MAKING BOOKS; Black Writers Get New Help
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There are, of course, the famous writing programs, like the Iowa Writers'
Workshop, attended by such luminaries as John Irving, Jane Smiley and Raymond
Carver; the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Middlebury, Vt.; and many others,
and these do have minority students. But Toi Derricotte, the black poet
(''Natural Birth: Poems,'' Firebrand, rereleased in 2000), said, ''Usually black
students at many of these writers' workshops conferences are uncomfortable, just
by the fact they may be the only black or one of few.''
Moreover, since every culture has its own complex language, blacks attending
them often feel that the stories they write are of a language not entirely
understood by fellow workshop members; hence by establishing black writers'
workshops, the goal is to protect the young author from the feeling of
intellectual and cultural isolation.
So all over the place black writers' programs are popping up. One is operated
by the Zora Neale Hurston/ Richard Wright Foundation, which was founded in 1990
by Marita Golden, a black novelist (''Long Distance Life,'' Doubleday, 1989), to
encourage young writers. The foundation started its workshop in 1996. Ms. Golden
said: ''We felt we needed to train writers in a way that none of the famous
writers' programs did for blacks. We felt there was a void and created our
program to bring together African-American and Caribbean and English black
writers.''
Among the writers who have attended the workshop is David Anthony Durham,
whose novel ''Gabriel's Story'' was published by Doubleday in February, to good
reviews. This year its workshop, encompassing all the writing disciplines, will
be held July 15 to 21 at Howard University in Washington.
''Unfortunately, at many of the programs, students and leaders of the
workshops had little knowledge of black culture,'' Ms. Golden said. ''Many black
writers have never been in a setting where there are lots of black writers.''
The foundation has had donations from such diverse writers as Terry McMillan
and John Grisham and support from Howard University, Virginia Commonwealth
University and Ballantine Books, among other institutions. Janet Hill, senior
editor for black issues at Doubleday and head of its new Harlem Moon imprint,
said that all the income from one of the imprint's first books, ''Gumbo,'' a
collection of African-American fiction, would be donated to the foundation.
And coming in the fall of 2002 are the foundation's Legacy Awards, with a
first prize in each writing category of $10,000 and two runner-up prizes of
$5,000. They will be the first literary awards for published black writers.
Borders Books, the bookstore chain, agreed to underwrite them by donating
$60,000 annually.
Generally writers' workshops focus on fiction, where the glamour is, but Ms.
Derricotte and Cornelius Eady, a black poet (''Brutal Imagination,'' Putnam),
have created the Cave Canem Foundation, which conducts a workshop for black
poets, held now at the Cranbrook Schools in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
Cave Canem is Latin for Beware of the Dog, and Mr. Eady came upon this saying
in a mosaic in the front entrance to the House of the Tragic Poet, one of the
few houses in Pompeii to survive the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, and
thought it a perfect symbol for a program that would be a safe place for black
poets.
It's the feeling of isolation among young black writers that motivates these
programs. ''We are trying to create a serene atmosphere, a sense of community,''
Mr. Eady said.
''I was in a university writers' program where I was the only
African-American student, talking about the idea of being in Jamaica,'' he
recalled, ''and clearly the phrases I was using were clearly the language of
Jamaica, and students were asking 'Why is that a poem?' ''
The program lasts one week a summer for three summers within a five-year
period. The cost is $800 a summer, and among those who have attended is Major
Jackson, whose poetry has appeared in The New Yorker.
On the Upper West Side, Budd Schulberg, the novelist and screenwriter, and
Fred Hudson founded the writers' workshop about 30 years ago at the Frederick
Douglass Creative Arts Center. Mr. Hudson, the center's president and artistic
director, said, ''We started the writing program because there were no black
writers on the team that wrote the 'Roots' television series, and they said that
was because there were no black writers.''
''We said we would develop some black talent so that nobody would ever be
able to tell that lie again,'' Mr. Hudson said. Four years ago it awarded
$15,000 fellowships to three writers and provided each with a writing mentor
''so that they could take time off from all the temp work they were doing to
really do some writing.'' On Tuesday they are to give $20,000 fellowships to two
black writers. Tuition at the writers' workshop is a very low $200 for an
eight-week cycle, with classes once a week. ''It's hard to understand what the
struggle is like to keep a place like this going,'' Mr. Hudson said.
One would suppose that sooner or later the book publishing companies in New
York would contribute to these programs for aspiring black authors, if for no
other reason than that the black imprints in publishing will need a constant
supply of good writing. There may be a Langston Hughes or a Toni Morrison out
there.
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