Page Lambert: All Things Literary & All Things Natural

Please scroll down to April 15 to read the first "8000 Writers Descend on Denver" installment about the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Denver last weekend . "What is to give light, must endure burning."  This is the motto that has, for 36 years, fed the brave editorial direction of The Sun magazine .  I wasn't able to attend the INTO THE FIRE reading by Sun authors Sy Safransky, Ellen Bass , and 5 other notibles, but I heard it was fabulous.  Instead, I attended WHEN FORM INVENTS FUNCTION: THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN INDIAN PROSE POEM, in part because Sherman Alexie was supposed to be on the panel ( a stand-up comedian who brilliantly disguises himself as an author, so brilliantly in fact that War Dances just won the 2010 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction), but in greater part because my frend, Choctaw author LeAnne Howe was on the panel.  If you want to know who invented baseball, read LeAnne's novel Miko Kings, and chec...

The program booklet for AWP’s annual conference and bookfair was 322 pages thick – no kidding. The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) has been “fostering literary talent and achievement” since 1967, but this is the first year they’ve done so in the West. What happens at AWP? Keynotes. Dozens of featured readings. Dozens of panels. And at least half a dozen off-site parties every night. It’s a virtual who's who of the literary world, with special emphasis on MFA students, programs, and instructors. If you’re a serious writer, this is the place to be. I say that a bit tongue-in-cheek, because I know there are a lot of serious writers in the West who have perhaps never heard of AWP. Here’s what I loved about the conference (besides the famous Blue Bear sculpture outside Denver's Convention Center peering in at all of us)…. Lots of friends from the West’s writing community were there. Teresa Jordan. Laura Pritchett. LeAnne Howe. Kent Myers. Laurie Wagner Buye...

The Spring Equinox is a time of earthly balance , when day and night are everywhere the same—a good time to envision the rest of the year with clarity and focus. My creative life is out of balance right now —I know this. Whenever I’m not spending enough time engaged in the creative process of writing my brain gets cob-webby and I get cranky. Half-formed thoughts congeal and cloud my vision. Writing requires introspection . Yet the business of writing requires extroversion, reaching out to the world at large. When I expend too much energy with the business of writing, and not enough time with the creative act of writing stories, I find myself longing to be back at Jentel, where nothing mattered but the writing. In 2003, I was awarded a month-long residency at Jentel. The award included a $400 stipend, a private writing studio, a private bedroom, and a fabulous community kitchen and living area that I shared with the other five residents: another writer, and four visual artists. On...

Have you ever been hiking in the woods and come across canine scat and wondered coyote or dog ? Or found deep imprints in the snow and wondered just how fresh are these mountain lion tracks ? No? Well then, have you ever been browsing the books at your favorite bookstore and wondered What made this publisher buy this book? What kind of query letter did this author write? Would this agent be interested in my manuscript Guidebooks are indispensible whether we’re navigating our way through the jungles of publishing, or wondering about the creature that might be lurking in the bushes just a few feet ahead of us. If we want to get published, we have to study the business. If we want to write about the natural world, we have to pay homage to the experts by bowing to their years of field experience and reading their field guides. A year ago, wildlife biologists spent days studying possible signs of gray wolves on the High Lonesome Ranch in northwestern Colorado (read “Prodigal Dogs” ...

Last Thursday, Larry and Debby, neighbors in our small mountain community of less than 100 homes, sent out a plea to help them look for their lost dog. Molly, a beautiful Golden Retriever they had rescued when she was 6 months old, had apparently wandered away from home the day before. Snow had fallen that evening, blanketing the dirt roads, the yards, and the thick forest in white. I set out that morning on a walk in search of Molly, as did several other neighbors. We saw Larry on the road. He’d been searching for hours—along the snow-covered hiking trails, near the picnic grounds, down to the meadow, among the wild grasses and groves of aspen that grow among the pines. This neighborhood was my childhood home—my first introduction to real community. When I moved back a year and a half ago, I was greeted by neighbors who had known me for fifty years. Many, like me, had journeyed away, only to return home. Mountain lions and coyotes also call this landscape home. The big cats prowl a...

Yesterday, at the National Western Stock Show in Denver, I watched artist Susan Bell paint two bison bulls.  The sun was shining and the bulls seemed content to settle into the sawdust bedding and pose for her.  She'd been painting animals for 3 days, sitting on a small stool, dipping her brush into the rich colors of her oil palate.  The scene was in stark contrast to gallery owners in Haiti who had survived the earthquake and were trying desperately to salvage their country's art, pulling prized pieces from the debris, compiling lists of the artists and writers who had not survived. When tragedy strikes, like the Haitian earthquake, it's easy to think that the novel we’ve been writing for two years, or the sculpture we've been chipping away at for months, are frivolous endeavors.  Shouldn’t we be doing something worthwhile ? we ask ourselves.  What is the point, after all, of art in light of such horrendous suffering? ...

What is an elder? That's the question a close friend asked me when I told her about the Elders Christmas Dinner hosted last week by the American Indian College Fund . "It's a blessing to help serve the meal," I said. "There were over 200 Indian elders there, from dozens of different tribes." My friend lowered her head shyly and asked, "What's an elder?" Her question made me ponder how we treat elders in the dominant culture of which I am a part. She knew, of course, what an elder was but not in the context of a special event held strictly to honor our elders. The dinner was a special affair, but not a serious one (it's hard to be too serious with 200 adults eagerly awaiting the arrival of both dinner, and Santa). "If you're over 55," said emcee John Gritts, "please have a seat and a youngster (anyone under 55) will bring you your food." The day after the Elders Dinner, Rick Williams, president of the American ...

SYNCHRONISTIC MOMENTS  - seemingly unrelated events that connect in unplanned ways.  How often do they occur?  How often do we fail to "connect the dots" that tie these moments together?  What do they tell us about the Grand Design of our lives ?  When the old man in John Steinbeck's collection The Pastures of Heaven stared down into the valley where he had lived his life, tears came to his eyes and he beat his hands helplessly against his hip. "I’ve never had time to think," he said.  "I’ve been too busy with troubles ever to think anything out. If I could go down there and live down there for a little while—why, I’d think over all the things that ever happened to me, and maybe I could make something out of them, something all in one piece that had a meaning, instead of all these trailing ends.” All those trailing ends--the threads of our lives that we long to weave into something whole and meaningful.  But how do we begin the...

According to The Wall Street Journal, 46 million domestic, farm-raised turkeys were devoured   this week (including the 13 pound turkey whose bones have been stewing in my soup kettle until an hour ago).  It’s probably fair to say that none of us ever saw “our bird” fully feathered, or heard it gobble, or knew whether a “hen” or a “jake” was gracing our dinner platter.  I haven’t had this kind of intimate relationship with a Thanksgiving turkey since leaving our Wyoming ranch a few years ago, and I miss it.  The picture below was taken by Seven J Outfitters on land adjacent to our ranch. I do not know these hunters but no doubt I’ve seen this turkey’s brethren foraging on our hay meadow. These are the same turkeys my son and daughter watched through the seasons when growing up , including hunting season.  “If they’re too many jakes,” my son once told me, “they’ll harass the nesting hens, and not enough eggs will hatch.”  He used to spend days out in th...

I met Colum 4 years ago (please see previous post below) and am thrilled Let the Great World Spin has won.  Go to NPR to learn more and read about it from the Associated Press News Release .  Here’s an excerpt: “McCann won the fiction prize for "Let the Great World Spin," a novel about daring, luck and mortality in the pre-digital world of 1970s New York. “He has called his book an act of hope written in part as a response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Accepting his prize, McCann praised the generosity of American fiction and of the American people.”

“A summer flood came and our draft horse got caught in the river.  The river smashed against stones and the sound of it to me was like the turning of locks.  It was silage time and the water smelled of grass.  The draft horse, Father’s favorite, had stepped in the river for a sniff maybe and she was caught, couldn’t move, her foreleg trapped between rocks.  Father found her and called Katie! above the wailing rain.  I was in the barn waiting for drips on my tongue from the ceiling hole.” These are the opening words to Colum McCann’s short story “Everything in This Country Must,” first published in The Atlantic in 2001 and later published in book form (along with another short story and a novella) by Macmillan/Picador . I met Colum McCann in June of 2005 at the Aspen Summer Words Literary Festival in Colorado.  Colum was part of an impressive lineup of Irish authors, including Robert Boswell, Grande Dame Edna O’Brien, Polly Devlin, Nuala O’Faolain,...