Michigan Writers News & Events

Endings and transitions prod one into contemplation, and lately I find myself pondering the mother of all questions artistic: What writer can I be?

The auxiliary verb is important here. It’s not a stingy and demanding “should”, nor a somewhat self-serving “do I want to” but rather a “can”—which implies a world of possibility.

Within that question rests another: What can I do to discover the writer I can be?

Finished, for all intents and purposes, with the goal I’ve called graduate school for the past two-and-a-half years, I bow to myself a bit and say, yes, that was a good move on the path of the writer I can be. Grad school was work, focus, an acknowledgment not just of talent but of desire. It was also time spent. Time spent in the pursuit of the answer. Dedication to the idea of Katrina-as-writer. Grad school insisted I carve out the space for the writing, which in turn insisted I switch my attention and desire from fiction to poetry. Given space, my writing went in the direction I least expected, providing a surprising part of the answer to the question. What writer can I be...

We all make concessions to the great god “modern life” who derails our attention with the terrific pressure of busyness and information overload. Writers require time—not just for writing, but for contemplation of the navel, dreaming, dawdling and doodling. Time claimed for writing becomes the space in which the question about the writer-self gets answered; space in which writing itself somehow steps up to answer the question of which it is the ancillary subject.

What writer can I be? I believe it is incumbent upon me to answer this question. How I go about this—by being a freelance writer, grad school student, editor, essayist, story teller and, yes, poet—is the means by which I will find it. Time claimed, attention given, love offered, all of this goes into the admixture of my answer, the final tally of which I’ll probably not know completely until the end of my life. In the meantime, these mental actions must and will be buttressed by the physical act of pen to page, fingers to keyboard, in which I always, always... keep writing.

Reprinted with permission from "Soundings: newsletter of the Rainier Writing
Workshop Low Residency MFA, Pacific Lutheran University.

The Michigan Writers Cooperative Press congratulates the winners of our 2010 publication contest. They are: Sarah Baughman for her essays, Growing In Seasons, John Mauk for his work of fiction shorts, The Rest of Us, and Jen-Sperry Steinorth's poetry collection, Forking the Swift.

Thanks to all who entered, and word is that this year the judging was especially difficult because of the excellence of the entries. Comments from Coop Press Judge and Board member, Michael Callaghan (himself a past winner of the contest with his 2005 poetry collection, The Grace of the Eye):

"This was definitely one of the most difficult years for the judges -- the quality of the manuscripts was so high. We'd been hoping for more prose submissions, given last year's publication of Jenny Robertson's Hard Winter, First Thaw--a wonderful oasis of storytelling that we'd been looking for in a prose or fiction submission. But while in past years the contest may have appeared to favor poetry, this year we were faced with such terrific quality in both poetry and prose.The judges hunkered down, read, listened and talked, and did so again. So, for the first time ever, we found two of our winners in prose.

"That said, the selections for poetry were most difficult. In any other year, any one of four or five might have come to publication--for their attention to the particulars of subject, and for what craft they've brought to the language. I couldn't be a judge for one of the manuscripts this year, as I recognized its author and had to call on other judges. But at the end--all votes were very clear: Jen-Sperry Steinorth's poetry manuscript, Forking the Swift, is original over each poem, each attentive to sound and where that sound can turn back to revitalize intent. I just hope that those who weren't selected this year continue to work hard and try again next year."

A reading by the winning writers will be held April 22 at The Writers House on the campus of Interlochen Arts Academy. All are welcome.