Memoirist gives writing tips at Borders
The award-winning author Kim Barnes, who is known for writing about her personal life, visited Utah State University and surrounding locations this week to speak about her most recent book and how to write.
Barnes visited as a guest for the English department. During her visit there were three public events that Barnes participated in. The first was a master class held Tuesday. A roundtable discussion was held Wednesday. The last event was a reading held at Borders Books Thursday night.
“Finding Caruso,” Barnes’ latest novel, received national acclaim when it debuted earlier this year. The book is about two Oklahoma brothers who set out for Idaho after their parents die. They both find work as loggers in the camps of Northern Idaho. Time passes and the brothers settle into their lives until one brother meets a woman named Irene Sullivan, who intends to pursue the other brother.
The book jacket reads that it “turns darkly violent and heartbreakingly tender … “Finding Caruso” is a work of extraordinary emotional power from an astonishingly original writer.”
Barnes is widely known for her two earlier novels, which are, “In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in an Unknown Country” and “Hungry for the World.” Both of her earlier novels are memoirs of her life.
“I think that there’s an actual hunger and need for personal lives,” said Barnes while telling about the importance of memoirs.
“I see now the access to others personal story is part of the technological era,” she said. “I think that people are looking for a connection.”
Barnes’ “In the Wilderness,” is a memoir of her life growing up in Idaho when it was a wild logging country. In the book she tells about her family fleeing from Oklahoma during the dust bowl, her parents new religion and her adolescent rebellion.
In Barnes’ memoir she discusses her family and told students at the roundtable discussion, if they are going to write about people in their lives to have courage.
“Have the courage of your convictions and have pride in what you are writing,” said Barnes. “I took absolute responsibility for what I was writing.”
English Professor Melody Graulich, said, “I think that reading memoir people do come to a sense of the individual.”
Getting to know the individual is something that readers found in Barnes’ other memoir, “Hungry for the World.” The novel is about Barnes leaving her family one day after high school graduation, and finding her way through the world without money or skills. She goes out to try to understand the world that exists outside her family life.
A review for the book in the Fort Worth Star Telegram stated, “It is refreshing to read such a moving story of human regeneration.”
-rbarlow@cc.usu.edu