MPR’s Cathy Wurzer profiles the 10th Anniversary of Minnesota Voices Project Competition.

Segment includes interviews with Catherine Meyer, managing editor of New Rivers Press; Sharon Oard Warner, author of "Learning to Dance and Other Stories;" and poet Mark Vinz, author of "The Weird Kid."

Mark Vinz reads his poem "Letters from Old Friends," Sharon Oard Warner reads from her story "Working Puzzles."

Transcript:

(00:00:00) The time right now is 1036. Well everyday words are written down in many many forms words filling journals poems springing to life and short stories are created. We are fortunate in this area for the depth of the writers who called the midwest home the voices of the region are celebrated each year through the Minnesota voices project competition five new books published this month Mark the 10th anniversary of this annual contest and to celebrate minneapolis-based New Rivers press is getting a reading book signing and reception tomorrow at the Landmark Center in st. Paul joining me in the studio this morning to talk about the MVP are Catherine mayor managing editor of the new Rivers, press and to Minnesota voices project authors suit Sharon ORD Warner who wrote learning to dance and Mark Vinz who wrote the weird kid? Okay to get everyone's name, right? All right. Good morning, Katherine. Let's start with you first the Minnesota voices project celebrates, New and emerging writers throughout the Right, that's correct. So, can you give us a sense of the depth of the talent that we have here in this region? Its immense every year we get submissions from all over the Upper Midwest from everything ranging from professional writers people who are business writers people who are college professors to people who are lawyers and doctors who simply write on the weekends and it's very diverse huge pool of talent. Is there any theme that connects Midwest writers are there? Something special about Midwest writers. I really don't think so. We're constantly asked this question and I really don't think so. I mean a lot of times when we're putting in proposals for new for new projects. That's a common question. And I think the answer is no and I think that's wonderful and itself. We really don't have one theme that we see we see a multitude of things and okay. What is it though about this region that seems to breed an awful lot of writers. A lot of I've heard every I've heard every Theory from cold long Winters where people sort of bundle up and More and therefore more likely to write to just having you know along the lines a lot of people inspiring a lot of other people and I think again, there are probably a thousand theories out there on why we have so many writers, but certainly there are a lot of presses. There's a lot of support for the Arts in general thus we have a lot of support for the presses and I think if you have strong presses and strong organizations like The Loft good writing programs, you're going to have a lot of support for writers and so writers tend to come to communities like this. Okay. Sure. Let's go to you. What has the Titian done for you and your work. Well, it's certainly given me a great deal more recognition than I had before and I've just enjoyed getting to know the people at New Rivers. They've been wonderful they've done a wonderful job with my work taking a lot of care and the cover art and in the editing process and much more than I think I would have gotten with some of the New York Press has what was the what was your first feeling like when you reading You when you realize that you won the competition. Well, Bill Truesdell called me at 10 o'clock on a Sunday night. And I thought it was somebody calling to ask me to give him a ride again to Des Moines. And so I was really taken off guard. I thought I expected this one person in it. Somebody suddenly said, you know you won this this competition and I just sat there and he said do you remember entering this competition? And I said, oh yes. Yes. Yes. I didn't want to see but I was stunned I really was stunned. So then I called several of my friends who were by that time in bed and woke them up and screamed guess work. What do you think the challenges are or what are the challenges to a new or emerging writer?
(00:03:44) Well, I think the main challenge is getting published, you know getting that kind of recognition which is which is validation why you do it is is one of my third graders once said and when I worked on writers in the school's if you painted a picture, you wouldn't hang it in the closet and I think there's a kind of analogy there. I mean writers want to you know have their work in print and distribute it and one nice thing about New Rivers and about about non-commercial presses is that they will keep they will publish work according to its merits as literature not according to what cells are doesn't sell. I mean, you know New Rivers is not dominated as a lot of the big New York houses everybody marketing and they will keep it in print you will see new Rivers books like my book which was published in 83 is still in print still available. Now that word New York. How's that? Have been probably pulped within within six months after its issue. So I mean there are a couple of other things that that independent non commercial publishing does for writers to offer him a special kind of
(00:04:43) support. It's so it seems to me that the Big Challenge to getting published is trying to get Beyond this seems like a roadblock here, especially with the big publishing places, then
(00:04:53) it is and and increasingly the big publishing places. You cannot send manuscript you have to go. Agent and again, they're looking at marketability the marketing people call the shots small, press independent, press whatever you want to call it non-commercial, press in this country, especially with fiction and poetry and especially with poetry are the ones committed to publishing the work because they believe in the work, you know completely aside from any questions of marketability
(00:05:20) speaking of work last night. I got to read your book The Weird kid, and I would really appreciate if you could share a little bit of that work with us.
(00:05:26) Okay. These are these are prose poems and nobody quite knows what a prose poem. Is and that's the joy of writing them because you can kind of invent them as you go along. Some of them are like poems. Some of them are like stories. By the way. This book will be a part of a new Rivers press book which will be published next month called late night calls. It's a kind of collected prose poems. So so this again something that small press can do this whole manuscript will be a part of a larger manuscript. This is called letters from Old Friends. Sometimes they arrive like suitors with tattered flowers polite and threadbare almost afraid to speak the weather has been good hasn't it? There's much to be done after a while. They get up to leave thankful to be through with it backing toward the door and bowing with many kind wishes. Perhaps they'll be back but not for a long time. Sometimes they arrive like Messengers with trumpets elegant in there tight gold suits a little flash of something not quite seen a promise that the real Siri will arrive one day soon. They insist very soon. Sometimes they're like tired old widows and black stocky. Duany has whose faces are hidden by their shadowy veils. They said in the most uncomfortable chairs wringing their hands their tiny Jade rosaries then just when you think they will Disappear Completely they move closer stretching out to patch your arm you settle back in your chair in the fireplace warms your face filling all the damn spaces. With waves of yellow
(00:06:53) light very nice. Thank you Katherine. What criteria do you use to which in terms of which books that you pick for publisher? Well every year I should explain the process a little bit every year panel five judges read all of the entries to the Minnesota voices project competition. And so that these five judges who change every year on any given year will have a different set of criteria and usually the judging sessions are marked by heated debates and often have come close to blows. And we really sort of encouraged this lengthy debate people pull for manuscripts that they feel are important. But one of the most important criteria that we always ask is does this person have the opportunity to get published elsewhere and if there are two manuscripts that are equal in everyone's minds but one person just for whatever reason the judges feel has little or no opportunity to public be published elsewhere. That person's probably going to be selected. We feel it's really important to get those people into print and that's something that a commercial publication like I said which is really tied into marketing. Probably they won't take the chances and we're in a really unique position to be able to take chances and we like to do that any criteria to decide what stories to pass by as I just kind of go all along the same vein same vein critical decisions. Okay. So we're always in were looking at something that works as a manuscript. Okay? Sure, and I'd like to close the segment if I would please if you would like to read one of your works. All right, this is an excerpt from a story called working. Results in March of nineteen fifty-nine while I was in first grade and concentrating on other things. My parents separated divorce was not so common. Then I had never heard of it before. It happened to me little girls from other classes cornered me in the bathroom and ask frightening questions. How would we eat? Where would we live? I had visions of a tornado touching down on the roof of our house scattering us and our possessions to the Four Winds. Actually the dispersal was a good deal more. Orderly mother my four-year-old brother Sonny and I moved to the other side of Dallas a big jump, even then mother must have had answered an ad in the paper because we took up living with two strangers a woman Meda and her grown daughter their house was in the country just off the intersection of two Farm roads that seem to go there and then on to know where a mimosa tree sprawled across the front yard, and I love to lie under it and stare up through the Twisted branches when we move to meet us the truth. Heavy with long curling pods our first days there. I distracted Myself by gathering the pods in the skirt of my dress. I would sit on the porch and split them open dividing the flat green peas some for meet his daughter Linda some for sunny some for the dogs. I chewed a few gritty seeds myself and was tormented afterwards by the thought of seedlings attaching themselves to my stomach and winding their blind way up my throat Sonny and I a I stayed Outdoors as much as possible meet his house was dark and Silent no matter what the day was like outside inside. It was always the same the blinds were closed and light bulbs burned in the den and dining room dark paneling absorb the available light the house had that sour closed up smell children hate me deboarded and bred dogs for a living. She boarded any sort of dog, but she bred pickaninnies cages were stashed around the house. And along the walls of the garage chicken wire cages wooden cages cages with doors and Tiny latches and Gathering dust in the corner of the dining room a wrought iron bird cage bird less a kennel stretched down the middle of the backyard along concrete rectangle that housed up to 20 dogs each dog had a tiny indoor area just big enough to lie down in and a small fenced patio Outdoors for pacing like most little girls. I was drawn to see small spaces and wanted to convert one of the pins into a playhouse when I got up the nerve to ask my mother snorted and made a left out loud. The answer. I understood was no like my brother and me the dogs prefer the outdoors some stood for hours on their little patios snouts pressed to the chain-link fence eyes roaming the fields to the strip of Road hunting that familiar car loyal they never thought to hold a grudge when there Has returned they became happy circus dogs barking twirling leaping into the air as soon as they'd run to their tricks though. They expected to be released and if made a warrant quick about it, they became desperate and hurled themselves against the fence once out of the cage. They resumed their circus Antics and ran and dizzy circles around the pair of legs that had come to retrieve them. I often wondered whether they remembered that these were the same legs that had brought them to meet us in the first place you paint wonderful word. Pictures thank you. I have to ask you a question both of you as I've tried writing in my past and it never really succeeded. So, where do you find your inner voice? How do you tap into that? So Sharon first? Well, one of the things I try to tell my students is just to let go to have the experience of really dreaming while you're awake because you know, you don't have that much control of your dreams and you sometimes do surprising things. Hmm Mark,
(00:12:17) I think that voice can come from a lot of places the book The Weird kid has a lot to do with dreams, but other books that I've written have to do with domestic life or observations are traveling or you know people in my family and again, I tell my students be open to all possibilities. I think people I think we get in trouble. We think you know writing has to be one thing or another it has to use a certain kind of language writers are constantly trying to push back those those barrier. So there's still hope that oh, yeah. There's always hope always