creative writing – Memphis Flyer

Libraries are something of an endangered species these days. Public spaces without an admission fee rarely fit into the makeup of the modern city. Maybe that’s why Susan Cushman, the Memphis-based author of Cherry Bomb, chose them as the setting for her new collection of short stories, Friends of the Library.

Friends of the Library is Cushman’s first short story collection, and she’s celebrating the release with booksignings at Novel bookstore this Sunday, August 25th, and at Cordova Library, Wednesday, August 28th. Those readings kick off an autumn and winter book tour that will take the author to 10 independent bookstores and 24 libraries.

Susan Cushman

Cushman, a native of Jackson, Mississippi, who moved to Memphis in 1988 with her husband and three children, didn’t discover her love for libraries until recently. “I was more so always a writer,” she says. “I really got into writing in junior high and high school for literary journals and our newspaper. I thought, ‘I’m going to be a journalist.’ I was a feature editor on our newsletter, and then I did some freelance writing as an adult.”

Her journalistic leanings were put to the test, though, when she came up against a work of fiction that, for her, reframed what a writer could do. “I knew I wanted to write fiction when I read Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides,” Cushman says, explaining that she relished the idea of using her own trauma to inform her expression — all without being too “confessional.”

“I didn’t start seriously writing books until about 2006 or ’07 [when] I started working on a novel and a memoir,” Cushman says. Of the memoir, she adds, “I didn’t know it was going to be a book. I did 60 blog posts over an eight-year period about caregiving for my mother with Alzheimer’s, and then I turned it into a book in 2017. That was a different kind of book project because I didn’t know I was writing a book all those years.”

Cushman spoke at the Memphis Alzheimer’s Conference in 2018, which, along with other speaking engagements, gave her direct access to others who were struggling with similar challenges. “I spoke at a lot of book clubs and bookstores and conferences, and people would always say, ‘I didn’t know anybody else felt that way,'” Cushman says. Processing the experience in such a way gave her a different perspective on her relationship with her mother, which had been strained even before the struggle with Alzheimer’s. “I was able to forgive her before she died in 2016. That was a real blessing.

“At the same time, I started my novel Cherry Bomb, and that was a long project that took about six or seven years. It came out in 2017 as well,” Cushman says, which brings the story back to libraries. “I was visiting libraries in 10 small towns in Mississippi in 2017 on a little book tour for my novel, and as I visited each town, I did a little research about it. Even though I grew up in Mississippi, I’ve never been to most of those places.”

Cushman grew fascinated with libraries, especially those in small, rural towns, where libraries can function as a cultural crossroads. The people Cushman met on her book tour were dealing with the same issues as she had, but they had fewer places to go to gain perspective, to share their troubles, and to take comfort from their fellows. And the pages of Friends of the Library are populated by troubled people in need of comfort.

A few issues dealt with in the collection include cancer, Alzheimer’s, domestic abuse, homelessness, and racism. To help her navigate the maze of heartaches she had created, Cushman invented a fictional author to take the trip through Mississippi. “She gets involved in the lives of the people that come to the Friends of the Library meetings where she speaks.” Even as she’s helping to fix the fictional dilemma, “she’s helping the real person Susan.” Because, when you get right down to it, everyone could use a friend. Susan Cushman discusses and signs her new collection Friends of the Library at Novel bookstore Sunday, August 25th, at 2 p.m., and at the Cordova Library, Wednesday, August 28th, at 2 p.m.

Poetry and prose. Fiction and nonfiction. If you’re interested in the state of the art of writing and if you’re into meeting with and hearing from some authors of note, beginning this week and continuing into November, you’ve got some good pickings. All of them are thanks to the creative-writing department at the University of Memphis, and all of them are free and open to the public.

For starters, what was once River City is now The Pinch, a semiannual literary journal sponsored by the U of M. In its pages, you’ll find fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and photography, and the fall 2007 issue is ready. To celebrate, Burke’s Book Store is hosting a release party on Saturday, October 13th, from 6 to 8 p.m. The event promises readings by visiting authors (as of this writing, Claudia Grinnell and Margaret McMullen, among others), and this issue of The Pinch includes pieces by Lee Gutkind and Dinty Moore, plus an interview with poet Linda Gregerson.

September will also see the announcement of the winners in the journal’s national contest (sponsored by the Hohenberg Foundation) for poetry and fiction. Make that “international” contest. According to assistant managing editor of The Pinch (and MFA student) Matt Pertl, this year’s contest received some 300 submissions worldwide, and that includes authors from the Czech Republic, Denmark, Great Britain, Australia, Columbia, Bolivia, and Japan. Judges Pam Houston (in the short-story category) and Linda Gregerson (in the poetry category) had some reading to do. You’ll have some reading too when The Pinch hits bookstores here and nationwide. Just look for the artful cover by U of M graphic designer Gary Golightly.

For more information on The Pinch, go to http://cas.memphis.edu/english/pinch/home/home.htm.

Care to hear from memoirist Joyce Maynard, novelist Charles Baxter, and poet C.K. Williams? They’re all about to be in town as part of the U of M’s River City Writers Series, now in its 30th year.

Maynard will be reading on October 24th at the Holiday Inn University on Central. Baxter (his The Feast of Love just hit movie theaters, starring Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear) will be reading at the Galloway Mansion in Midtown on October 29th. And the Pink Palace will be the setting for a reading by Williams on November 15th. What, no classroom time? Yes, classroom time, when the authors follow up their readings and signings with interviews inside Patterson Hall on the U of M campus.

But according to Rebecca Skloot, who arrived at the U of M this semester to teach creative nonfiction, the idea this year is to get the visiting authors out of class and into the community. “Arts-friendly” venues is what Skloot calls them, and they’re designed to make the writers series more inviting, more accessible — to turn them into a public event.

“When you’re at a reading,” Skloot says, “you want to be in a beautiful place. You want to ‘feel’ the art. You want to have the opportunity to mingle, talk.” She means the readings to be fun.

For more information on this fall’s River City Writers Series, go to http://cas.memphis.edu/english/rcw/season.htm.

What’s more? More poetry — at the very accessible P&H Café when former U of M students read from their work: Burke’s Book Store owner and Flyer contributor Corey Mesler and former Flyer staff member and teacher at the Memphis College of Art Mary Molinary. Onetime professor of English at the U of M and Commercial Appeal columnist Frederic Koeppel will also be reading. So too Matt Cook, a poet from Milwaukee who professes to write poetry for “people who hate poetry.” The reading at the P&H (1532 Madison) is on Thursday, October 11th, at 7 p.m.

Can’t make it to any or all of the above? Doesn’t mean you’re not on the lookout for new writers. See then: Best New American Voices 2008, a collection of short stories just published by Harcourt and drawn from university writing departments, workshops, and conferences. Nationally recognized novelist and short-story writer Richard Bausch is this year’s editor. That’s the same Richard Bausch who teaches creative writing at the — that’s right — University of Memphis.