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Marketing and University Communication UW-Green Bay, CL 815 2420 Nicolet Drive Green Bay, WI 54311-7001 (920) 465-2626 E-mail: hildebrs@uwgb.edu Last update: 9/26/07 |
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In
the News Archive - Year:
January 23, 2005 Jean Peerenboom column: By Jean Peerenboom The book won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, which
carried a $1,000 prize and publication.
The stories came about while she was working on her master's degree
in fine arts in Bowling Green, Ky., between 1992 and 1994. "I had no real
sense that it would become a collection," she said. "Success never really
occurred to me. I was in an MFA program, I was 22 and having fun."
When she went to Ohio to work on a doctorate, she got a job as a teaching
assistant.
"What I learned was that I love teaching." She's now an assistant professor
at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay teaching English, creative and
fiction writing courses as well as an African-American literature course.
She also is an adviser for the Literary Journal on campus.
When she needed a project for her doctorate, she resurrected the idea
of a collection of stories.
"I had no idea for a novel and I like short stories. I like reading
them; I like writing them," Meacham said. From there her 150-pages for
a collection took shape.
She gets her ideas from little discordant moments in people's lives.
"I'm not a big plot person," she said. "I like characters, conflict and
how they confront conflict."
At one point, her husband, Chuck Rybak, who was working at a Catholic
school while they were in Ohio, let her cast a musical.
"It was the best present ever," she said. She also was experiencing
pressure from her family "to produce a grandchild and all my friends were
having babies."
She was working with crafts and art supplies as well. The first story
in the book, "Trim & Notions," combines a musical, pregnancy and art.
It won the Indiana Review's Fiction Prize in 2002.
Another story, "Weights and Measures," won the Chelsea Award for Short
Fiction in 2002.
She urges her writing students to keep a journal, to go somewhere and
watch people. It's advice she takes to heart and the product of her observations
make compelling stories with unforgettable characters.
The final story, a tender look at a father and daughter, was "exhilarating
to write. I was talking to my father for this one. I asked him questions
like what kind of car did you drive in the '60s?" The story involves vacuum
cleaners and she had to do quite a bit of research on them. "I enjoy the
pleasure of finding these things," she said.
"I ask questions, watch and listen while trying to make myself invisible,"
she said.
Meacham anticipates another collection, though she has no timetable
for herself. There were a number of ideas that didn't make it into this
collection. "This collection is sort of 'dark,'" she said. "It has dead
babies, stalkers and a dead neighbor." The next one will be "lighter.
It doesn't feel so sad."
She is also thinking about a nonfiction piece about some events in her
childhood. She is looking to summer vacation to get serious about writing.
She and Rybak have a home in Hobart, where they each retreat to a study
to write. He's a poet and teaches at the University of Wisconsin Center-Washington
County.
And then there is that matter of a grandchild ... "It's on the horizon,"
said the 34-year-old author, "but first I have a book tour and publicity
to think about."
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