THE MAGAZINE OF THE PIPER CENTER FOR CREATIVE WRITING ART SPIEGELMAN COMIX RENEGADE LISA DAVIS ON THIS WRITER’S LIFE AN INTERVIEW WITH NAOMI SHIHAB NYE NEW BOOKS BY ASU’S CREATIVE WRITING FACULTY ON GENRE: SCIENCE WRITING | TRANSLATION ALSOINSIDE ELIZABETHSEARLE AARONSHURIN INDUSUDARESAN DAVIDL.ULIN IN THIS ISSUE VOL 2, ISS 2 SPRING 2005 FEATURES EDITOR COMIX WITHOUT SPANDEX ......................................................................... 4 Charles Jensen W. Todd Kaneko explains why Art Spiegelman’s work should be required reading and looks back at how his work has infl uenced a growing interest in “comix.” COPYEDITOR Elizabyth Hiscox HOMECOMING ROYALTY .............................................................................. 7 Tina Hammerton recounts the triumphant returns of ASU Alums Jorn Ake, Kevin Haworth, CONTRIBUTORS Ruth Ellen Kocher, and Richard Yañez for a special Homecoming event. Lisa Davis Patricia Sanders Matthew Gavin Frank Elizabeth Searle THE SCIENCE OF WRITING ......................................................................... 10 Michael Green Aaron Shurin Matthew Gavin Frank explores a burgeoning genre combining the aesthetic of art with the Tina Hammerton Indu Sudaresan exploration of science. Elizabyth Hiscox Greg Thielen Douglas S. Jones David L. Ulin W. Todd Kaneko TRUE TALES OF AN ASU GRAD .................................................................. 13 Molly Meneely Michael Green talks with ASU graduate and autobiographical essayist Laurie Notaro. Naomi Shihab Nye BOOKS IN BLOOM ...................................................................................... 15 Patricia Sanders profi les new books by ASU Creative Writing faculty members. PIPER CENTER STAFF Jewell Parker Rhodes, Artistic Director Jaime Dempsey, Program Manager “I MUST HAVE EATEN...” ............................................................................ 18 Salima Keegan, Editor/Publisher Tina Hammerton recounts a visit with Kathleen Fraser, founding editor of the groundbreaking Sean Nevin, Outreach Coordinator journal of women’s writing HOW(ever). Charles Jensen, Community & Adult Enrichment Paul Morris, MLSt Program Director TRANSLATIONS OF THE POSSIBLE ............................................................ 22 Kriste Peoples, Graphic Designer Matthew Gavin Frank and Elizabyth Hiscox discuss issues in and approaches to the art of poetry in translation. PIPER CENTER BLURRING THE LINES ................................................................................ 25 ADVISORY COUNCIL Matthew Gavin Frank recaps Lee Gutkind’s storied career in creative nonfi ction and gives a Ben Bova Janaki Ram quick snapshot of the genre today. Billy Collins Raye Thomas, chair Harold Dorenbecher Theresa Wilhoit THE DEEP HEART OF POETRY: NAOMI SHIHAB NYE ................................... 31 Dana Jamison, chair George Witte Greg Thielen interviews Naomi Shihab Nye about writing, perserverance, and margaritas. Simi Juneja C. D. Wright Jo Krueger Kathleen Laskowski POETRY VEERS OFF THE PAGE ................................................................... 35 Maxine Marshall Elizabyth Hiscox checks in with our friends at Royal Holloway University in London, where Naomi Shihab Nye poetic practice and the page are forming new relationships. Barbara Peters, ex oficio EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE ........................................................................ 38 Michael Green shares Russell Banks’s thoughts on contemporary fi ction writing. COVER ART © Art Spiegelman DEPARTMENTS LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR ....................................................................... 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS PHOTO THIS WRITER’S LIFE: LISA SELIN DAVIS ..................................................... 27 Geoffrey Gray Q & A: SEARLE, SHURIN, SUDARESAN, ULIN ............................................ 41 ALUMNI LINER NOTES ............................................................................... 49 PRINTED IN CANADA CONTRIBUTORS ......................................................................................... 50 2 FROM THE DIRECTOR LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR Dear Friends, My heartfelt thanks to all of you who have joined the Piper Friends community. Your contribution helps support the many activities of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, housed in ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Our goal is to foster an inclusive community of writers and readers and to celebrate the power of language to enrich our lives and to create a more civil and enlightened society. For those of you who have yet to join Piper Friends, please consider doing so today. Your contribution helps support our many activities, ranging from literary readings, writing workshops, craft and publishing lectures, and publications such as Hayden’s Ferry Review and Marginalia. One of the Piper Center’s most successful programs is the four-day Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference. This conference offers superb writers who are also skilled in the art of teaching. All of our conference authors are re- quired to focus on “teachable moments”—moments that provide not only inspiration but tangible and useful knowledge on how to create and shape better prose and poetry and how to become a better artist. Unlike many writing confer- ences and festivals, Desert Nights, Rising Stars is committed to providing a superb and intimate learning environment. For our 2006 conference, our faculty-student ratio is 1:5. Fifty faculty for two hundred and fifty participants! Is it any wonder that our conference fills to capacity year after year? Is it any wonder that participants rave about what they’ve learned, how much they’ve enjoyed the readings and panels, and about how useful the small classes are for receiving quality feedback on their writing? The Piper Center’s commitment to teaching echoes the educational commitment of ASU’s nationally ranked creative writing program. To be a writer, you need to write. To become a better writer, you need skilled teachers who can help you with your journey. The Piper Writer’s Studio Workshops provide another opportunity for learning in a nurturing setting. Unlike the Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference, the Piper Writer’s Studio provides eight week writing classes year ‘round. Why not join us? If you’ve been postponing your dream of becoming a better writer, stop. Come to the Writers Conference. Take a Piper Writer’s Studio class. The Piper Center’s commitment to teaching never wavers. Our faith in the beauty, the good, and the enlightening potential of language never flags. We believe in you. Believe in us by joining the Piper Friends community. Warmest Best Wishes, Jewell 3 FEATURES NADJA SPIEGELMAN COMIX WITHOUT SPANDEX WHY ART SPIEGELMAN’S WORK IS ESSENTIAL READING BY W. TODD KANEKO When most of us think about comics, we are generally inventing comics as an adult artform. reminded of images from childhood fantasies. We might Spiegelman prefers the term “comix,” which under- picture Superman flying through Metropolis to save Lois scores the co-mingling of visual and textual narration as Lane, or we might imagine Spiderman battling Doctor well as an association with the socially critical American Doom in downtown Manhattan. We might envision Betty counterculture. His work throughout the sixties and early and Veronica fighting over who will go for a ride in Archie’s seventies led to his co-founding of the comic revue Ar- jalopy in a strange, perpetual re-enactment of romance cade with Bill Griffith in 1975, and in 1980, he started the comics from the 1950s. But for Art Spiegelman, comics avant-garde comics magazine RAW with his wife, Fran- are more than pre-adolescent entertainment—throughout cois Mouly—these two magazines have been influential his career as a cartoonist, he has been instrumental in re- to the success of many American cartoonists like Robert 4 FEATURES Crumb, Drew Friedman, and Dan Clowes. Moreover, the Tide in 1976. Will Eisner’s Contract With God followed two socially conscious cartoons in RAW and Arcade remain years later, and since then, the genre has exploded as car- distinct from Spiegelman and Mouly’s series for children, toonists work toward a legitimization of comics as some- Little Lit, in which they often turn to writers and artists thing more than fare for children—for most graphic nov- like Lemony Snicket and Maurice Sendak, whose work elists, comics blend the power of visual storytelling with is otherwise outside of the comics field. In this sense, the the complex structure and seriousness of literature. work Spiegelman has done over the course of his career The sophisticated storylines that are portrayed in graph- has brought a great deal of artistic legitimacy to comics. ic novels take advantage of the visual aspect of comics, but Spiegelman is perhaps best known for his work on lack the superpowered melodrama of mainstream comics. Maus, a two-volume graphic novel for which he won the Instead, Dan Clowes’ Ghost World gives us two teen-aged Pulitzer Prize in 1992. In Maus, Spiegelman uses mice girls coming to terms with adulthood and Eric Drooker’s and cats as cartoon stand-ins for Jews and Nazis during Flood portrays the wordless ruin of a man in a succession the Holocaust, but the books are more than just a comic- of eerie black-and-white panels. A young girl comes of age book version of the Holocaust—they are an illustrated re- enactment of the life and survival of Spiegelman’s father in Hitler’s Germany, as well as the story of the cartoonist’s ART SPIEGELMAN