1. Your favorite novel.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.

2. What inspired you to start writing?

My first bits of writing were love poems … for my mother. (I still write love poems for my mother!)

3. Do you have (or have you ever had) a muse? If so, who/what?

Currently the cello is my muse! I am new to the instrument, and I find playing music really feeds my creativity in all areas.

4. Your favorite poem.

“A Secret Life” by Stephen Dunn. For many years, writing was my secret life!

5. Your favorite Alabama plant.

Dogwood tree.

6. Five words which describe you.

leftie, impetuous, restless, grateful, pilgrim

7. One way in which the Alabama Writer’s Conclave changed/impacted your life.

Not only has AWC helped introduce me to the Alabama community of writers AND helped me hone my craft, volunteering in various capacities has helped me to remember that perhaps the most fulfilling part of being a writer is to serve other writers — to offer encouragement and experience to help other people tell their stories.

8. What are you working on right now?

I write poems every day, and I have a number of projects in various stages — four books are under contract to release over the next several years. And I have just completed my first (50 pages!) nonfiction book proposal for a memoir called CELLO LOVE: THE ART OF BEING A BEGINNER. If it sells (fingers crossed!), finishing that book will be my top priority.

9. Your favorite place in Alabama and why.

“The Wall” in Florence, Alabama. The chapel at Bellingrath Gardens. Mentone. Gee’s Bend. Fairhope. My back deck in summer with my family around the table and the mosquito lanterns lit. All of these are places where I have felt a deep connection with the world and all that is greater than me.

10. One thing you need right now to help you as a writer.

Oh wow. There is always something new to learn! I think I need to write more from a place of wonder and delight… which means LIVING more in wonder and delight. Being present. Laughing. Giving myself permission to PLAY, rather than work.

Irene will be reading at Shine Bright: A Poetry Reading in Celebration of the Winter Solstice alongside other local poets and writers. Featured poets will read on the subject of light and winter. Light refreshments. Open mic to follow.When: December 21st at 7:00 pm

Where: DISCO (Desert Island Supply Co.) in Birmingham, Alabama

To learn more about Irene’s current projects, visit her website at www.irenelatham.com. A long-time blogger, Irene shares her thoughts on life, family, writing, and hope at www.irenelatham.blogspot.com. She tweets at @irene_latham.

1. Your favorite novel.

That’s a tough one. I’ll go with a couple of my most recent favorite novels: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr; The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, Miss Jane by Brad Watson, and Dispatches from Pluto by Richard Grant.

2. What inspired you to start writing?

Teachers inspired me (along with a certain sense of loneliness and introversion). I wrote my 1st story as a 6th grader (I’m not saying it was good), and my 1st poem the next year (a children’s poem, “The Cannibal”). Various teachers told me I was talented and they encouraged me to keep journals. In college, my creative writing professor (Dr. Claude Clayton Smith) entered one of my stories in the Hollins Literary Festival and it won first place. That same story was listed in Writer’s Digest in the top 100 stories. Also, I’m an avid reader, so writing followed that love.

3. Do you have (or have you ever had) a muse? If so, who/what?

I’m not sure he’s my muse, but he shows up in my dreams quite often — George Bernard Shaw. He makes himself comfortable in my dreams and talks about writing.

4. Your favorite poem.

That’s an unfair question for a poet. I’ll choose one from the past (“The Abortion” by Anne Sexton) and a current one (“Home” by Warsan Shire). Both are haunting to me.

5. Your favorite Alabama plant.

The iris is my favorite plant. I love purple irises.

6. Five words which describe you.

Empathetic, Anxious, Introverted, Tenacious, Ruminative

7. One way in which AWC changed/impacted your life.

The AWC with its members, Conclave, competitions, etc. validated me as a “real writer.” I’ve made wonderful creative friends who love words like I do. The Conclave provides learning and networking experiences. I read my work in front of an audience for the first time at the Conclave.

8. What are you working on right now?

My free time is spent promoting/marketing my poetry collection How We Bury Our Dead (recently published by Negative Capability Press). I’m also working on a series of essays (memoir). And lately, Eve (yes, THAT Eve) keeps whispering in my ear about a poetry project she wants to be part of. (I’m waiting to hear Shaw’s thoughts on that!)

9. Your favorite place in Alabama and why.

I love Fairhope with its artists, Gulf Shores with its beautiful beaches, and Mobile where my two daughters were born.

10. One thing you need right now to help you as a writer.

Time. I work full-time as a law library manager, and I’m involved in various organizations. Add to that a husband, two grown daughers, twin granddaughters, an elderly mother, and a book to promote, and whew, you get the idea. (I also need more visits from Shaw.)

Faith Garbin is currently doing readings for her poetry collection. Learn more about Faith at www.faithgarbin.com and contact her for readings. Facebook: @FaithGarbinAuthor
Twitter: @FaithGarbin1

Jennifer Horne on everything from gardening to Zelda Fitzgerald.

1. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE NOVEL?

This seems like a simple question, and yet I am astonished to find that I do not have an answer to it! My favorite novel is the one I am immersed in at a given moment, that takes me beyond myself, into another world, and back to myself again, changed. I think novels become favorites by speaking to you at a particular time in your life, and therefore my favorite novel changes as I do, from A Wrinkle in Time to the Narnia books to The Brothers Karamazov to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to The Waves to Look Homeward, Angel to The Sun Also Rises to The Golden Bowl to Sophie’s Choice to Beloved to Everything is Illuminated to Ahab’s Wife to, most recently, Miss Jane, with lots of other stops along the way. (My five-words description below in question #6 should probably read “not easy to pin down.”)

2. WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO START WRITING?

From the time I could read I also enjoyed making up stories and poems, and my mother, a writer, encouraged me in this. I wish she were alive so that we could still call each other when we’d come up with a good line for a poem and wanted to share it with someone.

For me, that sharing has always been a part of the pleasure of writing — I loved the way that writing could corral emotions, sense impressions, questions, imaginings into a form that could communicate something of what it felt like to experience the world through my particular lens.

3. DO YOU HAVE (OR HAVE YOU EVER HAD) A MUSE? IF SO, EXPLAIN.

Entire books have been written about the nature of the (traditionally female) muse in relation to feminism — is a woman who writes her own muse? If there’s one thing that over time has inspired, instructed, and engaged me, it would be the natural world, a source of comfort, metaphor, and, since I like to garden, good physical labor that takes me out of my head and into my body, where poems arise.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE POEM?

So many beloveds! One of my very favorites that I’ve been memorizing recently is Theodore Roethke’s “The Waking.” I love the images, the mystical elements, the repetition, the way it circles back on itself and gives me something new every time I read it. I find that the poems I want to memorize tend to be somewhat incantatory, reaching back in their rhythms to the beginnings of poetic history.

5. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ALABAMA PLANT?

Although I’m partial to oak leaf hydrangea and wild magnolia, the one that makes me happiest is the surprise lily, showing up in unexpected places just when all the plants of summer have died out and gone brown, and there it is in its showy red exuberance.

6. FIVE WORDS WHICH DESCRIBE YOU.

Stubborn. 
Curious. 
Loyal. 
Rebellious. 
Orderly.

7. ONE WAY IN WHICH THE ALABAMA WRITER’S CONCLAVE IMPACTED YOUR LIFE.

I’ve been aware of the AWC for a number of years and had the opportunity to speak on an editors’ panel one time when the Conclave met in Tuscaloosa. This past summer I attended my first meeting as an AWC member and felt such a good sense of community and connection among the writers there. Writing is a notoriously solitary calling, and it helps to connect with other writers online and, especially, in person, to share ideas and questions and simply to be among others who “get” you and what you do.

8. WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON RIGHT NOW?

My main project right now is a memoir-influenced biography of Sara Mayfield, an Alabama writer who is best known for her biography of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. I’m in the “messy draft” stage, finishing up research, and excited about keeping moving toward a finished draft. With my husband, Don Noble, I’ve just finished co-editing a collection of short stories by Alabama women, titled Belles’ Letters II, due out in spring 2017, and, as a personal project, my sister and I are putting together a collection of our mother’s poems, something self-publishing platforms now make it easy to do.

9. YOUR FAVORITE PLACE IN ALABAMA.

My favorite place is the place I live, on a little lake in Cottondale that astonishes me every day with its natural beauty, in a house that has nurtured my life for more than twenty years. Apart from that, I’m always drawn to Alabama’s beaches, reveling in the moment you can open the car windows and smell the ocean, even though you can’t quite see it yet.

10. ONE THING YOU NEED RIGHT NOW TO HELP YOU AS A WRITER.

Perhaps this is something we all need: to renew my faith daily that what I am doing matters. I reach back to the writers from the past whose work I admire, outward into the present to the writers I connect to across the state and beyond, forward to readers who might encounter my work in the future and find something of value there. We live in a time of an abundance of tools for writers, but also an abundance of distractions, so most of all I need reminders to stay focused, keep the faith, and write what needs writing.

Learn more about AWC member Jennifer Horne from her wonderful blog.

Also, put her on your calendars for April of next year, where she will be at the Alabama Writer’s Symposium and the Alabama Book Festival reading from her new collection of poems, Little Wanderer (Salmon Press, 2016).