Anthology Launch Day: Spinning Toward the Sun
I have to admit that this book launch sneaked up on me. In the wake of Hurricane Helene’s devastation in September 2024, my VCFA classmate and award-winning anthology editor Nora Shalaway Carpenter contacted me about contributing to a new anthology to benefit the people of western North Carolina affected by the hurricane. Nora lives in Asheville and experienced the impacts firsthand. Even though her own home was not damaged, her family and the rest of the city lacked power and electricity for more than a month. Schools were closed. Beloved Asheville and World Central Kitchen were among the first non-governmental organizations to arrive and help people survive during those terrible weeks. (As I wrote three years ago, World Central Kitchen also fed the people of Ukraine during the constant bombardment following the Russian invasion.) Nora wanted to support these two organizations, to give back for everything they had done and continue to do to help the people of western North Carolina.
The just launched anthology, titled Spinning Toward the Sun: Essays on Writing, Resilience, and the Creative Life, is for anyone, not just writers and artists, looking for inspiration and guidance in difficult times. All of the proceeds will be split between BeLoved Asheville and World Central Kitchen. In all, 30 book creators and teachers of writing have contributed essays on aspects of craft, process, and the writing life. Some write about what it was life to live through the hurricane. Others write about facing setbacks in general, including the inevitable rejections that writers and illustrators receive. Still others emphasize the power of story to do good — to increase understanding and empathy, to connect people across time periods, lands and cultures, and to build community. And others — teachers of writing who are acclaimed authors — offer advice on craft. They write about how to enhance conflict in stories, layer in key details without boring the reader, show through dialogue and body language, create multi-dimensional characters, and revise when things aren’t working. My own essay in the volume, drawn from a blog post I wrote last December, explores how writers can give their protagonists agency when young children have very little power over their lives and teens living in repressive societies like my characters in Torch and Eyes Open also cannot initiate their own projects or decide their own futures. This is where today craft meets real life.
The people of western North Carolina are still digging out from the hurricane almost six months later. For writers and artists around the country, the impact of a natural disaster has been amplified by a man-made one, as free expression has become far more dangerous as a result of the election last November. In his essay “Hold Onto Your (Writer) Friends in Dark Times,” Rob Costello writes:
Why not walk away from the truth when telling it might get us banned or even arrested? Why not turn our backs on writing when there’s no profit in it anymore? Why not keep our heads down and our mouths shut as the world falls apart around us? These are the kinds of terrible questions we may well face in the years ahead, as we witness atrocities and injustices and feel the full weight of political oppression bearing down upon our necks.
Rob calls on us to draw closer to our writing community and to support each other “in ways we can barely even comprehend right now.”
Some of the advice focuses on the small things — spending time in nature, making handicrafts, connecting with others. The writers share what has worked for them when times are tough. Linda-Marie Barrett, a translator and bookseller in Asheville, describes the years she spent in the Soviet Union, “a joyless place with no government accountability, where a candid conversation could mean a trip to jail, or worse.” How do you find happiness in this kind of place? Reading the essays in Spinning Toward the Sun, then creating your own stories and sharing stories, can point the way.
I’m grateful to Nora for inviting me to join this group of brilliant creators and to Sean Petrie, the founder and editor of Burlwood Books, publisher of Spinning Toward the Sun. Burlwood Books is a small press, established in 2022, that publishes poetry, art, diverse voices, and stories rooted in place. Learn more about Burlwood Books here.
