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Omaha Lit Fest puts focus on Women Writers and Women in Publishing
There’s nothing else quite like the (downtown) Omaha Lit Fest in these parts. Oh, there’s plenty of literary events to go around, but you’d be hard-pressed to find something as quirky as this annual assemblage of writerly concerns and pursuits. The wording of this year’s theme, The Lit Fest Guide to Etiquette for Women Writers, is in keeping with the sardonic leanings of novelist and event founder-director Timothy Schaffert (The Coffins of Little Hope). The October 19-2o festival just goes its own way in following whatever trail of thought and literary trend that suits the quixotic Schaffert. He brings in a great lineup of authors and artists every year for never less than interesting conversations and presentations about all things related to writing, editing, publishing. It’s well worth checking out.
©by Leo Adam Biga
Appeared in The Reader (www.thereader.com)
It should be no surprise the author of languidly paced satirical novels (The Coffins of Little Hope) that delight in peculiar, piquant details should fashion a literary happening along the same lines.
Novelist Timothy Schaffert has done just that with the (downtown) Omaha Lit Fest, a free celebration of prose, poetry and other word-made-art expressions.
He founded Lit Fest eight years ago and continues organizing the annual literary salon today. This year’s event luxuriates in its delightful otherness Friday and Saturday, October 19 and 20, at the W, Dale Clark Library, where there will be a gender-centric focus to the readings, panels, topics and performances.
The 6:30-9:30 p.m. opening night party promises local female slam poets unleashing from 7 to 7:30, an altered books exhibit, an edible books contest and an all-girl string quartet.
Well-attuned as Schaffert is to literary currents he hit upon 2012’s theme – The Lit Fest Guide to Etiquette for Women Writers – after reading about disparities females face in publishing.
Featured guest authors Elizabeth Crane (We Only Know So Much), Lisa Knopp (What the River Carries), Marilyn Coffey (Marcella) and Joy Castro (Hell or High Water) will no doubt have plenty to say on the matter.
With Great Plains writer Coffey and Cuban-American academy product Castro Schaffert’s attracted two authors squarely in the Zeitgeist.
Coffey’s 1973 novel Marcella broke ground and generated push back for its frank depiction of female masturbation. The book was banned in America, though Quartet in London published it in paperback. Pol and Ms. Magazine excerpted it. Danish newspapers serialized it. Now it’s being republished in book form by Omega Cottonwood Press in Omaha, along with a collection of Coffey’s poems, Pricksongs.
Marcella was a featured work during National Banned Book Week events in Omaha, including a marathon reading at the Benson Branch Library.
At Lit Fest Coffey’s slated to be on the Saturday, 5 p.m. panel Your Guide to Unladylike Demeanor that examines “women writers making people nervous.”
Meanwhile, Castro’s debut novel Hell or High Water is drawing praise for her ability to sustain a taut thriller amid a complex subject and to evocatively exploit its New Orleans setting. The University of Nebraska associate professor of English and ethnic studies also has a book of personal essays out, Island of Bones, eliciting rapturous praise.
Liz Kay of Spark Wheel Press and burtdistrict in Omaha will address the entrepreneurial publishing scene. New Yorker Festival director Rhonda Sherman will discuss building an audience for the literary spectacle.
All of it’s filtered through the perspective of women engaged in a lit world not always friendly to them. Recent counts by the women in literary arts organization VIDA show far more men than women published in leading literary publications. That concerns Schaffert enough that he’s making it a point of public discussion.
“If the VIDA Count had not come into existence I might not have even been aware of the disparity, but it really kind of commands attention,” says Schaffert, an UNL assistant professor of English and director of the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference.
He doesn’t doubt women writers confront bias.
“Obviously some editors are going to focus on that work that crosses their desk that seems most vital and other editors aren’t necessarily going to have the best ear for writing by the opposite sex. And I think for decades there’s been some level of condescension towards the subjects women writers take on. There’s some sense of what women’s writing is that may or may not be based on anything authentic in terms of the assumptions people make about the topics of interest to women.
“I’ve heard of editors be dismissive of a story by nature of its topic as too domestic, for example, or too focused on the sentimental, as if that denigrated the work somehow.”
Castro says VIDA, whose creative nonfiction committee she serves on, has been “working to figure out all kinds of ways to address this, in some cases publishing essays about it,” adding, “In my case I got involved with guest editing an issue of a really cool online journal, Brevity Magazine, that’s responding to that count.”
She says her own anecdotal observations have long made her sensitive to the paucity of minority authors published in select periodicals (The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New Yorker) “that determine who’s a big deal and who’s not.” The VIDA breakout, she says, confirmed “it’s not just my imagination.” She says when editors are called out on the disparity they either deny a gender-based agenda or agree to proactively strive for more balance.
Castro will join Kay, Knopp and Sherman for a 1 p.m. Saturday panel on the professional aspects of writing, editing and publishing. She’s interested in exploring how it is more women writers come out of MFA programs than men do yet fewer get published.
“So there’s like this attrition,” she says. “Then where do they all go? Why don’t they continue to write and publish? It’s a good question. I hope people will come out and talk about it and have a really exploratory attitude about it.”
That said, Castro and many other women authors fare well getting their work out and finding it well-received. Her Hell or High Water (Thomas Dunne Books) is a good illustration. The widely released book has been called “exquisite,” “fierce and intense,” “captivating.” Dennis Lehane (Mystic River) termed it “a terrific thriller.”
The book”s been optioned by film producers and Castro’s already working on a sequel. She’s excited that her Cuban-American protagonist, Nola, may headline a mystery series because the genre rarely features Latinas or issues of Latinidad.
Nola, a green Times-Picayune reporter assigned to investigate what happened to the registered sex offenders who went off the grid after Hurricane Katrina, serves much the same role a detective does in classic mystery tradition.
“That’s the story she gets assigned and she’s reluctant because it’s kind of creepy. But it’s sort of her first big break as a journalist, so she goes after it and of course gets in a lot of trouble,” says Castro.
“In the first chapter a young woman tourist is abducted from the French Quarter and that mystery is going on at the same time and Nola starts to investigate that as well and then the two stories intertwine.”
Much as Castro did in her own life, Nola comes from poverty and feels pressured to hide her past and prove herself. Castro’s interest in legendary archetypes comes into play when Nola intersects with believers in the Cajun legend rougarou, which warns of a person normal by day but predatory at night. Santeria spirits also show up. By the end, Nola calls on whatever powers she can muster to protect herself.
Best known before this for her nonfiction essay collection The Truth Book: How I Survived a Childhood of Abuse Among the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Castro will read from her novel and discuss her research in a 2 p.m. Saturday program.
About choosing to write a genre book for her first novel, she says, “I guess I would have anticipated I would write a literary fiction kind of novel, but I have always loved mysteries and thrillers. In deciding what to write this was the genre I got most excited about and the story seemed to keep suggesting itself to me and so I listened and paid attention and started writing.
“Writing a novel was new for me. I went through a lot of drafts. I was a slow learner.”
For event details visit http://www.omahalitfest.com.
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Ron Hull reviews his remarkable life in public television in new memoir
Everyone has a story. Ron Hull’s is a doozy. In the following story you’ll only learn a few things from the jam-packed adventure his life;s been but those tidbits alone should be enough to engage you. Because this piece is angled on his new memoir, Backstage: Stories from My Life in Public Television, you’ll learn a fair amount about the very eventful and accomplished professional side of his life. As you’ll read, it’s fair to call him a television pioneer because his career in public television goes back so far. You’ll discover some of the famous figures he’s befriended. You’ll also be introduced to the colorful way he came into the world. And you’ll get a select sampling of his world travels. None of these aspects are explored in much detail owing to the limited space the assignment dictated. For a fuller account of his life and some of these features of his life you can search or select on this blog the profile I did of Hull a few years ago. Or you can get to it via-
https://leoadambiga.wordpress.com/?s=ron+hull
That earlier story will put in perspective the remarkable journey he’s been on and continues making today.
Ron Hull reviews his remarkable life in public yelevision in new memoir
©by Leo Adam Biga
Originally appeared in The Reader (www.thereader.com)
Public television was a dream when Ron Hull joined what became the Nebraska Educational Television network in Lincoln. It was 1955 and the broadcast school graduate arrived inflamed with the possibilities of the fledgling medium.
Fifty-seven years later he’s still enthralled even though he misses live television and finds himself at 84 having outlived his contemporaries from those pioneering days. It’s been quite a ride for Hull as a NET host, producer, director and executive.
He personally brought major arts figures to the network, including authors Mari Sandoz (Old Jules, Crazy Horse, Cheyenne Autumn) and John Neihardt (Black Elk Speaks, A Cycle of the West) and comedian-talk-show host Dick Cavett. Sandoz and Neihardt became friends. Cavett remains a close confidante. He’s enlisted Cavett’s interviewing-vocal talents for many NET and University of Nebraska-Lincoln projects. Hull’s a UNL emeritus broadcasting professor and Nebraska Broadcasting Hall of Fame inductee.
History exerts a strong pull on Hull. He maintains ties to the Sandoz and Neihardt legacies through his work with the Sandoz Society and the Neihardt Center. He emcees the annual Neihardt Days. He’s served on the board of the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial in Red Cloud and headed the state’s Lewis & Clark Bicentennial Commemoration committee.
His own background reads like a dime novel. At 15 in Rapid City, S.D. he discovered he was adopted and that his birth mother had been a prostitute in a brothel run by one of the West’s legendary madams, Dora DuFran, who’d befriended Calamity Jane in infamous Deadwood. Among her other talents, DuFran was a midwife. When one of the girls in her Rapid City house got pregnant DuFran delivered Hull into the world. Soon after his birth she put him up for adoption. A respectable family raised him.
Buoyed by his search for identity and belief in a shared yearning to find meaning in our lives he’s made history a priority at NET, particularly Nebraska stories. He nurtured the film production unit, whose Oregon Trail, Willa Cather, Standing Bearand Monkey Trial documentaries have aired nationally.
Hull also founded the Nebraska Video Heritage Library that’s preserved NETs archives. He loves that programs are accessible to anybody online. “Young people need to know who they are and why they have this rich culture to enjoy,” he says.
As one of the network’s leading ambassadors, he co-chaired the NET Foundation’s Inspire Nebraska endowment campaign that raised $25 million. A special fund for telling Nebraska stories is endowed in his name.
Today he’s a special advisor to NET.
Hull also served stints with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Washington D.C. and the U.S. Foreigh Service in Vietnam. At CPB he held large pursestrings and expedited memorable programs,. As a Foreign Service officer he shepherded a project that set-up public TV stations in Vietnam in our government’s attempt to win the people’s hearts and minds.
Stories from this singularly rich career comprise his new book, Backstage (University of Nebraska Press). The long-in-making memoir is his gift to the field he loves, to the network he helped build and to the people he’s met along the way.
“So many interesting people I’ve worked with are no longer here and I wanted to extend their lives by giving other people an appreciation for what they did for us. Teachers. Performers. Poets. Writers like Sandoz and Neihardt – people I was fortunate enough to know over a long period of time. They all contributed so much to our cultural heritage by telling us who we are.”
He writes that working in public TV is “the best way to get a liberal arts education every day.” In an interview he elaborated, “You’re constantly sitting at the feet of scholars. It’s a great pleasure and one of the best parts of the job. I’ve been really fortunate to connect with a whole lot of fascinating people.”
“I think my (main) contribution was getting her to illustrate her philosophy about writing with anecdotes, with personal things in her life. which to me tells a story and brings it authentically to life.”
He recalls. “She would look you or the camera straight-on and say, ‘You have a great story to tell and I’m going to tell you what it really takes to tell it.'” In the course of shaping his memoir Hull says he came to appreciate what she preached. “She used to say writing isn’t writing so much as rewriting, refining, polishing, reading it, throwing it away, starting over and writing it again. If you’re going to write anything worth other people’s time, you’ve got to be totally honest, you cant soften it, you owe that to yourself and to good writing. You must tell the truth.” He tried to follow that advice in his own book.
He says while “she was absolutely driven she had this wonderful interest in other people. I always loved that about her. When she was in the studio and students came she always had time for those students. Or anyone. And she always listened to people because she learned so much from them.” He recalls she compulsively made notes of her observations about people and places, storing the scraps in shopping bags inside her apartment, and drawing on them when she needed real life details for her writing.
Hull developed a strong rapport with Neihardt as well.
“We connected instantly,” says Hull, who produced three half-hour programs with him in 1962. “It truly was a new beginning for him and his books.”
A particularly memorable program saw Neihardt read from his account of the death of Crazy Horse in Black Elk Speaks.
“He recited that section of the book for 24 minutes from memory in one take. There were no mistakes. He was 80 years old when he did that. His memory was just phenomenal. He was a mystic and I know part of his appeal for me was he was always looking for the allegorical. He believed in the spirit world and that fascinated me. And he was just so accessible. Everybody loved him. Every time he opened his mouth he said something that we all wrote down. He was just one of those people.”
Another mystic became a household name indirectly due to Hull, who was with CPB in the mid-1980s when he and then-director of programming, Suzanne Weil, brought PBS icon Bill Moyers back into the fold. Moyers had left for CBS and Hull says the journalist “was dying to get back to public television.” Hull and Weil jointly controlled a Challenge Fund that helped finance Moyers’ new production company. It wasn’t long before Moyers produced his landmark PBS series with mythologist Joseph Campbell.
Hull hasn’t lost his belief in the medium he’s given his life to.
“I personally believe public broadcasting is more important to America today that it has ever been. We have the only channel that in my view consistently brings top of the line cultural programs, unbiased news programs, documentaries, the best that our culture or world culture has to offer. We are presenting the best media there is.
“That isn’t to say commercial broadcasting doesn’t do wonderful things, they do, but we do it without the tyranny of ratings and profits. We want to edify and inspire.”
He marvels at TV’s technical advances but he says it’s still all about telling stories.
Hull will discuss highlights from the NET archives on Sunday, October 14, from 2 to 4 p.m., at the Joslyn Castle. The event is free.
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