[upbeat jazz music] - Good afternoon, my name is Ed Southern.

I'm the executive director of the North Carolina Writers Network, a statewide nonprofit that supports, promotes, educates and connects writers of all kinds all throughout the state and beyond.

And we are a proud sponsor of Bookmarks' 15th annual Festival of Books and Authors today.

Our three panelists today bring invaluable perspectives on North Carolina literature and its evolution over the 15 years since the first Bookmarks festival.

In their roles as writers, teachers and editors, they have helped expand, nurture and celebrate our state's writing and writers shaping our literary landscape and the course of its many highways and byways.

So we're looking at the last 15 years of the literary landscape in North Carolina.

Let's imagine that a bouncing baby book entered our little corner of the world back in 2004.

What would that book and it's proud author parent have encountered then that they wouldn't encounter now or flipping that around, what would they encounter now that they wouldn't have then?

Margaret, would you wanna take that first?

- I do.

[chuckling] I do want to.

I was thinking about this as social media, that in 2004 they would not have been expected to immediately set up a Facebook page for their book, a Twitter account for their book and do that kind of self promoting that the publisher used to take care of, a lot more of that, than that.

And they might correct me as these writers but now writers, I think, are more expected to deal with their own promotion than 15 years ago.

- Yeah, it's such a pain.

[panel laughing] It really is.

They feel like that if you have a Facebook page or a Twitter account, that that's somehow going to compensate for them not doing anything.

And it really doesn't, it really doesn't.

But when an author publishes a book, or in the couple of months prior to it, you'll see his presence on his Facebook page get bigger, higher and higher and higher.

And then for the six weeks after it's published, he'll be posting, you know, "I was at Bookmarks," and all this, and then it just dies.

It goes away.

- I look at the question backwards and forwards.

The Kindle came out in 2007.

There had been attempts at eBooks prior to that, but Kindle really changed the game and that really put New York on its hind parts.

I mean, if you talk to an editor in 2008, you will be talking to one of the most anxious professionals in America.

They were all worried that eBooks were gonna eat up publishing.

That didn't happen.

It became a part of life and reading, but it sort of diminished over the years and most people have gone back to paper.

And I agree with you both.

Social media has become this huge thing, but if you're good at social media, if you're good on Twitter and Facebook and Twitch, and all of that other stuff, it don't mean you can write.

- What's Twitch?

[all laughing] - What's Twitch?

- What's Twitch?

I have no idea.

I'm not good at it, I guess.

- I guess not.

- I guess not.

[audience laughing] - You amuse people.

[all laughing] - Or perhaps Twitch does, [indistinct] You, as you take a sip of coffee, I wanna follow up with you on that because you worked as an editor in New York - I did.

- for a number of years.

- So I knew a lot of these anxious people.

- Yeah, but there was this sort of literary culture that had evolved over the course of the 20th century that was, you know, even though life went on, the publishing industry went on, it was very disrupted around the turn of the millennium into the first decade.

Can you describe, you know, y'all all teach and you're sending new writers, young writers, out into this world.

What sort of a literary world are they entering now as compared to the sort of world that's gone that many people still think of as being the model for how the publishing world works?

- Well, I remember I was at a seminar in the 90s with one of our current colleagues, Paul Jones, who was one of the people who helped create what became the internet.

And he was talking with a bunch of cultural avatars and I remember one editor in particular was waning sad about the loss of the paper book.

And he stood up and he said... Paul Jones, da-da-da-da-da, yeah.

[chuckling] What you're describing is a romantic fetish.

The words are still the words.

Most of our students use texts digitally.

So paper is not lost, but the digital medium hasn't destroyed analog.

- Yeah, not at all.

- How does that affect, if at all, the type of books that come out now?

And I don't just mean in terms of the format in which they are consumed, I mean the content inside.

Does that have an effect?

- Well, I was thinking about this question, the different times a book could be born, and 2004 is just a couple of years away from when my second book came out in 2002.

And I thought, "I'm not sure that that book would be published today," or it would have a much harder time of it, essentially because it's about a middle-aged, semi-misogynistic white guy going through his, the travails of his day-to-day life and then sort of dying.

And nobody, if you pitch that book today, it's just not going to fly.

There would, nobody... People are not as interested in middle-aged white guys.

- Do you think in some ways in 2019, it's easier to find a publisher but harder to find an audience?

Would that be a fair statement versus 2004?

- I don't know I'd say that it's easier to find a publisher.

I've watched so many people.

Because, you know, now you need to find an agent first and go through that, usually.

And I've watched so many fine writers whose novels are going on 10 years old and they're still trying to place them.

No, you know, again, that's if they want a commercial... And sometimes they can find a smaller, but now some of the smaller presses, the independent book presses have on their website, "Agents only."

But these two already have agents so they may not be as... You have a lot of students who have gone through that.

- I'll have to check my email, but last I did, I didn't have an agent.

But I disagree actually with that, because when I was starting out and I was trying to get my books published and they weren't getting published, we sent my agent at the time and I sent one of my books to 35 different actual publishers.

Actual?

- Actual.

But this is before there was anything online.

So it wasn't somebody's press that they started in the basement where you could post your book online or get an ebook.

These were actual print publishers from Random House to Graywolf to, you know, smaller ones.

And today, if we went through an exhaustive list of publishers, I'm not sure that we would get past 15.

I don't know, what do you think?

- I think publishers care about finding material they can sell and they know how to sell.

And I think it would surprise a lot of people what publishers know how to sell.

I think a lot of authors don't think enough about where their books, what line their books fall into.

I remember there's a poet, a late poet, who's collected works were published posthumously by... Canyon?

What was it?

- It was Copper Canyon.

- Copper Canyon Press, yes.

And I was at a conference and I was having lunch with the publisher and I said, "Oh my God, thank you for publishing that book.

I was waiting forever to get it."

And he said, "You know that book was the best selling book we've had this year."

And that was a book of poetry, you know?

And most people don't think about poetry as being a bestselling book.

But Stanford's poetry, this particular poet, spoke to a particular area that I don't think a lot of people think about.

- Hm.

- But I think that, again, that you're talking about where an agent can help direct the work.

And so it kind of goes back to that need for an agent to place the book.

- All three of you teach.

What are your students most excited about as they look to the world ahead of 'em after they graduate?

- I don't know any student who's very excited about getting out of school.

[all laughing] - That's a great answer.

- Yeah, a lot of them go back to go on and get a Master's degree 'cause there was not quite sure yet what they're going to do.

I'm finding more and more who want to go into publishing and that's encouraging.

Sadly, they're moving away from teaching into publishing.

I mean, I'd like to have 'em in both but they want to kind of go find out, as you did, from the inside and then write their books after they kind of have a more of an inside scoop.

- Mm.

I push mine into investment banking [all laughing] organic chemistry and geology.

I don't know.

I remember having a conversation with a great playwright, John Ware, who taught at Yale in the MFA program there teaching playwrights.

And he was lamenting, this was God, 20 years ago, that playwrights would get all this debt and they go out to Hollywood and they start writing TV scripts and they'd start making good money.

And they would tell themselves, "Okay, I'm gonna come back and start writing off Broadway plays that have meaning.

But no, I'm going to write "Mork and Mindy" for $250,000 a year," you know, and the money would win out.

But I have a friend who studied at Yale at that same institution, Tarell McCraney, who did that and happened to win the Academy award with "Moonlight."

And now he's leading that program.

So, I mean, I think the tension is there.

People want to make money, people want to be successful, but success does not necessarily mean that you have to give up quality and visions of literary attainment.

- Do you find that's still a preoccupation for a lot of your students as they come through that tension there, or are they... Or you're pushing them all into investment banking so that's not really... - Yeah.

Become a geologist.

You know, Exxon will hire you.

- It's so much easier.

- It'll be cool.

[audience laughing] - I think they're looking for the job that they can be around what they love, writing books, while they write their books, to pay the bills.

So that's why I'm seeing more go into publishing.

- I'm gonna ask y'all a question that I get asked a lot in hopes that one of you will finally give me an answer that I can give because I have yet to figure out one.

- Randall knows the answer, whatever the question is.

- I'm sure he does.

Yeah.

That's what I'm waiting for.

- He taught it to me.

[Margaret laughing] - We, you know, the Writers' Network uses a quote from the late, great Doris Betts as a motto, "Welcome to the Writing-est State."

North Carolina does produce an extraordinary number of writers, produce and nurture an extraordinary number of writers.

Why do you think that is?

And Randall, since... Oh, Margaret.

- Wait.

You wrote a whole essay about that for NCR 2016's- - In which I said I was the only special one of 'em.

I'm looking for some solid facts here.

- Go ahead.

- No, you're the most qualified.

- No-no-no, he wrote the whole essay.

Nope, nope, go ahead.

- [Randall] 'Cause he knows I hate that question.

- Oh, so that's why you started with him?

I think it's the variety, you know, from the mountains to the coast.

There's so much here.

And I love how, when Allan Gurganus talks about getting off of I40 and into the small towns and seeing the real life there, and there's just so much inspiration everywhere.

So that's the easy answer.

I think it's part of what you said in your essay.

- Either of y'all want- - You next.

- You're in Alabama.

We want to hear what you have to say.

- Oh, that's a good point.

- Oh, really?

- Yeah.

- Well, absolutely.

I mean, even in just in the little towns of Carrboro, Chapel Hill and, and Hillsborough, there are probably more published writers than per capitas in Brooklyn, which is, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that's true.

But there are a lot and I don't know that there's any, sense to it, except, I mean, from my own story, when I left Chapel Hill, I went to school there two years and then I went to work for my dad for a couple of years and decided that wasn't gonna work out, and when that was over, I looked for a place to live, to write, just to start writing.

And I did this little tour of the Southeast, just to towns, places where I'd lived before.

So it was Birmingham, Atlanta, Chapel Hill, Washington DC and New York.

Those were the only places where I knew anybody.

And I wanted to go somewhere where I knew somebody.

And I actually, I actually went on to this tour interviewing people talking about which town would be best.

What do you think?

And I finally settled here and this is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy because so many other people were already here.

That is, I could be in this culture where writers were thriving.

I could go to the Harris Teeter and see Lee Smith buying broccoli.

[audience laughing] Where else can you do that?

She loves broccoli, man.

Oh my God, everybody knows that.

She's a broccoli lover.

Nothing to be ashamed of.

- I'm gonna talk to Lee about that.

- Or yams, would that be better?

- Yams, yams.

- Yams.

Yeah, probably.

But, so I did want to normalize what at the time was kind of a ridiculous idea that I could ever be a writer.

But to be in a community where you can see them... - Buying broccoli.

- Buying broccoli.

That changed everything.

- Or yams.

- Or yams.

- Or yams.

- [Randall] Sweet potatoes in North Carolina, I'm sorry.

- That really does make it seem somewhat more achievable.

- The question makes me sad, Ed Southern.

- I'm sorry, Randall, I don't mean to make you sad.

- You invoked my mentor, Doris Betts.

And I think we would answer the question differently than she would have.

And I think her answer was, and has been, that it's because of our education system, right?

And that is in conjunction with the fact that North Carolina is in line with the other poor, southern states, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana in producing great writers.

I mean, if you look at the concentration of great writers they come from places that are materially poor but are high on education, and North Carolina is not a poor state now, but it used to be.

And when you had Tom Wolf, when you had Reynolds Price, when you had Doris, we were coming, we were clawing ourselves out of poverty.

And our education system was invested in heavily.

And people read a lot.

People didn't have any money and material stuff, they read stuff.

And so you get this literature.

And it's about poor people.

I don't know if that's happening anymore.

That's why it makes me sad.

- And that anticipates my follow-up question which was, do you worry, that since we are a very high tech, we're not really a rural state anymore, we're a very much more urban, if not suburban, much more prosperous and populous state, do you worry that that will have an adverse effect on our writing and our writers?

- There are still some very poor sections of this state in Eastern North Carolina in particular.

And I think they're still inspiring stories.

But there's also a community, I think Doris Betts talked about this too, the community of writers in North Carolina.

They like each other, can't y'all tell?

[audience laughing] - Who?

- And they support each other.

And when Ron Bayes was inducted in the Literary Hall of Fame, he talked about New York friends coming to North Carolina to a reading and saying he was so surprised that a writer would come up and say, "You need to read this person's work," and introduce another writer.

And he said in New York, what they would say is, "Read my book.

It's the only poetry you should ever read."

And, you know, I remember that stuck with me because that's been my experiences editing NCLR for over over 20 years is the stars here support their students who are just coming out and help them get started and then promote their works.

You know, you might've come to see Randall Keenan or Daniel Wallace, but you know, they're gonna tell you about some writer they've just discovered and they're gonna tell you to read them.

- Which writers, if you care to name a few, who have emerged over the past 15 years in North Carolina, are you particularly excited about, or whose work you particularly enjoy?

Kind of putting you on the spot.

- Stephanie Powell Watts, David Joy.

Come on, help me out here.

I'm gonna get in trouble because I'm the editor of NCLR.

[all laughing] I'm gonna forget somebody.

- I was counting on you, Margaret.

Jason Mott.

- Oh yeah.

- Very encouraged by his success.

- There was a book, just came out, from Tin House books, which is a smaller press in the northwest, but again, is a wonderful place to have your books published, taking up a lot of slack from some of the bigger publishers who are going a different direction but they published a book just last month called "The Neversink Hotel," and it's by Adam Price who happens to be a graduate of creative writing program at Chapel Hill.

[Randall gasps] - Imagine that.

- Yeah.

[Randall chuckling] And he, there.... A lot of incredible writers out there who...

There were a lot of creative, wonderful writers everywhere, sometimes it's hard to write a great book and to get somebody to read it.

It's hard to get attention for that book.

But this book is just a wonderful, wonderful read and I think more people should know about it.

And it makes it that much better to know that he learned a lot of what he knows from Chapel Hill and Pam Durba, who also teaches with us.

- And not to get too nepotistic about it because he's teaching with us now, but there's a young writer, he actually started at State, not at UNC, but he's teaching at UNC now, Tyree Davies, a young African American poet but he's from my part of the world, the watery part of the world.

And his work just sort of resonates with the way I look at the world, and I think people should know his work.

And I'm happy that he's coming up.

- Wonderful.

- We've looked ahead at young writers that you're excited about.

Are there any writers from North Carolina's past that you feel should get more attention?

- Oh yeah.

- Oh boy, okay.

- I'll just sit back now.

- You have the rest of the show.

[Margaret laughing] - Oh yeah, well, I was just thinking of Kat Meads who's in Eastern North Carolina writer, lives in California now.

And her last couple of novels just knocked me out.

K-A-T M-E-A-D-S, look her up, and I love her novel, "The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan," and then her most recent novel that has Ms. Jane, I think in the title.

And I just love these.

And I've just made contact with Gwendolyn Parker who's an African American writer from the Durham area and she's in California writing for television and trying to get her novel, "These Same Long Bones" which is amazing, back into print with UNC Press, so.

- Randall mentioned Doris Betts, and I know many of you have read her or at least a familiar with her name, but she, to me, is a wonderful, if sad example of a writer who, once they leave the stage, once they stop producing, and dying will do that to a writer.

- Sometimes.

- They do fall off, fall away.

You know, some of my favorite writers, my students have never heard of before.

And that's just really sad.

I feel like that's sad.

- You stole that from me because I was gonna say Doris Betts.

- Oh my God.

- In the last two decades of her life, I tried so hard to get her to collect her three collections of short stories as a collection of short stories.

And she was like, "No, I'm gonna publish more stories.

Why would I do that now?"

And I still want that to happen.

There's Wilma Dykeman.

There's John Ehle who we just lost.

How long has he... - Within the past year.

- Just a couple of years.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Charles Chestnut, who inspired me to do what I do.

- Yeah, Chestnut is getting a lot of attention from literary scholars.

- Should we tell them who Charles Chestnut is?

- Please.

Please.

[Randall laughing] - Charles Chestnut was an African American writer from Fayetteville.

He was taken up North when he was a young child.

He would come back in the summers, a lot of black folk do that, just to be with the kinfolk.

- [Ed] And this was in the late 19th century.

- This was in the turn of the century.

Around the turn of the century.

In fact, his most important book, probably, is called "In the Marrow..." - The marrow.

- "In the Marrow of Tradition," sorry, which is about the 1898 massacre in Wilmington, North Carolina.

But my favorite of his books is "The Conjure Woman," a short story which is based in, and rooted in African-American culture in Southeast, Eastern North Carolina.

- Thank you all for being here.

Please give our panelists another round of applause.

[audience applauding] [upbeat jazz music] ♪