A Word on Words; 3119; Shannon Ravenel

on dancing in the once again welcome to word on words news stories from the south and john romano welcome to world war your newish stories from the south two thousand and two year's best this is a wonderful collection the new stores will not not notice when downside that's not a nose where the nose is best but but it but the title song was wide as ambassadors center aisle am i used to edit as a series editor of the best american short stories and he's the main very nervous that will always you know would they really supposed to be the twenty best stories of the year so when we've cloned this book we put the best in a set of a subliminal subtitle so write intimate before we get inside the book let me just talk about you as a

general gave the thirty years i've heard office saying in that chair now talk about their work and most often about halfway through we get outside the book and into their heads low bit about what it takes right and that's fascinating is what we have not they would do very often is get inside the world of publishing on the world of editing except from the prism of the writer man and you know that sometimes skewered on their bad experiences with one of the bad experiences with one publisher and maybe they've shown up and down and we being interviewed nick been to the bookstore in the books and on the bookstore la but he is a chance i have to talk to you and an editor and a publisher and a person with a distinguished career has tried new york and then tribal spend a

long time with but nothing which means you started when you twirl but i mean i talk to me a little bit of fat this selection process i mean because it must involve a poring over manuscripts and deciding among them and some of the writers i know didn't distinguish and maybe that's a guide some current some more obscure and unknown well listen this collection are anthology is is a really a direct climb from best american shuster is it is now like ninety five years old maybe it's at its eighty seven years ago you'd worked on i worked on after fourteen years i was what was called the first series after which meant that i did all the preliminary reading and selected a number of stories for a guest editor to choose from choose twenty from our matches a hundred and twenty years she churches twenty and then we

made a list of the rest of the back end it's not manuscripts at mclean's collection from the very beginning was the fifth elections were made from published stories in journals magazines periodicals com so that there was a screening process it in the in the next hour and that's exactly what i do man and had a different forum best american and i do this exactly the same thing i have subscriptions to back not as many as we have the best american but i am we have a hundred and twenty subscriptions to magazines that published first in original short fiction written a short fiction and i waive those as they come out and i i have to admit it's incendiary stories from the sat they usually read enough of the story to see if it set aside if it's not even though it's wonderful i go on an acid make a selection from those magazine

published stories people shoot on your career you there and there was no phone for a decade tell me how gaunt when karen and today well algonquin was the brainchild of louis rubin who was my professor at hollins collins mary university and i graduated nineteen sixty and lewis said he should go to new york and get into publishing which i did and i ended up in boston staying your buddy here and i worked there phone plan and show i married and my husband hit me out to england and i say i give a bad job and amanda went to st louis and st louis has no publishing at all but very fortunately i am mifflin was looking for a narrative for best american so i started back in st louis and seventy seven and in nineteen eighty to i

guess lewis wrote me a letter and said that he was kid here was starting his own publishing has he was sick and tired of the way new york publishers did not paying any attention to news southern writers who didn't have agents of contacts and bad audiences can start his own well had lewis had any business since he would never die starring the public didn't even want to be a subsidized year not for profit president wanted it to be a wheel won easily but with no no no absolutely international distribution and all of that and we have absolutely not appear in a bomb but he would he went out and found investors and i found some investors and other people found investors while to sell the year national debt and i am innately with other staffers list of books i was in st louis louis was in chapel hill town

we've we were paid we didn't pay us alice furlaud and seven years as an atm i had to go to chapel hill i do you know fled the be all to get there but it was interesting that i must immediately there was a response to this not only in the south but also in europe and people will kind of interested and the idea was to publish a good book says lewis said arm and he was just determined that out people like his students joe mccall called being one of them would have a place to publish it in the beginning we just wanted to be a place to introduce writers and then if they could go on to bigger houses that was fine with him and then make any am they make any money since at our request first call is

you know you're saying that when we do that off options and said look you free to go well it's now lee kwai easy money wisely is crazy emotional as because as soon as you present some added to the public in that there is success we don't want them to take to really go anywhere else right so that quickly went by the boys a week we kept them is it's going out as an independent company for any two till eighty nine various weird distribution deals with other small publishers and they've been in eighteen and we had no money at all and we did not normal lose our writers and then we're below us so we were they encouraged us and we decided to put the company up for sale high end we did end the word carol lam and we had lots of calls we had dates will a thorough amazed and it boiled and a random hands and workman publishing company and workman publishing company is independent owned by single

person and his wife team carolyn mormon and we thought that was the better ice are nowhere whoa whoa polishes his amazing story a politically or a publishing which has gotten more constricted in terms of recognizing koreatown is virtually impossible for a new order to find a home in a new york publishing house without year if they get a new work here and there and then you find the owner's home loan business of cycling and recycling the job of fiction really repetitious an hour i'm really about love and i go in their plan and i caught manage junk fiction and thats thats better than john bonini away when you go flying out well that's what that's a wonderful story

that brings me to the question what is a solo writer and indeed all these all these stores have to do is so that's how i started actually be much more exclusive on an item and my original idea was that the writer would have to be from the set really from the set the native and i was quickly disabused of that because there is an interest and doesn't happen very often than the writers live around people move around and they're wonderful writers to come this way and i influenced by our region and white wonderfully about it from a different perspective so over the course of the years and that's eighteen and it's come to be all you have to do is set the story in the sand well i was under say the least to write is an ear hair who are from your one blues and italy have eight cds they

invariably yes she doesn't and i'm not sure whether that has to do it whereas the news i think it doesn't i'm sure yeah but they really did grow up in this that is earning her story is about coming back and having made a mistake that's right let's talk a little bit about the story the sum of those two sets recently are located in the couple a song but all of us from an honestly nice story is the first one in the collection and it's a story about a lady whose married and then i guess mr bin wu early twentieth century and shia was taken by her husband away from home and many many many years later she starts a long journey back and she gets way too yes she had found on a speedier way and cheese and cheese happened this week and what happened was her husband who want to take away from a people watcher and

circles and for many days says she felt she was very far away and abdullah stand she discovers that he tricked her and she's been quite close down could have seen are people in yet and it's an interesting it's a wonderful story and it's a it's based on i think an old tale om because the same story shows up around the morgan's one of his novels the almost exactly a sentence based on her they both say on an old tale from the man's they differ on exactly where it was supposed to have happened that it's he treats it in a way that's entirely new i think i mean he says that his influence in the story was that you know theater in japan the amazing that your eye around now that this like the short story of the end and it's always painful short story and then then you give a slow sketch about each often we don't get there isn't a way as

nelson settled after that that that tennessee is short story was influenced that in their lives ended in fifty to have severe well suppose you just tuned in to talk the show now know about her new book news stories from the south she's the editor of this more with anthology and russell banks out russell banks is a special writer at his age songwriters and hear unknown song russell buy time how about err i know that and new for our own live action and your low profile on that is not only written wonderful books but a couple of them than in the movie and an application now why he's had wonderful success has been very lucky and the outer banks as a short story in a very short very slow but it but he talks about how

he bought a house from listeners during a year and then he'd envisioned no good and the army use the money from the sale going across the country wanting up an absurdly goes looking on the ocean i'm wondering what the hell but at he puts them inside this deep resonance i well you tell where are you the way he told the story was that they drove all across the country get free themselves at last they were free to do whatever they wanted to they worked all their lives and now they want footloose and fancy free and they drove and drove and drove and they went a wonderful places and i believe they're working their way back east and from this trip and not really sure exactly where they would end up which didn't become a question until halfway through and they stop

in and to see that the outer banks of north carolina and the little dog that they had with them on a clip from the highest to one of the one of the few things they took with them is an old dog and he dies really happened as i'm right there at it and they have suddenly this high wore realization and recognition that they had no place to bury this because they don't have a home anymore and it's a i think it's a win sings lola and you know for people my age for it every time you know so the sound's for me and i think he comes up with a very clear it's a boy yes yes exactly right on the law that story i just it's wonderful that a lot of the things were talking about max do you okay he admitted you know

milling about doesn't it about using him to sell ads and so in the same tone on any sentence comes and goes to the you know the fancy grocery store says the max i think he's a great writer he knew where wine fabulous successful novel debbie and alan paton talk for many years and inspired many analyzing values or you know wherever i am and he's almost whimsical guy in person what can you tell me how old he could possibly be and i'm seventy five years old sea bottom everyone's dan was a long time ago and that was an unnamed every it first came out and another tidal another term i read it was nineteen sixty four and it was so next the recipe at our brain and he is going on seventy five and i tell

you i think us free but with this that way there's a good story really good story i was a story that was said to be fit to be non fiction as opposed to be and it was in the washington post magazine family main thing and the actor as for personal memoir and max read that story in iran and that's it that was a panel on what you got was a big ol store and a courtland that as it is fiction or it may be nonfiction san diego and is it so much fiction starts from what is real user uses like this short story out it's less or it's a great short stories we published a collection of them and it is split as ali attributes of them in the genre classic story structure and then and that in my book means it's fiction what about lucian of our mission of it

is not sad i'm certainly a barrel but soon they also losing you she gets a delicious story is about a couple who drive to a faith healer from the northeast is a tennessee year there's a lot that has a lot of nerve going and that if the reason i like it and i thought it was sitting in this book is that i had an epiphany and here i am she's this woman is driven to the faith healer by her divorce tears and on the way down this island this strip sad he would i think realizes that he always love karen is really sorry that she's dying and she's at anthony and sizes okay with that issue has emerged hofer that they feel of issues that kind of hard and then it's just some yarn they end up in a place in the south and it seemed to me that the region had a

lot to do with his discovery of his real feeling far and may be stretching a little bit but it is that the sad truth and down i don't know alameda dunes of the shamrock motel in debt and burton was a i mean nothing i think i would've had this kind of recognition driving know and probably i'm guessing from faith healers and we're yeah but this our question in my mind what really was the faith you're aware that she was well he finally knows he doesn't oversell your and she hands in that misconstrue it's nice when and where it is along every move and you know he really talks about you get as you get a sense of intimacy or her measure

it that i think is quote as we say southern i think he and that's a void that was my feeling and i thought that it was the kind of in the scene that he realized he hadn't had thrown tammany just i don't know it's m and we make it simple little say it but in fact that story's not lie ahead here it's very building the whale dives into human alianza says guard riders it really is and she was not a surprise that we one image and unhappy and she's see yourself things that that the region played a role in and she said i chose than unites chose to see for them to go to because i thought this one have another in another part of the country you know this is what she says about the story is falling prices than women she says it began as morris a lovable bummer the mobile

bastard i mean i am an artist but she redeems him yeah i'm a nurse and christian redemption is a sort of southern identity that's right and that and we recognize that there's more than a bit more quickly on the weather channel show no you must know what is a solar bulb cast somebody new right from the sad made you know one of the best stories i ever played in this collection was and i have a nanny i'm sure you've heard of abraham verdi's <unk> we know where it is in now a ladder and only one was here in ghana saying absolutely ma'am and i read the first story of his i ever and i didn't know who it was was in the new york and it was called lilacs and it was a badly a man was from myrtle beach south carolina and he had gotten himself the area with a genie was in a boston hospital and i said i don't care that it's not

actually in their lobbies forgotten early eighties the best story i've read about aids and a lamborghini is when i called him up he said as it were you really from a piece of wire stamps indian east indian but i was as a kid and ethiopia and then i got my medical degree in india and then you know i've been in boston and now i'm an eye on texas and i am he said i am thrilled and that you know says his continent and that first book my own country which is about being an elite soccer player you notice as he's a lawyer i really do yeah you know alice rivlin says that seven writing is kind of like sex you like your life you know it when you see billy can describe it so that we don't want to boil it down

to a couple questions how there are there are writers more that at least a couple who have received help from the nea in a crude moon nea grants have been controversial because of political controversy it and there are members of congress who like wiping out early in all the keys gotta keep selling wasn't very nice lower income above are we having having edited writers who benefited from the air just so you fat pigeon as you would think i'm i wasn't really helped create a reuters yes and edits help them not now is indirectly with grants but i have i've served on

nea panels and they also give money to something that is very much in that your house right is very much in that is they give money to get literary journals because that's where the writers start i and in many cases that's where the best fiction is being published because the big slick magazines that support themselves have cut way back way way back in new york and the atlantic ten very few others though a trove of art that they only magazines left that actually hate on rioters in and they've cut their fiction back because they say it doesn't sell magazines so there are perhaps a thousand literary magazines in this country and that without help from the nea another you know parts of federal and state arts councils they wouldn't exist and there wouldn't be any place and you read stories like the ones that are in here and so that i'm amal for the nea being supportive way only really a turn took and backgrounds of

riders in this collection the our writers workshop turns up in two or three cases live there reminds me that the spike the commercial crass commercialism sometimes that is part of one of our huge crowds new york publishing but it's it's not that that's not a knock on the organ that what worked for obama has taken publishing in this country which should be to create and encourage creativity but my dad's still there still he adds it's a half say has a bottom line and selenium are owned by corporations that require a profit and the people who worked with him know is still people only has an absolutely talk to me in the minute we have left out about the future of the creative writers well i don't think he can keep and

i'm not at all worried because i think oh why was i work with say they ride because they have to and demos where is an emmy award just keep those pages to themselves elise teach yeah like evil speech i know what guys are worth golf driving range he thinks well as picking up golf balls i mean you know what most fridays can support themselves on their writing this history i am and so ah but i don't think they're gonna quit and so i had no no worries about the future of writing in america i knew it the artist or caramel corn yes well we've been talking to show know about news stories of the south from the south it's been great to make use of what they've all of you have done so you know after world war ii he breathing it