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From Obscurity to Oprah: Melinda Haynes & the Power of the Word

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From Obscurity to Oprah: Melinda Haynes & the Power of the Word FIRST DRAFT The Journal of the Alabama Writers’ Forum VOL. 6, NO. 2 SUMMER 1999 From Obscurity to Oprah: Melinda Haynes & the Power of the Word MELINDA HAYNES 1 LITERARY ARTS AWARDS WINNERS 2 ALABAMA WRITERS SYMPOSIUM 3 “WRITING (& PHOTOGRAPHING) OUR STORIES”5 Sheila Hagler FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ALABAMA n this issue of First Draft, we WRITERS’ salute a number of Alabama writ- FORUM Iers who have achieved excellence. Their age range is broad and they hail 1998-99 from every quarter of the state, and Board of Directors beyond. President Works by some of the young Brent Davis writers who were recently honored as (Tuscaloosa) winners in the 1999 High School Rodney Jones and Jeanie Thompson during the Immediate Past President Literary Arts Awards and Norman McMillan Alabama Writers Symposium. Scholarship Competition begin on (Montevallo) Alabama Southern Community page 11. With a record number of Vice-President College to these prestigious awards entries this year, we increased the Rawlins McKinney and would like to thank this year’s (Birmingham) number of awards given. As a result of award funders, the Alabama Power Secretary growing statewide interest in our con- Company Foundation for the Harper Jay Lamar test, we are approaching corporate Lee Award and George Landegger of (Auburn) sponsors to make an expanded Parsons and Whettemore for the Treasurer Literary Arts Awards possible. Edward M. George Current-Garcia Award. Please see the Recently, we were encouraged to learn (Montgomery) related story on page 3 that Brooke Lowder, a 1998 scholar- Writers’ Representative Also in Monroeville we wel- ship recipient who now serves on her Ruth Beaumont Cook comed home an Alabama writer who (Birmingham) family’s foundation, has requested that has distinguished himself among his a gift be given to the Forum to fund a Writers’ Representative peers in ways that few can hope to in Peter Huggins scholarship in the 2000 competition. a lifetime. Hearing Rodney Jones, a (Auburn) What a wonderful thank-you, Brooke. native of Falkville, Alabama, read his Priscilla Cooper Even as we wrap up this year’s poems reminded me that there are (Birmingham) Literary Arts Awards winners, we are those of us who began writing as Bettye L. Forbus compiling the anthologies for (Dothan) young people in Alabama, and by “Writing Our Stories,” now in its William E. Hicks hook and crook managed to find our second year at the Lurleen B. Wallace (Troy) voices. Rodney now teaches in School in Mt. Meigs and in its first Jean P. McIver Carbondale, Illinois, a long way from year at the Sequoia School in (Mobile) the red dirt and cotton fields of his Chalkville. Following the encouraging Nicole Mitchell native Morgan County. But his ties (Tuscaloosa) popularity of Open the Door, these here are deep, and his recent Elegy for Kellee Reinhart forthcoming books by young men and the Southern Drawl (reviewed on page (Tuscaloosa) women in the Department of Youth 19) recalls the farm country of his Rick Shelton Services system are bound to be best childhood where inexplicable things (Sterrett) sellers among juvenile justice profes- happened that he continues to mull in Frank Toland sionals, teachers and others working poems of humor and regret. (Tuskegee) with young people to help them We are trying, row by row, to Randall Williams toward a productive life. (Montgomery) plow the field and plant the seed for During the spring we also Executive Director our young writers in Alabama. We are honored two Alabamians for their Jeanie Thompson trying, crop by crop, to harvest the work in the literary arts and scholar- (Montgomery) best of Alabama’s contemporary adult ship. Novelist Madison Jones ASCA Liaison writers. The literary life in Alabama Randy Shoults received the second annual Harper Lee flourishes among its sister arts. May (Montgomery) Award for the Distinguished Alabama you be nourished by and grow within Writer and American literature scholar it as well. Book Reviews Editor Philip Beidler was named the Eugene Jay Lamar Current-Garcia Distinguished Editing/Graphic Design Alabama Scholar. The Forum deeply Wordcraft, Inc. appreciates the commitment of Summer 1999 FIRST DRAFT 1 Oprah Picks a Summer Blockbuster–Melinda Haynes’s Mother of Pearl “There is a power in the written word,” around Labor Day, and there’s talk of a 12-city said Melinda Haynes, quietly but fervently. national tour. The paperback rights have sold, “Words have the power to take me away from also audio rights, Australian rights, and the something, to lift me away from myself.” As a large print edition. Negotiations are underway reader Haynes found strength and healing; as a for the screen rights and names like Morgan writer she has been struck by a lightning bolt of Freeman and Kathy Bates are being tossed good fortune that has amazed and overwhelmed about. her. It’s hard to know what’s reality and what’s The story is legend, but told again with Melinda Haynes imagination and which is more unbelievable. “I fresh wonder by Haynes and her husband Ray look back and say ‘what if’ this or that hadn’t at a Montgomery book signing on June 29. Ray sent the happened. What if I hadn’t gone to get my hair cut that first hundred pages of Mother of Pearl to agent Wendy day that Sue Walker (University of South Alabama Weil after reading about her in Poets & Writers. Weil’s English department head) sat next to me and told me assistant, by chance, pulled the manu- about Poets & Writers? What if...so script out of the middle of a stack, many things,” Haynes voice trailed read some, and handed it to Weil with off. a strong recommendation. The What is real, unmistakably, for her process of immediate recognition and is the writing. “When I’m inside recommendation continued down the myself writing the only rule is to be line through Weil, who called Haynes honest to my characters,” she said, and when she reached page 57 to take her MOTHER her voice rang with strength and deep on as a client, to Martha Levin, then OF love for the beings she conjured from an editor and now president of the depths of her soul.“I tried to write Hyperion, to Hyperion CEO Bob PEARL with a dictionary by me, but that Miller, who hand delivered galleys to • didn’t work. I worried too much about Oprah Winfrey. “Oprah read it and A NOVEL the external world and I had to give called Toni Morrison,” said Haynes, that up. I had to write the story for shaking her head in disbelief. me,” said Haynes, “whether or not Mother of Pearl was named the anybody else ever read it.” summer selection for the Oprah Book Many, many people will read Club in early June. A whirlwind trip M ELINDA H AYNES Mother of Pearl. Haynes and her char- to Chicago for an “Oprah” tv appear- acters Even Grade, Valuable Korner, ance followed. (A flight was already Joody Two Sun and the others have booked for the following day when Haynes got the call.) burst on the scene like Fourth of July fireworks. But “It’s all happened in a month. It hasn’t really sunk in Haynes is a steady, resourceful woman who worked hard yet,” said Ray Haynes. to write her first book, and started the second “totally An initial press run of less than 10,000 copies was different” novel when the first was two-thirds done. set to launch Haynes’s first novel; a modest regional Maybe she hadn’t been north of Atlanta before she flew book signing tour was planned. But Oprah’s imprimatur to Chicago to talk to Oprah, but she’s lived a rich life, blew that plan out of the water. The June 21 Publishers much of it in books. First others’, now her own. Weekly reported that Hyperion had 710,000 copies in “You’re for real, aren’t you,” Wendy Weil said to print. Haynes makes a return visit to the “Oprah” show Haynes. And she is. 2 FIRST DRAFT Summer 1999 Fifth Annual Literary Arts Awards & Scholarship Competition Young Writers Recognized n its fifth year AWF’s DRAMA Literary Arts Awards First: Joseph Halli, student of Iand Scholarship Com- Martina Holt, Central High petition for high school School-West, Tuscaloosa students received 900 entries, FICTION up from 500 the previous year. “The growth of our First: Casey Moore, student of awards program coincides Denise Trimm, ASFA with an increased awareness Second: Blaire Rebecca in Alabama of the impor- Newhard, student of Denise tance of writing skills and Trimm, ASFA creative expression among Judge’s Special Recognition: Casey Moore, student of Denise students. Prizes, scholarships Judge John Kingsbury (third from right) selected portfolios of the five Trimm, ASFA and recognition show that we scholarship winners (left to right) Blaire Newhard, Camille Henry, Charles value excellence in the liter- Johnson, Shana Markham and Casey Moore. John Seay, student of Melinda ary arts,” said Jeanie Cammarata, Mountain Brook High Casey Moore, student of Denise School, Birmingham Thompson. Trimm, ASFA Creative Nonfiction was judged by Matt Barron, student of Martin Hames, Charles W. Johnson, student of Mary The Altamont School, Birmingham Michael Martone, director of the Ann Rygiel, Auburn High School Program in Creative Writing at the Peter Davenport, student of Kristi Shana Markham, student of Susan Byrd, Homewood High School University of Alabama and author of Deas Reeves, Sidney Lanier High Seeing Eye, Pensees: The Thoughts of Joy Fields, student of Amanda Beason, School (LAMP), Montgomery Clay-Chalkville High School, Pinson Dan Quayle, and Alive and Dead in Camille Henry, student of Denise POETRY Indiana.
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