Athens Spring Literary Festival 2017
Students from OU Southern are heading to the Athens Spring Literary Festival, April 5-7! Follow us for on Blogger for reflections and pictures!
Tell Me A Story by Jessica Conley
The first year I went
to Lit Fest, in 2013, I didn’t know what to expect. I knew that authors would
be there and they’d be speaking, but that was it. Well, let me tell you, they
didn’t merely speak, they passionately preached. Two years later, anytime I sit
down to write I hear Robert Olen Butler’s voice telling me to “write from where
I thrum; my white hot center.” So, when that time rolled around again, I was
super excited to hear more authors give advice, and add their books to my ever
growing TBR (to be read) pile. A few weeks before Lit Fest my advisor, Hayley
Haugen, told me which authors would be attending and my excitement grew;
DOROTHY ALLISON and MARIE HOWE were going to be in the same room as me! Doctor
Haugen, introduced me to Allison’s work, Bastard
Out of Carolina, a couple of years back and just a few months before Lit
Fest weekend another teacher, Andrea Fekete, introduced me to Marie Howe’s
touching piece, What the Living Do.
Both of these pieces are categorized as fiction, but they’re similar enough to
our authors lives to be considered biofictional (no, that’s not a word, I just
made it up). Brian Doyle, another speaker/author, would call them “sideways
stories,” but we’ll get to that later.
Dorothy Allison
reading “The Wicked Woman.”
Dorothy Allison and I after she signed my copy of her book.
I
didn’t have to wait long to hear the great Dorothy Allison and Marie Howe
speak, because they were the first speakers. Allison started the literary night
off with a reading from her upcoming book, which she called, “The Wicked
Woman.” I could listen to Dorothy Allison speak all night; her thick Southern
accent makes everything sound better. The title is ironic, because that’s
exactly what Allison was being by reading this hilarious book to us that we
won’t be able to get our hands on for years!
Don’t think the time gap is going to stop me from buying the book though,
it was so funny, brash, and genius, I will be thinking of the brief chapter she
read for years. I’m not going to summarize what the book is about, all you have
to know is the main character is a strong, vindictive woman, and her story is
addicting. After Allison read her enticing story, Marie Howe, read a few pieces
from her collection What the Living Do. Howe
read her work in a manner that you really feel
the piece. Although I had already read the few poems, when Howe read them in
her soft, quiet voice, it was like hearing them for the first time.
Marie Howe Charles Johnson
On
the second day, we met Charles Johnson. I didn’t know who Mr. Johnson was, but
that didn’t mean I was any less excited about hearing him speak, and I was not
disappointed. Johnson gave an amazing lecture on what it takes to be a writer.
Johnson shared stories of his writers “boot camp” that he use to teach at the
University of Washington. After sharing his curriculum with us, which consisted
of hundreds of pages of work in a ten week period, we were assured that his
class deserved its nickname, and devastated that we all missed out on what
sounded like a challenging, but life changing experience. Johnson shared that
it’s not a bad thing to have guidance along the way, and the best way to get
that guidance, and to find your voice, is by reading. After Johnson’s lecture,
it was Dorothy Allison’s turn to take the stage. I thought her reading was
pretty amazing, so I expected the same result for her lecture, and Mrs. Allison
did not disappoint. Within five minutes of being on stage she had a good part
of the audience in tears, including herself. Most of us there were literary
lovers, so we understood what Allison meant when she said that books save
lives. She was not kidding, or exaggerating, because they truly do. She
continued to call us “baby writers” from the first day until the last day, and
many of the authors quoted her turn of phrase for the rest of Lit Fest.
Dorothy Allison Me
freaking out because it’s MARIE HOWE
I
bet after all my fan-girling, you probably think my favorite speaker was
Dorothy Allison, or Marie Howe, but you’d be wrong. My favorite speaker was
someone I had briefly heard of; Brian Doyle. His speech was Life. Changing. It
wasn’t just what he said that was so moving, but the way he was said it. Mr.
Doyle is a master at telling stories and he had every one enthralled from the
moment the words, “let me tell you a story” left his mouth. Mr. Doyle didn’t
just read on the second night, he told us
stories. You don’t understand the difference? Don’t worry, I didn’t either
when he first explained it to us, but after listening to story after story I
understood what he meant. I remember every story that Brian Doyle told us that
night, from the couple who jumped out of the Twin Towers holding hands to the
discussion he had with the Dalai Lama about basketball. But, if you ask me to
tell you what the short story was about that I had to read for class last week,
I could tell you a few details, but that’s it.
Brian Doyle and I Brian Doyle
After
Brian Doyle’s phenomenal reading is was Robert Pinsky’s turn to read a few of
his poems. Doyle was a hard act to follow, after all he made us all “laugh like
a donkey on acid,” but Pinsky did a great job. Pinsky didn’t only read his
poems, but he had a bassist/cellist, drummer, and piano player perform while he
read. The lights were off and a spotlight was on Pinsky and the band, making me
feel like I was in a café listening to an author read their piece, except ten
times better, because it was Robert
Pinsky. The dim atmosphere, music, and poetry was a very nice and relaxing
experience. At the end of his musical reading Pinsky decided to do something
spur of the moment by having the band create a melody to a piece that hadn’t
been rehearsed. It was a nice display, because it reminded us that we don’t
just hear the beauty within poetry, we feel it too.
Brian
Doyle was up again the next day, and I couldn’t wait to hear his words of
wisdom. Another really fun thing about Doyle is that he’s so full of (creative)
energy he can’t sit still. During his reading the night before and his lecture
the next day he moved up and down the room, sometimes just staying in one
aisle; never touching the podium on the step-up stage. I was a little disappointed,
because he didn’t tell us another one of his amazing stories, but his lecture
was great! He told us to turn our heads off and “pretend [we’re] stoned”
because the best stories come when we’re not thinking about it. His main point
though was to tell him a story, he didn’t care if it was all true, false, or a
little bit of both.
Brian Doyle Dorothy Allison
signing Olivia’s copy of her book
I
felt like I was in a poetry class during Marie Howe’s lecture, but it was a
really enjoyable poetry class, so that’s okay. Howe passed out a number of
poems before her lecture, and went through a few of them stanza by stanza with
us. She read each piece how they deserved to be read, and showed us that each
poem could have more than one meaning. She explained that it’s okay if we don’t
understand what the meaning of a poem is; sometimes we’re just not ready to
understand them quite yet. I should mention that 1) I’m not a huge fan of
poetry and 2) DOROTHY ALLISON WAS SITTING RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME (!), so I was a
bit distracted at times.
Something that I noticed more this
year than the first year I went to Lit Fest in 2013 is that each author had a
unique voice. Dorothy Allison had a thick southern accent that seemed to roll
off the tongue and soothe our nerves. Marie Howe spoke in a soft, lilting,
voice that would honestly put me to sleep if her words weren’t so compelling.
Charles Johnson, had a gentle, grandfatherly voice that reminded me of James
Garner; the old man from the Notebook
(I was not surprised when Johnson told us that he meditates). Robert Pinsky’s
voice was jazzy like his performance. And last, but not least, Brian Doyle’s
voice was very dynamic. When he was telling a touching story, his voice would
get whispery and low, but when he was telling a funny story it would get
energetic and a bit squeaky. He wore his emotions on his sleeve, when he felt
like laughing he laughed, and when he got emotional, he cried, it was very
refreshing. We all have our own, unique, voice and the moral that each author
is trying to convey is use it. Speak
from the heart. Don’t be afraid to cry or laugh in public, don’t be afraid to
speak your mind or be who you are. You never know whose life you could be
saving by telling your story.
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