A Writer's Moment: 'First and foremost, create silence'

A Writer's Moment: 'First and foremost, create silence':   “The biggest achievement is to create silence. I think every real writer who has a passion to do justice to the world thinks this way.”  –...

'First and foremost, create silence'

 

“The biggest achievement is to create silence. I think every real writer who has a passion to do justice to the world thinks this way.” – Peter Handke

 

Born in Austria in December of 1942, Handke is the 2019 Nobel Prize-winner in literature, recognized for the breadth of his work as a novelist, playwright, translator, poet, film director, and screenwriter.

He first broke onto the international writing scene with his 1960s award-winning play Offending the Audience and novel The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick.   His play Wings of Desire and his semi-autobiographical novel A Sorrow Beyond Dreams also have earned rave reviews.  

 

 “An artist,” he said, “is only an exemplary person if you can see in his works how life goes.”

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the living memory of nations'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the living memory of nations':   “Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience … from generation to generation.  In this way literature becomes the living me...

'It's the living memory of nations'

 

“Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience … from generation to generation.  In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 

Solzhenitsyn, born in Russia on this date in 1918, wrote some of the great pieces of world literature in his historic novels The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch.  The books are both Classics and classes in great writing that unfold in the conversations and images around the horrors facing ordinary people who dared to confront the evils of totalitarianism. 

Solzhenitsyn spent nearly half his life in prison, work camps, or exile for his willingness to stand for those ordinary people in the works he created.   After being exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974, he lived for a number of years in the U.S. where he continued to turn out amazing literature until  he returned to Russia in 1994, where he lived out his days. He died in Moscow in 2008. 

Awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature” Solzhenitsyn had this advice for writers willing to stand for social justice:  

“Own only what you can always carry with you; (and) know languages, know countries, know people.  Let your memory be your travel bag.”

A Writer's Moment: 'A magical moment when words begin to pour'

A Writer's Moment: 'A magical moment when words begin to pour':   “The values transmitted through oral history are many - courage, selflessness, the ability to endure, and to do so with humor and grace. I...

'A magical moment when words begin to pour'

 

“The values transmitted through oral history are many - courage, selflessness, the ability to endure, and to do so with humor and grace. I got those values listening to my dad's stories about the Depression and how their family survived. It gave me courage that I, too, could survive hard times.” – Ann Turner

 

Born in Northampton, MA on this date in 1945, Turner has authored 44 novels, picture books and poetry collections for children and Young Adults in a career that actually began when she was a student at Bates College.

 

While there she won first prize in the Atlantic Monthly’s college creative writing contest, sparking an interest in writing that never left.    An education major, she tried her hand at teaching but ultimately was drawn back to her dream of writing.   Her first novel A Hunter Comes Home was an American Library Association “Notable Children's Book” and her first picture book, Dakota Dugout, received the same honor.  Since then she has won dozens of awards in every category in which she writes.   

 

Among her multiple award-winning books are Abe Lincoln Remembers and Through Moon and Stars and Night Skies.  Her most recent YA novel is Father of Lies, a suspense-filled (and bestselling) retelling of the Salem Witch Trials from the perspective of a 14-year-old girl.

 

“There is the magical moment when words begin to pour out onto the page — words which surprise and confound even me,” Turner said of her writing successes.  “I am as interested in seeing what happens to my characters as any reader; that is why I tell kids that writers write for the same reason readers read - to find out the end of the story.”

A Writer's Moment: 'A thing with feathers'

A Writer's Moment: 'A thing with feathers':     “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.” – Emily Dic...