Write Your Way to the End: A Profile of Emily Miller

Write Your Way to the End: A Profile of Emily Miller
by Robert Bausch

I was scheduled to teach a workshop in Aspen, Colorado. One of the manuscripts sent to me in the weeks before my flight was a brief chapter in a novel by Emily Miller. It was a scene in a car
with a father and son. The story is told from the father’s point of view, but what is memorable from that scene is the excruciating awkwardness of the father, his sincere need to avoid conflict,
set up against his son’s distant, disrespectful attitude. What the father says to his son engenders the kind of response he is getting—taken a certain way, and that is how the son takes it—but the father’s intentions are not at all what the son perceives them to be. It’s a car ride, mostly. Not much happens in the scene in terms of physical action. But the conflict in that scene is as gripping as any I’ve encountered in years.

Once the workshop began, I took Emily aside and asked her, “What are you doing here?”
I told her she could easily teach a workshop herself. She told me she’d been wrestling with the
first 100 pages of this novel for a long time. She wanted to get response to it in a workshop
setting. She thought it might help her finish it. Emily, I could see, had no faith in what she was
doing. I told her just to write her way to the end, to trust that prodigious talent and see what she’s
got when she’s done with it.

A few days after I got back from Aspen, I sent Emily an e-mail that said simply, “WYWTTE.” I had written that on a sheet of paper and taped it to my computer, and then I thought of her and decided to remind her of what I’d told her.

What I got back was an e-mail that said, “It took me several hours to figure out what
WYWTTE stands for. I get it. And I will.” Of course what it stands for is “Write Your Way To
The End.”

Every day after that, when I sat down to work on my book, I’d e-mail Emily first.
WYWTTE. That’s all. Over the rest of that fall, through the winter, and into the following
summer, I’d ask Emily for a “status report.” She’d ask me how my work was going, so I’d send
her a status report too. At one point I wrote to say, “I should probably quit sending you these e-
mails; I’m probably getting to be a nuisance.”

She wrote back and said, “No, don’t. It really is a help to me. And I think I’m helping
you, too. Go team.”

Emily finished her book that August. I’ll let her tell you what happened after that:
I spent the next four months doing two or three big revisions. In January I decided it was where I wanted it to be. I was ready to look for an agent. From everything I'd heard in my writing life, I braced for months (if not more) of frustration and discouragement. To my great surprise, things happened very quickly. One of the agents I queried in the first batch asked me to suspend my
search for 10 days while she read it. She promised she'd get back to me the coming Monday, which happened to be Valentine’s Day and, as promised, that Monday morning I got an e-mail from her saying she loved the book and wanted to try to sell it. The only change she wanted me to make was the title. (It was Gold. We changed it to After Augustus, which has since been changed again.) I was of course ecstatic. The very next week she sent it out to eight. A few came back right away with interest. I spoke to two editors on the phone on Tuesday, and ended up accepting a two-book deal from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on Wednesday.

A two book deal. Her first book, Brand New Human Being, will be published June 12,
and she is now beginning work on the second. And I think when she gets going on it, she will remember to write her way to the end. ¶

This profile has been updated since its original publication in the summer 2012 Workshop & Event Guide.

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Robert Bausch was educated at George Mason University, earning a B.A., an M.A., and an M.F.A., and he says he has been a writer all his life. He has taught at the University of Virginia, American University, George Mason University, The Johns Hopkins University, and Northern Virginia Community College. He has also been a director on the board of the Pen Faulkner Foundation. In 2009 he was awarded the John Dos Passos Prize in Literature. For more information, visit robertbausch.org.

photos by: Patrice Gilbert (Miller); Matt Briggs (Bausch)

The Heart & Soul of TWC: A Profile of Sunil Freeman

The Heart & Soul of TWC: A Profile of Sunil Freeman
by Jason DeYoung

Though he wasn’t there at The Writer’s Center’s (TWC) founding, Sunil Freeman has been with the organization longer than any other staff member—26 years! He is often described as TWC’s “institutional memory.” Hard working, modest, and giving, Sunil is perhaps the quintessence of TWC.

Sunil has lived most of his life in Maryland, but spent some years in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and India as a child. He graduated from University of Maryland, College Park,
in 1978. While there, he majored in journalism and wrote for The Diamondback, the university’s newspaper. He started taking workshops at TWC in 1985 and was hired in 1986.

When I asked him how he found out about the Center, he said his Aunt Grace (who later became the Poet Laureate of South Carolina) gently encouraged him to take a workshop after reading some of his poems. Sunil found TWC through word-of-mouth and he started taking workshops,
first with such legendary workshop leaders as Ann Darr and Rod Jellema, and then later with the wonderfully talented William O’Sullivan and Cathy Fink. Sunil says in The Writer’s Center he “found people who were serious about writing, but who didn’t take themselves too seriously.”

Sunil’s publications include two books of poems, Surreal Freedom Blues (1999) and That Would Explain the Violinist (1993), and numerous poems, essays, and reviews in various literary journals.

Sunil is currently TWC’s assistant director, in charge of off-site workshops at satellite venues and the Open Door Reading Series, which he calls the “celebration” of the hard work that goes on at TWC. He also oversees TWC’s special projects, such as the NEA-funded “Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience.” Over the years he has been the managing editor of Poet Lore, the bookstore manager, and the programs director. “But I was first hired
to do phototypesetting of literary journals and books.”

Sunil says what he likes best about working at TWC is the interaction with the workshop leaders. “They are the heart and soul of TWC. They are such a talented, accomplished group of people and that’s a honor to work with them.”

It’s hard to tease Sunil and TWC apart. While talking to him, you learn that an important part of his character is the sense of accomplishment he gets from helping lead this well-oiled organization. He is particularly proud of inviting Stanley Plumly and Robert Bausch to lead workshops.

When I asked him what people don’t know about TWC, he said, “I think of just how much work goes on behind the scenes to make things run smoothly. I think an apt comparison is what you sometimes hear about musicians. There are very talented guitarists who make their playing
look like it’s effortless, when in fact there’s a good deal of work that goes into it. There are a lot of conversations, emails, and thinking that take place behind the scenes [at TWC] to ensure that workshop participants, and those attending events, are able to focus on the writing.” ¶

This profile was originally published in the summer 2012 Workshop & Event Guide.

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Jason DeYoung is a former Writer’s Center staff member and Managing Editor of Poet Lore. His fiction has appeared most recently in The Los Angeles Review, The Fiddleback, New Orleans Review, and Harpur Palate. His fiction will also appear in the forthcoming 2012 edition of The Best American Mystery Stories. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

photos by: Genevieve DeLeon (Freeman); Ann Compton (DeYoung)

The Author Who Wrote from Her Life: A Profile of Heidi Durrow

The Author Who Wrote from Her Life: A Profile of Heidi Durrow
by Zachary Fernebok

Growing up in a racially divided town, Heidi Durrow would often describe herself as “black and white” to satisfy her curious community. Issues of race, class, and social injustice would later inspire her novel The Girl Who Fell from the Sky the first recipient of TWC’s McLaughlin-Stearns-Esstman Prize, which awards the author of the best first novel published during a given calendar year.

Your novel, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, was recently awarded with TWC’s first-ever First Novel Prize. Pardon the pun, but how did you fall into writing?
I always wanted to be a writer. But also wanted to be financially secure because I grew up without a lot of money. I took jobs that allowed me to write for pay: Hallmark greeting card writer, journalist, lawyer. Ultimately, I realized that I wouldn’t feel fulfilled if I never gave novel writing a shot. I quit my job as a corporate attorney and started working on this book. It took a long time—12 years—to write it and get it published. It felt like a miracle when I found out I had won the Bellwether Prize and would finally see my book in print.

Where did you get your inspiration for The Girl Who Fell from the Sky?
The story is inspired by a real event in which a family died in a terrible tragedy and the girl survived. I became obsessed with the girl. I wanted to know what her survival would look like and I set out to write a future for her, to give her a voice. I learned after some trial and error that the girl survivor had some relation to my own story. I went on from there, blending the initial idea with the touchstones of my own emotional experience.

At The Writer’s Center, we provide writing workshops for all levels of writers. While you were writing your novel, did you workshop your progress? How did that feedback help your process?
I did try to workshop some of what ended up becoming the novel. But I think I tried to workshop it too soon in one instance. In one summer intensive workshop, I got to share three chapters of the novel. It was there that I found a trusted reader who gave me great notes on other drafts.

What’s the best advice you can give to our members working on creative pieces that also address issues of race, class, and social justice?
I think the best advice is to be true to the story and characters first. The ideas and issues will be evident—but you want readers to connect with and empathize with the characters. If the readers can do that, they will certainly follow the vision that you are writing. ¶

Heidi Durrow will read from The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, at The Writer's Center on Thursday, April 12, 7:00 P.M.

This profile was originally published in the summer 2012 Workshop & Event Guide.

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Zachary Fernebok is a playwright, a company member of Infinite Stage Theatre Company and Flying V, and playwright-in-residence at American Ensemble Theatre. His plays have been performed at The National Portrait Gallery and the Otono Azul play festival in Argentina among others. His plays, The Pirate Laureate of Port Town and Navigating Turbulence, will be read and performed this summer with American Ensemble Theatre. He teaches at Writopia Lab.

photos by: Timothi Jane Graham (Durrow); Clinton Brandhagen (Fernebok)