Writing Workshop Focuses on Young Adult Fiction - DiscoverHumboldt.com

Writing Workshop Focuses on Young Adult Fiction - DiscoverHumboldt.com
Hit by Novel Overwhelm? Check Out These Standout Short Stories - Verily
Wisconsin Teen Who Lost Her Wallet Got It Back—60 Years Later - Mental Floss

Posted: 29 Jul 2019 09:48 AM PDT

Arthur Slade is a young adult fiction writer with a wealth of experience and insight into the writing craft. He brought his experience to a group of emerging writers at St. Peter's College on the weekend of July 27-29.

Slade's writing extends back to his high school days where he says that a positive experience in a high school writing assignment really kick-started his career.

"I remember writing as early as grade 4, and I do have some poems and short stories from that time. Where I really started was in Grade 11 when one of my teachers made the whole class write a short story, and I created a rather scary short story about a computer taking over the world, which I'm sure would never happen," Slade laughs. "I got a hundred percent, and I both thank the teacher and curse him, but it was the first time I had a sense of 'being paid' for writing." Although the payment wasn't monetary, Slade got the sense of value in his work and the experienced prompted him to continue.

While many writers hone their craft writing short prose or poetry before venturing into longer works, Slade jumped right into the world of novels without hesitation.

"It felt really natural because I loved reading novels. I'm a big fan of Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and Stephen King; that's what I was reading. With short stories, I really only thought about a writer like Ray Bradbury. He was well known for them, but I couldn't think of writers other than him, and I read so many novels. I just thought that was the natural process for a writer."

Another influence for Slade, especially when it comes to the fantasy aspect of his work was comic books. He recalls growing up in rural southwest Saskatchewan that his love of comics was fuelled by subscription deliveries of his favourite titles given that comic book shops were non-existent in the area. His fascination with the type of narrative that was delivered along with colourful and inventive illustrations eventually led to an opportunity to work in the medium.

"There was an artist from Swift Current who was a cousin of a friend. He said he had drawn six pages of a comic book called Hallowed Knight but that he hadn't written any of it yet. It was kind of a backwards way of doing it, but because comics are visual, he knew what they were doing; he just didn't know what they were saying."

From there, the duo self-published the comic which was an avenue for distribution that was becoming more popular at the time. The project scored big with over 5,000 copies sold and distributed throughout North America. The Hallowed Knight experience offered Slade another insight into story-telling, especially when it came to developing dialogue.

Slade has been a mainstay in young adult fiction for much of his career with award winners like Dust and The Hunchback Chronicles. Looking from the outside, some readers and first-time writers might think that young adult-oriented reading is somehow easier or less demanding to produce. Slade offers some advice about the world of young adult fiction.

"When you are writing for a younger audience, you have to remember to entertain, but you have to remember your audience hasn't read a thousand books. So all the references to, say old Norse gods or whatever you may be referencing, you have to somehow explain that within the story without slowing it down. Adults may come to a book with all sorts of knowledge about what you are referencing. With young adult fiction, you sometimes have to remember where they are starting from."

Arthur Slade's workshop wraps up on Monday, July 29. Participants have the opportunity to consider voice, character, creating engaging stories, and promotion and publishing. The workshop is part of St. Peter's College's Summer Writing Workshops series. The next one in the series features a fiction writing workshop with Gail Anderson-Dargatz in August.

Hit by Novel Overwhelm? Check Out These Standout Short Stories - Verily

Posted: 16 Jul 2019 12:00 AM PDT

Move at your own pace.

As we get deeper into summer, I always find my desire to read increases, but in the heat of the day, my stamina for more sustained reading often decreases. During these lazy summer days, I turn to short stories. A well-crafted short story can pack the emotional heft of a thousand-page novel, but with the satisfying ability to be consumed before the ice fully melts in my lemonade.

Here are a few standout stories you're sure to enjoy, along with the classic collections they can be found in. When you're done with one story, you can move to another at your own pace.

"The Daemon Lover"

Found in The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

Most people know Shirley Jackson's most famous story, "The Lottery," from a high school literature class, but Jackson's knack for unsettling readers with a world that feels familiar but just different enough to be frightening continues into her other short stories and her novels. In "The Daemon Lover," a young woman is waiting for her fiancé to meet her on their wedding morning to go and be wed. When he's late to meet them, she goes off to find him herself but soon encounters obstacles that force her to question whether he is who he seems.

"Everything That Rises Must Converge"

Found in The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor

"Everything That Rises Must Converge" is the title story of one of Flannery O'Connor's collections, so it's not an overlooked favorite at all. But this classic continues to be striking and relevant, for better or worse. A young man has returned to his Southern hometown after graduating from university to live with his mother. The two come into conflict over their differing beliefs about the world, including the son's self-important intellectualism and his mother's racism toward African Americans in their town. The conflict comes to a head as mother and son venture on a bus ride across town together.

"Reeling for the Empire"

Found in Vampires In The Lemon Grove by Karen Russell

This collection is classified in the horror genre, but think less Stephen King and more gothic with a touch of magical realism. The standout story, in my opinion, is "Reeling for the Empire," which is set in a small silk factory in Meiji-era Japan (during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). Young women have been sold into labor in the quickly industrializing nation, but their own bodies are put to work in a new and surprising way for the production of the much-demanded fabric. Though set two-hundred years ago and in a slightly tilted world, the story asks relevant questions about work, dignity, and agency.

"A Temporary Matter"

From Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri's award-winning collection opens with a heartbreaking story. A young married couple has been drifting apart following a personal tragedy, but a four-night blackout sets the stage for the hope that they may be able to rekindle what they have lost in their relationship. The story unfolds tenderly, and Lahiri's writing treats the characters with the love and care that they struggle to show each other.

100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

Edited by Lorrie Moore

If you're not sure you're ready to commit to one author or genre or publishing year, try a collection of the best. In this edition, many of the stories selected by Lorrie Moore, herself a talented writer of short stories, are wonderful introductions to authors worth reading more of, such as James Baldwin, Mary Gaitskill, William Faulkner, Lauren Groff, Jamaica Kincaid, and Alice Munro.

Whatever you choose to start with, you can be sure these short stories will be a digestible yet filling summer bite for your literary appetite.

Editors' note: Verily exists to empower women to be more of who they are. Support this mission by joining us at Verily Yours. Your subscription gives you exclusive content (that is different than our website content) and supports our publication, including our efforts to develop a print magazine. Subscribe here.

Wisconsin Teen Who Lost Her Wallet Got It Back—60 Years Later - Mental Floss

Posted: 29 Jul 2019 06:00 AM PDT

Born in New York City to a wealthy and socially connected family, Herman Melville (1819-1891) chose a life as exciting as that of his Moby-Dick narrator Ishmael. He spent years at sea on whaling ships and traveled to far-flung places, but also struggled to make it as a novelist while supporting a large extended family. To celebrate his 200th birthday on August 1, we're diving into Melville's adventures and fishing for some surprising facts.

1. Herman Melville's mother changed the spelling of their last name.

Despite his family's wealth and pedigree—his mother Maria Gansevoort descended from one of the first Dutch families in New York, and his father Allan Melvill came from old Boston stock—young Herman had an unstable, unhappy childhood. Allan declared bankruptcy in 1830 and died two years later, leaving Maria with eight children under the age of 17 and a pile of debt from loans and Allan's unsuccessful businesses. Soon afterward, Maria added an "e" to their surname—perhaps to hide from collection agencies, although scholars are not sure exactly why. "It always seemed to me an unlikely way to avoid creditors in the early 19th century," Will Garrison, executive director of the Berkshire Historical Society, tells Mental Floss.

2. Herman Melville struggled to find employment.

Thanks to a national financial crisis in 1837, Melville had difficulty finding a permanent job, but it wasn't for lack of trying. He served as a bank clerk, teacher, land surveyor, and crew member on a packet ship before signing on, in 1841, to the whaler Acushnet of New Bedford, Massachusetts, then the whaling capital of the world. He served aboard a few different whalers and rose to the role of harpooner. His adventures at sea planted the seeds for Melville's interrogation of man, morality, and nature in Moby-Dick. In that novel, Melville (in the voice of Ishmael) says, "A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard."

3. Herman Melville jumped ship in the middle of a three-year voyage.

Melville and the Acushnet's captain didn't get along, so when the ship reached the Marquesas Islands, Melville and a friend, Richard Tobias Greene, hid in the forests until the ship departed. They spent a month living with the Pacific Islanders. Melville was impressed with their sophistication and peacefulness; most Europeans believed that Polynesians were cannibals. He also found reason to criticize European attempts to "civilize" the islanders by converting them to Christianity. Melville drew on his South Pacific experiences in his first two novels, which became runaway bestsellers: Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847).

4. Herman Melville was inspired by a mountain.

Melville moved to Arrowhead, his charming mustard-colored home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, with his wife Elizabeth and their son in 1850, after he achieved fame as a popular adventure novelist. In the upstairs study, he set up his writing desk so he could look out the north-facing window, which perfectly framed the summit of Mount Greylock, Massachusetts's tallest mountain. Gazing at the peak on a sunny day, Melville was struck by how much the horizontal apex looked "like a sperm whale rising in the distance." He arranged his desk so he would see the summit when he happened to glance up from his work. In that room, in early 1851, Melville completed his manuscript of Moby-Dick.

5. Herman Melville fictionalized an actual whaling disaster.

While on the Acushnet, Melville had learned about an infamous shipwreck from the son of one of its survivors. In November 1820, a massive sperm whale had attacked and sunk the whaleship Essex of Nantucket in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Its crew, stranded in three small boats with little food or water, chose to drift more than 4000 miles to South America instead of 1200 miles to the Marquesas Islands—where Melville had enjoyed his idyll—because they thought they'd be eaten by the natives. Ironically, some of the castaways ended up eating their dead shipmates to survive.

Melville used the disaster to form the climax of Moby-Dick, in which the Pequod of Nantucket is destroyed by the white whale. Melville visited Nantucket for the first time only after the novel was published. He personally interviewed the Essex's captain, George Pollard, who had survived the terrible ordeal and become the town's night watchman. Later, Melville wrote, "To the islanders he was a nobody—to me, the most impressive man, tho' wholly unassuming, even humble—that I ever encountered."

6. Moby-Dick was a flop.

Readers who were expecting another rip-roarin' adventure like his earlier novels Typee or Redburn were sorely disappointed when Melville's masterpiece was published in November 1851. The British edition of Moby-Dick, or The Whale received some positive reviews in London newspapers, but American reviewers were shocked at its obscure literary symbolism and complexity. "There is no method in his madness; and we must needs pronounce the chief feature of the volume [the character of Captain Ahab] a perfect failure, and the work itself inartistic," wrote the New York Albion. The reviewer added that the novel's style was like "having oil, mustard, vinegar, and pepper served up as a dish, in place of being scientifically administered sauce-wise."

7. Herman Melville was very fond of his chimney.

Arrowhead became the locus of Melville's family life and work. Eventually, he and Lizzie, their two sons and two daughters, his mother Maria, and his sisters Augusta, Helen, and Fanny all lived in the cozy farmhouse. For a couple of years, Nathaniel Hawthorne was such a frequent guest that he had his own small bedroom off Melville's study. After Moby-Dick, Melville wrote the novels Pierre and The Confidence-Man, his collection of works called The Piazza Tales, short stories including "Bartleby the Scrivener," and many other pieces there. Melville grew very attached to the house, especially to the massive central chimney, which he immortalized in his 1856 short story "I and My Chimney." Yet his financial struggles after Moby-Dick failed to find an audience led Melville to sell Arrowhead to his brother Allan in 1863. As an homage, Allan painted a few lines from "I and My Chimney" on the chimney's stonework, which are still visible today.

8. Herman Melville finally got a day job.

Melville's chronic money woes prompted a return to New York City, into a brick townhouse at 104 East 26th Street in Manhattan, where the family benefited from being back in the bustle of civilization. Melville finally found regular employment as a district inspector for the U.S. Customs Service and maintained an office at 470 West Street. At the same time, he mostly abandoned writing short stories and novels in favor of poetry. In between inspections he wrote Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land, based on his visit to the Middle East in 1857. Because of its length—at more than 18,000 lines, it's the longest poem in American literature—and unconventional approach to its subject, Melville once called it "eminently adapted for unpopularity."

9. Herman Melville's last major work was discovered by accident.

The centennial of Melville's birth renewed interest in his novels and poems, most of which were long out of print by then. Raymond Weaver, a literature professor at Columbia University working on the first major biography of Melville, collaborated with Eleanor Melville Metcalf, Melville's granddaughter and literary executor, who gave him access to the author's papers. In 1919, while poking through letters and notes, Weaver discovered the unfinished manuscript of Billy Budd in a tin breadbox. Melville had started to write the short story about a tragic sailor in 1888 but, by his death in 1891, had not completed it. Weaver edited and published the story in 1924, but initially considered the tale "not distinguished." Other scholars asserted that Billy Budd was Melville's final masterpiece.

10. You can see Herman Melville's personal collection of knick-knacks.

Just a short drive from Arrowhead, the Berkshire Athenaeum in Pittsfield holds the world's largest collection of Melvilliana in its Melville Memorial Room. Along with first editions of Melville's work and a full library of books about him, there are priceless objects owned by or associated with the author. Fans can geek out over the earliest known portrait of Melville, painted in 1848; carved wooden canoe paddles that he collected in Polynesia; his walking stick; his favorite inkstand, quills, and other desktop tchotchkes; a collection of scrimshaw, maps, and prints; and Elizabeth Melville's writing desk. There's a section of the first successful transatlantic cable, which Melville valued as a prized souvenir, and even the actual breadbox in which Billy Budd had been hiding.

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