the inner workings of the literary universe
With writers Elena Poniatowska & Yurri Herrera in Mexico City
As a student at Berea College in rural Kentucky, I was not sure what the path was to lead a literary life, but I wanted to write, translate, conduct interviews, work on films, edit manuscripts, and, of course, write letters to other writers. Over the years, I made choices that provided me with the most time to read and write, living with the financial uncertainty of such decisions (as recently as this week I had a meltdown about not being paid on time for work I did last year). And I have done all the things that I wanted to do and many more, things as impossible to imagine as working as an interpreter for a Chinese neorealist painter along the US-Mexico border.
This month in Mexico City, for the Library of Congress, I interviewed writer Elena Poiniatowska and recorded Yuri Herrera reading his own work. If you visit the PALABRA archive at the Library of Congress, you can hear writers such as Gabriel García Márquez read their own work. Poniatowska and Herrera are among a constellation of writers who have influenced me, and for that reason, the experience was personally significant. Poniatowska’s Hasta no verte Jesús mío, published in 1969, has changed the way I’m structuring my manuscript for The Life and Death of the American Worker (Astra House 2024). To interview Poniatowksa at 90, writing daily and alight with the fire to write more, was a vision. I told her that I hoped to be like her, writing until my last day.
To the fires that move us & all that lights us up from within,
Alice
News & Events:
I have been accepted to the Yaddo retreat for artists where many writers whose work I love also spent time (Flannery O’Connor, James Baldwin, Sylvia Plath!)
I will be designing & teaching an in-person workshop for journalists in El Salvador via Arizona State University.
the inner workings of the literary universe
Yes, I loved Berea and return frequently. I didn't know Volker!
I didnt know you went to Berea! Did you know Volker Grzmek?