Soirée

Although Little Rock writer Kevin Brockmeier says he doesn’t read reviews of his work, a February 25 piece on his novel “The Illumination” in The New York Times—using descriptions such as “elegantly written,” “dark and profound” and “deeply felt and precisely observed”—is a sure attention-getter. Along with more glowing reviews in The Washington Post, The New Yorker, NPR and more, he was recently awarded the Laman Library Writers’ Fellowship.

“I’m very excited about it,” he said of the fellowship, which provides a writer with up to $10,000. “It’s very new (its second year; the first award went to Little Rock writer Grif Stockley), and I think the library is generous to have instituted it. The fact that [the library] is going to be supporting all of these writers as the years pass is going to be a tremendous boon to Arkansas writing. I’m very appreciative.”

Brockmeier will be a star attraction at the Arkansas Literary Festival, taking place April 7-13 at venues in the River Market and Argenta Arts District. He’ll read from his works at a program called Lunch and Literature at noon on Friday, April 8 at the Argenta Community Theater.

“I’ve participated every year as an author in the festival,” he said. “I think of it as the one time that people who are interested in listening to me and hearing what I’ve been doing will reliably have the chance to do so. I hope to continue participating every year.”

Born in Hialeah, Florida, Brockmeier and his family moved to Little Rock when he was 3 years old. “My extended family is pretty much all in Florida; I manage to make it there once a year. But Little Rock is my home, and it’s an exception to the rule when I’m away.”

The author of “The Brief History of the Dead,” “The Truth About Celia,” two children’s novels, “City of Names,” and “Grooves: A Kind of Mystery,” and two story collections got an youthful start on his career.

“As soon as I was 7 years old and able to put a sentence together on paper, I began writing stories in class,” he said, “but it wasn’t until I was about 18 that I figured out it was what I wanted to do professionally. I had a myriad of interests and maintained a lot of them, but reading, in particular, became more and more important to me. I felt that I had some capacity as a writer.”

A full scholarship took him to Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University), where he earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1995 with an interdisciplinary major in creative writing, theater and philosophy. “By the time I graduated, it was pretty clear to me that of those three totally useless degrees, it would seem writing was the one I was most attracted to,” Brockmeier said.

He worked on short stories while attending the Iowa Writers’ Workshop program at the University of Iowa.

“My first collection (published in 2002) was called ‘Things That Fall from the Sky’,” he said. “I was submitting stories to magazines and had some luck publishing them in good quality literary mags, like Georgia Review and Carolina Quarterly. Basically I got really lucky is what happened. I had a friend who was a literary agent. He wasn’t my agent, but it was what he was doing professionally. He was having lunch one day with an editor in New York, and he said, ‘Have you read anything you liked by a new writer lately?’ And she said, ‘Yeah, I read this story called ‘These Hands’ in the Georgia Review by this guy Kevin Brockmeier. I’ve never heard of him, but I really liked it.’ And my friend said, ‘I represent Kevin Brockmeier.’”

“I didn’t take the steps I was supposed to take to get a book contract. I worked very hard on my writing, but I didn’t do the business maneuvers I was supposed to do. It just kind of befell me.”

Soirée: What’s your writing process?
Brockmeier: I usually have a very broad idea of where a book is taking me. I know roughly how long it will be and how it is going to be patterned. I don’t necessarily know all the incidents that are going to take place, and I certainly don’t know the sentences I’ll use to carry me from the beginning to the end, but I discover all of that as I’m working. I know something about the rhythms that I want the book to have, the tone that I want the book to have and the overall pattern that I intend for it to follow.

What’s the difference between your children’s books and adult books?  
The children’s books are much more conversational. When I was in college, I worked at a daycare in summers and holidays in Little Rock. I loved that! The children were very important to me, and I would tell them stories every day. We’d kind of invent the stories together about them and their adventures, and they would help me fill in the details. When I wrote my first children’s book, it was basically a way of continuing to tell stories to this particular group of children, who were all older and in elementary school and capable of reading books for themselves.

What fascinates you about mixing fantasy with realism?
As a reader, I love contemporary literary fiction. I love the classics. I also love science fiction and fantasy, and I find that all those influences just sort of collide with each other when I’m working.