Madison Jones 1 This Year’S Harper Lee Award Will Go to the Dean of Southern Novelists

FIRST DRAFT VOL. 5, NO. 4 SPRING 1999

The Journal of the Alabama Writers’ Forum

COVER STORY: Madison Jones 1 This year’s Harper Lee Award will go to the dean of Southern novelists.

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

WRITERS’ COLLOQUIUM 3 Highlights of the AWF/AUM writers’ gathering THE PAPER CHASE 5 Archiving writers’ work BOYS AND GIRLS “WRITING OUR STORIES” 9

A PLAYWRIGHT’S PROGRESS Barbara Lebow and the story of Lurleen B.Wallace 11

BOOK REVIEWS 12

CALENDAR 18

NEWS 20

FROM THE FIELD 22 Tom Franklin on the path of “The Mitcham War”

Novelist Madison Jones Photos by Katie Lamar Smith FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ALABAMA WRITERS’ hen he visited Alabama in February for the Writers’ Colloquium at FORUM Auburn University Montgomery, NEA Literature Program WDirector Cliff Becker said he wished every state had an Alabama 1998-99 Writers’ Forum. I promised him I would quote him soon and often. We are Board of Directors grateful to Cliff for making the trip to Montgomery to see firsthand the wealth President of literary talentÐand energyÐin this state. See the story about the Colloquium Brent Davis (Tuscaloosa) starting on page 3. Immediate Past President Even more events are taking shape in Alabama because of this literary energy Norman McMillan level. Please note two late-breaking events of the spring literary season. On (Montevallo) April 9 there will be a publication party for Livingston Press’s Belles’ Letters Vice-President Rawlins McKinney at Highland Booksmith in Birmingham. Proprietor Jake Reiss will roll out the (Birmingham) carpet for Alabama’s best women short story writers (this feast will move to the Secretary Alabama School of Fine Arts later that evening). And on April 24 Jay Lamar Birmingham Public Library hosts its first “Alabama Bound,” (Auburn) a day-long gathering of close to 50 contemporary Alabama authors from Treasurer children’s writers to sportswriters to historians to poets. Edward M. George (Montgomery) Of course, it is not too late to register for the Writers Symposium in Writers’ Representative Monroeville May 6-8, where the second annual Harper Lee Award and Eugene Ruth Beaumont Cook Current-Garcia Award will be presented. See page 18 for details on these (Birmingham) events. Writers’ Representative Peter Huggins In between jaunts to readings and conferences, I encourage all writers to con- (Auburn) sider Ellen Garrison’s advice as outlined in our series on Archiving Writers’ Priscilla Cooper Papers. Every writer has something important to preserve. (Birmingham) On a personal note, there is nothing more gratifying to me as director of the Bettye L. Forbus (Dothan) Forum, than the day I spent in January working with the Chalkville “Writing William E. Hicks Our Stories” program. I was privileged to work with a dozen young women (Troy) who are finding their voices in poetry and other forms. For a couple of hours Jean P. McIver we investigated personification and some of those results, with further revision (Mobile) shepherded by teaching writer Priscilla Cooper, appear in this issue. With those Nicole Mitchell poems we are also publishing new work from the boys program at the Mt. (Tuscaloosa) Meigs site of “Writing Our Stories,” where writer Marlin Barton teaches. Kellee Reinhart (Tuscaloosa) The Forum’s continuing partnership with the Department of Youth Services is Rick Shelton a small miracle of dedication and cooperationÐfrom the teaching writers who (Sterrett) work alongside classroom teachers and other staff partners to the board of Frank Toland directors of the Forum who have made the AWF/DYS program a priority. And (Tuskegee) it is also a small miracle of growth on the part of these young people whom I Randall Williams believe have a future in Alabama as productive citizens. In this spring season (Montgomery) of renewal I believe in our work with these young writers and in their future Executive Director in Alabama. The energy level is high. Let’s give thanks for it! Jeanie Thompson (Montgomery) ASCA Liaison Randy Shoults (Montgomery) First Draft is a vehicle for communication among writers and those interested in literature/publishing in Alabama and elsewhere. We encourage publication news, events infor- Book Reviews Editor mation, and story suggestions. First Draft will grow as the needs of writers in Alabama Jay Lamar are identified. Contact: The Alabama Writers’ Forum, Alabama State Council on the Arts, Editing/Lay-out/Design 201 Monroe Street, Montgomery, AL 36130-1800. Wordcraft, Inc. Phone: 334/242-4076, ext. 233; Fax: 334/240-3269; email:[email protected]. Spring 1999 FIRST DRAFT 1 A Long, Hard Look at the South: Madison Jones’s 40 Years as a Novelist he 1999 recipient of the Harper evokes the personal and cultural losses Lee Award for a Distinguished inherent in the building of the TVA dams TAlabama Writer is novelist in the 1930s. Madison Jones, professor of English In fiction truer than life, Madison emeritus and University writer-in- Jones handles the big subjectsÐgood and residence emeritus at Auburn University. evil, desire, loss, betrayal. Whatever limits He will receive the award on Friday, May his charactersÐtheir upbringing, experi- 7, at a luncheon in his honor during the ence, or social situationÐthere is the second Alabama Writers Symposium in possibility of transcendence of spirit. Monroeville. During the two-day confer- There is hope; they have choices. And so ence, Jones’s novels and their masterful when they make mistakes, as the sheriff evocation of Southern culture and settings does in An Exile when he follows desire will doubtless form a backdrop for into an alliance with a brutal bootlegger, it writers’ and scholars’ discussions of is a true and inevitable tragedy. The Fall “AlabamaÐthe Place,” this year’s confer- re-enacted. ence theme. Look for more coverage in the sum- Born in Nashville in 1925, Jones was mer issue of First Draft. reared in and near there. He graduated from Vanderbilt, earned his master’s at the MONROEVILLE HOSTS University of Florida and taught in MADISON JONES SECOND LITERARY Tennessee and Ohio before coming to BIBLIOGRAPHY SYMPOSIUM Auburn University in 1956. Over his more The Innocent Monroeville and Alabama Southern than 30 active years at the university and Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1957 Community College gave a southern liter- since retiring to his farm, his stature as a Forest of the Night Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1960 ary symposium for the first time in 1998, novelist has steadily grown. Among many A Buried Land and about 200 people came. “We expect honors, Jones has received Guggenheim Viking Press, 1963 to have double that number this year, and and Rockefeller Fellowships, and most An Exile, Viking Press, 1967 we are prepared to accommodate them,” recently he was awarded the T.S. Eliot A Cry of Absence said coordinator Cathy Power. Events Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Crown Publishers, 1971 Passage Through Gehenna will be held on the campus of Alabama Creative Writing from the Ingersoll Louisiana State University Southern, at the Monroeville Community Foundation. Press, 1978 House and in the historic Monroe County Perhaps Jones hints at his own aim as Season of the Strangler Courthouse on the square. With registra- a writer in the prologue to his award-win- Doubleday & Co., 1983 tion, a limited number of tickets are avail- ning Nashville 1864: The Dying of the Last Things Louisiana State University able for a performance of To Kill a Light. The supposed author of the memoir Press, 1989 Mockingbird which is staged by towns- has used imagination to create details “of To the Winds, people on the courthouse lawn. gesture and feeling,” we are told, in order Longstreet Press, 1997 Several of the ses- “to do what any artist must: make memo- Nashville 1864: sions pair a writer with ry come alive to its fullest in the crucible The Dying of the Light J.S. Sanders & Co., 1997 a scholar for a discus- of art.” sion of the writer’s The South is what Jones’s art work. Lee May, colum- re-creates through his unsentimental nist with Southern Accents and author portrayals of different times, places and people. In A Cry of In My Father’s Garden is on the of Absence, a Civil Rights era novel, he gives us “intima- program with AUM Dean of Liberal Lee May tions of a time when life exceeded the grasp of stiffened Arts Robbie Walker. Dennis and Vicki minds and wills” through the tragic tale of Hester Glenn Covington will talk with Nancy Anderson, English pro- whose rigid acceptance of the old Southern ways led to a fessor at AUM. Frye Gaillard, author of As Long as the murder and the destruction of her family. A Buried Land continued on page 23 MONROEVILLE CONFERENCE

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FILM FURNISHED Spring 1999 FIRST DRAFT 3 Writers Gather for Colloquium at AUM iterary arts supporters gathered Friday, February 12 and Saturday, February 13, at Auburn University LMontgomery for the sixth “Writers Colloquium,” hosted by AUM and the Writers’ Forum. At the opening session, Forum Executive Director Jeanie Thompson introduced Cliff Becker, literature program director for the National Endowment for the Arts, as a “missionary from Washington come to give us glad tidings!” Those tidings included news of a $2.6 million grant budget in the area of literature. Grants are available to individuals, literary magazines and organizations. Becker outlined the mission of his area of the NEA as threefold: 1) to support emerging and mid- career writers during crucial points in their careers, 2) to broaden and strengthen the distribution of literature in Rus Baxley America, specifically through grants to literary magazines, Cliff Becker, NEA, met members of the State Arts Council Ceil Snow (left), and 3) to ensure all Americans have access to their literary Birmingham, and Wiley White, Montgomery. heritage. Inman commented that he owed 99 percent of it to the “I’m here to support Jeanie Thompson and the fact that he grew up in Elba. During lunch on Friday, the Alabama Writers’ Forum. I wish every state had an organi- producers of the Alabama Public Television series zation which did the work you do,” said Becker. He “BookMark,” hosted by Don Noble, taped an interview stressed the importance of writers’ contributions to the with Birmingham mystery writer Anne George. Friday nation. Writing is “heroic work indeed,” he said, because night at the Montgomery “our literature tells the world who we are.” Museum of Fine Arts, poet and Approximately 125 people attended the two-day translator Coleman Barks read literary conference. The 18 participating writers, including from his own poems and those Montgomery writer Helen Norris, read from their work or of thirteenth century Persian discussed the craft of writing in panel discussions. After poet Rumi. reading a portion of his Old Dogs and Children, Robert Nancy Anderson, AUM, called the Colloquium “a wonderful collaboration.” The Writers Colloquium was funded in part through a grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Katie Lamar Smith Conference sponsors and Robert Inman read from his Amaryllis literary magazine novel in progress and talked hosted a dinner for out-of-town about how experiences shape his fiction.“My mind is like the writers and guests at the worst closet in your house,” he Standard Club on Thursday said. evening. Amaryllis editors Nancy Anderson, Lynn Jinks, and Donald Nobles presented guests with a copy of the latest issue of the maga-

Katie Lamar Smith zine. To underscore the theme, brilliant red amaryllis AWF board member Jay Lamar,Auburn University Center for the Arts and flowers bloomed on each table. Humanities, chatted with writer Helen Norris. 4 FIRST DRAFT Spring 1999

served for several years as literary liaison to the Forum, and Randy Shoults, who recently assumed those respon- sibilities. Alabama House Ways and Means Committee member Rep. Mike Hubbard, Auburn, and House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Bill Fuller, LaFayette, were recognized for their concern for the arts. Katie Lamar Smith “Southern Poetry Today” was the topic for (left to right) moderator Jeanie Thompson and panel members Jake Berry, Natasha Tretheway, and Robin Behn. Writers’ Forum board members in town for the dinner included president Brent Davis of Tuscaloosa, vice-president Rawlins McKinney, from Birmingham, Auburn board members Peter Huggins and Jay Lamar, and Dothan member Bettye Forbus. Other board members present were Ed George, Montgomery; Rick Shelton, Sterrett; Kellee Reinhart, Tuscaloosa; and the newest member, Denise Trimm, Birmingham. AUM Chancellor Roy Saigo and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Roger Ritvo attended as well as conference coordinator Pam Stein. Representing the Alabama State Council on the Arts were Council members Wiley White, Montgomery; and Ceil Snow, Birmingham. Katie Lamar Smith Council staff members present were Becky Mullen, who Producer Brent Davis (standing) introduced Anne George and Don Noble, host, before taping their interview for a “BookMark” broadcast. Katie Lamar Smith Coleman Barks signed one of his collections for a fan at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. Katie Lamar Smith Nancy Anderson discussed book sales with Capital Book and News owners Tom and Cheryl Upchurch after Coleman Barks’s reading. Spring 1999 FIRST DRAFT 5

ARCHIVING The PAPERS OF ALABAMA WRITERS PaperChase: by Kathy Reid

llen Garrison was in her first week on the job as would cover the dining room table. He filled the table and curator of the W.S. Hoole Special Collections then filled the space under the table. “He piled drafts in ELibrary at the University of Alabama when she saw envelope boxes, and every now and then he would clean George Starbuck’s obituary in the Tuscaloosa News. up and toss them,” she said. “He never really finished, Without much hope of success, she wrote to his widow even after a poem was in print. He was always revising.” and asked her to consider depositing the poet’s papers at Herself a writer and editor, Kathy Starbuck appre- the University. Though Kathy Starbuck was not ready to ciates the peculiarities of her husband’s creative process. make that decision, she felt a great So does Garrison. “The way a person responsibility to her husband’s memory organizes his or her work tells us a as well as concern for making his man- BOOKS BY great deal about them. Archivists want uscripts and correspondence available GEORGE STARBUCK to preserve those characteristics, while to scholars. Bone Thoughts making materials accessible,” she said. “I didn’t want them to go to a big White Paper: Poems Two years after writing her inquiry place, like Harvard or Boston Elegy in a Country Church Yard letter, Garrison carefully packed George University. But Iowa was a logical Desperate Measures Starbuck’s papers. The six boxes cata- choice,” she recalled. George Starbuck Talkin’ B.A. Blues loged as “Papers, 1925-1995 of poet had directed the Iowa Writers’ The Argot Merchant Disaster: George Edwin Starbuck, 1931-1996” Workshop as well as the writing pro- Poems New and Selected account for about one one-thousandth gram at Boston University. Space Saver Sonnets of the library’s manuscript collection. In the months before his death, she Richard the Third Starbuck’s notes sparkle with wit had asked her husband’s advice. in a Fourth of a Second and wordplay. It is a thrill to open fold- “George had been no help at all ers labelled “Occasional Verses Worth because he had no feeling about what Saving” and “Current Promising should happen to his papers,” said Starbuck. In the end she Drafts” to see unpublished poems that may not have said “yes” to Garrison’s request. “I felt drawn to keep his been quite “finished” enough. Over several years, corre- papers here; it was a sentimental choice,” she said. In part spondence and manuscripts of Bits PressÐSpace Saver it was recognition of the warm welcome the academic Sonnets and the succinct Richard the Third in a Fourth of community had extended to her husband and to her. In a SecondÐgive insights into the poet’s serious and 1990 he was named to the Coal Royalty Endowed Chair in playful sides. Creative Writing for one semester. They made their home Box six is almost full of McDonald’s cookie boxes. in Tuscaloosa until his death in 1996; she lives They are packed with three-by-five cards, most of which there still. are covered with tiny, hand-inked letters that are difficult The toughest part of the process was looking through to make out. He was writing at McDonald’s, working out all the papers before she turned them over for safekeeping, palindromes, and he stored them in the cookie boxes that something Starbuck felt she had to do. The difficulty was came readily to hand. Turning the pages, getting a glimpse compounded by George Starbuck’s extreme lack of orga- of how George Starbuck’s mind worked (and what a nization. When he worked at home, she recalled, drafts mind!) conjured him into the present. 6 FIRST DRAFT Spring 1999

And then, the last folder: letters from George’s father to his ex-wife in California, on letterhead of the Department of Philosophy, Georgia State College for Women in Milledgeville. The father’s book-in-progress has him “buffaloed completely.” He encourages her to send young George on to Cal Tech at age 16; he has an aptitude for math and sciences, and that’s the promise of the future. Writing he can pick up on his own later. Starbuck studied mathematics and went on to study English at Berkeley, the University of California, and Harvard. A poet with a mathematician’s mind, he success- fully avoided ever getting a college degree. One wonders

Rickey Yanaura Rickey how many times over the next forty years he contemplated Starbuck’s palindrome cards are stored in their original McDonald’s boxes in his father’s words, written in a flowing hand,“Writing is the University of Alabama Special Collections. like spinning a cocoon, with all the chances against ever emerging.” COLLECTOR’S ITEMS “Borden Deal’s papers went to Boston University, William Russell Smith and Augusta Evans Wilson, they offered a good tax break,” said novelist Wayne Alabama’s most popular 19th century novelist, have Greenhaw. “The tax break is gone, and you don’t see papers archived in the state repository. The writing of those kinds of offers as much.” But bidding wars continue Thomas Owen’s four-volume History of Alabama and to take Alabama writers’ papers to libraries and archives in Dictionary of Alabama Biography, published by his wife other states. in 1921, generated an enormous amount of correspon- The battle to preserve historic writings and records is dence with and about authors. Mrs. Owen’s manuscripts well documented in the correspondence of Dr. Thomas and notes for her well known 1948 The Story of Alabama McAdory Owen, founder of the Alabama Department of are another treasure trove of the Archives. All this, plus Archives and History (ADAH), and his wife and successor Diddie, Dumps and Tot. Louise Clarke Pyrnelle, the author as director of the state archives, Marie Bankhead Owen. of these “plantation sketches,” circa 1882, was from Selma “Miss Marie replied to a letter from Grover Hall, editor of and corresponded with Dr. Owen. the Montgomery Advertiser in the 1930s, and gave him A few years ago, Montgomery writer Wayne down the country for writing complimentary remarks Greenhaw was surprised by a call from Rickey Best, now about a professor from North Carolina who visited him on acting dean of the Auburn University Montgomery a trip to Alabama for the purpose of collectingÐand even Library, who said he would like to start a collection of buyingÐpapers. She felt that these professors were stealing writers’ papers. Was Greenhaw interested in donating his? materials from repositories in the state of Alabama,” said He certainly was. archivist Rickie Brunner. In a sense, his papers are more useful to him now than Archives and History has papers and manuscripts of when they were cluttering his home. Said Greenhaw, several notable 19th century Alabama writers, including “They have it all cataloged on computer, so you can find Alexander Beaufort Meek, a lawyer who was better what you want. When I need something, I can get a copy known for his poetry. Meek’s unpublished papers include of it.” He is relieved to have turned over some items that a 1883 diary, “The Notebook of an Omnivorous Reader,” relate to other writers. “I gave them correspondence with 1839; “My Day Book,” 1840; a journal covering 1860- Borden Deal and William Bradford Huie because I 1864, and his unpublished History of Alabama. (Two thought that should be preserved. And I’d let friends read chapters of Meek’s history were spirited away to North some of my drafts, like Harper Lee, and I felt like people Carolina, Brunner says.) Cross-referenced with Meek is might be interested in her notes and comments,” he said. his biographer, Herman Clarence Nixon, and his biograph- AUM also has papers from Faye Gibbons, historian er, Sarah N. Shouse, author of Hillbilly Realist: Herman John Fair, and Lella Warren’s papers and drafts of all six Clarence Nixon of Possum Trot. (University of Alabama novels, including six drafts of Foundation Stone. “We have Press, 1986). Nixon’s papers include the results of his sur- drafts of her short stories, too,” said archivist Rickey Best, veys on slavery conducted with former slaves, former “and most of them weren’t published until Nancy got slave owners and others during 1912-13. them.” At the time of Warren’s death, AUM’s Nancy Spring 1999 FIRST DRAFT 7

Anderson was the only scholar studying her work. “I had The University of Alabama’s W.S. Hoole Special worked with her enough and published enough that her Collections Library is perhaps best known for its papers of family trusted me and gave her papers to AUM,” she said. Alabama and Southern political figures and for its Auburn University has letters and papers of quite a “Alabama Collection,” which attempts to preserve a copy few writers, including Mary Barwick, Clyde Bolton, Paula of every book by an Alabama author or about Alabama. Backscheider, Julia Oliver, Theodore Hoepfner, Edith “We have Hudson Strode’s papers, and if all we col- Royster Judd, Annie Laurie Morgan, James Richard lected was his student’s papers, that would be a major Rutland, Oxford Stroud, Eugene Current-Garcia, Anne resource for scholars,” said Curator Garrison. However, George, and Ellen Tarry. Most of the authors had ties to she has a larger mission in mind. “We are actively collect- Auburn. “Anne Rivers Siddons was a student, and Mary ing contemporary Alabama writers,” she said. Dale Short, Ward Brown’s husband worked for Auburn University,” Mark Childress, Nanci Kincaid, and Robert Gibbons are said Dwayne Cox, university archivist. some who have contributed. Robert Inman sends his The library’s on-line catalog contains a description of screenplays. Aileen Henderson, (Summer of the Bonepile the holdings for many of the authors “down to the folder Monster, Treasurer at Panther Peak) said she enjoys the level,” Cox said. The listing of Madison Jones’s Civil War feeling of putting a book behind her when the box of era family letters and business correspondence gives dates, papers goes to the University archives. Garrison, at the names and subjects. receiving end, finds just as much satisfactionÐin preserv- “John Weld’s correspondence with Maxwell Perkins ing a writer’s tentative, first ideas, her second thoughts and and Charlie Scribner is fascinating,” said Auburn English evidence of the rough edges smoothed out by the professor Bert Hitchcock, listing personal favorites in editor, the correspondence with a publisher about dead- Auburn’s collections. “I’ve used some of Paul Hemphill’s lines and publication dates, in short, the human context of manuscripts to teach writing classes,” he said. “It’s nice the art. for students to see his process of corrections.” “Who Me?” QUESTIONS ABOUT DEPOSITING YOUR PAPERS IN AN ARCHIVES by Ellen Garrison

“Who me? Why would an archives or special collections That and more. Researchers will be interested not just in want my papers?” the product of your work but also in how you worked and the Archivists want to preserve a broad picture of whatever context in which you worked. So a repository will also want subject they are documenting, whether that subject is a geo- drafts of your writings (especially those with comments from graphic region or a category of people like women or a specif- others) and all the materials that you generate as a profession- ic topic like agriculture. To do that archivists must seek out al writer who works with editors, participates in organizations, materials from a wide variety of sources, not just from the few goes on book tours, and interacts with colleagues, family who are rich or powerful or well known. and friends. Staff at the Baseball Hall of Fame, for example, know “That’s an awful lot of stuff to organize. What does it take that no group provides more breadth or depth of perspective to get them ready to go to a repository?’ on a subject that the people who write about it, so they active- Mostly nothing. You already arrange this material for ly solicit the papers of sportswriters as well as those of play- your own use and the way you do that reflects who you are ers, managers, etc. Fiction writers and poets reflect and influ- and the way you work. Archivists therefore want to preserve ence the culture of which they are a part, and in every society your filing system as well as the papers themselves. What you the process of crafting and disseminating words is an impor- can do to help is label your folders, boxes, discs or whatever tant economic and social activity as well. you use for storage in a way that reflects your method of orga- For all of these reasons archives and special collections nization (however little it might appear to serve the term!). welcome an opportunity to acquire the papers of writers of all Also, try to put dates on as much material as you can. If you types and at all stages in their careers. You don’t have to be follow these suggestions you will not only help potential dead or famous to be important. researchers, but also make it easier for you to find things when you need them. “PapersÐyou mean my completed manuscripts, right?” continued on page 19 8 FIRST DRAFT Spring 1999 “Writing Our Stories” Takes Different Forms hat does “confused” look like? Museum of Art. Suzy Harris, the museum’s assistant cura- Or “sophisticated,” “silly,” tor for education and outreach, instructed the girls in photography. W“depressed?” Bart Barton’s second creative writing class at the DYS In a class period devoted to personification, the girls in facility at Mount Meigs has presented the opportunity to Priscilla Hancock Cooper’s creative writing class at the spend more time working one-on-one with the boys. Alabama Department of Youth Services (DYS) facility at “We’ve had more turnover this time, so the group interac- Chalkville painted word pictures of emotional states. tion has been different,” he said. As a result, Barton has Jeanie Thompson, guest writer, was pleased with the girls’ seen some of them get serious about tinkering with their efforts. “They took it seriously and, I believe, developed a initial ideas to make their finished work more effective. new appreciation for the power of language,” she said. The They are learning that skillful rewriting serves self-expres- girls’ latest project is to take photographs and write text to sion, he said. accompany them for an exhibition at the Birmingham Following are samples of work from both programs.

FROM CHALKVILLE with a look on his face that said I can’t relate OUTGOING His friends and family disappear at the movement of his unheavenly mouth. Ms. Outgoing walks into the room with enough confidence to His heart fell from north to south. fill the world. Evil is the thing we all should fear. Evil is something you would not want near. Ms. Outgoing is filled with determination. Evil walked in, the room got quiet. Ms. Outgoing is as strong as Mike Tyson fighting his toughest K.M. competitor. ANNOYED Ms. Outgoing walks with her head up as the morning sun. Annoyed walked in the room and took a real deep breath. Ms. Outgoing has enough energy to climb Mt. Everest on the Annoyed dropped her books as hard as a hammer hits a nail. coldest day of the year. Annoyed wore a black plaid shirt and black jeans. N.E Annoyed shouted as loud as a full speed train on railroad tracks. Annoyed sat in her room wondering why people just won’t DEPRESSED leave her alone. Depressed sat down in her desk like she was exhausted from a S.W. long, hard day at work. SHE Depressed wears a white shirt, light jeans, and white shoes. She was as creative as a paintbrush Depressed sits off to herself like she’s just lost her best friend in running across a board the whole world. making very beautiful pictures Depressed lets tears fall down her face like the softness of rain of flowers with bumble bees before a heavy storm. sniffing the pollen off of them The skies were as blue Depressed says nothing to anyone and she stares into the atmos- as a baby’s eyes, phere, dazed, as if she has the world itself sitting on her and the wind softly and slowly shoulders. blowing the trees, and the leaves making this wonderful sound Depressed misses her mother and she thinks about the pain she’s that tells her to fall asleep. caused her. S.W. Depressed carries a picture of her son, wishing she could be DEPRESSED home with him Depressed wears all black like an undertaker T.M. She crawls through my mind like a snake in murky water. EVIL She wears a silver cross as a symbol of her undying devotion to her god. Evil came with cool breezes that started a riot. Depressed carries her taped-together heart in her arms with Evil was wearing a mask of hate gentleness, hoping it will never break again. Spring 1999 FIRST DRAFT 9

She screams shrieking cries, as if she were a heretic, gasping for CONFUSED her last breath. She walks around with her uncaring attitude, mocking the Confused looks as if she’s lost and doesn’t know where to run. world. Confused’s eyes are low as if they were blinds and they were She sighs and lets out a scream that leaves her deaf. closed. Confused’s face frowns as if her smile has run far away. A.W. Confused was very pretty but looked very down and doesn’t know where to go. DISAPPOINTMENT Confused wears a black shirt with butterflies; she wishes she She runs her fingers through her long stringy pale blonde hair. was one so she could fly far away. She stares into space with a blank, curious look on her face. Confused is holding a grudge against someone and it’s holding She sits in an old ragged torn discolored wooden chair. her down, but she also always carries a bracelet that makes She wonders why the sharpness of the pain hidden inside her her feel someone is there. won’t go away. Confused’s best friend gave her the bracelet on Valentine’s Day She realizes at last that the feeling of hurt is like having your and her friend told her she would never leave her place. heart pulled from your chest by a wild animal with long Confused has no money; she’s very, very broke. And in her sharp claws. heart she has no hope. She sits and wishes on a bright beautiful shooting star that all of N.C. this distinctive pain inside would disappear into the night and vanish without a trace FROM MT.MEIGS She wants it to go away and never return so hr heart and her OMEGA mind can be at ease once again She wants to be without all the feeling of being thrown away I saw the redness, and an outcast from the world. like crimson, drip from the sun. It seemed, A.K. as I tried to get away, BROTHER DEATH someone was shackling me down with huge rusty chains. Brother death walks silently into a room as fog creeps into a Fire from deep within the earth bay. was shooting out, He wanted an escape route for his bottled up anger. like a water fountain He carries the picture of his next victim and like a hobo it is his that never seemed to cease. one and only possession. I stood there thinking of how Brother death kills swiftly with no chance to say good-bye. I could escape from this place, Death came in the form of three ganstas on a rainy day. this place of agony, Death was as cold as ice and as uncaring as a woman scorned. this place of Hell, He had a dazed look in his eyes as a deer in the glare of a but nothing came to hunter’s headlight. my slowed mind. He wore Tommy Hilfiger and dark sunglasses, trying to camou- For I was weary and weak. flage himself like an elephant with red toes in a strawberry A moment later, patch. which favored an eternity, Death thought that he was slick and that he would never get I heard a newborn child crying; caught because no one knew his name or game. the echo of it was all around. Death looked and smiled like a cat that was about to pounce on It sent deep, warm chills an innocent mouse. to my insides. Death walked free... My heart felt as if S.B. it were being cooked. LONELY I wondered if the heavens were falling, and they were Lonely sits in the back of the room by herself as if she were in a like feathers of a dove, mental hospital. soft and white, Lonely wears all black as if she were the sea itself. falling so softly, Lonely clasps her arms around herself as if she were wishing for but covered with crimson her arms to be someone else holding her. as they touched the corrupted ground. Lonely carries a bear around with her as if it were the only thing Suddenly I heard in the world she can hold. voices behind the newborn’s cry. Lonely looks worn out, with raggedy clothes and long, dirty, I was trapped, stringy hair like a dirty rag doll. trapped by the evilness of this time, Lonely thinks about having someone to comfort her when times and could do nothing for either get rough and trials and tribulations are hard to bear, as if the child, the cry, the world is falling on top of her. or the voice. Lonely wishes for a hand she can hold through pain and strife, a The fright within me hand she can squeeze that will squeeze her backÐlike an was so poisoning anaconda strangling his prey. that I couldn’t holler K.R.H. 10 FIRST DRAFT Spring 1999 to ask where they were THE COLD CELL so I could join them. As the door is pulled open, Then, within a flash the draft of the cold air darkness came, hits the bottom pit of your throat, quick and black, just like a cold winter front like a panther, when you first walk outside. And I stood there looking up at it as it fell upon me, The light shines on you just looking up I was like you’re the main character as a lost child. in a play that never ends. J.B. The hard, cold floor is like a glacier DANGEROUS that doesn’t ever melt or get warm. As I would fumble around in the closet, When you talk or shout, like a grandmother trying to find a dress to wear it echoes like you are alone on a Sunday morning, I would see the big black in the deep mysterious mountains, rusty trigger of the double barrel that I always and no one is there to answer you. wanted to hold. And when the door is slammed shut, Its old black tunnels, which I looked into deeply, it makes you shudder with chills made me afraid. I always hoped to be braver, like fingernail sliding slowly but I would back down from the challenge down on a chalkboard. that it held. B.B. A.W. MY DOOR OF LONELINESS THE SECRETS OF THE WORLD My door of loneliness If you look to the ocean is as strong as my desire and listen to what it has to tell you, to stay away it will tell you the secrets of the world. from others. The words would be a story that never ends. It is as They would be beautiful like the morning sunrise. blue The words would be about today, as I feel deep down inside. tomorrow, sadness and sorrow. The windows They would be a silent whisper of my door of of a lost loved one crying out. loneliness But the waves of the ocean don’t always whisper. are as clear as They can be an army of men the tears that running violently through a battlefield, fall destroying everything in their path. from my eyes. In a blink or bat of an eye, Many come they can swallow you whole, suck you under. and try to open They will never let you go, my door of never stop until they consume the whole world. loneliness but it is always Nobody has the key to the secrets of the world. locked and closed up Only God and the ocean see all. just as I am. The ocean never lets the story of time get away. Although It will never let you go. my door of The ocean holds the memories of life and death loneliness It has captured countless lives is very strong, it is of strangers and old loved ones. beaten and battered It can swallow you whole. because of others trying to enter. C.L.M. R.S. Spring 1999 FIRST DRAFT 11 Barbara Lebow: A PLAYWRIGHT’S PROGRESS by Allan Swafford

Though they may share short stretches of track, no outreach programs important in Wittow’s theatrical two writers follow identical paths through the tangled for- philosophy. est of literature. In spite of points of similarity, a writer’s What the director/actor/playwright perceived in progress in this never-charted wilderness is as individual Lebow’s work was an attempt “to break rules and find her as are writers themselves. And, though never a dependable own voice and not be hampered by the forms of the map, the history of each writer’s progression is illuminat- dayÐto break free and experiment. It appealed to me a lot ing for others of his questing ilk. as I remember.” In fact, these traits meshed precisely with In Barbara Lebow, whose Lurleen is currently playing the goals he had set for the new workshop. at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival to sold out houses, Recalling the same experience, Lebow is emphatic writers have an unusual opportunity about its importance to her develop- to study such a progress. Not only ment. Of a long one-act, I Can’t Help does she herself speak insightfully It, written early in their relationship, about her development as a play- she says, “It was a breakthrough in wright, but Frank Wittow, the director the sense of process, of seeing some- of Lurleen, speaks of this develop- thing through from initial idea, to ment with equal authority and possi- working with actors, to polishing, to bly greater objectivity as he has been refining, to reading and rehearsing, to an almost constant witness to and seeing it on stage, and then feeling it influence on that development for with an audience. In terms of content, over three decades. In recent weeks it may or may not have been a break- the two separately shared their obser- through. The experience was like the vations on her career for this article. final hook for an addict. It was a A New Yorker, born and bred, breakthrough event.” Lebow like many of us fell under the From that start, their artistic col- spell of the pencil as a child. Her laboration assumed the guise of play- theater-loving mother exposed her to wright and dramaturg. Wittow, she the stage at an early age, and she Barbara Lebow says, “is the best–and always recalls creating “little scripts” on a wasÐdramaturgical mind for me. He child’s typewriter (the kind with a hand-turned disk) for really asks the right questions and doesn’tÐas dramaturg or neighborhood children and one-man shows for her directorÐ make the play his.” Of those early creative days, coercible brother. She says, “I’m one of those who started simultaneous with her third pregnancy, she recalls, “I Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland style when I was seven started really writing plays in 1965. Even my head was years old– ‘Hey, kids, let’s put on a show.’” She continued pregnant. I just exploded. I wrote a play a week, a one-act writing in various genres through high school and her col- play. I couldn’t write fast enough. It was exciting.” lege years at Vassar. Both Lebow and Wittow remember her development But not until she resettled in Atlanta in the early 1960s from this start as evolutionary rather than epiphanic. There and involved herself in the milieu of the Academy were no overpowering revelations, but each play built on Theatre, which Wittow tells me he founded in 1956 as the technical prowess attained in the preceding work. Atlanta’s first professional theater, did she really blossom He says, “I think in each play there have been break- as a playwright. In a class taught by Academy personnel throughsÐin each play. I don’t think Barbara tended to she wrote a one-act. “Because of the quality of that play,” repeat herself...in terms of form. She has never repeated Wittow says, “I thought she’d be a good person to have as herself in terms of content because she has chosen a great the writing component of this experimental workshop.” variety of settings and themes. In each play there has been The experimental workshop, a recent addition to the a reaching forward to try something new and different Academy, functioned with its resident ensemble in social continued on page 24 12 FIRST DRAFT Spring 1999

JAY LAMAR REVIEWS Book Review Editor Belles’ Letters: Contemporary nurse who cares for a dying man, a of the creative intent. Bahr points out Fiction by Alabama Women granddaughter who learns to appreciate that before an author reveals truth to Edited by Joe Taylor and her brusque but loving grandmother, a his audience, he must first confront the Tina N. Jones, with a foreword college student discovering her identity truth about himself. “Originality by Tina N. Jones and finding out about grown-up pain, requires honesty, and honesty requires Livingston Press, 1999 and the small town that grieves to lose the ability to think for one’s self,” he 184 pp. Paper, $23.95 one of its best citizens, a Japanese- notes. To find his originality, a writer The cleverly titled Belles’ Letters American man they call T-Coyote, to must cultivate honesty, humility, focus, plays both on the genre “belles lettres” the internment camps of WWII. confidence, and courage. and on the notion of Flashes of humor appear in these Dramatic Technique has been a Southern belle. pieces like fireflies on a summer night, widely praised by creative writing Likewise, the twen- but like the night, they are more dark teachers and is suitable for writers at ty-one stories and than otherwise. any level. Though not a lengthy five novel excerpts Jones asserts in her foreword that book, Dramatic Technique packs a in this collection the book is important because in it lot of punch. play on notions of “Alabama women are allowed a voice Carolyn Haines is the author of the criti- what it means to be all their own. They do not have to cally acclaimed Touched and Summer of a woman in the share their pages with anyone but the Redeemers, as well as more than 25 South, particularly themselves.” In a state that has brought mystery and romance novels. in Alabama. As co- us Harper Lee, Mary Ward Brown, and editor Tina N. Jones notes in her fore- Vicki Covington, to name a few, I’m Some Personal Papers: A Novel word to the book, these writers must not sure Alabama women need a sepa- by JoAllen Bradham move beyond “misleading stereotypes rate space, but I am certainly glad this Black Belt Press, 1998 which trivialize their own identities as rich and provocative volume exists. It 158 pp. Paper, $14.95 women and writers” so that they may is, truly, a volume of belles lettresÐfine JoAllen Bradham’s Some Personal “reveal the humanity of individuals.” literature I enjoyed reading and happily Papers won the Townsend Prize for An alternate title for this work, recommend to others. Fiction by or about therefore, might be “Beyond Belles.” Jennifer Horne is associate editor of Georgians. It is a Topics covered in the stories include Alabama Heritage magazine and a poet riveting and sex, marriage and its discontents, can- and teacher. She lives in Tuscaloosa. sophisticated work cer, race relations, spouse abuse, loss of contemporary of a child, rape, murder, single mother- Dramatic Technique in Fiction urban Gothic which hood, war and its effects at home, sui- by Robert Bahr both distorts and cide, AIDS, the loss of parents, and Factor Press, 1998 affirms the conven- even necrophilia (this last might make 158 pp. Paper, $12.95 tions of maternal you think twice about being cremated). Fact or fiction, when it comes to sentiment and tests These stories take place mostly in rural good writing, it doesn’t matter. All the boundaries of areas and small towns, in both the writing can, and what is sympathetic in the human nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and should, be enjoy- capacity for love. The title refers to the include women of varying age, race, able, clear, and six-day, first person, pre-execution con- class, and upbringing. deliberately struc- fession of a social worker named Miss In fact, perhaps the single most tured, says writer Eugenia Putman, a Southerner of pleasing quality of Belles’ Letters is and teacher Robert African-American descent with pro- its variety. Distinctive voices, charac- Bahr in Dramatic found emotional and spiritual ties to ters, settings, and plots make each Technique in the memory of her preacher father. story or excerpt stand on its own and Fiction. “Miss Genie” has devoted her life attest to the diverse talents represented The author of to her profession, a passionate devotion in this book. eight nonfiction distorted by the emotional rigors of the One thing that can be said about a books, a biographi- child welfare system and the deep and number of the female characters: they cal novel, and a short story collection, ironic divide between professional are not doormats. Violence, revenge, Bahr believes that dramatic tech- ethics and personal morality. Bradham and even murder may be found in these niqueÐor a deliberate awareness of the explores the tension between the com- pages, from the fed-up girl who beats author’s creative abilities and partmentalization of public perception up her bully of a cousin to a strong and powersÐis not only the choice of the and the ontological condition of indi- silent woman who bashes in the head author but also his duty. viduals when she has her protagonist of a competitor for her husband’s love His book addresses such topics as write: “Records miss reasons just like and attention. how to find the best voice to narrate a forms miss the very thing they are sup- In this book you will also find story, what sets great literature apart posed to pinpoint. Getting the personal great tenderness, in the person of a from the ordinary, and the importance truth is the hard part.” Spring 1999 FIRST DRAFT 13

As a matter of record, Miss Genie The story of the lower Chatta- stories in Body has murdered four small boys, each hoochee, skillfully researched by Lynn Parts included in grotesquely abused and abandoned by Willoughby, provides the history of the Hoar’s manuscript his natural mother, each crushed by the river, the peoples that have lived along that was a finalist severity of his physical and psychologi- it, and the changes that transformed a for the Flannery cal handicaps. Three of her “sons” are free-flowing stream into one of the O’Connor Award, buried in her garden; the fourth, a most threatened rivers in the United well, it’s not diffi- nameless infant abandoned in a K- States. She writes of the European cult to understand mart, hangs in a basket from a limb in intruders who explored the area and the trend. a stand of ancient magnolias on an describes Muskogee power politics Hoar’s fiction abandoned rural estate. By murdering played to preserve their lands. But by captures what’s best these children, Miss Genie believes she the 1830s, they had been forced to in the tradition of Southern humor, has given their lives a dignity and sig- move to Oklahoma. Settlers and slaves ranging from the raucous and violent nificance they would not otherwise took their place, and the river remained satires and raunchy tall tales of the have; she has liberated them “from important for transportation of cotton. Old Southwest to the documentaries of their multiple cages,” and for her, Cities grew, and in the 1830s the river time and place in his sexual coming-of- “[f]reedom, not graves, was in the gar- was bridged at Columbus, Georgia, by age stories to myth-weaving magical den.” The murders are a tender con- Horace King, a slave. realism. Part one of the collection summation of love: “Every morning I Willoughby describes the Civil contains five stories, including the title felt I had come to worship. I come into War and its effects on the river, the story, “Body Parts: A Memory of my garden as a garden of herbs. My days of steamboats, the lives of pilots, 1944,” a post-war narrative of beloved is gone down into the gar- stevedores, and passengers. Develop- adolescent discovery. Part two is den.’” But this is a promise interrupted ment of dams for hydroelectric power, composed of six stories that are more by the public cry for justice. The last attempts at river improvement by the eclectic, eccentric, and if possible, cry that Miss Genia Putman answers. Army Corps of Engineers, and recre- more sophisticated than those of Kelly Gerald is a Ph.D. candidate in ational reservoirs defined the river’s part one. English at Auburn University with a history into the twentieth century. Body Parts is a fascinating book specialization in southern literature. Today urban and industrial growth for its range of styles and subjects, its have nearly destroyed it. In an impor- complexity, and wit. There’s not a dull Flowing Through Time: A History tant chapter Willoughby discusses pol- moment in this one, folks, and that’s a of the Lower Chattahoochee River lution and the environmental laws used promise. by Lynn Willoughby to save the river. She closes with an Kelly Gerald University of Alabama Press, 1999 analysis of the “Water Wars” fought by 264 pp. Cloth, $29.95 Georgia, Alabama, and Florida over the Flights of Angels: Stories Along the lower Chattahoochee, river. Whether these states can solve by Ellen Gilchrist among the Muskogee, Lynn their dilemma is open to question, but Little Brown and Company, 1998 Willoughby writes, Willoughby calls for those who love 320 pp. Cloth, $24 “First thing every the Chattahoochee to make sacrifices “Yes, it’s me, Rhoda Katherine morning, summer to preserve it. Manning, and I am back at my type- and winter, every Suzanne Marshall is associate professor writer after a long vacation spent trying able-bodied man, of history at Jacksonville State University to live a normal life woman, and child and conservation chair of the Alabama and act like a sixty- went to the river Chapter of the Sierra Club. year-old woman and plunged under who has learned the water four Body Parts: Stories something from times.” The river by Jere Hoar experience.” was life; from it the University Press of Mississippi, 1997 Ellen Gilchrist Muskogee drew spiritual sustenance 286 pp. Cloth, $26.00 once described her and nourishment in the form of catfish, This collection of stories is Jere recurring character bass, and bream. The river transported Hoar’s showcase of award winners. All Rhoda Manning as them in leather boats and dugouts as laurels are well deserved. “The Snopes “a mirror of far as the Bahamas. By the late twenti- Who Saved Huckaby” was selected by myself.” So what has Rhoda/Ellen eth century, the river suffers from Allan Gurganus as co-winner of the learned from experience as revealed in sewage dumping, industrial pollution, Pirate’s Alley William Faulkner Prize her new collection, Flights of Angels? and siltation from timbering. Its flow- for Fiction. That story and its comple- In the story “Free Pull,” Rhoda’s ing waters have been imprisoned by ment, “How Wevel Went,” were chosen knowledge runs the gamut from the dams that created cesspool lakes where by Ernest J. Gaines as winners of the practical to the metaphysical. Taking a swimming is forbidden and eating the Deep South Writing Conference series of lovers results in bladder infec- fish is a health hazard. Competition. And with most of the tion and “large bills for cosmetics from 14 FIRST DRAFT Spring 1999

Neiman-Marcus,” but the compulsion To Hide in the Light “No, we can’t run away,” the poem’s that brought about these maladies can by Bonnie Roberts speaker responds. “This is the craziest be eliminated merely by stopping the Elk River Press, 1998 idea I’ve ever heard.” estrogen treatments. She learns too that 96 pp. Paper, $12 The knowledge the poet earns in life for a sixty-year-old woman can The paradoxical title of Bonnie her “fall,” she gives back to us as an still be filled with surprise and possi- Roberts’s new collection of poems, To affirmation of our human worth and an bility. Like Rhoda, characters in this Hide in the Light, insistence that we call upon her with collection are suffused with an energy evokes the ancient our own “list hope.” “Human Beings that springs from the enjoyment of life story of Eve, who Will Not Be Expendable in My Art,” on a primitive level and a growing, if only thought to hide she writes in one of the last poems. somewhat cautious, optimism. herself once she had “You are more beautiful than any- The darkest story in the book is tasted the fruit of the thing.” And in the final poem, “Poet of “Mississippi,” in which Larkin, a tree of knowledge Gristle,” she urges us, young white woman, winds up on and seen the light. death row after killing the murderer of Poets do this, hide Demand that this honorless poet love a friend. The friend was a young black you. themselves in the Turn my face to you. man, a lifelong companion, brilliant, words that bring us with great promise, who dies in Put my fingers in your mouth and bite hard-won, deeply lived truths. The them. Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s after cover, in fact, features a woman paint- I will be shocked, but I will know you being intentionally run over at a civil ed in light from an unseen window, are real, rights rally. Raised in the rural Delta by some of it dappled through unseen of power. a benevolent grandfather in a tradition trees. Open the book, follow her of tolerance and respect for others, gaze, and her journey is as compelling Poet Susie Paul is associate professor of Larkin could not deal with the mean- as that of any gifted novelist’s protago- English at Auburn University ness of the ’60s. Ultimately, her family nist. Why do so many of us resist Montgomery. and friends rally around her, obtaining reading poetry, experiencing its a stay of execution from the governor. dense textures as obstacle rather than Such a Pretty, Pretty, Girl Redemption is available, if not yet invitation? by Winston Groom realized. Things known in Roberts’s world Random House, 1999 Other characters adjust and go on are as familiar to most Southerners as 306 pp. Cloth, $23.95 despite hardship, family squabbles, dirt, a favorite topic of hers, her pre- Winston Groom’s books are like death, tragedy, and dishonor, counter- sentation of the quotidian so immediate his latest complex, sexy, multilayered ing them with a zest for life, bemused and sensual, we are reminded of how heroine: you never observation of the weakness of others, sublime life can be in its accruing, know what you’re familial loyalty, and a basic goodness momentary experiences: “tube rose, going to experience that redeems in spite of bad choices. mint, and wild grape of evening air,” next. Not only is And these stories are told, as all good “the layer of fall leaves on the front Delia Jameson Such stories are, in context. A sense of place porch,” “a beaded necklace,/ a tin of a Pretty, Pretty Girl, gives them the framework that enables cloves, and a painted rocking horse,” but she shifts each to stand on its own yet together “blueberries. . . blue herons. . . or personality gears make a cohesive whole. chromis fish,” or “bluebottle eyes from page to page, Gilchrist’s splendid collection streaked/ with sunlight and cream.” and Groom proves reveals both the horrible truths of But, she writes, himself once again a human existence and the miraculous unique and multifaceted talent. ability of humans to continue to live If you live only by the sweet, “It was raining in Los Angeles that sanely despite them. One of these the bitter will not exactly touch you. evening, an omen of some magnitude truths is stated directly in the prologue: It will annihilate you early on. out here,” he begins. Two sentences “the weak destroy the strong within a They will find you, later Delia enters the bar with “long family as well as in larger worlds. This a smiling vegetable in a nursing home... strands of lustrous auburn hair barely happens in every family. It is inevitable touching her shoulders.” It’s a begin- as the sun and rain.” Taken as Among my favorite poems in the book, ning, foreshadowing mystery and love, inevitable this is depressing indeed. in fact, is one about her sister, her own worthy of James M. Cain or Raymond But the human quality that saves and grief and regret in the wake of losing Chandler. And Groom’s deft social redeems us is also clearly stated: her. In “The Wild Ponies of List Hope” commentary of the sophisticated scene, “We’re going to die when this is over, she confesses to “betrayal” of her sis- from L.A’s Peninsula Hotel to Elaine’s Suellen. We need to be nice while ter’s wild inventions: on New York’s Upper East Side, is we wait.” modern-day Scott Fitzgerald. Lynn Jinks is an editor of the journal Let’s hop a freight train. . . As the successful screenwriter- Amaryllis. all the way to New Mexico. . . we can. . . turned-detective for his old lover, buy wild ponies. Johnny Lightfoot, a Southerner, is the . . .Acres . . .of wild ponies. author’s alter-ego. Lightfoot even has Groom’s taste for riding trains across the continent. He peels away the layers Spring 1999 FIRST DRAFT 15 of the mystery that is bothering his ens. The sisters are in the midst of the able to find some spiritual solace on lady friend by visiting her former happenings, Patricia Anne relating the hills of God. lovers. Not as quirky as Kinky them all with indomitable wit. The On the Hills of God is an enlight- Friedman, Groom’s detective yarn has author gives us a lively read and in the ening account of the Palestinian that same fun-time ring of truth, pep- last 50 pages arranges for little Pat to position and a deserving recipient of pered with real places and people, solve the mystery and for the Southern the PEN Oakland Award for Excellence slices of life that remind Lightfoot of Sisters to save themselves from in Literature. Fawal lives and teaches movies and stars. Yet a real undercur- (almost) sure and certainly horrid in Birmingham. rent of tension steadily builds. He death. The book is diverting, the Wanda Cook is assistant dean and uncovers more and more about this Alabama background feels right, and English/speech instructor at Bevill State butterfly who flits from flower to the plot plausible. Community College, Brewer Campus. flowerÐand each new fact is not neces- Norman A. Brittin is professor emeritus sarily as beautiful as it seems. From of English at Auburn University. Summer Lightning the Wall Street investor to the crusty by Judith Richards old English professor to her husband’s On the Hills of God Pierian Quality Reprints, 1987 best friend, he encounters Delia’s by Ibrahim Fawal 271 pp. Paper, $13.95. pastÐthen revisits his own life with her Black Belt Press, 1998 It is difficult to decide who is more to discover visions of himself he had 450 pp. Cloth, $27.95 fortunate: those given the chance to previously failed to see. In his first novel, Ibrahim Fawal revisit Judith Johnny Lightfoot, native of North has created a powerful and disturbing Richards’ 1978 Carolina and resident of the world, is work about a 17- novel or those lucky more interesting and complex than year-old Palestinian enough to be read- Spenser or any of the other ’90s boy, Yousif. ing it for the first detectives. And Such a Pretty, Pretty But the book is time. It really Girl would make one helluva movie. not a typical doesn’t matter. Wayne Greenhaw’s Beyond the Night: A “coming of age” Summer Lightning, Remembrance, will be published by narrative, for when soon to be a film, is Black Belt Press this fall. the U.N. votes to back for us all. partition Palestine Set near a Murder Gets a Life and give land to the migratory worker camp in the 1941 by Anne George returning Jewish Florida Everglades, this treasure of a Avon Books, 1999 people, Yousif faces life and death novel is the story of six-year-old Terry 248 pp. Cloth, $20 choices and sees the Jewish-Arab vio- Calder, who was “smoking at four, Anne George’s Southern Sisters lence come closer and closer to home. wandering far and wide at five,” and are back. Patricia Anne, the bright little Fawal offers historical and political stealing into our hearts at six. sister, tells the story. background to 1947 Palestine through Things aren’t going well for Terry Her big sister, Mary newspaper accounts and radio broad- at home. With World War II at hand, Alice (6 ft., 250 casts as he contrasts Yousif’s private, his father worries where the govern- lbs.), plays Dr. internal conflicts of career, friendship, ment agency he works for will send Watson to her and love with external conflicts: the him. His mother is a bundle of nerves Sherlock Holmes. British soldiers who still occupy while awaiting a new baby. Terry The tale is carried Palestine, the Zionist zealots who begin spends his days associating with, along by a great massacring Arabs, the father of his among others, those whom his mother deal of chatty- beloved Salwa who wants her married calls “tough, transient children.” But chatty, often to an older, more stable man before Terry’s big secret is elderly Jackson mocking sister talk which neatly war is declared, and his fierce love for Cole McCree. conveys the exposition of the mysteryÐ his country and desire for peace. One McCree lives in the swamps, alone first of all, that Mary Alice’s son Ray of the most powerful scenes in the except for occasional visits from Terry, has married Sunshine Dabbs of Locust novel occurs when Yousif, unable to whom he calls Little Hawk. He has Fork, Alabama, out in Bora Bora where stop Salwa’s marriage through peaceful taken a shine to Terry, teaching him the he operates a diving ship. The action of negotiations, literally breaks up the ways of the swamp and the ways of the the story takes place, however, during a Christian wedding, risking her father’s world. If all this sounds a little like hot August in and near Birmingham. anger and Salwa’s denial of love. The Huck Finn and Jim, it is. It is Scout Many other characters are introduced, private drama of Yousif’s lonely fight and Atticus Finch, too. But more including Sunshine’s grandmother for Salwa parallels his country’s lonely important, it is Little Hawk and Meemaw Turkett (“Meemaw’s a little and helpless fight against the Zionists McCree. Some of the most lyrical strange since she saw the flying saucer, and their allies. passages of the novel are set in the but that happens sometimes.”), Paw- When the rape of his friend’s wife swampÐaway from the civilization Paw her grandfather, and a slew of by a Zionist soldier signals the end of Huck understood all too well. As Terry relatives who live in the Turkett pacifism for Yousif, his ensuing jour- is taught by McCree, so are we, learn- mobile-home compound. ney toward Jordan and away from God ing the lessons of understanding, Strange things happen. Sunshine is a Dantesque trip through hell, compassion, and trust. disappears, reappears, disappears littered with Palestinian bodies. Summer Lightning moves seam- again; a murder occurs; mystery thick- Despite the human carnage, Yousif is lessly from the perspective of a child 16 FIRST DRAFT Spring 1999 to that of an adult and back again, as Pam Kingsbury writes and teaches in of the tribe. The same pattern occurred we watch Terry grow up a bit during Florence, Alabama. in many of the other tribes all over the this important summer. This gem is a As Long as the Waters Flow: Native south and east. The Catawba good book to curl up with, to be young Americans in the South and East Renaissance, however, was much again with, to be wistful with. And it Text by Frye Gaillard, photographs by more than new chiefs such as Keith is a summer to be revisited whenever Carolyn DeMerritt. Foreward by Vine Brown and Gilbert Blue. Talented we need. Deloria, Jr. potters revived old skills; dancers Steven Whitton is professor of English at John F. Blair, 1998. performed long-neglected ceremonies. Jacksonville State University and the 242 pp. Cloth, $21.95 John George became a modern-day founder of the Southern Playwrights This handsomely designed book, medicine man for his people, and Competition. highlighted by Carolyn DeMerritt’s although often in disagreement, stunning photographs of more than somehow both progressives and Twin Willows traditionalists managed to bring the by Kay Cornelius sixty contemporary Indian chiefs, artists, potters, basketmakers, and Catawba Nation to a new life. Harper Paperbacks, 1999 After studying the Catawbas, 375 pp. Paper, $5.99 dancers and their families and Gaillard and DeMerritt began a two- Twin Willows will appeal to the year trek to see what was happening in reader who likes history, romance, and children, living in the south and east, the other Indian communities. Each adventure. Kay group’s experience was different, and Cornelius is an avid might seem an attractive book for fortunately they let the spokesmen of historian and each tribe do the talking and explain descendant of a the coffee table. But its message is time- their sense of the tribe’s history, their famous revolution- own views, their hopes. Indeed this ary general who ly and serious. The text by book is notable for its ability to capture helped settle Indian voices. Kentucky. Her pas- Frye Gaillard provides a fascinating but sobering his- The authors close their account in sion for both writ- the middle of the fight as it were. They ing and history are tory of some sixty-two tribes found east of the Mississippi River. And find Wisconsin Indians seeking a return evident in the of the buffalo as a symbol of their own details of the novel, although most of them are tiny both in number of ongoing survival, and twenty-three of set in the years following the sixty-two tribes covered here are the American Revolution when persons and size of land holdings, Vine Deloria, Jr. states in his foreward that fighting the government over rights. Kentucky and Ohio were still the In reporting on these tribes the authors western frontier. contrary to the popular notion that the government moved most Indians west are clearly in the Indian camp. Their Ian McKnight, a Scots fur trader, has purpose they admit, is to “record a married a beautiful Delaware woman, in the 1830s, “at least half the natives in the east remained where they were.” story of hope and give it a face.” Silverwillow, who dies while giving birth Nevertheless in acquainting us with to twin daughters. The midwife in atten- They survived, he states, mostly by some kind of accommodation to state the story of these tribes and their dance decides that it would be best for the contemporary Indian leaders, they girls to be separated. Anna Willow and local governments rather than to the federal government. have rendered us a valuable service. McKnight is reared amongst the Howard R. Lamar is emeritus professor Shemanese (her father’s people) while Frye Gaillard, a native of Mobile and the author of fifteen books, has of history at Yale University. He is the Littlewillow is reared in the village in the editor of the recently published New traditional way. long been interested in the history of southern and eastern Indians and, Encyclopedia of the American West Anna has always wanted to (1998). meet her mother’s people and see the indeed, found a tiny Creek community territory that her father has spent his still surviving north of Mobile. He and lifetime settling. Anna’s curiosity and Carolyn DeMerritt, whose award- strong will sustain her through a winning photographs have been shown COMING IN SUMMER 1999: perilous boat journey from internationally, were both inspired by Reviews of Philadelphia to Kentucky where the the story of how, during the 1970s, the settlers and the Indian tribes are fight- Catawba Indians in North Carolina Rodney Jones’ ing over land ownership. During one of laid claim to 144,000 acres which they Elegy for the Southern Drawl; these clashes, Anna Willow McKnight demonstrated the government had Dennis and Vicki Covington’s and her sister inadvertently change illegally taken from them in the nine- Cleaving: The Story of a Marriage; places, changing their lives forever. teenth century. After more than twenty years, the Catawbas achieved a land Tom Franklin’s Kay Cornelius is a founding Poachers; member of the Alabama Writer’s settlement in 1994. Kenneth Wilkes’ Forum. She has taught creative writing The “Catawba Renaissance,” as it for more than twenty-five years and has been called, was due in part to a Dowsing for Light; now writes full time from her home in new generation of leaders, many of Sheri Cobb South’s Huntsville, Alabama. Twin Willows is them veterans of service in the army The Weaver Takes a Wife. her tenth novel. and navy, who took over the leadership Spring 1999 FIRST DRAFT 17 ALABAMA LITERARY JOURNALS Alabama English Black Warrior Review Noccalula The scholastic journal The University of Alabama Shelby Cochran, Editor of the Alabama Council Box 82936 Gadsden State Community College of Teachers of English Tuscaloosa, AL 35486-0027 P.O. Box 227 Ed Hicks, Editor 205/348-4518 Gadsden, AL 35902-0227 253 Smith Hall Troy State University Copper Blade Review POEM Troy, AL 36082 c/o Troy State University-Dothan Nancy F. Dillard, Editor 334/670-3286 P.O. Box 8368 c/o English Department Dothan, AL 36304 UAH, Huntsville, AL 35899 Alabama Literary Review 334/983-6556, Ext. 397 Subscription: POEM, c/o HLA Ed Hicks, Editor Dale Griggs 253 Smith Hall Elk River Review 1009 Brookridge Circle Troy State University John Chambers, Editor Huntsville, AL 35801 Troy, AL 36082 606 Coleman Avenue 334/670-3286 Athen, AL 35611-3216 Southern Humanities Review Dan Latimer, Dave Haney, Amaryllis Negative Capability and Margaret Kouidis, Co-editors P.O. Box 6330 Sue Brannon Walker, Editor/Publisher Department of English Montgomery, AL 36106-0330 62 Ridgelawn Drive East Auburn University, AL 36849 E-mail [email protected] Mobile, AL 36608-6166 If there are other statewide reviews or Astarte journals that should be listed here, The English Department please contact the AWF. University of Alabama at Birmingham Birmingham, AL 35294

The Auburn Circle Publications Suite Foy Union Building Auburn University, AL 36849 334/844-4142

Beyond Doggerel A Poetry Journal for Four-Year and Community College Instructors Claire T. Feild, Editor 1141 Knollwood Court Auburn, AL 36830-6126

Birmingham Poetry Review Bob Collins, Editor UAB English Department Arts & Humanities Building Birmingham, AL 35294 205/934-4250 18 FIRST DRAFT Spring 1999

the fiction and creative non-fiction sessions. $100 advance registration includes Eastern Literary Fellowship membership and t-shirt. Write ELF, CALENDAR 204 S. Holland St., Clinton, SC 29325 places of readings to be announced. UARTERLY VENTS or call Bonnie A. Jones, 864-833-5991. Q E Contact the Alabama African- Through July 24ÐLurleen, American Arts Alliance at May 2ÐReception, Birmingham Montgomery 334/263-2787. Creative writing and photography by Chalkville students will be included in The Alabama Shakespeare Festival Apr. 20ÐBACHE Visiting Writers a Birmingham Museum of Art exhibi- presents Lurleen, by Barbara Lebow. Series, Birmingham tion. Call 205/879-0679. For tickets, call 334/271-5353 or Lewis Nordan is the author of three 1/800/841-4ASF. short story collections and four novels, May 4ÐAlabama Voices, Dothan Apr. 8ÐBACHE Visiting Writers the latest of which is Lightning Song, Nanci Kincaid will read from her work Series, Birmingham (1997). Nordan will read at 7 p.m. in at the Houston Love Memorial Library Carol J. Pierman has published two the Comer Auditorium at the on Tuesday, May 4. Call Bettye volumes of poetry and her work has University of Montevallo. Call Robert Forbus, 334/793-9767. been published in many distinguished Collins, 205/934-4250 or Margaret May 6-8ÐSecond Annual Alabama journals. She will read at 7 p.m. in the Armbrester, 205/934-5634. Writers Symposium, Monroeville Harbert Auditorium on the Birming- Apr. 24ÐAlabama Bound, Writers and scholars discuss literature ham Southern campus. Call Robert Birmingham and Alabama. Friday presentation of Collins, 205/934-4250 or Margaret Celebrating Alabama authors and Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Armbrester, 205/934-5634. publishers, the Birmingham Public Distinguished Writer 1999 and the Apr. 9ÐBelles’ Letters Authors at Library’s book fair will bring 40 Eugene Current-Garcia Award for the Highland Booksmith, Birmingham published writers to the Linn-Henley Distinguished Alabama Scholar 1999. Editors Joe Taylor and Tina N. Research Library 3rd floor auditorium, Call 334/575-3156, ext. 223, or write Jones, along with more than 20 of the 2100 Park Place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Alabama Southern Community women writers whose stories are Bring your own or purchase books to College, P.O. Box 2000, Monroeville, collected in Livingston Press’s Belles’ be signed. Call 205/226-3604. AL 36461. Letters, will be at Highland Booksmith, Apr. 29ÐBankhead Visiting Writers June 18 & 19ÐMid-South Reading 2255 Highland Avenue, from 11 a.m. Series, Tuscaloosa & Writing Conference, Birmingham to 5 p.m. Call 205/939-3169. Bob Perelman, the author of ten books Presentations by nationally-known Apr. 9ÐReadings from Belles’ Letters, of poetry, will read at 7:30 p.m. in authorities are geared to the needs of Birmingham Room 205, Smith Hall. elementary and middle school class- Most of the authors of Belles’ Letters Call 205/348-0766. room teachers, administrators and teacher educators. Contact Dr. will be recognized at the program and Apr. 29-May 1ÐNational Black Maryann Manning, 205/93-8359, or some will read from their work. The Touring Company, Birmingham and Literacy First 800/607-5692. Pre-regis- time is 7 p.m. at the Alabama School Montgomery ter before May 15 and pay $59. Mail to of Fine Arts, 1800 8th Avenue North. Zora Neale Hurston: A Theatrical Call 205/252-9241. Biography, a play about the famous June 19 & 20ÐSpoken Word Festival, Apr. 11ÐAlabama Voices, Bay black author, will be presented at the Birmingham Minette Carver Theater in Birmingham and at Literary events are once again included Frye Gaillard will read from his work the Davis Theatre in Montgomery. in the annual City Stages festival. at 4 p.m. on Sunday, April 11 at the Related events include Hurston on Sonia Sanchez will be featured at the Bay Minette Public Library. Call Hurston/Traces of Zora, in which Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. For Charlotte Cabaniss, 334/937-7947. writer Lucy Ann Hurston, her neice, more information on readings, contact Apr. 15ÐBankhead Visiting Writers will read from her new book and share Hunter Bell, 205/939-1975. Series, Tuscaloosa family memories in a series of appear- Susan Griffin’s most recent book of ances and the Zora Neale Hurston NGOING VENTS poetry, Unremembered Country, won Symposium, at the Jefferson O E the Commonwealth Prize. She has pub- Birmingham Regional Library BIRMINGHAM lished widely and received a on May 1. Contact the Alabama Birmingham area coffeehouses and MacArthur Grant. She will read at African-American Arts Alliance at clubs offer regular readings. They 7:30 p.m. in room 30, Alston Hall, 334/263-2787 for more information. include Celestial Realm Coffee House, University of Alabama. Call 205/348- Apr. 30, May 1 and 2ÐELF Writer’s 2827 Highland Avenue, 205/327-5505 0766. Conference, Pigeon Forge, Tenn. and The Highland Booksmith, 2255 Apr. 17 & 18ÐNiyi Osundare, Writing competitions and workshops Highland Avenue, 205/939-3164. Birmingham and Montgomery will be held in fiction, essays/nonfic- HUNTSVILLE “Farmer born, peasant bred,” tion, poetry, screenwriting and play- Huntsville Literary Association Osundare is a lyrical and prolific poet writing and children’s and young adult members’ groups include the Literary and an emerging playwright. Times and literature. David Tillinghast is leading Discussion Group which meets the first Spring 1999 FIRST DRAFT 19

Thursday of each month at 7:30 p.m. “WHO ME?” Archivists understand that you have Call 205/881-2114 for information. Continued from page 7 concerns about these and related issues The Fiction Writers’ Group meets at 7 and want to work with you to arrange p.m. on the third Wednesday of the “Discs? Can archives really preserve terms of ownership and access to your month. Phone 205/882-2348 for stuff other than paper?” papers that meet your needs. In fact, details. On the fourth Tuesday of the You bet they can. In fact, if you archivists know about a variety of month, the Poetry Writing Workshop is work on a computer you will do both held from 7 to 9 p.m. at Shaver’s Book options for depositing papers in an yourself and archivists a favor if you Store at 2362 Whitesburg Drive. For archive and are experienced in making information, call 205/536-9801. stop from time to time, take a “snap- arrangements that protect your legal and Huntsville Literary Association mem- shot” of your work on a floppy disc in a financial interests as well as your priva- bership is open to anyone. Contact generic format like ASCII, and label the cy. But you have to take the first step by Susan Anderson, 8019 Navios Dr., disc with the title, date, type of comput- contacting an archivist and asking for Huntsville, AL 35802, 205/881-2935. er and type of file. Then you or what you want. MONTGOMERY researchers will be able to access the “OK, you’ve convinced me. How do I For information about the Alabama original even after shifting to a com- African-American Arts Alliance or decide what archives gets my pletely different computer system. readings at Roots and Wings: A papers?” Cultural Bookplace, contact “I still feel silly. Who am I to think Individual groups of papers gain in Georgette Norman, 334/263-2787 or that a researcher will be interested in research value when they are housed Gwendolyn Boyd, 334/262-1700; Fax my papers someday?” with similar papers, and researchers are 334/262-8498. Monthly events of the You don’t take time to preserve the Alabama African-American Arts also more likely to use papers in a papers you no longer use on a regular Alliance are held at Eight Thirty repository which holds a number of House, 830 S. Court Street. The basis in order to gratify your ego or cre- similar collections. So think about how Nommo Study Group meets the second ate a legacy, you do it as a kindness to you define yourselfÐby state or region? Tuesday evening from 6 to 8. The yourself and your heirs. That’s the only profession? gender? ethnic group?Ðand Creative Writers Gathering is the third way you can avoid the risk of inadver- look for a repository that holds material Saturday from 10 a.m. until noon. tently discarding something important from similar people. Ask other writers Poetry readings are included in the in a burst of overzealous housecleaning Music in de House/Voices program, and academic researchers about their 6 to 8 p.m., third Sunday of the month. or a hasty move. If you take care of the experience with various archives, noth- Montgomery Creative Writers meets task now you’ll also relieve your heirs ing better testifies to the quality of a the third Sunday of every month from of the burden of having to make sense repository than satisfied customers. 2-4 p.m. at the Vaughn Park Church of of your papers and decide what to do Then pick one or two and find out Christ on Vaughn Rd. The meeting is with them. open to anyone interested in writing. whether they have the willingness and Dues are $12 annually. Contact Donna “Won’t I lose control of my writings the ability to provide a permanent home Jean Tennis, P.O. Box 230787, if I deposit them in an archives? for your papers on terms that make you Montgomery, AL 36123-0787, Besides, my friends won’t appreciate comfortable. Most archivists will be 334/244-8920; e-mail poettennis@the- having their letters to me read by delighted to hear from you and eager to link.net other people.” answer your questions. TUSCALOOSA The Guild of Professional Writers for Children meets on the second Saturday of every month (except August) at the Tuscaloosa Public Visit our new web site at Library from 10 a.m. until 12 noon. Dues are $15 annually. Contact Aileen K. Henderson, www.writersforum.org Vice-President, GPWC, 10924 Big Hurricane Spur, Brookwood, AL You’ll find the latest literary arts news, including 35444, 205/556-0861. the Forum’s current programs statewide, a calendar of literary events, contests, calls for submissions and much more. In addition, you’ll have access to First Draft, publishing resources and links to other literary sites in Alabama. There are lots of exciting additions still to come, so plan to visit us often. 20 FIRST DRAFT Spring 1999 NEWS LITERARY MARKETPLACE on the state literary scene. You’ll also OUT OF PRINT? see in-depth features on AWF pro- COMING TO THE NEXT CHECK GUTENBERG grams and activities. The past four FIRST DRAFT The Gutenberg Project is issues of First Draft are archived on If you have books to sell or writ- putting classic and out-of-print books the web site so that you can read or ing/editorial services you would like on line. Subjects in the latest Project print out excerpts from them. to publicize, consider placing an ad Gutenburg Newsletter, published on Send us news of literary events in the new Literary Marketplace in line the first Wednesday of each and announcements of contests so First Draft. Typing, manuscript read- month, indicate the broad scope of that we can post them. The email ing, and web site design are other the endeavor. There are 36 new address is [email protected] likely services. “We hope to devote a Etexts available since Gutenberg page to small listings as a service to “ALABAMA BOUND” BRINGS reached number 1900 last month. our members, and at the same time WRITERS TO THE BIRMINGHAM Included in the new selections are generate revenue to plow back into PUBLIC LIBRARY works by Balzac, Hawthorne, the magazine,” said AWF Executive An email message from the Thackery, Horatio Alger, Martin Director Jeanie Thompson. Birmingham Public Library promises Luther and others. Among the latest A single listing will cost $35 per the realization of many a book lover’s titles available is a new edition of issue; advertisers who buy four issues dream: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. will pay $25 for each ad. To place “On Saturday, April 24th, the Send a message to gutenberg@ advertising in the Literary Market- downtown library is going to be fireantproductions.com to find out place, mail your ad copy of 25 words transformed into a book fair from 10 more about the Gutenberg newsletter or less and a check payable to the a.m. until 3 p.m. In the atrium we and catalog of on-line books. Alabama Writers Forum to will have a little cafe set upÐtables ENTRIES INCREASE IN Wordcraft, P.O. Box 6467, under the ficus trees, pastries, coffee, AWF STUDENT COMPETITION Montgomery, AL 36106. Copy dead- soft drinks available. Just inside the “I know we had at least 938 line for the next issue is May 17. library will be a sales table with the entries from all over the state, said BONNIE’S BACK books published by the Alabama Anita Miller Garner, soon after the Detecting Metal, a collection of authors participating in the fair. There deadline for entries in the AWF High short stories by Fred Bonnie pub- will be two signing tables on each of School Literary Arts Awards and lished by Livingston Press, is one of the first three floors of the libraryÐ Scholarship Competition. Last year 28 works of adult fiction listed as a six tables in all. Authors will sit at there were more than 500 entries, so 1998 Editors’ Choice by Booklist, the their assigned tables for an hour or it is incredible how the competition journal of the American Library so (as scheduled) to be available to has grown, she said. Association. The book contains sto- sign copies of their books and to talk Garner unpacks the entries, reads ries written between 1979 and 1995, with readers. just a smattering to make sure they and is Bonnie’s sixth collection of “Alabama Bound is on the same are entered in the right category, and short fiction. A recipient of the weekend as the Magic City Art packages them to go to the judges. “I Hackney Literary Award and former ConnectionÐa terrific juried art show have to stay on task, but it’s hard not garden editor of Oxmoor House/ held annually in the Linn Park adja- to read more of them,” she said. The Southern Living, Bonnie now lives in cent to the library. The art show one judge who has completed the Winston-Salem, N.C. His previous brings throngs of people downtown judging was “bowled over” by the book was Food Fights: Tales from the on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so student writing and wrote “This is Restaurant Trade, published by Black we expect a good turnout for the professional quality” on the top of at Belt Press in 1997. book fair. least one entry. “We will have an eclectic group The awards banquet for Literary SURF THE WRITE SITE of more than 40 authorsÐwriters of Arts Awards winners and their The Forum’s web site is up and fiction, of non-fiction (everything teachers will be in Montgomery on running at www.writersforum.org. from diet books to memoirs), history, April 29. Visit it to find out what’s happening poetry, and children’s books.” Spring 1999 FIRST DRAFT 21

CONCLAVE COMPETITION POET LAUREATE NOMINATIONS 1998 from the Alabama State Poetry The Alabama Writer’s CLOSING MAY 1 Society. Conclave has announced a June 1 Nominations are made through SEBA PRESENTS BOOK AWARDS deadline for its 1999 Writing members of the Alabama Writer’s Andrew Glaze’s Someone Will Competition. Both members and Conclave. If you are a Conclave Go on Owing: Selected Poems 1966- non-members may send in entries in member, send the name of the poet 1992, published by 15 categories of short stories, essays, you wish to recommend, along with Montgomery’s articles, poetry, one-act plays and TV the verification that the nominee is Black Belt Press in scripts. Entry fees are $2 for willing to serve for four years at their April 1998, has members, $3 for non-members. own expense, as well as a list of received the first Send manuscripts with fees to John accomplishments of the candidate. Southeast Book- Curbow, AWC Contest Chair, P.O. Mail information to John Curbow, sellers Box 277, Wetumpka, AL 36092. P.O. Box 277, Wetumpka, AL 36092. Association’s Entries should be received between ROBERTS WINS STATE POETRY Award for May 1 and June 1. BOOK AWARD poetry. Black Belt Members’ dues are $15 annually. Bonnie Press was the only independent Send dues to Harriette Dawkins, publisher to win an award. Treasurer, 117 Hanover Road, Roberts’s To Hide Homewood, AL 35209. in the Light, published by Elk River Review Press, has won the Book of the Year Award for Bonnie Roberts

The Alabama Writers’ Forum gratefully Auburn University Bookstore The Huntsville Times acknowledges those who make possible AUM, Division of Continuing Education Mr. Bill Jarnigan literary arts programming in Alabama. Mr. George W. Bates Mr. Rawlins McKinney MAJOR DONOR Ms. Barbara J. Belknap Law Offices of Grover S. Mcleod The Alabama State Council on the Arts Birmingham Public Library Lewis Cooper, Jr. Memorial Library The Book Cellar, Inc. Dr. Norman McMillan PATRONS Ms. Jean L. Bouler Ms. Virginia McPhearson The Alabama Humanities Foundation Dr. James A. Buford, Jr. Mobile Public Library Alabama Power Foundation, Inc. Crosshaven Books Morris Avenue School (Opelika) AmSouth Bank Mr. Russell Jackson Drake Mrs. Julia Oliver The Blount Foundation, Inc. Ms. Carolyn R. Ellis Ms. Judith Paterson Colonial Bank English Department, Auburn University Mr. P. David Romei Compass Bank English Department, University Samford University Farmers National Bank of Montevallo Smith and Thomas, L.L.C. First National BankÐAuburn English Department, University Mr. Robert C. Tanner The M.W. Smith Foundation, Inc. of North Alabama Mr. Charles D. Thompson Lynn Jinks English Department, Mrs. Katherine W. Thompson Regions Bank Troy State University Mr. Frank Toland Southern Progress Corporation, Inc. Factor Press UAB Honors Program Sybil H. Smith Charitable Trust Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Ms. Carol Prejean Zippert SCRIBES, $250 Mrs. Roberta P. Gamble Mr. Don Clark France William H. Goodson, Jr., M.D. The Forum greatly appreciates the more Mr. John B. Scott, Jr. Mr. Ralph Hammond than 600 individuals, including CORPORATE ASSOCIATES, $100+ Hoover Public Library students, who have supported its pro- Alabama Public Library Service Huntsville Literary Association gramming since 1992. Alabama Southern Community College 22 FIRST DRAFT Spring 1999 FROM THE FIELD The Gift of History by Tom Franklin On the Sunday after Thanksgiving of last 1940s, which I found out was the map Mr. year, I drove two hours north of Mobile to Jackson followed when he first came into Grove Hill, where I was born, to meet Hardy Alabama years before. Mr. Jackson wore slip- Jackson and Jim Cox at Hardy’s father’s pers and eased himself into a chair that I knew house. They were to show me around was his regular seat, beside the refrigerator Mitcham’s Beat, the part of Clarke County and with a perfect view of the television. Jim where a feud occurred late last century and stood against the bar and as Hardy mixed us where several people were killed. This feud, drinks Mr. Jackson began asking me about known as the Mitcham War, is the subject of a “my people.” As I named each of them, he novel I’m working on. Hardy Jackson, some nodded, smiling, as if he remembered each of you know, teaches history at Jacksonville face. He knew my father, he said, and my State University; Jim Cox is Editor and Tom Franklin mother and aunts. Knew my grandfather well, Publisher of the Clarke County Democrat. and knew Uncle Marion, who he called, Together with Joyce Burrage (who taught me English in “Strut.” the ninth grade), they wrote a wonderful book called The “Strut?” I asked. Mitcham War, an account of the events that have become “Strut Bradford,” Mr. Jackson said. “Called him that infamous in the county. cause he used to strut around so.” What I saw that day in Mitcham’s Beat was amazing, We talked on, and Mr. Jackson told me more stories crumbling houses and rotting grave markers and the sites about Strut Bradford and about his father—my grandfa- of murders and lynchings, and what I heard was even ther—Dock Bradford. Some were stories I’d never heard, more amazing. It was a privilege to listen to Hardy and others familiar, like the one about Strut being elected to Jim—two of the premier authorities on this subject—dis- the state legislature because his father had canvassed the cuss the true cause of the Mitcham War which, Hardy sug- entire county. How Dock got tired of the raccoons eating gested, was honor. “All those sharecroppers had back his corn at night but was helpless because of the law that then,” Hardy said, “was their pride. That and family. If kept him from having both a gun and a light in the you took that away, you took everything.” woods—night hunting was a problem. Uncle Marion, who This land we passed was familiar to me, these hills spent much of his time with Dock, drove to Montgomery and ridges, the magnolias and the pines, the carpet of and pushed through a law that allowed hunters a light and dead, dry leaves: the landscape of my childhood. The tem- gun, but only with number eight shot so no deer could be perature was in the low sixties that day, the sun so high killed. Mr. Jackson told me they’d named the law The and bright I had to keep adjusting the Jeep’s visor. We Bradford Raccoon and Opossum Act of 1955—which I passed pick-up trucks parked beside the road and hunters knew—but what I hadn’t heard was that they’d done it as walking with their rifles, even a muddy hound or two, and a joke on old Strut. I remembered things from my own past, stories about my The stories—and the drinking—went on. Each time grandfather, Dock Bradford, who I’d never met, and of his my mug got low, Hardy filled it. oldest son, Marion, the tale-spinner of our family who “Whenever I tell Daddy I’m bringing somebody by,” now lives in Birmingham and who I rarely see. Hardy said, “he always asks me a bunch of sly questions Later, back at Mr. Jackson’s place, Jim led me into a about ’em. What he’s trying to find out is if they’re okay.” small wooden building behind the house. This was Mr. Jim was sipping bourbon, as were Hardy and Mr. Jackson’s “Poutin’ House,” where his wife allows him to Jackson. come and drink. It’s kind of an institution in Grove Hill, a “What he means by ‘okay,’” Jim added, “is whether or place where people meet to discuss (or argue about) poli- not they’ll take a drink.” tics or football, and where they occasionally take a drink. I Mr. Jackson laughed. “When I found out you were sat down in a plush chair, just right for football, and Strut Bradford’s nephew and old Dock Bradford’s grand- looked around. One wall held an Alabama map from the son, hell, I knew you’d raise a glass with us.” continued on page 24 Spring 1999 FIRST DRAFT 23

MONROEVILLE CONFERENCE The Forum assembled a statewide committee to pro- Continued from page 1 vide nominations and select the second Harper Lee Award recipient. Committee members were: Brent Davis, AWF Flow: Native Americans in the South and East, and president; Rawlins McKinney, AWF vice-president; Jay Carolyn Haines, author of Summer of the Redeemers and Lamar, AWF secretary; Norman McMillan, AWF imme- Touched, will talk with Larry Allums, professor of litera- diate past president; Ruth Beaumont Cook and Peter ture at the University of Mobile. Phyllis Perry, author of Huggins, AWF writers’ representatives; Jeanie the novel Stigmata will speak with John Henry Hafner, Thompson, AWF executive director; Don Noble, professor of English at Spring Hill College. University of Alabama; John Sledge, Mobile Press- Friday morning sessions will include “Perspectives on Register; and Bert Hitchcock, Auburn University. Alabama” with Tuskegee University history professor and Also at the Friday award ceremony, the 1999 Eugene Civil Rights activist Frank Toland and University of Current-Garcia Award for Distinction in Literary Alabama English professor Philip Beidler. Historian and Scholarship will be presented to Philip D. Beidler, pro- author Wayne Flynt will moderate. “The Role of fessor of English at the University of Alabama. Beidler Alabama in its Literature” will be discussed by novelists has made major contributions to literary scholarship William Cobb (Harry Reunited and Somewhere in All during his 25 years at the University of Alabama. His two This Green), Robert Inman (Old Dogs and Children, anthologies of fiction by Alabama writers, The Art of Home Fires Burning and Dairy Queen Days) and Wayne Fiction in the Heart of Dixie and Many Voices, Many Greenhaw (The Golfer and King of Country). The moder- Rooms will be joined by First Books: The Printed Word ator will be Don Noble, host of Alabama Public and Cultural Formation in Early Alabama, forthcoming Television’s “Bookmark.” from the University of Alabama Press. He has published There will be poetry readings by Peter Huggins, extensively on the literature of war, especially as it deals Auburn University professor and author of Hard Facts, with the Vietnam conflict. The recipient of this award is and Rodney Jones, National Book Critics Circle award selected by the Association of College English Teachers of winner. Jones’s most Alabama. recent book is Elegy for the Southern Drawl. Other featured writers include Nanci Kincaid (Crossing Blood, Pretending Rodney Jones Marva Collins the Bed is a Raft, and the recently released Balls) and Marva Collins, educator and author of Values, and Lighting the Candle of Excellence: A Practical Guide for the Family. For registration information, call Donna Reed at 334/575-3156, ext. 223 or email [email protected]. For U of A updates and to register on-line, go to www.ascc.edu. ABOUT THE HARPER LEE AND 1/4 PAGE AD EUGENE CURRENT-GARCIA AWARDS The Harper Lee Award for a Distinguished CAMERA Alabama Writer is given annually in recognition of the READY lifetime achievement of a writer who was born in Alabama or who has spent a significant portion of his or her writing life in the state. The recipient is to be a writer of national reputation, whose body of work is recognized by critics, publishers, and editors as clearly superior. The recipient should also have received major awards and prizes. Harper Lee, whose novel To Kill a Mockingbird has sold more than 30 million copies, is a native of Monroeville where the Alabama Writers Symposium is held. 24 FIRST DRAFT Spring 1999

FROM THE FIELD future. Yet driving away that night, I felt how crucial his- Continued from page 22 tory is to us all, to the understanding of our ancestors, of the places we grew up, of ourselves. History reaches for- Well, we raised a few glasses that night. And I heard ward, too, touches us still. I had been welcomed into the stories about Clarke County and the Mitcham War and Poutin’ House, had been given a seat of honor there, more about my own family. As I sat there with my head because of my people, because of an uncle I don’t see buzzing, I felt a connection with Marion “Strut” Bradford, very often, and a grandfather I’ve never met. And even as and I felt an even stronger connection with my grandfa- I drove home, drinking coffee now, the windows open, I ther, who had died two months before I was born. It may felt what I’d just experienced already becoming history, have been the beer buzz, but I felt closer to Alabama than part of me, a story I would tell. I ever had. As if I’d been given a gift that night, the gift of history, of spending the day with people who loved and Tom Franklin’s first book, Poachers (William Morrow), will be honored the past, who’d lived their lives trying to under- in bookstores in June. The title novella has been selected for stand it. New Stories From the South: The Year’s Best, 1999 and the The novel I’m writing is historical, but I’ve always annual anthology Best American Mystery Stories. It has also been nominated for an Edgar Award. Franklin teaches creative been a sloppy student of history, more interested in the writing at the University of South Alabama.

BARBARA LEBOW (1985), Cyparis (1987) and The Keepers (1988), the tech- Continued from page 11 nique deepened into fantasy and hallucination sequences which offered ever better methods of revealing the charac- based on whatever breakthrough happened in the previous ters, of letting the audience “see what this person is think- work, a constant searching for better ways to give a fuller ing without an obvious aside.” These passages occur with- expression to whatever the material is at hand.” in a grounding context of naturalistic scenes. As an example of the same idea, Lebow cites the evo- “It’s been,” she concludes, “an evolving process, not lutionary development of a memory technique which first breakthroughs. I figure I’m still on the journey.” Pointing surfaced in her 1981 Little Joe Managhan, a historically to the effect of this evolutionary process on her latest play, based play about a woman who lived her adult life as a she says, “Everything I’ve mentioned has led to Lurleen. cowboy. From that play, in which memory sequences Elements of the play are in her head and help illuminate helped externalize the character, through A Shayna Maidel what is going on.”

Writer Allan Swafford has reviewed theatre in Montgomery for more than 15 years.

Lurleen will run in repertory at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery through July 24. FACTOR For performance dates, times and to purchase tickets, PRESS call 1-800-841-4ASF (4273). Locally call 271-5353.

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CAMERA READY EDITOR’S NOTE We apologize for omitting Anne Rutledge and Evie Spearman, Huntsville Literary Association, from the list of contributors to the C. Eric Lincoln Program in “The Back Page,” Winter Issue. In the same article, Dr. Lee Williams’s affiliation should be listed as the Office of Multi-cultural Affairs at the University of Alabama Huntsville.

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