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Show Notes
It’s summertime, and writers, you know what that means: it’s conference season! To celebrate, we’re speaking with Leah Stewart, the director of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, one of the best and most prestigious writing workshops in the country. Stewart shares how the conference works, the changes she’s made since taking the reins as director, tips for applying, why summer conferences are valuable for writers, the importance of financial support, and how literary organizations can evolve their institutional culture for the benefit of attendees, staff, and faculty alike. She also discusses her own writing process, why researching her latest novel made her relieved to be a writer instead of an actor, the current publishing landscape for novelists, and more.
Leah Stewart is a professor at the University of Cincinnati, the director of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the author of six novels: Body of a Girl, The Myth of You and Me, Husband and Wife, The History of Us, The New Neighbor, and What You Don’t Know About Charlie Outlaw. She lives in Cincinnati. Applications for the 2025 Sewanee Writers’ Conference will open in January 2025.
Leah Stewart photo credit: Jason Sheldon
Sewanee Writers’ Conference photo credits: Ananda Lima
In this episode:
- Sewanee Writers’ Conference
- Tennessee Williams
- Sewanee: The University of the South
- University of Cincinnati
- Choose to Read Ohio
- The History of Us
- The Myth of You and Me
- What You Don’t Know About Charlie Outlaw
- Gwen Kirby
- Benedict Cumberbatch
- Paul Rudd
- Uta Hagen
- Comic-Con
- Cave Canem
- CantoMundo
Excerpts
Transcript
Leah Stewart (00:00):
The main tip I would say is don't put something like, "I am a genius. The world has never seen the like," on your application <laugh>. But otherwise, I think it's really just submit your best work.
Laura Maylene Walter (00:15):
Welcome to Page Count, presented by the Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. This podcast celebrates authors, illustrators, librarians, booksellers, literary advocates, and readers in and from the state of Ohio. I'm your host Laura Maylene Walter, the Ohio Center for the Book Fellow and author of the novel BODY OF STARS. Today we're joined by Leah Stewart, the author of six novels, a professor at the University of Cincinnati and the director of the Sewanee Writers' Conference. We're going to talk about how to get the most out of attending a writing conference, tips for applying how literary organizations can evolve their institutional culture, the novel writing and publishing process, and probably a lot more. So Leah, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.
Leah Stewart (01:01):
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Laura Maylene Walter (01:03):
Well, I do want to focus on Sewanee for the first part of the interview, but before we get there, let's stick a little closer to home and just talk quickly about your Ohio connection. And I know you've lived all over, is that right? Can you tell us just how you ended up in Ohio?
Leah Stewart (01:18):
Sure. I grew up military, so I have indeed lived all over. And in 2007 I got the teaching job at the University of Cincinnati and we moved here for that and I've been here ever since. So for me, living in Ohio is strangely exotic because I've never lived any place so long and my children have grown up here entirely. And the idea that my children are from one state, it's pretty cool. <laugh>.
Laura Maylene Walter (01:44):
Yeah, yeah.
Leah Stewart (01:45):
It's normal to a lot of people, but to me it's, it's different.
Laura Maylene Walter (01:49):
And I know at least one of your books, THE HISTORY OF US is set in Cincinnati, is that right? And that was the book that was on the Choose to Read Ohio list as well?
Leah Stewart (01:57):
Yeah, so that book came out of our move here and the fact that when we got here in 2007, the city has changed so much in the time that we've been here. But when we got here in 2007, it was what I thought of as a low self-esteem city. Because as I was going around, you know, doing the things you do in a new city, like finding a dentist, finding a doctor, finding an exercise class, people kept saying, why did you move here in these tones...like why would you have moved here? And I kept thinking, well, you live here, you live here, why are you asking me that? And I have a friend who left Cincinnati recently, but she's from here and because of that I think had always kind of wanted to try living somewhere else. And she asked me recently like, what do you like about that city?
Leah Stewart (02:36):
And I find that so perplexing. I love Cincinnati. I think it's a really interesting city. The architecture is beautiful, the history is really interesting given its placement right on the border of north and south on the Ohio River. I mean a lot of interesting things have gone on here. And also because in the 19th century it was one of the fastest growing and biggest...I think mid 19th century, it was like the sixth largest city in the country. So we had a period where there was a lot of money in the city and then a period where there wasn't. And the good side of that is that all that beautiful architecture was not torn down. So now people are rehabbing it, reusing it, and we have all these lovely buildings with brick and stained glass and all that history is really present as you're walking around on the, on the streets here. And I also think that it's a very livable city that you have in Cincinnati, everything that you want in a city. But it's still, I mean I think rents have risen quite a bit, but it's still for the most part possible to find parking, to find a place to live, to get what you want without waiting in line for an hour to avoid traffic. So for me it's a really nice balance point.
Laura Maylene Walter (03:47):
Yeah, I completely agree as someone who lives in Cleveland, I'm not from Ohio originally either. And I got the exact same reaction when I moved here, which was quite a while ago. But people ask, why would you move here? What are you doing here? So I also said the same thing, like this city has a self-esteem problem, but I really love it. I can walk to Lake Erie. I am involved in a lot of literary organizations, you know, I work for the library and it's just easy to live here as a writer I think, and still have time to write. I think Cleveland and Cincinnati have a lot of similarities along those lines. And now I feel people are maybe starting to recognize that more. A good friend of mine, also a writer moved here a few years ago from Denver, you know, and I'm sure she got the same questions too. Why would you leave Denver for Cleveland? But she sees all the benefits as well. So this is our little advertisement for Ohio, everyone.
Leah Stewart (04:33):
It is! And it's actually one reason that I wrote that book because in some ways I wanted to say, Hey y'all, it's cool to live here. Just because the cultural discourse is that we're in flyover country or that the middle of the country is somehow culturally irrelevant as opposed to the coast, doesn't mean that that's true. And so I deliberately have a character in that book who ended up staying in Cincinnati for personal reasons after thinking that she would have, you know, a more sort of traditionally exciting ambitious life somewhere on the coast. And so has always felt a little like she failed and I wanted her to wrestle with that and essentially come to the conclusion that that was dumb.
Laura Maylene Walter (05:13):
<laugh>
Leah Stewart (05:15):
<laugh>
Laura Maylene Walter (05:16):
We'll talk about your writing a bit more later, but let's, let's get into Sewanee. So just full disclosure for our listeners, I did attend the Sewanee Writers' Conference last year as a Walter E. Dakin Fiction Fellow and it was a magical experience. I have raved about it to all the writers I know. So I'm definitely going to be biased in this conversation. It is, um, not an objective interview, but since you direct the Sewanee Writers' Conference let's talk about it. You know, we have a lot of writers who listen to this podcast, so I imagine a lot of people already know about it, but I'm sure some don't. So can you introduce us to the Sewanee Writers' Conference what it is and how it works?
Leah Stewart (05:51):
Sure. So the Sewanee Writers' Conference is funded by an endowment from Tennessee Williams. The endowment was given to the University of the South, which is popularly called Sewanee, and is in small-town Tennessee to support creative writing and writers. And what they decided to do 34, I want to say, years ago, was start a writers' conference And it is 12 days, 12 intense days, as you know, <laugh> of educational experiences but also, and perhaps even more importantly, community building experiences, because as we know, and your listeners will probably know, writing is a solitary task and can feel isolating and lonely and like you are, especially if you're working on a novel for a decade, can really feel like you're screaming into the void. And so I think one of the great benefits of the conference is that you get to meet a lot of other people who are having those same experiences and you get to sit in a room with 150 other people who are hanging on every line of a poem being read aloud. And it is a really lovely inspiring reminder why we got into writing and reading in the first place. Because we love literature, we love story, we love language, we love the creation of imaginary worlds and we all get to feel that in community together. But more practically, there are workshops, there are readings, there are lectures, there are special topics classes on everything from submitting a query letter to writing the lyric poem and opportunities to meet professionals in theater and prose and poetry publishing agents, editors, theater directors, et cetera.
Laura Maylene Walter (07:39):
Yeah, it really is amazing. And 12 days, I remember thinking, well, 12 days seems long. We only had workshops every other day and thinking, you know, could it be shortened? And then I got there I was like, no, it flew by <laugh>. It was really helpful to have a break between workshop days. I think there was so much to do. I mean I feel like it was over in a flash, so if you want to extend it to like 24 days or something, I should be fine.
Leah Stewart (08:02):
It's funny, there's always, whenever we get those evaluations there's always somebody who says it should have been longer and somebody who says it should have been shorter. And there's always somebody who says there was too much to do, which I kind of understand even though none of it's you know, required. And then I don't really understand this one. There's always someone who says there's not enough to do <laugh>.
Laura Maylene Walter (08:21):
I think they're just messing with you <laugh>. That's impossible. That is impossible. That's so funny.
Leah Stewart (08:27):
I'm always a little perplexed.
Laura Maylene Walter (08:29):
Yeah, yeah. Well how did you first get involved with Sewanee? You're the director now. What was your first experience with the Sewanee Writers' Conference.
Leah Stewart (08:37):
In 1995 when I was 21...I went right to my MFA program out of undergraduate and I was in the summer in between my professors at Vanderbilt, which is in Nashville, so only an hour and a half from Sewanee, recommended me to the Sewanee folks. And they hired me to be a dorm counselor at the Sewanee Young Writers' Conference, which is a really terrific program for high school kids and then to be on staff at the Writers' Conference. And our staff who come for the summer are early career writers who do the labor of making the conference run during the conference. So they pick people up at the airport, they help people with their luggage, they serve drinks, they put water on the podium for readers. So I was one of those folks and I did that for 10 summers. And then when the job came open, I applied and was hired in 2019 and because I had spent 10 summers at the conference, so I knew the conference very well. And then in the intervening years in my role as a professor here in Cincinnati, I had been the director of creative writing in my program. And then I had been the head of my department for five years and as it's a 60 person department, so it's a large organization to run involving large and complicated budgets and endowments. So I had developed the administrative and kind of I guess human resource skills in the meantime. And that coupled with the experience that I had had at the conference I think made me a good candidate.
Laura Maylene Walter (10:11):
No, absolutely. I mean everyone when I was there was raving about your leadership. I'd love that about Sewanee that the staff, they're writers, they're present and involved and you have staff readings as well so that they get to share their work. And so I thought that was fantastic. So one thing I think is really special about Sewanee is there are a lot of fellowships and scholarships available. It's run in I think a special way where every workshop has two faculty members and we had two fellows. So I was a fellow joined by Erin Swan was the other fellow. So we kind of work with the writers as well. And then there are scholarships students too. Can you talk a bit about that? I mean I think it's so important to have financial opportunities, especially for writers who might not be able to attend otherwise.
Leah Stewart (10:52):
It matters because writing is not a terribly lucrative business for most of us. Even when you sell a book as we know, like when you think about the hourly rate, it's profoundly depressing and best not considered. So we do our best to support people financially and we're lucky enough because we have access to that Tennessee Williams Endowment and the University has been very generous with us. Even those people who are paying what we call full price, they are actually half supported by the endowment because the total cost of housing them feeding them, paying faculty salaries is about twice what we charge. And then scholars are folks who have already had publications or productions on the level of journals or like a university production for the theater people. And then fellows are people who've had a full length play produced or they have published a novel collection of short stories, a memoir, or a book of poems.
Leah Stewart (11:54):
And the fellows, we ask them, as you were saying, to help us out because they have a level of expertise and success that is beneficial to the rest of the participants. So they do conferences along with the faculty and they have the option of offering those special topics classes that I was mentioning earlier. The other thing, and I'm getting a little ahead maybe of your questions, but I know you wanted to talk about cultural change at organizations. One of the things that we did when I came in, and this was actually an idea of one of my associate directors, Adam Latham, was to reach out to organizations that support BIPOC writers and set up partner fellowships with those folks. So we have a Cave Canem Fellowship, we have a Kundiman Fellowship, we have a CantoMundo Fellowship and we have some others too. We just started one with a theater company called Soul Project that supports Latinx playwrights. So we have those fellowships as well as a way of welcoming people into the conference.
Laura Maylene Walter (12:58):
Yeah, it definitely felt welcoming and that so many people are supported in various ways. And you did mention this is bringing back all sorts of memories of last summer, but you mentioned playwriting and productions and that is one thing about Sewanee that is different from other writing conferences I've attended is that playwriting is a part of it, which means that we would get to watch playwrights have professional actors reading their work on stage to experience that was one of my favorite parts for sure.
Leah Stewart (13:24):
Theater has always been part of the conference because it comes from Tennessee Williams's money. But another thing that we've worked on since I came in is expanding the presence of theater. They're bringing in more people and it's one of my favorite things about the conference that we have those theater folks there. Because as you're saying, we don't usually get to interact with them. I mean when we're in university settings, the rest of us are in different departments than the theater people. They have so much overlap with us, but they also have a lot of differences. For instance, when I think about dialogue as a fiction writer, it plays out largely in my head, but when a playwright thinks about dialogue, it has to literally be embodied. And just thinking about that I think has actually changed the way I write dialogue.
Laura Maylene Walter (14:05):
I also really like that the actors would offer special topics classes on performance. And I think that can be really helpful for writers who maybe some of us are more accustomed or comfortable to just sitting at the desk alone with our work and to get up and read it. It is a different thing and it is in a sense of performance even if you're not acting it out. And so having the actors there who could, you know, teach a few classes on giving a reading for example, I think is really useful for writers.
Leah Stewart (14:31):
Two of the actors actually have a little business that they call Performing Pros and I've brought them to UC twice now to work with grad students on giving readings. And I sat in on the workshop the first time and it is transformative. It is amazing how much they change somebody's presence at the podium.
Laura Maylene Walter (14:48):
For better or worse, that is part of being an author these days. You do have to do events whether in person or on Zoom, or on podcast, et cetera. And so it is helpful to have some kind of instruction because usually even if you get published by a big publisher, they're not going to be giving you media coaches or anything, right? So that is development that writers often have to do on their own. Well I will say, you know, speaking of culture change, when I was there at Sewanee last year...It was my first time at Sewanee. I'd never been there. I'd of course heard a lot about it from other writers who might have attended in the past but not a lot in detail. And what really struck me is how many people, both writers who had been there before and faculty were just praising some of the good changes over the years at Sewanee and how the culture has maybe evolved you know, over time.
Laura Maylene Walter (15:37):
And it just really changed the whole tone of the conference and it was just all positive. And so I thought we could talk about that a bit. And I would say from my perspective as a first timer, just two concrete examples of how Sewanee cares for its community were that this was the summer of 2023 and everyone wore masks inside. It was the first big event I've gone to really that everyone actually wore their masks and took care of that. And when there was Covid, because Covid is present everywhere, the writers were well taken care of and they seem to have a great conference as well. And the other example would be the interpreter, the sign language interpreter who, I don't know how the interpreters did it, but interpreting all of the creative writing, being read by faculty, by fellows, et cetera on the spot. So I don't know if you want to start by talking about those two parts of the conference and then we can get into the culture a bit more.
Leah Stewart (16:30):
So for the Covid protocol, I have to give a lot of credit to my other associate director, Gwen Kirby, who has really been on top of that and was the one who handled our procedures when we did have that mini outbreak this summer. And she had arranged for a quarantine dorm in 2021, which was our first conference in those roles but also since the pandemic had started because we were canceled in 2020. We had bought a bunch of, you know, biodegradable takeout containers so we would be able to take people meals in there. We had laid in a bunch of like decongestants and thermometers and things like that. So we were ready but we didn't have any cases that year. We didn't have any cases in 2021 at all. We had one case in 2022. And so we had a moment where I said, do we need to have this protocol again?
Leah Stewart (17:19):
And Gwen said yes and Gwen was absolutely right and we had, I think it topped out at nine cases this year. But I was so glad that we had those protocols in place because it didn't spread. I think what happened is people brought it with them and then because we immediately moved them into the quarantine dorm and we had a schedule for staff to bring people meals, most people I think just recovered and came back out without other people getting sick. Of course we have people with health concerns who come and really need to avoid Covid. So it seems like an important part of being inclusive in all kinds of ways to make sure we're keeping those protocols in place. And then even if you don't have a health problem, you don't want to take the time and spend the money and your energy and come to this and then end up getting sick and having to leave.
Leah Stewart (18:07):
So I was really glad that we were able to take care of those people. The sign language interpreter was...we had somebody who needed one, so Adam arranged to have them with us. And to me that seems like...it was interesting because that person was really effusive in their gratitude and so I guess it's not something that people are always willing to provide, but I don't know, I didn't even, we didn't even think about it. I don't know how to explain why we agreed to hire the interpreter. We just, it just seemed obvious that we would.
Laura Maylene Walter (18:39):
Explain why you were trying to just be baseline decent please <laugh>. Because apparently that's so shocking these days. So. But yeah, all of the writers, I mean we really enjoyed watching the interpreters do their work up there on the stage with whatever writer was either reading a poem or a story or a novel excerpt or the playwriting. And so it looked like a very tough job. So it was fascinating to watch. So speaking more broadly about literary institutions in general, because I'm involved with a few here in Cleveland that I think are doing really good work and making really good strides. But when you talk about a really big conference like Sewanee that has a fairly long history relatively, can you talk about the importance of evaluating that culture or changing or growing it? And you can talk about Sewanee specifically or you could talk more generally about why this is important. Are there growing pains involved when there are changes being made? Talk to us about how literary organizations can keep a finger on the pulse of their culture and make sure they're growing in the right direction.
Leah Stewart (19:41):
I think you have to listen to the on the ground people and that's both the participants. But perhaps even more importantly for me, the staff because the participants come and go in one summer and their experience might be determined by one negative encounter or one positive encounter that they had. Whereas the staff come back and they really have a sense of things that I might not be seeing from my vantage point. And I remember what it was like to be on staff and back then there was definitely...one of the things that we've worked to change is to lessen the sense of hierarchy. And there was a strong sense of hierarchy when I was there back then and we weren't always treated well. And it was the case that if you were a woman on staff, I think it's fair to say that some people who came as visitors or faculty were sexually harassing.
Leah Stewart (20:36):
I think that's fair to say. And some of the things that got said to me as a 20 something young writer who wanted the respect of these people for literary reasons. For instance, there was a faculty member that I kept trying to talk to like god knows why like I look back now and I'm like why did you want this person's attention? But back then, you know, we thought about these things differently instead of looking at this is a systemic problem, we need to change it. I think it was still a very much like as an individual, I need to overcome this somehow I need to prove to this man that he should take me seriously as a writer. So I kept on trying and I remember he kept asking me if I wanted to go out back and kiss him. And I formulated like a topic to discuss with him and he came up to the bar, I was working at the bar and I brought this up, this idea that I had of something I knew he was interested in a writer I knew he was interested that we could talk about.
Leah Stewart (21:30):
And I brought it up and he nodded, he nodded a few times, he kind of, he looked around the room a little bit and he nodded and then he looked back at me and said, do you want to go out back and kiss? Ha ha ha, I laughed it off, right? And then he gave a reading and it was a very funny reading. He got a standing ovation and I was standing back against the wall in the room where we used to have readings and he walked directly from the podium as people were still applauding for him, came over to me and leaned down and said in my ear, do you want to kiss me now?
Laura Maylene Walter (21:58):
Oh my god.
Leah Stewart (21:59):
So that's just one story. There was a lot of kind of thing. So having been on the ground in that situation, I know exactly what I do not want to have happen.
Leah Stewart (22:09):
So I am very conscious of the importance of having a sense of community that is predicated on we all deserve respect no matter what role we are in here and we're going to treat each other as fellow writers and not other people to the degree that I'm able to control that. And back then if those of us on staff had a complaint about something that wouldn't actually prevent that person from being invited back. But if my staff members came to me and told me that story, that person would never darken the door of the conference again. That would be that. For considerably less than that I would draw a firm boundary. And one of the nice things about being in charge of an organization like this as opposed to the complications of running an English department which is large and bureaucratic and has lots of processes that need to go through and shared governance, et cetera, all of which is good in certain ways, but one of the nice things about being in this position is how quickly I can pivot.
Leah Stewart (23:10):
Like if I hear that someone has behaved like that, I'm under no obligation to invite them back. No one is under contract, everyone comes just for that year. So one thing I made sure to do was say to the staff, I have your back. If somebody is mistreating you, you need to tell me. Because when I was on staff we wouldn't even necessarily report it if we were mistreated. And it just felt like the water we were swimming in, it just felt like, especially as women, like you just needed to suck it up and keep going because that was just part of it that was just going to happen. You know, when I watched Mad Men many years later, I really, really saw some of that in that nutshell. Anyway, I think having been on staff, having been in that position and really knowing how much those people see and really wanting to have their back is helpful.
Leah Stewart (23:54):
The other thing that I did in terms of racial diversity, which I get complimented a lot on the degree to which that's changed at the conference and part of me just feels like nothing I did was terribly hard. What I did was I decided that at least 50% of my faculty would be people of color, which just doesn't seem unreasonable to me. And it wasn't and it was not at all hard to hire people. And once we made that change because before that there was typically one person of color in each genre. Once I changed that and people saw who was coming to teach, I think that was an important message that went out there to people who might apply and it also was an important message to those faculty. It's quite legitimate if you're one of those people to wonder if somebody is tokenizing you. So if you can see that that's not what's happening, that makes a huge difference right off the bat. So even just doing that just created a huge ripple effect change throughout the conference.
Laura Maylene Walter (24:57):
Yeah, I remember just feeling really heartened in general while I was there and how everyone who had noticed some good changes over the years. I just felt really encouraged that organizations can change and grow and improve, right? And that you can make a really positive experience for everyone and not have anyone feel threatened or uncomfortable or slighted in any way. There are a lot of conferences out there. I mean we both know Sewanee's the best, but there are a lot of conferences out there and you know, you have to think about the culture. You know, I once attended a conference that had a much stronger hierarchy and that really affected everyone's experience whether they were on fellowship or not. Speaking of applying to conferences, what can you tell us about Sewanee's application process?
Leah Stewart (25:41):
The way applications work is they open in January and they go through March 15th. You know, it's rolling applications but all the admissions decisions happen at once. We have two levels of readers. So there's two people who in each genre who read everything and then it goes to the next level. The next level are fellows from the previous year and we changed the readers on both levels every year. And that was another, actually another thing that we instituted because in the past it was pretty much the same people who read year after year. So there wasn't any diversity at all really in that group. And also if they didn't like your work then you were never getting in. So we try to change it every year so that we get different points of view, different aesthetics in the mix. It's very competitive. We had 1800 applications this year and last year for 144 spots. 1800 was a record two years ago and then we matched it again this year. So yeah, it's challenging to get in but if you get in you should feel really pleased with yourself and if you don't you should understand that the readers will be different the next year. So you have a different shot the following year.
Laura Maylene Walter (26:50):
Do you have any tips for writers submitting applications, anything they should especially focus on?
Leah Stewart (26:55):
Really about the work. Just how the readers respond to your work. The main tip I would say is don't put something like, "I am a genius. The world has never seen the like" on your application <laugh>. But otherwise I think it's really just submit your best work.
Laura Maylene Walter (27:12):
Thank you for that. And listeners, we are going to likely air this conversation right when Sewanee is starting up this year just for fun. But you can set your sights on the application cycle in early 2025, start getting your applications in order. I recommend it. Again, fantastic conference and I just think these kind of conferences, as you had said earlier, are so important for writers. It gives us community, it reminds us why we do what we do. And you can also just have fun. The drinks at French House are great, so highly recommend. But let's talk briefly about your writing before we have to go. I don't think I told you this last year when I was at Sewanee, but I remember when THE MYTH OF YOU AND ME came out and I just at the time...You know when you read a book that hits at exactly the right moment in your life based on whatever is going on with your life and this book about female friendship, I just adored it. But you are the author of six novels most recently WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT CHARLIE OUTLAW, which I've been reading and really love. So I was wondering since that's the most recent novel, if we could talk about that just really briefly. It's a book about two well-known actors who go through a breakup when one commits kind of a PR faux pas and he goes off on aa spiritual journey and ends up kidnapped. So can you talk about why you chose to write about actors and what drew you to write this story?
Leah Stewart (28:34):
I think that one of the things I've noticed over the course of, my gosh, almost 30 year career as a novelist is that there are lots of things that I notice that could be stories. There are a lot of things that I'm just not going to write and it's because like I can see how that would be a story intellectually, but it doesn't hit home emotionally. So I have to find something that is different as it might be from my life, which this one is radically different from my life. There's some emotional connection that I make to it. And I think what my connection was here was the sense of being multiple selves, like the self who gets presented through my art, the self who's a professor, the self who's presented online, the self who's a mother. And also the way that that is for all of us these days, the fact that we always have multiple selves is augmented and refracted in certain ways through the internet and through how we present ourselves online.
Leah Stewart (29:28):
So I think the idea of being an actor who is a person, a genuine person, but also plays other people but also plays themselves in public facing role was really interesting. What the plot came from was actually reading an interview with Benedict Cumberbatch. He was on location early in his career and he got carjacked and like put in the trunk of a car. I no longer remember the full story, but I remember being really struck by that because when I read the interview it was about something and that had happened several years before, but when I read the interview it was when he was becoming super famous for Sherlock. And I was just really struck by the gap between an experience like that and how we picture the lives of celebrities who aren't quite real to us. I remember having a comparable reaction to hearing Paul Rudd on like the Daily Show, tell a story about going to the hospital with a terrible stomach virus and like in a fetal position on the gurney in the ER and somebody's asking for his autograph <laugh>, you know, very cognitive dissonance kinds of moments.
Leah Stewart (30:30):
So I was interested in that and then as I started researching the book, I got really interested in the idea of being somebody who had been super famous young and 20 years later is still famous in certain ways, but also not seen in the same way as she was 20 years ago. And so it became about these two people in these two very different places in their career. And then I just had a great deal of fun doing the research, lucky enough to know people who work in television. So I was able to visit sets, I was able to sit in auditions, I was able to interview a number of actors. One of them very helpfully sent me like her itinerary for Comic-Con. So I was able to write a Comic Con section with knowledge of what they actually do when they're there. I read lots and lots and lots of acting technique books and Uta Hagen and you know, lots of acting technique books and, and that was really interesting because that had me thinking a great deal about the ways in which their craft intersects and doesn't with ours. And the way we think about character creation, the way they think about it, the way they talk about channeling emotion, which in writing we do that too, but for some reason we hardly ever talk about it. You know, we talk about craft in terms of structure and sentences and we hardly ever talk about how do you tap into deep emotion in order to convey it on the page, but that's really primary in their technique. So it also made me think about my pedagogy. I'm getting a little off topic.
Laura Maylene Walter (32:11):
No, no, no, this is great because when I was reading the novel it I think sometimes just in general about the difference between say acting and writing. As someone I am not, I've never been interested in acting, standing on stage with everyone looking at me as my nightmare. No, thank you. But it's really interesting and I often will talk to other writers about it, how we're lucky we don't have to be young and hot to have a writing career, you know what I mean? And we're able to like keep developing the craft over many years. But in the book I saw so many parallels. Josie is the ex-girlfriend who was very famous when she was young, like 20-ish and now it's 20 years later and she's still famous as you said, but never reached the heights that she did back when she was young.
Laura Maylene Walter (32:53):
And so she's dealing with that kind of, maybe that sense of decline. And I pulled out a few lines that really made me think of writing. She's thinking, "How often do you have to act to call yourself an actress? More and more she's been thinking about quitting so that not working will be her choice so that she will no longer have to ask herself such questions." And I thought of this because I was recently talking to a writer who has been really caught up in a new job and hasn't written for about a year and has been really taking that to heart and feeling the pain of that. And so it was just interesting to compare the two of feeling like this is your art and what you love, but if you're not doing it all the time, what does that mean? Like are you a failure? Do you have to stop? And I think that's something we all grapple with at different times.
Leah Stewart (33:36):
Yeah, and I think like as writers we have this sense that we're working really hard on an art that the world that at least our country perhaps doesn't care a whole heck about. With actors obviously they can achieve heights where people care about them really obsessively, but they can't do it on their own. So that is the thing that they struggle with. That actually made me feel like I was really lucky to be a writer and not an actor when I was talking to them because it's funny how many of them actually have fantasies of being writers because they like the idea of being able to pursue what gives them creative joy without needing the whole apparatus around it.
Laura Maylene Walter (34:20):
Right. Without needing someone to hire them for a show or production that is funded already, right? I actually pulled a line about just that: "You can't be an actor unless someone will let you act. That's why she so often dreams of writing or painting anything really that would give her a creative outlet over which she had some control." Yeah, I think about that too as a writer. It's a portable art form, right? We can write anywhere, we can do it on our own and work on it for years and you know, maybe then get it published but can work on it the whole time. So that's so fascinating. Is there anything else you gleaned from the set visits or from watching auditions?
Leah Stewart (34:56):
I learned a lot about how it all works and how collaborative it is. And I could see sometimes how actors' demeanor shifted if they were standing around on set talking to people they worked with where they just were able to relax into whatever their actual personality is and the way they immediately would kind of take on a performance if somebody walked up and started telling them they were a big fan. I really got to watch that. But I think in a lot of ways the book was kind of a weird pep talk for myself because in the arts it's always a moving target, right? Like we never really feel like we've, maybe people who win the Nobel Prize feel.
Laura Maylene Walter (35:36):
Maybe!
Leah Stewart (35:37):
They really attained what they set out to attain. But we've all had those moments where you tell someone you're a writer and they say, oh, have I heard of you? You know, those kinds of moments. Or like you go to give a reading and two people are there. So there can be a lot of this feeling of sort of like humiliation and for actors it's auditioning, it's the way they get talked about in the press. There's this way in which if you're going to put your art into the world, no matter what kind it is, you're also exposing yourself to being wounded in a lot of ways. And that can be hard. It can feel like there's a gap between what you want to achieve and how you're perceived or who you think you are, what you think your art is doing and how it's perceived. And we all struggle with those things.
Leah Stewart (36:14):
So I connected to those things emotionally in my characters, but I was so grateful by the end of that book and the end of the research to be somebody who can go to my work just for the pleasure. It gives me any time I want because there's such pain for them in really wanting to exercise this ability, their training, their love of the art and not being able to get an opportunity to do it. You can't just stand around in your room by yourself being an actor, you need people to respond to. So it actually helped me remember what's at the core of why anyone is an artist is that joy that they get in creation.
Laura Maylene Walter (36:58):
Yeah, that's really well said. And you know, being a writer is often so hard and full of a lot of indignities that I will take any bit of positivity that we get to work on or writing and we have that under our control. I think that's great. I don't want us to run out of time, so I just have a few final quick questions. So you have published six novels. What have you learned after publishing six novels, both about your own process and maybe about the publishing industry? Or has your process changed or your outlook on the publishing industry changed over that time? And if so, how?
Leah Stewart (37:30):
Yes, both. I think where the publishing industry is right now is that it's very, very difficult to sell a book to a major press if it doesn't have a clear, strong story. I think it's very difficult to sell the kind of book that is more about beautiful language and the exploration of interesting themes. I think it's really hard right now without a strong story. So I also think that for me, I have found it frustrating in writing earlier books when I went into it not really having a strong story or quite knowing what the story was, the process always took a great deal longer. And so these days, one way my process has changed and one thing I really try to teach to my novel workshop graduate students is to figure out what the primary question of your novel is as early as you can and make sure it is posed on page one.
Leah Stewart (38:21):
In the beginning of my writing career, I would just start the way you start a short story and you kind of hope you can make something work for 10 or 15 pages. And I learned over the course of writing my first two novels that that made the whole process take a great deal longer because you can't really operate that way just kind of feeling your way or at least I can't with a three to 500 page text, like you can a 10 to 15 page one. So these days I don't start until I have a really good sense of what the book's about and what this story is.
Laura Maylene Walter (38:50):
That is advice I'm going to take because the latest novel I've been working on, I was feeling my way in that manner and I am now rewriting the entire thing, now that I finally know what the story is right? And the central question. So I will hope, fingers crossed, I can remember this advice and not make the same mistake next time. Is there anything you would like to share about what you're working on right now? I know I got to hear a snippet last summer at your reading, but what would you like to share about your current project?
Leah Stewart (39:19):
It's a book about archeologists who study the ancient Maya, which I was inspired to write because of a friend who does exactly that. And I was able to go to Belize and spend nine days in an archeological camp and visit the site. And I've interviewed a lot of archeologists and read a great deal about this subject and I structured it as a love story because that seemed to me. So I knew I had, this is a good example, I knew I had that subject matter, but I didn't really know what plot I would use to explore it. I think of basically your three options as quest, mystery, and love. And I, for various reasons, didn't want to do the first two. And so I landed on the love story as a way of writing about this because when you're an archeologist in this way, you have what's called field seasons and you go into the field for two to four weeks, sometimes longer, every summer or every couple of summers on the same project with the same team.
Leah Stewart (40:14):
But you might not see those people otherwise in your daily life. And so the love story seemed like a way of exploring that to me because these people only see each other there.
Laura Maylene Walter (40:25):
I love that.
Leah Stewart (40:26):
She's American and he's French, which I did so that there would be a strong geographic obstacle to take the relationship outside of the experience of the field seasons. So it becomes about like what is real life? Like is this experience that I have that is highly particular and intense and contained real life or is, is it sort of outside of real life and can I bring something from that experience into the quotidian?
Laura Maylene Walter (40:53):
I can't wait until it's out in the world. I will definitely be grabbing it immediately. I know we're almost out of time, so again, I mentioned that this episode will likely air when the Sewanee Writers' Conference is just gearing up. So right now though, we're a few months out from the conference, so I'm curious for you, what's one thing you're most looking forward to when you return to Sewanee?
Leah Stewart (41:18):
I'm really looking forward to meeting some of the new people who are coming in, both the participants, but also I've invited some different faculty and agents and editors and theater folks here who haven't been before. So I always think it's fun to get to know those people.
Laura Maylene Walter (41:32):
Let me know how it goes, I guess. And I hope you have a beautiful conference, as I'm sure you will, and all the writers who are going or who are there right now, you are lucky. So, enjoy it! Not tell us at all, not tell us at all <laugh>. All right, Leah Stewart, thank you so much. This has been a delight. Thank you for sharing all this information with us. It's so helpful, I think for writers. Thanks so much.
Leah Stewart (41:54):
Thank you.
Laura Maylene Walter (42:05):
Page Count is presented by the Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate and leave a review for Page Count wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more online or find a transcript of this episode at ohiocenterforthebook.org. Follow us on Instagram @ohiocenterforthebook or find us on Facebook. If you'd like to get in touch, email ohiocenterforthebook@cpl.org and put "podcast" in the subject line. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back in two weeks for another chapter of Page Count.
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