Residency over for emerging author

Robert Henry Becker Arizona Summer Wildcat Caroline Langston is the current resident of the UA Poetry Center1s Summer Residency Program. Langston will read in the Modern Languages Auditoriun Wednesday Night.

Karen Falkenstrom believes writing is similar to planting a field, it requires nurturing.

Falkenstrom, program coordinator for the University of Arizona's Poetry Center, said the center's Summer Residency Program was started to help emerging authors cultivate their writing skills.

Begun in 1994, the residency is designed to be a month-long opportunity for authors to write without distraction.

The center views supporting the creation of literature as one of its responsibilities. The residency is designed to help fulfill that duty, Falkenstrom said.

"We don't require anything. For the resident, this is an exercise in self-discipline," she said.

This year's resident, Caroline Langston, said she regrets that her month is nearly over.

"It's going to be terrible to leave," she said.

"I wake up, drink my coffee, and write for six or seven hours a day, six days a week," she said. "I've done what I came to do."

Prior to the inception of the summer residency, the guest house of the Poetry Center sat vacant, or housed featured authors for short periods of time.

At first, the program was open to all authors but by the second year the format changed, Falkenstrom said. The first recipient was a widely published poet, but now the residency is primarily aimed toward unpublished authors.

"We really rethought the residency. These kinds of residencies and colonies are really crucial for aspiring writers," she said.

Applicants now may not have published more than one full-length book.

"We look for people who are on the threshold of their careers," Falkenstrom said.

"I get the feeling that when people leave here, they will have their first book published soon.

"It's really exciting to be a part of this kind of building-up of emerging writers' success."

Nationally advertised in various literary journals, this year's residency attracted about 150 applicants.

Submitted manuscripts were read by a jury of published authors, faculty and students, who selected one resident and one runner-up.

Langston was the first fiction writer ever chosen.

"We wanted to keep the institution open to all genres," Falkenstrom said.

Langston, who describes herself as a slightly published author, was attracted to the literary community of Tucson when she applied for the residency.

Born in Mississippi and currently teaching literature at Rose Hill College in South Carolina, Langston said she applied because of the experience and southwest landscape the residency offered.

"At Rose Hill, I am surrounded by wonderful people, but there are no other authors. Here, I am in a literary community again," she said.

But Langston cautions against diving into a literary career.

"At first it's a great gift, then it becomes work and a vocation," she said.

"You have to do a balancing act between trusting your own vision of the truth and reporting that accurately. You can't get caught up in the psychology of it. You need to have the ability to take a dispassionate view of yourself, and you need persistence," she said.

Falkenstrom sees the residency as beneficial to both the aspiring author and the surrounding community.

For UA writing students, the program offers a tangible example of what they need to shoot for, she said.

While the community at large sees the residency as a reinforcement that our literary community is living and thriving, Falkenstrom said.