Dorothy Allison week

I'm so excited to be traveling to Vanderbilt University next week to give a reading and serve on a panel with Dorothy Allison and other women writers from working-class and/or poor backgrounds (including my lovely friend Karen McElmurray, who writes beautifully about adoption as well as class). 

Dorothy Allison's work has been so important to me over the years--so deeply and profoundly encouraging--that I thought I'd dedicate a few blog posts to some of her unforgettable passages, like this one from her book of essays Skin:  Talking About Sex, Class & Literature:

I believe the secret in writing is that fiction never exceeds the reach of the writer's courage.  The best fiction comes from the place where the terror hides, the edge of our worst stuff.  I believe, absolutely, that if you do not break out in that sweat of fear when you write, then you have not gone far enough.  And I know you can fake that courage when you don't think of yourself as courageous--because I have done it.  And that is not a bad thing, to fake it until you can make it.  I know that until I started pushing on my own fears, telling the stories that were hardest for me, writing about exactly the things I was most afraid of and unsure about, I wasn't writing worth a damn.  (217)

I'm so excited about meeting her.  Lorraine López, who has organized the whole thing, is editing a book titled  Beyond Our Beginnings, a collection of essays by "women writers who have grown up or lived in lower or working class homes before being vaulted by their literary gifts into the professional strata where they invariably confront feelings of guilt and unworthiness, familial betrayal and abandonment, imposture and fear of detection.  The alienation they experience often provides a unique opportunity both for identity formation and for evaluation."  I'm looking forward to reading the essays.