15 questions

 

15 questions posed by Sean Murphy, Executive Director of 1455/ a retreat from COVID-19

1.  The first book that made you want to be a writer?

An anthology entitled THIS GENERATION.

2.   Your most profound artistic influence is?

Reading Richard Wright and conversations with noteworthy makers of the Black Arts Movement.

3   Album or movie you recommend without reservation?

Casablanca

4.  Best first (or last) line of any book ever?

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

5. Most underrated author?

Kalamu ya Salaam

6.  Why have you not read MOBY DICK?

I have read MOBY DICK.

7.  Is there a single theme or issue your work addresses?

Implacable anger.

8. What 's your writing routine?

Writing when the spirit moves me to do so.

9. Do you believe in writer's block?

No.  I believe in writer's imperfection.

10.  Talk about the most significant setback  (artistic or otherwise) in your life?

The impossibility of reading materials at  the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Yale University) during the COVID-19 pandemic has hampered my scholarly production.

11.  How have you developed your career?

Through the fortunate accident of teaching at HBCUs for 42 years.  I wrote as I tried to be a good teacher and the results have been most rewarding.

12.  Define or explain what literary success means to you.

Being able to use language to help people means far more to me than being anointed with literary success.  In fact, I deem literary success, in some instances, to be an assassin.

13.  What do you wish you had known, as an artist, 10 or 20 years ago?

What I need to know as an artist is a process of evolving not a process of wishing.

14.  Have you ever visited a writer' s  retreat?

Never.  I have done what I might have done at such a retreat at home.

15. One-minute exhortation for beginning writer looking for advice.

Stop talking.  Write.

 

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            September 24, 2020

 

 

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