Words on a Page

Ethel Louise Mabry The end of another year is upon us and I am reminded of my grandmother’s claims that time speeds up as one gets older. As a kid, in Idaho, I was dumbfounded by this idea. Science was never my strongpoint, but I knew, somehow, as the interminable years of my childhood wore on that such a statement must go against some law of physics. ‘Don’t go wishing your life away,’ she’d tell me as I itched to break free of high school classrooms, anxious to join the world outside my small town. Even in grade school, at the age of nine or ten, I kept track of the school days, crossing them off one by one, willing each of them into the past so that I could be released into the freedom of summer. I was in a hurry to be somewhere else, do something new, start living my life. Anxious for time to pass. Grandma was right, of course. She always was. Time does speed up as a person gets older. It’s a fact. Physics be damned! And though I always find myself feeling sombre at the crest

Background Almost uniquely amongst academic studies, the Creative Arts are notoriously difficult to assess. Unlike other subjects, they are not about the learning of facts or the expression of theories, and consequently, they cannot be assessed using traditional methods of exams and essays. In Creative Writing modules, work must show an understanding of techniques and an understanding of the effects those techniques have upon the reader. It is a practical skill which can only be assessed by its final product—a piece of written text structured to achieve a desired purpose. Creative Writing students frequently, and occasionally even tutors, argue that assessment stifles creativity and that writing, as a form of self-expression, should not come under the usual sets of criteria given to other, more prescriptive subjects. Critics of assessment claim that Creative Writing cannot be judged objectively, as assessors will automatically be biased against any work whose style or subject matte

Between the end of May and the start of October, I had the dubious luxury of unemployment - not official unemployment which requires one to be seeking paid work, but the off-the-books kind of unemployment which doesn't show on government statistics and makes no demands apart from economic miserliness. Having spent the past few terms teaching, in one capacity or another, I greeted the summer as an opportunity to concentrate on my novel. Ahead of me stretched three, maybe even four student-less months, during which I could, if I remained focussed, bang out the rest of my first draft in a mere 625 words a day. I had counted them, the words, one by one, then grouped them into doable, bit-sized chunks. I had a plan and it sounded so easy. The first few weeks of my unemployment went blissfully well as I knuckled down to my new routine. Being a natural early riser, I relished my quiet mornings at the keyboard, a jug of thick Arabica at my elbow and a full day of uninterrupted writing ah

I am pleased to annouce that Thresholds is now up and running. Please register here and have a look around the site. Thresholds is the only online forum dedicated to the writing, criticism and study of the Short Story. Undergraduate students are welcome to join the forum as Associate Members, with access to our extensive resource lists, articles, interviews and our student-led blog. Postgraduate students are invited to join our team of bloggers and contribute to a wide variety of discussions about academic life, their own research and writing projects, and literary news. We will also run student-led writing workshops, and provide opportunities for peer review. Our inaugural edition contains an exclusive interview with the internationally acclaimed writer Hanif Kureishi who discusses his recently published Collected Stories . In October, we will host our first live Question & Answer session with Adam Marek , author of the weirdly wonderful collection Instruction Manual for S

On Tuesday, this week, I went to a seminar in London about locating funding possibilities for Creative Writing PhDs.  What I learned was not good.  At least not for me.  The already slim opportunities that exist for Arts and Humanities research are now anorexic, and I emerged from the session kicking myself for having wasted £30 on the train fare simply to confirm what I already suspected: it's very unlikely I will receive funding because - like most postgrad Creative Writing students - I have not followed the traditional (i.e. preferred ) academic route.  To be honest, rather than traipsing all the way to London for this news, it would have been less expensive and more convenient if I had just gone to  Online PhD  or one of the other online sites offering information and advice to postgraduate students.   In short, this is what I learned: f unding bodies such as the Arts and Humanities Research Council like to play safe and are rightly cautious when it comes to allocating money

It’s been a very short, very intense summer here in Portsmouth (not to mention, a very damp and grey one) and though I feel I’ve made good progress on a number of projects, I have sorely neglected my blogging responsibilities, here. Summer, for me, began when my temporary teaching post at Portsmouth College came to an end in late May and I was finally able to get down to some serious writing. For six solid weeks, I faithfully kept my commitment to work on the novel from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., five days a week. That period of frenetic activity came to an end after the first week of July when I went on a three-week bike ride in France. My big plans for continuing to work on the novel, in the tent each evening, came to naught. All I really wanted to do at the end of a long day’s ride was to eat and crawl into my sleeping bag. On my return, at the beginning of August, my attention turned, not back to my own novel, but to a collection of short stories by the American writer, Belle Boggs. Ear

          A year after the acclaimed Reservation Blues , Sherman Alexie’s second novel, Indian Killer received reticent praise when it was published in 1996. It is a book which he, himself, seems both drawn to and repelled by. In a 2002 interview with Duncan Campbell, Alexie states ‘It’s the only one [of my books] I re-read. I think a book that disturbs me that much is the one I probably care the most about’ 1 . He has expressed dissatisfaction with it, artistically, describing it as a failed mystery novel and ‘pretentious’ for its literary ambitions 2 . Maya Jaggi writes that he has now distanced himself from the novel and feels ‘overwhelming disgust’ [Alexie’s words] towards the violence portrayed 3 . Apparent in Reservation Blues , his previous collection of short stories The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven , and his poetry, Alexie’s own rage rises to its peak in this novel, with an outpouring of fictional vengeance for historical crimes.  

Congratulations to Barbara Kingsolver for winning the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel The Lacuna.   Despite the guff from Sherman Alexie, I've ordered myself a copy.

I am involved in setting up a new online forum for Postgraduate Creative Writing students working with the Short Story form. The forum is based at the University of Chichester, in West Sussex, but welcomes research students from around the world.  The forum, itself, won't go live until September, but the FaceBook group is gathering momentum and we now have students from across the UK and the United States.  Once it is up and running, the forum will provide a space for MA and PhD students to come together and share their experiences as writers and academics, test ideas, give and receive feedback on work in progress, and exchange advice and information. The site will include a blog, student-led discussion threads, links to online resources, workshops, and live question and answer sessions with professionals in the writing and publishing community. We are equally interested in engaging in discussions of a critical nature, looking at contemporary literary and cultural theory in relatio

This essay was presented at the 'Framing the Self: Anxieties of Identity in Literature' conference, sponsored by the Centre of Studies in Literature at the University of Portsmouth, 21st May.  Some of the material included has been adapted from earlier postings. The Quest for Identity The quest for identity is the overriding theme in the work of almost all Native writers. Four centuries of colonisation, during which children, mixed and full-blood, were taken from their homes and ‘civilised’ have scoured away nearly all remnants of traditional Indian identity. Sent to boarding schools such as that in Carlisle, Pennsylvania whose motto was ‘Kill the Indian, Save the man’, these children were no longer permitted to speak their own languages, wear their own clothes, or pray to their own gods. Imperfectly assimilated, they lost their voices and their histories, and found themselves balanced between two opposing worlds: the old world where they no longer fully belonged, and the

It is often only at the end of a writer’s career that it becomes possible to see how their work has developed, how the focus has narrowed or expanded, how the writer’s thought process has shifted.  In the sixteen years since Sherman Alexie won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction for the ground-breaking and controversial short story collection Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), he has published a further seventeen books including poetry, novels and short fiction.  Thanks to this rapidly-expanding catalogue, we are able to witness Alexie’s development in almost real time. From the very start, Alexie has explored the question of what it is to be ‘Indian’ in contemporary America, both on and off the Spokane Reservation.  Ten Little Indians (2003), however, began to shift away from the antagonistic cultural tribalism of earlier books.  Ethnicity was no longer the controlling force in the lives of his characters.  They were people first, Indian second.  W

Introduction As part of my research project, I am writing a novel set in the American West, with historical and contemporary narratives. From the outset, I have had two major concerns: how to access an accurate and authentic historical voice; and how to represent a Native American character in a culturally authentic manner. This paper will provide a context for those questions and look at the ways in which I have addressed them in my research. The Importance of Authenticity in Western American Literature No other region-based literature, and certainly no other genre is as concerned with the issue of authenticity as is literature of the American West. Even historical fiction, the form most closely associated with representations of actual people and factual events is at ease with supposition and probability. Western fiction, however, is often seen to regard its subject as if it were a holy relic, to be revered and scrutinized, but not to be tampered with in any way. Since Owen Wis

Many thanks this week to Steve O'Brien, editor of London Magazine , for publishing my reviews of Amnesty International's short story anthology  Freedom,  and Hassan Blasim's collection The Madman of Freedom Square.  Thanks also to Marlow Peerse Weaver for publishing my story Bastard in volume 8 of the series In Our Own Words: A Generation Defining Itself . 

One of the things that I’m exploring, in both my novel and in my thesis, is the idea of identity: what it is; how it is developed; and how it changes throughout a person’s life. This search for self-discovery is a common theme in fiction, particularly so where issues of race are involved. Sherman Alexie, for instance, has built his whole career on writing about characters who are caught between two cultures, trying to find out who they are, who they ally themselves with, and where they fit into the world they inhabit. Sociologists tell us that identity can be described in a number of ways, including as an external perception of the individual by those around him, as a contrast to an Other, and as the individual’s own perception of self. Though these definitions are interconnected, for the purposes of this discussion I will primarily focus on the last. There are many factors which contribute to our perception of self, including nationality, race, gender, social class, occupation, fa

Two years ago I wrote my first novel in thirty painful days, following Chris Baty's NaNoWriMo model. It was a dystopian story about a world in which a seemingly benign state deftly removes those of its citizens which it deems to be the unproductive – the disabled, the ill, and the elderly. It has all been done before, of course, but I like to think that my story added something new to the genre, a contemporary comment about ruling a society through fear and the way in which religion can be used to either keep people in check or stir them into action. I like to think that there is a germ of something really quite good hiding within that 50,000 words, and one day I'll go back and salvage what I can and build it into something great. Baty's book, No Plot? No Problem: A Low-stress, High-velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days, chivvies participants along with a combination of good-natured pep talks of the you-can-do-it variety and stern advice on overcoming 'w

During the late 18th century, according to tribal oral history, Nez Perce spiritual leaders predicted that a major change was coming to their culture. This change would come from the east, the tewats said, and the Nez Perce people would have difficult times for five generations. ~ Epilogue to The Fifth Generation: A Nez Perce Tale *** Linwood Laughy ’s first novel, The Fifth Generation: A Nez Perce Tale is set in the area around Kamiah, Idaho. The protagonist, Isaac Moses, is a 32-year-old Nez Perce man, living alone in his family home. Over the course of a year, Isaac’s life changes as he stops the destructive drinking which has marred his life, and seeks to reclaim his heritage. This is a story of self-discovery and hope for the future. My review of this novel has just been accepted for publication by the Western American Literature journal at Utah State University and I will post a link to it, via Project Muse, when it is printed later this year.  

During the past year, I have been attempting to gather all available information about William Clark’s supposed Nez Perce son, variously known as Tzi-Kal-Tza, Halahtookit, Al-pa-to-kate, Daytime Smoke(r), and Son of Daytime Smoker. The name I find the most poignant, however, the name that links into my research on personal identity, is the one he is said to have called himself – Clark (Moulton, vol 7, p 241). * The idea for my project started to emerge about ten years ago, when I visited the Nez Perce Historical Museum in my hometown of Lewiston, Idaho. Among the exhibits were collections of artifacts from early white settlers, the Nez Perce tribe, and the Lewis and Clark expedition which passed through the region twice: in September 1805, on their way to the west coast; and in May 1806, on their return journey to St. Louis. As I grew up in Lewiston, I thought I knew the history of the area fairly well, but tucked into a display of beaded gauntlets and stone tools was a piece of i

I've just read this article on the Guardian's website with advice for writers of creative fiction, and I'm pleased to see that much of it echos what I've been telling my own students.  I'm posting a link here as much for my own future benefit than anything else.  I particularly like:  Carrot and stick – have protagonists pursued (by an obsession or a villain) and pursuing (idea, object, person, mystery).   ~ Michael Moorcock Rewrite and edit until you achieve the most felicitous phrase/sentence/paragraph/page/story/chapter.   ~ Annie Proulx Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide. ~ Roddy Doyle For the full article, click here:  Rules For Writing

- William Faulkner, Requiem For a Nun from an epigraph to The Fifth Generation: A Nez Perce Tale by Linwood Laughy

Published in 1986, James Welch’s historical novel, Fools Crow, is considered to be a modern classic within the Native American literary canon. Set in the late 1860s, the novel depicts pivotal events in the history of the Blackfoot Indians, and focuses on the young protagonist, White Man’s Dog (later renamed Fools Crow), as he journeys from adolescence into manhood. The story climaxes with a retelling of the 1870 raid on a Piegan village which became known as the Marias Massacre. Below is a synopsis of the main events depicted in the novel.

One of the issues I’ve been grappling with since I began my research about a year ago is my concern (some might say my obsession) with cultural sensitivities. When she was at college in the 1960s, my mother, a blue-eyed blonde of Anglo/Celtic descent, was elected as the first historian of the newly-formed ‘Indian Club’. I grew up with many Nez Perce friends, and we attended the occasional powwow at the Nez Perce reservation at Lapwai. My mother was involved with civil rights politics, and with her, I waved my little fist at marches and rallies and demonstrations – on the rare occasion when these were held in north Idaho. In this ‘lefty’ household, cultural sensitivity was paramount, and my mother’s concerns about both centuries-old injustices and those of the present day became my own. At some point, however, our thoughts on the matter diverged. While I learned to carry a sense of inherited responsibility (inherited guilt?) for the poverty and social ills afflicting many Native Ameri

Had news this week that my novella, Gathering Fragments of Light, received an Honorable Mention in Carpe Articulum's novella competition.  Yet another near miss... 

Sherman Alexie had already published four collections of poetry by the time he gained national attention in 1993 by winning the prestigious PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction for the short story collection The Lone-Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven .  In 1996, he was named as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists in recognition for his first novel Reservation Blues . Two years later, he won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival for the screenplay of Smoke Signals .  In all, Alexie has published eighteen books and screenplays in sixteen years, making him one of the most prolific writers working in the United States today. But his multi-genre talents don’t stop there.   He’s also collaborated on an album with musician Jim Boyd and turned his hand at film directing, too.   And in his free time?   He does a spot of stand-up comedy as well.   * While much of Alexie’s earlier work explores small-town life on the Spokane Reservation where he grew up