The Idle Class - Fall 2015 - Storytellers

THE IDLE CLASS THE STORYTELLERS ISSUE

CELEBRATING THE ARTS IN ARKANSAS / FALL 2015

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EDITOR & PUBLISHER Kody Ford

MANAGING EDITOR Katie Wyatt

EDITORS-AT-LARGE Jeremy Glover Marty Shutter

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Angela Cox Chelsie Martin

CONTRIBUTORS

Editor’s note

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PHOTO / VIKRAM DESAI

ince the dawn of man, storytelling has been a unique feature to our species. The methods have changed, but the desire for it has remained. Whether it is a novel, a poem, or a film, we need a good story to be entertained, to believe, to hope. Arkansas is no stranger to storytelling. From our rural traditions of spinning a yarn on the porch to brilliant novelists like Charles Portis, this state can tell a good tale.

One of the reasons I started The Idle Class was to focus on fiction and poetry in our state. I figured I needed some other things in there too. As a fiction writer myself, the Storytellers is my favorite. It’s great to hear the struggles, techniques and triumphs of these writers. I’m glad we get to share those with you as well.

This issue wouldn’t be possible without the hard work of my writers, editors, photographers and illustrators. Also, a special thanks to Chelsie, Angela & Copper Canyon Press. And as always, please support the local businesses that support us.

See you in the winter, Kody Ford Editor-in-chief

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Jamal Abu Hamdan Taraf Abu Hamdan Joshua Asante Kara Bibb Nicholas Claro Vikram Desai Shayne Gray Brandi Holt Jade Howard Phillip Rex Huddleston Ben Krain Joe Meazle Jo McDougall Dave Morris Brandon Otto Aaron Sarlo Donna Smith Blake Sutton Chris Stinson Ginny Crouch Stanford Randal Thompson Holly Talon Melissa Tucker Kat Wilson Terry Wright Cindi Zimmerman

LAYOUT

Kody Ford

COVER

“The Ruralist”

by John Harland Norris

FOLLOW US

THE STORYTELLERS ISSUE FALL 2015

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS PAGES 34 - 35

Terry Wright reflects upon his relationship with legendary Arkansas poet Miller Williams. And how he never really knew the man.

A DIFFERENT APPROACH PAGES 36 - 37

Kevin Brockmeier believes in treating every sentence with care. And it’s working out well.

BALANCING ACT PAGES 38 - 39

Padma Viswanathan doesn’t wait for inspiration to fill the page. She takes matters into her own hands.

UNDER THE GUN PAGES 40 - 41

Peabody winners The Renaud Brothers go where the story takes them. Sometimes that means wearing a flak jacket.

TRIPLE THREAT PAGES 42 - 43

Robert Ford can write for the stage and the page. Not to mention he plays a mean flute.

THE LONG HAUL PAGES 44 - 45

Graham Gordy finally has a show coming to television. But nothing’s a done deal in showbiz.

NERD ON

PAGES 10 - 11 Nerdies and its sister organization Arties offer young people a different kind of education.

“The Announcer” by John Harlan Norris

ALSO FEATURING

THIS IS THE END PAGES 12 - 13

Randall Shreve’s latest album The Devil & The End closes out his saga of concept records.

MAN OF MANY FACES PAGES 22 - 27

Artist and ASU professor John Harlan Norris explores identity in his work.

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EVENTS

CREATING A RIPPLE EFFECT

(Above) “The Climb”

Five years ago, Studio 7 held a small art show for the community to purchase local works. Now Art on the Creeks has grown into an event attracting artists and patrons from multiple states.

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WORDS & IMAGE / CINDI ZIMMERMAN

t all started five years ago with an idea inside a warehouse art studio.

Several amateur artists from Studio 7 in Rogers, Arkansas begged their not-so-amateur art teacher, Tania Knudsen, to let them host an art show for family and friends, and with that, Art on the Creeks was born. Approximately 300 people attended the event. Artists sold their work, made connections and new friendships, and momentum started to build from within the local art community.

A year later the exhibit became official and moved into Village on the Creeks. Every year since, the show has grown in attendance, with more artists showcasing distinct work in various mediums, and the local art scene experiencing increased support.

Art on the Creeks has transformed into an art event pushing past state lines. The Fourth Annual Art on the Creeks will be held October 3 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., showcasing over 60 local and non-local artists from five states and 23 cities. Northwest Arkansas studios, galleries and organizations including Studio 7, Life Styles Inc., Poor Richards Art Gallery and Village Art Club of Bella Vista also will have

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exhibits at the show. One of the many ways this show is unique is artists get to participate free of charge. No application fee, no exhibit fee, and the showcase tents are being sponsored by various businesses and art patrons.

This exhibit will have something for every taste, from traditional and classic to modern and edgy and everywhere between. Mediums being showcased include oil, acrylic, watercolor, encaustic, colored pencil, pen, collage, digital media, mixed media, sculpture, jewelry, woodturning and pottery.

To add to the fun, Two25 Gallery, located at 225 S. Main Street in Bentonville, will be hosting a wine and beer tent and food truck. Music will be provided by Block Street Hot Club Jazz Band, Arkansas Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and Trilogy Women’s Vocal Trio.

VISIT: FACEBOOK.COM/ARTONTHECREEKS INSTAGRAM: @ART.ON.THE.CREEKS

GROWING UP...IN WORDS & IMAGES Works by Joe Barry Carroll Historic Arkansas Museum Sept. 11, 2015 - Jan. 3, 2016

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lthough he is most known as a one-time NBA All-Star and for his successful 11-year career with the Golden State Warriors, Joe Barry Carroll’s accomplishments span far beyond his earned NBA accolades. Carroll is an avid philanthropist, wealth advisor, and­ - most recently - a painter and a writer. Carroll is proud to present his show titled “Growing Up...In Words and Images,” which will run from September 11, 2015 to January 3, 2016 at the Historic Arkansas Museum’s Trinity Gallery in Little Rock. The show kicks off with a free opening reception on September 11, 2015 from 5 to 8 p.m.

The exhibition is based around Carroll’s recently published coffee table book and memoir of the same title as the show and will showcase paintings from the book. Carroll’s paintings are full of warm, inviting childhood locales and family figures, leading many to describe his paintings as “folk” and “impressionistic.” Carroll will be signing his book in the Museum Store during the reception. All proceeds from sales of his book will go to the Georgia Innocence Project and other charities supported by Carroll’s philanthropy organization, the BroadView Foundation.

Before becoming a professional basketball player, Carroll spent his childhood in Arkansas and Colorado and was born in Pine Bluff, the tenth child of thirteen. Carroll shared his excitement about coming back home to Arkansas.

“Coming home with an exhibit at [the] Historic Arkansas Museum is an incredible opportunity,” he said. “As you read the details of my story, that should come as no surprise to anyone that this is really a big deal to me and my family. I am hopeful that everyone will experience the words and images as a shared experience. The details of ‘Growing Up’ are mine, but the substance of my life are common to everyone’s life. We are all so similar in so many ways.“ All Historic Arkansas Museum galleries are free to the public and are open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Carroll’s show is a part of the Second Friday Art Night, a monthly collaboration between local museums and businesses to celebrate the arts and culture in Little Rock.

Joe Barry Carroll is director of the BroadView Foundation, The Carroll Group, and sole Trustee of The Antonio and Betty Zamora Collection of African Art. He has shown his work around the country and spends the majority of his time in Denver, Atlanta and Arkansas.

VISIT: joebarrycarroll.com historicarkansas.org - Holly Talon

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TRUE LIT FESTIVAL BRINGS BIG NAMES TO FAYETTEVILLE Annual literary festival to host best-selling authors Lois Lowry & Zadie Smith along with many other great writers to Fayetteville Public Library.

WORDS / BRANDI HOLT

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iterary heavyweights Lois Lowry and Zadie Smith are coming to Northwest Arkansas this fall. True Lit: Fayetteville’s Literary Festival opens Thursday, October 1 with authors, songwriters, artists and book discussions through Thursday, October 8. In its third year, the festival offers a variety of events at multiple venues around Fayetteville.

“True Lit 2015 raises the bar for the Arkansas writing community by offering pitch sessions to publishers seeking freelance work, networking opportunities with other writers and award-winning authors,” said Brandi Holt, Marketing & Communication Manager for the Fayetteville Public Library. “This year’s featured world-renowned authors cover a variety of genres from children’s to young adult fiction to adult literary fiction to graphic novels. The festival also continues its appeal to diverse audiences with art and music components.”

Lowry is credited with more than 30 children’s books and is the recipient of two Newbery Medals for Number the Stars in 1990 and The Giver in 1994. She is best known for handling difficult subjects - racism, murder, terminal illness, the Holocaust - for children, earning her both praise and criticism. During the festival, Lowry will be the featured speaker at the Young Author’s Series for Fayetteville Public Schools’ fourth graders, the Blair Lecture Series for tenth graders, and at a public presentation for the FPL Author Series at the Fayetteville Public Library. The public is invited to hear Lowry speak at Fayetteville Public Library on Wednesday, October 7 at 7 p.m.

Smith’s involvement in the True Lit festival is sponsored by the University of Arkansas’s Creative Writing and Translation Program. She will give a public talk on Monday, October 5 at 7 p.m. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), a portrait of her contemporary multicultural hometown of London, earned international praise and numerous awards. She is working on a book of essays entitled Feel Free to be published in 2016.

University of Central Arkansas journalism professor Donna Lampkin Stephens opens the True Lit Festival on Thursday, October 1 with her debut book If It Ain’t Broke, Break It: How Corporate Journalism Killed the Arkansas Gazette. Stephens gives a blow-by-blow description of the shift from being locally-oriented to profit-driven. The free evening presentation will be at the Fayetteville Public Library on Thursday, October 1 at 6 p.m. in the Walker Community Room.

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(Above) Lois Lowry (Below) Zadie Smith

The True Lit Festival presents a full day of events on Saturday, October 3 beginning with Coffee and Conversation at 9:30 a.m., a prime opportunity for authors, writers, and editors to network. Editors from CitiScapes, The Idle Class, DoSouth, Nimrod, and The Free Weekly present the panel “Magazines: Best Secret in the Publishing World.”

Regional book publishers distributing nationwide discuss current trends with their small presses and offer insight into industry trends during the following panel discussion “Got Book. Need Publisher.”

Rocking Horse Publishing (Missouri), Post Mortem Press (Ohio), The Wild Rose Press (New York), and Mongrel Empire Press (Oklahoma) will be available, each seeking different genres.

Following the two panel presentations, writers may sign up for an individual one-on-one session with the editor of their choice to pitch talent and ideas for freelance work. Pitches are verbal; no manuscripts.

You can, however, leave your contact information with the editor.

Magazine editors may invite writers to send a query letter or idea, while book publishers usually invite authors to send character and plot synopsis for their consideration.

Other highlights include graphic novelist Cole Closser’s teen comic book workshop “Cartooning 101;” songwriter, singer, and artist Joe Crookston’s “Grand Adventure Creativity Camp and Concert;” a writing workshop with UA creative writing instructor Toni Jensen entitled “Working the Genre Divide;” and “Painting & Poetry x2” facilitated by local Fayetteville artist and Artist-in-Residence at FPL Leilani Law.

Visit: truelitfest.com

DON’T MISS THIS Sensory Iconoclasts

Arts Center of the Ozarks - Springdale Exhibition dates: Sept. 2 - 25, 2015 Art reception Thurs., Sept. 10, 2015, 6pm - 8pm acozarks.org Sensory Iconoclasts is in its third year. This year’s theme is diversity. Diversity through culture, art and food. As in years past, SI will pair artists and chefs together fueling reciprocated inspirations to create a singular experience.

Bringing together two concepts that create one interesting paradigm shift seeing, feeling, tasting. Curated by Case Dighero, culinary director at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Eve Smith, curator at Arts Center of the Ozarks, this is a can’t miss event.

El Dorado Film Festival

South Arkansas Arts Center - El Dorado Sept. 17 - 19, 2015 eldofilmfest.com The Second Annual El Dorado Film Festival boasts a charming array of short and feature-length films from over 13 different countries. The workshops include YouTube sensations “Zombie Go Boom” and their “Blood and Guts Special FX” workshop along with “Dance Choreography for the Camera,” “Screenwriting,” and a panel on submitting to film festivals! Industry guru David Gale from MTV Films will host a discussion on producing for the screen and share insights from his 18 years of experience in the field. Also, Kim Swink’s film Valley Inn will be featured during family night. Looks to be even better than last year!

Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival

Arlington Hotel - Hot Springs Oct. 9 - 18 hsdfi.org The 24th Annual Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, presented this year by Deltic Timber Corporation, will open with the critically–acclaimed documentary The Primary Instinct, featuring legendary character actor Stephen Tobolowsky who will attend the festival. Other highlights include former St. Louis Cardinal Lou Brock appearing at the world premiere of Larry Foley’s The First Boys of Spring, while Triple Crown Champion jumper Harry deLeyer will host the screening of Harry & Snowman.

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IMPACT

NERD ON, MY FRIENDS. NERD ON. Fayetteville’s Nerdies is offering young people new means of expression from art to coding to the occasional Rube Goldberg machine.

WORDS / CHELSIE MARTIN PHOTO / BLAKE SUTTON

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ntelligent, soft-spoken and wears thick-rimmed glasses. When you hear this description, what type of person do you envision? More than likely, the word nerd comes to mind. This illustration has been fueled by media stereotypes time and time again, picking up a negative connotation along the way. Why is it that someone’s role is dictated by their ability to fit in, when in reality it is our differences that allow societal growth?

Driven by the passion of learning, Brad Harvey has found a new way to celebrate curious minds, through a Fayetteville-based company called Nerdies, where learning is cool. This is a new type of business where unconventional ideas turn into action through a wide range of sessions where you can learn just about anything that sparks your interest. Some of the sessions Nerdies offer include video game coding, Photoshop design and, of course, robot building.

Considering himself a nerd at heart, Harvey was strongly influenced by his three girls. “I was fortunate enough to find my passion, my dream and my purpose when I was in my mid-thirties. However, I did not want my children to have to wait that long wandering through life searching for their purpose and passion,” Harvey said. “I simply could not find anything for kids out there who want to go to that next level. For this reason I decided to open Nerdies, not only for my children but for all kids out there who are looking to learn and start pursuing their passion.”

The process runs a bit differently at Nerdies than your average after-school program. Because the company believes learning happens through action, their sessions are geared towards simply doing something, with the learning occurring along the way.

“We are revolutionary not only for what we mentor, but in the fact we do not resemble traditional education in any way,” said Harvey. “There is

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something genuine and unique in what we do and the kids respond in a very positive way.”

Continuing to celebrate the love of learning, Harvey along with Jessica Beil opened up a subsidiary that focuses solely on creativity and imagination found in the minds of artists. “We felt like we needed to create a brand that specifically focuses on this group of people,” said Beil. “So many artists have shared their struggles about growing up and trying to find a place where they could be themselves, practice their passion and grow into who they truly are. My parents gave me a name, but through art and music, I got to decide who I am.”

Nerdies and Arties differ from any other program due to their sessions pushing STEAM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics). “Traditional artists, coders and makers all under the same roof is truly a sight to be seen,” says Beil. “Having these two seemingly different groups in such close quarters only challenges the other to excel and look at what they are creating differently. The possibilities are truly endless.”

Arties is truly an unique experience - creative learning is harbored through one-of-a-kind sessions. Currently, the brand extension offers anything from creating your own comic book to mastering the technique of guerrilla art, to starting your own podcast.

As Nerdies and Arties continue to grow, Beil hopes to create new boundaries and push the idea of “cool learning” even further. “I want to give them the opportunity to learn, be inspired, witness professional artists at work and learn from their practices as artists to promote and show their craft to the community.”

VISIT: NERDIES.ME & ARTIES.ME

The

LITTLE CRAFT SHOW 80 MAKERS 10K ATTENDEES 2 DAYS GIVEAWAYS

DECEMBER 4 & 5, 2015 THE FAYETTEVILLE TOWN CENTER

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21 W MOUNTAIN SWEET 226 FAYETTEVILLE, AR PATHOUTFITTERS.COM @PATHOUTFITTERS (479) 871-5645

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MUSIC

THIS IS THE END Randall Shreve brings his saga of concept albums to a close with a new record, a new band & plans for the future.

INTERVIEW / SHAYNE GRAY PHOTO / JADE HOWARD

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andall Shreve and the DeVilles of Fayetteville recently released their fourth and final album chronicling the saga of a young entertainer named Charlie and his personal evolution.

The new album is called The Devil and the End and ends the story arc and reveals the final metamorphosis.

I caught up with the band at Kings Live Music in Conway on a Friday night earlier this summer. His music has many elements of other bands and a great range of sounds, but it is all original (except for a few tasteful cover songs here and there). Over half their show was new dance-friendly and anthemic songs from the upcoming album. The new songs had great dynamics, melodies and crowd sing-alongs. Randall has a beautiful voice in the same vein with Jeff Buckley, ELO and some elements of Freddie Mercury of Queen. The most interesting element of the Shreve’s catalogue of music is the continuing elaboration and honing of their fun, dark, carnival sideshow milieu.

Their live show is somewhat hard to describe, maybe like a Tim Burton/ Quentin Tarantino collaboration film about a traveling snake oil salesman’s Bar Mitzvah on acid. They draw an eclectic audience - which I believe demonstrates the spectrum of their talent - and I think people of all ages can enjoy this music. The whole evening got weird in the best possible way, and their performance was passionate and heartfelt.

Randall Shreve and the DeVilles bring their own brand of rock, and I recommend you check them out if you like vaudeville, cabaret, classic black and white films, libations and sultry indie rock music. They put a unique twist on music with their gritty old school Hollywood swagger and are one of the best good-time bar bands in Arkansas.

After the show I asked him a few questions about the new album and line-up:

I understand you’ve been back in the studio working on your fourth and final album in the story of Charlie, the anticipated follow-up to The Jester album. Tell me a little about the new album.

This has been a beautiful, overwhelming experience. Every album was recorded in very different settings. I borrowed and rented gear for this album and converted my rehearsal space into a studio. Like the other albums, I recorded all the songs once as a general outline before starting the actual recording that people will hear. I spent much more time in the writing stage for this album. All in all, it’s taken over two and a half years to complete.

The songs take on a more rock sound in some cases, while others are more vaudeville/speakeasy sounding than anything else I’ve ever done. I couldn’t be more satisfied with the outcome.

What is your typical recording process, and has this album been different than past experiences?

I always start off alone. I like to have the album in a skeletal state before sharing it with anyone else, including band members. I believe that if the idea is strong enough for the song to eventually be a part of my catalog, it should be able to be heard in a poor quality recording with me playing all the instruments. It also helps me to hear the songs play back while I finish lyrics. The

difference with this one was the time that went into lyrics after those original demos were recorded. I tried my best to keep my opinions and personal attachments out of the way with these new songs, which led me to dropping some of the songs I personally liked best because they didn’t work as well with the feeling of some of the ones that were more obvious choices for the feeling of this record as a whole.

Is your current lineup different than before, and are they the same members that play on the studio album?

I was fortunate to keep Zach Reeves on drums and Michael Tisdale on guitar from The Sideshow. I’ve added two new members to the live band. Kendra Lane is on bass and Robert Geiger is on guitar as well. They all played on the record, though I also had many guests on the album like Matt Putman, who played drums on four tracks. I also played some of the drums on the album. It was nice being able to record with friends that I’ve been wanting to work with for some time.

How would you describe the band’s sound now, and how has it progressed up to this point?

Right now, the band’s goal is to sound like the record, which is an evolution of the Vaudeville rock I’ve been playing for years. I definitely drew from a lot of new places on this record and have enjoyed the opportunity to explore new sides of my writing. The DeVilles will certainly take these songs to new places over time, but where those places are and what they look like are a mystery to all of us right now. That’s what I love about this process the most getting to see the songs take on new life over time. The live show has always been a different monster than the writing/recording process. The music is never finished. There is always room for development and growth. I can’t wait to see what this group does with these songs.

What are your upcoming touring plans?

I’m trying to be smarter with the touring. We’re going to play the venues and cities that want us to play and are willing to split the pressure with us. It’s time for me to make some income while doing what I do best. I am going to keep it regional until our strong markets afford us the luxury to take some risks in new markets. Of course, I’ll play anywhere in the world if I can make sense of it.

When and where can we get the new album, and where’s the best place to listen to and purchase your music online and/or physically?

The new album is available online at our website as well as on iTunes, Amazon and all other online music outlets. The best place to buy it is always at a show.

VISIT: RANDALLSHREVE.COM idleclassmag.com

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BEYOND THE MUSIC Luke Pruitt doesn’t just sing a catchy tune.

He writes stories set to a melody.

WORDS / JOE MEAZLE PHOTO / CHRIS STINSON

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rkansas is a musical state. This state has had far more than its share of music legends and pioneers in a vast variety of genres. If you look closely, you will start to notice certain towns in Arkansas have become associated with specific types of music. Newport and Northeast Arkansas may well be the epicenter of rockabilly music. Mountain View has been proclaimed the “Folk Music Capital of the World.” And Helena has its strong connections to the heyday of blues music. Although the town certainly has its own notable history, Fort Smith rarely, if ever, seems to be mentioned when discussing music in Arkansas.

Well, don’t tell River Valley native and singer/songwriter Luke Pruitt any of that.

His newest project - Songs of Home Pt. 2: A Novella Album - is Fort Smith music. It’s slated for release later this year. Even though some of the tracks are from Pruitt’s perspective, don’t start thinking that this album is just a sentimental autobiographical self-indulgence. It is far from that. Fort Smith has always been a city of immigrants, whether it’s former Europeans embarking on travels towards the old west, the Vietnamese refugees of the mid 1970s, or the current influx of Latino workers. Pruitt is not only aware of this but shows a great deal of empathy telling the stories of those struggling to make Fort Smith their new home. Storytelling is one of Pruitt’s strong suits.

“Well, it is about the concept of ‘home,’ first of all, which is a broad and abstract theme to say the least,” said Pruitt. “So to be more specific, it is about seeking our place in the world, finding solace in times of struggle, and ultimately finding peace and joy, especially through the family structure and our kinship with others.”

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Many of the musical influences that he credits are cerebral singer/ songwriters of the 1970s, the likes of Paul Simon, Randy Newman and Joni Mitchell, all great storytellers. That influence shows, not only in the storytelling but also in the music accompanying the stories. For instance: a Paul Simon groove is evident in the song “My First Job” and “Coyotaje” has a very Joni Mitchell-esque refrain. That jaunty Randy Newman feel is apparent in “Two Kinds of People.” He also cites literature as having a strong influence on his songwriting.

“From a lyrical standpoint, though, I feel like literature had as much influence as any songwriters, specifically short stories,” he said. “I was reading a lot of Hemingway shorts and a lot of Raymond Carver.”

The production and musicianship heard on the album also seem very reminiscent of that seminal era in American music. The sweet sounds of a harmonica can be heard towards the ending of “Because of You” and put you in the mind of those great 1970s Stevie Wonder recordings.

It would be hasty to say that Luke Pruitt has defined the Fort Smith sound, but if you pay close attention and listen hard, you can’t help but see how the city has helped define his sound.

VISIT: LUKEPRUITT.COM

WHAT’S THE FUSS ABOUT? Jamie Lou & The Hullabaloo make it sound so easy.

WORDS / AARON SARLO

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first saw Jamie Lou Thies perform in Russellville at the super cool (but sadly, now defunct) venue, The Cavern - a dingy, poorly lit hole with exposed wall studs and dumpster couches strewn around the room. I loved the venue, but its atmosphere didn’t jibe with the one song I had known by Jamie Lou. For months prior, I had been playing Jamie Lou’s single, “Love’s a’Blazin’” on my radio show, Shoog Radio on KABF 88.3. “Love’s a’Blazin’” is a terrific song, jazzy, dark, well-written. What is striking about hearing Jamie Lou for the first time is her stunning, effortlessly soulful singing voice. It was the voice in that song that made me look around The Cavern, wondering how it would fit into such an environment.

When Jamie Lou and The Hullabaloo took the stage, from their first note, I was transfixed. There, in that dilapidated room, rang true her clear, pristine voice, careening off the crumbling plaster walls and concrete floor like a beautiful bird bounding about a cold, stone cage. For Arkansans in the know, I will draw an apt comparison. Jamie Lou’s singing voice rivals Adam Faucett’s - not necessarily in volume (because Faucett sings loud!) but in tone, precision and stark beauty.

One song Jamie Lou and The Hullabaloo played that night is, in my opinion, one of the best original songs to come out of Arkansas in a long while. I learned later that the song is named “Speaking In Lyrics,” but that night, hearing “Speaking In Lyrics” for the first time, played in a room better suited for the bone crunchiest of punk shows, I was introduced to music that should be heard by as many people as possible, performed by a phenomenal, super-talented band - a band to make other bands jealous.

Since that night at The Cavern, I have had the pleasure to watch Jamie Lou and The Hullabaloo perform in a professional recording studio. I witnessed Jamie Lou give a remarkable, chill-bump-induc-

Photo courtesy of Jamie Lou Thies ing vocal performance in just one take.

Jamie Lou and The Hullabaloo is a great band, fronted by an immense talent. If this world turns out to be a just place, we will embrace their music with the infinite passion of a toddler taking her first steps into a life that she just knows couldn’t be anything less than perfect.

VISIT: reverbnation.com/jamielouthies

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ART

FORTY YEArs STRONG Terra Studios celebrates its fourth decade with plans for the future as a nonprofit to promote art in Northwest Arkansas. But don’t worry, the Bluebirds aren’t going anywhere.

WORDS / KODY FORD

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t’s hard not to venture into Northwest Arkansas without hearing the name Terra Studios. Hearing people describe it has an almost mythical quality - the labyrinth, the troll sculptures, the walls engraved with dragons. Even if you have been to Terra Studios before, you probably don’t know Terra Studios.

Like any work of art, it’s constantly changing.

In 1975, Leo and Rita Ward and their son John established this wonderland of art as a glass and pottery studio. Together they worked in their respective fields - glass, pottery and sculpture and other artistic endeavors. Eight years later, they created their first Bluebird of Happiness and started a business that boomed. Fast forward eight million Bluebirds and things have changed greatly. James Ulick purchased Terra Studios in 2007. It has blossomed into a sprawling campus with a variety of installations ranging from a giant chessboard to a pavilion for those beautiful glass birds that made it all possible. Of course, the Bluebirds of Happiness are still for sale, and you can even watch them being made.

Five years ago, Ulick decided to make a major change for Terra Studios - to turn it into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to “Using Art to Create a Better World” - and last year, that became a reality.

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Photo courtesy of Terra Studios

“We realized that as we planned out the next decade, we were approaching retirement and have a ‘seventh generation’ mindset - but we are only good for one generation,” said Val Gonzalez, Executive Director of Terra Studios. “Becoming a nonprofit allows for change and growth, community involvement, and for a longterm plan for Terra Studios.”

However, as a nonprofit, Terra Studios is faced with another set of challenges, namely raising funds. They are not able to apply for grants for a few years due to government regulations. While many may think the Bluebirds are a cash cow, the overhead for things like a glass furnace can take its toll. They do have fundraisers planned for the coming months though.

The Terra Studios Fall Music and Art Festival (a.k.a. Terra Fest) is a fundraiser that will be held on September 12 & 13 from noon to 5 pm each day. The event will feature art booths, food vendors and song circles where groups of musicians play a wide variety of music in small, intimate groups all around the grounds.

Gonzalez said, “[There will be] bluegrass here and Celtic there, rockabilly in the woodland, country on the back porch, blues in the gazebo, and it feels like you’re eavesdropping on a living room jam session.”

The annual Terra Studios fundraiser is held in November. This year, they will host a Celebrity Troll Auction, in which local celebrities unleash their suppressed creativity by creating trolls. They will have art and other items available at an auction. “[The trolls] are an excellent metaphor for creativity,” she said. “You see being creative is a little scary, but once you unleash creativity it’s really, really fun and, so it is with trolls. To create trolls, you are actually sculpting. But, trolls are only ‘sorta human,’ so there’s no perfection to drag you down.”

Terra Fest or their November fundraiser are both great reasons to head east out of Fayetteville down Highway 16. Not that you need a special occasion to visit.

Gonzalez has a message for people who have never been to Terra Studios.

“It is so much more than ‘the Bluebird place.’ Yes, it is the home of the worldfamous Bluebird of Happiness, but it is also a gallery of over 100 local artists’

works, and a place to create art. It’s a great place for a date, a birthday party, a girlfriends’ day out, a family adventure with the kids or grandkids and much more.”

The future looks bright for Terra Studios. They have plans for new, interactive art installations, for wheelchair accessible paths throughout the art park, for the art lab to be open every day and for a broader range of art classes.

“We encourage people to be artists,” Gonzalez says. “Everyone has that in them. We offer classes and the price point is really low. We have step-by-step instructions, so it’s fail safe and you can actually take something home that you feel good about.”

Four decades is a long time for any institution, much less an art studio. The beauty of Terra Studios is that it appeals to children and inner children. The mystique lies in the creative energy found throughout the grounds. You can see into the minds of hundreds of artists who have left their mark. Gonzalez has her own thoughts on the matter.

She said, “Terra Studios is still appealing because creativity is eternally appealing - it is fun, whimsical, and stimulating. And, Terra Studios is 40 and brand new as well. It has evolved and continues to flourish. Terra Studios celebrates creativity in everything and in everyone.”

VISIT: TERRASTUDIOS.COM

60+ Artists

FREE TO THE PUBLIC In the Courtyard at Village on the Creeks (I-49, Exit 83, Rogers, AR)

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LOOKING UP Eureka Springs group The Up Project engages students & the community through art.

WORDS / KODY FORD PHOTO / RANDAL THOMPSON

A

rt is about change, creation and, at times, renovation. With its many galleries and rich cultural history, Eureka Springs is no stranger to visual art. Now local gallery owner Raven Derge has teamed with Steve “Yip” Vorbeck to allow young artists the opportunity to leave a mark on their community through a public art organization called The Up Project that is dedicated to involving artistic high school students in the community arts in tangible ways.

Recently, the group completed “The Up Project Cash & Boardman Mural,” a large-scale mural on the stair steps that connect Eureka Springs’ North Main Street to Center Street.

Over the 2014 winter break, they tasked the Eureka Springs High School Art Club with rendering designs for the project and professional muralist Doug Myerscough combined two submissions for the final design - a waterfall from Eureka Springs High School senior Kyla Boardman and a multicolored tree from senior Kennedy Cash. The mural is named after these students.

The community came together to support this project.

The City of Eureka Springs drafted a resolution to allow the students to paint the public space, and the Historic District Commission signed off on the mural since the entirety of downtown is on the National Historic Register. Each vote won with unanimous approval.

While The Up Project focused on high school students, the Cash & Boardman Mural directly solicited community involvement in its creation. Work days were publicized and volunteers came out to power wash the steps, apply the primer and assist with painting. Myerscough laid out a giant “paint by numbers” on the 69 steps and anyone, regardless of experience, was able to paint.

Derge believes the mural is different from your average public art project.

“The Cash & Boardman differs, in my opinion, in the level of community involvement, as it provided an opportunity for those that may not have considered themselves members of the ‘art community’ to participate,” she said.

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“Eureka Springs is many things to many people. The Up Project Cash & Boardman mural encapsulates that ideal. It’s a huge mural and has that BAM Art Here! grandtype entrance, but then brings in our commitment to our environment, the diversity of our people, the talent and wisdom of our youth.”

a shot at REDEMPTION

Artist Matt Bradley passed on the opportunity to design the cover of Lucero’s debut album Tennessee. Fifteen years later, he got a second chance.

WORDS / DAVE MORRIS

A

rkansas expatriate Matt Bradley is known to fans of the band Lucero for wearing “a jean jacket with a bullet in the sleeve” as referenced in the lyrics of the song “Tears Don’t Matter Much.”

He’s also a visual artist and he recently painted the cover for the new Lucero album All A Man Should Do out September 18, via ATO records. “‘Tears Don’t Matter Much’ ended up being a song about a few of my favorite singer-songwriters around Arkansas and Memphis at the time,” said Lucero front man Ben Nichols. “Matt Bradley had been in a band called Superstar and my old band Red Forty played a bunch of shows with them. He had a Levi’s jean jacket with a .22 bullet slipped into the red Levi’s tab by the chest pocket. I thought that was pretty cool.”

Bradley is currently based out of San Diego, but he grew up in Hot Springs and also resided in Fayetteville, Memphis and New York before settling out west. He considers his Arkansas roots to be very influential on his artistic work. “I think it’s in everything I do. I am very much a product of my environment and proudly wear that on my sleeve.” He is part of a loose art collective known as URADNZA which has existed in San Diego since 1991.

Bradley is “currently working on a series of paintings of photographs of UFOs” which he claims were partly inspired by “redneck conspiracy theorists from back home who sent (him) down the rabbit hole.”

He executes this work through a very specific process. “I take screen grabs of alleged UFO photos and video from YouTube and then make paintings of those images. My work over the last few years has been all about myth, belief and experience. My subject matter comes from alternative histories, crypto-archeology, crypto-zoology, UFOlogy and conspiracy. Painting these UFO images as naturalistic landscapes legitimizes the image and presents it as documentary.

There is no attempt to distinguish whether the images are authentic. ‘I Know What I Saw’ was the name of the exhibition I just had at Helmuth Projects in San Diego.”

“Tears Don’t Matter Much” isn’t the only Lucero song Matt Bradley is linked to. “Funny story for all the Lucero fans,” Bradley said. “The notorious ‘Chain Link Fence’ was at an outdoor skate park in Hot Springs where we had shows. I’m pretty sure Red Forty and Superstar

played. The girl on the fence was my roommate’s girlfriend who’d come down from Memphis with us. Ben straight up stole her from him, then wrote a song about it!”

Although Bradley “has known the Lucero guys forever and loves them to pieces” and is even a former roommate of Lucero guitarist Brian Venable, it was specifically his recent work with UFOs that led to him doing the new Lucero cover.

“Brian had seen the UFO paintings online and they were up against a tight deadline,” Bradley said. “He called and asked me if I could make a painting for the cover in like a week. They wanted a cityscape, but without real identity or definition. I found some images online and used those as a reference. I painted a day and a night so they could choose.

I guess there’s a print that has both day and night, and the day version is the cover. Super stoked! They had asked me to paint the cover of Tennessee years ago and I totally choked. So it’s great to have a chance to redeem myself!”

VISIT: uradnza.com/bradley_index.html

Courtesy of ATO Records

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ARTISTS WE LOVE:

TREVOR BENNETT INTERVIEW / DONNA SMITH

“A

rt is hard,” to quote one of my favorite undergraduate professors. Trevor Bennett experienced that same moment many of us feel when he quit his job to pursue art full-time at the University of Arkansas Little Rock. Through humor, abstraction and a willingness to try out new installation techniques, Bennett presents work that is engaging on all fronts to the viewer. Bennett’s upcoming work can be seen in the traveling exhibition “Drawing Value,” which will arrive in Little Rock, his hometown, at Boswell Mourot Fine Art in November. For me, if his insightful and refreshing interview is any indication, you won’t want to miss this show.

Tell me more about your upcoming show Drawing Value. What types of work can we expect to see and is it a departure from previous work?

The show ultimately is about subjects with multiple interpretations. I feel that it is an exciting next step in the evolution of my art adventure. In “Drawing Value” I am exploring my personal biography by scrutinizing pocket-sized objects from my life. I channel that scrutiny into charcoal drawings that meticulously recreate my collection at a much larger scale. The title of the show was selected because it has several different meanings. Individual titles within the show provocatively adopt other drawing-related words such as “resolution” and “fidelity.”

How did you start with ceramics? How did your ideas develop between your time in Arkansas at UALR and then later on in New York at Alfred University?

UALR was a wonderful experience for me. I had been interested in art my entire life but when it came time for school, I didn’t know if I could manage to make it a career. One night, my ceramics teacher, Missy McCormick sat me down and convinced me to stop studying part-time and to focus. The next day I quit my day job and dedicated myself to art. The following year I was selected to attend the amazing Alfred University in New York. It was a dream come true. I learned a lot about clay but even more about art. Thanks Missy!

Do you find that your drawing process directly impacts your ceramics work and installation?

From your website, drawing seems quite integral to your mold and sculptural process. There is even a section of your works called “Sketches,” which includes terracotta pieces.

Drawing has always been a staple in my art diet. I think it’s essential to every artist’s practice. I grew up drawing every minute, imitating other artists. I have always been an obsessive person when it comes to the details. I think that being hyper-observant as a child conditioned me in my adulthood. Eventually, I started comparing the blankness of the page to the emptiness of a gallery space. Three-dimensionally arranging sculpture in an installation sense was not unlike tinkering with composition on a two-dimensional surface.

From looking at your work as a whole, the ceramic works are impressive, but seem to come together more fully in your storyline composition or installation connections between each piece

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ABOVE: Salt and Pepper, 2015, charcoal on paper BELOW: Portrait of the artist

in several of the series you’ve produced. When constructing an installation, do you have an idea of where the pieces will go, or do you rearrange pieces on site?

Believe it or not, story is not something I am trying to dictate. My favorite movies are those that include me as a character. When the credits roll, it’s up to me to determine what actually happened. All of the “stuff” around us plays a role in our personal, biographical narratives. In “Drawing Value,” the “stuff” is isolated, ripped out of its previous, narrative context. What’s left is up to the viewer. Will they quickly see the subjects through the lens of their past, or will they slow down, embracing the image as a completely new relationship?

How does humor factor into your work? From the titles of several installations including “Adjunct Mountain,” and “Doppelganger,” there seems to be an element of play and maybe just a bit of autobiography.

I have always been a joker. When I was a kid, it was all fun and games.

As I get older and more politically charged, I have to be careful not to let humor turn completely into cynicism. Cynicism is cool and all, but I just don’t want to lose a positive outlook on life. “Adjunct Mountain” is cynical. My giant pile of peanuts represents the laughable pay that adjunct professors garner nationally while showcasing our seemingly infinite ranks as educators.

In your series “Milk and Honey,” do you find the images of the two figures or golden figure to help with the idea the work is based on?

Also, you give some background information on your starting point for the series on your website, while other works are left up to the viewer. Is there a particular reason for this, or would you consider that your investigation of choice applies to your studio practice overall?

I have friends who say that I am giving too much information or that I should leave more to viewer interpretation, but I just can’t help myself when it comes to background information. My work is very experimental. I think this is great for any art practice as long as the artist is honest about the results. “Milk & Honey” was a move that allowed me to circle back to personal biography. I posted a description on my website that addresses the outcome of the experiment sincerely. After all, photographing gold-plated, ceramic objects in milk baths is a pretty wacky idea!

ABOVE: Mr. Perfect (process), 2015, charcoal on paper

How has teaching affected your studio practice?

Teaching has revolutionized my life. Teaching forces me to make a stand and to draw conclusions to the studio’s experiments. I have been lucky to work with some outstanding young artists. Their eagerness and creativity provides daily inspiration. I have learned many lessons through teaching. One is that “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” As it turns out, you don’t need fingers to make amazing art.

Did you always know you wanted to be an artist?

My mom tells a funny story. Once when I was eight, she asked me why my hair was so messed up. My response was “because I’m an artist.”

VISIT: TREVORBENNETT.NET

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THE MAN OF MANY FACES John Harlan Norris creates art that showcases identity.

And the danger of getting lost in it.

INTERVIEW / DONNA SMITH

“S

o, what do you do?” Blurgh. It’s such a benign, yet maddening question. We have all encountered it when meeting someone new or even have committed such a verbal atrocity. In a world where categories are the way we organize information, people are identifiable by their professions.

While that may help ease a stranger’s curiosity, for the person answering, it can be difficult. How many people are one thing and that’s it? For artist John Harlan Norris, “we often assume identities that both define and fail to define us,” which describes the very thing that drives his work.

Through his paintings, Norris investigates how our identities are constantly in flux.

His works focus on the things we identify ourselves with, such as a uniform or tool, while at the same time, use these devices to completely hide the person represented. In the end, these paintings offer insight into how we present our own story or narrative to the world. The outcome is, as Norris describes, “one that is both intensely descriptive and curiously elusive.” John was kind enough to talk with me about his work and more of the things that make him a person and not just an occupation.

Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, he is a visual artist, musician and teacher. Triple threat.

To some artists, place can really inform work. Do you feel like coming from Kentucky and getting your education in Louisiana added something to your practice that you may not have otherwise gotten in say, Los Angeles or New York?

I lived in New York for a period after college, and I found it exhilarating though not necessarily conducive to making work. I think I’m the kind of person that needs ample space and a certain amount of solitude to really settle into my creative pursuits. I love going to New York and LA for periods of time to absorb what’s happening, but it’s then nice to return to a quieter place where I can really focus in a sustained way. Everybody’s different and that’s just what seems to work for me.

You also collaborate in a music group called Harlan. When did you

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start this project?

I’ve been playing music in one form or another since I was about 12 years old, but the Harlan thing began just as a name I gave to demo tapes I would make on my own. It eventually morphed into a band around 2006 when I was living in Louisiana. I still make recordings, though I haven’t really been playing with a band in recent years.

How does your art inform your music and/or vice versa? Would you consider them completely separate? Or are there parts of both mediums in each?

At a young age I was definitely introduced to the visual components of pop music (album art, posters, videos) before I was familiar with the world of contemporary art. So I think that has had an enduring effect on my painting. When I’m making work in each medium, there are definitely elements that bleed over from one to the other, but it’s also helpful to view them as separate projects on some level if only for practical reasons.

I think your blog supplement for students in your courses is pretty cool. And for other teachers, artists and makers that would like to teach, it’s a great resource. How do you approach teaching? Were there any styles of teaching that helped you when you were first starting out? What excites you most about a new course, new group of students?

I love teaching because it makes me feel connected. Being alone in the studio for weeks at a time can be great, but sometimes it can also become a very insular experience. My favorite part of teaching is being surprised. I love it when a student approaches an assignment from a totally unexpected place or when their developing body of work takes an exciting or unforeseen turn. Those moments are very inspiring.

In the same vein, how do you balance making and the classroom? I only teach one course a semester and it’s not a studio class. I can only

imagine it can be draining. How do you keep your mind fresh and, at the risk of sounding pessimistic, un-jaded?

consider those models sculptural works that could exist as pieces on their own, divorced from the paintings?

Teaching while maintaining a studio practice can be challenging. I’ve tried to cultivate a bit of compartmentalization in that regard. On studio days, I try to cool it on the email and be productive in a sustained way, and on teaching days, I try to really be all-in. In terms of staying fresh, teaching beginning classes is very helpful. There’s a vulnerability and sense of risk when starting something new, and I admire it when students are willing to go to that place. I try to also remain a beginner when approaching my own work in some ways; it keeps me open to new possibilities.

I would love to show the busts I used as models alongside the paintings at some point. They are certainly an integral part of the process.

Your paintings represent people in daily life, but in a hyper-sense of what a person identifies himself or herself as. Do you come across that in conversation? It does seem like one of the first things people ask you when meeting is “so what do you do?” Is that one of the issues you’re dealing with in the work?

Yes, that is certainly part of it. “What do you do?” is a very complicated question, and the answer will always be incomplete or in flux on some level. And I think these portraits are trying to address that uncertainty to a degree.

Do you pull each of your “models” from people you’ve met or people in your life? Or, do you use imagination and props to create these exaggerated portraits?

I would say both. I do have props, but I’ve also used models (as well as myself).

One thing that I enjoy about making these is that they can contain elements of people I’ve known, but also remain anonymous and hopefully reflective of wider experiences for the viewers.

I watched the short film on your website which was a document of your preparation and opening reception for “Occupants.” What a cool view into your studio! I was going to ask if you made models for your paintings and boom. There they were. Would you consider those to be studies or would you ever think of showing those alongside the paintings? Do you

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You use a variety of media when creating - printmaking, painting, music making. Is there any media you don’t find works with your method/idea?

If you couldn’t paint anymore, which method would you turn to?

That’s tough to say. For me, settling on my chosen working method has been more about intuition and experience than decision-making. For example, my printmaking practice kind of bled into my work as a result of having a roommate who’s a great designer and silkscreen artist. Who knows where a new set of experiences might lead? If I couldn’t paint, I don’t know: ice sculptor, sandwich artist, the possibilities are endless.

I’ve had the privilege of seeing your work in person, on multiple occasions in separate cities, in fact, and it is alarming, but allows the viewer to make up his or her own narrative. How strong is a backstory for you when making this work?

The anonymous quality of the figures is absolutely intentional. I want there to be space for the viewer to play an active role in terms of meaning and narrative. The work is not meant to elucidate one specific interpretation or reaction.

The titles offer some possibilities, but I try not to make them too specific.

When you write that a person is at once validated, and yet, invalidated by his or her profession, do you think there is also a part of that in the making of a painting that depicts that profession by the commonly known objects used within it? Would that make the paintings of the person then just a collection of objects? Is that notion of defining a person a struggle when making?

For centuries, we have used inanimate objects as a way to signify our place in the world. Totems, uniforms, record collections - I think that’s just an unavoid-

able part of the ongoing experiment of constructing one’s identity.

I usually hate to bring up other artists’ works, but hey, I’m doing it now. Nick Cave’s Soundsuits. Your paintings and more specifically, the models of which some of those come from just make me want to grab one and wear it around. Sort of like an astronaut helmet of identity. Do you ever consider these pieces being involved in a performance? What happens to them once you’ve finished the painted work?

They usually end up kind of breaking down as I borrow parts from them to put into new pieces. Performance is fascinating to me, but in terms of making work, it’s very foreign. Who knows what will happen down the line, but at the moment I feel dedicated to this project in terms of painting – it feels very much like an experiment that remains unfinished.

How has travel promoted your ideas or studio practice? I know you visited Portugal recently and have traveled inside the states to several places including residencies.

Travel widens your set of experiences in unexpected ways.

For example, later today I will be converting photos I took of street and building tiles in Lisbon into patterns for prints. I couldn’t have predicted such imagery ending up in the work before this trip.

What advice would you give to artists, young or old?

I feel like I’m still figuring things out myself, so I don’t know how well suited I am to offer advice. But I do think there’s something to that idea I touched upon earlier of remaining a beginner. The artists I really admire always seem willing to go to new places that might be uncomfortable or uncertain, rather than simply rely on what they know has worked in the past. That’s something I hope to continue to cultivate.

“The anonymous quality of the figures is absolutely intentional. I want there to be space for the viewer to play an active role in terms of meaning and narrative.

The work is not meant to elucidate one specific interpretation or reaction.”

(Left) “Passenger” (Upper right) “Youth” (Previous page) “Portrait of the artist” (Page 23) “Weekender” idleclassmag.com

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Why stay in the South and right now, Arkansas? What’s special about this area that enables you to work?

I came to Arkansas when I was appointed to a teaching position at Arkansas State University. In academia, you never know where you might end up, and I feel super fortunate to have landed here. There are great artists both at my university and throughout the state, and this setting affords me both the physical and mental space to focus and really get to work.

Have you ever felt like you just absolutely blew it with a painting or work? I know I have for sure. How do you define success, or just, contentment maybe, in your own work?

If I make a work that I think shouldn’t exist, I destroy it. Then it’s like it never happened – which helps.

What’s next for you in terms of studio, shows, and the upcoming year?

I have some things in the works in some cities I’ve never shown in before, which is exciting. I’m also just looking forward to getting back to the studio after running around a bunch this summer. I get anxious if I’m not working on something new.

VISIT: JOHNHARLANNORRIS.COM

(Upper right) “Miner” (Below) “Focus Group” (Opposite page) “Foreign Observer”

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FEATURES

HEMINGWAY WROTE HERE The legendary writer penned one of his most famous works in a barn in Piggott, Arkansas.

So what exactly was he doing there?

WORDS & PHOTOS / KODY FORD

hen you think Ernest Hemingway, places like Key West, Havana, Paris, even the African plains come to mind. Piggott, Ark., probably is one of the last places you’d imagine. However, this small town, about an hour drive from Jonesboro, played a pivotal role in the writer’s personal life and career, and Arkansas State University is doing what they can to let the world know.

He met his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer in Paris. Though still married at the time, he struck a friendship with Pauline that eventually became romantic as his marriage to his first wife Hadley deteriorated. After their divorce, he married Pauline, around the time of the publication of his second short story collection, Men Without Women.

While his time to the United States is mostly known for his time in Key West, Hemingway and his wife often came to Piggott for months at a time, staying in the barn-turned-studio behind Pauline’s parents’ home on 60,000 acres of farmland. He worked in the breezeway beneath their barn apartment, the front porch of the house and, depending upon the weather, in the barn. He worked on his classic A Farewell to Arms along with short stories such as “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” His story “A Day’s Wait” is set in Piggott.

“I think most people don’t realize the amount of time that Ernest spent here,” said Dr. Adam Long, director of the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center.

“When he visited, he didn’t just stop for the weekend. He often stayed for months at a time, getting a great deal of work done while he was here.”

In 1997, Dr. Ruth Hawkins and ASU were working to help establish the Crowley’s Ridge Parkway. Piggott was the northernmost town on the proposed route, and Dr. Hawkins was aware that Hemingway had visited here, so she sent a photographer to examine the property. It happened to be on the market. ASU gathered donors, including Sherland and Barbara Hamilton of Rector, Arkansas, and the Janes family of Piggott. Thanks to their support, ASU acquired the property in 1997 and opened it to the public in 1999.

The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum receives about 5000 visitors a year from about 35 to 40 states and many foreign countries. They host two writers’ retreats a year - each one a week long - that pair a professional mentor and 12 to 15 participants. In the morning, the mentor engages the writers in activities to get them started and then writers spend several hours writing on their own (or in individual or small group conferences with the mentor). Many choose to write in Hemingway’s studio. At the end of the day, the writers come back together as a big group to share their work and give each other feedback.

“It’s a great time for writers to not only hone their skills, but also to build relationships with other writers,” said Long.

In addition to on-site programming, they offer educational programming off-site.

One of their most popular events is the annual Hemingway trip. In summer 2016, they will visit locations connected to A Farewell to Arms in Northern Italy and Switzerland.

W

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ABOVE: The breezeway of the barn where Hemingway lived.

He often wrote here during the day because it was cooler.

BELOW: A copy of the first printing of The Sun Also Rises.

Feel free to contact Long if you want information.

While Piggott is a long drive for many Arkansans, it is worth it for lovers of literature.

“The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum preserves an important part of Arkansas history,” said Long. “Through the Pfeiffer family and their famous son-in-law, the Arkansas Delta came into contact with the art and politics of the larger world. The Delta also influenced the Hemingways and Pfeiffers. This interaction is a segment of Arkansas history that shouldn’t be missed.”

VISIT: hemingway.astate.edu

RIGHT: A photo of Ernest Hemingway and his wife Pauline (née) Pfeiffer.

A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow gives writers the solace they need to be productive.

WORDS / KODY FORD

E

very writer needs a place to work. For some, it’s an old desk in a quiet room with a locked door. For others, it’s the ruckus of a public place like the food court at the mall. To each their own. But for those who do like to get away from the grind of daily life, The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow has you covered.

Tucked on a hillside in the shade of the lush foothills in Eureka Springs, The Writers’ Colony offers a unique residency program for writers, artists, composers, architects and chefs. Open year round, they host more than 50 established and emerging writers for time frames from one week to three months. (Editor’s note: I have stayed at the colony on two separate occasions and loved it.) The selection process for residents involves an application and a review of their work for either subsidized general residency or a fellowship-funded stay. Writers work and stay in individual suites equipped with a bedroom, writing area, wifi, air conditioning, private bath, private entrance and mini-kitchen. Meals are prepared by Jana Jones, who tailors them according to dietary restrictions, allergies, vegan or vegetarian or gluten-free diets or whatever the writer requires.

Once writers come to the Colony, they often make the trip again. Linda Caldwell, director of the Colony, believes it has to do with having the time and space to focus on writing. “There is an energy at the Colony that is very conducive to creativity and writing; almost all our writers comment on how productive they are while in residence,” said Caldwell. “There’s no laundry, no meals to prepare, no dogs to let out, no kids needing attention or rides; they just write. And most of the time, they have other writers to talk with at dinner. Friendships are often formed here, and they end up coming back at the same time the next year and sometimes hang out together in Eureka.”

The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow was formed in 1998, when prolific author, teacher and longtime Eureka Springs resident Crescent Dragonwagon and her late husband Ned Shank closed Dairy Hollow House, Eureka Springs’ first bed and breakfast and restaurant, which they had operated for 18 years. The couple, both writers and artists, wanted to give back to the community, so they established the Colony as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. The Colony’s main house with three suites, a great room for gatherings and a commercial kitchen, took the place of the restaurant. The Farmhouse, a few blocks away, was converted into three suites for writers. In 2011, it was sold to pay for renovating 505 Spring Street next door. The Colony now has a total of eight suites, each with a bedroom, private bath and a writing room. One suite is devoted to culinary writers and has a kitchen designed by Renovation Style magazine and furnished by KitchenAid. All suites have coffee makers and small refrigerators, and laundry facilities are available in both houses.

Fellowships include “The 2015 My Time Fellowship For Writers With Children” and “The 2015 Moondancer Fellowship For Writing About Nature And The Outdoors.” Past fellowships include “The 2014 Eat-Write! Culinary Fellowship.” While this is an amazing resource, like all things, it’s not free. Writers pay $60 a night, which includes food, and the actual cost is closer to $125 per night.

“Fundraising is a constant challenge. We plan to do two major events a year in the future to help with fundraising and we’re working on organizing several other fundraising campaigns to be done on a yearly basis to help. People can help by donating, obviously, but it’s also very helpful to write and talk about their experiences here and to encourage other writers to take advantage of us. The more the word gets out there about the Colony, the better for us.”

VISIT: WritersColony.org

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FROM THE MIDDLE EAST TO THE OZARKS Jordanian writer Jamal Abu Hamdan garnered a well-deserved reputation as a prolific man of letters in Arab literature. He earned praise, provoked controversy and even shrugged off death threats from religious extremists.

Until his last days with his family in Fayetteville, he never stopped writing. Here are two of his short stories.

BY JAMAL ABU HAMDAN

TRANSLATED BY JUSOOR PHOTO BY TARAF ABU HAMDAN

T

THE MIRROR

he ancient mirror remained abandoned for a long time, with no one in sight, reflecting nothing. One day a pair of lovers passed by; they stood in front of it, not looking.

Their hands were entwined but the awe-struck mirror reflected them as separate. They drew closer to each other, but their images stood far apart. They embraced, but the distracted mirror kept them where they were. Then they meshed together, and were gone. The mirror’s surface was empty. It felt terribly depressed, and soon a sound of breaking was heard. The ancient mirror fell to the floor in pieces. The frame remained hanging from the nail. The nail stayed in the wall.

I

THE CHOICE

n the middle of the café, there are chairs of many colors. On a certain evening, two lovers entered the café. They were so gentle, almost transparent, that the café pulsated like a heart.

They stood and looked around. They whispered to each other.

Smiling, they chose: he a black chair, she a white one. Then they sat down. They gazed longingly at each other, but couldn’t merge. Their longing ceased, contact became difficult. They tried to speak, but to no avail. Silence drifted, gray, between them (between the black chair and the white one.) It drowned them. They stayed until time itself aged. Then they rose. They left. The two chairs, white and black, stood in the middle of the café, side by side.

ABOUT JAMAL Jamal Abu Hamdan was a prolific and influential Arab writer and author. He published numerous novels, plays, and collections of short stories and articles along with a number of television dramas. He is considered an important symbol of creative literature and drama in the Arab world and is praised for his contribution to literary works and language. He modernized the short story with his unique approach to short fiction, rebelling against the traditional forms of Middle Eastern literature. Jamal won several high profile prizes for his work, and his plays are performed all

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over the Arab world.

Jamal was born in 1944 in Sweadaa, Syria, while the family was moving from Lebanon to Jordan. He studied in Amman, Cairo and Beirut. He received his law degree and worked as the Media/Public Relations Director and Vice Chairman for Legal Affairs for the Royal Jordanian Airlines. He was married to Rima Eirani and has three children. He spent his last days with family in Arkansas, and he died and was buried in Fayetteville in 2015.

the life & times of Mr. fancy pants Playwright Mark Landon Smith discusses his career & how getting cocky almost cost him everything.

WORDS / KODY FORD PHOTO / BRANDON OTTO

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he play was done. The tour was booked. The seats were filled. The curtain rose. It was opening night and by the end of the first act, people began to leave.

This was Mark Landon Smith’s second play. The first one - Faith County - had been a hit, but the sequel was dead on arrival. Now the young playwright who had shown so much promise had to make a decision - run and hide or figure out what went wrong? He chose the latter.

“I thought I was the greatest writer on the face of the earth because my first play was published immediately,” Smith says. “It was just terrible.

People were walking out. So I closed the show that night and canceled the tour. This was a big, humbling moment for me.”

But the play wasn’t a total waste; 10 minutes of it got laughs. And those ten minutes became the starting point for his new play.

“Before, I was forcing it,” he says. “Those 10 minutes were the only 10 minutes in the entire play where the characters started talking. I listened to that and the rest of it fell into place.”

The revamped play - Faith County 2: An Evening of Culture - was a hit and his career was back on track. While it hasn’t been without its bumps, Smith learned a valuable lesson that day: don’t get cocky and give the people laughs.

The Fayetteville-based playwright and executive director of Arts Live Theatre began writing as a child, penning homages to his favorite works like Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and The Hobbit. At age 15, he performed in a play called Dinner at 8, so he wrote a play called Dinner at 6. He jokes, “I just moved dinner back two hours.”

While the original is a serious drama from the 1930s, Smith’s play was a 30-page farce. He sent it off to several publishers and received some responses including Baker’s Plays. The editor wrote him and said, “We consider this more than most, but unfortunately it does not fit in our catalog.”

Smith went to Rhodes College in Memphis, where he majored in playwriting. He wrote several plays that he describes as “horrible” before eventually finding his voice.

“I was very earnest about trying to write the Great American Play, never realizing that no playwright or author does that. The public does that. History decides that. Not you.”

During this time, he worked as an actor with the McCoy Repertory Theatre and between productions, began to improvise with his fellow actors. Together they created a town called Mineola that was located in the middle of nowhere in the South. Smith wanted to make a film, but realized that since the actors were in their twenties and the characters were middle age, perhaps they would be better suited by taking it to local radio station WLYX. He wrote a script called Faith County about small-town folks whose lives involved mundane things like playing Monopoly or attending church picnics. He describes it as “very white trash Seinfeld.” While the initial run was for one episode, the show was a hit and the station offered them an on-going run at that time slot. Faith County started out with six characters, and after 52 episodes the world had expanded to 60 characters. Smith wrote all but five episodes.

In 1991, Smith used the radio scripts as the basis for a one-act play, which he entered into a playwriting competition that he won. The Actor’s Workshop Theatre Company wanted to produce it, so he wrote a second act. The play toured for several months as they worked the kinks out. He sent the finished play to several publishers. It was picked up by Baker’s Plays, the same company that had turned him down when he was a teenager.

He’s been a working writer for most of his life now. His 15th published play will be released this year. He works with several publishers like Samuel French (who acquired Baker’s Plays), Pioneer Drama Service and Still Spring Publishing. He estimates that he has written 50 to 60 plays and hasn’t sub-

A Good Name She knows she will never have one.

At the grocery store, no one stops to help her invalid mother.

No one tips a hat to her father.

Her brothers have all done hard time.

She knows she’s become invisible, flashing like neon.

- Jo McDougall mitted them all to be published. Some are adaptations of public domain works such as Plan 9 from Outer Space and Night of the Living Dead that he uses for Arts Live Theatre.

Many writers claim that if you don’t write every day, then you’re not truly honing your craft, but Smith disagrees. “I find that very restrictive,” he says.

“If I force myself to write, nothing ever happens so I sit and wait until I start hearing the voices. So the characters will start writing the script for me and I just do dictation. It can take me a couple of days to get a good script out.”

He uses a bulletin board system with index cards for everything he writes. Certain plot points have different colors. He arranges them on the board and if there is too much of one color, then he knows to adjust that part of the story. He finds this works well because he is such a visual person. Typically, only small amounts change, the result of workshopping the play. “If it doesn’t work, you’ve got to be willing to yank those pages.”

Not all of Smith’s projects are for the stage. Currently, he is writing a humor observation book called Mr. Fancy Pants that is very much in the vein of Tina Fey, Mindy Kaling and David Sedaris. Also, he and writer/ director Kim Swink (Valley Inn) are collaborating on Desire in the Ozarks, an homage to Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries, that he describes as a “no budget film.”

“It’s a new movement and I’m fascinated with that,” he says. “Anyone can make a movie for $200,000 but can you make a movie with nothing?

Of course you can. At the end of the day, the story is what rules. Nothing else.”

Writing comedy is not everyone’s forte, but for Smith, aside from a few flirtations with drama, it has been his bread and butter. His only advice for aspiring comedy writers is to just let it come to you.

“If you’re trying to be funny, it’s not funny,” he says. “All you’re doing is writing the truth. My mother is the funniest person on the planet, but she has no idea she’s funny. She’s just being honest.”

While Smith admits that he took himself far too seriously at a young age, he’s still happy with the way things have turned out.

“This has been my path to travel,” he says. “Every artist goes through that period of ‘I’m an earnest 20 year old artist.’ And I’m sure every artist would love to tell their younger self not to do that. But that’s part of the process - learning to not take yourself so seriously and just doing the work.”

VISIT: MARKLANDONSMITH.COM

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CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MILLER WILLIAMS Terry Wright reflects upon his experiences with the legendary Arkansas poet Miller Williams WORDS / TERRY WRIGHT ILLUSTRATION / PHILLIP REX HUDDLESTON

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have been thinking lately about my memories of Miller Williams – renowned poet, translator, and publisher from Arkansas – since his death on New Year’s Day. Unlike my friend Jo McDougall, I cannot say I knew Miller Williams. I did not. However, I did have a number of close encounters with him. Like unspooling Stars Wars episodes, here they are: Episode One: In 1974, I am living in Sioux City, Iowa, and attending Morningside College where I am double-majoring in English and Drama. Having washed out of a painting class after holding the brush like a butcher knife and stabbing mercilessly at the canvas but still wanting to work in the image business, I begin to more seriously read and write poetry – and attend poetry readings. A number of Morningside grads have gone to graduate school in Arkansas, so the college brings in Miller to read. He is the complete package – charming, educational, moving, and funny. I nearly fall out of my chair when, at the close of “I Go Out of the House for the First Time,” he intones: hello turd so I pull off my penis and everybody runs up saying in loud voices look at the dumb turd he pulled off his penis.

That isn’t the “poetry” I had to memorize in high school. I want to do that (poetry writing not appendage pulling). So, I wait in line, shuffling nervously, determined to talk with Miller after the reading. He says I should move to Arkansas to study poetry. He says the winters are milder than Iowa. He says the forests are filled with fun things to smoke. I say I will think about it. I do.

Episode Two: And then I do some more. I move to Fayetteville and begin a Master’s Program in English and American Literature at the University of Arkansas. I feel I should first try to read everything everywhere before trying to write. Moreover, Miller is there, and so are so many other awe-inspiring poets and writers, and I get to meet and talk with all of them – Leon Stokesbury, Frank Stanford, C. D. Wright, John Stoss, “Buddy” Nordan, Ellen Gilchrist, and more. Miller also lets me enroll once in his graduate poetry workshop which meets one night a week downstairs at his house. I distinctly remember three things from that experience. 1) Meeting Lucinda Williams before she was famous. 2) Coming to the gradual realization that I would never be an agrarian farmer poet like John Crowe Ransom. 3) Learning the confidence to edit and “kill my darlings” utilizing the method of peer review. I recall turning in my portfolio at semester’s end and telling Miller that I am unable to take any other workshops because of the study regimen of the master’s program. He says that is okay because I fall into one of two categories of young poets he knows from experience he cannot help. “I can’t help some poets because they are already fully formed and have found their own voice, and I can’t help other poets because they are just too stubborn to listen to my sound advice.” I still wonder, to this day, which category he placed me in.

Episode Three: It’s 1977. John Stoss is putting together a poetry reading at the U-Ark Theater in Fayetteville. He read a long poem I’d written on punk music in the wake of the Sex Pistols sensation. He wants me on the program – along with John Clellon Holmes, who is teaching in the creative writing program at this time. John (Stoss) prints flyers that advertise the event as “The Punks vs. The Beats.” The place is packed the night of event, and I’m completely terrified. I’ve never read to an audience larger than a workshop.

Backstage, during my introduction, I’m shivering – and I see Miller backstage at the other end of the proscenium. I shake my head sideways in a classic I-cannot-do-this gesture. Miller nods up and down and makes the iconic Carol Merrill hand gesture to the stage – as if to say: “The floor is yours. Take it.”

So, I do.

Episode Four: It’s now 1980, and The Malls, Arkansas’ first punk band, is playing in Fayetteville at a party held the home of an MFA graduate student.

I’m the band’s singer, and my voice can barely be heard over the instrumental

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roar. The scene is chaotic. Grad students from the CW program are flailing about. Books are literally vibrating out of their shelves. Jim Whitehead is talking to several cops at the front door - presumably bargaining with them not to break up the bash. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I see Miller. He’s sitting, legs crossed, on a folding chair positioned directly in front of one of the band’s P. A. speakers.

He’s squinting, and his head tilts at an angle where his ear is resting on the speaker. I realize he is trying to ferret out the lyrics. The song crashes to a halt, and Miller straightens up, looks at me, and gives me the same nod as the one he shot me at the reading three years before. I smile at him – turn to the band and scream “Take it.” The next song explodes to a start – and I don’t see Miller again for over 20 years.

Episode Five: Flash forward to 2003. I’m in the Majestic Hotel in Hot Springs and have been asked to be a feature reader at the Arkansas State Poetry Slam Competition. The other feature reader is – Miller Williams. We are also serving as judges for the contest. I read first, and my theatricality and dramatic style seems to go over well – if finger snaps are any gauge. Miller follows, and the crowd is much quieter – almost as if fearful that any sound will result in something critical being missed. I am again struck this night by his range and dignified grace – just as I had been nearly thirty years earlier.

After the competition, we talk a bit and agree that Clayton Scott, unquestionably, deserves to win the slam. I remind Miller that he had been the agent of change that first brought me to Arkansas. He jokes that he hoped literary history would not hold that fact against him. We part ways, never to see each other again. All the same, in the hotel lobby, a teenage boy abruptly stops me, pumps my hand, shuffles nervously, and tells me he liked my reading – the first poetry reading, in fact, he has ever attended. I remember thinking – strange. He seems mistily familiar.

death is not a stranger Cult poet Frank Stanford careens along the edges of The South.

WORDS / JEREMY GLOVER PHOTO / GINNY CROUCH STANFORD Tonight you better listen because I am going to tell you What you always wanted to hear.

All you bad hombres better take a deep breath.

I shit you not.

This is the night of nights.

Take a chance on love.

Old friends making up after 200 years Of the fine and high lonesomes I’ve seen my days.

- from “Direction from a Madman”

I

have only experienced the poetry of Frank Stanford in the one hundred degree heat of an Arkansas July. I’m not sure he belongs to this climate as much as the state’s dramatically shifting winters. He extrapolates, pokes through, and skirts around the heady, conflicted feelings that undulate so easily at the height of those stark seasons.

I knew Stanford was an after-the-moment cult hero of southern verse, but little else besides the fact he put three bullets in his heart in 1978 at the age of 29. With that bit of biography - you can blame it on our oversaturated times or the familiar American story of talent and youth ending in its late twenties - I have no real desire to learn much more than the bare bones I know about the man. His poetry is what interests me.

Born in Richton, Miss., in 1948, Stanford was adopted by a single mother who soon married and moved to Arkansas. He graduated from the Benedictine monastery and prep school Subiaco Academy, then attended graduate-level creative writing workshops at the University of Arkansas. During his short, prodigious life, Stanford produced 10 volumes of poetry and a prose collection, co-founded the small press Lost Roads Publishers, and left hundreds of pages of unpublished poems and short stories.

Death is a character that is present and accounted for in much of Stanford’s poetry, yet it never feels forced or the basis of a bold statement - Death is merely part of the show. Death is no different than the he’s and she’s that populate his verse.

Everytime Death gets a Cadillac He wants to fight He wants to run the front door, He wants cooking that will remind him of home.

If you try to forget Death ties a string around your finger.

In his 15,000-word, unpunctuated epic “The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You,” Death is a beguiling southern dandy when he arrives to take “my first mammy” for a final ride. well that black Cadillac drove right up to your front door and the chauffeur was death he knocked on the screen he said come on woman let’s take a ride he didn’t even give you time to spit he didn’t even let you take the iron out of your hair you said his fingernails was made out of water moccasin bones and his teeth was hollow he was a eggsucker you said he reach up under your dress and got the nation sack

you said he came looking for you and you hid out in the outhouse you waited for him with butcher knife you asked him why not let the good times roll The recently released What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) offers an entertaining and enlightening overview of his published and unpublished output, as well as some prose selections and a hazy, yet lucid early morning interview, that altogether create a distinct path that Stanford backtracked, retraced and made anew. You get a sense he wasn’t a Southern writer in the traditional lineage as much as a poet preoccupied with the South and its possibilities and inevitabilities.

Men go out at night, trying to sweep up the stars.

And women grow weary of the cold weather in their men.

They need a friend on the lake with a sailboat.

They need to take medicine and be alone.

Bad food and dead children are not forgotten.

They smell like cod liver oil In a thimble on the fingers– A fat lady in a housecoat Walking through rooms with a cage, Calling a bird.

VISIT: coppercanyonpress.org idleclassmag.com

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K

TAKE IT ONE SENTENCE AT A TIME

evin Brockmeier, an award-winning author and Little Rock native, strives to give as much of himself to his readers as possible, imparting soul-baring, intimate truths from his own soul in every story - whether the genre is non-fiction or fantasy.

Is that a scary prospect? Yes, it is, he admits.

But his calling has ultimately been rewarding. He’s been given the O. Henry prize three times and awarded the Arkansas-based Porter Fund Literary Prize, among others, for his fictional short stories.

Brockmeier’s narratives typically begin with an intriguing concept, often taking metaphor to the extreme until it becomes literal. The most widely known of his books, The Illumination, explores a world where the physical and mental pain of humans suddenly begins to radiate from them like a shimmering light and is no longer hidden from view.

As a writer, he’s disciplined and deliberate with the simple goal of continuing to produce more work that’s worthy of our bookshelves. These days, he’s making progress on another novel, but because of long-held writing superstitions, he can’t say what it’s about. On the sporadic times when he’s not in the midst of a novel, he’ll spend a semester at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop or teach a weekly workshop at Hendrix College.

You don’t generally teach and write at the same time?

I would love to be able to do both simultaneously, but I’ve found that when I’m teaching, it absorbs so much of my creative energy that I end up getting very little, if any writing done. If I were teaching full time, I might figure out a way to maybe do it.

So you’re generally consumed with one project at a time?

I try to be. If I’m working on a novel, and I reach some kind of natural pausing point, then I might interrupt myself to write a short story or an essay or something for an assignment. But as best I can, when I’m immersed in a book, I stay completely immersed in that book until it’s finished.

Kevin Brockmeier may have a novel approach to writing, but it’s one that is paying dividends.

I’ve read your writing process is to write sentence by sentence until you’re finished. Do you still write like that?

WORDS / MELISSA TUCKER PHOTO / BEN KRAIN

I do. I would never recommend it to anyone else as a working method, but I have the type of writing mind that won’t allow me to abandon a sentence if it doesn’t seem to be working properly. Slowly, I think I’ve managed to turn that into a working method, rather than an awful defect. While I’m working, every

A House in Kansas sentence goes through dozens of iterations before I’m happy with it. But by the time I’ve reached the end of the story, each sentence seemed to depend so very heavily on the sentences preceding and following it, that it’s not easy to re-immerse myself in the story and make the broader adjustments that one might think would be necessary.

So, it seems you’re fully present - almost meditative - as you’re writing?

I try to be wholly present with each moment of the story and allow every moment to dictate the one that follows. And if I’m faithful to whatever my impulses have been, then gradually a story will accumulate by the process, and it will be coherent, and it will have something to say to its readers, and oddly, it will be an expression of my own personality as well. That’s not to say that I haven’t had stillborn stories, because I have.

But it’s been a long, long time - since I was adolescent - that I’ve been able to speed my way through something, and then, as most writers would, go back to it and gradually refine it with subsequent revisions.

Nearly everything important and substantial about a story for me is a product of the music and the history and the insinuations of the words and the phrases that I’m using. Everything erupts from that - stories, plots, characters, themes, emotions - and as long as I’ve got a premise that I find satisfying and productive, my way of examining that premise is to pay very, very close attention to each and every sentence and allow it to offer up whatever might come next.

From where do you draw your inspiration?

I think like everybody and every writer, I’m inspired by everything that happens to cross my path. I have a very busy and healthy reading life, and certainly that’s a prime source of inspiration for me. And I’ve got a deep history of my own that I spend a lot of time thinking about, and I’ve got friends and family who are dear to me. And I listen to music and I watch movies and I have conversations and I don’t have a practice of meditation, but I spend a lot of time pondering the world and pondering my own experiences.

How do you develop a memorable character?

It would be hard for me to fill out a questionnaire about most of my characters, but there are certain deep fundamentals that I know about them before I even begin writing a story. And the rest of their character announces itself very gradually by the emotions of the words that I’m using to describe them, and if I had chosen one adjective rather than another, then they might have become a completely different character than they turned out to be.

Were you interested in writing as a child?

As early as age seven, as soon as I could put a sentence together, writing was how I entertained myself. So when my classwork was done and I was sitting in my schoolroom and had nothing else to do, I would make up stories and write them down. For a long time, all the way through elementary school, I wrote mystery stories, and I was always the detective and one of my classmates would disappear, and I would have to solve the crime. So, again and again, I wrote these stories. They were little wish fulfillment fantasies. I loved doing it, and it came very easily to me back then. I always loved reading as much as I loved anything else.

I think I just wanted to participate, find a way to participate creatively in that world.

The winter we bought the house with the big back yard, we kept ourselves amused wondering what might wake up in the flower beds: Tulips, we hoped. Jonquils. Canna.

We waited for them, touched them, red and yellow, in our sleep.

Stepping outside each day to check for spring, we saw the wind sharpen the trees to pencils.

- Jo McDougall In 2014, you published a memoir about your own life as a seventh grader in Little Rock, hoping to be as intimate as possible. Did you worry how others - friends and family - would react to this honest portrait of yourself?

Not until I had finished writing the book, and I began to talk to people about it, and they worried about it on my behalf. So I began to worry about it. When I was in the middle of writing it, it’s such a secretive private process, and it’s just you in the silence of your home or office, and it’s hard to imagine the book having a public life when you’re in the middle of writing it. When I wrote it, I used everybody’s actual names because those were their actual names, why would I change it?

And then I began to talk to people about it and everybody told me, “Oh, no! You have to change everybody’s name. You could upset people.”

The book was published through Random House, and they have a legal department who vetted it and told me, “There’s nothing libelous in these pages. You can publish it exactly as you’ve written it, if you choose to. But you might want to think it over.”

They weren’t even giving me legal advice. They were just giving me personal advice. So, I did end up reading through the entire book and devising pseudonyms for each and every one of my classmates that I thought somehow captured the emotional tone of their names. And I was even careful to keep everybody’s name in the same alphabetical order, that they could fall side by side, as I remembered them in the yearbook.

But that came very late in the writing process for me, so as I was writing, I just thought of these people as the people I perceived them to be when I was 12 and 13 years old, and what I was most interested in doing was capturing my experiences and my consciousness as the 12- and 13-year-old boy I was when all of these events transpired.

In the end was that scary? Or what point of writing and publishing a book is the most frightening to you?

It’s always very difficult to begin a book, because you know you have so much work ahead of you. And if you work like I do, incrementally, sentence by sentence, if it’s an entire book you’re working on, you know it’s going to be a year or two or three before you reach the last sentence, so that’s frightening. It’s much easier to be in the middle of a book, and even easier than that to be approaching the end of a book, because you build up some momentum.

See KEVIN, pg. 46

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STRIKING A BALANCE Praised by critics and students, award-winning writer & University of Arkansas professor Padma Viswanathan doesn’t wait for inspiration. She pushes through for the sake of the story.

INTERVIEW / NICHOLAS CLARO PHOTO / KAT WILSON

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here’s a big difference between being talked to, and talked at. I encountered the former a lot during my time as a student in several different universities. I can’t deliver a precise number, but I can say I have had many professors and countless TAs that, while teaching, did so in a way where I (and I am sure many of my fellow students) felt as though our presence was somewhat of a burden.

What I mean by “talked at” is this: speaking to a person, or a group of people, without emotion; simply saying what it is you want to say as to be rid of it. Now, do I think these professors and TAs really viewed us as a burden? No. Not at all. But what I am saying is they lacked fervor. In the classroom, I feel enthusiasm is as important as morale is to an active combat unit. Without it, or with little of it, things can go awry.

Like so many others, I met Padma Viswanathan in the classroom - a fiction workshop some years ago. The first day of class started as nearly 100 percent of all classes do. Everyone introduced himself/herself. We said where we were from. What kind of things we wrote about and why. What writers influenced us, etc. And all the while this went on, Padma smiled and looked at the speaker, and at times, asked a question about the writer they were talking about (which book of his do you like best?) or a question about their hometown. From day one, she engaged with all of us. And this never waned as the semester went on. If anything, Padma’s enthusiasm only grew.

Apart from being a passionate and wonderful teacher, Padma is also a very talented novelist and short story writer, as well as a playwright. If you didn’t know, over the years, Fayetteville has been home to a number of talented writers and poets (Ellen Gilchrist, William Harrison, and Miller Williams to name a few) and now, I’m happy to say, we can add one more to that list.

Padma Viswanathan is the author of the novels The Toss of a Lemon and The Ever After of Ashwin Rao. She has written two plays, Disco Does Not Suck and House of Sacred Crows and her short fiction has appeared in various journals. She currently resides in Fayetteville with her husband, the poet and translator Geoffrey Brock, and their two children. The Idle Class recently caught up with Padma to discuss her teaching and writing balance: Most writers out there are “working writers,” meaning they have 9 to 5’s like anyone else, so my first question is what is it like to teach and also write? Do you have a set time of day when you sit down to write, or do you wait for a free moment when one arises?

I’m not a waiter on free moments, and teaching is, fortunately, not 9 to 5, especially in creative writing. I have the stunning good fortune, as a morning writer, to teach just two afternoons a week. I do prep evenings (after kids are in bed) and come in for meetings but apart from that, try to keep my writing hours close to what they always have been. Before kids and this job, that was 8 to 2. Now it’s sort of 5:30 to 7 and 8 to 1 or so. Some semesters, like the last one, are so demanding that all this completely falls apart in favor of nonstop prep, but it’s a routine I return to whenever life permits.

I know Kent Haruf used to write in the basement of his Illinois home, in an old coal room, at a manual typewriter with a stocking cap pulled

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over his eyes, as to “blind himself so he could see” and Italo Calvino said the last thing he wanted to do in the morning was write, so he’d go out and run errands, buy the newspaper, so by the time he was finished it was afternoon, and that’s when he would sit to work. Do you have any conventions of your own when writing?

I’m curious to see how this might change with my next two projects, a translation and a non-fiction book, but when working on fiction, I have generally tried essentially to wake up at my keyboard, already writing. I often fall asleep thinking on the novel and wake up into it, and so try to preserve the dreamspace, as a sort of bridge into the world of my imagination, by silently making a cup of tea and going straight to my desk.

I’m astonished to hear that about Calvino - his work is so immersive, so fully imagined, that I can only think his mind at work must be iron clad, to withstand the million assaults of the mundane world that you are describing! As I said in my last answer, I often have to take a break 7 to 8 to get my kids off to school, and when they leave, it’s not uncommon for me to take a short nap, not only because I have been up for hours at this point, but because sleep destabilizes, takes down the defensive curtains guarding the unconscious. I should also say that my study is a private little attic room on the third floor of our house. It’s slightly arduous to get up there, and feels very protected. Although I have written in many places, I crave isolation to do it (no cafes for me), so this is the other necessity that my living situation answers. My kids come up there now, in the summer break, to say hi, but I actually kept it secret from each of them until she or he was old enough to respect it.

A sort of secret writing lair. That’s great. And, I’m intrigued with your answer, on your recognizing the possibility that your writing habits may or may not change in regard to switching from fiction to other areas of focus. Any hints on what possibly might shift slightly, or change altogether?

It’s a curious question and I’m mulling it. As much as has remained consistent, I’ve certainly shifted in various ways as my life has progressed, not just in my writing habits but in my focus. You mentioned teaching, which has added a new set of demands and a new set of rewards. I very much find myself using teaching to work out my ideas on writing and on service what it means to be a writer in the world, notions of social responsibility.

I have always thought I would be more productive if I were a little more rigid and self-protective, but I’m sure I would also have an unhappier family and perhaps even feel impoverished, myself, emotionally and intellectually.

I find Fayetteville social life a little overwhelming at times, but also tremendously enriching; ditto for my family.

I never thought I would write autobiographically, but, in recent years, have found myself, to my surprise, writing urgent personal essays. And it did happen that while I was working on the darkest parts of my last novel, in mid-winter, that I couldn’t drag myself to my desk before dark - it was just too desperate. I needed to see my kids and the sun first, to give myself the energy for the descent. So much, in writing, feels like call and See PADMA, pg. 46

Hair & Makeup by Melissa Arens of Mayapple Salon and Boutique

IN THE LINE OF FIRE With their documentary work for media heavyweights like HBO, VICE & Al Jazeera, the Peabody-award winning Renaud Brothers go where the story takes them.

WORDS / MELISSA TUCKER

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n the sunlit offices of the Little Rock Film Festival, Brent Renaud is screening a bittersweet documentary about a body-building, near-miss rockstar from the ‘70s attempting a comeback tour. Like most artistic pursuits, the film festival itself began as a labor of love, with the Renauds calling in favors to get it off the ground. But don’t call it a comeback. Now in its ninth year, the festival comes together more naturally and has a widespread reputation as a relaxed place for filmmakers to screen their work and interact with audiences.

Brent Renaud and his brother Craig organize and curate the annual festival - which took place on May 11-17 in Little Rock when they’re not creating documentaries for networks like HBO or VICE. The first film for these Arkansas natives, Dope Sick Love, debuted in 2005, and the documentarians have since traveled to film war zones in Baghdad, post-earthquake areas in Haiti, and drug cartels in Juarez, Mexico. Closer to home, they’ve covered gang violence in Chicago and the 50th anniversary of desegregation at Little Rock’s Central High.

Craig studied film and anthropology at the University of Oregon. Brent focused on English and sociology and then began interning at production houses in New York City to learn the art of filmmaking, traveling to Afghanistan, China and Bolivia while finishing his degrees.

Though they’ve traveled the world, Craig lives in Little Rock, and Brent splits his time between Arkansas and New York City.

Besides the LR Film Festival, what’s on the horizon for you guys?

Craig: We’re working on a film in New Orleans about youth homelessness. It centers on kids ages 16 to 22 finding themselves homeless and a shelter called the Covenant House. A large part of the film is about what happens to young people when they have health issues and can’t find a place to turn.

Photo courtesy of the Renaud Brothers

Brent: We’re also making a film for HBO about the methamphetamine market and how it’s controlled by the Mexican cartels and how they’re trafficking it through rural America. We’ve just started filming that for HBO so that’ll be on some time next year.

How does a filmmaker get shows on HBO? Do you pitch ideas to the network?

Brent: Filmmakers pitch them projects and they turn a lot of them down, and every once in a while if you’re really lucky, you’ll be one of the seven or eight they greenlight each year and get to make one, so the fact that we’ve done three features for them is pretty amazing. To work for HBO, it’s about the pinnacle of what we could do. That’s our goal, to get our films on HBO. Which subjects interest you the most as documentarians?

Craig: I don’t know, it usually has more to do with interesting stories that we stumble upon or that we hear about. Sometimes it’s conversations with networks we’re working with on topics we want to cover. Sometimes one film leads to another one. We’ve done a number of films in Chicago that as we finished one, another came along. We certainly cover a lot of topics that don’t get enough attention. Our approach is shining a light on issues and places and people in the headlines that don’t get a lot of play in the films.

How do you and Brent divide the workload? Do you have different strengths as filmmakers?

Craig: We both shoot, produce, film and edit. We’re both involved in every stage of the production. As documentary filmmakers, the nature of the type of films we’re doing is very intimate. You’re one-on-one with your subject. A lot of times, it’s just one of us with a camera, but we’ve been working together for a couple of years now, and stylistically we’re the same. If you watched one of our films, it would be hard to tell who shot what.

Brent: We’re totally interchangeable. And, actually, even when I watch old stuff that we’ve done, I can’t watch it and remember if it was me there shooting or if it was him. You can’t tell style-wise, and I can’t necessarily remember, which is why sometimes the stories we tell can get interchangeable, too. Like “oh, that was your story, but I thought that was my story,” but I’m remembering it from the video that we shot. But, no, our strengths are just dividing up.

If the film has multiple characters, one of us will cover one and one of us will cover the other. It also allows us to have a number of projects going at one time.

What’s something that would boost the Arkansas film industry? Where would you like to see it headed in the next 5 years?

Brent: I think one of the things we’re most proud of is the part the film festival has played in building the local film industry. When we first started, there were a couple of good filmmakers working here, but there was really no community and no significant place where people could screen their work. Right from the beginning, the Arkansas program has been a big part of this festival. In the first year, we didn’t have a lot of submissions, and believe it or not, some people were submitting things like footage they had shot of their kid’s play at school because for some people, the concept of what we were doing was not yet fully understood.

Flash forward to this year, where the films that we’re getting are as a good as anything in the country. And certainly a lot of films that are in the Arkansas program this year can screen in our national program. [Arkansas filmmakers] work all year to get their films ready for the festival because we try to bring it out in a big way. If you’ve ever been to our Arkansas programs, they’re huge

Merrythought I’m meeting minds in bars and on bar stools Engaging poems in Times New Roman Retiring Arial slowly It doesn’t matter what bright minds say I only hear infinity The wishbone above my heart is a scar Should have healed without a trace Surface wound that it was but it is still here Protecting a wish and the other half Eventually we gather at the breasts of birds Giving thanks for the same thing You give into wishful thinking We pull hard in the opposite direction We are broken, but we are one - Kara Bibb

turnouts. They’re always sold out. This year we’re adding more venues for the Arkansas program, some more dedicated parties, more dedicated panels to continue that growth, and it’s something we’re really proud to be a part of. I think we’ve been a part of helping to build that.

Craig: I think it’s come a long away. Christopher Crane, who is the Arkansas Film Commissioner, has done a great job. He’s doing a 10-person job by himself, but he needs more support. If we can get to the point where we can have incentives as good as Louisiana, we’d get a lot more films this year.

Brent: Louisiana is probably the standard for that. They started out by giving incredible tax breaks, and when you start giving incredible tax breaks and rebates, the big films come and then there’s an infrastructure that develops, studios are built, there’s a workforce that gets trained, and that’s all sort of self-fulfilling and self-satisfying. And then it gets people coming back because everyone knows there’s great crews in Louisiana, and it’s less expensive because they live there, and you don’t have to bring them from Los Angeles, so that’s a goal.

The package Arkansas has put together is better than it’s been in the past, but it needs to improve if we want to compete with that. Arkansas has incredible locations just because the diversity of the state is amazing, and it’s fairly low cost and because there’s a growing film community, there’s starting to be a good base crew.

VISIT: RENAUDBROTHERS.COM

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THE TRIPLE THREAT Robert Ford’s talents range from writing to acting to music. But one of his greatest challenges has been making sure that TheatreSquared, the company he co-founded, makes its mark.

INTERVIEW / KODY FORD & MARTY SHUTTER PHOTO / MARTY SHUTTER

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obert Ford is a man of many talents. The page. The stage. Even the flute. Born in Scotland but raised in the Northeast, he immersed himself in music as a child, eventually pursuing flute and composition at Yale University. He received an MFA in acting from Rutgers and an MFA in Writing from the Michener Center for Writers at University of Texas-Austin.

His life changed when he came to the Mount Sequoyah New Play Retreat and met his future wife Amy Herzberg, an actress and director. Ford moved to Northwest Arkansas in 1998 where he worked at the Fayetteville Public Library while writing his debut novel The Student Conductor. He thought he might spend the rest of his life writing fiction, but a play he had written fell into the hands of Alabama Shakespeare Festival, who wanted to work on it and produce it. This reignited his love of playwriting, which had been his primary emphasis at UT-Austin.

By 2004, he and Herzberg developed the idea to start a theatre company. They were encouraged by their friends, Bob Kohler and Laura Goodwin, who offered to help them find a space. Originally, with friend David Pickens, they looked at the location of what is now Matt Miller Studio and The pAth Outfitters just off the downtown square in Fayetteville, before deciding to hold out for a larger spot. Around this time Ford and Herzberg met Kassie Misiewicz and Daniel Hintz, who had recently moved to the area and wanted to open a professional children’s theatre. Shortly thereafter, they established TheatreSquared, picked up another collaborator, Morgan Hicks, and launched their inaugural season in 2006. Misiewicz left a few years later to establish Trike Theatre for children in Bentonville. Ford took her place as the artistic director, a job that occupies his time when he is not writing plays.

Over the last nine years, TheatreSquared has performed five of Ford’s plays including My Father’s War, The Spiritualist and Look Away with the premiere of his latest, Fault, scheduled for this season.

The Idle Class recently caught up with Ford to discuss his craft and TheatreSquared.

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How did you get into theatre and writing?

I was drawn to the theatre from an early age, plus all that stuff kids do that’s actually theatre – playing army, cowboys and Indians, chase, playing house – but music took the front seat for a long time. There was some acting in college, but really where I felt most expressive was in performing music and improvising and composing. The theatrical die was cast while I was attending Yale School of Music, where I got my Masters in flute. I bought a subscription to the Yale Rep across campus, unbelievably cheap, and I saw a play called Master Harold and the Boys by South African playwright Athol Fugard, about a young white boy who betrays the older black man who’d looked out for him, really had his back, from the time he was an infant.

Emotional doesn’t even come close to describing the experience. I read an interview with Fugard: turns out he loved “Beethoven’s Seventh,” one of my all-time favorite pieces of music. Again, a ridiculously emotional piece.

Something cracked open – the revelation that those divisions between theatre, music, and, I later discovered, dance, those were all artificial. And I began to understand my own connection to them: it was emotional. I knew then that I wanted to write plays, to actually conjure that kind of feeling.

What are your thoughts on failure and the role it plays in growing as an artist?

Failure is dangerous because we’re so often overly impressed by it. I certainly was. Still am. I’m talking about failure as measured by external judges.

Your story gets rejected. You don’t win the contest. You don’t get into that one grad school. No one laughs. I didn’t get past the first round of the Paris International Flute Competition when I was 23, something I’d practiced hundreds of hours for. I was devastated. That experience might have knocked me out of pursuing a performing career, and it shouldn’t have. It

took me forever to learn that you’ve got to be your own judge, and that there really is no such thing as failure. There’s just the gap between where you are and where you want to be. The other trap that I fell into early on was underestimating the sheer amount of work over time that it takes to succeed. We meet these great artists – these writers and musicians – at the peaks of their careers. And we compare ourselves to them at their peak. Sustained work leads to success way more than mere talent. I wish I’d understood that in my teens and 20s.

Tell me about your writing process.

I love this image that I’m going to attribute to Henry James, though I haven’t been able to track it down, of an idea or impulse being a tender flame that you slowly, slowly tease into a roaring fire. Again there’s that word tender. Ideally I get to work that way, just teasing an idea onto the page. That said, I do like external structures – the social kind, where you’ve created a situation in which other people are waiting for your work. Writing groups. Workshops. Deadlines. I also like having a formal structure to write within. The rigorous form of the screenplay. Or a true story that I’ve been handed like the real-life story of these two young African American guys who were caught with a couple of white girls in 1930s Wilson, Ark., which became my play Look Away. Or the steady stream of war stories my father-in-law told my wife Amy, which became My Father’s War. I had one magical period – a post-graduate year at the University of Texas – where I had absolutely no distractions, and I wrote the bulk of the first draft of The Student Conductor. Those days are long gone.

How do themes develop in your work?

I suspect that, in my work, theme takes care of itself. I’m more concerned with need. Discovering what a character needs, what drives her. Ultimately, for me, a story stands or falls on how successful I’ve been at specifying need. Theme emerges later. Often it’s pointed out to me by someone else.

Do any of your plays ever surprise you (thematically or otherwise)?

All the time. The Spiritualist was full of surprises for me, for example. It was only late in the game that I discovered the play was about finding real connection, with oneself and with others. I also didn’t notice how autobiographical it was until several drafts in, how it parallels the dissolution of faith that happened to me in my 20s and the concurrent discovery that what makes life meaningful is being able to connect to and become intimate with other people. My sense is that if there are no surprises – no discoveries – for me in the process of writing a play, there won’t be any for the audience.

Tell me more about The Spiritualist.

It’s the real life story of this woman in London in the 70s, who claimed to channel the music of dead composers. It immediately struck me as great theatre, not just thematically, but I was also intrigued with the question of why Rosemary Brown couldn’t write music that she claimed as her own. Because she was actually very gifted. I wanted to know psychologically why she wouldn’t claim it was hers. Also I was drawn to the story’s inherent theatricality. You have this simple plain woman in her parlor and in walk these iconic composers, Liszt, Beethoven. I knew that would automatically be exciting on stage. Also, it had great subject matter: questions of authorship, the interaction of art with commerce, deeply personal questions about where the music comes from, voice and what that means to an artist.

You’ve written a novel and many plays. Does the key to writing a good story differ by the medium or are the some universal “truths” for storytelling?

Audiences and readers respond when you tell the truth, whatever the medium. A good joke has hit upon some acutely uncomfortable truth. The satisfying redemption of a hard situation requires some believable action that’s psychologically true. The traps are legion that lead writers to lie.

The last time we spoke you were reworking your new play Fault, which then had a reading at the New Play Festival. It sounded very interesting. Tell me more about the play.

ly trade-offs we make in order to live the lives we’ve chosen. And that’s all I’d like to say for now because I’m in the thick of rewrites.

Why do you think that we are so obsessed with apocalyptic events in entertainment?

There’s obviously been much scholarship around this question, and anything I say is going to be a gross oversimplification. But it seems intuitively obvious that we’re living under the threat of any number of potentially devastating events – either from international terrorism or, much more seriously it seems to me, global climate change, and as a collective whole we haven’t yet conjured up the political will to do anything about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if, again collectively on some level, we’re not drawn to these movies as a means of venting our anxiety about the whole thing.

Also, when Hollywood blew up its first train on screen, it was love at first sight; producers and audiences never looked back.

Many of your plays have taken place in Arkansas. Do you feel our state’s culture lends itself to telling unique stories or is it just writing what you know?

I’m not a big believer in writing what you know. Write what intrigues you.

What grabs your gut. And Arkansas...well it’s just plain ridiculous how story-rich Arkansas is. Our accursed history. The horror stories around race. The brilliant progressives who’ve tried and failed and tried again to save us. The comedians, the musical geniuses. The stark contrast between rich and poor, instance after instance of the most bizarre possible human behavior, irony at every turn. For an Arkansas writer, it’s Christmas everywhere you look.

It’s been 10 years since you helped found TheatreSquared. What’s the greatest thing you learned in that time?

I’ve learned that building a great theatre is really about building a great audience for theatre, for the kind of meaningful plays and musicals we love most. And it’s about building trust with that audience.

Tell me what to expect for Season 10?

Expect a lot. A lot of swash, a lot of buckle (that’s a direct quote from Peter and the Starcatcher). A lot of humor. A lot of broad, theatrically dashing moments. And then some exquisitely redemptive moments, where what is maybe most difficult about being human turns on a dime into what is most uplifting. This season features two of the biggest shows we’ve ever produced, Peter and the Starcatcher and Amadeus (which has 15+ actors). An exquisitely-written gem in Water by the Spoonful. A smart and welcome look at contemporary womanhood in Rapture, Blister, Burn.

Also a lot of firsts: our first season with six shows (including the addon, the musical Murder for Two); our first co-production (of Starcatcher, with the Arkansas Rep); our first Wednesday-night performances. And finally you can expect brilliant and brave performances from our actors – some new, some our audiences will recognize from past seasons.

How hard is it being a working writer and an artistic director for a theatre company?

It’s actually a great combination because the incentive to write is built into the job. (So are the excuses not to, and that’s sometimes a struggle – writers often crave distraction.) Most artistic directors are primarily stage directors. It’s a rare privilege to be a playwright in my position – able to facilitate the incubation and the production of new work, both my own and others’. And to be part of the amazing team we have at TheatreSquared.

What’s next for you?

I want to keep learning how to do better on both fronts. I saw a play last May that knocked my socks off, an adaptation of the Cornish myth, Tristan and Yseult, by the British company called Kneehigh. Extraordinary stuff.

Big and bold and theatrical, but at its core intensely human and truthful.

Like TheatreSquared, Kneehigh does its work at some remove from the main theatrical hubs over there. My aim is to do work like that.

VISIT: THEATRE2.ORG

Fault is set in Arkansas in the aftermath of a fictional catastrophic event. It might be about shared-risk and shared-responsibility, the sometimes cost-

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THE LONG HAUL Many writers dream of having a network pick up their television show.

After years of work, Graham Gordy has finally done it.

Now it’s in the viewers’ hands.

WORDS / KODY FORD PHOTO / JOSHUA ASANTE

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elevision has entered a dramatic renaissance over the last few years thanks to shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Given the rise in cord-cutting and online streaming, people have more options than ever to watch quality programming. Where there is demand, there is supply. Cinemax, a network that has long been the butt of jokes concerning their late-night programming, has sought to reinvent itself over the last few years. Shows like Alan Ball’s Banshee or Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick, starring Clive Owen, have allowed the network to fall in line with their parent company HBO in terms of quality drama. It is also planning an adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s latest hit comic book Outcast.

Another highly-anticipated series is Quarry, based on the crime novels

by Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition) and created for television and executive produced by Graham Gordy and Michael D. Fuller (Rectify). If you are an Arkansan with even a fleeting interest in filmmaking, Gordy’s name has certainly been on your radar. The Idle Class even profiled him in our Summer 2013 Film Issue. Then, Gordy detailed the process by which he and Fuller adapted the books into a pilot and caught the attention of Cinemax. A lot can happen in two years, and luckily for the two writers, things have gone well. So far.

Cinemax not only picked up the pilot for a first season with an eight episode run, it brought out the big guns like executive producer Steve Colin and Anonymous Content, who produced True Detective, and director/executive producer Greg Yaitanes (Banshee, House M.D.). Over the last year, they have filmed in New Orleans and Tennessee. Quarry stars Logan Marshall-Green (Prometheus) in the title role; Jodi Balfour (Final Destination 5) as Joni; Peter Mullan (HBO’s Olive Kitteridge) as The Broker; Nikki Amuka-Bird (Luther) as Ruth; and Damon Herriman (Justified) as Buddy; along with Jamie Hector (HBO’s The Wire) as Arthur; Edoardo Ballerini (Romeo Must Die) as Karl; and Skipp Sudduth (Ronin) as Lloyd.

Recently, we caught up with Gordy recently to discuss Quarry.

Give me your elevator pitch for Quarry.

It’s 1972. A Vietnam vet returns home to Memphis to find himself ostracized from his family and those he loves. As he struggles to cope with his experiences at war, he gets pulled into a network of criminality and murder that spans the length of the Mississippi River. How’s that?

I have read the first book in the series so I’m familiar with the premise. How much of the first season is based off of the books?

The season itself is more inspired by the books rather than based on them, if that makes sense. The books are great, but they are mostly self-contained stories. We knew starting out that the show would have to be more serialized than the books, but as the development went on, it only grew more so, and has kind of taken on a life of its own. We really consider what we’ve done in the first season to be a creation story for Quarry. In other words, “How did he become the man we meet in the novels?”

eight episodes, so we essentially shot it like an eight-hour movie. Every movie feels like a marathon, so I consider this experience to have been a marathon, followed by a marathon, followed swiftly by two more marathons. That said, it’s been very rewarding and utterly humbling to see so many people working so hard to bring it to life.

What is the greatest surprise that has come your way since the show got green-lit?

The scripts had been in development for months. Casting had been done. We had been in production meetings and on scouts for weeks and weeks. But one day, during pre-production, Michael (the co-creator of the show) and I were walking through the stages where thousands of props were warehoused, furniture was being held, etc., and there were dozens of people with hammers and table saws and shit. These are people we hadn’t met at all and they were quite literally building this world. It was astonishing. You spend years writing these things down on paper, frustrated that no one is paying attention to them, and then one day, you walk into a warehouse and you want to say, “Guys, wait. You’re doing too much.”

Did you have to reshoot the pilot once Cinemax ordered a full season?

We’ve reshot a good portion of it. The script has stayed mostly the same, but so many other elements changed.

How supportive has Cinemax been throughout production?

They’ve been great. There’s a shift going on in their original programming, and I’ve been pleased at how collaborative and open they’ve been to a lot of ideas and scenes that I never thought they’d go for, or that a traditional network would never go for. There seems to be an opportunity to be audacious.

Since Steve Golin and Anonymous Content produced the full season of Quarry, will there be similarities in the tone of the show to True Detective?

There’s a great team of producers, but yes, Steve and his bunch from Anonymous, especially Matt DeRoss, are among them. There are some similarities to the first season of True Detective, insofar as they’re both southern and fairly dark in tone. That first season was a great investigative story – two cops and a bad guy – and self-contained within their eight episodes. One of the biggest differences (and one of the biggest challenges mentioned above) is that Quarry attempts to establish multiple characters and storylines in our eight episodes that will be ongoing in subsequent seasons. We’ll be hoping for “full” and “riveting” rather than, say, “ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.”

Writing and producing a show is a huge undertaking. How has your experience been so far?

Obviously you have experience seeing actors bring your characters to life, but did it feel different for television since it is a longer work, and there’s a chance they could play them for years to come?

Exhausting, but very positive. We had one director, Greg Yaitanes, for all

See GRAHAM pg. 46

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KEVIN, cont. from pg. 36

GRAHAM, cont. pg. 44

When I was working on the memoir, I had devised the book to be as revealing as it could possibly be. That’s why I was writing it. So it wasn’t frightening for me, exactly, to do that. It was just at the center of the project. As it turned out, it was a little frightening for me to publish the book in a way I hadn’t anticipated. It’s been a little frightening for me to publish every book, but this one more than most because it was so very intimate. Not that my other books haven’t revealed things about me that I think are right at the center of my own experience, but they’ve done so in ways that were more disguised, but in this book I was really speaking as directly as I possibly could about my life as it actually unfolded.

Without really being able to analyze why, I was a little shaky, if not petrified when it came close to the publication date.

I think the potential long-game you speak of makes each of the choices carry a lot of weight. I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic when I say they can completely make or break a show. It’s no longer the 90s. We don’t just rush home on Sunday nights to watch one or two terrific cable shows. Genuinely great shows pile up on our DVRs now, so it’s a very big investment for an audience to engage 50 or 60 hours of their lives with these strangers (and generally not very endearing strangers). Thankfully, I think we got a pretty stellar group. And that’s from our leads to the local actors we’ve hired.

Really exceptional.

As a teacher, what’s a writing trait you like to see in up-and-coming writers?

Two things, I would say. One, I like to see them writing stories that matter deeply to them. And that’s so essential because if you’ve got the smallest bit of talent, it’s easy to coast along on that talent without ever really investigating something that matters to you. I’ve mentioned probably in some of the interviews you’ve read, something that Charles Baxter said about William Maxwell, who wrote a book called So Long, See you Tomorrow and there’s an essay by this novelist in which he says, “Over the course of this book’s 120 pages, Maxwell has given away more of what was most precious to him, than many authors do in books of many hundreds of pages,” and that’s an idea that I think is important - to give away what’s most precious to you.

So, I encourage my students to do that, even if they are not writing autobiographically. Very little of what I’ve written has been truly autobiographical, the memoir excepted, but a lot of it, and certainly the best of it, has been an attempt on my part to explore those things that matter the most to me in the world.

I also encourage my students to devote as much concentration to fulfilling the artistic demands of each individual sentence they’re writing whenever they possibly can, whatever those demands might be. I don’t insist they write sentences exactly the way I write sentences, but as a reader, nothing bothers me so much as opening the pages of a book and sensing that I’m paying closer attention to what the writer is doing, than that writer has done.

And I think you can’t ask people to read your books unless you’ve concentrated on each and every sentence and demanded of it that it fulfill its own designs.

PADMA, cont. from pg. 38 response.

I’m glad you brought up the novel, which is The Ever After of Ashwin Rao, since I was going to ask, in your experience, what the most difficult aspect of novel writing is.

I very much think it varies from book to book and writer to writer, but in my case, it was probably the integration of research. Both of my novels worked from real historical circumstances, though in the case of The Ever After of Ashwin Rao, the circumstances were more recent and much better known. So I had full imaginative leeway with my characters’ responses to these events, but I knew many readers would be familiar with various of the details of the acts of terror that provide the context and motivation for the novel’s action.

I chose to attempt to represent a good deal of what is commonly known or accepted about those events, but I fretted long and hard over how to do so in ways that were aesthetically and ethically sound. The details had to be presented in ways that felt inevitable and natural. Also, when it came to the worst violence, I had to find ways to make them sear the reader but that didn’t feel sensationalizing. So all of that was a struggle.

Beyond (and related to) this, structure--what order to put things in and how to link them--is always a struggle for me.

I suspect both of these will be just as big a challenge in the nonfiction book as well, though.

Well, I look very much forward to the nonfiction and translation. Beyond those two, is there anything else we should keep an eye our for?

I’ve also been beetling away on a book of short stories. It could be close - I think I have published half a dozen pieces from it - but I seem to think it needs a couple more pieces. I hope that if I just keep my head down, nose to the grindstone, and hew to all the other clichés, something completed will emerge from my study before long!

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George RR Martin and Robert Kirkman are involved to varying degrees with the shows based on their properties. Does Max Alan Collins have any involvement with Quarry?

Max has been terrific throughout the process. He’s been extraordinarily open in terms of how we’ve adapted things or taken certain things in different directions. He wrote one of the eight scripts for the first season and we hope to continue to have him along. He’s astonishingly gracious to a couple of guys who have taken over a character he’s lived with for 40 years. I can’t say I would be so accommodating.

How does storytelling differ from television and film?

It’s just about time limits, and therefore, character. If you pitch a movie, you’re pitching the actual narrative, 90 to 120 minutes of story and what happens. If you’re pitching a cable series, you’re pitching a main character or a group of characters more than anything else. You’re explaining why Tony Soprano and his family, or Don Draper and his co-workers, are going to be absolutely compelling to watch – not for two hours – but for 40 or 50 or 60.

What is the most challenging aspect of writing a full season of television?

It’s all great fun, honestly. I don’t say that with any irony whatsoever. It’s my favorite part of the job. Rick Bragg said, “Writing is hard. But it’s better than roofing.” I try to keep that in mind. There were specific challenges to this first season. We had originally imagined it as twelve or thirteen episodes (as that was somewhat standard when we pitched it), then we got the order for eight. Turns out it’s not as simple as just lopping off the edges and turning it in. Also, eight episodes is an entirely different animal than ten or twelve. The shape of the container determines what the show is in so many ways. That was a challenge and a good lesson.

When we last spoke, you told me that you hoped that you and Michael could be as courageous as Ray McKinnon was with Rectify when it came to staying true to your vision. Has this been the case?

I’d like to think so. I’ve come to believe that creative courage is putting serious stock in that little voice within yourself that says, “That is really entertaining.” “That’s funny.” Or “That’s heartbreaking.” It may end up being just to you, but I think it’s important to listen to that part.Self-doubt and the approbation of others are so powerful within anyone putting their work out to a large audience. Those moments that we invest in because they made us howl in the writers’ room, or because they brought tears to our own eyes, without a second thought of getting the approval of the group. Those are the moments to me that are most courageous and that I’m most proud of.

Quarry premieres on Cinemax in early 2016. Look for a trailer later this year.

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