Interview with Mary Ann Taylor-Hall and Judith Slater’s Advanced Creative Writing in Fiction Class at University of Nebraska-Lincoln

(15:03) [Nickole] Hello! Welcome to the SIE Chatroom! Today, Judith Slater’s Advanced Fiction Writing Class is meeting with the author Mary Ann Taylor-Hall.
(15:05) [Mary] Nickole--I’m here, just to ease your mind--I hope they won’t disconnect me before the chat begins. Can we change my name to Mary Ann ?
(15:06) [Nickole] Yes, but in order to change your name you would need to start over, empty your cache, and type MaryAnn with no space in between. (The cache can be emptied, by the way, in your preferences file.)
(15:07) [judith] Hi, Mary Ann and Nickole,
(15:07) [judith] Hi, Mary Ann and Nickole, we have a little emergency -- are trying to get organized and find some free computers. Please be patient -- we’ll be there as soon as we can!
(15:08) [Nickole] Hi, Judith! So do you have everyone there together? Or have you sent them off?
(15:10) [Mary] No thanks--I’m staying right here. Hi, Judith--I’m very glad to be with you,--take your time. I understand all about comp;uter emergencies. While I’m waiting I’ll just say that I have been having a wonderful time reading your book
(15:15) [Josh P.] Hello, Mary Ann. We’re trickling in down here now.
(15:15) [Jennifer] Hello
(15:16) [Nickole] Hello, everyone! Glad to see you made it! Judith, who would you like to start with the first question?
(15:17) [Jennifer] Mary Ann, how do you write from so many different perspectives?
(15:19) * Mike D. is happy :)
(15:19) [Josh P.] Technical Note: We’re still having some Computer difficulties, so we’ll be a minute or two before we’re all ready
(15:19) [Sean] Hello Mary Ann. Question: As your stories are so women-focused, we are curious as to whether or not you’ve ever written stories with a male (main) protagonist, and if so was it more challenging?
(15:20) [Mary] I think that if you write in the first person, or the very limited third person, as I tend to do, you have to be a sort of actress--a method actress, in fact, and get really close into the eyes of the person who’s telling the story--that’s the joy for me
(15:20) [Mattttt] Hi all
(15:21) [Josh P.] Hi, Mary Ann -- sorry for our difficulties. I think we’re set now. I liked what you said about being an \"actress.\" It sounds related to a question I had about voice. All the voices in your stories are very different. Could you talk about the issue
(15:21) [Mary] I’m writing a novel now that is written partly from a man’s point of view--once you’re in it, it feels about the same as using a woman’s mind, but sometimes the act of entering is daunting.
(15:22) [Nickole] Guys, I know this sounds obvious, but we have to make sure to ask only one question at a time.
(15:22) [Mattttt] This may be a bit point-blank... I notice that the characters in \"How she knows\" are, for the most part, in somewhat troubled relationships. I was wondering what your ‘source’ was for that. Thanks :-)
(15:23) [Nickole] She’s tending to Josh’s question now, hold on. . . these are good but difficult things you are asking. . .
(15:24) [Mary] Josh--The voices in the first two stories rather took me over. It was a very odd experience--Rosa, In \"Banana Boats\" just took up residence in my head. I have some idea where her voice came from, but none whatsoever where Undella’s came from--except that I listen to way people in Kentucky express themselves and sometimes it really tickles me.
(15:24) [Sean] In Banana Boats, you move rapidly through space and time. Is this intentional in the sense that it was done to achieve a particular effect, or is it simply instincual, i.e., when you have something to say about your character’s past you say, it, when you
(15:26) [Mary] Matt--Oh Lord--Isn’t everybody in troubled waters? I have the feeling about Undella that she’ll learn to navigate them. The source is just living, I guess. (I’m sorry I’m slow--I’m working on a brandnew computer
(15:26) [Nickole] To keep this conversational, feel free to make comments about Mary’s answers. . .
(15:27) [Josh P.] Thanks Mary Ann. . .I also see what you’re saying with your response to Sean’s question. I’m writing for the class now a story where I need to write from a female perspective, and just entering the mindset is a challenge.
(15:27) [Jason] No troubled waters here. :)
(15:27) [Mary] I think that the movement in Banana Boats is dictated by the play of this elderly woman’s memory over her whole life--she’s in a crucial moment, and I think memory is often elided and compressed in these times
(15:27) [Nickole] Sean, I believe Mary Ann is answering you next.
(15:28) [Jennifer] That is true about living being inspiration..even if we don’t have troubled waters it is easy to see it many other places then just directly in our own lives. Watching other people etc.
(15:28) [Mattttt] Mary, sorry to barge in so soon with another question but i was really intrigued with Undella’s voice as well as the voice of the narrator. I thought that you were trying to create a somewhat surreal ‘universe’. It really reminded me of a fairy tale. I gu
(15:30) [Judith] I too wanted to ask about the voice in Yo-Yo’s, and the fairy tale quality Matt mentioned. Where did you come up with that voice -- it’s wonderful.
(15:30) [Mary] Jennifer--I think That for a long time I’ve been interested, generallly inthe way that women, in particular, find a way of living their lives--they seem sometimes to have to invent a way for themselves
(15:30) [Mattttt] Very wonderful :-)
(15:32) [Josh P.] What makes people interesting is how they deal with their lives. We all have very similar circumstances, in the large scheme of things, but we all deal with things differently.
(15:32) [Josh P.] And those differences is what gives us identity.
(15:32) [Mary] Judith and Matt--Thank tyou for seeing that the diction in the Yo Yos story is not exactly realistic--I think I may in fact have been shoved into this story by just playing around with language--the appropriation of cliches, for instance, to slightly askew purposes, And then the language invented the characters and the characters had to do something
(15:33) [Jason] Im curious- your stories seem to have a trend of strong and independent female characters. Do you consider yourself a feminist writer?
(15:34) [Mattttt] I was also curious about yo-yo’s. They seem to have a ‘trickster’ quality about them themselves. They go one way, then just before they fly off, they turn about... very tricky themselves.
(15:35) [Josh P.] I think we need to sit back and wait for a moment -- give Mary Ann a chance to answer everybody’s questions.
(15:35) [Sean] Excuse my northern-midwesterness, but, what’s a pith helmet?
(15:35) [Mary] Josh--I’m fascinated by what happens to people when they are in moments of choice--that’s why fiction is practically holy to me--it distills those moments, and we can see the truth about what being human means, in the way that crisis resolves itself in the circumstances of the story we’ve made and the ending we’re groping toward
(15:36) [Jennifer] What is your intended message in Banana boat? Are we supposed to be on Rosa’;s side? Because, actually my heart goes out to Gilbert- From Sylvie
(15:37) [Mary] Jason--Yes,
(15:37) [Judith] Re your answer to Josh -- that’s really what fiction is all about, isn’t it? Those moments of choice in life -- the moment where things change.
(15:38) [Sean] There is a repeated theme of travel or hope or memory of travel to get to or away from something. Do you treat ‘travel’ as a character as you’re writing?
(15:38) [Jennifer] I think so too, its either about what the choice does to the characters life or how the character makes that choice
(15:39) [Nickole] Everyone, please keep in mind that Mary Ann is giving incredibly thoughtful answers and needs time to compose them. Please refrain from asking her more than one question at a time. . . right now she has three. . .
(15:39) [Mary] Sorry--this computer just kind of hiccupped and stopped for a minute, Oh Matt--thanks for seeing that about the yo yos. I think of them as a holder of magic, of knowledge, of expertise, and fun--they do go out as into the worldand then you bring them back. I’m crazy about them, myself
(15:42) * Jennifer is happy :)
(15:42) [Mary] Sylvie--I don’t know whose side you’re supposed to be on--the story is Rosa’s, in that she is the one who experiences the channge. But I think both of them are -- I don’t know. I like them both. Or anyway, they’re both near to my heart. m b
(15:42) * Davin is happy :)
(15:43) [Mary] sean--I think that people often think of Cutting Out as Changing. That’s the old American myth , isnt it--go further west
(15:45) [Jason] But is traveling away from problems necessarily a symptom of strength?
(15:45) [Davin] I think that’s why she called it the old American myth...
(15:47) [Josh P.] Leaving your problmes behind isn’t so much the symbol of the Western Myth as getting a new beginning. It takes a lot of strength to start from nothing.
(15:47) [Josh P.] That’s why we’re usually only born once.
(15:47) [Mary] Jason--Absolutely not--it’s often an illusion. But in several of these stories, well, now that I think of it, all of them, the going does manifestly offer a change. The only person in the collection who’s not leaving is Jana--in Advanced Beginners--she’s on the other side of the cutting out. She’s landed. And she’s staying.
(15:47) [Jason] And you think the characters are starting from nothing?
(15:47) [Jennifer] But you can’t always just leave them, some you have to deal with
(15:47) [Davin] Not if you’re a hindu...
(15:49) [Josh P.] Make that \"Once in a lifetime.\"
(15:49) [Judith] More about travel....We were talking in class about the theme of travel in \"The World’s Room. Traveling to the old world to gain a sense of history -- sort of the opposite of heading west -- the American myth.
(15:49) [Mary] Jason--I’m sorry--I don’t understand--Which characters.? I don’tr see any of them as starting from nothing.
(15:50) [Mattttt] One thing that I like about Banana Boat... it isn’t often that you find a story in which the more optimistic ending would have been the death of the heroine’s husband. The end.
(15:51) [Jason] I agree Mary, my question was directed at Josh. : )
(15:51) [Jennifer] What really bothered me, though, in Banana.. was the fact that two people can leave 50 years of their life together and so thoroughly, absolutely, utterly mess everything up and make each other miserable. Doesn’t that depress you too? Sylvie
(15:52) [Josh P.] Not so much starting from nothing as starting over. Perhaps I worded that poorly. By \"starting from nothing\" I mean to say that they leave their lives as well as their problems.
(15:53) [Mary] Judith--Yes. I was raised in Florida, as the Virginia was. There’s not much of a sense of history there. So I felt impelled to write about my own response to the continuity of human history that Europe has. What we did here was to obliterate what came before. I wish it had been otherwise.
(15:53) [Jennifer] When we discussed World Room in class, we were wondering how why Ginny had to live Roger at the end? SHe obviously would have enjoyed that life, what was pushing her away?
(15:53) [Josh P.] I was commenting on the image of the Western Myth in general more than the application to these stories.
(15:56) [Mary] Sylvie--I wish I could answer that objection in some helpful way. But I think people DO soetimes thoroughly and absolutely mess everything up. Although I doubt either Gilbert or Rosa would agree that that’s what they’d done. But it is what they’ve done, from where I stand. They’ve both lived in illusion, and in lies.
(15:57) [Josh P.] Nickole, how many Questions do we have in queue right now?
(15:57) [Mary] Jennifer--I’d be interested in the answers you came up with in class as to why Ginny left instead of staying.
(15:59) [Josh P.] Never mind -- I guess we can open things back up now. . .
(15:59) [Josh P.] Mike, you’ve been pretty quiet. What do you want to know?
(15:59) [Judith] I’m not sure we really came to any consensus about the ending of \"The World’s Room\" -- my sense was that Ginny somehow didn’t feel she had a right to stay -- that she was a kind of intruder. But I don’t really understand why she made the decision to go b
(15:59) [Nickole] Looks like we’re all caught up, but we only have about 15 minutes or so of chattime left. . . are there any last comments you would like to make? Or questions about her answers?
(15:59) [Mattttt] I’m not Jennifer (well, my mom said that I would have been... anyway) but I always give credence to a person’s \"gut feeling\". People do what they do because they want to, even if they don’t know that they want it. (?)
(16:00) [Judith] I garbled the end of my question -- which was to wonder why Ginny made the decision to go back to America....
(16:01) [Mary] Sylvie, I’d like to continue my answer to your question in this hiatus--I think my answer is an oversimplification. It isn’t all one way between Gilbert and Rosa, as it never is. The fact of disappointment and regret isn’t all there is to say about their marriage.
(16:02) [Josh P.] Mary Ann, earlier you said that you consider yourself a feminist writer. What qualities do you think define a feminist writer?
(16:03) [Michael] My impression was that Ginny didn’t feel like she belonged there, as if she was in a mist. Perhaps America felt more solid and sure to her.
(16:03) [Jennifer] I think that Roger and Ginny didn’t think that they had a right to be together for some reason...if you’re from different places and are different people then it’s hard to work it out. But would have it been worth it, at least trying.
(16:03) [Sean] Aside: My dad was actually the 1939 Duncan YO-YO world champion. Thought you might like to know. Jody
(16:06) [Mary] Judith--I don’t think there was any way that Ginny could have stayed there--for one thing, Roger Simpson was married, and not going to leave, probably. But --perhaps because of her attraction to him--, I think she understands that she belongs in America. SheDoesn’t want to be an expatriot.s ige
(16:07) [Jennifer] I guess I have difficulty with this story because I am a born optimist and consider that there are enough tragedies to overcome or at least deal with in real life without opening the window of fiction on a moonless, starless night. In fiction, we can be
(16:08) [Jennifer] lst comment was from Sylvie
(16:08) [Jennifer] we were not sure Roger was married.
(16:09) [Mary] Josh--I think a feminist writer is a person who has sympathy with women’s attempts to become their fullest expression of themselves. But I’m interested in that process in everybody. I just know more about what women’s struggles entail
(16:10) [Judith] I suppose we should be starting to wrap things up. I wanted to say how much we all enjoyed your book, Mary Ann. As you can see, it generated much discussion. And the writing is absolutely lovely.
(16:10) [Josh P.] Do you think it’s possible for a male to be a feminist? I know some people who insist that it’s not.
(16:10) [Mattttt] Thank you =)
(16:11) [Michael] Thank you for the chat time. I enjoyed your stories. :)
(16:11) [Mary] Jennifer--I’m not sure myself--but whatever he is, he’s settled there. Of course, Ginny could settle there, too--but in that society she would always be the American. Maybe that would be allright with some people, but she’s seen too much, been moved too deeply, to accept that role
(16:12) [Mary] Josh--of course it’s possible. Some of my best feminists are men.
(16:13) [Nickole] Thank you all for your time & participation here! I will send you a copy of this chat soon. . .
(16:13) [Jennifer] Thanks
(16:13) * Mike D. is sad :(
(16:13) [Nickole] Any last comments for Mary Ann?
(16:14) [Jason] Thanks for your time Mary Ann. :)\\
(16:14) [Josh P.] Thank you, Mary Ann. I thouroughly enjoyed a bit of philosophical discussion mixed in here.
(16:14) [Judith] Thanks, Nickole. And thanks again, Mary Ann. We really appreciated your time! We may have some followup questions, so I might e-mail you if that’s okay. Good-bye
(16:14) [Mary] Gooye, Nebraska--Thanks for reading my book with such imagination and interest
(16:14) [Jennifer] Goodbye Mary Ann
(16:14) [Mike D.] bye bye, thanks for all the wonderful insight
(16:15) [Mary] I meant goodbye, not gooye
(16:15) [Josh P.] Good bye, Mary