WIW Pubspeak–Thursday, July 19, 2007
Program 7:00-9:00 p.m., food and beverage orders from 6:30 p.m.
Irish Channel Pub
500 H Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20001
Wheelchair accessible, call (202) 216-0046
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown–Red, Yellow, and Green lines
Writing and Publishing the Literary Short Story
Kate Blackwell author of you won’t remember this: stories
Southern Methodist University Press, June 2007
Blackwell wrote the 12 stories in her new collection over a period of 20 years. She will talk about the challenges for a slow writer of surviving in a literary culture that prizes the fast and the new, and the rewards of taking your time. Some of the issues she will touch on are: How to keep writing when you aren’t publishing; when to stick with stubborn stories and when to move on; and getting a collection of unlinked stories published without an agent.
Drawing on her stories as examples, she will also discuss memory as the catalyst for fiction, as opposed to unfiltered life. “One of the first stories I wrote is based on my highly distilled memory of a family wedding I attended when I was 12-years-old. I had all the details—the heat, the clothes, the way the family talked about each other, so I didn’t have to invent anything—except the story. It took me a long time before I found it. ‘My First Wedding’ went on to win the fiction prize at The Nebraska Review and become the first story in my collection.”
She was born in Winston-Salem, N.C. and worked for newspapers in Raleigh and Greensboro before moving to Washington, DC, where she was a free-lance writer and editor and co-authored several nonfiction books before turning full-time to fiction. Her stories have been published in numerous literary journals. She has taught fiction writing in the Washington area for fourteen years, at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Md., and other venues. In addition to stories, she has published book reviews and travel articles. you won’t remember this is her first book of fiction.
“Kate Blackwell is a wonderful and very perceptive writer who knows more about love, and more about loss, than most of us ever will. These stories about all sorts of Southern men and women are both funny and sad, and always subtly but deeply sympathetic.”—Alison Lurie, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, author most recently of The Last Resort
Kate Blackwell’s prizes and honors in fiction:
- Winner of the 2004 Larry Neal Fiction Prize, District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities
- Winner of The Nebraska Review 2001 Fiction Prize
- Winner of So To Speak’s short-short story contest, 2001
- First runner-up for fiction, New Letters 2000 Literary Awards
- Honorable Mention in the 1999 fiction contest, The Greensboro Review
Member cost is $5 with advance payment; $7 at the door. Nonmember cost is $10 with advance payment; $15 at the door. Reservations are required. To RSVP, call (202) 775-5150, send e-mail to rsvp@washwriter.org or register online at www.washwriter.org. Please mention the event for which you are responding and your membership status.