The evening of Jan. 30 began with a bang. Or rather, a mass-cracking of knuckles. These dramatics were led by Bowers Writers House Director Jesse Waters as he introduced the first event of the spring 2014 semester at 8 p.m. last Thursday: a “Contemporary Fiction Reading with Kyle Minor.”
The Elizabethtown College event marked the second stop of Minor’s “Praying Drunk” Zero Dollar Tour. Waters joked to a packed house, “I like to start the semester off with some kind of nuance to make people remember it.” The nuance was an appropriate one, as Minor’s fiction tends to be loaded with tension-inducing scenes.
Waters felt that Minor would make an interesting first guest at Bowers as his writing has “the ability to not only make a reader absolutely engaged with those elements that make fiction, but to make the reader absolutely aware of the act of reading. That’s something that’s really important to me and that’s something that I appreciate about Minor’s work,” he said.
Minor is the author of two collections of stories: “In the Devil’s Territory” (2008) and the just-released “Praying Drunk,” which he read from Thursday evening.
His work has won him the 2012 Iowa Review Prize for Short Fiction and the Tara M. Kroger Prize for Short Fiction. He was named one of Random House’s Best New Voices of 2006 and is a three-time honoree in the Atlantic Monthly contest. Minor’s work has appeared online at Esquire and in print in The Southern Review, The Iowa Review and “Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers.” He currently writes a bi-weekly audiobook column for Salon.com and teaches creative writing at Indiana University.
Thursday’s reading was preceded by a writing workshop, during which Minor offered the following advice: “You should write about the thing you don’t want to write about, the thing you don’t want anyone to know about, and when you lay in bed at night you try not to think about. There’s a lot of power in that stuff.”
Amanda Wenrich, a junior occupational therapy major, was among those in attendance. She found the workshop very helpful. “I try to take advantage of any opportunities from which I can get hints on how to write better,” Wenrich said. “I learned that there are no boundaries to writing short fiction, and that the best way to get ideas for new fiction is by delving into the darker side of life and humanity.”
Minor offered more advice over dinner. He said aspiring writers should do two things: “First, read a lot of good stuff. You might start with the ‘Best American’ series… Get a reading list from a reader you really admire.” Minor said that his own writing has been influenced by authors such as Alice Munroe, Andres Dubus, Barry Hannah and Katherine Anne Porter. “Next,” he said, “find a really good reader. One who’s also a writer, and knows what they’re doing, to save you time by showing you ways in which you’re limiting the power of your stories. Work with them as long as they’ll let you.” Minor attributes much of his own success to these two pearls of wisdom.
Later that evening, in a convincing Southern accent, Minor read the story “The Truth and All Its Ugly” from his new collection, “Praying Drunk.” When asked where he came up with the idea for the story, Minor referred back to his advice from the workshop, telling the audience that the story is “about 90 percent nonfiction.” He then acknowledged that this “is a funny thing to say about a robot story set in the year 2024.”
After the reading, Minor took several moments to answer questions from the audience, followed by a book signing complete with chocolate fondue. Elena Peretti, a sophomore English major who had never previously read Minor’s work, decided to buy a copy of “Praying Drunk” after attending his reading. “It was an outstanding reading,” she said. “He has a very dynamic and captivating voice for his characters.”
Chad Rice, a senior English literature major, tries to attend as many Bowers events as he can. “Waters brings in some really great writers who have a vast body of different kinds of works, and the house is so small and intimate that it’s less intimidating to meet some really great authors who are published and feel less pressure,” Rice stated. “I enjoyed that Minor committed himself to just reading one short story from his book. It was a compelling story and I enjoyed his nice Southern voice, in his writing and in his voice.”
