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2017
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANN EHRINGHAUS; COURTESY OF NCLR
JOURNEY BEYOND GRIEVING: FEMINIST, SPIRITUALIST, ENVIRONMENTALIST JAN DEBLIEU FINDS NEW VISION FOR HER WRITING VOCATION
COURTESY OF NCLR COURTESY OF JAN DEBLIEU
Jan DeBlieu has told a lot of different kinds of nonfiction stories: journalistic, memoir, investigative science tales, and plenty of scientific observation reports. Until recently, her writing has been evocatively set on and/ or about North Carolina’s Outer Banks. A native of Delaware, transplanted to North Carolina thirty years ago by way of Atlanta and Oregon, DeBlieu has sounded, through her books and essays, the clarion call to Carolinians in particular and to Americans in general to wake up and pay attention to the extraordinary (and federally protected) natural world of the Outer Banks, especially around Cape Hatteras National Seashore’s endangered barrier islands and ecosystems. This hasn’t been her only topic of literary and conservationist discussion, but it is what has to date been her best known. I came to know the Outer Banks about the same time Jan DeBlieu moved there back in the 1980s, through what was then a free weekly circular for the Research Triangle region, The Spectator, where I found an ad for a threebedroom Pamlico Sound–front vacation bungalow renting for three hundred dollars a week. It was love at first sight, and Ocracoke and I have been intimate ever since. Soon after my discovery, Jan’s writing about the Outer Banks, rich with natural history and human and environmental drama deepened my knowledge and appreciation, as have our many conversations over the years. Jan DeBlieu’s passionate and lyrical writing is “focused on landscape and place and the incredible complexity of nature,” as she states on her new website.13 And “now, in addition [she is] drawn to stories of people in need, and how their pain might be alleviated by small, everyday acts born of kindness.” Why this shift in her writing focus? Jan notes, “I am a writer and a woman seared by grief [the death of her sixteen-year-old son, her only child, in a car accident] and who has emerged from the fire believing in the wellspring of human goodness.”14 Jan DeBlieu shares the story of how the healing power of nature (and nature writing) expands to include the healing power of seva, the art of selfless service to others, and how they are intertwined. SHERYL CORNETT: So much has happened since we last met together to dis-
cuss your first three books, and a bit about your fourth.15 Would you talk about the philosophy behind the book you’re working on, Searching for Seva: The Path to Selfless Service. Can you name influences or other thinkers that have led you to this, beyond your personal experience and tragedy? JAN DEBLIEU: You’re right – so much has happened that our conversation seems like a lifetime ago. One professional twist that was completely unexpected. I continued to work for a grassroots envi-
ABOVE TOP NCLR 2005, which included
Cornett’s interview with DeBlieu ABOVE BOTTOM Jan DeBlieu
13
Read more about DeBlieu, her books, and her commitment to serving others at her website, where she writes that seva “is a Sanskrit term that describes the kind of service that’s wholehearted and completely selfless.” The important aspects are “Careful listening. Trust. Patience.”
14
This quotation is from the following interview, which was conducted via email between Sept. and Dec. 2015 and a faceto-face conversation on 19 Nov. 2015.
15
Sheryl Cornett, “‘in Wilderness is . . . preservation’: An Interview with Jan DeBlieu,” NCLR 14 (2005): 83–95.