The awfulness - and awesomeness - of being short - BBC News
The awfulness - and awesomeness - of being short - BBC News |
- The awfulness - and awesomeness - of being short - BBC News
- The CBC Books fall reading list: 30 books to read now - CBC.ca
- Acclaimed author and Millburn native Joan Silber believes that we can all do better - NorthJersey.com
| The awfulness - and awesomeness - of being short - BBC News Posted: 28 Sep 2019 04:35 PM PDT  Image copyright Allan Mott For men, being tall is considered desirable, but Allan Mott, who is about 7in (18cm) shorter than the average Canadian man, has come to embrace his height - or lack of it. Have you ever experienced being universally adored by members of the opposite sex? It happened to me whenever I was in the school playground. As soon as I appeared, the older girls would shriek in delight and chase me until I couldn't run any more. When they would catch me, I would get a big hug and a kiss on the cheek before being set free to play or chased by another fan. I was five and adorable - the tiniest child at Mee-Yah-Noh elementary school in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I looked more like a doll than a nursery student. Even at that age, I understood that it was being small that caused people to treat me differently. What I didn't know was that in just a year that treatment would quickly vanish and be replaced with something far less desirable. I went from being this adored kid, to just being the smallest boy in class. I had been outgoing, but then, due to playground bullying, I would go to help the librarian put books away during playtime. As it turns out, I peaked in my first year of school, which wasn't ideal. I only had the rest of my entire life to live. The truth is, genetically I never stood a chance. My mum was 4ft 11.5in (151cm) and my dad is 5ft 4in. Growing up, our paediatrician estimated that I might make it to 5ft 6in, maybe even 5ft 8in if I was lucky, which is not far off the Canadian average male height. But it turned out that the doctor was way off. I stopped growing soon after my 13th birthday. My lifelong summit turned out to be 5ft 2in (157cm), just four inches above the official medical classification of a dwarf or little person. In the years that have passed since then, I've come to two major conclusions about being a short man in Western society: 1. It's awful. 2. No-one wants to hear you complain about it. I tend to keep quiet on the subject. I've heard many people say to me, "Oh, come on! People don't treat you any differently because you're short!" (Every person who has ever said this to me has been at least 5ft 11in.) But I know the reality of what is means to be a short man in our society. There is as much discrimination about size as there is about gender, race, religion, etc. Once I looked up the list of chief executives of Fortune 500 companies. It's mostly men, with a smattering of women, and their average height is 6ft - and if that's the average, many are actually taller than that. It's not a secret that women earn less than men for doing the same jobs. What people should also know is that height is also a major factor in salary differences. According to Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink, it is estimated that an inch of height is worth an extra $789 (£699) a year in salary. This means that a man who is 6ft tall, might earn $7,890 more a year than I would for the same job. Over the course of a 40-year career, that could amount to a difference of $315,600. When I read that I didn't even feel surprised. In my heart, I always knew it was true. Short men are taught by society to accept what is thrown at them. When I get a new job and they offer me a particular salary, my instinct is: "That's less than what I was expecting. Oh well, I guess I'll accept that." Maybe a taller guy has a greater sense of entitlement, and says: "Oh no, I need 10K more than that." Have you ever walked into a room and felt yourself evaluated and dismissed in a matter of seconds? Short men know that feeling very well. This is where disparaging terms like "Little Napoleon" come in, and the desire to succeed is dismissed as evidence of "short man syndrome". If a 6ft 2in guy stands up for himself, it's described as having self-confidence, but someone my height fighting to be heard is deemed insecure and needy. In a marketing job I had, I would be talked over in meetings. I'd make a suggestion, which would get ignored, and then a few minutes later, someone else would make the same suggestion. People responded "Oh yes, that's a good idea" to the second person. I found myself having to fight to make myself heard, but then I came across as pushy and annoying. No matter how good my points were, they were often ignored because it had already been decided that I had nothing worth contributing. I have watched many of my female colleagues and friends go through the same thing. While they think the discrimination they experience is strictly sexism, I often wonder how much of it is actually the result of sizeism? Sometimes I ask myself if I'm being insecure. "Maybe those people just treat everyone like that?" I think. However, there was one meeting that stood out. It was a brainstorming session and we were approaching a project with one line of thinking, and I suggested "Why don't we approach it from the opposite side?" The creative director responded by sharply telling me to be quiet. This silenced the room, and he realised that it was inappropriate. I really admire a colleague who stood up for me. "It's really hard to feel comfortable continuing this meeting when you basically just told Allan to shut up," she said pointedly. Having other people acknowledge it helped confirm my suspicions that he was treating me badly for no good reason. What about when it comes to dating? The reality is, as a short man you can expect eight out of 10 women to immediately dismiss you as a potential sexual partner at first sight. The chances are, the remaining two out of 10 will only give you a couple of minutes to make your case before making excuses. Whenever I say to my female friends that women don't like dating short men, they almost always say the same thing: "That's not true. I bet there are lots of women who love short men." "Have you ever dated one?" I ask. "Well, no…" they reply. "Would you?" An uncomfortable silence follows. According to Freakonomics, the bestselling book by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, short men are statistically less likely to receive responses from their online dating profiles than any other demographic group. The fact that I'm averaging one a year on my online dating profile means I'm actually breaking the odds through the sheer force of my amazing personality. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule that people love to bring up. "Women loved Prince and he was tiny!" I hear over and over again. Right, so all I have to do is go through life wearing eight-inch stiletto shoes, and be a musical genius who also happens to be the greatest live performer of his generation. I hear about guys who are shorter who are really uncomfortable around tall women. I think tall women go through a similar experience. I have tall female friends, who say all the time about guys they were dating: "He never let me wear heels," and "He was really self-conscious of people looking at us." Not me. If it turned out my soul mate was 6ft 2in, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest. Most people unconsciously associate height with strength, intelligence and dominance, and as a result, assume that taller people are better leaders than their shorter counterparts. I admit that sometimes I think I make life as a short man sound worse than it is. Would my life have been easier if I shot up an extra 6in during high school? Probably. But it's not like the life I've lived has been one of unremitting pain and misery. I am who I am because of my height. It's given me this willingness to take risks that I call my "Parachute syndrome". In a terrifying situation - even though I may be terrified, just like everyone else - my reaction is often: "Oh well, I'm standing at the door of this aeroplane - might as well jump out. What's the worst that could happen?" Once when I was starting a new job, the company held an all- staff meeting in Edmonton's Northlands Coliseum, a huge sporting and concert arena. There was a tradition that each new employee got lightly hazed [put through an initiation ceremony] when joining the company. Bruno Mars (3in taller than me) was going to be playing the venue, so we were told to sing one of his songs. On the stage, everyone murmured, "We're not gonna do that," and looked down, shuffling their feet. I had never heard a Bruno Mars song in my life, so I Googled some lyrics on my phone, and grabbed the microphone. I didn't know the tune, but I sang the chorus to Locked Out of Heaven to all these people I was about to work with. As I was willing to do that in front of everyone, the chief executive immediately knew me by first name. And I had the confidence to do that because I have this determination to transcend people's expectations of me. They might expect me to be quiet and hide, but actually I will jump out of the aeroplane. Hopefully my parachute works. It may also be because I am short that I am now a writer. I've already mentioned that short guys don't get taken seriously when they talk, so writing is a real chance for me to express myself and speak out. It's my one real skill. I started writing ghost stories, and although my books have never made it beyond the most obscure regional bestsellers lists, I often run into people who grew up reading them and it's always a special feeling. As I'm getting older, I think that I'm actually getting better-looking. A few years ago, I had a revelation: I had always thought that I was being funny by being self-deprecating but then I met a guy at a house party who told me, "I'm going to punch you if you make another negative comment about yourself." So I've decided that I'm going to make jokes about how awesome and handsome I am. The thing I found is that people like it when they laugh with me about something nice and positive. Society doesn't think I'm a handsome ideal, but I will keep asserting that I'm awesome anyway. Every selfie I put up on Instagram has a caption like: "Another handsome day!" or "Can you handle this much handsome?" I don't do self-deprecating any more. When I look back at some of my prouder achievements, I have to admit these might not have happened if I was just an average guy and not an awesome shrimp. Additional interviews by Elaine Chong  |
| The CBC Books fall reading list: 30 books to read now - CBC.ca Posted: 23 Sep 2019 09:53 AM PDT The CBC Books fall reading list is here! Here are 30 books from Canada and around the world to check out this season.  In Night of Power, Mansoor Visram, his wife Layla and son Ashif were forced to move to Canada when Idi Amin expelled South Asians from Uganda. In 25 years, Mansoor has risen from working at a used car lot to running a dry cleaner in Calgary. He has big entrepreneurial dreams for him and Ashif, who is chasing his own ambitions at a major corporation in Toronto. Layla, who runs her own home cooking business, sees her son and husband growing distant and feels herself drifting away as well. Anar Ali is a novelist and screenwriter who lives in Toronto. Her short story collection, Baby Khaki's Wings, was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize, the Trillium Book Award and the Danuta Gleed Literary Prize.  Award-winning author, journalist and human rights activist Sally Armstrong is this year's CBC Massey Lecturer. In her lectures, titled Power Shift, Armstrong argues that improving the status of women is crucial to our collective surviving and thriving. The facts are beyond dispute, she argues: when women get an education, all of society benefits and when they get better healthcare, everyone lives longer.  The Testaments is set 15 years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale and includes the "explosive testaments" of three women. The book answers questions on the inner-workings of Gilead, the oppressive dystopia where Offred, the novel's original narrator, was stripped of her freedoms and forced to be a handmaid for powerful men. Atwood is a celebrated Canadian writer who has published numerous novels, poetry, nonfiction and comics. The Testaments is on the shortlist for the 2019 Booker Prize and the longlist for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize.  In We, the Survivors, Ah Hock, an uneducated man from Malaysia, is trying to make his fortune in a new country that falls short on its promises. Working a series of low paying jobs, Ah Hock ends up murdering a migrant worker from Bangladesh and serves time in prison for his crime. Years after his release, Ah Hock speaks to a local journalist about the murder and tries to understand how he became a killer. Tash Aw is an award-winning writer, whose past books include the novels The Harmony Silk Factory, Map of the Invisible World and Five Star Billionaire.  Billy-Ray Belcourt is a writer and academic from Driftpile Cree Nation. In his second poetry collection, NDN Coping Mechanisms, he uses poetry, prose and textual art to explore how Indigenous and queer communities and identities are left out of mainstream media. The work has two parts — the first explores everyday life and the second explores influential texts such as Treaty 8. Belcourt won the Griffin Poetry Prize for his first collection, This Wound is a World.  Taffy Brodesser-Akner's new novel, Fleishman Is in Trouble, is about a middle-aged doctor in New York named Toby Fleishman, who has just ended a 14-year marriage. He's pretty sure there's only one villain in his story. It's obviously his ex-wife Rachel, who always paid more attention to her high-powered career than to their family. Then one day Rachel drops their two kids off at his apartment and disappears. Toby is forced to deal with the fallout — and to consider the possibility that he never really understood the story of his own marriage. Brodesser-Akner is a writer for the New York Times Magazine. Fleishman Is in Trouble is her first novel.  Ta-Nehisi Coates's first novel, The Water Dancer, tells the story of Hiram Walker, who is born into bondage in Virginia. His father is plantation owner Howell Walker and his mother is Rose, who has been sold away. Despite having a photographic memory, Hiram has no memories of his mother until he has a vision of her during a near-death experience. After almost drowning, Hiram resolves to escape from the Deep South and becomes involved with the Underground. Coates won the National Book Award in 2015 for his nonfiction book Between the World and Me. He is a MacArthur fellow and writes Marvel's Black Panther and Captain America comic book series. The Water Dancer is the latest selection for Oprah's Book Club.  In Greenwood, it's the year 2038 and most of the world has suffered from an environmental collapse. But there is a remote island with 1,000 year-old trees and Jake Greenwood works as a tour guide there. From there, the novel takes you back in time as you learn more about Jake, her family and how secrets and lies can have an impact for generations. Greenwood is on the longlist for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Christie has been longlisted Prize twice before — in 2015 for If I Fall, If I Die and in 2011 for The Beggar's Garden. He lives in Victoria and Galiano Island, B.C.  In Michael Crummey's new novel, The Innocents, a young brother and sister live in isolation in Newfoundland, surviving alone on the bits of knowledge their parents left behind. Their loyalty to one another is the reason they are able to persist through storms and illness, but their relationship is tested as they grow older. Crummey is a poet and novelist from Newfoundland and Labrador. Two of Crummey's novels have been shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction — Sweetland in 2014 and Galore in 2009. The Innocents is longlisted for the Scotianbank Giller Prize.  Empire of Wild follows a woman named Joan, who hasn't given up on finding her husband, even though he's been missing for a year. One morning, a hungover Joan finds herself in a packed preacher's tent on a Walmart parking lot. The charismatic Reverend Wolff is none other than Victor, who claims to have no memory of Joan or their life together. Cherie Dimaline is a Métis author whose novel The Marrow Thieves won the Governor General's Literary Award for Young people's literature — text and was defended by Jully Black on Canada Reads 2018.  This Is How You Lose the Time War is a debut fantasy novel co-written by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. When two time-travelling agents from warring factions begin a clandestine correspondence, they're each determined to make sure their side has the best hope for the future. But when they fall in love, their secret may have deadly consequences. El-Mohtar's short story Seasons of Glass and Iron won Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. Gladstone is the author of the Hugo-nominated series Craft Sequence.  Break in Case of Emergency follows Toby Goodman, a teen whose father left their small town before she was born and whose mother dies by suicide when she's a young girl. When she finds out that her estranged father is coming back to town and wants to meet her, Toby must try to make sense of her life amid surprising revelations about her family history. Brian Francis is a writer and columnist for The Next Chapter on CBC Radio. His first novel, Fruit, was a finalist for Canada Reads 2009. He is also the author of the novel Natural Order.  Talking to Strangers explores how we interact with people we don't know, and the impact of the assumptions we bring to these conversations. As with his previous books, Malcolm Gladwell uses anecdotes and a narrative voice to examine how societal structures shape human behaviour, including decision-making and the spread of ideas. Gladwell is the author of several books, including Blink, Outliers and The Tipping Point.  When Omar Ali is informed his ex-girlfriend Anna has died, he resolves to retrieve her suicide note from her parents. Filled with grief and unable to cope, the 27-year-old line cook spirals out of control, participating in break-ins and online terrorism. Adnan Khan was the recipient of the 2016 RBC Taylor Prize for Emerging Writers and was a reader for the CBC Nonfiction Prize in 2017. There Has to Be a Knife is Khan's first book.  Helen Knott is a poet and writer of Dane Zaa, Nehiyaw and European descent. Her memoir, In My Own Moccasins, is a story of addiction, sexual violence and intergenerational trauma. It explores how colonization has impacted her family over generations. But it is also a story of hope and redemption, celebrating the resilience and history of her family. In My Own Moccasins is Knott's first book.  Agnes, Murderess is inspired by the local legend of serial killer Agnes McVee, a 19th-century B.C.-based roadhouse owner who allegedly killed miners for gold during the Cariboo Gold Rush. The tale of Agnes McVee has never been verified, but in this graphic novel, her life is imagined as one filled with ghosts, betrayal, passionate love affairs and, of course, murder. Sarah Leavitt is a Vancouver comics creator and writing teacher. Her debut book was Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer's, My Mother, and Me.  In Frogcatchers, a man wakes up without his memory, and finds himself in a strange hotel room with an old-fashioned keychain. He thinks the building is empty until he comes across a young boy, who begs him not to use the key for fear of releasing whatever else is locked away. Jeff Lemire is an acclaimed Toronto comics creator who recently won an Eisner Award for the comic book series Gideon Falls. Some of his previous graphic novels include Roughneck and Essex County.  Ami McKay's family has a history of dying early, thanks to a a genetic disorder called Lynch syndrome. This discovery began with McKay's great-aunt Pauline Gross, who, in 1895, went to a doctor with the expectation she would die at a young age. What followed was a decades and generations-long study of one family and their relationship to cancer. It would become the longest and most detailed cancer genealogy study ever. In Daughter of Family G, McKay explores this family history while grappling with the fact she tested positive for the gene while raising a family of her own.  Inland takes place in 1893, as a drought chokes the lands of Arizona Territory. Nora is a strong-willed frontierswoman awaiting the return of her husband, who is out in search of water. Lurie is a former outlaw on a dangerous journey west. Their stories unfold alongside one another, until eventually colliding. Téa Obreht is a writer based in New York. Her first book, The Tiger's Wife, won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction (now known as the Women's Prize for Fiction).  Anna Mehler Paperny is a journalist who has struggled with depression her entire life. After a suicide attempt in her 20s, she decided to look into her disease: how it's caused, treated and talked about. Part memoir, part investigation, Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me is a examination of an illness that is far too common and far too little understood. Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me is shortlisted for the 2019 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.  Indie pop band Tegan and Sara have written a memoir. The book, titled High School, will share the life story of the famous identical twins and LGBTQ icons. Tegan and Sara Quin grew up in Calgary at the height of grunge and rave culture in the 1990s. High School is written in chapters alternating between Tegan's point of view and Sara's and will explore how they coped with their parents' divorce and how they navigated issues around love, drugs, sexuality, queer identity and academic pressures during their high school years.  David Szalay's novel Turbulence links the stories of 12 passengers on a series of flights around the world. The narrative passes from one character to the next, each chapter exploring a new personal crisis — whether it's a mother worrying about her son's cancer treatment or a journalist heading out on a delicate assignment. Szalay was born in Montreal, but grew up in London and now lives in Budapest. His previous novel, All That Man Is, was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize.  For Three Women, journalist Lisa Taddeo spent eight years travelling across the U.S., hearing the stories of ordinary women from a variety of backgrounds and learning about their complicated perspectives on desire. Three women are featured in this book: Lina, a suburban mom from Indiana who ends up having an affair after her husband refuses to kiss her on the mouth, Maggie, a 17-year-old high school student from North Dakota who describes having a physical relationship with her married teacher, and Sloane, a successful business owner whose husband enjoys watching her have sex with others. Taddeo lives in New England. Her writing has been published in New York Magazine, Esquire, Elle, Best American Sports Writing and best American Political Writing.  Jesse Thistle has earned many honours for his work in academia, including the 2016 Governor General's Silver Medal. He is also a Trudeau and Vanier Scholar. He specializes in Indigenous homelessness, a topic he understands all too well. Abandoned by his parents and raised by his difficult grandparents, Thistle struggled with addiction as an adult and spent 10 years homeless. He shares his story of overcoming his circumstances in the memoir, From the Ashes.  I Hope We Choose Love is a collection of essays and prose poems from writer, performer and social worker Kai Cheng Thom. Thom explores several social movements and the issues that complicate them, such as violence, complicity and forgiveness. She calls for respect, nuance, understanding and love as we work toward making the world a better place.  Trick Mirror is a collection of insightful and humourous essays from New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino. With each essay, Tolentino tackles some phenomenon of popular culture — from social media to female literary characters — and explores the way they interact with our own self-delusions. Tolentino was born in Toronto, but grew up primarily in the U.S. Trick Mirror is her first book.  The Dearly Beloved tells the story of two clergymen and their wives over several decades. Charles intended to follow his father into academia, but joined the church after an inspiring lecture. He falls in love with Lily, a fiercely independent woman who doesn't believe in God. James grew up in a poor family in Chicago, resentful of his father's alcoholism and mother's anxiety. Nan, the dutiful daughter of a beloved Mississippi minister, changes his life. The lives of the two couples intersect in Greenwich Village in 1963, as Charles and James are chosen to shepherd the Third Presbyterian Church through dark times. Cara Wall is a New York-based writer. The Dearly Beloved is her first novel.  Based on a real reform school in Florida that operated for over a century, The Nickel Boys is the chilling tale of a young black man named Elwood Curtis who is sent to live at a juvenile reformatory after an innocent mistake. The Nickel Academy bills itself as a place of "physical, intellectual and moral training," but in reality it is a place where young boys are subject to physical and sexual abuse. Coming of age in the early 1960s, Elwood struggles to hold onto the words of his idol, Dr. Martin Luther King, in the face of cruelty. Colson Whitehead is a celebrated American writer whose previous book, The Underground Railroad, won the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Carnegie Medal for fiction and many other honours.  Jenny Heijun Wills was born in Korea, but was adopted by a Canadian family and raised in a small town. When she was in her early 20s, she decided to travel back to Korea to meet her extended birth family and other young people who were adopted from Korea and raised abroad. Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related. shares Wills's journey and also explores the impact of being raised by a family of a different ethnicity and culture. Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related. is on the shortlist for the 2019 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.  Red at the Bone begins in 2001, as 16-year-old Melody appears for her coming of age ceremony in front of her loving family. The event brings forth painful and joyous memories from before Melody's birth, and how her unexpected arrival brought two families from different social classes together. Jacqueline Woodson is an American fiction writer and poet whose acclaimed work includes Brown Girl Dreaming and Another Brooklyn.  |
| Posted: 14 Sep 2019 12:00 AM PDT CLOSE  Acclaimed author Joan Silber, who grew up in Millburn, recalls studying hard, writing poetry and skating in Taylor Park when she was young — activities that were unlikely to put her in contact with the kinds of drug-dealers, strippers and petty thieves that populate her novels and short story collections. But though she likes to create characters who behave badly, her message to them is the same as it would be to anyone who has let himself down: You can do better than that. "I watch a lot of TV where the message is how people get corrupted or people are worse than you think, and I write about the other side of that," says Silber, who lives in New York City. Her most recent work, Improvement (Counterpoint, $17), won both the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the 2018 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction. We talked to her about story-telling, how Hurricane Sandy inspired her, and the joys of traveling for work. How old were you when you lived in Millburn, and what memories do you have of growing up there? My parents moved there in 1941, and I was born there. I went to the [public] schools, and stayed there till I moved out on my own after college. I had very good teachers. I loved reading; I had friends I would show my writing to, and they'd show me theirs. It was an environment that was quite friendly to writers. When I went to Sarah Lawrence as an undergrad, half the population had gone to a private school, and I thought they'd know more than me. But they didn't. At what point did you know that you wanted to be a writer? I wanted to be a movie star or actress when I was in fifth or sixth grade, and I took dramatic lessons with a friend. But that went by the wayside, because at one point I learned I didn't have any talent. I also wanted to write poetry from the time I was little, and in fact, we had to do a research paper my junior year of high school. The question I had to answer was, Why did [French poet] Arthur Rimbaud stop writing at age 19? There's no answer to that question. You studied with [famed short story writer] Grace Paley when you were at Sarah Lawrence. What useful lessons about writing did you learn from her? It was in the late '60s, and it was her first year teaching undergrads. I was in a class of mixed poetry and fiction writers. I wanted to write poetry, and she had everyone try the other genre. I wrote a story for her that I considered a great success, and it tilted me toward fiction. She said that fiction is about character, and the structure of a story is like the structure of a poem. That was helpful to me. You've written both novels and short stories. How do you decide that a story merits expanding, as you did after writing the first chapter of Improvement? You're always hoping you can get something longer out of things. I am making it up as I go along. For me, it begins with the situation. In Improvement, there were two things. When Hurricane Sandy happened, I was living on the Lower East Side, an area that was hit by it. The Con Ed tower went out, and there wasn't heat or hot water. I heard on the radio that people were visiting the elderly in housing projects affected by the storm, and the older people were fine, saying "We're okay, it's no big deal." I had also wanted to write about Turkey, and I thought of the character of Kiki, and the younger character. They had adventurous, parallel lives. Why do you think the theme of wanting to be a better person resonates with readers? We're certainly in an era when people aren't used to asking enough of themselves morally. I think this book did well because we're hungrier to see people do good things. You currently teach at your alma mater and in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College. Have you noticed any changes in writing students over the years? When I ask "Who makes you want to write?" they give ten names, not just one, and they're more socially aware; there's less fear of writing about politics, with their ethical views of things sneaking into their work. Warren Wilson's campus is in Asheville, N.C. How do you make that work? Warren Wilson is a low residency program for adults who can't leave their lives for long periods of time. Students come to campus for 10 days a year, take classes and meet one person who's their advisor. I correspond with them every three weeks, sending a long email with comments. It's a two-year program, and a very one-on-one kind of teaching. When you give readings, are there questions you get asked all the time? People ask, "Why did you give it that title?" Another is, "Do you know what all the stories will be about before you start?" With Improvement, I did know what the beginning and the ending would be, but didn't know all the different parts. You need to know where you're going. What are your plans for the near future? I'm in the last quarter of my new novel. It's called Secrets of Happiness, and it comes from a story a friend told me about a wife who discovered that her husband had a whole other family hidden from her. It's also about how people cope with pitfalls. And I love travel, especially in Asia. I'm going to Nepal in October, and I have two work-related travel plans: To teach at the "Under the Volcano" conference in Mexico in January, and because the book just got published in the UK, New Zealand and Australia, to go to a festival in Adelaide, Australia in March. What advice would you give young fiction writers? I've had a long, zig-zagging career. Cultivate equanimity. More: Filming for 'The Plot Against America' in Paterson More: Succeed2gether's Montclair Literary Festival 2019 draws more than 3,000 attendees More: 'Voices of Poetry' holds readings in cafes. Now, they read poetry in a Paterson boxing gym Read or Share this story: https://www.northjersey.com/story/entertainment/2019/09/14/author-and-millburn-native-joan-silber-believes-we-can-all-do-better/1330779001/  |
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