Childhood and identity

This week on Realgoodwords are two new memoirs from women who are, to some extent, both writing about identity. Laura M. Flynn grew up in San Fransisco with a mentally ill mother. Her story shows not only the onset of schizophrenia and how it affects a family, but it shows the ordinary-ness of it; the good moments as well as the bad. Her father eventually divorced her mother, but left the three girls with their mother, because as she told me, "he didn't know that she wouldn't get better". Laura M. Flynn's "Swallow the Earth" was a finalist for a MN Book Award. The Washington Post wrote:

Despite all, Flynn's childhood contained love. Her salvation came through her father's protectiveness, her closeness with her sisters, and the imaginative world the three girls created together.

While Laura M. Flynn is examining her childhood to more fully understand who she is as an adult. In Mei-Ling Hopgood's "Lucky Girl" she, as an adult, comes to meet and understand the parents who gave her up for adoption in Taiwan. Kirkus Review's writes:

Hopgood writes with humor and grace about her efforts to understand how biology, chance, choice and love intersect to delineate a life. A wise, moving meditation on the meaning of family, identity and fate.

May is National Mental Health Awareness month and the Grand Rapids chapter of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) is bringing Laura Flynn to Grand Rapids to speak - she'll be at the MacRostie Art Center Tuesday May 19th at 6:30pm. She'll be in Brainerd the next day, signing her book at BookWorld. And in June she's part of the Brainerd Public Library's Brown Bag lunch series.

who inspired Bob Dylan?

Last fall at KAXE we had the great great fortune to host the StoryCorps project in Grand Rapids. We not only got the chance to meet different people in our community, see the effects of listening to loved ones and watch the StoryCorps crew in action, but we also got the chance to show them what Northern Minnesota is all about. Sometimes it takes showing people where you live to really get how unique it is. I'm grateful to StoryCorps for their visit that reminded me why I live here.

Alex Kelly, one of the StoryCorps faciliatators and I went to Hibbing one day. We saw the Greyhound bus museum, the Hull-Rust mine pit and we did a "Dylan" tour.

Luckily, I have my connections (thank you Aaron Brown) and he was able to spice up our Dylan tour. We journeyed to the home of B.J. Rolfzen, Bob Zimmerman's high school English teacher. Over the years many historians, documentarians and fans have contacted Mr. Rolfzen because Dylan has cited him as a great influence on his writing. On Realgoodwords you can overhear our conversation with B.J. here.

For the past five years Hibbing has held "Dylan Days" as a celebration of the influence of the Iron Range on Bob Dylan's career. Held around his birthday, every year there's the hopes that Bob Dylan may actually show up to some of the events. This year is a high school reunion that may attract him. Who knows? Stranger things have happened, like Doug MacRostie getting ahold of Dylan's cell phone number and leaving him messages.

Sometimes I wonder why towns celebrate their giant balls of twine or their local legends - either people who left town at a young age or never really want to admit where they came from. But lately I get it. It's how we show our pride and it's an excuse to get together and build community. It's not necessarily about Judy Garland or Bob Dylan. It's about celebrating this place where we live...

From the Dylan Days website:
The following excerpt from the May edition of Rolling Stone's Douglas Brinkley interview with Dylan explains why we organize Dylan Days:

“I ask Dylan if he minds people visiting Hibbing or Duluth or Minneapolis searching for the root of his talent. ‘Not at all,’ he surprisingly says. ‘That town where I grew up hasn’t really changed that much, so whatever was in the air before is probably still there. I go through once in a while coming down from Canada. I’ll stop there and wander around.’"

Dylan Days is May 21st - 24th check here for the complete schedule.

Interviews and reading for the week ahead

I'm reading Michael Perry's latest book "Coop - A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting". What is it with chickens? Seems like everybody's doing it! Michael Perry gives readers his very real, back to the basics, life in rural Wisconsin. Read his description of his concern over his father's new "lifestyle".

My father recently joined the community choir. Sounds innocuous enough - sweet, even - but my immediate reaction was to phone my brother John and ask if he thought Dad might be smoking reefer. Four decades I've known my father, and he has led an avowedly quiet life. He works hard, he works quiet, he works above all to avoid any public act more conspicuous than renewing his driver's license. And now suddenly he's out there on tour (Chetek...Bloomer...Sand Creek... it's all a crazy blur), ascending the risers to raise his voice in public.

Tune in this week for my conversation with Michael Perry.

Also on the docket, for a different reason, is the vampire tween novel "Betrayed: House of Night Book Two". My thirteen year old friend Erika (maybe you've heard her excellent cohosting on the Friday morning show with us?) asked me to be her reading partner for a class project. Little did I know I'd be entering the odd world of teenage vampires. Except for the bloodsucking, the all night school sleep during the day thing and markings, these kids have the same issues facing any others. Issues of acceptance, trust, romance, independence, responsibility and friendship. Did I mention bloodsucking? Yup, bloodsucking! This is our final week of the project.

Another interview coming up this week is with Erik Reece. Erik's new book is called "An American Gospel - On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God".

Reece describes how he found a Christianity he could embrace in Jefferson's famous Jefferson Bible, which stripped out all references to the miracles and divinity of Jesus, emphasizing instead his teachings about how we should behave towards one another in the here and now.

I also watched a very literary movie last week, while I was off on my writing retreat. I'd seen the movie before, but I watched the commentary with Helen Hunt. The movie is called "Then She Found Me" and it stars Helen and is also written and directed by her. I found Helen's comments a fascinating look at an artist. You can see the trailer here:

What it means to be a modern military wife

Alison Buckholtz joins me on Realgoodwords this week - she's married to an active duty Navy pilot who never thought she'd be in the military world. Her new book is called "Standing By - The Making of an Military Family in a Time of World". She says,

"For me it was really about learning how to ask for help- and accept help when it was offered. That wasn't something that came naturally to me... I don't think that I could have survived deployment without that social safety net (other military spouses)"

finding ALTARS everywhere with Barbara Brown Taylor

I had a great conversation with Barbara Brown Taylor about her new book "An Altar in the World - A Geography of Faith". A former minister, she now teaches and has written about looking at everyday, not just Sundays, as an altar of sorts. She begins the book with this poem called CAPABLE FLESH. You can hear it live tonight at 6pm, CST here or Sunday morning at 9am. Or check the Realgoodwords archive.

The tender flesh itself
will be found one day
-quite surprisingly-
to be capable of receiving,
and yes, full
capable of embracing
the searing energies of God.
Go figure. Fear not.
For even at its beginning
the humble clay received
God's art, whereby
one part became the eye,
another the ear, and yet
another this impetuous hand.
Therefore, the flesh
is not to be excluded
from the wisdom and the power
that now and ever animates
all things. His life-giving
agency is made perfect,
we are told, in weakness-
made perfect in the flesh.
-St. Irenaeus (c.125-c.210)
adapted and translated by Scott Cairns

William Kent Krueger this week

Tune in for a discussion of William Kent Krueger's latest, "Red Knife".

William and I talked about the character that he writers about Cork O'Connor. Cork is half Irish-American, have Ojibwe. A former sheriff who is now a private investigator, he's a man that embodies the conflict that we often see in Northern Minnesota. As William said, "a fiction writer is always thinking where is the conflict?"

In "Red Knife" violence and how we deal with and handle it is at the core. Cork O'Connor has been called in to help with a conflict that concerns a man whose daughter has died due to meth addiction and the Ojibwe gang, Red Boyz, that supplied her with the drug.

Publishers Weekly called Red Knife "outstanding... Simply and elegantly told, this sad story of loyalty and honor, corruption and hatred, hauntingly carves utterly convincing characters, both red and white, into the consciousness."

William Kent Krueger is going to be speaking at Ironworld in Chisholm this Saturday

April 18: "For Love or Money: Six Reasons to Write," with "Cork O'Connor" series author William Kent Krueger
An Oregon native and former logger, construction worker and four-time Minnesota Book Award winner, Krueger will discuss both his work and why he chose to become a writer, including the compelling reasons for setting his novels on the Iron Range.

Book events coming up in Northern Minnesota

Coming up this weekend (April 10-11th) in the Brainerd/Nisswa area is the first annual Minnesota Author's weekend at Grandview Lodge featuring Doug Wood, Will Weaver and Mary Casanova. Some of the topics include Doug Wood's "Earth Songs and Earth Stories" and Will Weaver's "Pathways to Publication - But First Comes the Writing" and Mary Casanova's "No Less Than Stars".

Bestselling Minnesota mystery writer William Kent Krueger will be at Ironworld in Chisholm on Saturday April 18th from 2-3pm. Krueger writes mysteries set on the Iron Range featuring Cork O'Connor. The latest is "Red Knife". Publisher's Weekly called Red Knife "outstanding... Simply and elegantly told, this sad story of loyalty and honor, corruption and hatred, hauntingly carves utterly convincing characters, both red and white, into the consciousness."

Coming up Tuesday April 21st at the Grand Rapids Area Library there will be a noontime tribute to author Bill Holm for National Poetry Month. From 12-1:30 area writers and fans of Bill Holm will gather to read excerpts from his work. Later that evening, at 5:30 at Brewed Awakenings coffeehouse in Grand Rapids there will be a celebration of Itasca Community College's publication "Spring Thaw". You are invited to come listen to excerpts from the publication as well as share your own poetry.