Words on a Page

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...

As a matter of record, here is a list of my goals for 2010:  writing an average of 7000 words per month, complete 1st draft of novel; attend University of Chichester’s Research in Progress conference, 15 May, and present paper ‘Voices of the American West: Striving for Authenticity’; attend University of Portsmouth’s Centre for Studies in Literature Annual Postgraduate Symposium, 21 May, and present paper ‘Identity in Western American Literature’; make a research presentation at the Postgraduate Forum at Uni of Chichester; gather critical sources; complete outline of dissertation; review Sherman Alexie’s next book, Fire with Fire , due out in autumn; submit paper to Western American Literature journal; apply for research travel grant from British Association for American Studies in autumn.

It's been a full year since I started down the PhD road and at times it doesn't feel like I've gotten very far at all. To be honest, I've only been officially on the MPhil/PhD programme since mid-October. The preceding ten months were spent on University of Chichester's Probationer's Scheme, a sort of feeder road leading to the PhD highway, filling out applications, applying for funding, applying for more funding, building my 'writing profile', attending conferences and doing preliminary research into my subject. Lordy, I've filled out a lot of forms this year... Here's a list of what I've actually done this past year: completed a 7,000-word Literature Review of fiction, historical texts and theoretical works pertaining to my research; finalised my research proposal; applied for funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (a three-month long process which was highly stressful yet ultimately unsuccessful); attended three confe...

Have just received an email from the good folks at Moonlight Mesa to say that 'The Difference Between Cowboys and Clowns' was named as one of four runners-up in their 1st annual Cowboy Up Short Story Contest, just missing out on a piece of the prize money... The story came out of the 1st round of the 2009 NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge in which competitors are assigned a genre and subject and given one week to come up with a 2500-word story. I was horrified to receive the genre of 'Romantic Comedy' and the story remains the one and only example of this genre in my portfolio. Shockingly, it's proved quite successful, as it was also a finalist in the NYC Challenge. Perhaps I should give up my pretensions of writing 'literary fiction'? NYC Midnight run a number of competitions throughout the year, and their SS Challenge is a good way for writers to step out of their comfort zone and attempt something entirely different. Here's a link for more inform...

My romantic rodeo romp 'The Difference Between Cowboys and Clowns' has just been named as a Semi-Finalist in Moonlight Mesa's short story contest: http://www.moonlightmesaassociates.com/ .