This year’s theme was “Welcome to the 13th Floor.” The cover art titled Secret Tunnel of the Willow is by Amy Bates.
My flash fiction story “Dog Down the Stairs” was selected for the 2024 Nemadji Review, which is published by the University of Wisconsin-Superior. I’m so excited to be included in the Review because I graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Superior, a small but mighty force for liberal arts and education majors. Every time I walk onto the campus of my alma mater, happy memories flood my soul, and I feel as though I’m being hugged.
Last night the dedicated editorial staff of The Nemadji Review held a reading for the writers whose works appear in this year’s journal. What a delightful evening! Beautiful prose and poems were read by writers in a cozy and inviting auditorium filled with a supportive audience, followed by conversations with fellow writers while eating scrumptious treats. I had a brownie and a cookie!
I think I’m getting better at these readings. Before last night’s event, I read an essay at another journal launch in April. After I finished my five-minute reading and took my seat, I realized that I hadn’t had an “out of body” experience while reading. Before that, somewhere in the middle of a reading, fear would always take over, and I would become disconnected from the written word. I would no longer be able to put any emotion into the words because I would need all my energy to wade through my fear in order to finish reading. However, last night I did it again — I made it through my allotted reading time without having an “out of body” experience.
Maybe the brownie I ate before I read gave me courage. Or maybe I’ve come to realize the floor isn’t going to crack open and swallow me. Flying monkeys aren’t going to whisk me off stage. And my tenth-grade speech teacher isn’t going to present me with a grade.
I also think, because I keep reading in front of people, my flight or fight mode has relaxed. It’s decided there is no reason for concern. Best to save the adrenaline for real emergencies.
[To read my story click here, then scroll to page 94 of the journal.]
I forgot to have my friend take a photo of me reading. Perhaps that was a convenient-memory slip.
Photo: Max Youngquist, 2024 Instagram@maxyoungquist
My nephew took this picture. He said that at first he wasn’t very impressed with the photo, but after looking at it for a while, he started to think it wasn’t bad.
I fell in love with his photo from the moment I saw it. “This photo,” I told him, “is full of stories.”
Some photos capture the beauty of a bird on the wing, or a sunset over an ocean, or a flower in the breeze, or a Japanese tea set at rest on an oak table. Those photos can be works of art, and we love them for their composition, study of light, and subject matter, but they are not a story in themselves, though they may evoke one.
My nephew’s photo is a story — even more than that — it’s a collection of stories. “This” I said, “is the kind of a picture a photojournalist takes because he or she is telling a story about a place or event or people.” Then I told him about all the stories I saw in the photo.
My nephew is a wonderful photographer. I love his work. I love to listen to him talk about his digital and film cameras. He develops both black-and-white and color film. He speaks of camera settings, film speeds, and film brands. Focus, depth of field, and lighting. And I understand enough of it because I took art photography and photojournalism classes in college, enough of them to minor in photography, if I’d only been willing to take an art history class. I loved photography, but not enough to make it a passion or career. Today my camera phone is all I need. But my nephew’s eyes are lens, always framing a shot. He has developing fluid coursing through his veins. And like a true artist, he experiments.
And with this photo, he has inspired me. I’m composing a story set inside of this moment he captured.
Photograph as a collection of stories. Tales about inside and outside, darkness and light, illumination and shadow. Stories of three cars pointed toward different journeys, a bus releasing and corralling commuters. Glassed reflections recounting illusions, faded signs whispering of past triumphs and failures. Photo by Max Youngquist
[Max asked me to write a blurb about his photo to post on Instagram. What I wrote is in the photo’s caption. You can see Max’s work on Instagram @maxyoungquist]
[William Morrow, An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2022.]
What is this book about?
Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe is both a historical and coming-of-age novel. Set in 1999, the story follows four 12-year-old girls through a tumultuous summer of change. Set during the real-life demolition of Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes by the Chicago Housing Authority, most of the story takes place in or around building 4950, which will soon be torn down. Twelve-year-old Felicia “Fe Fe” Stevens lives in 4950, along with her mother and teenage brother. Fe Fe and her friends, Precious and Stacia, spend their days going to school, jumping rope, and hanging out. When Fe Fe befriends Tonya, a skinny, forlorn girl with a drug addicted mother, and invites her into their circle of friends, Precious and Stacia aren’t happy.
As the summer temperatures scorch their neighborhood, trouble brews and spills into the streets. Gang wars erupt and residents endure gang shootouts and indiscriminate police violence. Fe Fe’s brother, who has managed to avoid gang life, is wrongly arrested and taken to jail. As Tonya’s beauty becomes more apparent, she can’t escape the unwanted attention of older boys. When the dynamics of Fe Fe, Precious, and Stacia’s relationships change, Fe Fe faces difficult questions about friendship and self-preservation. And as demolition day nears, Fe Fe worries about where her family will be allowed to live.
What makes this book so good?
From the first page, Wolfe’s style of prose, story-telling skills, and well-rounded characters combine to create a gripping and powerful series of events that draws the reader in and holds them throughout the book. Wolfe’s characters face crucial moments in their lives, forcing them to make tough choices in an environment that offers few options. And as her novel unfolds readers come to understand that Wolfe’s characters are complex and evolving.
Fe Fe, who narrates the story, is an adult looking back at her twelve-year-old self and her summer of seismic shifts. Wolfe creates a compelling, believable, and seamless voice for Fe Fe, who tells us a pivotal story from her youth as an adult, but at the same time as if she were still that child. I loved this weaving of Fe Fe’s voice, both young and innocent, but at the same time layered with reflection and maturity. If you’re a writer, thinking about writing a book where a character looks back at an event from their childhood, Last Summer on State Street provides an excellent model for the technique.
Why is this book important?
Wolfe’s beautifully written novel illustrates the consequences of racism and segregation against African Americans. A gripping story, skillfully told in first-person POV by Fe Fe Stevens, Wolfe’s debut novel is filled with sadness and joy, broken dreams and hope. And most importantly, it’s a book that can start conversations and encourage understanding among diverse people. Wolfe’s novel tells the story of segregated neighborhoods, poverty, fear, violence, stripped opportunities, and forced displacement. We live in a political climate where some people want to sanitize history, supposedly to spare white people uncomfortableness. But books like Wolfe’s have a much greater power to build bridges of understanding, hopefully fostering amends and shattering stereotypes.
[PEN Open Book Award finalist; Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award winner; Stephen Curry Underrated Literati Book Club Pick; Named a Best Book of Summer by Good Housekeeping, Chicago Magazine, The St. Louis Post Dispatch, Chicago Tribune, Veranda, The Milwaukee Sentinel, Publisher’s Weekly, among others.]
When I posted my thoughts yesterday about the twelve Raymond Carver stories I liked, I discussed, from a craft standpoint, what I believe makes those stories so good.
Someone pointed out to me that some of Carver’s stories were heavily edited by his editor Gordon Lish. I was aware of that, having read about it a handful of years ago. But I made a decision to keep the Carver-Lish editing relationship out of the blog because I wanted to focus on what worked in those stories for me. I wanted to write about what I took away from those stories as far as craft. Also, I have no idea which stories on my list were written by Carver when Lish was his editor, and which stories were written by Carver after he stopped working with Lish. Or which stories might be printed as Carver originally wrote them.
I didn’t want to get into the conversation about Carver and Lish because that wasn’t the focus of my blog. But after thinking about it for a day, I should have made mention of the writer-editor relationship between Carver and Lish, so my readers could decide if they still wanted to read the stories. Because I knew about Carver and Lish’s working relationship before I decided to read the stories, I should have let my blog readers know. However, either way, whether a story on my list is solely written by Carver or one written by Carver then heavily edited by Lish, making it more of a collaboration, I still love these stories and admire their craft. And the stories stick to my ribs.
A friend of mine gave me a used copy of Where I’m Calling From: New and Selected Stories by Raymond Carver. She had picked up the book from the free shelves at our library, which is a section of books that have been donated by people who need to make room in their homes for more books. Anyone can come in, peruse those shelves, take what they want, and leave — no library card needed. People can keep the books, pass them along to friends, or donate them back to the library. Note: I’m keeping the copy of Carver’s short stories. My heirs can argue over who gets to inherit it.
My paperback edition of Carver’s stories was published in 1989 by Vintage Books: A Division of Random House. My particular copy has an intense black-and-white photo of Carver staring at his readers. The whites of Carver’s eyes are abnormally bright, suggesting an effect created by the photographer. Carver is neither smiling nor frowning, but looks like he could have done either after the shutter clicked. Every time I look at his photo, I wonder what he is thinking. This book is still in print, but the updated cover art isn’t nearly as interesting as Marion Ettlinger’s photograph of Carver, with its Mona Lisa vibe.
After my friend finished reading Carver’s book, she thought I’d like to read it. Sure, why not. I hadn’t remembered reading any of Carver’s work before. (Probably not the only gaping hole in my literary education. I still haven’t read a single Colleen Hoover novel or War and Peace.)
There is no way I’m going to take on reviewing Carver’s short story collection. Literary critics have done that. But having read the book, cover to cover, I feel compelled to share some thoughts.
If you write short stories, you might want to read Raymond Carver, not because you need to write like him, but because you will learn about craft from him. So here, and in no particular order, are random thoughts about Carver’s stories:
He writes great dialogue, conversations filled with irony, skepticism, avoidance, misunderstandings, and sarcasm — the way angry, unhappy, disillusioned, conflicted people talk.
He writes great first-person point of view narration. It’s not easy to create a character’s narrative voice that can reflect, ponder, and think about the past and the present without becoming oppressive or irritating. It’s a skill that when done right looks so easy, but when done wrong sounds like fingernails scratching on a chalkboard.
He creates characters who come to life, stirring up emotions of dread, disgust, helplessness, loss, confusion, regret, grief, boredom, uselessness, and addiction. Carver has been called a postmodernist and a minimalist. He writes about real life in a stark manner with bruised and broken characters, leaving readers to fill in between the lines, and he doesn’t provide tidy endings. But you don’t need to go all postmodernist to admire and learn from Carver’s character development.
I read Carver’s stories before bed. Some of his characters drank so much alcohol, I worried I would be hungover in the morning. They lit up one cigarette after another, filling ashtrays to overflowing. Occasionally, a joint gets passed around. The dulling of the senses is a motif in many of Carver’s stories, but it’s usually not the story. It’s an atmosphere created, one that made me psychosomatically nauseous as I read through a powerfully told, unsettling story.
I didn’t like all of Carver’s stories. To me, some of them were little more than a short conversation, and I felt something was missing. This was especially true when the dialogue pulled me in, making me want more of a story. Most of the stories I didn’t like were in the first part of the book, but I kept reading because it was Raymond Carver, who is considered one of the finest short story writers in American literature.
But I loved a lot of his stories, usually the longer ones, which were in the second half of his book. My favorites from this collection: “The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off”, “So Much Water So Close to Home”, “Careful”, “Where I’m Calling From”, “Chef’s House”, “Fever”, “Feathers”, “Cathedral”, “A Small Good Thing”, “Boxes”, “Elephant”, and “Blackbird Pie.”
Carver’s story titles throw subtle, understated jabs at the situations in his stories. The title “A Small Good Thing” nods to a sad irony in a tragic story. The title “Where I’m Calling From” is layered with multiple meanings, including its play on the phrase, where I’m coming from. The one-word title “Boxes” is brilliant in its ability to cover the physical and the metaphorical dimensions of a dysfunctional family.
Carver sometimes weaves absurdly unexpected events into the mundane. And they’re believable because Carver believes them. For example, in the story “Feathers” a city couple goes to dinner at a country couple’s house. The country couple have an ornery peacock that likes to come into the house at night, a plaster-of-Paris cast of repulsive teeth that decorates the top of their TV, and the ugliest baby one can imagine. My take-away: Don’t be afraid to throw curveballs in your story.
Even though some of Carver’s characters believe they are happy, they actually live vapid lives, teetering in the balance. So, when a complication occurs, their lives become complete crap, miring them in muck that will stick to them, even should they pull themselves out of the cesspool. The stories I liked best reveal a before, followed by a pivotal change, which lets loose a wrecking ball headed toward at least one of the characters. We don’t get to see the impact; we are left to imagine it.
Less is more. Carver’s stories say so much by not saying all of it. Every word counts for something, and he never nags. I’m reminded of Grandma’s advice: Put your jewelry on, then take one piece off. Or Marilyn Monroe’s advice: Don’t make your hairdo too perfect, or no one will notice the rest of you. You know, just “kill your little darlings.”
Of course, I looked up Carver’s own story. He died of lung cancer. He was an alcoholic, but found sobriety. He had a failed marriage, but found a second love. He died young, at 50, but he achieved a literary immortality.
A shout-out to my kind friend who handed me a collection of Carver’s stories and said, “I thought you might like to read these.” She was right.
And I recently discovered I won’t have to read War & Peace because PBS is airing it as a miniseries, starring James Norton, a dreamy British actor, who I came to adore while watching Grantchester. That means I have time to re-read David Copperfield and Huckleberry Finn then read Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and James by Percival Everett.
On St. Patrick’s Day, I drove two hours and ten minutes to Brainerd, Minnesota, to attend a book launch for Sister Lumberjack, Candace Simar’s newest historical novel. My daughter-in-law agreed to go with me, even though she hadn’t read any of Simar’s books yet. But she loves to read, so she’s always willing to do book things with me.
I was intrigued by the story and its characters. The year is 1893, Minnesota winter is approaching, and lumberjacks are returning to the camps. Solveig Rognaldson, sixty years old and recently widowed, hopes to hire on as a cook in a lumberjack camp. Cooks earn high wages, and she needs the money to pay the mortgage on her beloved farm, or the bank will repossess it. However, logging companies don’t hire women. Nels Jensen, a young man struggling with the drink, knows he needs to grow up. He plans to work in the camps again, but he discovers he has been blacklisted. Sister Magdalena, a young, atypical nun, sells hospital tickets to lumberjacks as a form of insurance, should they get injured and need medical care. These three people come to know one another at Starkweather Timber, a logging camp where nothing runs smoothly.
Fun fact: There was a real nun who lived in Minnesota and sold hospital tickets to lumberjacks. When Simar discovered this golden nugget, she was inspired to write her book, which she said is a fictionalized account of that nun. I have to say, the idea of a nun traveling from one logging camp to another, sometimes while wearing snowshoes, captured my imagination. I was all in for a book launch in Brainerd.
Does this make me a historical fiction groupie? Perhaps! Author Candace Simar couldn’t believe that my daughter-in-law and I traveled more than two hours to come to her book launch. Several times Simar asked, “You really came all that way for my book launch?”
Yep, we did. But I explained to Simar that my daughter-in-law and I also made a day of it. We went to Christmas Point, a large, lovely gift shop, where we had a tasty lunch. Then to kill more time, we went to Target. If any of the local bookstores had been open, we would have gone to one of them instead. But it was Sunday, and I’m guessing the booksellers were all at home reading.
So, how did I become a devoted Candace Simar fan? Well, historical fiction is one of my favorite genres, and I read Simar’s historical novel Shelterbelts, which is set in Minnesota at the end of World War II, and I loved it. The novel, set in a small town, follows a cast of interesting characters as they adjust to life after the end of the war. Simar’s dedication to research, and her ability to use that research to create realistic characters and settings, took me back in time, immersing me in a beautifully written, well-told story.
Because I attended Simar’s book launch, I was able to buy a copy of Sister Lumberjack a month early. Simar’s publisher printed a run of seventy-five books, which were offered for sale. After asking Simar to sign my copy of Shelterbelts, I bought Sister Lumberjack and had her sign that too.
Candace Simar, March 17, 2024
My daughter-in-law and I helped ourselves to cookies and punch, then settled in at a table to read. I handed my copy of Shelterbelts to my daughter-in-law, and I cracked open Sister Lumberjack. We read for a bit before a couple of other Simar fans asked if they could sit with us. By this time the room was crowded with people who had come to buy a book, have it signed, and hear Simar read. We had a nice chat with the women, but soon my daughter-in-law and I drifted back to our books. I was already hooked on Sister Lumberjack, and my daughter-in-law took my copy of Shelterbelts home with her.
In a packed room, filled with attentive fans, Simar read two passages from her book, one featuring Widow Solveig and the other featuring Sister Magdalena. When she finished, the audience saluted her with a well-deserved, hearty round of applause.
I’m on “Chapter 10” in Sister Lumberjack. Once again, Simar has transported me back in time. I’m performing farm chores with Solveig, squirming when Nels takes a job with an undertaker, laughing at Sister Magdalena’s mishaps in the kitchen. And I’m learning lumberjack lingo. Best of all, Simar’s novel Sister Lumberjack is every bit as good as Shelterbelts.
The John C. Gale Boardwalk, part of the Taiga Boardwalk built in autumn 2023
Last week I took my four grandkids to the Sax-Zim Bog in Toivola, Minnesota, appropriately located on Owl Avenue. (It’s a good place to see northern owls.) The drive from my house was one hour and four minutes. (Thank you, GPS.) The grandkids brought library books and their adventure bags, which are filled with postcards, maps, compasses, binoculars, auto bingo, bird books, and other adventuresome stuff. We weren’t one minute from my house when the three youngest grandkids took up an intense game of auto bingo, searching for cows, horses, ambulances, no parking signs, and billboards. However, by the time we were far enough out of the city to see cows and horses, the bingo game had blown over.
Of course, there is always one grandkid who wants to know: How far? How many more miles? Are we halfway there yet? Have you ever been here before?
We arrived at the bog’s parking lot about eleven o’clock. It was 52 degrees and sunny, with a slight breeze — perfect weather for walking through an old bog. But we were glad we’d worn sweatshirts over our T-shirts.
The Sax-Zim Welcome Center was closed, but we met a volunteer coming out of the building who looked like part of an illustration from a Jan Brett book. He kindly answered my questions about the trails because we wanted to walk on the new Taiga Boardwalk built last autumn.
Grandkids on the Taiga Boardwalk
Shortly after we started down the trail, a loud clattering commenced. I wondered, “What kind of bird is that?” Then I discovered two chattering squirrels chasing each other up and down tree trunks and across fallen logs at breakneck speeds like a pair of NASCAR racers. “Those are fox squirrels,” Michael, 10, said. “My grandma has them at her house.” His other grandparents live in rural central Minnesota. But, according to a post on the Friends of Sax-Zim Bog Facebook page, we most likely saw Red Squirrels. They are highly territorial, and one of them probably invaded the other’s space, which would explain their loud scolding sounds and serious chasing behavior. Whether fox squirrels or red squirrels, they were fun to watch.
As we walked through the bog’s forest, I thought about The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, a book I recently finished reading. I learned a lot about trees and forests. True forests are diverse and interconnected in an amazing cycle of life and death, filled with competitiveness and cooperation, and home to a large variety of insects, animals, and other plants. Forests grown for harvesting are nothing of the sort.
A tree near the end of its standing lifeClose up of same tree: the fungi have arrived
Walking along the trails of the bog, we saw different species of trees. New trees, only inches tall, grew under the branches of old trees. Unless the old tree dies, most, or perhaps all, of the baby trees we saw won’t make it to adulthood. Some standing trees looked nearly dead, waiting for their turn to fall to the forest floor. Tree trunks that had already fallen lay on the ground in different stages of decay, providing habitat for other creatures.
Steeped in tranquility, the breathless silence of the bog held no traffic or city noise. No planes droned overhead. Occasionally, the peaceful quiet was accompanied by the chirps and calls of birds and squirrels, which like the silence, belonged to the forest.
The Taiga Boardwalk loop is short, but it’s not meant for serious hiking. It’s a trail where visitors take their time, stopping to look for birds and animals who are masters at blending into the forest. When we finished the Taiga trail, we weren’t ready to leave the bog, so we walked a different, smaller loop. We still didn’t wanted to leave, so we walked the Taiga again.
On our second trip around the Taiga trail, Evan, 7, got down on his hands and knees, peered through the slats on the boardwalk, and said, “I see why they built this. There is water down there.” I’d told them the boardwalk was built to help keep people’s feet dry.
Charlie points at the common redpoll on the cover of his trail map. He said he just saw one, and he might have. Before we left the bog, another volunteer told us a redpoll had been spotted that morning.
We didn’t see any owls, but in addition to the red (or fox) squirrels, we saw chickadees, and Clara,12, spotted a black-back woodpecker.
After we finished walking the trails, my youngest grandson Charlie, 5, gave me a hug. “Do you know why I gave you a hug?” he asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “I gave you a hug because you brought me to this bog.” I think Charlie felt what I felt: a pervasive peacefulness. As I walked through the bog, I felt a sense of increasing serenity. In The Hidden Life of Trees, the author mentions studies that show people have reduced stress levels after walking through old-growth forests. I have no data to prove that is what happened to me, but I certainly felt calmer than when I’d arrived.
Holding our trail maps, Sax-Zim Bog calendars, and warm memories, we got in the van and buckled up. I was about to start the engine when Clara pointed out her window and said, “There’s a butterfly in the parking lot.”
The butterfly, a Compton Tortoiseshell, sunning itself before the pickup entered the lot.
Having recently finished reading Bicycling with Butterflies by Sara Dykman, I had to get out of the van and have a look. As I was snapping pictures of the butterfly, which wasn’t moving much, a red pickup truck pulled into the lot. The only open space for the truck to park happened to be where the butterfly was resting, and the driver wouldn’t have been able to see it. Squashed butterfly, I thought. I walked toward it, and it fluttered a few feet, but in the wrong direction. Coming from another angle, I walked toward it again, and it flew another few feet, but this time it landed out of harm’s way.
The red truck parked without crushing the butterfly. Perhaps it wouldn’t have needed me to save it. Maybe it wouldn’t have been run over, and it would have flown away from the truck instead of into it. But I’m glad I didn’t leave the butterfly’s destiny to fate.
The grandkids and I left the bog and headed back to the city. As I drove down the county roads, they flipped through their calendars, enjoying pictures of the beautiful wildlife who make their homes, for at least part of the year, at the Sax-Zim Bog.
They are gathered on pages 44 and 45, enjoying a nice two-page spread in the beautiful Pink Panther Magazine, which describes itself as “a celebration of women’s art and writing.” So appropriate because it’s filled with exquisite artwork, fiction, and poetry.
I reviewed three wonderful books: The Net Beneath Us by Carol Dunbar, An Obesity of Grief by Lynn Haraldson, and Finding the Bones by Nikki Kallio. Another fun bonus — my writing friend Kim Suhr has a short story, “Pay Phone,” in the same issue. Suhr is one of my favorite writers, and so it’s a kick to be with her in the same publication.
For me it’s an honor to be part of Pink Panther Magazine with all of the talented women featured, especially on International Women’s Day.
I recently finished a short story, and for the past few weeks, I’ve been reading and rereading it and sending it to my favorite readers for feedback. After minor revisions and edits, I think it’s done. I’m happy with the story now. But I almost ditched it because I’d spent months (on and off) trying to figure out how to write this particular story. As proof, I have multiple handwritten versions in a journal and several other attempts saved on my computer. None of those drafts were salvageable.
I had decided to use present tense and third-person point of view. But I couldn’t find a way into the story — each draft lacked a beating heart. The real problem? My third-person narrator desperately needed a voice, and I couldn’t find one. I kept putting the story aside and working on other writing. And I kept reading: fiction, nonfiction, and short stories.
It would be a short story written by Raymond Carver that gave me an idea.
Although, if you read the Carver story, you might not see its connection to my story because our styles and voices are so different, plus his story uses past tense and first-person point of view. So, what was it about the Carver story that inspired me? Narrative distance. Carver’s first-person narrator tells his story from the distance of years gone by, even though there are some closeups. As I read Carver’s story, I became giddy. A hundred-watt light bulb lit up over my head. I’d found a way to tell my story. I needed to keep my narrator at a distance.
I began my short story anew — on a blank page, without even a glance at the other drafts. I did keep the present tense and third-person point of view, but I created narrative distance. It worked. That distance gave my narrator a voice, which in turn gave my story a heartbeat.
And I’m grateful because something about the story wouldn’t let me go. It kept pleading, “Just give me one more chance.”
Experienced writers tell beginning writers to write, write, write. They also tell beginners to read, read, read. I used to think if I read while I was writing, I would end up writing like the author I was reading. But that just doesn’t happen. Instead, I’m inspired. I pay attention to how an author crafts her story, from sentence to paragraph, from beginning to end. And sometimes (thank you, Raymond Carver), I come across a technique that I can apply to something I’m currently writing.
Writing Near the Lake 