I introduced Giovanni at a poetry reading at The University of Virginia's College at Wise - quite the intimidating feat, since I had written essays about her work - mainly her violent poems from the Civil Rights era that railed against white culture's willful resistance to integrated society. Later that same year, I interviewed Lee Smith when she visited the campus; I worked full-time as a staff reporter for The Coalfield Progress, a biweekly newspaper, and covered the local education and academic beat. I remember that Smith gave me one of her check stubs with her Hillsborough, NC address on it so I could mail her a copy of the article after it went to print. I still have it somewhere. Smith's novel Black Mountain Breakdown was the first novel I ever wrote a college-level essay on - and now I'm so old, I can only remember that two characters were named Crystal and Agnes.
Meeting Janisse Ray was an otherworldly experience for me - I felt she sang my life with her words in her memoir/environmental essay collection entitled Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, in which she describes growing up a dirt-poor country girl in rural northern Georgia and pursuing her dreams of becoming a writer and academic. I sat across from her in an elegant reception room at The University of Richmond, and watched as she was served a plate of chicken, pasta, and salad. Ray is a vegetarian, and she raises chickens. I was mortified. However, Ray smiled, ate around the chicken, and talked with me and some other fortunate students invited to this private reception as if she had known us for years. I found her organic farming, self-sustaining lifestyle admirable and fascinating, especially how she visited her local Wendy's for donations of old vegetable oil that she converted to fuel for her farm vehicles. She talked to me about my dreams of writing, of teaching, of making a difference and leaving behind my Appalachian footprints in the written word. In fact, she is my sole inspiration for writing my own memoir, which exists in various draft stages at this point. In the front of my copy of Ecology, she wrote, "Stephanie: Tell the story of Appalachia. You are the one."
Those were some mighty big expectations to live up to, but I will endeavor until the day I die to tell that story.
Recently, I had the opportunity to meet Charlaine Harris. Many know her because her books are the novels that inspired the HBO hit series TrueBlood. Originally known as the "Sookie Stackhouse novels" or The Southern Vampire Mysteries series, Harris's tales of supernatural exploits are colored with Southern charm and feminine wit. A no-nonsense, yet vulnerable protagonist, Sookie, is a telepathic waitress at a local bar who frequently finds herself drawn to the undead and the two-natured communities as a liaison and consort. The novels employ a huge cast of diverse characters and the little town of Bon Temps, Louisiana comes alive as if it were a real place. According to Eudora Welty's essay, "Place in Fiction," Harris has certainly been successful in creating a fictional community that is as real as the ones that inspired it.
This is only half the crowd who came to hear Charlaine Harris speak about the conclusion of the Sookie Stackhouse series, which will end with its thirteenth installment in 2013. Harris entertained the audience with stories of her rise to fame, her creative quirks, personal triumphs, and hints about upcoming projects during a 45-minute question and answer session.
When I met Harris at a Barnes & Noble question-and-answer session and book signing for her newest addition to the series, Deadlocked, I was not surprised that she was so humble and welcoming. Her down-to-earth nature did not shock me. Her voice rings in her prose in such a way that you feel like you know her already - and my every expectation of how she would be as a speaker was flawlessly met. Humorous, matter-of-fact, and unabashedly honest, Harris quipped that she "cried all the way to the bank" when a fan asked her if she was upset with how HBO's producers had changed the plot of her novels in both major and minor ways. Most touching was how she justified abandoning her character Lily Bard of the Shakespeare-inspired mystery series of the same name. "I am a rape survivor and Lily Bard was my way of dealing with that dark place. I decided to move on and go forward, so I had to leave Lily Bard behind."
Charlaine Harris signs my copies of Deadlocked and Many Bloody Returns: Stories of Birthdays with Bite at a Charlotte book-signing event in May 2012.
I enjoyed hearing Harris talk about her personal approach to writing, and I wish my students could have heard her. She makes writing sound exactly like what it is: a process in which one must find the most comfortable way to do what must be done. She is obviously a woman who loves what she does. It tickles me to death to see a Southern woman with a sense of old-South style and humor be skyrocketed to unbelievable fame in less than a decade. Harris remained very real about the difficult exchange between writers, publishers, media managers, and all the other middlemen that are involved in giving life to an author's work by releasing it to the public. I told Mrs. Harris a few things about myself when we had an opportunity to speak, and I told her that her fans (including me) love her and love what she does - to always keep doing it as long as she was able. She remarked, "I don't know what else I would do."
I have often said the same thing about teaching and writing, myself. For those of us who live our lives through words, nothing could come closer to immortality than leaving the legacy of our stories behind.
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