So, being from Amarillo, snow was just snow until I read Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising. Afterward, snow was different, and so was everything else. Now, when I looked out at a white world, I sensed intense magic. And, when a frayed net of blackbirds dropped down into an elm, I glimpsed Will Stanton’s rooks, and I remembered, as in The Dark is Rising, that in every moment we are capable of great good and great evil. I remembered that there is a battle going on, and our actions matter.

And, so, it was with a flushed and reckless joy that I awaited the day that Susan Cooper was going to tell us about her new book Ghost Hawk at Inprint’s Cool Brains! reading. The weather that Sunday was gray and ominous, as is the weather in Susan Cooper’s books. As we waited for her to come to the podium, our anticipation of a cold front magnified the anticipation in the auditorium.

Susan Cooper is white-haired and elegant. She speaks in a measured voice, her British accent crisp as snow. It seems no accident that she speaks slowly, for a pace unaffected by time is what one might expect from an author whose characters break free of time (in The Dark is Rising, Will Stanton steps into a previous century as easily as one steps into the next room, and in Ghost Hawk, **spoiler alert** Little Hawk views two-thirds of the story’s events from a place beyond time.)

Susan Cooper described the genesis of Ghost Hawk—several years ago, she moved to an island in Massachusetts to be near her children and grandchildren, and the beauty of the salt marsh surrounding her new home led her to imagine the Native Americans who once lived there. She said she writes of “the battle between the light and the dark,” a battle she knew with terrifying intimacy as a little girl huddled with her family in a bomb shelter as people died above.

Susan Cooper described the genesis of Ghost Hawk—several years ago, she moved to an island in Massachusetts to be near her children and grandchildren, and the beauty of the salt marsh surrounding her new home led her to imagine the Native Americans who once lived there.

American history is full of good and evil, and we prefer to look away from the latter. Cooper pointed out that everyone celebrates Thanksgiving to honor the famous first feast shared by the settlers and the Native Americans, but no one remembers that, “within sixty years of the friendly dinner, the settlers and Indians were all murdering each other.” In a battle called King Phillip’s War, more than six hundred settlers and three thousand Native Americans were killed. “It changed things forever,” she informed us, “and, we don’t consider that.” In Ghost Hawk, Cooper has revived a painful story that we must remember—and, grieve and learn from.

When Susan Cooper was, sadly, finished sharing about her book and her writing process, I got my copy signed and headed outside. The air was chillier, the clouds grayer, than before she spoke, and I thought of Will Stanton, of how all Will wanted for his eleventh birthday was snow.

I wanted it to snow, too. I knew it wouldn’t, not in Houston.

But, I didn’t need it to. The excitement of snow has spread to many other aspects of my life now that I’m an adult, and I know well the painful yet inspiring battle between light and dark. From the streets of Afghanistan to the streets of Houston to the streets of my own heart, the battle rages on. And, I knew that I had just left a place where the light was winning.

The post Susan Cooper and the Battle between the Light and the Dark first appeared on An Open Book - The Inprint Blog.

Palacio spoke in a friendly, comforting voice, the voice she might use with her two sons. She began with a slide presentation, and one of the first photos she shared showed the ice cream shop where she and her boys encountered the girl who inspired her character August Pullman, or “Auggie.” Palacio began Wonder the same day–on Post-Its. She showed us the first two, and they sounded like Wonder‘s first page.

R.J. Palacio shared many intriguing facts about Wonder. For instance:

— She named Wonder after the song “Wonder” by Natalie Merchant.

— Wonder took Palacio a year-and-a-half to write. She worked between 12 and 3 a.m., because “this was the only time it was quiet.”

— The name “Jack Will” was inspired by a memory of a mother coming to pick up her sons, friends of her boys, and crying out, “Jack, Will! It’s time to go!”

— Palacio kept “precepts” as a girl and used them in the novel. She based Auggie’s English teacher on her favorite high school teacher.

— She identifies most strongly with the character Charlotte, who is always “nice,” but never truly kind, as Summer is. R.J. Palacio wants to be–and, wants us to be, like Summer and to go out of our way to be brave and kind.

— Palacio’s publisher started a website called choosekind.tumblr.com that inspires kids to choose kindness.

There were more kids than adults in the audience, and kids were jumping up and down during the Q&A. A young boy in a Boy Scout uniform asked the last question: “I have problems with my ears,” he said. “Have you ever known anyone who has problems with his ears?”

“Great question,” Palacio said–and, indeed, the boy had asked everyone’s question: “How did you know what it’s like to be us?” For there is an Auggie Pullman, a good person who’s unappreciated and even ridiculed for his uniqueness, in all of us.

Palacio has never known anyone with ear problems, but, she explained, “writing is more about extrapolation than it is about direct experience.” For example, she often has parents of special-needs children assume she has a special-needs child, even though she doesn’t. “I don’t know what it’s like to have a child who’s had twenty-seven surgeries,” she said, “but I do know what it’s like to be the mom of a child who’s sick with the flu, when you stay up all night keeping vigil by the bed.”

So, how did R.J. Palacio write this novel that makes us feel understood–and, helps us better understand others?

So, how did R.J. Palacio write this novel that makes us feel understood–and, helps us better understand others?

With every breath, she described how she accomplished this, but she never answered the question, because there is no answer, just as there are no answers to the questions of how Auggie stays good despite what he suffers and how his bullying classmates finally arrive at kindness. There are no answers for wonders like these, there is just wonder.

The post The Wonder of Wonder first appeared on An Open Book - The Inprint Blog.

May 9, 2013, was Inprint’s official 30th birthday! Executive Director Rich Levy shares his thoughts about what Inprint is most proud of, what excites Inprint as it turns 30, and where the organization wants to go.

Thirty years: we are in a state of astonishment. To be honest, when I took this job 18 years ago, it was difficult to believe that the making and consumption of literature were compelling facts on the Houston cultural landscape—even with a great Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston (UH CWP). And we have done what we can to keep that program strong and to help attract some of the nation’s best emerging writers to Houston: since 1983, our fellowships and prizes to UH CWP grad students have exceeded $2.5 million and supported more than 500 of the nation’s top emerging writers.

That is a meaningful legacy for the city. These writers lead our workshops, and teach in schools and colleges and community centers throughout the region, sharing their work and skills everywhere, on stage and in bookstores and bars and coffee shops. There’s no part of the city or surrounding areas that hasn’t been touched by these writers and their work in the community.

Another thing that excites us is that, through the Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series (in August beginning its 33^rd season—it was launched two years before we came into the world by the UH CWP), Houstonians fill downtown theatres for an evening with a literary writer or two. This past season, four of the seven readings were sold out before the night of the event, and we have high hopes for the 2013-14 Series, which we’ll be “rolling out” later this month. The Inprint Brown Reading Series has a season with a real presence here, like the opera or theatre companies or the symphony. On May 6, we presented James Salter at The Menil Collection in celebration of our 30th, as a special event of the reading series. It was a festive night, complete with a great writer, champagne and cupcakes, and it was also great fun to celebrate our presence on The Menil campus, where we’ve been since 1991. 

Our writers’ workshops fill up in minutes. (I wish we could offer more of them, but we are constrained by location and an obsession with quality.) Children queue up on a Sunday afternoon for an hour or two to meet a favorite author at our Cool Brains! readings. Different community groups—senior citizens at various community centers, K-12 teachers from throughout the region, children at Project Row Houses, staff members from across The Methodist Hospital—fill workshops to write, to challenge themselves, to say something meaningful, fun, and/or true.

We are incredibly grateful to our donors who enable us to do all this at such a low cost to the public. The Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series tickets are $5 (unchanged since 1980) at the city’s leading arts venues; Cool Brains! readings are free; our writing workshops for the general public cost less than $12 per hour of instruction, while our outreach workshops are all underwritten and free or nearly free. People from all parts of the city, all walks of life, participate in our programming. As we enter the next decade we want to offer these diverse programs in as accessible a manner as possible.

I don’t think the brave visionary souls who launched Inprint ever imagined that the organization would grow as it has and would occupy as meaningful a cultural space in the city as it does.

I don’t think the brave visionary souls who launched Inprint ever imagined that the organization would grow as it has and would occupy as meaningful a cultural space in the city as it does. To our founders, our leaders, our supporters, and most of all to the writers and readers, we offer our thanks for 30 years of literary adventures.

Reading and writing are fundamentally quiet, private acts, and I am delighted that Houstonians want to share their love of the written word, this quietest of art forms, in theatres, workshops, schools, and other surprising venues. We love to join forces with other organizations, kindred spirits, to share this conjuring of something out of nothing—words, sentences, carefully modulated linguistic structures that shake us from head to toe, move us, give us something unforgettable and unique. It’s a gift, and we’re grateful that Houston supports the written word like few cities in the country.

The post On turning 30 first appeared on An Open Book - The Inprint Blog.