After lunch, I heard
Valerie Sayers talking about the genesis of her novel, The Powers, talking about the use of photographs, not only in the research for the book but in the final novel itself.
When asked about her timeline for her books, she said that she spends more time on them now, but when she first started out she had a two year timeline: the first year was dedicated to anxiety, research and procrastination; the second year was write write write.
The second session of the afternoon was “The future of Catholic literature in a secular age.” 
This is, along with a similarly titled talk tomorrow morning, to me the centerpiece of the conference.
I did find myself wishing that there had been a working definition of “Catholic literature” offered. Back in the ‘90s, I attended a talk by a Fordham University Jesuit at the New York Catholic Worker on Catholic literature where he defined it as literature which deals specifically with some point of Catholic doctrine and he considered a fair amount of what was considered in the popular imagination as Catholic literature as being instead just supplied with “Catholic furniture.”
There were some interesting observations made. Kaya Oakes’s “Pope Francis keeps telling us to take our faith to the margins. Why don’t we take our literature there too?” Randy Boyagoda’s observation that Roman Catholic (as opposed to merely Catholic) carries with it the implication of a mixture of sacred and secular; and later his suggestion that maybe we need to direct young Catholic serious about literature into internships in publishing/agenting so that they might be in a position to start influencing the direction of literature down the line.
Asked for their suggestions as to who represents the future of Catholic literature now, they offered the following:
- Lisa Ampleman: Natalie Díaz, When My Brother Was an Aztec.
- Kaya Oakes: Rebecca Brown, American Romances.
- Joshua Hren: [inaudible—I’ll update if someone supplies an answer]
- Randy Boyagoda: Elena Ferrante, Neapolitan Quartet.
After a wine and
hors d’oeuvres reception, we had the launch from Loyola University Press of Jessica Mesman Griffith’s and Jonathan Ryan’s Strange Journey from which both Ryan and Griffith read excerpts.
This was followed by
Heather King speaking and then a concert of sacred music from the Notre Dame Vocale and then after a bit of wandering to find a suitable venue, the open mic night which ran past midnight.
egan with Randy Boyagoda’s talk, “Trying to say God without sounding like Marilynne Robinson.” Boyagoda’s thesis was that the first and primary purpose of literature i to increase charity and towards that end he did a dive into a novel by Mary McCarthy, The Group and a story by David Constantin, “The Loss.” This was followed by a reading from his upcoming novel, Original Prin, which sadly is to be published by a small Canadian publisher which means that it will be a challenge for me to get a hold of a copy when it comes out in the fall of 2018 (although I suppose it will be for sale when TTSG19 takes place in Toronto). One of my favorite moments from the reading was when Boyagoda read a line from his novel, “Anglicans are bashing you on Good Friday” and followed it with the comment, “That’s probable the best line I’ve written in my life.”
revitalize literature.”
otre Dame University for the “Trying to Say God” conference. This is a conference whose animating spirit is “revitalizing Catholic literature.” As a Catholic writer who has some works that could reasonably be termed “Catholic literature” this is something of interest to me and since the conference was relatively inexpensive ($75), I decided to go and see what they had to say.
have been beating the Catholics at the literary festival thing for quite some time now. This is meant to be the first in a biennial series of conferences with the conference to return in 2019 in Toronto.
Sacred Heart which aside from its beautiful architecture also had a heated holy water font, something I’d never encountered before. I can see that being really nice for baptisms.
ning keynote was Mary Karr who appeared via teleconference thanks to a back injury. Despite being in so much pain she couldn’t walk, she was still an engaging speaker (plus we got a peek at her office complete with cross and bust of Beethoven).
bring me to French. I’m still not up to actually learning a language and this book is thin and looks promising. It turns out that it’s mildly more interesting than reading a dictionary. I kind of hoped that literal translations of some of the expressions would have been provided, but I guess more functionality with French than I have is assumed.
hich looks like it might not be a real learn Yiddish book to check off this decade.