Crushing on Almond
Local writers' conference features edgy writer
BY NANCY _STETSON Florida Weekly Correspondent

COURTESY PHOTO Author Steve Almond will appear at this week's Sanibel Island Writers Conference at Big Arts on Sanibel

Not that you asked, but Steve Almond is a damn good writer.

If you haven't discovered him on your own, Tom DeMarchi will be glad to tell you about him, though he can't loan you his copy of Almond's latest book; he's already loaned it out yet again.

DeMarchi, instructor in the Department of Language and Literature at Florida Gulf Coast University, and director of the Sanibel Island Writers Conference, is effusive in his praise and almost evangelical in his zeal about Almond.

"All my friends have intellectual crushes on him," he says. "One woman said, 'I love Steve Almond. I want to be his new best friend.'"

DeMarchi invited Almond to speak again at this year's Sanibel Island Writers Conference, running from Oct. 4-7. Almond will teach classes in non-fiction writing, participate in a debate with literary agent Christopher Schelling, and give a reading, which is open to the public, on Saturday, Oct. 6.

"He's an important writer, not just entertaining, not just funny," DeMarchi says about Almond. "I truly think he is one of the best writers of his generation writing in America."

Even though he'd received a free advance copy of "(Not That You Asked): Rants, Exploits and Obsessions," DeMarchi went out and bought another copy.

"I want Random House to know that this is someone they should support, appreciate, and keep publishing," he explains.

So far, DeMarchi's loaned his copy of "(Not That You Asked)" to three different friends, and after reading it they each went out and bought their own copy. He's also bought six copies he's given as gifts.

Part of Almond's appeal is his humor, mixed with almost painful honesty.

"Everybody goes through these experiences where they're ashamed, they feel humiliated," Almond says. "The dark stuff. And to me, it takes more calories and stress and anxiety to cover up those feelings, to front about them, then it does to just unburden myself.

"The bad news is, the path of the truth runs through shame much of the time. That's the way it works. At some point, if you really want to tell the truth, you're going to have to tell the stuff that you don't want to include, where you don't look like the hero, you do dumb things. We all do that stuff, and we can try to pretend we don't, or be honest about it. A lot of the book is me just trying to be honest about it."

It's not a matter of using writing as therapy and blurting out everything on the page, he says.

"It's a matter of trying to understand, not just confess, but really try to understand our experience and get to the place where you're being honest, that other people will say, 'I've been there too.' They feel implicated, not just that they're watching you like a freak on a reality TV show, but that they're saying and feeling, 'Yeah, I've felt that ashamed or disappointed or heartbroken also.'"

In "(Not That You Asked)," Almond talks about his romantic failures, being filmed for a reality TV show (the episode never aired), meeting in person a blogger who hates him, and dealing with his twin brother hitting puberty before he did.

The book shows a doll with boxing gloves smiling on the front cover, and on the back: another boxing doll, this one with two black eyes.

"The book's about me getting punched by various bullies and trying to fight back, and winding up with a black eye, [so the cover image] is perfect," Almond says. "It's about getting into scraps and taking your licks from a bully, and that's what the dolls capture...That's what life is like: you get bullied, and you try to make sense of it and fight back, if that's what you can do. That's what the right wing of this country is about, bullying. And pretty soon, the good decent folks on the other side are going to fight back."

Almond fought back in his own way last year. An adjunct professor in creative writing at Boston College, he wrote an open letter of resignation when Condoleezza Rice was selected to be the school's commencement speaker. The letter ran in the "Boston Globe." He talks about the media fallout, and about appearing on NPR and Fox News, in his essay, "Demagogue Days Or, How the Right-Wing Hateocracy Chewed Me Up and Spat Me Out."

As he always does with his students, Almond will stress truth-telling in writing. Almond, author of two collections of short stories ("The Evil B.B. Chow" and "My Year in Heavy Metal") and co-writer of a novel with Julianna Baggott ("Which Leads Me to You"), spoke about fiction last year at the conference. This year, with his book of essays just published, he's talking about non-fiction.

"What I emphasize is the non-fiction I'm excited about, the non-fiction that's storytelling and employs the techniques of fiction. Not that it makes things up, but it's writing in a way that emphasizes character and themes, and the emotionally dangerous moments.

"Good non-fiction is about gathering or recollecting good material, and then getting out of the way. Don't overwrite it, just get out of the way of good material. It's stuff that's charged, emotional, human, shameful -- whatever gets people to feel what they need to feel."

His book was originally supposed to be about Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. The publisher wanted a collection of essays instead.

"You make choices," Almond says. "Would I like to have written a whole book about him? Absolutely. And I might, still. Did I like writing the essays? Yeah. But I would love to write a book about Vonnegut. There's too little about him out there. He's under-appreciated. And what he has to say is his moral agenda, one we need to hear now, more than ever. I just love reading his stuff and thinking about it, going to see his papers and figuring out how he became a writer. It's thrilling to me."

An essay in Almond's book, "How I Crush on Vonnegut (Not That You Asked)," talks about meeting Vonnegut in person and later reading through his papers at Indiana University's Lilly Library.

He's looking forward to returning to the Sanibel Island Writers Conference.

"Let me say, about the conference, it's fantastic," Almond says. "They don't tell you this when you start out as a writer, but it's very lonely. You're alone a lot of the time. It's a great chance for people to know there are crazy nutbags out there like them. They need contact. That's what the conference provides, a sense of community. Everybody feels like they know everybody else, no one's shy. And the instruction is incredibly passionate."

And it's another opportunity for Almond, on a coast-to-coast book tour, to interact with readers.

"When you get to share your work with a live audience, it's the best thing," Almond says. "These essays are very personal. When I read them, I go off and talk about things not in the book. There's nothing like it.

"Literature isn't a bunch of people in a library. Literature is a party."

If you go

>>What: The Sanibel Island Writers Conference
>>When: Oct. 4-7
>>Where: BIG Arts Center, 900 Dunlop Road,
Sanibel
>>Cost: $350
>>Information: Call 395-0900
If you're not attending the Sanibel Island Writers Conference, you can still attend the nightly readings from 6-7:30 p.m. at BIG Arts Center (900 Dunlop Road, Sanibel). They're $8 each, or $20 for all three nights. Here's the line-up: Thursday, Oct. 4 >>Robert Olen Butler/ keynote address and reading Robert Olen Butler published 10 novels and four collections of short stories, one of which, "A good Scent From a Strange Mountain," received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1993. His latest book is "Severence," 62 short stories in the voices of newly severed heads. Butler also published "From Where You Dream," a collection of his lectures on the creative process.

>>Heidi Julavits Heidi Julavits is the author of "The Uses of Enchantment" (a "New York Times" Notable Book of 2006), "The Effect of Living Backwards" and "The Mineral Palace." She's a founding co-editor of "The Believer."

Friday, Oct. 5

>>Jill Bialosky Jill Bialosky is the author of "The Life Room" and "House Under Snow," and two poetry collections, "The End of Desire" and "Subterranean." She is an executive editor and vice president at W.W. Norton & Company

>>Larry Doyle Larry Doyle, the author of "I Love You, Beth Cooper," wrote the newly revived "Pogo" comic strip, as well as episodes of "Beavis and Butthead" and "Rugrats." He was also executive editor of "SPY" magazine.

>>John Dufresne John Dufresne's most recent novel is "Deep in the Shade of Paradise." He's the author of "Love Warps the Mind a Little" and "Louisiana Power & Light" and two short-story collections: "The Way Water Enters Stone" and "Johnny Too Bad." Dufresne is also the author of a book about fiction writing called "The Lie That Tells a Truth."

Saturday, Oct. 6

>>Steve Almond Steve Almond wrote the "New York Times" bestseller "Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America" and two short-story collections, "The Evil B.B. Chow," and "My Year in Heavy Metal." His collection of essays, "(Not That You Asked): Rants, Exploits and Obsessions," was published in September.

>>Lynne Barrett Lynne Barrett is the author of two story collections, "The Secret Names of Women" and "The Land of Go" and co-editor of "Birth: A Literary Companion."

>>William Giraldi William Giraldi's stories and essays have appeared in "Tin House," "The Believer," "Shenandoah," "Witness" and "Mississippi Review." He's fiction editor for "AGNI" at Boston University, where he teaches writing.