman Black, ASFAJohn Burkhart, student of Mary AnnRygiel, Auburn High SchoolPaige Poe, student of Anne-WymanBlack, ASFA

SEE CHAPBOOK

BEGINNING ON

PAGE 11

2 FIRST DRAFT Summer 1999

Young Writers Recognized

Judge John Kingsbury (third from right) selected portfolios of the fivescholarship winners (left to right) Blaire Newhard, Camille Henry, CharlesJohnson, Shana Markham and Casey Moore.

Fifth Annual Literary Arts Awards & Scholarship Competition

EDUCATION &THE POWER OF STORIES

Bradley Byrne, State Board of Education member, addressed theAlabama Writers Symposium in Monroeville on May 8, 1999.

Following is the text of his remarks.


This is a wonderful conference for our state and weare very proud that Alabama Southern CommunityCollege, one of the schools we govern, is hosting it. Weon the Board are grateful for writers, storytellers,scholars, and writing instructors, and for what you addto our educational system.

The contemporary author Reynolds Price has said,“A need to tell and hear stories is essential to thespecies Homo Sapiens,second in necessityapparently after nourish-ment and before love andshelter. Millions survivewithout love or home,almost none in silence;the opposite of silenceleads quickly to narrativeand the sound of story isthe dominant sound ofour lives.”

From the earliestdays of civilization, sto-ries have defined who weare individually and as aculture. Homer,Sophocles, and Aeschylus defined ancient Greece withtheir stories, plays, and poems more than Pericles andSolon with their laws.

Jesus’ preaching is unparalleled, His moral teachingis the greatest the world has ever known, but when Hewanted to describe God’s love or the concept of for-giveness, He told parables, simple but powerful shortstories. He knew that stories contain the most profoundtruths.

Down through the years, Dante and Shakespeare,Milton and Cervantes, Dickens and Fielding, Melvilleand Twain, Tolstoy and Dostoevski, Yeats and Joyce,Hemingway and Faulkner, Toni Morrison and MayaAngelou have done more than entertain us.

Plato and Rousseau were right. Stories help moldus and define who we are, deep inside our culture, deepinside each individual.

Therefore it is right that we should be very con-cerned and deliberate about the stories we tell. Ourchildren are told trashy, violent, and ultimately emptystories every day by our modern so-called enlightenedculture with its mindless sit-coms and soap operas, its

sensationalized newsmedia, its blood and sex-drenched movies, and itspopular music with lyricsthat are just plain bad.

The antidote to thiscultural emptiness andpoison is the beauty ofgreat literature. Deep,moving, and provokingstories built on the greattruths of life are desper-ately needed to rescueour children from thedarkness of our own age.And there is no institu-tion better situated to tell

these stories than our schools. Robert Coles, in his own book, The Call of Stories,

said it well. “A compelling narrative, offering a story-teller’s moral imagination vigorously at work, canenable any of us to learn by example, to take to heartwhat is really a gift of grace.”

A state like Alabama, which has produced suchgreat writers like many of you, and Winston Groomfrom my hometown of Mobile, Walker Percy andFannie Flagg from Birmingham, and Nell Harper Leefrom here in Monroeville–such a state owes greatstories to its children.

So thank you for what you do. It’s important to ourchildren, and indeed, to all of us.

FROM THE ALABAMA WRITERS SYMPOSIUM IN MONROEVILLE

(From left) Bradley Byrne, State Board of Education, Mary Tucker, MarvaCollins, former State Senator Ann Bedsole, and Alabama Southern CommunityCollege President John A. Johnson.

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Excellence and responsibility, taught through love,becomes a habit.” That’s the philosophy of Marva

Collins, a native of Atmore, Alabama, who has taken herno-nonsense, respect-yourself approach to educationaround the world and who brought it back home in Maywhen she spoke at the Alabama Writer’s Symposium.

Collins, who grew up in Monroe County, said she wasblessed with a family that believed in the importance ofeducation and literature. She recalled her Aunt Ruby attheir dining room table reading Macbeth aloud, studyingto complete her high school degree. “I really didn’t under-stand it at the time,” said Collins, “but it stuck.”

Collins credited her family’s commitment to personalachievement and education and the firm loving support ofher teachers as the reason she thrived despite being edu-cated in a segregated school system that limited the accessof African-American students to books and even the pub-lic library. She attended Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia,(“It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t attend college,”she said). After graduation she taught in Alabama, then inChicago’s public school system for 14 years.

Frustrated with the quality of education that her chil-dren and others were receiving, she opened WestsidePreparatory School in her home in 1975. The initialenrollment of six children included her own son anddaughter. Collins’s methods produced great success withdifficult-to-teach students including learning disabled,

problem children and even one child who had beenlabeled “border-line retarded.”

Collins was featured in Time and Newsweek maga-zines, on 60 Minutes and Good Morning America, andwas the topic of a CBS movie. Presidents Ronald Reaganand George Bush both asked her to be Secretary ofEducation, but Collins declined because she wanted toremain at the forefront of education–in the classroom andin schools. Today she lectures and gives seminars aroundthe United States and the world. She has received manyhonors including some 44 honorary doctoral degrees. Herexperiences and methods are contained in two books,Values and Lighting the Candle of Excellence: A PracticalGuide for the Family.

TEACHING EXCELLENCE AND SELF-RELIANCE

Collins contends that effective teaching requires mak-ing daily “deposits” so that every child can become a life-time achiever and will not go through life faced with“insufficient funds.” She also believes that investments inchildren must come from many sources, including parents,educators and their community at large.

Teaching children to take control of the small thingsin their lives, such as keeping a neat desk, will help themcontrol the bigger things, Collins says. She noted that thetragic shootings at Columbine High School in Coloradowere symptomatic of the lack of expectations that adultshave for children, and the lack of adult involvement intheir lives.

Collins is a firm believer in personal accountabilityand believes “there is a great difference between disciplineand punishment.” Instead, her philosophy promotes settingguidelines for children, teaching them to make their owndecisions and showing them that they must face the conse-quences of those decisions.

Collins noted that literature has always been a hugepart of her life, and should be an integral part of the livesof children. Incorporating literature into family life hasmade a lasting impression on her children and grandchil-dren, she said.

Katie Lamar Smith, a freelance writer from Auburn, wrote thisarticle and shot photographs for First Draft at the Symposium.

MORE PHOTOS ON PAGE 26



Association of College English Teachers of Alabama president Harry Moore,Alabama Humanities Foundation Executive Director Bob Stewart, PhillipBeidler, winner of the Eugene Current-Garcia Award for Distinction in LiteraryScholarship, Alabama Southern Community College President John A. Johnson.

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Excellence in Education isMarva Collins’s Watchword


“Make a picture of who you arewithout showing your face” was anassignment Priscilla Hancock Cooperand Suzy Harris gave the young womenin the AWF “Writing Our Stories” pro-gram at the Chalkville Department ofYouth Services (DYS) facility. The girls’black and white photos and accompany-ing text panels were exhibited at theBirmingham Museum of Art’s SonatGallery during May.

Harris, the museum’s assistant cura-tor for art education, has worked on sim-ilar projects in Birmingham-area schoolssince 1996. “Usually we give studentsthe camera and they shoot on their own,but the (Chalkville) girls had to stay in agroup and take pictures during class, allwithin the security perimeter,” she said.Often several girls stood side-by-sideand photographed the same object fromslightly different angles. Yet the individ-uality and originality of the work isstriking, according to Harris.

The girls chose the images theywanted to write about from contactsheets. “At first we got descriptions like‘this is the pond by the pool.’ But soonthey were able to make up interestingstories about their images,” Harris said.In “Wondering,” which Harris called

“powerful and disturbing,” a student ispictured lying in the grass. Her writingexplores death and concern for herfuture. Other work expressed the loneli-ness and isolation of girls separated fromfamily and friends. A pregnant girlexposed her swollen belly in a photomade by a classmate.

After several months in Cooper’screative writing classes, the girls hadlearned to use writing as a positive outletfor their troubling emotions. “It’s toughenough being a teenager, and many of

these girls are dealing with issues ofabuse, neglect, sexuality, and some ofthem with caring for and rearing theirown children,” said Cooper. Harris com-mented, “They wrote on a deeper levelthan the other students I’ve worked with,and during class they sat right down andworked and produced a lot.”

The girls and their families wereguests at a reception at the museum onMay 2. None of the students had beenthere before, they said, and they wereamazed by the art, the building, and thefact that their work was displayedprominently. The experience gave thema new perspective on the meaning andimportance of art. “So much of life is ona pass/fail basis and these girls haveknown their share of failure, but this wasan opportunity to express their unique-ness and be accepted for it,” Harris said.

The 22 photographs and narrativesin the exhibit will be including in ananthology that Cooper is editing fromthe student work produced during hernine months of teaching. “Writing OurStories” is funded by DYS through acontract with the Alabama Writers’Forum.

YOUNG LIVES IN WORDSAND PICTURES

Shown in the Birmingham Museum of Art gallery during a reception for Chalkville girls are (left to right)Gail Trechsel, museum director; Jane Baker, principal of Minor Junior High School, Priscilla HancockCooper, poet and creative writing teacher; and Mary Ann Culotta, director of arts education for theJefferson County School System.

(Left to right) Chalkville Superintendent James Caldwell, AWF Board Member Bettye Forbus, andChalkville Principal Jerrell J. Barbee view photographs by the “Writing Our Stories” students.

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I got tapped for jury duty recently under unusual cir-cumstances and, surprisingly, I welcomed the experience.I was attending the Alabama Writers Symposium inMonroeville, and was sitting with other participants on thelawn of the old Monroe County Courthouse waiting forthe first act of the town’s annual production ofMonroeville native Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbirdwhen a gentleman dressed as a 1930s Southern sheriffwalked toward me and my friends.

“I’m Heck Tate, and I’m the sheriff here inMaycomb,” he said. “I’d like to ask you to serve on thejury in the Robinson trial.”

What an invitation. Anyone famil-iar with Harper Lee’s story knows TomRobinson didn’t “have his way” withtrashy Mayella Ewell, and that he gotrailroaded. The opportunity to changehistory–or Southern literature–or atleast to hear the story with a juror’sear–was too good to pass up. I leapt atthe chance, and old Heck filled out mysummons.

After Act I, John Hafner, LarryAllums, Peter Huggins and I joined therest of the jury for an instructionalmeeting beside the gnarled roots of acenturies-old live oak. Sheriff Tate outlined the rules ofthe voir dire. “Be attentive and follow directions,” hecounseled. “Don’t lean back too far in the chairs or you’llbe thrown out into the floor,” he added. He repeated this atime or two.

Then he pulled his wallet from his sheriff’s britchesand took out a tattered piece of paper. He looked us overand asked who our foreman was. Peter, Larry and I point-ed at John, who wasn’t quick enough to point to someoneelse. “Here’s your verdict,” the sheriff said, handing thepaper to John. “Don’t try to change it, because the judge isgonna go with the real verdict no matter what y’all say.They tried that in Israel and London. It didn’t work.”

It seemed the only danger in this jury box was the oldoak chairs. Old Heck neglected to warn us that if you saton the back row and leaned back too far, you’d be dumpedout the second-story window.

I imagine the people of Monroeville who filled thisjury box decades ago were accustomed to danger. Likeother jurors, they walked a treacherous line between truth

and travesty. But the travesty here was that our jury was ashill, and that we had no choice but to return the predeter-mined verdict: Despite the indisputable evidence to thecontrary presented by literature’s most noble attorney,Atticus Finch, Tom Robinson would be found guilty. Hewould be sentenced to the state penitentiary, and he woulddie trying to regain his stolen freedom.

I’ve been exposed hundreds of times to Harper Lee’sclassic tale. I know the story as well as I know any story.But as I sat in the cavernous courtroom and watched thesepeople of Monroeville play out their town’s pageant, I had

the chilling realization that in thesmall-town South in the 1930s, a blackman accused of “having his way” witha white woman would hear no verdictbut guilty, even if the entire FirstBaptist Church choir stood up for him.That was Harper Lee’s point, and timehas not diminished it a bit. What thoseof us in the jury box that warm Fridayreally wanted was to change the socialclimate from which her story sprang.

In the years since Harper Leepulled that famous story from her soul,To Kill A Mockingbird has become oneof literature’s most dissected stories,

and each examination reveals something new. What would this work have offered had the jury seen

Bob Ewell for what he really was, and had those 12 folkshad the gumption to see justice through? Bob Ewell wouldhave eventually been put on trial himself, and TomRobinson would have gone on back to the poor section oftown. Ewell may or may not have been convicted, andRobinson might have found himself spirited away by thelynch mob anyway. Scout, Jem and Dill would havemissed a valuable lesson and Boo Radley would still behidden away in the scariest house in the neighborhood. Ifthe verdict had been different, Harper Lee’s story wouldlikely have been forgotten on history’s dusty bottom shelf.

Harper Lee told a good yarn, and in the process creat-ed a work so richly textured and multifaceted that the mil-lions who have read and re-read the story of the Finchfamily won’t ever figure it all out.

The story tells us there is indeed a price to pay for liv-ing in our society, and that no one–not the fictional Tom

Continued on page 24


FROM THE FIELDTwelve Good Men and True

Part of the 1999 cast of To Kill A Mockingbirdwaiting to enter the Monroeville courthouse forthe trial of Tom Robinson.

by Bill Perkins

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Because many of the programs at the AlabamaShakespeare Festival are made possible through the gener-ous financial support of city, county and state government,ASF annually hosts an evening to thank officials from theCity of Montgomery, Montgomery County, and state gov-ernment. This year the event took place on March 24, andincluded a reception and a preview performance of theplay Lurleen, by ASF playwright-in-residence BarbaraLebow. Guests were greeted by Winton M. “Red”Blount, theatre benefactor, and his wife Carolyn, forwhom the theatre building is named, along with KentThompson, ASF Artistic Director, and Jim Scott,Chairman of the ASF Board.

In brief remarks before the performance, GovernorDon Siegleman cleverly wove the evening’s themestogether and delivered his lines as if he had rehearsedthem well:

Ladies and gentlemen, I bid you listen keenFor I am just a Governor whose poetic skills lean.“I will gravitate my voice so that I will roar as gentlyas any suckling dove; I will roar you as ‘twere anynightingale.” [A Midsummer Night’s Dream]We are about to witness a story of power and love:Lurleen and George Wallace and their historical tale.“The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the con-science of the King.” [Hamlet]Not tonight, my dear audience, for tonight is theevening of the Queen.“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by anyother name would smell as sweet. So Romeo wouldwere he not Romeo called.” [Romeo & Juliet]A Wallace without the name would still be a victorof insurmountable feats. As was Lurleen, who madeAlabama enthralled.“Here we will sit and let the sounds of music creepin our ears, soft stillness and the night become thetouches of sweet harmony.” [The Merchant of Venice]Tonight we will learn of Lurleen’s courage, strengthsand fears; tonight we will see a woman who servedAlabama with pride and dignity.“Her life was gentle, and the elements so mixed inher, that Nature might stand up and say to all theworld, ‘This was a woman!’’’ [Hamlet]Lurleen’s legacy is everlasting, such a soft-spokenwinner, that all in this great state must recognize andhail her as a governor, wife, mother, and woman. “Let me tell the world. The time of life is short; tospend that shortness basely too long.” [Henry IV]

She knew and lived and suffered with dangers of thissort, but her life must not be seen as a sad mournfulsong.“Merrily, merrily shall I live now under the blossomthat hangs on the bough. O brave new world, that hassuch people in it!” [The Tempest]It’s plain to see that those who made her merry loveeven now–love her every day, every hour, and stillevery single minute.“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and womenmerely players. They have their exits and theirentrances.” [As You Like It]She has not left the stage–this woman for whom wesaid our prayers, for her brief life impacted manyhistoric instances. “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player thatstruts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then isheard no more…” [Macbeth]The Shakespeare Festival company of ladies and fel-lows will be heard more on this brief history page,for our memories of Lurleen will be hard to ignore. “The text is old, the orator too green.” [TwoGentlemen of Verona]Please accept what I’ve told, for I’m just theGovernor, my poetic skills lean.

The play opened to much acclaim on March 26, andis, in the playwright’s words, “About the dynamics of awoman in her own evolution. It focuses on her strugglesand personal triumphs. This is not a play about GeorgeWallace.” It runs through July 24.


(From left) State Senator Larry Dixon, Governor Don Siegleman,Montgomery County Commissioner Bill Joseph, Montgomery Mayor EmoryFolmar, and Winton “Red” Blount at the pre-performance reception forLurleen during Government Appreciation Night at the Carolyn BlountTheatre, home of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.

GOVERNOR HONES POETIC SKILLS FORASF GOVERNMENT APPRECIATION NIGHT

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he was something else entirely,” comment thewomen friends of Lurleen after her death. “She was

two people–a dream flyer and a wife/mother”–explainsthe Kabuki women’s chorus. And thus opens BarbaraLebow’s two-act play Lurleen, running at the AlabamaShakespeare Festival in Montgomery through July 24. Theplay spans the years from 1942 when Lurleen Burns, 15 anda recent high school graduate, meets George Wallacethrough 1968 when she at 41 is governor of Alabama anddies of breast cancer. Her story is typical in many ways ofthe male-defined, middle-class,white American woman from the1950s who generally was viewedas inferior to the male. She mar-ried after high school, becamemother and caretaker, and enabledthe husband to pursue a profes-sion, and other interests, outsidethe home. This sexist arrangementfrequently resulted in the woman’sdouble consciousness–her splitbetween public and private selves,between the obedient wife/motherand the outraged female.

Lebow’s (re)visionary treat-ment articulates the unspokendesires of the private Lurleen–thewoman who wanted a collegedegree in nursing, who played thepiano and sang, who identifiedwith women across lines ofnationality and color, who wanted to fly both literally andfiguratively. One of the most telling scenes in the playcomes when Lurleen, as the First Lady recovered fromsurgery, takes a flight lesson. Welcomed back on the groundby her women friends singing “Off We Go, Into the WildBlue Yonder,” Lurleen responds: “We broke free, and I feltweightless like an astronaut....I wish I could have been thepilot.” The connected themes of freedom and flight charac-terize her hidden self as she yearns to walk outside the shad-ow of Mrs. George Wallace.

Lurleen is a memory play framed by the remembrancesof female friends and embodying the thoughts and emotionsof Lurleen as imagined by the playwright and based onresearch and interviews. Lebow dramatizes Lurleen’s subjec-tivity and interior life against the backdrop of her public life.The play’s most exquisite technique is the Kabuki women’s

chorus who give voice to Lurleen’s concealed desires andstrength while signifying the social mask(s) imposed uponher. The Kabuki roles are assumed by the actresses who alsoplay her friends and domestic employee as they slip in andout of Japanese masks and costume. In the beginning whenLurleen talks about becoming a nurse, the chorus tells her:“You won’t be a Japanese wife, walking ten steps behindyour husband. You won’t be invisible.” With this remark theyprophesy her emotional growth within the play. In the firstact she moves from the sixteen-year old bride, afraid that her

husband is “going to swallow[her]” to the angry wife/motherwho confronts him about familynegligence and adulterous behav-ior. Realizing that she has turnedinto the invisible wife, Lurleenleaves him, takes the children,goes to her parents’ home, andconsiders divorce.

Soon after the second actopens, Gerald Wallace, her hus-band’s brother, entreats Lurleen toreturn. She agrees to do so onlyunder certain conditions: her hus-band must treat her with therespect due a wife. During this actshe begins to discover her ownstrength as she moves from FirstLady to the Governor of Alabama.Describing her appearance beforethe state legislature, she discloses:

“I’m 40 and just finding out what I can do. We won’t beinvisible anymore.” But an untimely death cuts short selfdiscovery. She asks the Kabuki women: “What do you thinkof people dying in public? I want to tell everyone how angryI am.” Their advice: “Your job is to die like a lady.” Andlater the female friends, no longer masked and rememberingLurleen, observe: “She missed growing old and becomingherself.” The connection with Japanese women also reachesacross time and genre. Lebow opens and closes the playwith the 1906 song “Poor Butterfly,” recalling Puccini’s1904 opera about a Japanese maiden who is married to andabandoned by a heartless American sailor. When he returnsto Japan with an American wife, Butterfly stabs herself todeath. The American rushes to her side, but his concern istoo late.


Lurleen:BARBARA LEBOW’S (RE)VISIONARY PLAY

by Chella Courington

Monica Bell and Conan McCarty as Lurleen and GeorgeWallace in the ASF world premiere production of Lurleen.

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AWARDS & HONORSHAFNER APPOINTED TOLITERATURE CHAIR

Spring Hill College has appoint-ed Dr. John H. Hafner, professor ofEnglish, to the Altmayer EndowedChair in Literature. He is the first tohold the position which was estab-lished in December by Mobilian NanAltmayer to recognize someone whohas fostered an understanding andappreciation of literature throughteaching, scholarly contributions, andcreation of literary works. Hafnerwill use the support to complete astudy of Mobile novelist MaryMcNeil Fenellosa, revise his ownshort stories for publication, and pre-pare a three-volume collection ofreadings for Mobile’s tricentennialcelebration.

YOUNG POETS TO READ ATHANDY FESTIVAL

First and second place winners ofthe W.C. Handy Poetry Contest willread their works at the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library during thisyear’s Handy Festival, August 1-7.High School Division winnersincluded Laura Landrum, MuscleShoals High School, first place;Adam Bickhaus, Bradshaw HighSchool, second place. First place inthe Middle School division went toKristin Smith, Anderson JuniorHigh School; second place was wonby Syrah Simon, Riverhill School.

HACKNEY WINNERSDuring the Writing Today

spring conference at Birmingham-Southern College, winners wereannounced in the Hackney LiteraryAwards. In the state short story con-test Wendy Reed Bruce receivedfirst prize; Lisa C. Bailey, second;and Jimmy Carl Harris, third. Allthree are from Birmingham. In thepoetry division, Rosemary

McMaha, Huntsville, took firstprize; Amanda Murray, second andBarry S. Marks, third.

Novel postmark deadline for thisyear’s contest is September 30, 1999;deadline for short stories and poetryis December 31, 1999. For detailedguidelines, call 205/226-4921.

YAKETY YAKCharles Ghigna’s latest book for

children, See the Yak Yak (RandomHouse), has been named a Book ofthe Month Club “Main Selection” forthe fall.

HAMILTON, RICHARDS WINSTATE LIBRARY AWARDS

Virginia Van Der Veer Hamiltonis the recipient of the 1999 AlabamaLibrary Association’s Author Awardin Nonfiction for her Looking forClark Gable and Other 20th CenturyPursuits: Collected Writings pub-lished by the University of AlabamaPress. The collection of essays andarticles is the sixth book byHamilton, professor of historyemerita and former chair of thehistory department at the Universityof Alabama Birmingham.

Judith Richards, Fairhope,received the Library Associations’sannual award for literature for herfifth novel Too Blue to Fly.(Longstreet Press, 1997).

TEACHERS WRITEThree University of South

Alabama students received awards atthe Gulf Coast Association ofCreative Writing TeachersConference hosted by USA profes-sors Jim White and Sue Walker.Cody Roy won second place in grad-uate fiction and Sam Wilson placedthird in creative nonfiction. JeremyMaxwell won second place in under-graduate fiction. More than 100 writ-ers from 50 universities attended theconference. Jim White founded theorganization seven years ago.

ASFA WRITING PROGRAMFINDS A PARTNER IN OUTREACH

“Last year we started a writingcontest, a reading series and our stu-dents began mentoring elementarykids,” said Denise Trimm, creativewriting program head at the AlabamaSchool of Fine Arts (ASFA). Trimmrecently completed her first writer’scamp for seventh and eighth-graders,another new project. “We worriedabout putting our whole budget intooutreach–but this year it has comeback to us multiplied,” she said.ASFA’s “Write Now!” program hasbeen awarded a three-year, $75,000educational development grant fromCVS Pharmacies.

ASFA’s work with elementaryschools has drawn a great deal ofpraise and interest. “Writing assess-ment is one of the elements of theelementary Stanford AchievementTests, so schools are looking forways to improve in that area,”saidTrimm.

JACKSON’S WORK RECEIVESHERITAGE AWARD

The Landmark Foundation ofDothan has chosen author and colum-nist Barbara Ritch Jackson as arecipient of its Heritage award, whichis annually presented to a person,organization, or business that hasmade a significant contributiontowards preserving the heritage of theWiregrass region.


NEWS

Tom Franklin, right, holds the Edgar Award hewon for Poachers and accepts congratulationsfrom Paul Bresnick, his editor at William Morrow.


The award was given forJackson’s book, For I Heard ThemSay, An Alabama Odyssey. More thana family history, the book combinesrecollections of family life withreflections on growing up in a small,post-World War Two southern town.

THE ZORA NEALE HURSTONSYMPOSIUMChella Courington

“Zora Neale Hurston was an indi-vidual genius but also appreciated thecollective genius of African-Americans,” said Professor RobertE. Hemenway. He was a featuredspeaker at the Zora Neale HurstonSymposium at the BirminghamPublic Library on Saturday, May 1,from 9 a.m. until noon. The brain-child of Georgette Norman, execu-tive director of the Alabama African-American Arts Alliance it was spon-sored by Auburn University Centerfor the Arts and Humanities, AWFand the Alabama HumanitiesFoundation. The Symposium broughttogether Hurston’s three biographersand involved them in a conversationon the author’s life as she lived it andimagined it in her novels and autobi-ography. The three biographers wereHemenway, who wrote the 1977Zora Neale Hurston: A LiteraryBiography, recognized as the stan-dard Hurston biography; Lucy AnnHurston, Zora Neale Hurston’sniece, who has written a forthcomingbook drawing on family memories ofher aunt; and Valerie Boyd, who isresearching and writing Wrapped inRainbows: The Life of Zora NealeHurston, scheduled for publication in2001.

The biographers raised the slip-pery issue of the connection between

fact and fiction. To what extent isbiography the product of a past, his-toric moment and a present, literarymoment? To what extent is biographyshaped by the kinds of questionsasked at a given time? How does aparticular moment in time affectinterpretation of fact? When askedabout the “facts” of Hurston’s life,Lucy Hurston answered: “We don’tlook for Zora in her autobiography.She lies like a rug. We look for Zorain her literature.” Boyd, on the otherhand, said that Dust Tracks on aRoad is a more reliable autobiogra-phy than given credit for being. Shewent on to say that Hurston, thoughborn in Notasulga, Alabama, alwaysconsidered the all-Black town ofEatonville, Florida, as home. Alongwith Hemenway, Boyd and Hurston

spoke candidly and passionately oftheir search for Zora, responding toquestions from the audience.

More than seventy-five readers ofHurston were eager to learn moreabout the Alabama-born writer. Theywanted to talk about her novels, par-ticularly Their Eyes Were WatchingGod; her relationship with herpatrons Mrs. Mason and FannieHurst; her opposition to integration;her anthropological work collectingthe folktales of African-Americans;and her romantic life. The exchangebetween the biographers and theaudience was lively as conversationabout Hurston extended into thebreaks.

(Left to right) Millie Anton Skinner, Janet Mauney and Loretta Cobb sign copies of Belles Letters, arecent publication from Livingston Press, at a reception and book signing at Highland Booksmith inBirmingham.The event was attended by more than 20 of the Alabama women writers whose work wasfeatured in the book.

First Draft is a vehicle for communication among writers and those interested in literature/publishing in Alabamaand elsewhere. We encourage publication news, events information, and story suggestions. First Draft will grow asthe needs of writers in Alabama are identified. Contact: The Alabama Writers’ Forum, Alabama State Council on theArts, 201 Monroe Street, Montgomery, AL 36130-1800. Phone: 334/242-4076, ext. 233; Fax: 334/240-3269email:[email protected].

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First Place, PoetryMY FIRST AND LAST ARS POETICAAmethyst Vineyard

It’s like swimming at night. At first, confidence as you peel off shirts and muddy socks,pull pants from long white legs,leap in from sun-bleached boards. And, for a moment,under the surface,the faces of mermaids and slick seals’ heads swim up, the water fills you in, the cool brush of weeds folds over your forehead. Breaking through to oxygen, you remember snakes, the clumps of drowned grass ready to hold you, the insects and bodies that can be avoided in daylight, your watery nightmares of flippered fish-babies. You swim to the pier with stiff arms, the boards splitting into hairs under the dark,and when you pull yourself from the water, there is only you, pale and naked,with the moon staring at your back.

Second Place, PoetryEXHALEShiloh Booker

My fingernails press into plastic curls of the phone cord, making indentions. My mother’s voice falls through the receiver like snow outside,telling me she misses her little girl,not asking if I’m holding myself together, now.

I close my eyes,my sigh pushes against the phone,and Momma asks if I’m okay.

The clouded breath reminds me of us walking my brother to school,careful not to fall on the ice. We’d push air out, fast and hard. “It’s really smoke from the dragons inside us.The cold air brings them to life,” she’d say.

Her voice in the phone drifts away like the mist from our mouths. I lay the phone on the cradle and walk outside.Winter air shocks my lungs,waking my dragon,then curls around my neckand folds my arms against each other.

Judge’s Special Recognition, PoetryA TRIP ON THE ST. MARXJohn Burkhart

Sound of metal against gravelly soil-the canoe slips into the glassy water.

I scramble madly,the canoe shakes, rattles, rolls.

I sit down suddenly, and the canoe settles itself. My brother jumps into the front.We paddle out, avoiding the green in the water,which is 68 degrees all-year round.We paddle furiously upstream,to gain ground against the gushing river. On closer inspection, the green is grass. Flowing, waving, blue-green;

grabbing the canoe with vegetable fingers. Cormorants, fiery red bills, black and gangly,

explode from weeds under a moss-saturated Live oak. Our backs and wrists ache from exertion:

about face and drifting downstream. The surroundings make my eyes clearer,

clarity and definition are appreciated with Beauty as rich as this.

Cypress knees protect the banks with jagged rigidity.A huge bird swoops from above,

flaps and then glides overhead. “Was that what I thought it was?”I stand in awe,

and the king of all birds flies overhead.The bald eagle swoops up and lands,


1999 LITERARY ARTS AWARDS WINNERS’ CHAPBOOK

Poets present for the awards ceremony were Amethyst Vineyard, KateHazelrig, Peter Huggins (judge), Adele Austin, Meredith Johnson, Paige Poe,John Burkhart, and Casey Moore.

grasping a branch with its golden talons.We begin to approach it,

and it swivels his gleaming bald head towards us.He pierces us with his eagle eye,

and crashes off the branch. He follows the flow of the river,

and fades into the dusk of north Florida.

Judge’s Special Recognition, PoetryARRIVING–A GHAZALPaige Poe

Through the skin they read the signal.Intricate web, the parts of their body.

I see you swim, breathing water likea heavy perfume full of dense roses.

A blind child traces her face.He smears her lips in scarlet.

Fingers rising like mercury.Irises the blue of new flames.

Leaves are the color of blood,of pulsing consciousness.

Dilated by new rain, cellsof dew begin to slip from leaves.

Between the mouth and the glass a breath escapes, a survival.

We are red. Like servants’ clothes,we press rough against each other.

Winter spreads against the trees,dry as skin. He searches for cardinals.

Hands are frozen against me.The water stills and dies like marble.

Judge’s Special Recognition, PoetryLACE AND MARY JANESMeredith Johnson

I.Her fingers weave red lace around roses,arthritis spreading through unsteady hands as she places plastic stems in baskets. I watch from across the room where I make flower jungles out of lilies. Old records crackle in the background,and I tap my black Mary Janes against table legs.

II.She sits on the floorwith flowers spread around her in a circle. The phone rings and she leaves the room.,complaining about the noise.She then hums quietly to herself because the record player won’t work. She doesn’t notice it isn’t plugged in.

I stoop to pick up roses thrown across the floor,hoping she won’t notice my hands trembling more than her own.We steady each otheras I lead her to her chair. I teach her how to weave red lace around roses.

Judge’s Special Recognition, Poetryfeeling with E’s (an ode to e.e. cummings)Josh Lovvorn

the E and the E are feeling, onlysince feeling comes with E’s and breaks apart the world into shapes, colors, and feels

kisses are better than knowing for a kiss is just a kiss enjoy life for the feeling cuz knowing with just confuse

wisdom tries to arrangeknowing becomes much E’sier but what’s the point in knowing if you can never feel

wisdom tries to explainthe feels are only axonswhy would i want to know much less understand

wisdom knows all the knows but it’s E’sier just to feel syntax would make it E’sy and where’s the fun in that

Judge’s Special Recognition, PoetryBLUE LINESKate Hazelrig

I have a pink bow on my mailbox,Because of my grandmother,Who went to workIn a time when mothers stayed home.Because of my mother,Who served my fatherIn a time when women went to work.Because of the thousands of Chinese and Turkish girls Never brought into the world.

I have a pink bow on my mailbox. For the flush our bodies heldAfter making love.For the sorrow your eyes heldWhen I couldn’t make you love me. For the looks I received of disgrace From people no better than 1.For the pain and the blood,The screams that caught in my head And burst like fireworksCreating so many tears.For the loneliness I felt in that cold room,And it was only my babyWho came to comfort me.

I have a pink bow on my mailbox.For the rosy lips, like tulip petalsThat encircle my breasts for theirPrimitive meal.For the tearing of the fleshAnd the pouch my stomach has become.For all those who told me not toAnd for those who said there was no other way.

I have a pink bow on my mailbox.Not so much that I want others to seeBut that you’ll see it and stop by.For the father that my daughter will never know.


Judge’s Special Recognition, PoetryCOMING HOME TO MAMA’S BISCUITSCasey Moore

We don’t need anotherBatch of tomato gravy.There aren’t biscuits enoughFor the first pot.But mama’s got the thin juiceTrickling down her wrists,Working the red pulp likeRaw cow udders.

Something’s happened on the TV.Daddy justWiped dust off his glasses andLet the recliner up.

Mama juices faster andFaster and theHam turns smoking-blackIn the oven–nobodyTo watch it.Tomato waterStreams down her apron creases,Puddles next toBatter crumbs on the floor,Seeps under cracked linoleum.

The war endedTwo years ago,Just after my big brotherCame home dead,Face full of Cowboys and Indians.I shot him onceWith a wood pistol,He lay twisted in the mud,Jaw sagging.I screamed.He sat up and held meIn his hard, freckled arms,Laughing,Until I felt theHeat of his pulse again.

His coffin shone blacker thanOur Chevy, cleaner thanMama’s polished porcelainOn the coffee table.I touched the surface andMy fingerprints disappeared.They lowered it downWith white carnations,Too delicate for a boySo tough. I threw in myWood pistol and itMade a sound on the metalLike the gook gun that killed him.

The TV’s full ofGovernment preachers again,Break-ins and documents.Nixon’s promises fallLike communion crackersIn our living room, andI try to pick them up.I want to hand them allBack to mama, tell herJimmy’s not dead,It’s just another scandal,But Daddy sounds off the verdict

From the den:“Nixon’s a crookAnd our boy’s deadFor nothing but a bloody wad of cash.”

Judge’s Special Recognition, PoetryTHE AIR-WHALEAdele Austin

There is a whirring behind me.Turning, it is the purring

of a little air-whalenuzzling about the walls

and ceiling.

A silver balloon with motor and propellers–tails with three fins.

It is smooth as black pianosand as bare.

No place for eyesstaring through water

at slowly swimming divers.

Placid rover, a whale.bred miniature and airborne

but a whale, still,with the ocean’s vast serenity.

In the barn-shaped kitchenit nestles at the high ceiling

and is silent.The boys scowl upward, shake the control,

growl about ladders and batteries.

As they move away, I seea rubber-gloved hand stroking rubber-like skin,

divers riding a flipper as a silent glider,a darkness heavy as curled-up sleep,

long flukes vanishing into deep blue caverns.

First Place, FictionONE FLEW NORTHCasey Moore

Clarence cried once when his hygiene products were lost in NiagaraFalls. He’d been leaning over the rail a bit, with his Naugahyde travel bagclutched to his chest, thinking how he wished his sink faucet had that kind ofpowerful, Godly pressure, when his younger sister Georgia, who brushedonly once a day, bumped him from behind. All of his personal items spilledout into the bubbly distance.

“Georgia,” he screamed, but could not speak after that, for he envi-sioned the stand-up tube of extra-strength pearly-whitening baking-soda for-mula with its flip-top as it found its new home beneath the violent poundingof water. Pounding and pounding and molding its soft plastic sides intohideous shapes, the water would come and never stop, but eventually thetube would, Oh Jesus, the tube would burst and that sensuous minty nectarwould spread like the ashes of an important man through the dark. silentwater.

He was distraught in a most profound way. And to boot, his parentssuggested he might skip brushing for a day.

“Clarence, my boy,” his father boomed, pastrami hands caressing hisown breasts, “you might just skip brushing for a day. Marigold, tell your sonhe’s being obstinate.”

“Yes, Clarence,” his mother offered, I never see you without that bag oftoilet goodies. It might do you good, psychologically I mean, if you’d learnto relax. Skip brushing just this once. We’ll go to Piggly Wiggly when we gethome, and buy you a brand new toothbrush.”

Clarence knows that there is something really stupid-looking abouttoothbrushes. The little clusters of bristles, make him feel like he’s brushing


his teeth with the head of a baby doll. And he’s never liked baby dolls, any-how, especially when his anus-of-a-little-sister cuts the hair off to the base,leaving the peach plastic underneath. But he brushes his teeth anyhow, nomatter how the doll’s skull bumps around inside his mouth. He brushes themthoroughly.

“What about my damned toothpaste,”’ Clarence asked. “My goodtoothpaste. And my dental floss, minty-wax, also the good kind. Hmm, andum, what else? Possibly my fluoride? You don’t mess with my fluoride.Nope, not the fluoride.” He stared down into the abysmal resting place of thetube, and molded an expression of acute agony onto his face. “It’s gone.Down in Hell’s watery canyon of death. Down with the bodies of the littlechildren who leaned too far over the railing. Down with the—”

“Clarence!” his mother screamed. Her hands rested in a fold of hip fatand cotton shorts. Sweat trickled down from her armpit to her elbow. Sheturned toward the father and asserted her breasts at him. “Howard, your sonis a maniac.”

“I beg your pardon?”“You heard me, it was your genes that did it. Your little infantrymen

marching along my uterus chanting their crazy war songs. My genome is justfine, Howard, and your son is a maniac.”

“Your genome? My infantrymen? Whose mother, may I ask, servedtime in the Mississippi pen for exposing herself at a live stock auction duringthe crossbred pork special?”

“Howard, really–”“And didn’t she also strip down in the middle of a stockcar track just

before the flag? I think they had to call the race–”“Howard —”“Mother, father, my canines are wilting. My molars are crumbling into

gelatin.”

When he brushes he must keep the spearmint foam monster from escap-ing his lips and dripping down his chin, even when he’s alone. He likes tohave clean lips while the toothbrush is moving, so he seals them tightlyaround the handle. Tightly, tight, very, very tight, he hums to himself whilethe medium-flexibility bristles scratch against his enamel. It is a goodscratch, and the bleeding gums are a good sign. Better too much than notenough, Clarence knows.

“Mommy, all this water is making me have to pee,” Georgia squealed asshe jumped up and down with her legs crossed.

Marigold did not answer her children, but stared a hole throughHoward’s face. “My mother? I seem to recall a certain Easter brunch,Howard, with a certain Jell-O mold, Howard, shaped like a giant, erect—”

“She didn’t know. She bought it from a traveling salesman.”“A traveling Jell-0 mold salesman, father?” Clarence asked. He enjoyed

listening to his parents argue, and wasn’t above giving the discussion a slightpush if it happened to slow down.

“Shut up, Clarence.” Howard let his hands droop from his breasts. Hefelt around his waist for the tops of his pockets, but his gut hung over too far,and the slits were buried under it

“Howard, I don’t think I like the tone you just used with my son.”Marigold pulled her shorts out from her crotch and leaned over to massage abulging varicose vein across her knee.

“Marigold, a few moments ago he was my son. My maniacal son.” Hisnose let out a wet snoot.

“Howard, I don’t think I appreciate the tone you just used with me.”“Bite me, bitch-head. Put that in your Valium bottle and swallow it.”

His father, Howard, has sweaty, wool-covered teeth, like a wrestler, andhis mother Marigold’s teeth were clean but as yellow as urine from a dys-functional kidney. This is not acceptable.

“Mommy, daddy, I just tinkled all over my shorts and it’s getting downinto my socks. It squashes when I walk–listen...” Georgia stomped around,leaving dribbles of yellow on the white concrete. A small crowd had formedduring the genome discussion. This development quickly dispersed them.

“Georgia, honey, your good new Keds...” Marigold bent down andremoved Georgia’s shoes, then dumped each one and hit the sole with theback of her hand to get the extra liquid out.

“Well, you can’t blame that on me, can you?” Howard said. “You’re theone with the bladder problems. I’ll never forget our wedding night, Jesus,and not because of the romance either. I’ve never heard of anyone having toget up to pee in the middle of—”

“Not in front of the children, Howard!” She slammed her hands againstGeorgia’s ears, who rolled her eyes back and started to scream,

Howard yelled over her, “You make it sound like they don’t know any-thing about sex. Why do you think we took the time to explain all of it?Demonstrate some of it even?”

Heads turned as if magnetized. Marigold whispered into Howard’s ear,“It’s too early in their development for a full primal scene. I just thought—Christ, Howard, what if they turn out gay? What if they strip naked everytime they see an Indian in a baseball cap–?”

“Enough, already, mother, I am perfectly adjusted,” Clarence said.His mother turned on her heels. “Clarence, shut up.”Howard put his hands on his hips. “Hey, you told me not to tell him to–”“Shut up, Howard. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Nobody say another

goshdanged word.” Clarence stopped grinding his teeth. Georgia stoppedsqueezing her socks out. Howard put his hands back on his breasts andrubbed frantically. Marigold stood for a moment like a defiant turkey, herneck stretched up and backwards and her legs shifting back and forth withoutthe knees bending.

Then something happened. Marigold held her hand to her heart andstaggered back toward the railing.

Brush, brush, brush your teeth! Brush, brush, brush your teeth! La la lala la la la la la la! This song comes on the television sometimes, andClarence watches the man in the giant dental floss costume for hours. He hasthe whole thing on videotape.

Marigold put one loafer on the bottom rail, then the other one, andcurled her cowhide arms around the iron until she looked like she was tiedthere. Like she was a big, white sign that read “Do not stand too close to theedge.”

Then she straightened out her body and stood, stomach pressed againstthe bar. The bottom button of her blouse went first, then the next one up.Slowly, she unfastened each one, while her family stood staring at the placewhere the failing water beat against the river.

“I am a good mother,” she groaned, “I always point the pot handles tothe back of the stove.”

She lifted her arms. and showed the tourists her clean-shaven armpitsand pretty brassiere, the off-white one with a tiny sunflower embroideredbetween the cups. She held her position like that, letting her fingers play withthe thickness of the air, collecting beads of water in her palms. The winddried her throat, and she swallowed again, and again.

“All I wanted was for someone to tell me, ‘Marigold, you are my oneand only. Love me Marigold, bear me a child.’ Then I would, and the childwould say, ‘Mother, you’ve done damned good job of raising me.’ That’s all Iwanted. I deserved that.”

The men and women in their summer outfits turned away to look at thetrees.


In the fiction category, AWF Executive Director Jeanie Thompson (secondfrom left) presented prizes to (left to right) Joy Fields,Casey Moore, BlaireNewhard, and Matt Barron.

Howard did not try to cover her. He did not acknowledge her naked-ness. He only took Georgia by her wrist to the park area to clean up. Helooked at his wife across his shoulder as he walked.

Clarence turned his back, crossed his arms, and licked his teeth like amadman. He could feel the tiny rough spots forming across his smoothenamel. After a moment he uncrossed his arms and let them slip down to histhighs. He turned to look up at his mother, who stood crucified with Niagarafalling across her chest.

“You know,” Clarence said, “people have tried to ride the falls in allsorts of things. Barrels, crates. even plain rafts,”

“Your father doesn’t think I’m fit to raise the two of you.”Clarence paused. His teeth actually hurt. He couldn’t stand this much

longer. “We’ve gotten this far, haven’t we? I mean, maybe we aren’t com-pletely together, but we’re still alive, aren’t we? You don’t have to do every-thing.”

“Look at me, I’m naked in a national park. My six-year-old daughter’sjust wet herself, my husband’s just screamed about sex, loudly, and you,Clarence ... Clarence your tongue is moving like a piston. What the hell areyou doing?’

Clarence brought the tongue motions back down to survival mode, justa few casual licks when she stopped looking, He puffed his chest up, cockedhis head, and put his hand on Marigold’s shoulder. “Mother, all I need istoothpaste. Good toothpaste. If you can get me some good toothpaste, I’llneed nothing more from you. You will have accomplished your duty as mymother. Good toothpaste, that’s all.”

Teeth must be squeaky when you rub them with your thumb. Teeth arethe instruments of survival, the grinders and tearers of meat, the exposedbones of happiness. They aid enzymes in the breakdown of foodstuffs. Teethare your little white friends all lined up in a row.

She looked at him like a cow looks at a calf that’s just fallen out of herbody. She ran her finger along his jaw line and felt his teeth through hischeeks. Then she stood up and climbed over the rail. She hung on with onehand, and with the other, pointed down into the swirling water.

“I’ll get your toothpaste, honey, if that’s all you need.” She let herselffall backwards.

As he watched her body sink into the mist Clarence whispered after her,“It’s in a stand-up tube, the kind with a flip-top.”

The mist rose to a level just below where the onlookers stood. It waslike they were standing on top of a cloud that wasn’t supposed to be there.They were angels surfing the heavens in Hawaiian print shirts.

Judge’s Special Recognition, FictionTHE WAITING ROOMMatt Barron

Raymond watched out of his window as the sun’s broken rays flashedthrough the pine trees across his face. He thought about nothing in particularas he stared at the slowly passing countryside. He was playing a game insidehis head; he tried to blink his eyes every time the sun came out of the shad-ows. For all outward appearances, he was bored. His mood this morning wasbeyond boredom. He was never bored on Sundays, because he felt an atmos-phere of peace and unusual stillness. His usual mildness became silence thathe was unwilling to break. He enjoyed the silent warmth of the sun on hisface and the low rumble of his family’s car as they drove over the broken andtarred road that led to their church. Raymond enjoyed the drive to churchmuch more than church itself. In church he would have to wear his uncom-fortable dress shoes, and sing with the rest of the children, though he hated tosing. Today he would have to listen to the sermon on some worldly sin forwhich the unsaved would burn in hell. About this topic he had mixed emo-tions. He had never been baptized; and he sensed that although he went tochurch almost every single week, he was still one of the unsaved. He couldnot believe that God would save the few hundred people of his church, andleave the rest of the world to bum in hell.

“What about all the children in China?” He thought.He knew they weren’t all Christians, yet his mama prodded him into

eating his squash and beans by telling him that children there were starving.

But what did it matter to them if they starve? They were all going to hellanyway. He did not see how eating his beans would ever, in the grand magi-cal scheme of things, help them. But he ate his beans anyway, to please hismama. The only fun part of his day would be his Sunday School class. Hehad one or two friends there with whom he could talk if he did not mindbeing scolded by his teacher. In reality, he did not see the point in SundaySchool either. He never learned anything about God, either in Sunday Schoolor in sermons. He wondered what the point of church was if he didn’t learnabout God. He figured that the older, adult classes learned about God, andthat he would too someday. But then, he thought, he would have to hear thesermon every Sunday.

Sometimes his family left because his father was tired. He hoped theywould leave today. He did not want to sit through a sermon. He hated ser-mons. They were too long, and he wanted to fall asleep during worship, buthis mother never let him.

Soon they arrived at the parking lot of their church, the SouthernBaptist Church of Elmwood. Raymond put on his shoes, and got out of thecar with the rest of his family. His mother was in a hurry, as usual. She wasalways complaining that they would be late to church, but Raymond assumedit was normal because they were always late. He gazed over the parking lotat all of the shiny new cars of the rest of the congregation. He watched a fewother families, who were late also, walk through the parking lot. As theyentered the church, his mother and father left him to go to their classroom.Raymond never knew where his class was being held. So he waited forsomeone he recognized from his class to walk through the lobby.

Finally, he saw his parents’ Sunday School teacher walk across thelobby toward the halls where the classrooms were, and he ran to catch upwith him.

“Hello, Mr. Nebermeyer,” Raymond called out to the briskly walkingfigure in the black suit.

“Why hello there Ray, how’ve ya been?”“Pretty good. Do you know where my Sunday school class is today?”“The rest of your class is in room 240, downstairs, I believe. You better

hurry up and get on down there.”“Thank you, Mr. Nebermeyer.”Mr. Nebermeyer was nice. After Sunday School Raymond went to his

parent’s classroom and Mr. Nebermeyer let him have a leftover doughnut.As Raymond walked into his class, they were talking about people they

knew who needed the congregation to pray for them. Jimmy said that hisaunt had cancer, and that she needed everyone to pray for her. No one elseknew anyone who needed a prayer, so Andy stood up and said that his broth-er had broken his arm on a fourwheeler the other day, and so they ought topray for him to get well. Raymond sat down next to Jimmy. Jimmy was a kidfrom his school although he never talked to Raymond outside of SundaySchool.

After Sunday school, he went to his parent’s classroom as he alwaysdid. Today they were waiting outside for him.

“Are we going to sermon now?” Raymond asked.“No, son,” his father said,” We are going to visit your grandmother.His grandmother lived in a nursing home: St. Mary’s in the Cedars.

Ray did not like to visit his grandmother. She scared him, and the smell ofthe nursing home made him sick. His grandmother’s face never moved. Hereyes just followed him around the room. She could not talk, but she tried to.She grunted when she was trying to talk. It made Ray cringe to think aboutit. But he could not tell his mother that he did not want to go. He feltashamed of his disgust. He knew that he had no choice in the matter.

“Ok, let’s go,” he said.They left the parking lot in silence and drove the thirty minutes to his

grandmother’s nursing home. He hated talking on Sundays, when the air feltstill. He wanted everything to be quiet.

They arrived at the nursing home before church service for the elderlyhad ended. He did not like the waiting room either; it was painted a nastyyellow, and the paint was cracking and stained near the ceilings, as if the roofleaked all around. There was an empty, dingy aquarium in the middle of thefar wall, and underneath it the linoleum was peeling. Raymond fell asleepafter a few minutes, since nothing held his attention. His parents woke himas the service ended.


They stood up as the patients exited the chapel. Inside he could glimpsethe old pews, and the preacher walking off the dais. Raymond’s fatherwalked in and rolled his mother out. She stared straight forward with a stonyexpression. That face bothered Ray. He knew that, as a result of her disease,she could no longer move her face. StiII, he loathed that unchanging expres-sion. Soon they took his grandmother down the yellow hallway to her clois-ter-like room.

“Hi Mary,” Mr. Hornsby said,” Are you feeling alright.”“I know you can hear us. Say hello, Raymond,” his mother chided.“Hello Grandma. How are you.”He gave his grandmother a kiss on the forehead and a short hug. He

looked into her eyes, and saw her blank expression. But he knew she hadheard him, and he knew that she could understand. It was as if she wastrapped behind a wall. Her immobile face was like stone, she could not forceit to talk. But he was scared. He was scared because of the closeness ofdeath. It waited behind her wrinkled face. It lurked in her silence. Her roomsmelled of death. Its previous occupant had died of a liver disease last fall.

“Would you like to watch television?” his father asked. She grunted.“Ok,” his father said as he turned on the thirteen-inch television that

was on top of the dresser. It received forty channels, but only one worked.Wheel Of Fortune was playing right then. Everything beyond that was static.

“Mama,” he asked quietly, “Mama, can I go outside?” He did not haveany interest in anything outside; he merely wanted to get away from thatstony face.

His mother sighed, “Yes, you can go outside, don’t wander away.”He walked out of the room, and shuffled down the hallway to the room

where all of the people whose families did not come to see them sat andwaited, talked, or gibberished at each other. A few of them even played soli-taire. He was afraid of them too. Forlorn and forgotten, they reminded him ofanimals at the pound; no one cared about them in their senility. They remind-ed him of the kitten he had seen playing between the wheels of cars at astoplight. He pushed the thought out of his mind.

He walked past the attendant, who was reading a magazine, and out theglass door. He took a seat on one of the green iron benches. The cars on thefreeway interrupted the peaceful songbirds chirping, but it did not matter tohim. He was pensive and still. He let his thoughts wander lethargicallythrough his head. His thoughts turned again to the little kitten. It had been apathetic thing, with dirty orange fur. It had been playing in traffic like hisaunt’s cats played in her livingroom. It rubbed its tail up against the tires of acar, as if it wanted to be friends and play. The cat didn’t know that the carwasn’t a toy or a new person. It could not even comprehend the fact that thecar might kill it. Its innocent mind had no concept of its own death. Thethought of the kitten made him uneasy, so he pushed it out of his mind.

Raymond soon grew bored. He went to the car to see if he had left abook or something with which to busy him. There was nothing but a cheappaperback New Testament. So he returned to the iron bench and sat down.An old man came outside, and sat down beside Ray. The old man’s palsiedhand cradled his dark walnut cane that was crooked and wavy, and pulled uphis trousers as he sat down. He looked like the World War Two veterans Rayhad seen on the local news, watching T.V. in the home for veterans. He tookout a crumpled pack of Camel cigarettes, and held a cigarette between histhin, tightly stretched lips as his shaking hand attempted to light his yellowtarnished silver lighter.

He said to Ray, “Son, when 1 was your age, I woulda been scared tocome to this place. It’s ugly, an’s got all these old people.”

“Excuse me?” Ray said. The old man paid no attention to him.“My Louise is in there. She doesn’t think right, she doesn’t recognize

me anymore, thanks to the Sickness.”“The Sickness?” asked Ray.“My Louise has the Alzheimer’s disease. I reckon I’m gonna have it

too, one of these days. By then there ain’t gonna be no one to come visit me,anyway. So, what brings you here? Got a Grandmaw in there?”

“Yes. My Grandmama has Parkinson’s,” Ray answered.“Mighty sad to hear that, son. I bet she was a fine lady in her day. My

Louise weren’t never very fine. But I loved her, and that was enough.” Hepaused and gazed sadly at the brown leather contour of his shoe, “Son, I’ll

tell you a secret. I hate this place. It has the smell of death. It’s just like in thehospital. Good people sit in here, waiting to die, while no one comes to seethem, not even their own families. Their loved ones just forget about ’em,stuck here in this place. Their grandmaw’s and grandpaw’s is just old, some-times they can’t move very well, but they appreciate the love of their sonsand daughters and husbands and wives. Meanwhile they’re stuck in there likea hospital waiting room, only all’s they’re waiting for is admission into thatnext place. It’s a waiting room all right, a waiting room for death.”

Raymond thought again about his grandmother, and about all of thepeople inside sitting alone. He suddenly felt a wave of intense sadness andpain come over him. He felt sorry and guilty for all of the people inside, justas he had felt for the little kitten. The feeling washed over him. It was thesame feeling that always made him uneasy when he thought of the kitten. Itwas anguish and helplessness mixed together and tossing him around like thesea did at the beach when Raymond was only four years old. It caught him inthe throat and in the stomach, and he couldn’t move for the pain of it all. Herealized that his grandmother, that smiling face that had always been there,was going to die. Then the thought that he had dreaded came, the thoughtthat hovered around tile edge of his mind when he thought about the kitten,that always made him push the subject away. Someday, he would die too.He felt afraid, and helpless again.

“Well,” said the old man, “I guess I had better go back inside. I justcame out here to have a smoke. Nice chattin with ya.” With that, the old manwas gone. Raymond sat, unable to move. He barely whispered a goodbye tothe old man.

A few minutes later his father and mother appeared at the door.“Come on Ray, its time to go home,” his father called.Ray stood up, walked with them, quiet as usual, and sat in the back seat

of his family’s car. As they drove home, Raymond listened to his parentstalk. He followed the low tones of his father’s baritone, and the thin clarity ofhis mothers alto. He listened, and he was glad for the break in the silence.He asked his mother what was for lunch.

“Oh, we’re having rice and gravy, roast beef, corn . . .”

Judge’s Special Recognition, FictionTODAY IS WEDNESDAYJohn Seay

“I dream, therefore I exist.”—J. August Strindberg“Give me back my youth!”—Goethe

Today is Wednesday, my wall-mount calendar tells me from across theroom. I would have known even if I had not thought to glance mechanicallyat the neat little white boxes with the dates and pictures of tropical islandswhich I will never visit stuck in the top left corner. The truth is that I haveknown for quite a few days now that today would be Wednesday. And tomor-row, barring any bizarre act of nature, will be Thursday. Or so my experiencetells me.

I know also that tonight is meat-loaf and tapioca. I know that tomorrowis fried chicken, the next day is vegetable soup, and the day after . . . well,who wants to look so far into the future? I prefer instead to cross my wrin-kled hands across my motionless legs and think of how things used to be,before the accident. Before my future was etched out in stone under pinkmeal menus, TV Guides, and the two braces which have encased my shat-tered legs for some forty years. I prefer to remember back to when I wasyoung and vital. And unaware of what my future held for me—even then. . . .

I remember when we sat on Grandpa’s cold cement steps well into thenight. Until the moon was firmly planted directly above our heads and thehordes of crickets began their incessant chirping. He would talk for hours ofJellyroll Morton and Jackie Robinson and Alabama sharecropping. Listeningintently, we would tuck our elbows by our sides and ring our hands aroundour bony knees, drawing them close to our chests for warmth.

The night was always so beautiful then, I thought. Before my accident.Grandpa would laugh as we would run across the yard catching fireflies inour hands, giggling with excitement as their magic illuminated our faces. Inold pickle jars we would watch them for hours until the next day; when


morning would find them at the bottom of the jar, dead. I would cry, but soonforget the incident and look forward to the night when we would begin ourgame anew, not realizing that you kill something beautiful if you try to holdon to it all by yourself

As a boy I wished I had wings like the firefly. I would run as fast as Icould across the yard with my arms held stiffly out, parallel to the ground.With eyes closed I would leap into the air and, in my mind, go sailingthrough the clouds. Feeling the wind lap against my cheeks. How beautiful itwas then to be a young boy. How beautiful it was to believe that perhaps, if Iran hard enough, if I bit my lip tight enough, I could sail into the sky and liveforever above cotton candy clouds.

But my dreams, as well as my brother’s, would exceed our energy andwe would stumble wearily back up to the concrete porch where Grandpawould laugh and pat our heads as we entered the modest house. Often, whilelaying in bed, I could hear him whistling and rocking in his favorite chair,under the stars. I would strain to keep my eyes open just to hear him rockgently back and forth, but each blink increased the difficulty in maintainingthis endeavor. Finally, my tired lids would yield to sleep and I would surren-der peacefully to the night.

Morning would bring Corn Flakes and hot bacon, made by Grandma.Sam, my oldest brother, would pour mounds of sugar into his bowl untilGrandpa, with a wink, would tell him that so much sugar would turn himinto a giant sugar cube. I remember that smell. That indescribable delectablesmell which greeted us every morning. That smell of home. And family. Imiss that smell, sometimes when I sit alone. I miss that house and my nightsof freedom and companionship.

Now I spend my days staring out into the sky by my room, remember-ing those crickets and my foolish dreams. I wish I could dream now, some-times. But experience has told me that my dreams will never come true. Notanymore. I have seen the fireflies. I know that I can never stretch my wingsagainst the sky and feel the wind against my face. Not now. Not since theaccident.

No longer do I dream of running across the yard and eating home-grown watermelon down to the flavorless white rind. Now, all I have are mymagazines and my television, which gives me my stale dreams in neat thirtyminute intervals. Now I have air conditioning and hot water and my nurseregulates my sugar from pink and blue paper packages. Now I am old.

I try sometimes to convince her to, just once, let me indulge my sweettooth and drink that thick glucose paste that I remember at the bottom of mycereal bowl at Grandpa’s house. She just smiles and wheels her cart away.She thinks that because I am old, I am infantile. She treats me like a childsometimes, but then that is her job. I only wish that she would sometimes letme tell her about my first baseball game, before there were grandstands andmulti-million dollar contracts.

I tried once to tell one of my brothers, who came to visit me. But heonly stared at my legs and the floor and never looked into my eyes. Notonce. I cried when he was gone. I told him he did not have to come visit me.I told him I was doing fine. I told him the nurse treated me nice and theheadaches never bothered me so much.

Sometimes I wish I could tell him the dreams I used to have, before Iam too old to remember them. Sometimes I think that my dreams are suffo-cating inside my mind. Sometimes I believe that if I tell someone, I can growstronger. That I can dream again. But I am old. Experience tells me that noone wants to come and sit and listen to a crippled old man try to recapturehis dreams in a dusty pickle jar and watch them glow faintly before they alldie out.

Who knows? Like I said before, today is Wednesday. Tonight is meat-loaf and tapioca. Tomorrow is fried chicken. And the next day and the nextday and so on and so on, like clock work. But now I wish to think not ofsuch things. Now, I want only to rest so that, visiting the corridors of myyouth, I can build a thousand new dreams. One at a time.

Judge’s Special Recognition, FictionA CANDLE’S FLAMEJoy Fields

She stood in the center of the ring of candles, her face lit by the eerieglow of fire. She hugged her arms close to her body and shivered as gunfiresounded in the streets below. Sitting down, Mira reached for her worn andtattered prayer book and fingered the pages gently. She strained to read thetiny, black letters printed in Hebrew across its musty pages. The little roomwas small, without windows, and only lit by the candles glowing from theirglass holders on the floor. It had been a while since its last use, and was nowcompletely covered in a film of dust and dirt. The sounds of children laugh-ing and adults telling stories and a mother rocking her baby to sleep with asoothing lullaby, had once filled it and gave it life. Then, with the threat ofwar in Poland, the little room had been turned into a secret place to hide, justin case it was one day needed.

Mira, the only one of her family still alive, was in hiding from theswarms of Nazis that ravished each town and captured each Jew they couldfind. When the Nazis had come to her town of Warsaw, Poland, they burned,destroyed, and claimed everything. All Polish Jews were rounded up andpiled into big trucks. Others were killed on the spot from the bullets of Naziguns and hauled away in the lorries. The earth was stained the crimson colorof blood. Mira had watched as her older brothers were taken away on thetrucks, while her parents and grandparents were shot. She had rememberedthe small room hidden behind the kitchen in their apartment, now made onlyaccessible by a concealed, removable board. She had fled that day to it, andthere she would stay and wait.

But, now the only connections she had to the outside world were the fre-quent rounds of gunfire, screams, and few traces of smoke from burningbuildings that managed to crawl through the cracks in the walls and floor.Sometimes she even feared that the building would get burned beneath her.Every now and then, footsteps on the stairs below brought Mira into a state ofcomplete fear as she held her breath, silently praying she wouldn’t be found.

That night, she dreamed as she tossed and turned on the little springmattress against the wall. Mira dreamed about the camps she had heard ofand the thousands of Jews who were dying there at the bloodstained hands ofthe Germans.

She was standing at the window of one of the women’s barracks, hold-ing a candle in one hand. The wind was cool and crisp, but brought the rawaroma of death and Mira had to grip the windowsill to steady herself. Insidea small girl walked to the window and stood there looking at Mira withglossy, brown eyes. Her face had no expression and no color left in it. Hereyes were big and round as she glanced down to the candle that Mira held inher trembling hand. The girl’s mouth slowly formed a word and then wentback to a thin line. Mira tried to understand her. Had she said “HOPE?”But, the girl had disappeared back into the shadows. A gust of wind cameand stole the flame from the candle...and Mira was left in darkness.

Mira awoke in a cold sweat and sat up straight. Three of the candles inthe circle had gone out. Nine still glowed as wax trickled down their sidescreating little ridges down to their base. She walked over to the three that hadgone out and lit them with a match from her box. Momentarily all was silentand she realized it was still night outside. The Germans had stopped their ter-ror until morning, when the next line of tanks would come through. She tooka seat in the ring of candles and gazed at one of the flames that burned fromthe little wick, admiring its color as it danced in the air.

Mira found herself standing at the edge of a giant dirt pit. To her leftwere SS guards with rifles pointed to the line of Jews winding up the hillside.To her right, was an old man, shivering and naked, hugging his body tightlywith bony arms trying to stay warm. Mira stood frozen with the image of theman in front of her. She couldn’t move...and couldn’t speak. His mouth beganto tremble as he struggled to speak.

“The candle...it represents our hope...the flame represents our life...please don’t take away the flame....”

As he finished his last word, a bullet forced him to his knees and he fellinto the vast pit behind him. Mira fell to her knees and screamed out. No oneheard her. She sat there and her fingers clawed at the soil.


“Oh, Jehovah...why this, why...?’Tears choked back her words. A little girl stepped up to the spot where

the old man had stood. Mira closed her eyes.

She came to, startled by the sound of footsteps approaching fast. Howlong had she been sitting there? Mira jumped to her feet and ran to where theboard opening was. She put her ear against it and listened.

Someone had come up the stairs and had run down the hall. She couldbarely make out some Hebrew words. Whoever it was, was trying to hide.They were trying to escape for their life. Mira held her breath as sweat gluedher brown hair to her forehead. Hopefully she wasn’t in danger just yet.

She was exhausted and when sleep did come at night, it was disturbingand terribly vivid. How many days had it been since the raid swept throughthe ghetto? How long ago was it that her family was killed and she had tohide in the little room? Every day was an eternity and every day moved clos-er to liberation or to death.

The days were filled with endless gunfire, screaming, and the sounds oftanks as they rolled their way through to the other line, taking more land andvillages as they went...no one trying to stop them. The Germans were goingto get their way and, right now, there was no one to tell them they couldn’t!

The next night, Mira could not sleep. She was scared to sleep, but shewanted desperately to shut out the world that she had to listen to and hidefrom. In her dreams, there was another type of fear. It was the hauntingimages of her own people and her own race being brutally murdered. It wasthe images of those she had watched die, including her family. She could notseem to make the dreams stop. Even during the day, they were playing overand over in her mind, like a broken film projector. But her body was tooweak, and she did not want to have to fight with herself to stay awake. Soshe gave in.

This time she found herself standing in the middle of a set of railroadtracks. The sky was crystalline and the air warm on her skin. Mira lookeddown at her bare feet that were red and blistered from walking on the hottracks. She didn’t know where she had been or how she had gotten there oreven where she was going, but she knew she had to keep following the set oftracks.

There were no signs that a train still ran on these tracks, because theties were rotted away in places and weeds covered the space between therails. She started to walk again and set herself at a steady pace.

Before long, she came upon a fence that started to run the length of therails and continued on into the horizon. It was a tall fence, with barbed wireat the top. It was made to keep people in and everyone else out! Mira

walked and kept her eyes searching for any sign of anyone or anything onthe other side. Nothing. Suddenly, she noticed some tiny figures off in the dis-tance leaning on the fence. She saw what looked like an arm stuck outbetween the spaces, and now she began to run.

She stopped where the fence opened at a massive steel gate with a signhung high above it. In tall, thin, inscribed letters it read, “Work makes onefree.” It was the gate to the entrance of Auschwitz, one of theconcentration/labor camps. Just inside the gate stood a group of children.

They stared at her with huge, curious eyes. Some of them took a stepcloser to the fence. Finally, she walked up to it and ran her hand along thecold steel

A small, frail boy stepped up to the front of the group. “Are you ourhope? Are you here to help us and to set us free?”

He stepped back as a girl pushed her way up to the gate to speak.“‘Thank you for keeping the candles lit. They give us hope...when we

have nothing else. You have saved us, although you may not realize it. Yourcandles help us to make it through another day, with the hope that we willsome day be free again and the Germans will leave us. Thank you, Mira!”

Mira stood there and stared at them and looked for some explanation...some understanding as to who they were and how they knew who she was.

“But, how do you know me? What do you want me to do for you...please, tell me so that I can help...’

“You are helping us, Mira. Each one of us is alive because of you andbecause of the hope and faith that you still have... you are helping us...” Theyoung girl smiled at her as she turned to the others. They slowly began tofade, leaving her standing alone on the tracks, still reaching out to grip themetal of the worn gate.

Gunshots pierced the air and rang in her ears, as she jerked herself out ofthe dream. This time, she had the feeling that she was in danger of beingfound. She crawled across the floor to the opening in the wall and peekedthrough the tiny crack. She could see nothing, but she heard footsteps of sev-eral men climbing up the stairway to her floor of the old apartment building.

She almost let out a scream as the door was kicked in and men stormedinto the apartment. They were all screaming in their German tongue, so shecouldn’t make out what they were saying.

Just then, two of them entered the kitchen. She turned around putting herback against the board and faced the ring of candles.

“A flame for life...a flame for hope,” she whispered.Someone was running the barrel of a rifle along the wall checking for

loose boards and cracks. She knew that she would soon be found and mostlikely killed, but she also knew that she couldn’t keep hiding forever. Mirawent and sat in the ring of candles on the floor and picked up her prayer bookand began to pray.

“Jehovah, give me the hope...the candles must stay lit for them, and forme...”

Just then, the board concealing the entrance to the room was kicked inand light filtered through. An SS guard crawled through and aimed his riflearound the room, shouting again in German. He stood still and focused hiseyes on the ring of candles and spit at them in disapproval and utter disgust.

“No one in there...just a ring of burning candles on the floor...” he report-ed to the others.

As the men stormed out of the little apartment and down the stairs, Miraopened her eyes and stared at the opening with tears streaming down her face.Rays of bright sun were flooding the room. She stood to her feet and lookeddown at the candles still burning bright. She began to sing in Hebrew. Outsidethe sound of fighter planes roared overhead. They were the planes of theAllied forces.


AWF President Brent Davis (second from right) presented awards to creativenonfiction winners Joyce Selina Momberger, Chris Lafakis, and Betsy Childs.


Elegy for the Southern Drawlby Rodney JonesHoughton Mifflin, 1999112 pp. Cloth, $20

Mr. Rodney Jones is a singingman, a jam-rock man whose “music isnot sound but an engraving of silence.”He finds that voiceinside the poemand listens while itsings through him“the beautiful/Tuneof [its] ego.” In thebook’s first section,“The Changing ofthe Present,” adrunken voice fromthe poem “Not SeeAgain” recalls

how lucky I wasTo have gone broke, not to have it all

regurgitatedFor me from some book, but to have lain

in a fieldWith the tongue-tied, the murderous, the

illiterate,And the alcoholic.

This wonderfully generous voice is themagnetic power at the center of Elegyfor the Southern Drawl.

In the second section voices fromsome old worrying with work andplace sound like the “racket ofcrows.../In all their larceny, loud talk,and glitter-lust.” Most of the voicesflitter, break wind, and die away, butone voice stays a constant concern forwhat poetry is, where it might befound, and who is reading it. Thatvoice longs

for the trueReader, the one who vanishes into Joyce,The one who admires Hart Crane only

for the sound,And the one who quit medical schoolTo spend a year washing dishes and

reading Whitman.And that voice worries in “The PoetryReading” that “perhaps the universityis not the place for poetry.”

We turn a page, “catch a straywhiff,” and begin the center piece,“Elegy for the Southern Drawl,” alament for the dead and dying, some-thing gone and going, the way we sawit once, our folk from the past.

Everywhere in this section you canhear the voices of the dead slowlydying in our own ears. Again you hear

the hugging voice of a grandmother,“ya’ll gon spin the nite?” Jones seemsalmost desperate in his search for aplace to store the past. He uses tales,jokes, stories, yarns, and legends, andhe stuffs them full of voices living in aslow strum of time, pilgrims strung outalong some dusty road going some-where in Alabama, Mississippi, possi-bly even Tennessee. I can hear themeven now in my father’s memory, “BigJim Folsom promised to pave theroads, and he did.”

From somewhere way off a voice,perhaps in a dream, says, “if ya’ll don’tmind, I’ll go with you ‘A Piece of theWay,’” and we enter the fourth sectionof the book. Here the voice is hauntedby “The great, trembling laugh ofbeautiful grief.” The lament for thedying, the leaving, and the not havingbeen

rises now, among the dogwoodsAnd through the ink of papers stackedon desks where flowers are forbidden.

Father, husband, lover shuffle, stumble,mutter into the cautious dismissal ofuncertainty,

I do not ever crossA bridge but that whole histories of

optionsCrop up like bubbles from the river’s

bottom.The real interest in this section is thefather’s humble recognition of his inad-equacy in the presence of the son’shuge and curious needs.

The final section of Elegy for theSouthern Drawl is “The SorrowPageant.” Now, some facing up to do,some holding back the need to weepfor all of us who know, or must learn,what it is

to be old, as though underwaterAnd weighted with lead, you’d halfA mind to struggle as you sank, and soStumbled on, or crawled.

The darkness descends in this sombermoment of knowing that we belong tothis world in some very painful, tear-ing, and real way.

Read this book slowly and morethan once. Listen to this voice that sosubtly draws us into the human worldof love and astonished anger, of fearand questions, and of utter dismay thatwe have so concocted our own confu-sion. This book is not only an elegy tosomething peculiarly southern; it is anelegy to something terribly human.Ed Hicks is professor of English at TroyState University and editor of theAlabama Literary Review.

Detecting Metalby Fred BonnieLivingston Press, 1999160 pp. Cloth $19.95; Paper $9.95

Fred Bonnie is an immigrant. Hecame to Alabama from Maine in 1974and continues to write, in this his sixthvolume of short sto-ries, of both places.Of the twelve sto-ries in this volume,six are set in NewEngland, four inAlabama, one inboth places and onenowhere/anywhere.

No matter thesetting, however,this is Bonnie’s best book and everystory is a winner. Detecting Metal hasbeen named an “Editor’s Choice” byBooklist, and this puts it in very selectcompany.

Of the twelve stories, two strikeme as extraordinary. Appropriatelyenough, one is set in Maine, one inAlabama. The title story, “DetectingMetal,” sends the reader away with asweet aftertaste. A fiftyish Mainefarmer, George Stockton, who remind-ed me of one of Garrison Keillor’sNorwegian bachelor farmers, goes tothe airport to meet Jenna Simmons, agirl he had a crush on in high school.She has been widowed for five yearsand “George could not help but wonderwhat she looked like now–and whatshe might think of him.” George hashopes. But George has never beforebeen to an airport and has no experi-ence with metal detectors. He is carry-ing in his overalls his watch, keys, apipe cleaning tool, a miniature screw-driver set, an Allen wrench, a metaltape measure, his old volunteer firemanbadge, and, of course, a large pocketknife. After one rejection by the securi-ty guard, George puts all his metalobjects under his hat, on top of hishead, thinking this might outwit themachine. George is ridiculous, but wealready knew that and we have come tolike him anyway.

“Rest Areas” is the most emotion-ally moving new story I have read inyears. The narrator, Ben, a perfectlyordinary young man, is enlisted to helphis buddy care for his old and dyingmother, Opal. Ben drives Opal to herdialysis treatments, gleefully aids herin cheating on her diet–she is dying,after all–spends time with her, comesto know her, and finally comes to loveher. Although they seem to have a gen-

REVIEWS


uine sexual passion for one another,there is no physical dimension to theirrelationship; there cannot be. But theyboth sense that however unlikely itmight seem, if she weren’t ill, therewould be. Like the “lovers” they are,they set out on a road trip to the beach,but they never make it. Opal dies in arest area just south of Evergreen. WhenBen delivers Opal’s body to the emer-gency room in Mobile, the intern, ayoung woman, asks, “You her son?”Ben answers, “Boyfriend.”Don Noble is professor of English at theUniversity of Alabama and host ofAlabama Public Television’s“BookMark.”

Poachersby Tom FranklinWilliam Morrow and Co., 1999192 pp. Cloth, $22

So much was said about Poachers,Tom Franklin’s first book of stories,that I anticipated a major new talent.Then I read his First Draft reflectionon the enduring relevance of Southernhistory, the impor-tance of family, andother worn senti-ments we’ve grownnumb hearing. Thenhis book openedwith yet anotherautobiographicalreflection, again onAlabama and itsimportance in thewriter’s life. Iprepared to acknowledge another wholives by the front porch storytellingtradition of Mama and Daddy and AuntSophia.

But of course I was wrong. WhenFranklin writes that he comes to Ala-bama–especially “the wooded countiesbetween the Alabama and TombigbeeRivers”–he sets the hook by admittinghe’s here to “poach” for stories. Instrange and powerful and unexpectedways the poaching theme returns againand again. It’s one of the many twistsand turns that make for a fresh, excit-ing, exhilirating read.

The people in Franklin’s storiesaren’t pretty, but they are real. Hispurpose in Poachers is to capture theirstories before they disappear along withthe old hardwood stands that are beingclear-cut, hewn: poached. The openingstory, “Grit,” with its amazing charactersin a modern Snopes fable, offers thefirst of many great lines when Snake-bite says: “If Michael Corleone waded

out in the ocean and [mated with] thatshark (from Jaws), then you’d have oldRoy.”

Most of Franklin’s many greatlines appear in the dialogue, though thestories have relatively few spokenwords. When these characters speak,something is always being said. Relishthe “pork chop” exchange between thedrifter and the watermelon man in“Shubuta”; the cell phone call and thereminiscence on the lost son in“Dinosaurs”; the heart-rending conver-sation about cowboy business in “BlueHorses.” The dialogue is perfect. Thesettings are on target. Alabama isnailed down here by one who knows it.If you’ve been around, especially inthat area Poachers inhabits, you knowthese things to be true.

And the details are rife. They’refree-flowing and lurid and wild.Steeples on flatbed trucks, midgets atfilling stations, cracked car batteriesleaking into oil-stained sand. If there’sone problem with these stories it’s thatFranklin sees everything, and occasion-ally an editor might rein in his enthusi-astic eye for life and slow death. Niceproblem to have. Then there’s the longlast story, “Poachers.” It’s been nomi-nated for lots of important awards andwill probably win some. It’s alsoincluded in a collection of the bestmystery stories of the century. And onand on. That’s because it’s so good.

Tom Franklin is the most forcefulnew fiction writer I’ve read sinceencountering Larry Brown severalyears ago. The two have the hard edgeand jagged truth in common, thoughFranklin ultimately takes the reader toa higher level of mystery and wonder.

There’s a haunting contrast in theneat, tight “Triathlon” where Bruceleaves rubber on the highway with noother trace of himself. “But there’straces of me everywhere,” the narratortells us. Tom Franklin writes with OldTestament wisdom, folding it in withthe same excitement Adam must havefelt when naming the animals.Poachers will shoot you through themind and heart.George Littleton teaches English atAuburn University.

A Messy Job I Never Did Seea Girl DoBy Mary Jane RyalsLivingston Press, 1999116 pp. Cloth, $20.95; Paper, $9.95

Geographically, the FloridaPanhandle is not that far removed from

Alabama, but the landscape of MaryJane Ryals is not necessarily land norwater but a state of emotion that isregionally specific yet universally true.

A collection of short stories, herbook, A Messy Job I Never Did See aGirl Do, is like a series of drawingsthat can be rapidly flipped to create theillusion of movement. In manyinstances, her images are striking andbrutal. Her language is a good matchfor those harshimages, sometimescrystal clear andsometimes deliber-ately muddied.

The charactersin her stories are thewomen and girlswho must find theirway alone. Some bychoice, others bycircumstance. These are women with-out men, or so disconnected from themen in their lives that they might aswell be alone.

For the most part, the charactersare poor, and often young. Some of themost potent stories are set in the pastand explore the difficulties of negotiat-ing racial and male-female relation-ships. Ryals explores these themes withhonesty and no apology.

Her language is both a joy and abother. There are times when herchock-full sentences snag rather thanflow. But when they flow, which is amajority of the time, they are likerapids, shooting fast and furiousbetween the rocks. In describing theflood, she writes “all you could seewas the pink light on the barge’s bowand the broil and roar of the floodwa-ters, the humming under it like bloodas it sliced and dissolved the face ofthis earth.”

In “Swallows Dance” the maincharacter has found the man she loves.She “hangs in his carved out musclearm” and finds a haven until flood andtragedy strike once again.

In my favorite story, “144” (a kids’shorthand for something awful), theprotagonist discovers a terrible secretabout her best friend. In this story,though, there is hope that the younggirl will connect with her mother longenough to find at least some answers tohuman behavior and a bit of protection.

Ryals is a talented writer with afine ear for the melody of the batteredheart–and the words of the brain thattry to heal us.

Carolyn Haines’s novels include Touchedand Summer of the Redeemers, as wellas more than 25 mystery/intrigue titles.

Under the Same Heaven: A Novelby Marjorie BradfordBlack Belt Press, 1999459 pp. Paper, $17.95

Any time a novel begins with along list of characters and several dif-ferent settings, one expects it to beslow going. However, MarjorieBradford’s Under the Same Heaven isso meticulously structured and hercharacters so well drawn that it is sur-prisingly easy to follow. It is also avery suspenseful book.

Waverly, Georgia, may be a smalltown, but it has more than its share ofsecrets, mysterious visitors, andunsolved crimes. It even has a ghost, forafter his death in anairplane crash, PriceTownsend, or“County Pa,” thewealthiest, mostpowerful man inSouth Georgia, canstill be seen guardinghis game preserve.County Pa also con-tinues to dominatethe lives of his sons.By leaving his estate to Rudolph,County Pa made sure that Carltonwould hate his brother, even to the pointof stealing the girl he intends to marry.

However, Under the Same Heavenis one of those old-fashioned novels inwhich Providence is always at work.The hobo Will Fable publishes hisbook; Jake Potter is rescued from a lifeof crime and set up in a woodcarvingbusiness; the golf pro Jack Hamiltonreturns to his wife;

Carlton, reformed, makes up withRudolph, and both of them end up withthe right girls; the wicked are punishedand the good rewarded. Unfortunately,Bradford’s prose style is choppy, andher dialogue seems stilted and artifi-cial. However, if one ignores thosestylistic defects, Under the SameHeaven is an interesting read.Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman, Englishprofessor at Charleston (SC) SouthernUniversity, co-authored ContemporarySouthern Men Fiction Writers, publishedin 1998 by Scarecrow Press.

The Voyage of the Encounterby Sheldon Burton WebsterRutledge Books, Inc., 1998434 pp. Cloth, $24.95

In his suspenseful first novel, TheVoyage of the Encounter, SheldonBurton Webster, a Birmingham accoun-tant by profession and a sportsman bynature, pulls his readers through a dan-gerous financial intrigue. His protago-nist, Wall Street investment bankerPeter Slade, is targeted for arrest by avengeful Securitiesand ExchangeCommission (SEC)investigator forSlade’s artful dupli-cation of a col-league’s illegalinsider trading. Theconsequences of thatarrest follow Sladefrom his marriage toa Rhode Islandheiress through a romantic and busi-ness entanglement in Bermuda with aninfamous madam.

The novel’s pace and tension buildwith vivid and detailed descriptions ofinternational banking scandals, anopen-water yacht competition, and alife-threatening storm. Webster’s writ-ing, described by one critic as “ElmoreLeonard with a dash of SidneySheldon,” is marred by some technicalflaws. Despite this, The Voyage of theEncounter affords readers a compellinginsider’s view of both Wall Street highfinance and international yacht racing.Lisa Brouillette is a writer who lives inAuburn.

The Weaver Takes a Wifeby Sheri Cobb SouthPrinny World Press, 1999234 pp. Paper, $12.95

It is easy to understand whyRegency romances are so popular withwomen readers. Like Cinderella,Pamela, and Jane Eyre, the heroines inthese books labor on, unappreciated,until a wealthy aristocrat happensalong, recognizes their true worth, andwhisks them off to his world of wealth,privilege, and abundant hired help.Although Sheri Cobb Smith calls hernew novel a Regency romance, TheWeaver Takes a Wife is not typical ofthe genre.

In this case, the heroine is the aris-tocrat, the daughter of a duke, whilethe hero is an orphan without a pedi-gree. All that Ethan Brundy has to rec-

ommend him as ahusband is thewealth he derivesfrom his textile millin Lancashire.However, since thefather of the beauti-ful Lady HelenRadney has gambledaway the family for-tune, she has nochoice but to marry Brundy. At first,Lady Helen is embarrassed to be seenwith her spouse, whose manner ofdress and speech, as well as his radicalopinions, brand him as a man unfit forpolite society. A session with a tailorimproves Brundy’s appearance; howev-er, even to win the heart of LadyHelen, he will not alter his principles.It is Lady Helen who changes. At theend of the novel, she has become botha compassionate individual and a lov-ing wife.

One reason the characters in TheWeaver Takes a Wife are so believableis that, from the Duke and his friendsto his Lancashire son-in-law to the lit-tle servant Sukey, all of them speakexactly as they would have in theRegency period. South is at her bestwhen she lets her characters revealthemselves in dialogue. The responseof members of a Tory club whenBrundy attempts to defend the poormakes authorial comment unnecessary.Occasionally, the novel moves towardmelodrama, but fortunately the authorsoon returns to her comic mode, oreven to farce, as in the final episode.The Weaver Takes a Wife is really toogood a book to be dismissed as aRegency romance; it deserves to bedescribed as a novel of manners in theAusten tradition.Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman

Cleaving: The Story of a Marriageby Dennis and Vicki CovingtonNorth Point Press, 1999214 pp. Cloth, $22

Dennis and Vicki Covington areacclaimed writers, Dennis for theground-breaking book of literary jour-nalism, Salvation on Sand Mountain,and Vicki for three critically praisednovels. Like so many writers of bothfiction and nonfiction these days, theyhave turned their talents to memoir.

I date the blossoming of the newAmerican memoir from the publicationand unexpected popularity of twobooks published in the early 1980s,Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s


Beginnings and Russell Baker’sGrowing Up. Since then, the form hasflowered in the literary marketplaceand the national psyche. In less thantwo decades, memoir has diversifiedand matured into a full-fledged literary

genre as capable ofilluminating thehuman condition asfiction, poetry, orsong. Memoirseems to havebecome the newliterature of themasses. Experi-mental approachesabound.

As the title tellsus, rather than being the usual slice ofindividual life written by the personwho experienced it, Cleaving is thestory not of one person and not of twobut of the unpredictable two-headedoneness we call “a marriage.” In alter-nating chapters, these two skillful writ-ers chronicle the wayfaring of theirtroubled souls, their love for eachother, and their attempts to anchor bothlove and trouble in the ever-absolvingwaters of their Christian faith.

Their two very different voicesflash backward and forward in time,revealing the story of a love that began25 years ago. It is also the story ofalcoholism, a divorce, infidelities,abortion, depression, barrennessfollowed by the miraculous birth oftwo daughters, missionary travels,conversions, re-conversions, a thousandfalls from grace, and two checkeredcareers graced by a shared love for thewritten word.

In writing their lives as sin, confes-sion, and the quest for salvation, theCovingtons follow a tradition inChristian literature that goes back tothe confessions of St. Paul and St.Augustine. The Covingtons fail thatheritage only in their inability to pro-vide the moral and spiritual reawaken-ing that is required to put the seekerson a new path.

Readers of memoir look for a reso-lution that connects the writer’s experi-ence with their own and gives sharedsuffering new meaning. Cleaving offersa few glimpses of larger truths but noth-ing suggests either personal redemptionor the salvation of the marriage.

One of the challenges of memoir isthat you can’t make up the ending. Youhave to wait for it. The Covingtons, aswriters, are too honest to fake it.

Cleaving shows two gifted writersgrappling with some of life’s hardestlessons in a budding genre still tooyoung to know exactly where it isheaded. Those who want to see them attheir best would be better served toread Dennis’ Salvation on SandMountain and Vicki’s The Last Hotelfor Women.Judith Paterson grew up in Montgomery.She is the author of the criticallyacclaimed Sweet Mystery: A SouthernMemoir and teaches writing at theUniversity of Maryland.

A Pirate Looks at Fiftyby Jimmy BuffettRandom House, 1998458 pp. Cloth. $24.95

A quick and easy gallop throughMargaritaville, that fabulous fantasyworld that Jimmy Buffett has created inhis music, A Pirate Looks at Fiftybrings to the pages of his half-centuryautobiography a journey into theCaribbean, through Costa Rica, downthe Amazon, and into the islands.

As a Parrothead lover of thisMobile native’s rendition of “Stars Fellon Alabama” as well as his own laidback ballads, it was easy for me to flyand sail with Buffett from the momenthe leaves Florida until he sweeps backover the Gulf of Mexico, a restless fel-

low.He tells about

his long love affairwith the novelDon’t Stop theCarnival byHerman Wouk andhis passion to turnthat work into aBroadway musical,about his work with

unique professional artists, friends,gringos, natives, living Boogie Nightsand days.

He tells of a close call inColombia, problems wherever he goes,and “another snowy day in Paradise” atthe Cartagena International Airport.Need I say more? When the writer-singer of “Pencil-Thin Mustache” set-tles into prose, he flies.Wayne Greenhaw’s latest book, Beyondthe Night: A Reminiscence, will be pub-lished in the fall of 1999 by Black BeltPress.

But for Birmingham: The Localand National Movements in theCivil Rights Struggleby Glenn EskewUniversity of North Carolina Press,1997472 pp. Cloth, $19.95

On April 2, 1963, Martin LutherKing, Jr. and Fred L. Shuttlesworthlaunched a campaign of nonviolentprotests in Birmingham that precipitat-ed the most profound racial crisis ofthe early 1960s. The principal demandof the protesters–that the city’s depart-ment stores permitblack customers toeat at their lunchcounters–appears,with hindsight,absurdly mild andself-evidently rea-sonable.

In 1963, how-ever, the mere asser-tion of black rightsin the form of public protest was utter-ly unacceptable to the city’s whiterulers. Birmingham was the“Johannesburg of the South,” whereracial segregation resembled SouthAfrican apartheid; it was“Bombingham,” where the Ku KluxKlan dynamited the homes of blackpeople who moved into white neigh-borhoods. Above all, Birmingham wasthe political domain of EugeneTheophilus “Bull” Connor, a pugna-cious, dictatorial, and ruthless politi-cian whose ironic title, Commissionerof Public Safety, belied the fact that heused the police force to bug, browbeat,and brutalize the black population. Infact, so vehement was Connor’s reac-tion to the protests led by King andShuttlesworth–especially his unleash-ing of police dogs and fire hoses uponblack demonstrators–that the nationand the world recoiled in horror. TheCivil Rights Bill of 1964, introducedby President Kennedy as a direct resultof the protests, swept away racial seg-regation and constituted a milestone inthe history of the South.

Or so it seemed. For in his deeplyresearched, passionately written, andcontroversial book Glenn Eskew chal-lenges the view that the Birminghamcampaign of 1963 represented astraightforward victory for the CivilRights Movement. For one thing, thegoals of national civil rights leaderMartin Luther King, Jr. were often atodds with those of local black leader


Fred L. Shuttlesworth. Although thetwo men were ostensibly co-leaders ofthe 1963 protests, King ultimatelypulled rank, Eskew argues, in order toimpose a negotiated settlement which,while it advanced King’s reputationand fathered the Civil Rights Bill, didlittle to improve the position of ordi-nary black people in Birmingham. ToEskew, Shuttlesworth was the real heroof Birmingham–a diminutive Baptistclergyman whose inspired, tenacious,and courageous leadership kept theCivil Rights Movement alive between1956 and 1963. King, perversely, wasthe villain of the piece–a bourgeoiscompromiser who betrayedShuttlesworth and his local followers.Indeed, in a pessimistic coda to hisbook, Eskew concludes that the CivilRights Movement advanced the inter-ests of the black middle-class but,judging by the fact that at least a thirdof the black population still lives belowthe poverty line, achieved only a limit-ed success.

A superb account of racial politicsin Birmingham between 1945 and1963, But for Birmingham is so aggres-sively revisionist that it is likely to bethe last word on the events of 1963.Eskew is surely correct to insist thatFred L. Shuttlesworth was absolutelycentral to the Civil Rights Movementin Birmingham. His harsh criticisms ofKing, however, are not always well-supported. Still, although its conclu-sions are tendentious, this book isimportant.Adam Fairclough is the author of ToRedeem the Soul of America: TheSouthern Christian LeadershipConference and Martin Luther King, Jr.(1987) and Race and Democracy: TheCivil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972 (1995).

Lift Every Voice: African-AmericanOratory, 1787-1900Edited by Philip S. Foner and RobertJames BranhamThe University of Alabama Press, 1998925 pp., Cloth, $49.95; Paper, $24.95

This is a massive volume, compris-ing 151 speeches by African-Americans, male and female. At a timewhen so much African-American writ-ing is being printed and reprinted, onemight ask of the need for this book. Inthe deeply informative introduction,Branham tells us, “Of the thousands ofspeeches published in [the series] VitalSpeeches of the Day, published before1970, less than one-tenth of 1 percent

were by African-Americans.” Andthe fifteen-volumeAmericanEloquence (1925)contains only twospeeches by a black,both by Booker T.Washington.

This volume isa revised andexpanded version of volume one ofFoner’s two-volume Voices of BlackAmerica (1972), now out of print, witha number of previously abridgedspeeches now included whole and over60 new ones. Ending in 1900, this vol-ume will be followed by two more,1900-1945 and 1945 to the present.

Branham explains the centralimportance of oratory in the worldbefore television, movies, radio, video-tape, or audiotape. Oratory was howone organized movements, how onepreached, and how one swayed opin-ion, and it was entertainment, withspeeches and sermons commonly last-ing more than two hours. African-Americans, who were frequently illiter-ate, by law or circumstance, particular-ly relied on the spoken word, and thespoken word was developed, in famousspeakers such as Frederick Douglass orSojourner Truth or W.E.B. DuBois orBooker T. Washington, to high art.(Frederick Douglass was asked by theabolitionist societies for which hespoke to be a little less eloquent, a littleless perfect in his grammar and pro-nunciation, as some members of theaudience were doubting he had everbeen a slave.) Branham also introducesseveral “finds”: hitherto little-knownspeakers such as Joseph C. Price, aMethodist who became a rage inEngland, and Lucy Parsons, an anar-chist and a founder of the InternationalWorkers of the World.

It is understood that African-Americans, whether as escaped slavesor free men, spoke out against slaveryin the 1840s, ’50s, and ’60s and spokeagainst lynching in the years after theCivil War. It is less well known thatblack speakers addressed all the bigquestions of the day: women’s suf-frage, temperance, labor organization/activism, educational reform, Indianpolicy, Chinese immigration policy.The black community did not speakwith one voice; these issues were hotlydebated. Should blacks support suf-frage for black men, if black womenwere excluded?

Emigration to Africa or Canadaseemed desirable to some, but what ifit were coerced? Orators also debatedimmigration policies for the Chinese,concerned that there would be morecompetition for unskilled labor. MostAfrican-Americans spoke out for tem-perance on the grounds that addictionto alcohol or any other variety of intox-ication was a form of slavery, denyingthe freedom to think clearly.

This is a terrifically important vol-ume. It belongs in every public libraryand for those concerned with African-American literature, in the privatelibrary as well. And a surprising num-ber of the speakers, Booker T.Washington most notably, wereAlabamians.Don Noble

Alabama’s Historic Restaurantsand Their Recipesby Gay N. MartinJohn F. Blair, 1998204 pp. Cloth, $16.95

Southerners, it can be argued, are ahouse-proud people. Perhaps that isbecause so many of our grand oldhomes were lost over the years, first toravages of war and the abject povertythat followed in its wake, later to thatmost pernicious menace, urban renew-al. Tales of parkinggarages built on thesite of a city’sgrandest home arerife in Southern cir-cles.

So it shouldcome as no surpriseto learn that six ofthe nine states(seven if you countMaryland) featuredin the Historic Restaurant Series pub-lished by the John F. Blair firm areSouthern. The newest, Alabama’sHistoric Restaurants and TheirRecipes, debuted in late 1998. Profiledare 50 restaurants, distinguished not somuch by superior food or service–orlongevity for that matter–but by theirsetting. Put bluntly, this could be dis-missed as a guidebook for theArchitectural Digest set, wherein asmuch ink is spent describing a restau-rant’s heart pine flooring as the succu-lence of its deep-fried catfish. And yetthe author does an admirable job ofplacing the restaurants in some sort ofcultural context, a fine example of



CONCLAVE TO CHOOSE POETLAUREATE AT AUGUST MEETING

The Alabama Writers Conclave(AWC) will convene its morning busi-ness session on Thursday, August 5with four nominees to consider for thepost of Alabama poet laureate: SueScalf, Anne George, Helen Norrisand John Morriss. (Sue Walkerwithdrew her name from the list.)Nominations will be accepted fromthe floor provided the nominee hasagreed to serve.

“Writers Paint With Words” is thetheme for the Alabama Writers’Conclave August meeting at theUniversity of Montevallo. “We put thebudget into speakers this year, and it’sgoing to be a great conference,” saidDonna Jean Tennis. The talentedline-up includes Dennis and VickiCovington (Cleaving), humor colum-nist Susan Murphy (“Mad DogMom”), novelists Judith Richards(Summer Lightning) and Terry Cline(The Attorney Conspiracy), ConnieMae Fowler (Before Women HadWings) and veterinarian Dr. JohnMcCormack (Fields and PasturesNew, Friend of the Flock). There willbe presentations by Dr. RandyBlythe, Emily Dickinson scholar. JoKittinger will talk about writing forthe children’s market; and RosemaryDaniell will conduct a short storyworkshop.

Registration for all three days is$55 (includes 1999 member dues). Fora registration form and information onaccommodations write to HarrietDawkins, 117 Hanover Road,Homewood, AL 35209. Phone205/871-6855.

HUNTINGDON OFFERS CREATIVEWRITING CREDENTIALS

“There are lots of creative writingcourses in the area, but no organized,credentialed program,” Dr. Ken Dealsaid, explaining the reasoning behind

the new 30-hour certificate programoffered through the Division ofEvening Studies and ContinuingEducation at Huntingdon College inMontgomery. “This is the only creditprogram of its type in the state,” saidDeal, chair of the Department ofLanguages and Literature as well asEvening Studies dean.

The program is designed forbeginning and experienced writers infiction, poetry, creative nonfiction,drama, or children’s/young adult writ-ing. Coursework starts with a founda-tion study of general literature. Thenthere are workshops in specific genresunder a professor who publishes inthat area. More advanced work in thestudent’s specialty leads to a final pro-ject of preparing a manuscript for pub-lication.

Other new evening college pro-grams at Huntingdon include certifi-cate and bachelor’s programs in artsmanagement and non-profit manage-ment. Call Pam Stein at 334/833-4522 for more information.

TELLING ALABAMA STORIESThe Alabama Humanities

Foundation (AHF) is celebrating its25th anniversary this year. In lateOctober, a lecture by novelist ToniMorrison and a conference on“Stories Alabama Tells” will con-tribute to the festivities. The confer-ence will be held at Birmingham’sWynfrey Hotel from noon on Friday,October 29, until 1 p.m. Saturday. Theevent will showcase spoken and writ-ten stories as well as poems, songs,paintings, sculpture and other storyforms. Kathryn Tucker Windhamwill be the Friday luncheon speaker.

On Saturday evening, writer ToniMorrison will lecture at the AlysStephens Performing Arts Center atUAB. Her talk will be followed by aVIP reception. For tickets, call205/975-ARTS.

REVIEWSContinued from page 23

which is her incorporation of a briefdissertation on the steel-makingprocess in an entry on that longtimeBessemer favorite, The Bright Star.

Restaurants reviewed run thegamut, from Birmingham’s temple ofhaute cuisine, Highlands Bar and Grill,to Red’s Little School House in Grady,where mayonnaise-laced rolls are pop-ular and the vegetables are grown outback. Recipes, usually two to three perrestaurant, lean toward the continentalend of the culinary spectrum, thoughofferings like cracklin’ cornbread fromthe Irondale Café, give balance andheft to the whole. John T Edge is a contributing writer forthe Oxford American and director of theSouthern Foodways Symposium at theUniversity of Mississippi.


ANNOUNCEMENTS

FROM THE FIELDContinued from page 6

Robinson or hundreds of real menjust like him–should be deprived ofjustice simply because they’re differ-ent from their accusers. The storytells us things aren’t often what theyseem, as Jem learns as he comes toknow the morphine-addicted crazywoman he’s sentenced to visiting reg-ularly. The story shows us the fallacyin judging others, as Boo Radleyproves he’s not a bogeyman after all.Through Atticus Finch, the story tellsus that living up to one’s responsibili-ty is a hallmark of character, and is arare quality to be cherished andadmired. The story teaches us an age-old lesson in the tenacity of evil, andshows us that eventually, good willtriumph.

We wanted to change the verdict.But Heck Tate was right: We couldn’tchange the ending, and we shouldn’tif we could.

Bill Perkins is editorial page editorof The Dothan Eagle.


QUARTERLY EVENTS

Bookmark8 p.m. Thursday, 1:30 p.m.Sunday on APTV.Hosted by Don Noble. Bookmark isa production of The University ofAlabama Center for PublicTelevision and Radio.July 1: Journalist and novelistPhyllis PerryJuly 8: Roy Hoffman, writer in res-idence at the Mobile Register.July 22: Birmingham poet andauthor Charles Ghigna.July 29: Novelist and short storywriter Nanci Kincaid.Aug. 5: Lee Smith, the author ofthree collections of short stories andnine novels.Aug. 19: Hal Crowther, columnistfor the Oxford American.Aug. 26: Jeanie Thompson, poetand AWF executive director.Sept. 2: Novelist Madison Jones.

Through July 24–Lurleen,MontgomeryThe Alabama Shakespeare Festivalpresents Lurleen, by Barbara Lebow.For tickets, call 334/271-5353 or1/800/841-4ASF. July 9–Reading and Reception,MobileEmerging writers Tom Franklin(Poachers) and Melinda Haynes(Mother of Pearl) will be honored at7 p.m. at the Laidlaw Performing ArtsCenter by the University of SouthAlabama (USA) Writers Associationand the USA Library Collections. Call334/460-6146.July 23 & 24–Harriette AustinWriters Conference, Athens, Ga.Agents, editors, authors (includingRalph McInerny and Nora Deloach)plus forensics and criminal investigatorshold sessions for writers of mainstreamfiction, mysteries, nonfiction and chil-dren’s books. Call 706/542-5104 or goto www.coe.uga.edu/torrance/hawc.

July 25-30–Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference,Oxford, Miss.“Faulkner and Postmodernism” is thetheme of the 26th annual conference.Program includes sessions on teachingFaulkner, lectures and discussions byFaulkner scholars and a reading byJohn Barth. Contact the Institute forContinuing Studies, The University ofMississippi, at 601/232-7282 or email:[email protected]. 6-8/Birmingham HeritageFestival ’99 Poet’s Corner hosts readings, somecombined with music and dance, alsoliterary workshops and scholarship com-petitions. Contact 205/324-3345 oremail: [email protected]. 10-15–Mid-Atlantic CreativeNonfiction Conference, Baltimore,Md.Tobias Wolff, Diane Ackerman, TerryTempest Williams and others. The con-ference is held at Goucher College. Callthe Center for Graduate and ContinuingStudies, 1/800-697-4646.Sept. 9–Bankhead Visiting WritersSeries, TuscaloosaTomaz Salamun, Coal Royalty Chairholder, will read in Room 205, SmithHall at 7:30 p.m. Salamun is a Slovenepoet whose works are translated byRobert Haas and others. Call 205/348-0766.Sept. 23–Bankhead Visiting WritersSeries, Tuscaloosa New UA faculty members Don Belton,novelist and editor of anthologies, andKaren Volkman, poet, will read fromtheir work in Room 205, Smith Hall at7:30 p.m. Call 205/348-0766.Sept. 24–Write Now! Author Series,BirminghamThe Alabama School of Fine Arts issponsoring readings at the Hess AbromsRecital Hall on campus, 7 p.m. Call205/252-9241.Oct. 7–Poetry Reading, BirminghamReadings by Alabama School of FineArts students, 2:45-3:45 p.m. Call205/252-9241.

Oct. 14–Robert Pinsky, TuscaloosaPoet Laureate Pinsky will read, cour-tesy of the Bankhead Visiting WritersSeries. Time and place to be announced.Call 205/348-0766.Oct. 23– “Writing and Illustrating forKids,” BirminghamGenre-specific workshops on craft andpublishing information will be availableat this annual regional event of theSouthern Breeze Region of the Societyof Children’s Book Writers andIllustrators. SASE to Joan Broerman,Regional Advisor, P.O. Box 26282,Birmingham, AL 35260 or see the webpage, //hometown.aol.com/southbrez/ Oct. 29-30–Stories Alabama Tells,BirminghamA two-day conference features story-telling through many media. For moreinformation contact the AlabamaHumanities Foundation, 205/930-0540.Oct. 30–Toni Morrison, Birmingham“An Evening with Toni Morrison”begins at 8 p.m. at the Alys StephensCenter with sponsorship by theAlabama Humanities Foundation.Admission $35; $175 includes perfor-mance, signed book, and reception. Fortickets, call 205/975-ARTS.

C A L E N D A R

ANNOUNCE YOURLITERARY EVENTS ONAWF’S WEBSITECALENDARSend us your calendaritems–meetings, readings,etc.–and we will include themin the calendar on our website:www.writersforum.org.Send us your information byemail: [email protected] mail: The AlabamaWriters’ Forum, Alabama StateCouncil on the Arts, 201Monroe Street, Montgomery,AL 36130-1800phone: 334/242-4076, ext. 233or fax: 334/240-3269


Phil Beidler and Madison Jones, winner of the Harper Lee Award for a Distinguished Alabama Writerdisplay their trophies which are modeled on the Monroeville courthouse clock tower by sculptor FrankFleming.

In the courtroom Madison Jones reads from hislatest novel, the Civil War-era Nashville 1864:The Dying of the Light.

Allen Cronenberg, director of Auburn University’sCenter for the Arts and Humanities caughtbetween sessions.

Phyllis Perry reads from her novel Stigmata.

Rodney Jones and William Cobb talk shop.

Photos by Katie Lamar Smith Nanci Kincaid reads from her latest novel, Balls.

Lee May autographs his book In My Father’sGarden.


MAJOR DONORThe Alabama State Council on the Arts

PATRONSThe Alabama Humanities Foundation

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Sybil H. Smith Charitable Trust

SCRIBES, $250Mr. George W. BatesMr. Don Clark FranceMr. John B. Scott, Jr.Mr. Robert C. Tanner

CORPORATE ASSOCIATES, $100+Alabama Public Library Service

Alabama Southern Community CollegeAuburn University Bookstore

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Ms. Barbara J. BelknapBirmingham Public Library

The Book Cellar, Inc. Ms. Jean L. Bouler

Dr. James A. Buford, Jr.Crosshaven Books

Mrs. Linda Henry DeanMr. Russell Jackson Drake

Ms. Carolyn R. EllisEnglish Department, Auburn University

English Department, University of MontevalloEnglish Department, University of North Alabama

English Department, Troy State UniversityEufaula Carnegie Library

Factor PressFlorence-Lauderdale Public Library

Mrs. Roberta P. GambleWilliam H. Goodson, Jr., M.D.

Mr. Ralph HammondHoover Public Library

Huntsville Literary AssociationThe Huntsville Times

Mr. Bill JarniganLaw Offices of Grover S. Mcleod

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Ms. Virginia McPhearsonMr. & Mrs. Julian McPhillips

Mobile Public LibraryMorris Avenue School (Opelika)

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R.B. Draughon LibraryMr. P. David RomeiSamford University

Smith and Thomas, L.L.C.Mr. Charles D. Thompson

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The Forum greatly appreciates the more than600 individuals, including students, who have supported

its programming since 1992.


The Alabama Writers’ Forum gratefully acknowledges those who make possible literary arts programming in Alabama.

Beyondthe

NightA Remembranceby Wayne Greenhaw

“…blends the New Age withthe age-old in a lyrical cele-bration of all life.”Harper LeeTo Kill a Mockingbird

“…a lovely, loving bitter-sweet tribute to the glory ofyouth. Wayne Greenhaw is thebest writer to come out ofAlabama since Harper Lee.”Winston GroomForrest Gump

“Wayne Greenhaw has writtena remembrance of extraordi-nary tenderness. It capturesall the awe and strangeness ofbeing a boy in the South. Itseems part tall-tale, front-porch reminiscence, ghoststory and family saga–all thestuff the South does betterthan anyone else.”Pat ConroyPrince of Tides

BLACKBELTPRESSMontgomery, AlabamaIn bookstores, on-line,or from the publisher,

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CAMERAREADY

LURLEENContinued from page 8

Part of Lurleen’s discovery of self involves her perceiv-ing alliances across borders of nationality and color. Shesympathizes with the Japanese mothers and children whoawait their husbands and fathers after the attack on PearlHarbor. Lurleen and her friends imagine the women inGermany, ten years after the war and short of men, as strong“on their own” and having each other. The most poignantalliance, however, is that formed between Lurleen andMartha–the African American woman who works in herhome and then in the governor’s mansion. Toward the end ofthe first act, Lurleen and Martha connect as friends, sympa-thizing with each other’s experience of miscarriage. In thesecond act their friendship, with its tension and honesty,evolves while George Wallace obstructs justice and engen-ders hate crimes. The killing of the four little girls inBirmingham is the critical point where Lurleen and Marthaare allied in their suffering. Later Martha confrontsGovernor Lurleen about her racial attitudes and reflects thatshe doesn’t know “her own heart yet.” Before dying Lurleentells Martha that she is “still trying to figure it all out.”

Lebow’s play is an engaging and creative work that asksus to resee and rethink who Lurleen is and what she repre-sents. The playwright urges us to revisit a public figure froma different view, calling to mind Toni Morrison’s comment:“The crucial distinction for me is not the difference betweenfact and fiction, but the distinction between fact and truth.Because facts can exist without human intelligence, but truthcannot” (The Site of Memory, 113). Through knowing theraw, historic facts that define the public life and shadow thepersonal life of Lurleen in the 1950s and 60s, the playgoercan understand Lebow’s artistic commitment to revealingpossible truths of individual women’s experiences.

Chella Courington is Associate Professor of Literature atHuntingdon College in Montgomery.

(Left to right) Regan Thompson, Stephanie Cozart, Heather Robison, andMonica Bell in Lurleen.

ASF/

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From Obscurity to Oprah: - Alabama Writers' Forum

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