{"id":5837,"date":"2011-04-03T11:00:18","date_gmt":"2011-04-03T16:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=5837"},"modified":"2011-04-03T05:26:04","modified_gmt":"2011-04-03T10:26:04","slug":"thirty-years-of-work-produces-new-story-collection-for-apsus-kitterman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2011\/04\/03\/thirty-years-of-work-produces-new-story-collection-for-apsus-kitterman\/","title":{"rendered":"Thirty Years of Work Produces New Story Collection for APSU’s Kitterman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Clarksville, TN<\/strong> – Barry Kitterman, an Austin Peay State University creative writing professor, is from the San Joaquin \u2013 a large valley in California where much of the country\u2019s fruits and vegetables are grown. Specifically, he\u2019s from the small town of Ivanhoe, where the air doesn\u2019t smell of sea salt and beach bums aren\u2019t camped out under the redwoods or on the rabbit farms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I would tell people I was from California, they had a certain set of assumptions as to what that meant,\u201d Kitterman said. \u201cIt was so far removed from my real experience that I thought I wanted to write stories about the California I grew up in, which is rural, agricultural, a long way from the ocean and, something I realized much later, very poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Barry<\/a>

Barry Kitterman<\/p><\/div>\n

This idea of writing stories about Ivanhoe, formed while Kitterman was a Master of Fine Arts student at the University of Montana in the 1980s, turned into a 30-year project. But on May 1st, Southern Methodist University Press is releasing Kitterman\u2019s new collection of short stories, \u201cFrom the San Joaquin.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe title? When I left home and went to Berkley to college, people would say \u2018where are you from?\u2019\u201d Kitterman said. \u201cIf I were to say I\u2019m from Ivanhoe, people wouldn\u2019t know where that is. So the answer is, \u2018I\u2019m from the San Joaquin.\u2019 These stories, these characters, even though one central character leaves and returns, the characters are all from the San Joaquin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kitterman started writing and publishing the stories, set in his hometown, while in graduate school, but he gradually drifted away from the idea. He wrote a few novels in the ensuing years that were never published and eventually he took a job at APSU. Then, in 2008, SMU Press released his debut novel, \u201cThe Baker\u2019s Boy.\u201d That book, based on Kitterman\u2019s experiences as a Peace Corp volunteer in Belize, ended up winning the 2009 Maria Thomas Peace Corps Writers Award for Fiction. Previous winners include such noted writers as Kent Haruf and Paul Theroux.<\/p>\n

Following the success of \u201cThe Baker\u2019s Boy,\u201d Kitterman decided to take another look at some of the old short stories he had filed away. He contacted Kathryn Lang, his editor at SMU Press, and asked her what she thought. Not all the stories were about Ivanhoe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sent her the collection, which was every story I ever had published,\u201d Kitterman said. \u201cTalking to her, and thinking about shaping it into a collection, she encouraged me to go back to my plan to tell the stories of a place. So I did, and I did draft after draft with her help, deciding which stories should go in this collection and which shouldn\u2019t. Now, it is a collection with recurring characters and they\u2019re all tied to this town in California, called Ivanhoe, which is a real town.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Barry<\/a>

Barry Kitterman, an Austin Peay State University creative writing professor.<\/p><\/div>\n

Kitterman likes to refer to the work as \u201cstraight up realism,\u201d and the writing hints at some of his literary influences, including Sherwood Anderson, Louise Erdrich and Ernest Hemingway. Al Young, California\u2019s poet laureate emeritus, even likened the APSU professor to John Steinbeck.<\/p>\n

\u201cKitterman\u2019s fiction gets at the gut and soul of a scuffling, blue-collar farming, lumbering, trucking tottering California,\u201d Young said. \u201cA heart-stirring collection of stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

William Gay, the best-selling author of \u201cProvinces of Night,\u201d described the stories as \u201cdeeply human\u201d and \u201ctouched with grace and compassion and a strong sense of place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are sturdy, no-nonsense, character-driven stories that make turning the pages a necessity as a well as a pleasure,\u201d Steve Yarbrough, author of \u201cSafe from the Neighbors,\u201d said. \u201cKitterman\u2019s book is superb.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book \u201cFrom the San Joaquin\u201d is set for release in May, but it is currently available for pre-order on websites such as amazon.com. For more information on Kitterman or his fiction, contact the APSU Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts at 931-221-7876.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – Barry Kitterman, an Austin Peay State University creative writing professor, is from the San Joaquin \u2013 a large valley in California where much of the country\u2019s fruits and vegetables are grown. Specifically, he\u2019s from the small town of Ivanhoe, where the air doesn\u2019t smell of sea salt and beach bums aren\u2019t camped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[7296,23,589,262,2018,7295],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-1w9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5837"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5837"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5839,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5837\/revisions\/5839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}