Today I’m writing about two mentors because, as you will see, Isabel Zuber and Kathryn Stripling Byer are so intertwined in my experience, it’s hard to write about them separately.

 Izabel Zuber’s poetry collections include Oriflamb and Winter’s Exile. Her novel, so beautifully crafted that it reads like poetry, is Salt, a novel of Appalachia.

Isabel grew up in Boone, NC and lived her adult life in Winston Salem where she was a librarian at Wake Forest. And while being a librarian is an honorable profession, and has given Isabel an extensive knowledge of books and their content, Isabel Zuber is so much more than a librarian that I cannot describe her so narrowly. Herbalist, philosopher, ardent feminist are just a few additional aspects that come to mind.

 Isabel is so much a part of my writing life that I can’t remember exactly where we met. I think we were introduced by Charlotte Ross at an Appalachian Writers Association meeting, or maybe we met through the NC Writers Network. (Isabel, if you read this, and remember, please remind me!) In any case, Isabel supported me in ways beyond definition. But in a most concrete way, Isabel shared a room with me for years at the annual Appalachian Writers Association meeting and at the SELU Writers Retreat at Radford University—at first a week-long, and then two-week-long writing retreat that Isabel and I helped to found along with short story author Tamara Baxter, nonfiction writer Heidi Hartwiger, teacher Judy Miller, and fellow writer and then SELU Retreat Director Parks Lanier, who at the time was Chair of the English Department and President of AWA. 

 Each summer I’d picked Isabel up in Winston Salem and we’d head for the mountains of Virginia. One year we asked Parks if he could arrange for some of us to stay in the dorm at Radford for a week preceding the AWA meeting, so that we might have a writing retreat. He did this. After a year or two, we asked for two weeks preceding the meeting. This is what we discovered: It took us from Sunday afternoon to Wednesday to “let go” of our lives (our jobs, families, worries, responsibilities) so that we could immerse ourselves in our writing. And on Friday of that first week, when the conference attendees showed up, we felt interrupted. So we asked for the second week. Then, beginning on that first Wednesday, after we were settled in and serious about our writing enterprise, we could write like crazy all day, maybe share a quick breakfast or lunch in the commons room for those on a similar schedule, and a communally produced supper. We’d read our work to each other at night. On the two-week schedule, by the second Friday we were antsy for something else, and the AWA conference attendees would show up and we’d celebrate, have a good meeting, and be ready to go home that final Sunday.

So that I could come for that retreat each year on my tight single-parent budget, Isabel shared a room with me (I snore like a freight train) and on a few occasions helped pay my way. Isabel also read versions upon versions of my poems and stories. And when the time came, and I had a novel to share, Isabel eagerly asked her agent to take a look.

I know Kathryn Stripling Byer (Kay) through Isabel and Lee Smith. I can’t remember for certain where I met Kay either. It just feels like I’ve always known Kay and Isabel forever. They are close friends themselves. I think Lee Smith introduced me to Kay at a Lee Smith Festival in North Carolina.

I have never had a formal university course in poetry writing. Aside from my week-long class with Robert Morgan in the 80s at Hindman Settlement School, what I’ve had most is Kay’s careful attention to my work over the years and her generous feedback, along with Isabel’s. I truly apprenticed myself to Kay, and she reciprocated with generous feedback, coaching, and at times hard truth. When my poetry manuscript was accepted by LSU Press, Kay—LSU Press poet—became my editor. Together, we cut my manuscript in half to accommodate the Press’s standard poetry volume format.  Every time Kay takes a red pen to my work, I learn something valuable. And while I don’t always make the choices she’d like me to make, I always listen to her advice and more often than not, I follow it.

Now, as NC Poet Laureate, Kay influences numerous writers of all ages and in all stages of writing. She is a tireless advocate of the public arts and humanities and demonstrates her commitment to the writing community everyday in this important civic and creative role.

Kay Byer’s other books of poetry include: The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest, Black Shawl, Catching Light, Wake, and Coming to Rest. For more information on Kay Byer, go to:  http://www.ncarts.org/freeform_scrn_template.cfm?ffscrn_id=176.

This is a serendipitous blog entry today. As I lay awake last night, contemplating this woman-apprentice entry, writing about these two women seemed an inseparable task. Then, when I got up this morning to extract two scene storm word lists from their work, I opened my copy of Byer’s Wildwood Flower, an there in the front were the handwritten words “Merry Christmas & Happy Birthday, Darnell. From Isabel, 1992.” Then I opened Zuber’s novel Salt, and there in the beginning is the epitaph: Kay Byer’s poem “Empty Glass” from Wildwood Flower. You see? Inseparable!

We often think of who supports our writing, who teaches us, who helps us. But who do we help? Who do we teach? What writers do we in turn support and nurture? I hope I have become for others the mentor these women have been for me.

It is my firm belief that we are all angels for one another at different times in our lives. Sometimes we are the angel, sometimes we are the beneficiary of an angel’s graces. At this time of stars, angels, gifts, and lighted candles, think about how you can be a gift to someone, think about how you can give some small or large encouragement to another writer or artist who needs a positive stroke of some kind. Remember, the best gifts don’t come in a box.

Since so many of you are on vacation this holiday season, I’m giving you two scene storms word lists today, one from Isabel Zuber’s Salt and one from Kay Byer’s Wildwood Flower.

Scene Storm Word List #1 from Salt:

upright

grass

rebuilt

rent

revival

handkerchiefs

joke

ash

punish

salt

Scene Storm Word List #2 from Wildwood Flower:

snow

skirt

maple

cast

strike

sorrel

underbrush

skatter

ivory

croon