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A dreamy week in central Ohio

When overwhelmed with emotion, it can be easy to reach for there are no words. I certainly do it often enough, especially in the moment itself, doubly so if I can fall back on a facial expression, a gesture like a sweeping hand—how can one encompass all this? But as a writer, I feel some obligation to locate some words for particular occasions, even if I am a fiction writer whose primary motivation is avoiding writing about myself directly, most of the time (…this newsletter notwithstanding). The week I had at the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop (KRWW) is one of those occasions that obligates me to try to find some words.

The KRWW is, unlike the other workshops I’ve attended, a generative workshop. The premise is remarkably freeing; rather than turn up to your workshop (a group of strangers, generally) to discuss work with which you have a long-standing relationship (and an attendant investment of ego), you share work written the afternoon before workshop (or even perhaps written in that day’s workshop meeting). Because everything is quite literally new, it’s so much easier to treat the work as nothing more than a draft, which does wonders for the atmosphere of a workshop (especially, again, among the newly acquainted). But, of course, so much of the success of a workshop is dependent on the the workshop leader(s), who establish the tone and methodology and then keep care of that space.

Our workshop faculty Nick White and fellow Cleyvis Natera—both massively talented writers—wrought some magic in that room. They turned a group of strangers into what felt like family in one careening blink of a week, and workshop proceeded with humor, humanity, rigor, and, above all, a sense of a whole room rooting for the work in question and for the writer, as a person moving forward in their creative lives. They were generous with their time and their advice in a way I still can’t quite believe; it seemed like the kind of week that could happen to someone else, not me.

One of our workshop colleagues asked a really wonderful question as we lingered over the final dinner, not wanting things to end. It was the kind of question that cuts right to the heart, which is, I think, why no one answered—out loud.

“What are you proudest of achieving this week?”

I have been thinking about this question since the moment it was asked, and I had the answer in my mouth, all at once, but it’s the kind of question that’s so difficult to answer out loud because it requires at least two things I (and many other people) struggle with at a cellular level: recognizing something as an achievement, which implies a kind of end-point or resting place, rather than another rung or stair, which counts only insofar as it propels one onward, and daring to be proud of something, which requires recognizing something as being worth achieving.

But here’s my answer: I am proudest of letting myself believe that someone else—someone whose enthusiasm my cynical side can’t explain away with past friendship, affiliations, or anything else—might really believe in my work, so the least I can do is believe, too.

What are you proudest of achieving this week?

Rosse Hall, Kenyon College

What I’m making: It being peach season, the only reasonable thing to do is bake a pie. I use Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio for my pie crust recipe. It’s a very useful book that offers up ratios for a lot of culinary basics (pie crust, pasta dough, bread, custards, stocks, sauces, etc.), rather than the “best” recipe for any of those things. Once you have a fundamental understanding of how flour, fat, and liquid, for example, come together in different proportions to make a crust vs. a crepe, you can adjust and customize those things to your liking.

What I’m reading: This week, this is such a hard, hard question because I am trying to read everything at once—everything, in this case, that I haven’t already read by the magnificent folks at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. So let me get effusive about the May/June issue of the Kenyon Review, specifically the “Nature’s Nature” poetry folio and Melissa Seley’s essay “Gladioli.” Seley’s essay is not officially part of the folio—being not a poem and focusing on gardens and the development of the gladiolus—but I read them together and felt the richer for doing so: a transition from the cultivated to elsewhere, mysteries of bodies and grief and translation (of a plant native to one place shifted to another and changed, purposefully, and then poems, like Paisley Rekdal’s “Home-Gazing,” speaking with/to/from Hesiod. It’s such a lovely issue, like all of the issues of KR.

What I’m writing: My latest for the Ploughshares blog is “The Gap Between Knowing and Understanding in On Bullfighting.” On Bullfighting, by A. L. Kennedy, is one of those books I keep coming back to, despite having no real attraction to bullfighting. What I love, however, is Kennedy’s writing. And while there is no reading around the bullfighting here—in all of its vivid and uncomfortable and often devastating detail—this is also a book about art and crisis and persevering. If you think this sounds interesting but you just can’t read a book about bullfighting, she’s got a whole host of books from which to choose! Everything You Need is my favorite of the novels, and a collection of essays, On Writing, is, of course, right to the point.