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Funding for this project is provided by
the Library Services and Technology Act administered by the Institute of Museum
and Library Services and the West Virginia Library Commission.
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Winner of the national Gabriel Award for programs that uplift
the human spirit.
Entertaining visits with fourteen
of West Virginia’s most celebrated writers.
Marc Harshman
Listeners will be treated to spellbinding
readings from four of Harshman's books. He represents the
many fine writers who have moved to the state. A West
Virginian for more than 30 years, Harshman combines a
national reputation as a children's writer with a talent for
storytelling performance. He tells about his early days in
West Virginia and offers insightful comments about poetry,
politics, and storytelling in West Virginia.
Glimpses from readings: Two kids watch their dad
put out a chimney fire in the snow -- a beloved uncle writes
wonderful letters, then turns out to be an alcoholic -- a
family weights their pockets with rocks so the wind won't
blow them off the mountain.. a snowbound family has a great
time when they take in strangers in a snowstorm.
Personal: Born in Indiana in 1950. Has lived in the
northern panhandle of West Virginia (now Wheeling) for over
30 years. Married Cheryl Ryan. One daughter, Sarah.
Publications: Turning Out the Stones,
State Street Press 1983; A Little Excitement, Cobblehill;
Snow Company, Cobblehill 1990; Rocks in My Pockets,
Cobblehill 1991; Only One, Cobblehill 1993; Uncle James,
Cobblehill 1993; Moving Days, Cobblehill 1995; The Storm,
Cobblehill 1995; All the Way to Morning, Marshall Cavendish
1999; Red Are the Apples, Harcourt 2001; Roads, Cavendish
2002; The Maidens, Cavendish, forthcoming.
Education and Career: BA Bethany College 1973. MAR
Yale University Divinity School 1975. MA University of
Pittsburgh 1978. West Virginia Elementary teacher,
children's literature writer and scholar, storyteller, poet.
Awards: Reading Rainbow Review
Title; The Storm - Junior Library Guild Selection,
Smithsonian Institute Notable Book, Parents Choice
Award; WV English Teacher of the Year, 1995, WV English
and Language Arts Council; WV Commission on the Arts
Fellowship in poetry, 2000 ; A Little Excitement
translated into Swedish and Danish.
Reviewers' Comments:
-"Harshman delivers more plot and action than is usual
in picture books, seamlessly injecting a sense of how
[the character] handles everyday life." (Booklist)
"A bleak realistic story--a perceptive, well-told story
[Uncle James]" (Kirkus Reviews)
-"The story [A Little Excitement], with its folksy
appeal, is well plotted and gripping." (Horn Book)
-"Without being maudlin, the first-person narrative
[Moving Days] quietly evokes the mixture of sadness,
fear, and anticipation that comes with leaving the old
and beginning anew. Harshman's soothing words never
coddle." (Horn Book)
-"Harshman portrays everyday people in folktale-like
circumstances, giving his works an air of
timelessness." (Biography Resource Center)
Excerpts from In Their Own Country:
Marc: Virginia Hamilton - my vote as
America's finest writer of children's books - Virginia
Hamilton says that all people are storytellers. And the most
fundamental form of tale-telling is gossip. That delicious
story of our everyday lives. And when those tales are shaped
and polished, passed from one hand to another, from one
generation to another, they transcend whatever they started
out to be and become, in her words, folk tale. Or, in my
words, they simply become Story. And that's what I was
hearing at that supper table. And I don't think I've stopped
listening every since.
Marc: ...One of the things I like to
tell parents and teachers both is that, with that table gone
from the lives of so many of our children - and I say
children in the larger sense - then it becomes our
responsibility as teachers and educators, as artists, to
recreate that story table, I like to call it. To recreate
that story table wherever we can, be it in our schools, our
community centers, our synagogues and churches, wherever we
can.
And when I say that, I don't mean that we
have to become storytellers ourselves, as some sort of
professional thing. No, no, what I mean is simply that we
recreate that time when we're simply sitting together. And
not just us, talking to them, but allowing our children to
talk to us, to let them tell us their fledgling stories. And
it's just so, so crucial.
Marc: ...You know that, to be good at
anything in this life, you have to practice. You can't be a
great ball player, simply by watching the games on the tube.
You've got to get out and run and throw and dribble and
pass, whatever the sport is.
You can't become a great musician simply by
listening to the music. You have to practice your
instrument, your flute, your piano, your fiddle. The same's
true for a writer. I can't simply read, wonderful and
feeding and nurturing as that is. I do need to do the
practice, the actual writing. So I try to make sure that
there I am, at my desk, scribbling away on those days.
Seeing what will happen.
Well, one afternoon in Moundsville, many
years ago, I was sitting at my desk at our home in
Moundsville, scribbling away, trying to make one word go
together with another one here, make some spark happen. And
all of the sudden, the magic descended. And I wrote down
these words: "There may be a million stars. But there is
only one sky.
I didn't know what that meant or where it was
going, not for sure. I didn't know if it was going to be the
first sentence of the great American novel, if it was going
to be a story or a poem. Or a song. I really didn't! But I
LIKED the sound of those words. So I began to play with
them.
See also:
Booklist, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Biography
Resource Center,
Mountainlit.com |
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