![\"Anne](\"https:\/\/idsunmedia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Anne-Enright.P1020733-300x214.jpg\")
Anne Enright has three rules: Stay out of Brooklyn. Stay out of London. Stay out of Dublin.<\/p>\n
\u201cI break those rules all the time,\u201d she laughed. Somewhat to her surprise, she has spent most of her life in Dublin, where she is part of a growing number of celebrated women writers.<\/p>\n
Enright, the first ever Fiction Laureate of Ireland, is one of those writers, who drops bon mots with abandon. When you watch her, she seems a wee bit bored. But, rather, she\u2019s thinking about how to say things in a more succinct and poetic way. She\u2019s self-editing, as we speak.<\/p>\n
The 2016 Sun Valley Writers\u2019 Conference had a distinctly Irish appeal. Besides Enright, there was a performance of W.B. Yeats\u2019 work by the Irish Repertory Theatre of New York. Enright sat in as one of the readers of Yeats\u2019 prose at the Sun Valley Pavilion. This performance included poetry and song, and a bit of dance, followed by a standing ovation in the Pavilion.<\/p>\n
In explaining her rules, Enright said, \u201cIn those towns, people are so involved in their reputations. It maddens you to be around the froth of literary reputation too much.\u201d<\/p>\n Enright\u2019s novels are \u201cThe Wig My Father Wore,\u201d shortlisted for the Irish Times\/Aer Lingus Irish Literature Prize; \u201cWhat Are You Like?\u201d winner of the 2001 Encore Award; and \u201cThe Pleasure of Eliza Lynch\u201d and \u201cThe Gathering\u201d (2007), which won the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the Irish Novel of the Year. \u201cThe Forgotten Waltz\u201d won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Enright\u2019s latest novel, \u201cThe Green Road,\u201d was published last year.<\/p>\n Enright\u2019s breakout session was about writing 200 words a day.<\/p>\n \u201cI looked over my output in the usual state of despair that most writers live,\u201d Enright said. \u201cIf I get 200 words down \u2013 if they\u2019re good words \u2013 it\u2019s a successful day.\u201d<\/p>\n Two hundred words sound doable, until you realize she\u2019s talking about winnowing down from perhaps 1,000 words. Writing a book takes months and months of struggle to get a little, Enright said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first year is the most difficult. It takes three years to make a book but people can read a book in a day. You can have joy and pleasure from the writing process, but people who expect it to be easy are very thrown by the reality of it. I\u2019m Mrs. Reality Check.\u201d<\/p>\n Enright\u2019s latest book, \u201cThe Green Road,\u201d has been on the bestseller list in Ireland for a year.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to do a big, spacious book. You don\u2019t know why a book takes off. I\u2019m glad it\u2019s finding its feet, for sure. I was interested in ideas of goodness and compassion and doing good.\u201d<\/p>\n Enright has a sly sense of humor. It can creep up on you, like her beautifully crafted books.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is so terrible about sitting down and writing?\u201d she said. \u201cSelf-censoring is paralyzing, particularly with women. The fact is most people won\u2019t read it anyway, so it won\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n Awards, of which Enright has many, help.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re good for business. Different markets view awards differently. American sells differently than in the UK. It\u2019s a great place to sell books, the readers on the ground. The book club movement started here. Publishers work hard here.<\/p>\n Americans are so nice \u2013 so supportive,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve been to a lot of festivals. This is more thoughtful.\u201d<\/p>\n Maureen Corrigan<\/b><\/p>\n It\u2019s her voice that is so recognizable. Maureen Corrigan (yes, half Irish) gave me a mini-lesson on book criticism, and on F. Scott Fitzgerald, and \u201cThe Great Gatsby,\u201d of course.<\/p>\n Corrigan is best known as the longtime \u201cFresh Air\u201d book critic on National Public Radio. She is also a lecturer and critic-in-residence at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and the author of\u00a0two books: the memoir \u201cLeave Me Alone, I\u2019m Reading\u201d and \u201cAnd So We Read On: How \u2018The Great Gatsby\u2019 Came to Be and Why It Endures.\u201d<\/p>\n Corrigan has been a Pulitzer Prize juror and an AP essay judge. She calls herself a \u201cgatekeeper.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Born in Queens, New York, she attended Fordham University in the Bronx and graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n In 1975, when she went with beloved English teacher to the Yeats School in Sligo, Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heany was there.<\/p>\n \u201cHe would lead the American students on pub crawls,\u201d Corrigan said. \u201cWe\u2019d have to recite poetry and sing\u201d in public.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was at Fordham, I thought there was nothing better to be than an English professor, surrounded by people of like mind. But I was miserable at Penn. It was cutthroat with an atmosphere of contempt.\u201d<\/p>\n Around the same time, she began writing book reviews for the Village Voice in New York City.<\/p>\n Corrigan turned what could have been a one-time assignment into a career.<\/p>\n She was attracted to, and learned from, the works of critics of an earlier generation, people like Pauline Kael and H.L. Mencken, \u201cwho wrote fully,\u201d she said. \u201cThey were funny and enthusiastic. Irving Howe taught us that \u2018enthusiasm is not an enemy of the intellect.\u2019 I thought about their voices. You have to have substance to weigh in.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0 Corrigan receives books from many outlets, and barring those that are self-published, she reviews 45 books a year.<\/p>\n \u201cI look for the voice, something authentic in the setting,\u201d she said. \u201cI look for the power of the narrative and the internal coherency. I\u2019ll take notes on a legal pad while I\u2019m reading, or, if I\u2019m lost in a book, I\u2019ll put a sticky note on the page.\u201d<\/p>\n (Note to aspiring writers: Aim for the sticky note).<\/p>\n Corrigan also was enthusiastic about who she\u2019d met, seen and spoke to at the conference.<\/p>\n \u00a0 \u201cIt has literature, politics, psychology, the different modes of learning. People like Ryan Stevenson, Juliette Kayyem, Justice Stephen Breyer. I was speaking with Firoozeh Dumas. This was her first time and she said it spoiled her for all festivals afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n We talked Gatsby. She made me want to read it again, and then again.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so much with us,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s the greatest American novel about class, the drowning images and water, the fear of going under. I could spend a month on each page.\u201d<\/p>\n Corrigan said she liked what Jonathan Franzen once said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the central fable of America. It goes down so smoothly. It\u2019s like whipped cream.”<\/p>\n \u00a0 Corrigan\u2019s voice is like that, too. As she grew more passionate while discussing F. Scott Fitzgerald, her familiar voice became creamier, even with its Queens inflection. And so it beats on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Enright, Corrigan & the green writers\u2019 conference By Dana DuGan Anne Enright has three rules: Stay out of Brooklyn. Stay out of London. Stay out of Dublin. \u201cI break those rules all the time,\u201d she laughed. Somewhat to her surprise, she has spent most of her life in Dublin, where she is part of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-art","8":"category-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Maureen](\"https:\/\/idsunmedia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Maureen-Corrigan.P1020483-214x300.jpg\")