Well, AWP was great.  Provocative panels, terrific new people, chewy ideas, plenty of gossip, only a few too many glasses of wine. Even the food thing worked out okay, if you discount the late-night Domino’s pizza in the room.  (Pepperoni and pineapple. That’s how I really know I’m on vacation.)  I loved hanging out with other writers, talking crap and craft, listening to snippets of new work, exchanging suggestions.

And then we all went home.

I’ll have lots to say in future posts about craft and such — issues that were raised in panels and bandied about after — but for today I’m thinking a lot about community.  How do you sustain an atmosphere of mutual support and encouragement when you’re back home, working solo at your desk, facing that blank page?

Here in Taos, we have a lively bunch of writers and a lovely organization, SOMOS, that supports and promotes the literary arts, both spoken and written, in the region.  SOMOS has been around for something like 20 years, the brainchild of a bunch of civic-minded writers who wanted to organize for their own benefit and at the same time share their knowledge and energy with young emerging writers and other community members.

Other, larger communities have similar organizations.  Minneapolis has The Loft (world renowned), D.C. has The Writers Center, Boston has Grub Street, Denver has Lighthouse Writers Workshop.  Representatives from these four groups joined to present a panel on Creating Literary Community, offering ideas and recounting useful stories from their experiences.

Highlights?  Here are a few.  And, though their suggestions are mainly directed toward large, urban populations, there’s plenty of food for thought for smaller places, too.

1. Know your core mission.  Are you there to connect writers?  To develop readership?  To reach out to underserved groups? To promote professional development among your membership?  You may be doing all of these things.  It helps to formalize your aims and periodically assess your progress.
2. Strive to maintain quality of programming while you welcome writers (and readers) of all levels.
3. Try to work toward a balanced funding stream.  It isn’t always easy. The panelists had a lot to say about securing funding in the current economic climate.
4. Promote accessibility.  Are your programs affordable?  Do you have a welcoming, easily accessed space?  Do all community members feel invited?
5. Be creative in your ideas and approaches, but strive to maintain a consistent identity.

These are organizations with big budgets and impressive workshop schedules.  Here in Taos, SOMOS operates on a shoestring and offers much more circumscribed programming.  Even so, these folks sent me home with lots of thoughts for how to improve things here in my own community.

What works for you?  Do you have a writers group?  Do you correspond with writers who live at a distance?  Are you part of a local organization, or aspire to start one? Do you reach out to younger writers, or know where to turn when you need advice or mentoring?  What ideas or strategies can you offer others?

I’m just home from giving a talk and a reading at the local college to an Intro to Literature class.  (My friend Sean Murphy, himself an accomplished novelist, is the teacher.)  The students, a wonderfully diverse group, were interested, informed, empathetic, and involved on a deeply personal level.  It reminded me how important it is for writers to get out and talk both to their current readers — and to people who might someday be inspired to pick up a book, just because they heard somebody talk about stories with passion and relevance.

What are your thoughts on creating literary community where you live?

Scratch any writer, and you’re likely to find evidence of a great former teacher.  For me, the first was Viola Sliwa.  She got me through fourth grade by feeding me a steady stream of books, and by constantly and enthusiastically encouraging my writing.  (She told me I couldn’t start a sentence with and or but until I was a published author, but that after I cleared that hurdle I could do whatever the hell I wanted to with the language.  It was pretty heady stuff.)  Some writers will swear they were headed toward jail or the grave if they hadn’t been mentored by an older teacher.  And often the bond is really simple:  one person who loves to read shares that love with another person, a budding reader and writer.

Come to think of it, it’s a little like the flu – but without the fever and cough.

I got involved with a local mentoring program here in Taos some years ago.  It’s sponsored by SOMOS, the local literary organization, and it’s a wonderful thing.  This year, I’m mentoring a promising young writer named Sarah Pyatt.  I opened my email this morning to find a spectacular message from Sarah, an eighth grader:

I just Finished The book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! about 5 minutes ago!!!!! I can’t believe it! It’s 122 pages long!

Way to go, Sarah!  This is a kid who would have written this novel even if she’d never met me, but I can’t help feeling proud to be a part of her accomplishment.

Hats off to Robert Wilder, too, an outrageously funny writer who takes his teaching with the greatest seriousness.  Rob was just awarded a 2009 Innovation in Reading Prize from the National Book Foundation – a prestigious honor rarely bestowed on individuals.  Here’s what Rob says about teaching and reading:

Like many other teachers and writers, I try to find myriad ways to get good books into other people’s hands. Whether it’s a kindergartner struggling over his first sentence, a high school student trying to find her voice in the wilderness of adolescence, or an intellectually starved friend at a dinner party, books are my gesture toward a better life for anyone willing to turn some pages. Reading provides a sustained relationship with our minds and the minds of countless writers trying to pursue thoughts and ideas, beauty and humanity. Winning the Innovations in Reading Prize is a great honor and will give me the energy to keep fighting the good fight. 

It’s a week of congratulations.  Kathy’s and my son Yohta Namba just graduated from the California College of the Arts, and we made the trek to San Francisco to celebrate with him.  Way to go, kid!

Yohta was lucky to have some great teachers along the way, too.  One of them, Jen Hull, is a gifted educator who is herself a talented writer.  She writes an often funny, always insightful blog at www.citymouseandcountrymouse.com, and her most recent post profiles me.  I’m honored and humbled and secretly (well, not so secretly now, I suppose) pleased to be described as moving like a “gangling and shy high school basketball player”.

I can’t wait to read Sarah’s novel.  It’s a good time for new starts, with the lilacs blooming like crazy.

Happy springtime.

It’s called Evocative Cartographies:  Collecting and archiving stories from place.  You can read it here.

What is it about place?

I’ve always been fascinated by landscape.  Urban, rural – it doesn’t matter.  Place figures in a big way in much of what I choose to read, and in the novels and stories and articles I write.

Some writers can nail a place dead-on.  How do they do it?  Can science inform our understanding of place and make us more astute observers and able writers?  Can desire?

Personal memory, cultural memory, sensory apprehension, the input of science and the imagination – literature draws on all these ways of knowing.  The way I see it, story says.  The way I sense it, feel it to be, remember it being, project it to become. Place permeates the most effective writing, altering its fundamental structure and lending a kind of authority to that voice.

I’ve been thinking and writing on this for some time, now.  Turns out I’m not alone.  So I picture this blog partly as a kind of virtual living room, a meeting place for readers and writers who care about place.  The aim is to stimulate thought, invite discussion, share links, build community.  And because creative vision and expression is as vital as analysis, the seedbank is there to fire up your imagination.

Here’s the setup:  every weekday you’ll find something new on the home page.  Monday and Thursday it’ll be a new post on some topic related to place.  Some days it’ll be a book review, or a movie review, or a comment on music or art.  Some days it will explore a particular place or mull over a writing issue.  Some posts will riff on a word or a phrase from science, or architecture, or some other fertile field for thought.  Some will be written by me, others by guest writers.

And on the other days?  Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday you’ll find a “seed”, a quote or an image or a writing exercise or a list or an evocative word you can use to sprout your own live creation.  If you want more, check out the separate “seedbank” page; every week I’ll shake it up with five seeds from past posts.

And whether you’re primarily a reader, a writer, or both; whether you’re mad about a particular place or are interested in the idea of place in general, I want to hear from you.  Urban or rural?  Weigh in.  Fiction or non?  England or France?  Cats, dogs, chickens, children?  Whatever your leanings and wherever you go, bring the pith of it back here.  Comment on the posts.  Submit to the seedbank, and I’ll credit you if I post yours.  Shoot me an email at summerwood@thewhereofit.com if you’d like to contribute a guest post, or if you’d like to subscribe to a daily email version.

Welcome to the where of it.