Author: Leonard Gill

For nearly a century and a half, the Lotos Club, located today in an impressive townhouse on New York City’s Upper East Side, has counted major writers, journalists, and critics as members. Lifelong member Mark Twain once called it the “ace of clubs.” And that’s where, last week, the club hosted a reception honoring two former Memphians: writers Anna Olswanger and Vince Vawter.

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Memphian Jane Fraser was at the Lotos Club too and doing the honors. As president since 1982 of the Memphis-based and internationally recognized Stuttering Foundation (and to coincide with National Stuttering Awareness Week, May 12th-18th), the foundation honored Olswanger for her Holocaust tale for young readers, Greenhorn, and Vawter for his novel for young readers, Paperboy. The gala recognized Alan Rabinowitz (A Boy and a Jaguar) and Scott Damian (V-V-Voice: A Stutterer’s Odyssey) as well.

As Fraser — daughter of the Stuttering Foundation’s founder, Malcolm Fraser, and co-author herself of If Your Child Stutters: A Guide for Parents — put it by email: “We on the committee felt [these authors] captured the true essence of stuttering and what it means to stutter.”

(Pictured: Stuttering Foundation president Jane Fraser — second from left — honors authors Scott Damian, Dr. Alan Rabinowitz, Anna Olswanger, and Vince Vawter during the foundation’s National Stuttering Awareness Week gala at the Lotos Club in New York City.)

As Fraser also pointed out, this year was something of a departure for the Stuttering Foundation’s annual gala. Actor Colin Firth (for his role in The King’s Speech) and newsmen John Stossel and Byron Pitts were recognized in recent years. This year, and true to the site of the May 13th ceremony, those recognized were all writers, and two of those writers — Vawter and Rabinowitz — are represented by Olswanger, senior literary agent with Liza Dawson Associates in New York. Even Olswanger admitted, though, she was surprised to learn she was being honored along with not one but two of the authors she represents. As she said in a speech to those attending the gala:

“You probably think I only represent books by stuttering authors or books with stuttering protagonists. I represent what I think are good books. Why are Paperboy and A Boy and a Jaguar good books? They are about stuttering, but they are bigger than stuttering. They are specific, physical, visceral. They are about children who are outsiders, children who are lonely, children who have deep feelings. And what I have learned as both a writer and literary agent is that if you are specific as a writer, it means the reader can enter your world and the wider your audience will be. It’s my job as a literary agent to help my clients develop the specifics. It’s my job to help them develop their stories. And that is also what I do as a writer. I discover stories. …

“Greenhorn, along with Paperboy and A Boy and a Jaguar, is about finding a voice. That is literal for stutterers, but it’s also the metaphor for all humans. It’s our quest while we’re on this earth to find out who we are, what we have to say, say it, and be heard.”

Vince Vawter, who grew up stuttering, has certainly heard back from readers this past year. Writing by email from his home in Louisville, Tennessee, Vawter had this to say of his Memphis-set novel:

“The Stuttering Foundation has been helping those of us with speech difficulties since 1947, the year after I was born. Since the publication of Paperboy in May 2013, I’ve been made more aware of how people, especially our young ones, continue to be frustrated by this ailment, which remains such a mystery. 

“My book has given me the opportunity to chat one-on-one with dozens of young people who need to know that someone understands what they are going through. The Stuttering Foundation, so ably run by Jane Fraser, helped publicize that I was available to speak or video chat with anyone who needed an understanding ear. The reach of that organization is amazing, and I appreciate the support they have given me and Paperboy.”

The “reach” of Paperboy is about to increase dramatically. According to Vawter, contracts have been signed with six foreign publishers to take Paperboy worldwide.

And Greenhorn is about to reach film audiences. According to Olswanger, shooting in New York finished last week, and director Tom Whitus is ready to start postproduction for a scheduled premiere in October. For more on Greenhorn the movie and to help the film reach its final fund-raising goal, go here.

And to read more on the Stuttering Foundation’s recent gala, go to the piece written by Madeline Wahl on Huffington Post. It’s a moving essay that describes Wahl’s lifelong battle with stuttering and the isolation it so often brings. But as Wahl writes, on May 13th, in the company of strangers, the Lotos Club felt right where she belonged: home. •

“There was this guy in the English department at Ole Miss. He asked me to stay after class one day.

“I said: ‘Did I do something wrong?’

“He said: ‘No, Mr. Iles. I just want to make sure you know something.’

“I said: ‘What’s that?’

“He said: ‘I want to make sure you know you can write.’

“I said: ‘Well, um, yeah, thanks.’”

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That short conversation took place around 1980/81, according to Greg Iles, author of the new novel Natchez Burning (William Morrow), and it was a fertile time to be at Ole Miss. Willie Morris was teaching there, and he brought in friends such as William Styron and James Dickey. Iles was fortunate to meet them. (“Mind-blowing” is how he described it in a recent phone interview.) And as Iles also recalled of those days:

“John Grisham took one of Willie’s classes. It was Willie who told his student Donna Tartt to go to Bennington to study writing.

“I wouldn’t say, though, that at the time I was steered into writing. I didn’t even have any intention of being a writer. I was more into music, and that’s what I did for eight years after college. Writing was just something I always could do. But it meant nothing to me. It wasn’t going to help me get the best-looking girl. It wasn’t going to be my career. The last person I knew of from Mississippi who’d written anything was Eudora Welty. Back then, it wasn’t like Grisham or anybody pointing the way.”

And it wasn’t like Iles’ mother could point the way either.

“When I was 14, my mother told me: ‘You know what you’re going to be? You’re going to be a Hollywood screenwriter.’ I was like, she’s out of her mind. Nobody from Mississippi could be a Hollywood screenwriter.

“What it took for me to become a writer was getting to be 29 years old, being married, touring as a musician 50 weeks out of 52 and thinking, This ain’t no life. I gotta do something. I sure wasn’t gonna get a real job.

“So that’s when I quit playing music, locked myself in my apartment for one year, and wrote Spandau Phoenix.”

It would be the first in a long line of novels that eventually landed Greg Iles on nationwide best-seller lists.

“That professor, by the way, was Michael Dean,” Iles added of the teacher who told him he could write. “He comes to my book signings. His prophecy came true.”

But the band that Greg Iles played in in his 20s? True to its Southern roots, it went by the name Frankly Scarlett.

“Sort of Crosby, Stills & Nash but more alternative” was how Iles described the sound of the band. “It was fun, and look: Playing in a band is a lot more fun than being a writer.”

Proof of that: The Rock Bottom Remainders, the lit-rock band Iles still plays in when he can and depending on who can join him onstage — names you may recognize: Mitch Albom, Dave Barry, Roy Blount Jr., Matt Groening, Stephen King, James McBride, Roger McGuinn, Ridley Pearson, Amy Tan, and Scott Turow.

The Remainders may be inching toward retirement, but just the other day they took a gig in Tucson. “Old rock-and-rollers never die,” Iles said. “They just keep on going.”

And Greg Iles is still touring despite the serious car accident he was in in 2011. His tour stop on Thursday, May 1st, from 6 to 7 p.m. for Natchez Burning: The Booksellers at Laurelwood. Memphis? Iles, who lives in Natchez, Mississippi, feels almost home.

“New Orleans … Natchez … Memphis: They’re all river towns though they aren’t all the same, but you could drop me in Memphis and I’d feel practically just as at home as I do in Natchez,” he said. “And my best childhood friend, John Ward: He went to Ole Miss too, and when I was 14, 15-years-old, he taught me to play guitar. John now owns Ecko Records in Memphis, and he’s given me some insight into the blues.”

And it was Ward’s older brother who helped land Iles a place to live in Oxford when he was a student: the cabin of “Mammy Callie.” She’d taken care of William Faulkner and his brothers when they were children. But Iles, who said he isn’t about to go New Age-y about the ghost of William Faulkner, admitted: “Living there did affect me, for sure.”

What, apparently, didn’t affect him as it has so many Southern writers: a long line of family storytellers.

“No, not really,” Iles said of any such family line. “My father was a physician and amateur historian. My mother was an English teacher, though she never tried to mold me. But based on my father’s library and what my mother cared about, maybe I did absorb writing by osmosis. My uncle, however: He could tell a story, including stories about being a barge captain in Africa. I’ve heard everything.”

And that’s another thing about Greg Iles — his gift for listening.

“For some reason, people feel compelled to tell me things, people I’ve barely met. They sense I care about their stories, their lives. And as a writer, you can’t be an elitist. Like Faulkner said: ‘Good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers, or horse swipes.’”

Which is another way of saying: “You gotta keep your ears open, your eyes open,” Iles concluded. “That’s what a writer does.”

And listening to Television, the band, is how Memphian Corey Mesler opens his poem “I Was Listening,” one of the nearly 100 outwardly observant but deeply introspective poems in Mesler’s latest collection (and borrowing from Frank O’Hara), The Catastrophe of My Personality (Blue Hour Press). But more than listening, visualize this: “Picture of the Poet Reading,” another poem in the collection.

No reason to have to picture the poet, however, on the evening of Thursday, May 1st. That’s when Mesler will be reading from and signing his new collection (cover design by Mesler’s daughter Chloe and Susan Sweetland Garay). The signing is from 5:30 to 7 p.m., with the reading at 6 p.m., and the location is the book store Mesler co-owns with his wife, Cheryl. You know it — as Memphians have known it since 1875: Burke’s. •

The next installment of the “Impossible Language” series is the evening of Saturday, April 26th, and for those not in the know, it’s a series of poets reading from their work with visual artists often showing their work. It is also part of the wide range of artistic activities, including events spearheaded by Crosstown Arts, that have sprung up on North Cleveland in and around the Sears Crosstown building.

Ashley Roach-Freiman is playing her part. A poet in the MFA program at the University of Memphis and poetry editor for the program’s literary journal, The Pinch, Roach-Freiman heads “Impossible Language.”

What is all of this about? Let Roach-Freiman explain, as she did recently in another series — a series of emails:

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“The next event in the ‘Impossible Language’ series is at Story Booth, adjacent to the Cleveland Street Flea Market,” according to Roach-Freiman. “It’s a new space for the series, but I’ve been to other readings there, and it’s wonderful. This will be the first ‘Impossible Language’ without an art component, but I’m excited about the reading. It’s a smaller space, very intimate.”

Some background on “Impossible Language”: The series was your idea? Your goals?
Ashley Roach-Freiman (pictured): I started organizing it last summer, with the first reading in September. I’ve felt like there was an opportunity for something like this in Memphis for a long time. I have been to wonderful, intimate readings at Burke’s Book Store, and the River City Writer’s Series at the University of Memphis brings well-known writers to town. But there wasn’t a regular reading series like this.

I’d been trying to get my friend, the excellent poet Adam Clay, to come to Memphis to read, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to create a space for other poets. At the time, I was a librarian at the Memphis Public Library, where I did a lot of programming, so planning a reading didn’t seem insurmountable, and I knew that Crosstown Arts had a gallery space for not much money.

I was also inspired by the whole “Crosstown aesthetic.” My goal has been to feature writers that might not have made it to Memphis otherwise — Adam Clay, Ada Limón, Abraham Smith, Sean Patrick Hill, Laressa Dickey — as well as writers who are local or regional and publishing incredible work: Tim Earley and Jessica Comola from Oxford; Caki Wilkinson at Rhodes. I also get to feature current students and graduates of the U of M MFA program (Ruth Baumann, John Owen May, Clay Cantrell), highlighting the good work being done in the city.

The series is also innovative, because it is not just a reading series but a gallery show, and the artists probably work the hardest, putting in a solid 10-hour day to make an incredible space for the events. All of the artists — John Garland (who designed the poster for the April 26th event), Ashley Luyendyk, Caitlin Hettich, Amelia Briggs, April Pierce, Meghan Vaziri, and Mary Jo Karimnia — are Memphis-based.

You’ve had three events so far. How has the response been, the turnout? Future plans?
The turnout has been spectacular (up to 75 people at one event) — above and beyond what I expected for a poetry reading in Memphis. Which just goes to show: This city loves and supports its artists.

The creative energy has been enormous too. I’ve met some great people, which is how this thing keeps rolling. My philosophy is to keep my ears open. I’m interested in collaborative work, so when Clay Cantrell suggested a piece with Laressa Dickey featuring music and poetry, I was all for it. I don’t always know how things are going to look or sound, but I trust the writers and artists.

I’m definitely interested in expanding the concept of “Impossible Language,” and while I want to keep the core concept of the reading series, I also want to build the art “muscle.” I’d like to feature more collaborative work, with artists and poets getting together to plan something special.

The lineup of authors for the event on the 26th: Did they come to you, or did you invite them to read?
A mix of both. I’ve had Tara Mae in mind for a while now, and her book, Philomela, just came out. Heather’s book also just came out — In the Low Houses. Both are so strong, so good. Heather’s name has been in my ear forever, so it was only a matter of time before we met. I saw her read at Burke’s not long ago and was delighted to make her acquaintance. She jumped at the opportunity to read.

This latest event will be a straight reading, without an art component but with a nod to National Poetry Month. Representatives from The Pinch will also be present, with copies to sell. So it will be a good idea for attendees to bring a few bucks. They’ll be sad to leave empty-handed.

What do you mean by your series’ title, “Impossible Language”?
I wanted something evocative that would be a good fit for this sort of multi-genre experience — something that would help explain what it is that artists and writers experience when we enter the “creative space.” We really are trying to get across something that is impossible to convey in any other medium. I also wanted something that tied every reading or event together, even as it evolves and shifts, so that people know they are part of something ongoing.

Crosstown has it own energy going.
I am constantly trying to get people to move here to Memphis. I don’t think I would have been able to accomplish half the stuff I have been able to anywhere else. There’s so much goodness here. I love Memphis like crazy, especially in the spring. •
Poets Heather Dobbins, Caitlin Mackenzie, Tara Mae Mulroy, and Elaine Scudder Walters at 438 N. Cleveland on Saturday, April 26th, 6 to 8 p.m. Reading begins at 6:30 p.m.

To contact Ashley Roach-Freiman: impossible.language.memphis@gmail.com. Follow “Impossible Language” on Facebook at facebook.com/ImpossibleLanguage, on Twitter @impossiblelang, and impossiblelanguage.tumblr.com.

“It’s cool,” Eric Jerome Dickey said by phone, and he wasn’t referring to the fact that that morning on Barbados, where Dickey lives, he had the windows open and fan going. The native Memphian and best-selling author was referring to life on the island generally. But life on Barbados is different. As Dickey reported: “For one thing, in the States, you get so used to stuff. You have access to it … Walmart, Target … an overabundance of everything. Here, I walk into a store, and there may be only four pairs of pants my size! No Nike stores, no outlet malls, no Adidas stores.”

So, no. No “spend cycle” — as Dickey described it — on Barbados like the one you find in the U.S. But here’s Dickey on a few more matters, put to him before his Memphis signing at The Booksellers at Laurelwood on Friday, April 18th, at 6 p.m. He’ll be autographing his latest novel, A Wanted Woman (Dutton).

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MX-401 aka Reaper aka Goldie, the wanted woman of your title: She can be a cold-blooded killer but she can also have a heart. How’d you come up with such a character?
Eric Jerome Dickey: I knew I wanted to write about a female assassin, but I didn’t know the direction to take. So I just sat down and started, and the more I added, the more I thought: This is the right combination for this character. Even going back to her upbringing in Memphis: Bit by bit, the plot just came together.

You’re a male author — and popular one — often writing from a woman’s perspective. When did you learn you had that talent?
I was in a creative writing class at UCLA, and we had to write from the point of view of the opposite gender. I was nervous about it, but people liked what I did. It worked out okay. So I started introducing the woman’s perspective, to break up the writing, and I do get compliments on it. But I do try not to write the same character over and over again.

This is your 22nd novel. What’s the key to being so prolific?
I just show up for work. I’m not on a regular schedule. It’s not 9 to 5 for me. Some days I’ll write for 13, 14 hours. Some days I’m not able to work at all. But I’ve learned even if you have a small block of time, use it effectively.

Doesn’t sound like you suffer much from writer’s block.
We all have difficulties. Writer’s block: Sometimes it’s because you’re just tired. Time to chill out, take yourself away, leave it alone, come back, look at it with fresh eyes.

Any pointers on keeping up the fast pace you show in your novels? And knowing when to switch gears, settle down?
Orchestration. That’s something I learned at UCLA too. It’s a matter of craft. Writing A Wanted Woman, I’d think: I need to slow it down, break it up, this is too much. And you can feel it, when things take off. You’re there. But then I slow it down a bit, give Reaper a breather. But I’ll admit: Part of the fun, early on, writing about Reaper when the scenes are set in Trinidad, I was thinking: What else can go on?

At this stage in your career, do you still work closely with an editor?
Every book is a starting over. And I don’t wanna get too big for my britches … I still need an editor’s comments. I need to see those comments, because if an editor has questions, that editor is showing me questions the reader is going to have too. Sometimes it’s something I need to explain further, or I need to cut a line, rearrange a scene. You need someone who’s not afraid to edit your stuff, someone who’s almost like a parent.

Sounds from reading “A Wanted Woman” that you had fun with the Caribbean vocabulary, the speech patterns, the idioms.
I did, and that is just me having fun — like Einstein having fun with his equations. But I had to watch it. I may love a certain word, the sound of it, but the reader could say, “I can’t even pronounce this!” So, again, I had to watch it. Don’t want the reader to have to pause too much.

Looking forward to being back in Memphis? You still have family in Memphis?
I always look forward to coming back every year or two. In addition to my daughter, I have an ever-growing family — aunts, uncles, first and second cousins. Man, between the Dickey and Mitchell sides of the family, we could fill an auditorium! •

With four collections of poetry, a Rome Prize in 2003, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005, and a Bogliasco Fellowship in 2012, what else is there to add to Sarah Arvio’s impressive resume?

A lot and including: publication in The Best American Poetry 1998, Women’s Work: Modern Women Poets Writing in English, Ariadne’s Thread: A Collection of Contemporary Women’s Journals, and, forthcoming and perhaps on a lighter note, Eating Our Words: Poets Share Their Favorite Recipes.

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Arvio’s poetry has been set to the music of serious contemporary composers. She’s been a translator of others’ work. Today, she lives in Maryland, but on April 17th, she’ll be in Memphis to read from her latest book, night thoughts: 70 dream poems & notes from an analysis (Knopf).

That’s right, no caps in that title. And there’s no punctuation in the book’s 70 set pieces, which are all 14 lines each. This poetic record of Arvio’s dream life has added notes by the author, but nothing dispels the disquiet.

Arvio’s use of the ampersand throughout? A sign, perhaps, that in night thoughts, analyst and analysand are one and the same: the poet herself. First-person, singular, the lone word capitalized throughout is I.

Read some samples from night thoughts here. Be at Burke’s Book Store on Thursday, April 17th, to hear Sarah Arvio read from and sign her work. The event is from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., with the reading at 6 p.m. •

To go with this week’s Flyer coverage of The Concrete Killing Fields, Pat Morgan’s first-person account of her work with the homeless in Memphis, I asked the author about an important point she makes throughout the book: inadequate mental-health services for the homeless in the wake of decades of deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill.

Go to Mother Jones for a useful timeline of events that saw the emptying of public psychiatric hospitals in favor of community-based, state-funded outreach programs. The timeline is subtitled “How deinstitutionalization moved thousands of mentally ill people out of hospitals — and into jails and prisons,” and pay particular attention to the year 1984.

That timeline ends in 2010, and rephrase the subtitle to read: “into jails and prisons or onto the streets.” Which is why I asked Morgan to bring us up to date on mental-health services for the homeless generally and what’s being done — and needs still to be done — for the homeless in Memphis and Shelby County:

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Is the U.S. any better today at meeting the mental-health needs of the country’s homeless?
Pat Morgan: No, but it’s not the fault of the mental-health professionals who are doing everything they can for as many people with mental illness as they can. They know what needs to be done and how to do it, but they don’t have the funding for the number of mental-health outreach workers needed to go to the streets, shelters, and jails to try to connect homeless people with mental illness to services, benefits, and housing.

A total of 55,147 mentally ill people were found sleeping “unsheltered” during the 2013 national point-in-time count of homeless people. We don’t know how many of them “lack insight” into their illness and/or the conditions in which they are existing and therefore can’t, or won’t, accept shelter, much less mental-health treatment. An additional 69,005 mentally ill people were in shelters or transitional housing programs for homeless people.

We worry about all of them. We don’t have to worry nearly as much about those who have been deinstitutionalized, because it’s almost impossible to get someone involuntarily committed. If you’ve never been institutionalized, you can’t be deinstitutionalized. And I’m not the only one who says so.

Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, who endorsed The Concrete Killing Fields, is the executive director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute and founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit dedicated to “eliminating legal and clinical obstacles to the treatment of severe mental illness.” “It’s almost impossible to get someone involuntarily committed,” he said in a recent interview.

Is the case today that government funding for mental-health programs is even harder to come by than it was?
Absolutely, and some of the nation’s leading mental-health advocates, including the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, and the National Alliance on Mental Health have the data to prove it.

All three have recently published or updated reports reflecting the decreases in funding for mental health by the states that began when Medicaid began paying for mental-health services, decreased again in 1981 when Congress replaced direct funding of mental-health centers with a block grant, and decreased again when the markets and economy began crashing in 2007.

Medicaid is now the largest payer of mental-health services in the U.S., and the costs would be even higher if people weren’t so afraid of the stigma associated with mental illness or were willing or able to accept treatment. The federal government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reported in 2010 that 40 percent of people in the U.S. with a serious mental illness had received no treatment in the past year. Dr. Torrey’s research reflects the nightmarish results for many of them: “There are now more than three times more seriously mentally ill persons in jails and prisons than in hospitals.”

What the report didn’t describe were the inhumane conditions under which some of them are held. I contend that purists who insist on an individual’s absolute right to freedom, regardless of his/her mental state, have not contemplated the freedom to be incarcerated.

What steps are Memphis and Shelby County taking to improve the homeless situation?
There are quite a few. The steadily increased development of permanent supportive housing for homeless people with a disability has resulted in a significant decrease in the number of those who are chronically homeless, primarily defined by HUD as having slept in shelters or on the streets or other places not meant for human habitation for a year or more.

There’s also been a significant decrease in the number of homeless veterans. The Community Alliance for the Homeless also reported a decrease in the number of homeless families. That statistic no doubt reflects a greater emphasis on prevention and the closing of approximately 60 units of transitional housing for homeless families with children, which are now set aside for permanent supportive housing for homeless families who are involved with the State Department of Children’s Services — that is, have children in foster care or are at risk of losing custody of their children.

What, in your opinion, is the most pressing need?
There are many, but I would argue that the most pressing need is funding from a reliable source to help ensure that people with serious mental illness who lack insight into their illness, refuse treatment, and are therefore at great risk of becoming homeless and/or incarcerated receive the mental-health treatment and services they need in the least restrictive setting.

I’d propose that Memphis and Shelby County partner with local foundations and mental-health providers to fund, develop, and implement a pilot program to test the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of Assisted Outpatient Treatment as a means of preventing/reducing homelessness, institutionalization, and undue incarceration resulting from untreated mental illness. There are models that actually work — if and only if they are adequately funded and administered.

I believe in Memphis, Shelby County, our foundations, the state of Tennessee’s Department of Mental Health, and local providers of mental-health services. I think they can make it work. •