SSU Writers Series Hosts a Pair of Funny, Compassionate Writers
Authors Share Secrets of Fiction and Fantasy Craft
Deb Olin Unferth, an Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, appeared in a wool hat on Zoom Feb. 17 as she described her dive into the lives of chickens for Barn 8, a new novel about animal rights and corporate malfeasance.
“These are creatures with beating hearts and personalities,” she told a rapt audience. Unferth’s research methods consisted of sitting in a hen house and recording the chickens’ voices, then listening to decode their chatter and determine social structures. "I gave my whole heart to these animals," she said, honoring them by seeing them.
Author Sheree Renée Thomas then introduced her cat, Tituba--named as you might guess for the Jamaican housemaid who bore the brunt of insanity in our fair city centuries ago. Thomas’ rise in the literary world has been insane in a good way. She edits the Dark Matter anthologies of African stories and writes speculative fiction, or fantasy. In Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future, she presents an epic collection about survival in lyric lines that ide the waves of the Mississippi Delta.
A congenial back and forth between the two talented authors and Kevin Carey, Coordinator of Creative Writing at Salem State, kept the session rocking on waves of laughter.
“When I’m laughing, I can go to dark places,” Thomas said. The change in register that comes from "constantly moving into grief and coming back to humor” frees the writing from existing in one place. She suggested that writers undermine their own arguments to add an emotional and psychological connection that often sets Thomas to laughing. A sense of wonder is of utmost exigence to this finalist for the 2020 World Fantasy Award and co-host of the upcoming 2021 Hugo Awards in Washington, D.C.
When Unferth was asked what gets her attention in a piece of writing, she hinted at a similar undermining of characters’ arcs. She is drawn to authors when there’s something unusual or weird in a story; a rule being broken so that it can hold incompatible truths at the same time. “That’s what life is like,” she said. "It’s frustrating when there’s not just one truth, but it shows diversity in the world. If I see expressions of that, I like it.”
A vegan Buddhist, Unferth has compassion for all suffering, human and animal. She is also the director of Pen City Writers, a creative-writing program at a south Texas penitentiary. “They have lost so much. All they have left are their voices and their stories.”