Winter 2007-2008
“Why do I live in Vermont?” 14 famous writers respond
Novelists, commentators, essayists, storytellers, poets and playwrights … Vermont has more than its fair share. What is it that draws these creative spirits here?
Philip Baruth
Author of “The X President” and award-winning VPR commentator
Why live and work in Vermont? The Flamenco Rule, a logical outgrowth of our tiny
population. According to the 2000 census, Vermont had then just a smidgen over 600,000 people.
Residents under 18 accounted for nearly a third, leaving just over 400,000 adults. A small, clear
pool indeed.
Hence the Flamenco Rule: Any Vermonter can be one of the 50 best in the state at nearly any quirky pursuit within a space of two years, tops, given a bit of starry-eyed enthusiasm. In many cases, the 25 best.
Clearly we have to rule out strenuous athletics, and the state’s highest paid occupations. But take Flamenco dancing. Vermont has so few Flamenco dancers that if you come to the study of it with even a modest eagerness, you’ll soon be running the Flamenco club in your town — and if you’re not careful, your county.
Will that give you a sense of rhythm? No. Will it matter? Not in the least. The only thing that will matter is the rose clenched tightly in your teeth.
Howard Frank Mosher
Author of 10 books set in the Northeast Kingdom, including “Disappearances,” the recipient of the New England Book Award for fiction
Where else but Vermont in general and the Northeast Kingdom in particular could I find so many contrary, stubborn, cantankerous, strong-minded, argumentative, persnickety, blunt, ornery and totally wonderful people to write about?
Elizabeth Inness-Brown
Acclaimed novelist and author of the highly praised short story collections “Satin Palms” and “Here”
Down at Somers Hardware on Main Street in Montpelier, the guy talks to me as if he knows I know what he’s talking about, not down or up but to me. At Town Hall in South Hero, the clerks know everybody’s business, but I also know I can trust them with mine. When the smoke alarm starts going off next door, the fire chief drives right over, and we meet the landlady outside the dark house to figure out what the problem is and make sure it doesn’t get worse. Respect, trust, working together. The whole state of Vermont is just a big small town, with the kinds of people and the kinds of values that make me comfortable — the kind of people I like to write about. And that’s why I call it home.
David Budbill
Award-winning poet, novelist and playwright whose play “Judevine” has been produced 51 times in 24 states
I came to Vermont to live in the woods, in the mountains, to build my own house, raise vegetables, cut firewood with a chainsaw, snowshoe and swim naked in a pond. I was so appalled and disgusted by what Amerika had become by the late 1960s that I wanted to leave my own country; yet I was still in love with what America could be, with what it was supposed to be. I came here to get as far away from that other Amerika as I could. I came to Vermont to find America again. I also came here to get away from academic poetry and the literati. I came here to rebel against the literature of secret languages and elitist attitudes. I came here to write poetry for ordinary people and garden and cut wood. And that’s what I’ve done here in Vermont for the past 38 years.
Katherine Paterson
Multiple Newbery medalist and best-selling author whose novel “Bridge to Terabithia” was recently adapted into a film by Disney
We came to Vermont in 1986 because my husband had been called to be pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Barre. “Oh, you’re lucky,” people said. “You can work anywhere.” Yes, I thought, a writer’s work may be portable, but her doctor, her dentist, the wonderful Filipina who cuts her hair, above all, her friends are not. That first August it rained almost every day. The youngest of our four left for college, so I was not only friendless, but childless and chilled to the bone. Nine years later when my husband retired we could have moved back South, but I couldn’t leave. Not only had I found stories here that I wanted to write, but a community and a state that I loved and friends I couldn’t bear to leave. This writer’s work and life is simply not as portable as some might imagine.
Castle Freeman
Short story writer and novelist whose books include “Judgment Hill” and “My Life and Adventures: A Novel”
I came to Vermont in the summer of 1972 with my wife, Alice, in a blue Ford Pinto with five cats, two turtles, at least a dozen houseplants, and the clothes we stood up in. We came from the big city, attempting an experiment in country living. The experiment worked. We found here what others have found before and since: a fortunate combination of small-town community and rural elbowroom that happens to suit us very well. By the time our furniture and other belongings arrived on a moving van, we were no longer experimenting. We were here to stay.
Joseph A. Citro
Author and folklorist known for his books on hauntings and paranormal activity in New England, including the best-selling “Green Mountain Ghosts, Ghouls & Unsolved Mysteries”
Why do I live in Vermont? A stereotypically taciturn answer might be, “Born here.” Why I work here is another matter. When I was a boy my father regaled me with enough local color to fill a guidebook. He told me about the man from neighboring Cavendish who’d had a railroad spike blasted through his head … and lived. I learned about Chester’s Jekyll and Hyde phantom, a fist-sized fiend from Plymouth, and ultimately my favorite: John P. Bowman of Cuttingsville. When Mr. Bowman died he willed that his fortune be used to maintain his mansion. On-site staff prepared, then served, a complete meal every night. Mr. Bowman believed he’d return from the dead; what if he showed up hungry? I loved these stories and characters, so I began adapting them as novels. But when I realized the weirdest Vermont tales had never been collected in book form, I knew I had a mission. I work here to fulfill it.
John Elder
Middlebury College professor, novelist and essayist who is celebrated for his nature writing, as exemplified in the well-received “Reading the Mountains of Home”
I write because I live in Vermont, not the other way around. Within just a few years of coming to teach at Middlebury College in 1973, I found that the experience of living in this state had transformed my outlook. It increased my appreciation for rural landscapes and sustainable communities, helped me understand literature’s part in a broader effort of stewardship, and motivated me to contribute to that effort as a writer.
Making maple syrup on our family’s sugar bush in Starksboro figures more and more prominently in my writing. The mysterious alchemy of
sugaring intensifies my sense of identification with the history, seasons, and flavors of our adopted home.
Chris Bohjalian
Best-selling author of “The Double Bind,” “Before You Know Kindness” and “Midwives”
Wiser minds than mine have known for centuries that drama needs two things: conflict and human transformation. Certainly those are the two points on a compass that matter most in fiction. Well, we have them in abundance here in Vermont, and we have them on a scale that is manageable.
And scale matters. When I was writing “The Buffalo Soldier,” for example, I wanted to spend some time with the commissioner of the state’s Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services to discuss foster care. I’d never met him, but I called him up one morning in 2001 and asked if we could have lunch. He told me he was busy that day, but said the next day was free and clear and to come visit.
Imagine if I were trying to schedule a lunch with the head of human services in California. I’d still be waiting.
Vermont also has excellent creemees. Make no mistake: Writers need ice cream, too.
Edward Hoagland
Novelist and essayist described by John Updike as the best of his generation, and the author of nearly 20 books, including “Walking the Dead Diamond River,” a National Book Award nominee
I love living in Vermont because it’s a place jam-packed with mink frogs, milk snakes, indigo buntings, hollering woodpeckers, ravens, goshawks, coyotes and other favorite creatures of mine — plus people who log, milk cows, fashion bobbins and dowels, or shift jobs in midlife in order to dogpaddle along. The choppy mountains, rollercoaster roads, musical loons and owls, ice fishing, fisher “cats,” hippie diners and outlaw bars, with independent politics and a Canadian soupçon, foster the illusion that life is long instead of short. Although it’s got some dumbheads, not as many as many warmer spots. With vivid trees, dappled meadows, a muscular sky, joy can be like photosynthesis here.
Willem Lange
Storyteller and Vermont Public Radio commentator whose weekly column “A Yankee Notebook” appears in several New England newspapers
For over 70 years I’ve lived west, south, or east of Vermont. From New York I could see Camels Hump; from Massachusetts, our cross-country running trail crossed into Vermont; and from New Hampshire, on a cold morning, I could hear the traffic on I-91. I’ve often felt like Moses, wandering through the wilderness at the head of the Hebrew children – able to see the Promised Land, but prohibited from crossing the river himself to sojourn there.
But finally Mother and I have achieved what Moses couldn’t. By the time you read this, we’ll be sojourning in the promised land. We’ll never be Vermonters, of course, any more than a chicken can be a goose. But just to end our days here, surrounded by Vermonters: conservative, yet a little wacky; serious, but with humor dry as a cork leg; and dedicated to perfect woodpiles, is more than anyone could deserve.
Natalie Kinsey-Warnock
Author of over a dozen children’s books, including “The Bear that Heard Crying” and “The Canada Geese Quilt,” an American Library Association Notable Book
My Scottish ancestors settled in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom because it reminded them of home. Every day I am reminded of them: as I run or bike by the farms they built, or hike by the cellar holes of the homes they left behind; when I pick lilacs and apples from the trees they planted; whenever I smell the moss rose that they brought with them from Scotland; when I eat oatmeal or graham rolls for breakfast, from the recipe my grandmother used, passed down from her mother. This place connects me to them, and since it is their stories that I’m telling, this is where I was meant to be. I’ve found that I can’t write anywhere else but here. Had my ancestors settled in any other state, I might be living and writing there. But, thankfully, they didn’t.
Julia Alvarez
Multiple award-winning author and poet whose celebrated novels include “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” and “In the Time of the Butterflies”
Like the Bicknell’s thrush that summers in the Green Mountains and winters on the mountains of the Dominican Republic, I’ve always felt an organic connection between my native country and my adopted state. Both places are still largely rural, songbird/writer friendly, just the right balance of solitude and community. A small country, a small state — there’s a hands-on feel to how we operate. Not much to distract us except nature and each other. We live in accordance to older, natural cycles. The seasons season us. We go deep in winter and burst into glorious blossom come summer. I live here and work here and when I die, I want some of my ashes to go into the earth here and some to be scattered on the mountain where the Bicknell’s thrush spends winter. I can’t think of two better places to spend, not just the rest of my life, but eternity besides.
Leland Kinsey
Regarded as the unofficial poet laureate of the Northeast Kingdom and lauded for his collections of poetry, including “In the Rain Shadow”
My ancestors on my mother’s side, forced from Scotland by the effects of the Lowland Clearances, shipped out to New York, took the then new canals north to Lake Champlain, and walked overland with ox carts to help clear and settle the four southern towns of Vermont’s Orleans County. My father’s family worked its way north from even earlier settling in the Colonies. I grew up working the land. My mother’s mother used to say, “Thank heaven they left, thank heaven they settled here.” So now I live within a hugely extended family with sufficient members for strife and comfort, and, since my writing subjects are history, culture, family and the changes therein, I chose for now to continue living here. And since this is the landscape of my life, I have not found, in my considerable travels, a place or climate more gripping.
