>> Tope Folarin: Hello, everyone.
I'd like to welcome
you all to the
Library of
Congress National Book Festival.
Thank you so much
for joining us today.
I know we're going to have
an incredible conversation
about two incredible books
authored by
two incredible writers.
This session is called
Past Pain, Future Hope:
Perseverance in Literature
with Tomás Q. Morín
and Morgan Talty.
Tomás is on the faculty at Rice University
in Vermont College of Fine Arts.
He is the author
of three poetry collections,
and his most recent book
is called
Let Me Count the Ways,
A Memoir.
Morgan Talty is
an assistant professor
at the University of Maine.
His debut book is called
Night of the Living Rez,
a collection of stories.
My name is Tope Folarin.
I'm a fellow writer.
I direct the Institute
for Policy Studies,
which is a think tank
here in D.C.
and I'm also the Lannon
Visiting Lecturer
in creative writing
at Georgetown University.
My debut novel is called
The Particular
Kind of Black Man,
and it was published
by Simon and Schuster.
We all want to give a shout out
to the National Endowment
for the Arts, which
is sponsoring the session.
And we all have
the great honor
of being NEA Fellows
as well,
so we'll have a conversation
about that a bit later.
But so much love
to the NEA
for its support of literature
across the country
and of course,
for sponsoring this conversation
today as well.
I want to remind all of you
that we're going to be
having a Q&A session,
sort of at the conclusion
of our conversation.
So please, as any questions
occur to you
keep them in mind
so that we can have
a kind of
robust conversation
after I've spoken with
both of these wonderful writers.
And they both have
a signing session at 12:30 p.m.,
so a few minutes
after the conclusion
of our conversation today.
With that, let's start
the conversation.
I have to say that
it's truly an honor
for me to be speaking
with both of you,
I had the great honor
of reading your books
over the past few weeks,
and I greatly enjoyed them
and I think they're incredibly
important books.
And the thing,
there's some logic here
and I think having us
have a conversation
because we kind
of write about similar themes.
So I hope to have
an opportunity to discuss that
that in some depth
as we move forward.
But I wanted to ask both
of you at the outset
how both of you found
your way to literature.
It's a question as a writer
that I'm obsessed with
and I constantly think
about as I sort of
think about my own
trajectory as a writer
I suppose in some ways.
My pathway to literature
is my parents,
my father in particular,
needed a kind of babysitter,
so he dropped me
[Laughts] off at the library
and said just look after him
while I'm at work.
And I had so much fun reading
as many books as I could.
So I wanted to ask
both of you how literature
sort of came to be such
an important part of your life.
So I wanted to start
with you, Tomás.
>> Tomás Q. Morín: Yeah, thanks.
Thank you, everyone, for coming
and listening to us speak
for a little bit.
My path started actually
just down the road in Baltimore.
It was back in 98.
I was a graduate student
at Johns Hopkins
in Hispanic and Italian studies,
and I had taken
some poetry workshops
as an undergrad like
a lot of undergrads do.
It was a fun elective
sort of thing to do,
but didn't ever really
imagine writing books.
And when I was
living in Baltimore,
I experienced
my first major depression.
And the only
sort of like glimmer of hope
in my days was writing
and reading poems.
So for me,
starting at that point,
it was an act
of survival, really.
And then I thought, well,
maybe I should pursue this
because it brings me
so much joy.
And then that led to --
I left that program,
got a master of fine arts
in creative writing
and yeah,
and then just kept
going forward with it.
>> Tope Folarin: Were there
any particular books
or writers who
were helpful to you
during that sort of
darker period of your life?
>> Tomás Q. Morín: Yeah,
the one that always stands out
is the poet Philip Levine,
who passed away
a few years back.
And during that time,
one of my friends in that
graduate program I was in
when I was considering
whether to leave the program
and try to be a writer,
she said,
Maybe you should write
a letter to that Levine guy
that you're always reading
and talking about.
And I thought,
nobody does that.[Laughts]
She was from Spain. [Laughts]
I thought, maybe they
do that over there.
That's something
we do here.
We don't write our heroes.
Then a couple of weeks later,
in a really dark moment,
I sat down,
I wrote him a letter,
put it in the mail,
and just asked,
explained my situation
and asked if he would be willing
to read a few poems
and tell me
if he thought there was
anything worth pursuing.
Immediately regretted it.
Wanted to get it out
of the mailbox. Couldn't.
Three weeks later,
there was a letter from him,
and handwritten,
and he said something like,
over the years poetry
has been really good to me
and the least
I can do for poetry
is to give you
my honesty.
So send me three poems
that you have faith in.
>> Tope Folarin: Wow.
>> Tomás Q. Morín: And I'll let
what I think.
So, super nervous
at that point.
>> Tope Folarin: That's
[Laughts] a moment, right?
>> Tomás Q. Morín: That's
a moment. Yeah.
So I sent him three poems
and he sent them back
with notes on them.
And he said something like,
you have talent
and one of the poems
shows that you have a gift
that you still don't know
how to use.
You're not resourceful.
But all three poems show that
you still don't know
the first thing
about how to make a poem.[Laughting]
And I think someone
who maybe wasn't
an eternal optimist
in the way I am
would have cued in
on that part.[Laughting]
But instead, I was like,
talent, gift?
I'm like, okay, that's all
I needed to know.
Like, if all I need
to do is work hard,
this is the path for me.
So I thanked him and
then headed down that path.
>> Tope Folarin: That's an
incredible story.
Thank you so much
for sharing that.
And Morgan,
how about you?
How did you find
your way to literature?
>> Morgan Talty: Oh, it's
a long story. [Laughts]
I hated reading and
writing growing up.
I just did not care for it.
I was a kid who loved
the woods,
a kid who loved being
outside of school.
But I was always
surrounded by stories.
I grew up on the
Penobscot Indian Nation,
and the more
I think about it,
the more I feel like I've always
loved telling stories.
I've always loved when I was
with friends in the woods,
I would tell stories.
I remember being young
in second grade
and during
Parent/Teacher Conferences,
getting not sort of scolded,
but the teacher telling
my mom
that I was making up stories
that just weren't real.
>> Tope Folarin: Yeah.
>> Morgan Talty: For one,
I told her in the summers,
I worked for
a moving company.
>> Tope Folarin: [laughs]
>> Morgan Talty: And when
my mom went in there,
well, went in there,
she's like, well,
he does live with
his father in the summer
and his father does
have a moving company.
And so I was kind of mixing
truth and fact and fiction.
And I had sort of like a
very tumultuous high school,
just upbringing,
and I didn't really give
my attention to school
and to education.
And when
I went to college,
when I went off to school,
things sort of
became clearer for me,
and I started to read
and I started to realize
stories could exist,
, not in the way
that my mom
was telling my aunt a story,
which my mother
was the best storyteller.
She could take a story,
I would have seen it.
She would have
told my aunt
and she would have
gotten half of it wrong.
Like, I think that's where
I picked up my best skills
in writing fiction was knowing
when to elaborate,
knowing when to say
that you weren't
the one who started the fight,
all that stuff.
And I realized that
I could do this storytelling
in written form,
and I just started reading.
And I said to myself,
I'm going to be a writer.
I'm going to be a storyteller.
And I got my undergraduate
in Native American studies,
and then I did my MFA
at the Stone Coast MFA program.
And midway through the
Stone Coast MFA program,
I was like,
it's really hard to be a writer.
And I was like, if I had known
this earlier. No.
But I think my stubbornness
and my desire
to just tell stories is really
what got me to this point,
and using fiction
and nonfiction as a means
to communicate what we tend
to forget about humanity and
we need to be sort of reminded,
I think.
>> Tope Folarin: I’m going
to ask you
the same question
I asked Tomás, which is,
could you tell me about
or tell us,
I should say,
about some writers
who inspired you or writers
who prompted you
to stay on the path
of pursuing
your desire
to become a writer?
>> Morgan Talty: Yeah,
very early on,
I will have to say
Jack Kerouac,
of all of all the writers.
He -- , I mentioned
I would visit my father
in the summer
and my mom would
very eagerly put me
on the Greyhound bus
and I'd ride from Bangor,
Maine, down
to South Station.
And sometimes
I'd have a layover overnight there,
which was weird.
And, I was like 12,
and I was like 12 outside,
I'm like, do you have a cigarette?
And then I'd get on the bus
and go down to Bridgeport
and stay with my dad.
And so when
I encountered Kerouac,
which I was supposed
to have read
in the 10th grade,
which never did,
but when I read him
in college,
I sort of saw this sense
of traveling,
the sense of on the road,
sort of prevalent
in a lot of what
I had done growing up.
And I just loved his voice.
I was captivated
by his word choice,
his diction,
his style and everything.
And I just tore through
the beat writers,
and then
I found myself entranced
by indigenous fiction.
That was sort of
my next thing.
And I think the book
that transformed me the most
was The Lesser Blessed
by Richard Vancamp,
who is a Canadian native writer,
is a member of
the Dog Rib Nation.
Phenomenal book,
I think it came out in 91.
Great, great book.
I highly recommend.
So yeah, those
and Louise Erdrich
and Joy Harjo
and Scott Momaday.
>> Tope Folarin: The greats.
Yeah, Wonderful.
My strong suspicion is that
there are a few aspiring writers
out there in the audience.
And so I wanted to ask
both of you
to talk a little bit about
the journey
to becoming a writer,
and how you surmounted
the various barriers
that we all face as we try
to make it as writers.
Tomás, you've spoken
about this a little bit
as you talked about
sort of that optimism
you had when you
received a letter
from your literary hero
and taking the good
and perhaps not dwelling
on the
not so good sort of
parts of that feedback.
I wonder if you could say
a bit more
about like the sort of
the life of a writer
and why it is that you've committed
yourself to that path?
>> Tomás Q. Morín: Yeah.
It's twofold for me.
One is I had to --
after I left my graduate program,
I had to make peace
with the fact that
there would probably be
more nos
in the writing life than
there would be yeses.
More doors would
close than would open.
I had this five-year
window where
I didn't have
a single piece picked up
by a literary magazine
or a journal.
And it was -- this was
before Submittable,
So all the nos were coming in
the mailbox.
>> Tope Folarin: Snail mail nos, right?
>> Tomás Q. Morín: Yes. Snail mail nos.
And there was one day where
I received three rejections.
I was simultaneously
submitting three rejections
for the same work
on the same day.
And the brutal thing is,
they’re self-addressed
stamped envelopes. Right?
So it's your own handwriting
that's coming back to you.
in a way I feel like Submittable
is a little more kind
in that sense.
>> Tope Folarin: Sure.
>> Tomás Q. Morín: And that was
the moment where
I thought --that was in the
middle of the five years
where I thought,
can I keep doing this?
Why would I keep doing this?
If this feels -- these moments
feel so awful.
And my answer
was a very quick yes,
but I had to make the contract
with myself that
in the understanding that writing
and publishing
are different things.
They require different kinds of energies,
Different skill sets.
And if I keep those worlds separate
and if I never publish again,
then the joy that
I get from creating work
will be preserved
and will be for me.
And that's something that I can take
into the rest of my life.
And it's not dependent
upon a yes or a no
from an editor
that I don't know.
And then eventually,
things started getting picked up.
But I think, looking back,
a lot of those nos
were very justified.
The work wasn't where
it needed to be.
It wasn't good enough.
So that was really important
at making --
coming to this understanding
that writing
wasn't going to just be
a profession for me.
It was going to be
a life just like the person
who commits themselves
to doing Tai Chi every day
because it cleanses
their spirit
and it feels good and it's
a way of being in the world.
For me, the writing process
is the exact same thing.
I write in the same way that --
for the same reason that I eat,
the same reason that I drink,
same reason that I exercise.
It's just a part of my life.
>> Tope Folarin: That’s a beautiful
response.
Thank you so much for that.
Morgan, I wanted to ask you
the same question.
Why have you committed yourself
to this lifestyle?
>> Morgan Talty: I don't know
what else to do with myself.
[audience laughs]
I've always felt--
I described this
to somebody once.
It was almost like I feel dirty
if I don't write.
Like, I feel like writing
is somehow
a way of, like, cleaning.
And I think writing and in
its very basic generative sense
is a knowledge making activity.
>> Tope Folarin: Sure.
>> Morgan Talty: And for me
I've always found,
like what you said,
separating the business side
of writing with
the art of writing.
a really critical thing
to think about
because you won't get
anything done --
at least for me,
I always just wrote
because I wanted to write,
and I remember eventually
I was like,
oh, I'm going to start
sending stuff out,
and you buy the
writer's marketplace book.
>> Tope Folarin: Yeah. Yeah,
been there.
>> Morgan Talty: Like,
which one of these
has five money symbols? [laughs]
>> Tope Folarin: Exactly.
>> Morgan Talty: And I remember
sending stuff out
and everybody saying no.
And I think I didn't get
my first acceptance,
I think, until eight or nine years
of writing and actually submitting.
>> Tope Folarin: Yeah.
>> Morgan Talty: And I actually
never even saw the journal
it was in because it was such
a small, obscure place.
And then I also paid $20 for two
more copies that I never got.
[audience laughing]
>> Morgan Talty: I don’t know
if this really counts,
but yeah, I think for me --
I write because
that's the only thing
I feel like.
I feel like it's I have
an obligation to do so.
I have an obligation
to try to articulate something
about the human condition
that we're all trying
to articulate and understand
in a way that moves us
past the hardships
of living; the hard realities
that we use stories
as a way to cope with what
we don't know. Right?
The very basic essentials,
like, where did we come from,
what is going on?
And so I think it's been
a form of distraction for me,
but it's also been
a form of discovery.
And there's no greater
pleasure I get
than working on
a story and coming
to a moment where
I am like, Oh my God.
Like for me, I think
of story as being
this entity that exists and will exist
regardless of whether
we're here or not.
Story is always happening
and I try to listen to it.
And for the writers out
there who are writing
and may experience
some sense of struggle
with a story or a poem,
consider that perhaps that
resistance isn't necessarily--
consider that that resistance
is the story telling you
it wants to go a
different direction, right?
So it's talking to you.
It's communicating to you.
And I find that
to be almost sort of,
I don't know, magical
in a sense.
>> Tope Folarin: Yeah,
no, you're so right.
And I love the fact that
both of you kind of
mentioned what I think
is the kind of
the intrinsically spiritual
practice of writing.
And it is.
The one thing that
I was most sort of surprised with
when I started writing
was exactly
what you described,
Morgan.
That sense when
you’re at your desk,
on your laptop or
you're writing longhand
or however it is
you produce work,
when you sense the story
responding to you in a way,
it's truly a
kind of magical thing.
I remember when
I started writing,
I would go on YouTube
and I would listen
to my favorite writers talk
about like the craft of writing.
I listened to them
talk about how it is
they sort of were able
to start their careers,
and almost all of them
would inevitably say
at some point that
their characters spoke to them.
And I thought,
this is a bunch of mumbo jumbo.
What I need
is craft lessons,
what I need are
the secrets of the trade.
I don't want to hear
that nonsense about
like how the character
told you
to do something
or something.
But I discovered
when I started,
like, I committed myself
to the practice of writing
that for me, it was in
characters, but it was a story.
The story would say,
this is not the right direction
and I will not yield
to your desire
to force me in
this direction.
I want to go
in that direction.
And learning to kind of
listen to that was,
I think, key to my sort of
discovering
how I wanted to be
a writer in the world
and how my story
is more important
than that wanted
to be as well.
So I love the way that both
of you discussed that.
Morgan, I want to talk a little bit
about your collection.
I loved it.
I had the great pleasure
of reading it over the
past few days
and sharing passages
with my partner and my kids.
And so we really
enjoyed the collection.
I especially love
the character David,
who is kind of like a central
figure in your collection,
and his voice and perspective
kind of links the stories.
I wanted to read a bit of
what The New York Times
has to say about
your collection.
They say Talty has
an incredible ability
to take the seemingly
disparate events
of David's life and reveal
how interconnected they are,
how each tiny decision
becomes something bigger,
how the small moments click
together in ways
that are both heartbreaking
and revelatory.
Could you discuss how
you developed David
and how you became a kind of
sort of central figure
in your book,
and how you determined
that he would play
such an important role in
your book as well?
>> Morgan Talty: Yeah.
So I think when
I first started writing,
I think like most writers tend
to gravitate toward themselves,
projecting themselves.
And so David, I think, was
in many ways very early on,
iterations of him and stories
that were not in the book,
sort of images of me
in a sense.
And when I began
to realize fiction,
I could leave that
autobiographical part
or the majority of it,
he became this boy
who I just cared
for very deeply.
The way he observed the world,
the way he cared
for his mother,
the way he cared
for his sister,
the way he cared
for everybody who would fail him
at some point in his life.
And so I just kept writing
stories with him.
And I wrote -- I said I
was going to write a collection
of stories told from
David's point of view,
starting with him being
a boy all the way
until he was a young adult.
And so I wrote about
15 or 16 stories,
all told from
David's point of view.
And I looked at the book
and I'm all feeling good.
And then I read it
and I'm like, this sucks.
And it was it was so bad.
It was just different
stories and situations
with the same character.
There was nothing.
It didn't work.
And so I set it aside
and I went and wrote this
other story called Burn,
which features a --
When I was drafting the story,
it's about a guy, Fellus,
who gets his hair frozen
in the snow
and his friend finds him
and he has to cut his braid.
And I kept wanting
to call the character David
because I was writing
in first person.
I had been writing so long
and I was like,
it's not David.
I'm leaving that project.
And I just put the
letter D in as a placeholder.
And as I was revising,
I was like, David,
what is this person's name?
And then I put two Es
at the end and I was like,
Oh, he goes by
the name Dee.
And I was like, wait,
is this David all grown up?
And eventually my collection
came back to life
and I was like, okay,
what happened now?
And so I found David as a boy.
And then I found him
later by accident
as an adult who had
completely turned himself around
and was not this child anymore.
He was very troubled.
And it just.
I was just so --
he's still sort of the same
when you read him as an adult
as he was a child,
except he's troubled.
And I think finding David
wa  s purely accidental.
I think it was a sustained
effort of writing, really,
and investing my time
and commitment
into this individual
and trying
to look at him
from various angles.
I think for any writer out there,
it's like there's 12 stories in here,
but there's probably
40 or 50 that
are in a folder somewhere
that didn't work.
>> Tope Folarin: Thank you
so much for that.
How did you settle
in the short story
as the best kind of form
for telling these tales?
>> Morgan Talty: I think it's --
I got to a point where I was
too far deep to turn around.
I had written been published
some in venues and stuff.
And I was like,
I'm going to write.
I'm going to just have
this be a story collection,
but I also kind of want it
to read like a novel.
And the book has a very--
I wouldn't say
an overarching arc.
I would rather say
it's buried underground
and it's connecting
the book very emotionally.
And I recognize that,
again, listening to the story
and seeing what it will allow
you the opportunity to do.
And so I did do that.
I kept with the story structure
and I tried to find moments
where I wouldn't implicate the
stories in a whole narrative,
but rather suggests their existence
as they exist
or as they coexist.
In one story,
Dee hurts his leg.
And then in a later --
due to a car accident.
And a later story, for example,
someone asks him to drive
and he goes, I hate driving.
And he scratches his leg.
And it was like trying
to find these little details
that linked the stories,
but not directly in your face.
And I had agents
and being like,
I can't sell this because
it's a story collection.
And they're like,
can you turn it into a novel?
Like, I can try.
And I tried.
And the more I did, the more
the stories began to break.
The more pressure
I applied,
and I eventually got
to the point where I said,
whatever, if you can't,
leave me alone.
If it doesn't get published,
it doesn't get published.
But I stayed true
to what I thought that
the form should have been,
which was this story,
novel structure.
And you're holding
the book now.
>> Tope Folarin: Yeah, it worked.
It works really well.
Tomás, I wanted to ask you
a bit about your book.
Now I have to say that I knew--
I know you as a poet.
That's how I have engaged
with your work in the past.
And so I was surprised
when I saw your name
on the NEA list of fellows
as a prose winner.
>> Tomás Q. Morín: I was too.
>> Tope Folarin: Yeah, I was
really taken aback by that.
And I thought, wow, I was like,
it’s the same dude
that I've been reading
his poetry for a while.
So I was wondering
if you could talk about
the decision to pivot
to prose after
a career spent writing
and publishing poetry?
>> Tomás Q. Morín: Yeah, it's funny.
In the first two books
of poetry that I published,
most of the poems
are written through
either the rather
dramatic monologues
or written personas,
through masks.
And I made that decision
early on
because I thought,
who would ever want
to read anything about my life?
My life is so boring.
It's like it's not the stuff
of literature.
So I was always writing
through behind this mask.
It was my life, but always
once or twice removed.
So, then to pivot
to prose memoir.
What had happened
was I was telling these stories
about my father figures,
about growing up
in South Texas,
that I'd been telling them
with close friends for years.
And there came
a moment where
I retold the story to
a friend and I had--
it wasn't that I misremembered it,
but I told it differently enough
that the friend noticed,
and said, well,
I thought last time--
well, first time you told me
that story, this was different.
And I thought, Oh, yeah,
that's right.
And I realized that I had
hit this point where
the memories were
really changing with me
and growing as I was changing
and growing as a person.
And the people that
I wrote about were no longer
with me or in my life anymore.
And so the stories had always--
they sort of functioned
as a way to preserve them,
right, to preserve these people.
And I thought, if I can
put them down in prose,
then maybe what will happen
is there's this thing
that Annie Dillard said once.
It was a word of caution
for people
who write nonfiction;
personal nonfiction.
That sometimes when
you put a story from
your life down on paper,
it fossilizes it
and it stops changing with you.
>> Tope Folarin: So true.
>> Tomás Q. Morín: It fossilize it,
and then you keep growing,
but that past event is
now frozen
because you've used language
to freeze it.
And that was what I hoped
would happen.
But in the sense also,
I wanted to make my father,
my surrogate father,
my grandfather,
like their speech,
their the rhythms
of their bodies,
I wanted to make them live
on the page
in the way that my
younger self remembered them.
So it was partly
an act of preservation
and I didn't know
if I could do it.
And it was just,
just trying to--
the muse gives you homework
and you do your best
to complete the assignment.
>> Tope Folarin: Yeah.
Thank you for that.
As a fellow Texan, I was
drawn to the evocative ways
that you describe Texas
in your memoir.
You write about Texas with
such like unflinching honesty
and a sense
of intimacy as well.
Could you describe
how your childhood
And Texas specifically
shaped you
and how your relationship
to Texas
has shaped your memoir as well?
>> Tomás Q. Morín: Yeah,
it's such a great question.
I grew up in a town that was,
I think it probably still is,
probably 90% Latinx,
but yet at the same time,
I felt invisible.
I always felt like I was
on the outside.
And Texas is --
I mean ask any Texan,
right, it's big.
it's large, it's vast.
But at the same time,
that vastness,
it can feel empty.
And that emptiness
and trying to find a way
to live within that emptiness
and survive it
and thrive in it was sort of
the project of my childhood,
which then as a writer
my task was to try to,
okay, so how can
I recreate that struggle?
But yeah, it's--
Texas is -- we were
talking yesterday,
it's such a weird place.
And it's like three
or four states all in one.
Geographically it's
incredibly different.
So in particular the small town
where I grew up in,
so 90% Latinx.
but yet in my memory,
all the doctors,
the store owners,
police chief,
all of the mayor, the  city
leaders, they were all white.
So all of the sort of positions
of power,
many of the teachers that
I remember from my childhood,
I was shocked when I found
out what the percentage was.
I thought, oh, I thought
we were in the minority
because in all of these
positions
of power and authority,
all I saw were faces
that didn't look like mine.
>> Tope Folarin: Yeah.
>> Tomás Q. Morín: Yeah.
So it was-- I mean,
what part of Texas
are you from?
I mean, it's a--
>> Tope Folarin: North Texas.
So places like Carrollton,
Arlington,
places that are close
to Dallas and Fort Worth.
So a different Texas from
the Texas you grew up in.
Yeah, and you're right.
Like I've been to South Texas
and I'm like, where am I?
It just feels like
a different place.
Thomas Morin: Right.
Morgan, I wanted
to ask you
about your relationship
with Maine as well.
I have a connection
to Maine also.
I spent a year at Bates College
in Lewiston, Maine,
and met my wife there.
And so it's a very special
place for us.
It's very cold place as well
for many parts of
a large parts of the year.
But I also, when I was in Maine,
started reading the
work of Caroline Chou,
the great sort of working class.
She writes about white
working-class folks
in Maine in really
compelling ways.
And when I read her work,
for me, it was the first time
that I started to think
that it would be possible
for me to render
my reality on the page
because it was obvious
that she was doing this.
And one of the great moments
of my time in Maine
was when she came
to visit our English class
and talked in depth
about her process
and her work
and everything else.
So I wanted to ask you too
about how Maine,
as a geographical location,
has impacted and
influenced your work.
>> Morgan Talty: Yeah,
I think I mean--
so I grew up on the
Penobscot Indian Nation,
which is in the Bangor area,
but it's an island that is
in the middle of
the Penobscot River.
And so you have
to take the bridge to go
to get onto the reservation.
And so I grew up there and
it was-- it kind of felt like
one big giant house
in a sense
Everyone was related to each
other in some way. Right.
There goes the cliché
and end of fiction.
Everybody's your cousin.
But I think that
tight knit community,
knowing everybody,
somehow everybody knew
what you had done
before you'd done it,
like that type of
that type of setting.
And I think also a lot
of the systemic issues
that were in that place,
drug and alcohol addiction,
and then mental illness
and chronic diseases
caused by federal
government rations
throughout the years.
I think all of that
has influenced
my writing in a way
that is inescapable.
And I think to not address
those types of things
would be sort of an
injustice in a way.
So it's the people of that
place that have really
sort of given me
the courage and I think
the content to write about
but it's also the place to,
I think we--
it's funny how--
we were just talking
about language.
And then you put,
once you use the language,
you freeze something, right?
And I think
for Penobscot people,
it's place is just
an extremely important idea.
I mean, in the Penobscot language,
there's Panawahpskek
which is--
I'm going to poorly translate it
because I can never
get it right.
But like where the water
descends upon the rocks.
And if you were to say
a Penobscot person,
you would take that word
and change the suffix.
So it would say,
instead of Panawahpskek,
it would be Penawapskewi,
one word.
So a person who is
a part of this place.
And that's
a completely different
than English language, right?
Like in Penobscot,
that's one word.
It's connected.
Whereas in English
it's I am from Maine.
Everything is separated.
So there's this sense of
actual physical relationship
to that place.
And so, in my book,
I treat place
very much like
a character.
It's a way that
my characters are able
to make sense of themselves,
make sense of their ancestors,
my ancestors.
And I also think too,
speaking outside of
this indigenous community,
there is also that sort of
Mainer attitude to the book.
Somebody asked me once,
they're like,
would you describe this
as a Mainer book?
And I was like,
in a way, yeah,
because the river
or the woods,
all of this stuff,
it's just, and,
>> Tope Folarin: I can never ,get the accent right.
It's Maine-uh or is it?
>> Morgan Talty: Yeah.
My father in law
has really thick Northern Maine,
accent and, yeah.
I won't even try to do it.
But yeah, it's,
I think that community,
that place has
just been central.
I can't imagine writing
anywhere else,
writing about anywhere
else with my fiction.
>> Tope Folarin: Sure, sure.
So we are all here  as
recent recipients of fellowships
from the National Endowment
for the Arts.
And I, I have to say that for--
so, speaking personally,
it's been like an incredible
honor for me.
I longed, kind of--
every couple of years
when the list of pros
sort of fellowship winners
is announced,
I'd peruse the list
and I'd see
my favorite writers
on that list.
And for me, getting
that fellowship
is kind of a marker that
I have arrived in a way.
And it's so meaningful
that the government
has said in a way, like
we notice the work you're doing.
We think it's worthy of,
sort of love
and perhaps more important
than that of money.
And here you go.
Here's a significant sum of
money to continue your work.
I wanted to ask both of you
how sort of your impressions
of the fellowship,
perhaps before
you got it,
and how getting that fellowship
has impacted your life
and your trajectory
as an artist.
Start with you, Tomás.
>> Tomás Q. Morín: Yeah.
I'd applied for the
NEA Fellowship in Poetry
for about ten, twelve years
or so.
Never received it.
And near the tail end of that,
I started writing some essays
and publishing some essays.
And I had applied
for the NEA Fellowship
in prose once before
I was awarded the fellowship.
And because
I had published enough
to meet the requirements.
And I almost didn't apply
the second time
because I thought,
well they already said no once.
I mean, I've been publishing poetry.
Maybe I'm just moonlighting.
It doesn't feel like it,
but it feels like that's
the message I'm getting.
And, I think it was the week
the application was due.
I thought, well, the odds
of winning this
are better than
winning the lottery.
So it's not really costing me
anything to apply again.
So I went ahead
and sent my application in,
and then forgot about it.
I completely forgot about it.
So for me, being
chosen felt like, okay,
like someone sees me
as a prose writer
who is worthy enough
to be in the company
of folks like the
two of you,
Laura Vandenberg,
Melissa Febos,
and these other prose writers
that I admire.
And I thought, okay,
like I'm not,
I'm not a moonlighter anymore.
I'm doing the thing, I belong --
I feel like I belong
in this group
and can't just call
myself a poet
who also writes
X, Y, Z anymore.
I'm a writer.
I'm a writer now.
>> Tope Folarin: How about getting
that call from Amy Stolz,
who's the literary director
of the NEA?
What was that experience like?
>> Tomás Q. Morín: Yeah.
>> Tope Folarin: Who is here
I believe as well.
Shout out to Amy.
>> Tomás Q. Morín: He’s is
right there.
I was in Terminal C
of the Houston Airport
of the Bush Airport.
And whenever I happen
to pass by the Thai place,
that was right where
I was when I received the call,
like I always remember that.
And I always take
it as a good omen.
So on the way over here,
I was supposed to fly
at a Terminal E.
Flight got canceled.
And then they said,
okay, new plane, Terminal C.
So I hustled over there
and I walked right by the spot --
>> Tope Folarin: Oh, that's great.
>> Tomás Q. Morín: --where I
received the call.
And I thought, okay, this
is going to be a good flight.
It's going to be smooth,
which it was.
But yeah, it was just--
--it was an incredible moment.
>> Tope Folarin: Yeah. Yeah.
Morgan, how about you,
your experience with
the NEA Fellowship?
>> Morgan Talty: Yeah. I mean,
I knew  immediately
I was going to get one.
[audience laughs]
So I'm in a similar
-- same with Tomás
that I used to always
see the list of people
who would be
awarded the funding.
And I remember, I think
it was maybe in 2018,
maybe that I looked
finally at like the criteria,
which I think it was
like five stories published
in like three
different magazines.
And I wasn't there yet.
And then I did
get there eventually
and I was like,
I'm going to apply.
I'm like, why?
Why not apply?
And I got extremely lucky.
I applied once
and got it all right.
For what did you say,
it was like 49 attempts?
>> Tomás Q. Morín: Yeah.
>> Morgan Talty: But it was just--
like I didn't believe.
Amy had called me
and I was an adjunct
and I'm sitting in my office
with my other adjunct friend,
and we were complaining
about money.
And then I get this call,
and I didn't believe
it was real.
I think, I was like,
I don't know,
who you are,
what do you want?
And then the mention of the NEA,
and I'm like 25,000?
And so it was it just felt it
did it felt very validating
in a way to be part of
a long line of people
who have received
this type of funding
to support work and
who have gone
on to produce work that
has become influential
and unforgettable
and part of
a canon of writing
that will forever exist.
And I'm just extremely,
extremely grateful
to be part of that lineage
and continue to see
others get it.
>> Tope Folarin: Cool.
Thank you so much.
I wanted to pause
for just a moment
and ask if any of you
have any questions right now.
Anything comes to mind.
Any and all questions
are acceptable.
Yes. Please feel free
to approach the microphone.
>> So I just want to ask,
I haven't heard a thing
about an agent.
Should you go that route
or should you just keep
sending things off
and keeping your
fingers crossed?
>> Tomás Q. Morín: There are many
different roads
to get to where-- your work
to where you want it to go.
I have an agent now.
The agent I had before,  things
ended up not working out.
And I sold the memoir myself
to the University
of Nebraska Press.
So there are some
presses where
you don't need an agent.
You can just send things
over the transom,
doing your homework
and figuring out
what the different
avenues are and
what you need in order
to have access to them,
I think is really important.
>> Thank you.
>> Morgan Talty: And yeah,
I think to go on that if--
I'm coming at this from
a fiction point of view.
If you're a fiction writer,
I think,
and if you want
to publish a novel
or a story collection
with a major press,
you're going to need
an agent to get in there.
But you can publish without
an agent as you did.
There are contests
out there, too.
They're all leaving
me right now,
where you can submit
a manuscript,
and I think,
is it the Iowa?
>> Tomás Q. Morín: Iowa?
Yeah, yeah.
>> Morgan Talty: Iowa
has the contest.
they publish the book.
But yeah, agents
can be really helpful
or they can just be not
helpful at all.
I had an agent who just
didn't do anything
for me for a year.
The agent I have now feels
like an older sister.
And so it's like you can get--
the biggest advice
is if you don't feel like
you're getting--
the agent works for you,
remember that, okay?
And if they-- if you get
an agent
and they're not doing what
they’re supposed to be doing,
just be like, bye, and try
to find somebody else.
But yeah, I think for fiction,
do your research.
Look in the back of
your favorite books
in the acknowledgements
sections to see
who your favorite writers
have thanked
for having a specific agent,
and add them to the list
of people
you might want to
reach out to.
>> Thank you.
Thank you.
>> Tope Folarin: Yes.
thank you for that question.
The one thing I would add
to that is that I think
it's incredibly important
to ensure that your work
is solid before--
I think we all teach.
And so we get these
questions a lot
about agents and such.
And one thing I
sometimes see is
that folks want to
start the process
of looking for an
agent before their work
is as solid as it needs to be.
So, if you're really sort
of secure in the work
and that it's polished
and other folks
have read it and like it a lot,
then I think you can
start the process.
But, and also agents are,
it's about what you
want to do.
If you want to sort of,
as Morgan said,
publish with a big press
and the rest of it.
Like that is a key part of it.
But know that you're
entering a process
that is difficult and has
its own issues
and you have to keep
the faith.
But thank you
for that question.
>> Morgan Talty: Thank you.
>> Tope Folarin: Please.
>> I wonder how you've gauged
your growth as writers,
particularly in the absence
of reaching that point
where you've been published?
>> Tomás Q. Morín: For me,
a key thing was the--
I don't know if that Ira Glass?
It's a really short piece on--
it's like a paragraph long,
on taste.
And if you just Google
Ira Glass taste,
right, it'll come up;
tons of images of it.
But he says something
in there that
he wishes he had known
when he started out,
which I wish I had known
when I started out,
which was that in the beginning,
what brings you -- one of
the things that brings you
to writing is your taste.
As a reader, you have
impeccable taste.
And that's also the reason
why your work
often feels like it falls short.
And the only way
to overcome that hump
is to keep writing more
and more and more.
Because the more
you practice it,
the more you do it, the more
your skill will increase.
And hopefully what
will happen is that
that gap between
your taste and your skill
will start decreasing slowly.
So there came a point
where I would read
my stuff and I would
not feel absolutely
just disgusted by it,
by how it wasn't as good
as Writer X, Y or Z,
where I would think
like, oh, okay,
that's pretty good.
And then eventually
I'd get to a place where like,
okay, this is better
than anything
I've ever done before.
So those were really important
milestones for me.
>> Morgan Talty: Yeah.
I would say a lot of
the same that you
had just said, Tomás.
I think I am very--
when it comes to my own work,
I'm just never
really satisfied with it.
One thing I had,
one of my first mentors,
the writer Rick Bass,
said to me,
he was like,
you need to learn
when to stop overworking
the story
because I would become so--
like I felt like it
could be better,
but I would work it so hard that
I would run it into the ground.
And so for me I had to learn
a lot about sort of patience
and so many writers talk
about time
as being their worst enemy,
but it's also, paradoxically,
our best friend
in learning to set things aside
and move on
to something else and
go back, back and forth,
find this balance,
this rhythm.
And I think through doing
that practice of writing,
that practice of engaging
in a story, leaving it,
doing something else,
going back, revising,
and however your process is,
doing that over a series
of years and years and years,
you get to a point when
you start to sort of understand
how you work but
I always caution people
to never feel settled
because the moment
you feel settled is the moment
you have stopped
I think, trying to progress.
Like every time I approach
a new project,
I pretend I'm just
a new writer again.
Like, I think that's just
so important because
each book is so different
and has its own logic
that we have to figure out.
But by that point in time,
we have the skills,
the craft skills necessary
to sort of communicate
with it in a way
to produce the text.
But, it's a combination
of reading nonstop
and writing nonstop.
>> Tomás Q. Morín: An interviewer
once asked
Philip Levine, how do
when a poem is done?
And he said, when I've stopped
making it worse.
>> Tope Folarin: That's
perfect advice.
>> Thank you both.
>> Morgan Talty: Thank you.
>> I think both of your work
has been published
in Poets and Writers,
and I was wondering
how literary magazines
like Poets and Writers
and others go into the mix
for you in each of your work?
>> Tomás Q. Morín: For me,
like Poets and Writers,
along with like the
Writers Marketplace
that you mentioned earlier,
it's always been
a way to keep up with
what's going on
in the community, what's new.
I love the different features
in the magazine.
And, as I've been
in this now since 2000, right,
been working as a writer.
To now I've gotten
to a place where sometimes,
my friends are on the cover
and their pieces are in there.
So now it's a way
to keep up with  the people
I know and I respect
and even the people
that I admire from a distance
what they're what
they're up to.
So, yeah, that's how
that's how
it's been important to me.
>> Morgan Talty: Yeah.
I think for me,
literary magazines have
been this like,
they've been closer
to art in a way,
I think, than-- this isn't,
I'm not trying to badmouth
big publishing or anything,
but I think looking at
literary magazines
and journals they're
usually underpaid
or not paid at all.
And they're doing this
out of love for literature.
And so what you're
getting is really,
I think, strong work
that you won't
usually see in the mainstream.
And I just say subscribe
to all of them.
And you'll be like Harry Potter
when those letters are coming.
You'll just, especially if you
subscribe to The New Yorker.
>> Tope Folarin: Yeah.
>> Morgan Talty: That one
will come nonstop.
Don't forget to turn auto
renew off if you get a deal.
>> Morgan Talty: But yeah, yeah.
They are central
and my first love and yeah.
Thank you for that question.
>> Tomás Q. Morín: Thank you.
>> Hi. Thank you
for being here.
My name is Gabriel.
My question is for Tomás.
I'm really excited about
reading your memoir.
I haven't read it yet, but
I've read about it.
I actually grew up with
a father who's bipolar,
and he had a lot
of manic episodes.
So I actually developed
OCD as a kid as well
to deal with my changing,
constant environment.
So it's really inspired that
you decided to write about it.
And I was wondering if there
was a point in your process,
did you struggle at all
with sharing your story?
One thing about COVID
was it was so great
about bringing about
the awareness
of mental illness
in our society.
And I'm just wondering,
like, did you struggle
with any shame
about telling your story
or was there a pivotal moment
where you were like,
you know what?
Forget that,
I really want to just share this,
or was it kind of just
a long process?
>> Tomás Q. Morín: Great question.
And thank you for sharing
your struggles with it.
I can't answer the question
without saying
how important therapy
and talking about
my mental illness has been,
like those sessions
with my therapist
and just having
the language to think
about it and to have
it be normalized.
Like, I can't underestimate
or overestimate
how important that's been.
So by the time I got
to writing the memoir,
I felt like I had the tools
necessary to write
about the presentation
of that illness
and then how it's developed
over my life
and how I still struggle
with it in an honest way,
in a way that I hope comes
across as different
than mental illness is often,
or the addiction
that my father figures had.
That's different than the way
they're usually portrayed
in other literary works
where someone--
you can tell right off the
bat if like,
if a character's addiction
or a character's mental illness
is a way to increase
a dramatic tension.
I wanted to write something
where mental illness
and addiction were
not literary devices
in order to tell a good story,
but they were part of
the story of who
these people were
and are.
And I felt I wasn't seeing
enough of that.
So I thought, well, let me see
what I can do
in my own small way to try
to put that on a page.
>> Tope Folarin: Thank you for
that question.
I think we have about
five minutes left.
There's so much more
I want to ask both of you
but time is running short,
so I'll settle on this, Thomas,
and shout out, by the way,
for the Guggenheim,
I know you just recently
got them as well.
Congratulations
to you for that.
I was reading an interview
you recently gave to
Texas Monthly.
And I was really struck
by something
you said at the
end of that interview.
You said, for three books now,
I’ve been exploring
suffering and trauma
and how we survive that.
I feel like I'm ready
to explore how we thrive
when we are
in a state of crisis,
not just survive anymore.
So I wanted to
ask both of you.
We are inhabiting
a kind of state of crisis.
There's all kinds of crises
that we're grappling with
as a society now, whether
it's the climate crisis,
democracy seems to be
not as strong as it was before.
And I wanted to ask
both of you as artists,
how we can get to
a place where we sort of
create stories that
teach us as artists
and our audiences
how to survive
and even thrive during
these difficult times.
So I'll start with you, Morgan.
>> Morgan Talty: Yeah, I think
my answer kind of goes back
to what you were saying
about not wanting to put
addiction or mental illness
as the literary device,
and I think
the same
is true about crisis itself.
It's not about what's--
it's not about the crisis,
I think.
it is, but it's about the people
who are experiencing it.
And I feel like there's the term
that's used is like misery porn.
Like there's so much like
literature out there that is,
takes its emotional journey
through manipulating
the reader to feel a certain way
because of a mental illness
or something
or a specific type of trauma.
And I think we need
to tell stories
because we are in
a state of crisis.
We have to think about
how we tell these stories,
how we position them,
how we choose to look at it.
For me, I think the best fiction
or the fiction I hope to see
and the fiction I hope
to write is the fiction
that really doesn't come--
it comes from the inside
of the character outward,
as opposed to looking at
the character and moving inward.
I think it's about trying
to articulate more than
the afflictions and the crises
that are occurring
and trying to figure out how
these characters live with it,
how they put up with it,
how they sort of try
to transcend it,
how they try to heal
through it,
and maybe even trying
to figure out
a way out of that crisis,
right, not for, again,
to make money,
but for an actually
trying to bring about
change in a sense.
>> Tope Folarin: Yeah.
It's a wonderful answer.
Thank you so much.
And Tomás.
>> Tomás Q. Morín: I think for me,
I feel like crisis,
it makes you feel like
you're in a bubble.
So I feel like I've done
a really good job
so far of writing and
exploring inside that bubble.
But I want to write
about characters and people
who are in the bubble,
within the bubble,
but then also write
what's outside the bubble
and make room on the page
for that that space.
That space which--
I feel, this is just
my instinct.
I don't know,
but I feel like hope
is somewhere
outside that bubble,
And so that's sort of
my project.
Hope and survival are
outside that bubble,
finding a way to pierce it,
getting the person to
look up from their grief
or their rage and
remember that, oh,
like I'm also a living,
breathing creature
in this world.
>> Tope Folarin: How do you do that?
>> Tomás Q. Morín: As honestly
as possible.
>> Tope Folarin: Yeah.
>> Tomás Q. Morín: Yeah, as honestly
as possible.
>> Tope Folarin: I think we should end there.
It's a wonderful sentiment
to end on.
I can't even begin to express
how wonderful
it's been to be in conversation
with both of you.
Please buy their books.
They will be signing books
again at 12:30.
Such a pleasure to be on
the stage with both of you.
And thank all of you so much
for coming to this conversation.
>> Morgan Talty: Thank you.
>> Tomás Q. Morín: Thank you.