Conversation #1
Author Happy Hour
This blog is where you will make all the author role-play discussion postings. There will be 10 conversation prompts during the rest of the semester and you are required to participate in at least 8 of them.
Make sure you are speaking in your author's voice and from your author's perspective and time period. We are going to assume that all the authors (no matter the time period) all now know about the internet and the advantages its gives us. So, have fun with your posts! As your author, feel free to share links about a conversation topic or add images or videos.
Our first conversation is a getting to know you one. We all are going to just mingle and see who is here before getting too far into talking about stories. So, come on in, grab an appetizer and introduce yourself to your fellow writers. Please give the other writers some of the basic facts about you...
a.) name
b.) when you were born - if you are still alive or not.
c.) some information about growing up
d.) how you got into writing
e.) some details about your body of work
Feel free to give a shout-out to any other writers that you might know or even ones that you might admire (or...not).
I suppose I ought to introduce myself, as we’ve all been tossed into this charming little writing group together. My name is Zelda Fitzgerald, and I was born in July of 1900 in Montgomery Alabama, which is absolutely as dull and sweetly southern as you might guess. You’ve likely not heard much about me, besides perhaps of my reputation for being rather “wild in the mind,” to phrase it as one might over tea. I’m sure, however, that you have probably heard a great deal about my husband, Scott Fitzgerald. If you’ve read any of his writings, then you’re actually more acquainted with myself as an author than you realize. Now I’m not one for gossip, so I won’t bore you with the insipid details of our – how do they put it? – tumultuous relationship, but I will tell you that there are four things Scott excelled at, and the last of them is plagiarism. I know it’s rather a dig to learn someone isn’t quite who they say they are, but there you have it. Now enough about that for now, and more about who I am.
ReplyDeleteI am a romantic and an idealist, a painter and a ballerina, the original flapper and F. Scott’s muse, an alcoholic and a schizophrenic, and I am a writer. I was fortuitous in my youth. My mother being an absolute dear and my father a Supreme Court Justice, I shouldn’t have wanted for much. My days were spent on the arm of countless, admittedly faceless, courters; my nights were spent dulling the inescapable heat and boredom with all sorts of unsavory and delicious activities, chief among them drinking and dancing and flirting. You can imagine the scandal, the uproar, the downright horror it caused when I ran off to New York City to marry a young soldier who had visited our town briefly. I couldn’t help it though; I’d always been too mad for that town, and Scott sang to me a song of deathless devotion for our wildest dreams.
I’d always been a writer, filling my diary with meanderings of thought that others later claimed to be iridescently enchanting. You might have heard of my first novel, Save Me the Waltz, which was published in 1932. If you happen upon a collection of my works, you’ll likely also come across a great deal of letters and diary entries, as well as a dozen short stories and a second (unfinished) novel. I’ll leave you with a quote from my diary that I’m rather partial to:
I am really only myself when I'm somebody else whom I have endowed with these wonderful qualities from my imagination
I’m impossibly delighted to be here and do hope we all learn something from each other.
Until then darlings,
Zelda Fitzgerald
Hello, my name is Sherman Alexie. I grew on up on an Indian reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. I spent most of my childhood reading due to being sick constantly. I left the reservation to pursue my education, but I ended up abusing alcohol.
ReplyDeleteLater I transferred to Washington State University and that is where my love for writing grew. I wrote poems and short fiction. I got published in a magazine and this gave me incentive to stop drinking and ever since I have been sober.
I write short stories and poems about the struggles Natives face on reservations such as: poverty, despair, and alcoholism. I write from the perspective of Natives to display the struggle we go through; both internally and externally.
My thoughts on writing: "If I wasn't writing I'd be washing my hands all the time."
Also was born on October 7, 1966.
DeleteKnowing that I have a heavy heart, I must start to introduce myself. I was born Katherine O’Flaherty. Why, otherwise known as Kate Chopin. I awoke into this world in St. Louis, Missouri on February 8, 1850. I now lie asleep in the shadows of the Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri. This has been my current residence since 1904.
ReplyDeleteBorn into a wealthy family my father died when I was young. From then on I was raised by my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, who were three strong-minded widows. My life path was rather conventional. I was the housewife to Oscar Chopin, bearing six children until his untimely death. This unforeseen circumstances altered the course of my life. With tragedy comes beauty since it was the reason I began to write. My family helped to support me as my own resources dwindled. That was until my writing gradually became an economic necessity.
Guy de Maupassant, a French short story author was my inspiration as I wrote to expose the Creole culture that supplied material for my own fiction.
In the late 1880s my stories and sketches began to appear in magazines, and my first novel, “At Fault,” was published soon after. Drawing upon Creole society of my married life, I gained national recognition during the 1890s, and I was deemed an exemplar of the local-color movement, which focused on characters, dialect, customs, and other cultural features.
I suppose I should introduce myself. I was born Mary Flannery O'Connor, though I tend to drop that first part. I was born in beautiful Savannah Georgia on August 3rd of 1925.
ReplyDeleteI had quite the spectacle of a childhood. My father was a real estate agent so my mother and I were quite well off. I became a sort of public figure at age six when some nice newsmen filmed me and my chicken. I had taught it to walk backwards, and people all across the country gobbled it up. We moved to Milledgeville, where I mostly stayed until my untimely fate. My father, however, met his fate first, pretty quick after we had moved there. My mother and I stayed there, where I would do art in both my high school and college newspapers.
This led me into writing, where I was blessed enough to go to the one and only Iowa Writers' Workshop where I studied journalism. I met all kinds of famous writers, including the great Andrew Lytle. Andrew was a staunch supporter of my work, publishing my fiction in his newspaper and guiding me in the process of writing my very first novel, Wise Blood! However, by the time I had finished this book, I had been diagnosed with a nasty disease called lupus, which forced me to go back to Milledgeville for good.
A word that always bookends my writing is "grotesque." This adjective almost always comes from Northern folk who can't hide their repulsion for Southern culture. That's really what I write about, in a style of realism I formed from my own Catholicism. I make no mends exposing the effects of racism and poverty on my characters. That may make some uncomfortable, but I feel the need to be honest in my works.
Good evening fellow writers, I am Henry Rene Albert Guy de Maupassant in full but you may refer to me as Guy for that is all I truly am. A Frenchman, I was born August 5, 1850 and sadly am no longer alive in the flesh. I passed before the age of 43 in a mental institution, which I’d prefer not to speak about at this moment. Surrounded by friends and colleagues, I do not wish to bring the mood down with my draining tales of personal grief and French high society.
ReplyDeleteMy parents separated when I was a boy, but I was never without. I received an education from the church but decided to pursue other avenues. I abandoned studying to law to become a soldier in the Franco-German War. Post-war, I continued working as a lawyer but did not care much for bureaucracy. My dear mother knew someone who knew someone who knew Gustave Flaubert, much like the seven degrees of Kevin Bacon only Flaubert was a literary artist who became my mentor. He passed much too soon and was like a father to me. May his soul rest peacefully.
I published my first two works under a pseudonym but didn’t quite stick to this unnamed business. One of my best received works was “Boule de suif.” I have heard my work described as being part of “naturalist literature.” My work is realistic in that humans can be disgraceful creatures and crave a kind of power, but irony always wins the day, teaching my characters about struggling against their fate. It’s not all so negative. I like women, especially prostitutes, and I think someone ought to hold a mirror up to French high society. I don’t have a mirror, but at least I have a pen.
Hello everyone. My name is Roald Dahl and I was born on September 13, 1916. I passed away on November 23, 1990. I grew up in the United Kingdom, and both of my parents are from Norway. My sisters and I both learned Norwegian as our first language. I had 3 sisters named Astri, Alfhild, and Else. My sister Astri died when she was seven years old from appendicitis. A few weeks later my father died from pneumonia as well. I never cared much for school. The teachers were horrible, and gave out cruel punishments. I was also told that I was not a good writer by one of my English teachers. After school I fought in World War II as a fighter pilot.
ReplyDeleteI used real life experiences that I had, and put them in my writing. I always wanted to make different types of chocolate, and that is where the inspiration for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory came from. My first published writing was titled, A Piece of Cake, and it was inspired by a meeting with C.S. Forester. The story is about my my experiences during the war. A lot of what I have written is children's literature. I have written some adult literature though, such as A Piece of Cake and The Smokers. Most of my children's stories are told from a child's point of view where an evil adult is involved.
I have enjoyed talking with you all. I hope to speak with you again soon.
Roald Dahl
Hello, my name is Kuzao Ishiguro. I was born on November 8, 1954 in Nagasaki Japan. When I was five years old I moved to England with my parents. This happened after my father was invited to move there by the National Institute of Oceanography, to help participate in research.
ReplyDeleteBecause of this, I would say that my childhood was very distinct. My parents didn't know how long they would stay in the UK, and they felt it necessary to keep me in touch with Japanese values. English was not a language that spoken through my house, we all spoke Japanese to each other. And I think that this has had a very interesting affect on my life, it has given me a unique perspective of the world. I'm not entirely Japanese, and I'm not entirely English, I'm a sort of blend of the two.
But, back on subject, After I finished my schooling in Surrey, I took a gap year travelled across North America, the United States and Canada to be specific. It was after this period, when I went back to the UK to attend the University of Kent in Canterbury, that I really began to begin writing. Because of my upbringing I began to write stories set in Japan. Though, the Japan I wrote about wasn't the real Japan, as I had never been there, at the time. It was an imaginary Japan, Japan as I thought it was, based off of these stories my parents told me and a childhood imagination of what it was like.
Though, now I've moved on from writing about that other part of me, and now concentrate mainly on works that stir human emotion. Works that show our connection to each other and to the world around us. Some may call me a genre author, some of the setting for my novels including a dystopian future and a magical past Britain. But, I don't think that that's the case. Especially in these times, the line between serious fiction and genre fiction is breaking down. Though, I've never agreed with those distinctions to begin with. I'm a firm believer that those nice little boxes have been made by the book industry, or the movie industry, in order to better market their books, or films. But, as I mentioned previously, these lines are very quickly crashing into each other and becoming and intermingling with each other. So, I wouldn't call my work genre work by any means, nor would I exactly call it serious fiction. I think my work lies in the sort of middle, undefinable, ground of literature where so many novels are finding themselves anymore.
ReplyDeleteHello. My name is Flannery O’Connor.
I was born March 25th, in 1925. I died in 1964, August 3rd. I had been in a coma for three days due to my recurring battle with lupus, a disease that has plagued me since my time boarding with Sally and Robert Fitzgerald in Ridgefield around the 1950s.
I was born in Savannah, and I started schooling in the local church’s parochial school. In 1938, my family picked up and moved to Milledgeville. There I continued school at the Peabody Laboratory School. I later attended Georgia State College for Women in their accelerated three-year program.
My first big job in that field began during my time as an editor for the college literary magazine, Corinthian. And, as the campus cartoonist, an unofficial job for the campus newspaper. Even did some for the yearbooks and for pieces in the Corinthian.
A few of the poems and essays that went into the Corinthian were my own.
I’m told one of my best novels was "Wise Blood". It was one of the first novels I won an award on. The Rinehart-Iowa Fiction Award. Many of my works are collections of short stories, books like "Everything that Rises Must Converge", and "A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories" are collections of short stories.
I am a person who needs no introduction, but I will deign you with one anyway. I am Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, born October 16th, 1854 (if you want gift ideas, just make sure its expensive and beautiful). I may have died in the 1900s, but that hasn't stopped me. My parents are kind of important themselves, with my father a knighted philanthropist oto-ophthalmologist, and my mother a talented poet herself. It is thank to my mother that I began down the path of understanding the beautiful pleasure in life and in the classics. ( I also have a brother named Willie, but he is far from as exciting as I am.)
ReplyDeleteGrowing up, I was simultaneously a model and rebellious student, a delicate line that I managed to walk with ease. It is not my fault that learning about the classics in school is not quite as exciting as actually seeing them in Greece, it was totally reasonable for me to be 3 weeks late. However, it is thanks to school that I was able to have my eyes opened up to the truth of the world in Aestheticism by Walter Pater and John Ruskin. Art for Arts sake, as we aesthetes say.
You might know me from such hit plays such as "The Importance of Being Earnest", or "The Picture of Dorian Gray" or "A Woman of No Importance". They are truly beautiful and meaningful plays, if you haven't seen them you absolutely should! Or maybe you know me as editor and chief driving force behind the evolution of the feminine magazine in "The Woman's World." I also have an amazing book of poems called "Poems." If you want a copy, just let me know.
My name is Shirley Jackson. I was born December 14, 1916 and died August 8, 1965. Between then I lived my life as a practicing amateur witch.
ReplyDeleteI grew up with conservative, country-club parents. My mother told me I was the product of a failed abortion and often lectured me about my bad hair, my weight, and my willful refusal to cultivate feminine charm. When I was growing up I thought no one was as lonely as I was, and my writing dealt mostly with loneliness. The world is cruel and foolish and afraid of all those who are different.
I left my mother for a man who treated me just as well. Stanley Edgar Hymen and I met at Syracuse University. He sought me out after reading "Janice," my first published story, in the college magazine. Stanley seemed to understand me through the anxiety and depression I felt in my life. He believed in me as a writer. He often slept with other women, and would tell me, good-naturedly, about his sexual adventures. I married him.
I was miserable most of the time. I grew reliant on alcohol, tranquilizers, and amphetamines. I was expected to be a good housewife, though Stanley encouraged my writing because the money kept our family afloat. In addition to the cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and child-rearing, I wrote 1000 words every day without fail. When my career eclipsed that of Stanley's, he would tell our friends that I was a gifted idiot who wrote my stories in a trance and had to take it to him when I finished so he could explain it to me. I also received my income in the form of allowances from him whenever he saw fit. Often I would fantasize about divorce. Once I wrote Stanley a six page letter about why I will divorce him. I drew cartoons in which I would feed him entrails or sneak up behind him with a hatchet. I could never go through with it.
You probably know me best for my short story, "The Lottery." My writing is often about lonely women living in miserable families or in claustrophobic communites. "I wrote of neuroses and fear and I think all my books laid end to end would be one long documentation of anxiety," as I once said. The vision of a happy life is nothing more than an illusion.
I did, however, try a tonal change in my writing. I began writing a new novel--a funny, happy novel--and wrote 75 pages before dying. I was 48 years old.
Good afternoon. My name is Margaret Atwood. It is from the old English “wode,” meaning, of course, the woods, so, at the woods, or, in the woods. I believe it highly relevant, as I was a child growing up in the northern woods of Canada. I was born in Ottawa in 1939. I am very much alive—a little slower, and creaky here and there, but still upright. I was recently at your Emmy awards ceremony because the show that was based on my book, The Handmaid’s Tale, won the award for the best series—or, drama series. I never intended it to be a prediction of the country’s direction, but a comment on where we were back in the 1980s. I do believe this rise of Donald Trump contributed to the reemergence of the book’s popularity.
ReplyDeleteBut, to answer your question, growing up, for me, was very different. My father was a scientist conducting research on the insects of the backwoods so much of my early childhood was spent out there, away from any city. I saw probably three movies before I was 12. I had books though, plenty, all sorts. Scientific journals, biological textbooks, fantasy novels, folktales, everything. I was never told to stop reading. Maybe to set the table, but never to stop because I wasn’t old enough, or smart enough.
I wrote as early as I knew how—poems, plays, many things. I was 16 and thought, well, I may be able to do this as a career. I was never told I couldn’t because I was a girl. We didn’t have that in Canada during my generation. It was the generation before us that got that, and it was the American women who got that. We also didn’t go to college to meet a man and settle down, we still went to provide an income for ourselves. I think my parents, though, wanted me to be a botanist. They thought I’d make a great botanist. So, if I had, I’d be making your potatoes glow in the dark. But instead I wanted to write, and tell stories, and make, at least partly, make some sense of things. I mentioned earlier that I grew up outside of society, and so, I didn’t see social behaviors as instinctive but anthropological. “Why do they do that,” instead of, “That is what they do.” I’ve explored that a lot in anything I’ve written.
I’ve written a great deal now. I have lost all track of the collection of things I’ve written. I’ve worked on books, short fiction, non-fiction, poetry—some people even took enough interest to make my stories into the comic books and cinema. Of course, you know The Handmaid’s Tale. I think MaddAddam is something I’m most known for. It’s a simultaneal, not a sequel, or a prequal. It all takes place at once like three concentric rings.
Hello fellow writers. My name is Stephen King. I was born in 1947, so I am currently 70 years old. But don’t tell anyone that. I was born in the wonderful land of Portland, Maine, but I moved around a lot in my childhood. I guess one could say that this made my childhood interesting.
ReplyDeleteMy mother is the one who raise my brother and I throughout my childhood because my father left us when I was 2 years old. After that, we moved around from Fort Wayne, Indiana to Stratford, Connecticut to be close to family. When I was about 11 years old, we made our way back to my birth state and allowed our roots to anchor there. My family didn’t have much money while I was growing up since my mother didn’t really have a stable or well-paying job. We mostly depending on the family for financial support. It was the least they could do since they pushed my mother into playing nurse her elderly parents. Once they passed, my mother was able to find good work.
I became inspired to write at a young age. I remember vividly the very moment where I decided to be a writer. I was cleaning out the attic with my brother and found a collection of short stories by H.P Lovecraft. From then on, I was hooked. As a kid, I would dabble in writing every once in a while and submit pieces, terrible pieces I might add, to magazines and comics that accepted and published amateur stories. I couldn’t tell you how many rejections I received. But that never stopped me. Everyone needs a little rejection in their life to show them how to make their writing better.
I guess you could say that my first job as a writer was for my brother’s newspaper, Dave’s Rag. In high school, I wrote fun stories for my friend’s newspaper, The Village Vomit. The first time I ever got officially published in a magazine was when I was 18. That moment is where most people say my writing career started. The vast majority of my work is in the horror and fantasy genre and are original stories, but some of them are my own spin on classic stories such as Dracula. I’d like to believe that the reason why my writing has gotten the praise that it has is because of the dynamic characters I create that take charge of the stories and become relatable for a lot of people. I also like to use metaphors in my writing, the most notable is the extended metaphor that I hope is evident in my book The Green Mile.
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ReplyDeleteGreetings All,
ReplyDeleteI am playwright and author James Baldwin. I was born August 2nd 1924 in Harlem and I passed away from stomach cancer in December 1987. Growing up my mother took me away from my biological father to escape his drug problem and she remarried a preacher who was much harder on me than he was on the eight other children he fathered with my mother. I showed my intelligence at a young age and for a while it got me a lot of negative attention. By my pubescence I had discovered my knack for writing and started documenting much of what happened to me daily, notably the racist harassment I received regularly from police officers.
When I discovered my talent for writing in school I began writing essays constantly. Some of these early efforts made it into school magazines through out my years in middle and high school. My education was a struggle because I knew I was black, of course, but I also knew I was smart. I didn't know how I would use my mind, or even if I could, but that was the only thing I had to use. A very important force in my life was my teacher who saw something in me and would take me out to plays and was responsible for a large part of my knowledge of cultures outside my own.
I got out of America as soon as I was able and spent a good portion of my life abroad. And while my travels kept me away from my home country, my writing never lost the focus on the black man’s experience in white America. My body of work is expansive and includes many novels, essays, speeches, and plays that embody these experiences and highlight a theme of brotherhood. I spent a good deal of time and effort working to expand the views of closed-minded people and while I know it’s futile to hope I changed them all, I know for a fact that many were impacted by my words and changed for the better.
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ReplyDeleteHello, I'm Margaret Atwood, I was born in Ottawa, Canada on November 18th 1939. I am 77 (soon to be 78) years old.
ReplyDeleteI traveled a lot when I was a young child because my father was an etymologist. On long road trips away from school and distractions I developed an affinity for books that quickly developed into a life-long love affair and profession. I first discovered I wanted to write professionally when I was 16 and I have gone on to become quite the prolific writer.
A lot of my work centers on a feminist narrative with female leading roles that are in some way oppressed by an overbearing patriarchy.
Hello, everyone. My name is Roald Dahl. I was born in Wales, September 13, 1916, and I died on the 23rd of November, 1990—ripe, old age of 74. I could’ve done better, couldn’t I? Well, I was born to Norwegian parents, along with my three sisters, Astri, Alfhild, and Else—so our first language, in fact, was not English, but Norwegian. There was a chance for us to move back to Norway after Astri died of appendicitis and my father died of pneumonia, but we remained in Wales because my father believed that a British education was the best kind of education his children should have. I was then transferred to boarding school, St. Peter’s, it was called—a bit south of Bristol—and… I had a terrible time. I was terribly unhappy, but I never told my mother that. I never told her how unhappy I was, but I became terribly homesick, so I would write letters to her often. It was only after she died that… I discovered she’d kept every one of my letters I’d sent her. What a beautiful woman.
ReplyDeleteNow, the second school I attended was in Derbyshire—Repton School, an equally terrible environment, even more so, in fact. The older boys exploited the younger boys and would make them their personal slaves, and almost frequently, we were subjected to corporeal punishments and violent beatings—but I’ll tell you one good thing that came of that place. Cadbury, the chocolate company, would send us chocolates to test their flavors, and this became the inspiration for my children’s book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Now, the Second World War comes around, and as any many would, I enlist for the RAF—the Royal Air Force, during which I became injured. Later, I would become an intelligence officer and work for the British SRS after the war, but by no means was I a spy. That’s an ugly word—but you know what came out of that war? The Gremlins, and it was very lucky to be published 1943, which was bought by Walt Disney. I sent a copy to Eleanor Roosevelt, who read it to her grandchildren, and they loved it, so I was invited to the White House to meet with the Roosevelt family, and we had a lovely time.
My writing comes from experiences and bit and pieces of my life. My first published work, actually, was inspired by a meeting with C.S. Forester, and it was entitled A Piece of Cake, but it was published by The Saturday Evening Post as Shot Down Over Libya. The story depicts some of my wartime experiences and adventures. I wrote many stories—novels, horrors, mystery, fantasy, all kinds—but it was the children’s book that people loved, that people really connected with. You have books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, Fantastic Mr. Fox—and many more, many more. I’ve been asked if I chose children’s books because they’re easier to write. The answer is no. Definitely not. If anything, children’s books are the most difficult kind of stories of all. There’s no question about it. Children's books are far harder to write than any other kind of book, but they are the most important. And I believe they are the hardest books to write because everyone has a go at children’s book; everyone's written one—and an example is Graham Greene, a successful novelist. He’s done four children’s books, and yet they didn’t succeed. Children’s books are difficult to write and to get recognition, but they MUST be written for the children out there who NEED them.
Well, this was a lovely discussion, and I hope to see more of you all within the upcoming discussions.
Yours sincerely,
Roald Dahl
Good evening Everyone, I’m sorry I'm late but you know that we're never on time. My name is Zuwena Packer. IThink y'all would better know me as ZZ Packer. I was born on January 12, 1973, up in Chicago. I’m still alive in well. I actually grew up in Atlanta Georgia.
ReplyDeleteSo the first thing that people usually ask me is how I got my name, so to spare you’re the trouble I’ll tell you. You see in my family everyone has a nickname. My sisters nickname is actually Baby. Well when I was growing up my uncles would always call me ZZ even before I could speak. So that nickname just stuck with me. I became so accustomed to the name I thought it was actually name for many years until my mom told me my actual name which is Zuwena.
So here’s another story about me and writing. When I was young I was actually into robots. I liked putting little robots together and seeing if they could clean the room even though it never worked. So when I was deciding a major for college I picked engineering because I thought it would be a good career to go into. Except when I got to Yale I noticed how much time and effort it took for me to even keep my grade above a C in those classes. Even though if I had an English paper to write, I could write it within minutes and get a good grade. So around my Jr year I decided to switch majors to English and focus on writing.
So when it comes to my type of work it can be difficult craft because essentially you taking the point of View of the people who don’t always win. Because when it comes to short stories they always start with a main character walking around thinking or doing something, but in most cases the reader will think the main character is white. So in my work I try to erase that assumption from the very beginning and that can require a little bit more work than usual.
I don’t like personal questions.
ReplyDeleteMy name is William Faulkner. I was born in 1897 in good ol’ Mississippi. I’m currently in this strange period of my life where I never run out of whiskey and I never need to sleep. I live the same day over and over and over again--apparently this means I’m dead. However, before I get to that, I assume I should give you a little backstory on myself. My father was a conductor on a railroad built by my great-grandfather, Colonel William Faulkner. Before I could even remember anything, we moved to Oxford, where I lived out my childhood and teenage years. When I turned 21, I enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force, later moving on to study at the state university. I was able to get a job as a postmaster; temporarily, at least (I got fired for reading on the job).
Anywho, let’s get to the meat and potatoes. Writing was not my calling, originally. I’m a failed poet. I thought I would spew thoughtfully beautiful strings of words together and people would call it art. Instead, I ended up with “failure” stamped on my forehead, and a masochistic desire to do it all over again--except with novels. I think it worked out well.
In the end, there is no formula to my work. I write. I write and I keep writing, fueled by my tobacco, whiskey, and peace of environment. To write like me, you only need three things: experience, observation, and imagination. And working in a brothel for a short period of time might help, too.
To start off, my name is James Joyce. I was born in Rathgarl, Dublin, Ireland on the second of February in 1882. Unfortunately, after awakening from a coma from perforated ulcer surgery, I fell into my final rest on the thirteenth of January in 1941 in Zürich, Switzerland. I grew up in the town of Bray, which is about twelve miles outside of Dublin. We had moved there when I was seven. Soon after we made the move to Bray, I was attacked by a dog, the vicious beasts that they are. I was the eldest of ten siblings and baptized in the Catholic Church. Growing up Catholic, an aunt of mine informed me that thunderstorms were God making his wrath known. Naturally, I have been wary of this wrath ever since.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was nine, I wrote my first poem about the death of Charles Stewart Pernell after hearing from my father of how unfairly he was treated. My father had sent it off to the Vatican in protest of how the sides with the British. When I was twelve, my father was fired and started drinking more heavily. While at school, I started to join theater and literary circles. I wrote article reviews and plays for my peers. The protagonist of my work Ulysses was inspired by a friend of my father’s named Alfred Hunter, who helped me after a long night of drinking and a bit of a scuffle. The work is referred to as a “stream of conscious” piece. It follows a path similar to the Odyssey but with Leopold Bloom as our Ulysses and Ireland as his stage.
Hello my name is Edgar Allan Poe. I was born January 19th, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. Sadly I died at the age of 40 in Baltimore. My father left my mother and I a year after I was born and then my mother sadly passed away a year later. As an orphan I was taken in by John and Frances Allan although John and Frances never adopted me I still thought of them as family. Sadly John and I got into some arguments over some small debts I had staring our relationship.
ReplyDeleteI got into writing through Poetry. I started my career with the my first publication of poems Tamerlane and Other Poems. Sadly due to my debt and strained relationship with my foster parents I needed to find work quickly. So I decided to enlist in the U.S. military to make some money while still writing on the side.
One of my more popular tales would be "The Black Cat". This is a story about a man who suffers from alcoholism and has to live with the decisions he makes while intoxicated. In my story his alcoholism eventually leads him to insanity causing him to murder his wife. This is one of my more darker pieces, but this tale demonstrates the disease of alcoholism.
My name is Raymond Carver. Most of my friends call me Ray. I was born in '38 by the Columbia River in Oregon and lived in Yakima, Washington after that. I died when I was fifty years old of lung cancer. Too much smoking. I had thought it would be the drinking, but I quit when I was 40. So it wasn't that.
ReplyDeleteI didn't grow up writing. Mostly I worked doing lowbrow stuff--I worked as a janitor, a delivery guy, I worked in a sawmill, that sort of thing. It wasn't until after I'd been married for a few years I started writing. I was about 20, already had two kids, and I joined a community college. We had just moved to California to be near Maryanne's mother, and I got into a creative writing workshop with John Gardner. That changed everything.
In '61 I published a collection called "The Furious Seasons." I hate it now. I had been reading too much Faulkner. Next came a lot of moving to different schools and getting partway through a lot of different courses. John all the time was trimming and slashing, and my stories always becoming less and less. It helped me to focus on what was important.
Hello everyone, I am Michael Cunningham. I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on November 6th, 1952. I know, I know, I've become an old man. As a boy, I from Ohio to England for a bit, and then ended up in Pasadena, California when I was ten. Now I am living in New York, and could not picture being anywhere else. The hustle and bustle of the city life saves me from the hours of writing in solitude and makes me feel human, and I guess you could say, one with the world again, after being in my own.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't until college when I felt I wanted to be a writer. I think in order to want to write, you have to love to read and I did. It was actually Virginia Wolf, who inspired me to become a writer, I was fascinated by her work. 'Mrs. Dalloway' was a character that stayed with me, the first character and book that i felt so compelled to understand and thought the writing was to beautiful to miss. It was the turning point in my life, when reading became something more to me and that later, pushed my longing to write.
I based a character of my story, "The Hours" after my mother and showed her the book when it was complete. Something, she was not too proud of, but she was dying soon and the filming for "The Hours" was taking place. So, I had my mother sit on the couch with me, that we sat on growing up and watch the mere 20 minutes of film we had done and she reacted better this time. The movie resonated more with her and it was a moment I will hold onto for the rest of my life.
My work follows a lot of family life, and their are some gay characters and their struggles. Although I do not want to be confined to the limits of being a "gay writer" I do have gay characters. But you will never find a novel of mine, only consumed with gay characters. There will never be a world in which i right something, so defined by sexuality. I have made it apparent though, in my writing and in my speeches, that my story's are not defined by that aspect, it is merely just an idea or characteristic. The way I right is a directly reflection of my mind, going in and out of objective. Every writers work is entirely a reflection of their mind, how could it not be?
Hello there, my name is Kazuo Ishiguro. I was born on November 8th, 1954 and am very much still alive. I was born in Japan, but moved to England in 1960 when I was five years old with my parents and two siblings. I didn't return to Japan for a while after that, thirty to be exact, but I did set my first two novels in Japan.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I was raised in England, my Japanese upbringing has made me mix in terms of cultural background. I don't consider my style of writing to be distinctly Japanese. I earned my bachelors degree from the University of Kent in English and Philosophy in '78, and my Masters in Creative Writing in '80 from the University of East Anglia
Most of my stories are written in first person, and besides novels I have also written short stories, screenplays, and lyrics. Oh, and in 2017 I was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Good evening everyone. My name is Jack London but you obviously knew that. While I died quite a while ago, I was born first in in 1876 in San Francisco. I grew up poor and was sadly not able to finish my formal education. I took the surname of my step-father. I got into writing after multiple years of travelling during the depression. My body of work extends far beyond most of yours. I wrote "White Fang" but you probably know me for "The Call of The Wild". Alright. I need a drink.
ReplyDeletee.) some details about your body of work
Good evening,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Edgar Allen Poe. I was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. My parents are Elizabeth Arnold Poe and David Poe, Jr. My mother was a British actress, but unfortunately died of tuberculosis when I was three. I heard my father was an actor as well, but I did not know much from him as he left me and my mother early on. After the death of my mother, I was separated from my brother William and my sister Rosalie to live with John and Frances Valentine Allan, a successful tobacco merchant and his wife. They lived in Richmond, Virginia. I grew a very close bond with Mrs. Allan, but not with her husband. When I was thirteen, I began showing an interest in poetry, but Mr. Allan would have none of it and only wished I followed his business. Finding the business painfully boring, I past my time by writing poems on the back of Mr. Allan's business papers.
Attending the University of Virginia, money became an issue between me and my foster father. I did not receive enough funds for my education from him, and so I turned to gambling to cover the difference but ended up in debt. When I returned home, I came to find out that my neighbor, who was also my fiancée, engaged another. I moved to Boston wanting nothing more to do with Virginia.
In 1827, i joined the Army to then only learn that Mrs. Frances Allan was dying of tuberculosis. Sadly, by the time I returned back to Richmond, she had already passed. In an attempt to finally make peace with Mr. Allan, he helped me get an appointment to the US Military Academy at West Point. I excelled my classes, as I always have, but was told to leave for a year for "poor handling" of the duties that were given to me. While I was there, however, Mr. Allen thought it appropriate to remarry without my knowledge. After that he had cut ties with me.
My literary inspiration came from my beautiful wife, Virginia. We married in 1836, but it was only for a few short years until she too died of tuberculosis. I continued my work though my heart was broken.
In my life I have published three books and countless poems and short stories. I became a critic and referred to as "Father of the Detective Story." I have also won a literary prize in 1843 for my work "The Gold Bug," a suspense piece on codes and treasure.
(Priscilla Orta)
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ReplyDeleteHello my name is Nilanjana Sudheshna Lahiri, but you all probably know me as Jhumpa. I was born on July 11th, 1967 in London, England. I wasn’t born here, but I consider myself America. My family immigrated to the United States when I was two, but my parents are from West Bengal. My Bengali heritage has always been a large part of who I am and how I write. When I began kindergarten, my teachers couldn’t say my given name so they decided to call me by my pet name, Jhumpa.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up in Kingston, Rhode Island my father worked as a librarian at the university. He encouraged my love of literature and writing, while my mother made sure I never lost my cultural roots. After finishing grade school in Kingston, I received my B.A. in English literature from Barnard College. Then, I attended Boston University where I earned three masters degrees and my doctorate in Renaissance Studies.
For those of you familiar with my work, you know that my Bengali heritage plays a large role in my writing style and themes. My experience as a child shaped the story for “The Namesake” and my father played a large role in shaping characters for “Interpreter of Maladies”. I’m humbled and honored to have received a Pulitzer Prize for my stories and to be recognized as a New York Times bestselling author. I owe everything to my family.
Hello,
ReplyDeletemy name is Leslie Marmon Silko and I'm a Laguna Pueblo from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was born on March fifth in 1948. My heritage and the state I was born in has always been a significant part of my identity. It has also played a significant role in my writing throughout the years; I am known for my poems and essays on Native American subjects.
I grew up on the Laguna Pueblo reservation—received my early education there—so it only makes sense for me to be inspired by what I've seen and the traditions of my people. Storytelling is a big part of my Laguna Pueblo heritage.
I'm of mixed heritage so, my writing does also take on what it means to be in the middle of two cultures. For example, Ceremony—a book I published in 1997—was about Tayo a half-white and half-Pueblo man. Yellow Woman and Almanac of the Dead are two other books I've written that have a heavy focus on Native American subjects. It's what I know and what I enjoy to write about.
My name is Grace Paley, and it was a cold December morning on which I was born. It was a New York winter, December 11, 1922, and I was the third and final child for a wonderful Jewish couple making it the best they could in a New York ghetto. Not that it was worse than the dreaded old country; Europe. They would never forget the injustice of the pograms and prejudice they escaped in Ukraine. But New York wasn’t easy.
ReplyDeleteThe Great Depression was a dark mark on my childhood. I was a little urban tomboy and all around me a hard life was getting harder. One by one, the fathers of my friends came home one day announcing “The shop is closed.” Things were hard for my family too, of course, but we made off luckier than most. Those hungry nights, the repeated tragedy of eviction after eviction on my block, started my political itch. I was nine years old when I joined my first junior socialism political organization. That itch was never fully scratched.
I attended three colleges before, finally, finishing school. There is no doubt in my mind the most influential teacher I ever had was Mrs. W.H. Auden, who further fueled the flame of social equity in my heart. You could say it was because of her that I received the Lester B. Granger Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2006. I would die a year a later. Before beginning my double decade teaching career, my first collection of short stories The Little Disturbances of Man was published in 1959. It puttered along quietly, not receiving a great deal of attention in its day, but where it was reviewed it was well received.
After the nominal success of Little Disturbances, my publisher insisted I used my momentum to publish a novel. My second collection of short stories, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, was published in 1974 instead. Pressing on, my final collection, Later the Same Day, completed my trilogy, and all three were published together in an anthology. Along with several collections of poetry and assorted essays, these are my library, my completed works. Women’s issues and social injustice was always a core tenant of my writing. I’m proud to say I not only wrote but wrote about something.
Hello all, I am John Cheever. I was born May 27, 1912 and I grew up in Wollaston, a suburb of Quincy, Massachusetts. My experience growing up in an American suburb in the twenties was like watching a beautiful house collapse over time. The scaffolding gives way to gravity and the blue paint of the exterior chips from the wind and summer thunderstorms. The Depression arrived early for my family. My dad lost his shoe store due to the failing shoe industry and his mind to drink. My mother had to open a gift shop to support us, which only cemented the shame I felt for my family. I began writing short stories as a teenager to cope with falling status and financial troubles. I wrote about contradictions. Characters whose lives are fortified by wealth and comfort but impoverished of the necessary qualities for long-term happiness, like humility and self-awareness. I wrote about crumbling marriages based off the deteriorating marriage of my own parents. I failed out of high school due to poor grades, which meant nothing more to me than a burden off my shoulders. When I was twenty the beautiful Victorian house I grew up in was foreclosed upon and my parents divorced.
ReplyDeleteTwo years later I was accepted into Yaddo’s Artist Colony in New York. Over the few next decades, with the help of living among a group of fine young writers like me, I honed my talent and got several of my stories published in magazines. The short story that guaranteed the rise in my career was “The Enormous Radio.” My first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, was published in 1957, and the sequel, The Wapshot Scandal, in lauded by critics as my crowning achievement. In my career, I won a Guggenheim Fellowship, I taught at Boston University, and my short stories appeared regularly in The New Yorker. I made enough money to buy another beautiful old house for my children and wife.
The topics of my stories remained centered on the thin façade of American suburbia. The ordinary lives of middle class people, marred by events that reveal the flaws in character or in the relationships between characters. The inciting incident may be as simple as a wife cheating on her husband or as mythical as a radio that can tap into the secret conversations of other families. But I don’t give a toss about plot. What I am interested in is the characters’ reactions and potential self-realization. My stories have retained the same style and subject matter, it is because my life followed a similar path to my father’s. My career remained steady but I inherited my father’s drinking addiction. My marriage became a tug-of-war and I struggled to keep my closeted desires quelled. I died on June 18, 1982 at age seventy from renal cancer.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. I was born on January 29, 1860. My grandfather was a serf, and when I was one year old, in 1861, Russia’s serfs were freed. This topic plays a role in many of my works because it is close to my heart.
I died on July 15th, 1904, in Germany, so as you must realize, I am no longer living. I suppose you could call me a witty man. My last words were, “I haven't had champagne for a long time." I said this because in Germany, when a doctor knew a patient was not going to survive, that patient would often be offered a glass of champagne.
I am the third of six siblings. My father was a grocer, and also a painter, but his moods were quick to change and he was abusive. In 1875, my father took my family to Moscow to escape, for he had gone bankrupt, while I stayed behind in Taganrog to finish my studies. When I joined my family in Moscow, I entered medical school, and I also began working as a comic writer, producing anecdotes for comedic journals, to help support my family. Over time, I began experimenting with more serious bodies of work, for the human experience, and all the hardships that come with it, are worth exploring. In 1888, I was published in a respected literary review called, Severny vestnik, or Northern Herald in English. My story, “Steppe,” is about the journey to Ukraine form a child’s perspective, and with this story, I moved on from writing exclusively comedy. Instead, there are elements of comedy in my later works, but it is more subtle. I wrote my stories and plays in the genre of realism, and wrote 14 plays, and over 200 short stories. I purchased an estate not too far from Moscow in the country, where my parents and sister Mariya would also live. I stayed here for around six years. In my stories, I often explored village life, but did not sugar coat what it was like. I wrote some of my best short stories during this time in the country, for instance, “The Butterfly”, “Murder”, “Ariadne,” “The Black Monk,” “Murder,” and, “Neighbours.”
In my stories, I have mixed humor and poignancy to evoke the harsh realities of life. In the endings to my stories, I tend to avoid concrete conclusions. In life, we do not know what will happen next, and situations are rarely ended wrapped in a bow.
Leo Tolstoy said of me, “Of most importance was that he was always sincere, which is a great thing for a writer; and thanks to his sincerity Chekhov created new, totally new forms of writing."
-Kelsey McGary
DeleteHello, all! My name is Kate Chopin, and I come from St. Louis, Missouri. I was born Katherine O’Flaherty, of course, on February 8th, 1850 (though there is some speculation on that). I passed on August 22nd of 1904. My father was Irish and a very successful businessman. He passed when I was just 5 years old. My mother came from a well-off family of Frenchmen. After my father passed, the house was mostly us girls, all strong and smart. I met my Oscar when I was through studying at Academy of the Sacred Heart, and we married in 1870. We moved to Louisiana—New Orleans, in fact—and moved from city to city after Oscar’s business failed. During this time, I was often excluded from society since people found me peculiar and often too fancy for the area.
ReplyDeleteI first started writing published works in the late 1880s, and the rest was history. After my first poem “If It Might Be” in 1889, I caught the writing bug, it would seem. After my first ventures into writing poetry, I found myself more and more often drawn to prose. My hand drifted down the path towards short stories and, eventually, novels! In time, I took solace in my writings. I would host salons wherever Oscar and I lived in order to satisfy my thirst for words and art.
Many of my works were drawn from the observations, stories, or real-life events that happened to myself or people I knew. My stories like “Desiree’s Baby” and “Beyond the Bayou” were heavily reliant upon a setting and society that I was familiar with myself. The events that conspired in the stories were often plausible and believable in my own era. How could they not be? There are so many fascinating facets of everyday life that, though they seem tedious and unexciting to ourselves, are remarkable to others! Some say that The Awakening was inspired by affairs and rumors that circulated in my time, centered around myself and a family friend. The circumstances in “Ma’ame Pelagie” were not unheard of—places can fall to ruin after wars.
Hello, everyone. My name is Zora Neale Hurston. I was born on January 7th, 1891 and I am no longer around. I was born in Notasulga, Alabama before I moved to Florida, where I grew up. When I went to Barnard College, I conducted anthropological and ethnographic research and earned my associates degree in 1920 and my BA in 1928.
ReplyDeleteIn New York, I became a large part of what became the Harlem Renaissance with my short satires. I wrote in and helped produce powerful black magazines. I have published many short stories and novels since then, although my work has gone relatively unnoticed until a Ms. Alice Walker published "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" in the March 1975 issue of Ms. Magazine.
a.) name
b.) when you were born - if you are still alive or not.
c.) some information about growing up
d.) how you got into writing
e.) some details about your body of work
Hello,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. I was born on January 29, 1860. My grandfather was a serf, and when I was one year old, in 1861, Russia’s serfs were freed. This topic plays a role in many of my works.
I died on July 15th, 1904, in Germany, so as you must realize, I am no longer living. I suppose you could call me a witty man. My last words were, “I haven't had champagne for a long time." I said this because in Germany, when a doctor knew a patient was not going to survive, the patient would often be offered a glass of champagne.
I am the third of six siblings. My father was a grocer, and also a painter, but his moods were quick to change and he was abusive. In 1875, my father took my family to Moscow to escape, for he had gone bankrupt, while I stayed behind in Taganrog to finish my studies. When I joined my family in Moscow, I entered medical school, and I also began working as a comic writer, producing anecdotes for comedic journals, to help support my family. Over time, I began experimenting with more serious bodies of work, for the human experience, and all the hardships that come with it, are worth exploring. In 1888, I was published in a respected literary review called, Severny vestnik, or Northern Herald in English. My story, “Steppe,” is about the journey to Ukraine form a child’s perspective, and with this story, I moved on from writing exclusively comedy. Instead, there are elements of comedy in my later works, but it is more subtle. I wrote my stories and plays in the genre of realism. I purchased an estate not too far from Moscow in the country, where my parents and sister Mariya would also live. I stayed here for around six years. In my stories, I often explored village life, but did not sugar coat what it was like. I wrote some of my best short stories during this time in the country, for instance, “The Butterfly”, “Murder”, “Ariadne,” “The Black Monk,” “Murder,” and, “Neighbours.”
In my stories, I have mixed humor and poignancy to evoke the harsh realities of life. In the endings to my stories, I tend to avoid concrete conclusions. In life, we do not know what will happen next, and situations are rarely ended wrapped in a bow.
Leo Tolstoy said of me, “Of most importance was that he was always sincere, which is a great thing for a writer; and thanks to his sincerity Chekhov created new, totally new forms of writing."
Well hi everyone, my name is Aimee Bender, I have my PHD in creative writing and I am currently a professor at UCLA. I am most known for my writings such as “Girl With The Flammable Skirt” and “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake”. My birthday is June 28th, 1969- wow year and all, we’re really getting close here, huh? Well anyways, I grew up in the California area, and I think I got my love of writing and storytelling through my childhood. My sisters always had this way of storytelling, and my dad always had great stories as well but my Uncle was this really neat man. He was quite the character, a walking irony if you will. He was a high school coach but always had these stories that came across as “classic”. That is one thing I’ve really noticed, I don’t really see anyone as a classic story-teller but my Uncle was definitely as close as it got. Reading I would say was what mainly draw me in to storytelling, that’s a neat question though. I also really like to tell my stories from this child-like, adolescent view. I think it opens up this really emotional point in every person’s life where they’re coughing wanting to be treated as an adult but also coddled like children, adults without the responsibility. If I never had pursued a career in writing, my immediate second career path would be in education or psychology- there’s something so intriguing about the human mind.
ReplyDelete