(Pictured left to right) Ellen Douglas, Tayari Jones and Suzanne Hudson join host Gene Edwards at the Writers' roundtable

“I think there’s an impulse to categorize women’s writing, regardless of its rigor, as chicklit,” states Tayari Jones. The award-winning novelist responds to host Gene Edwards’ initial question “Do women writers get enough credit?” Ellen Douglas and Suzanne Hudson join them at the Writers’ roundtable.

 

Hudson, who always wanted to express things broader than chicklit, admitted to considering an alter ego. “Ruby Pearl Sapphire. She writes social commentary, poetry and self help. She does not do serious literature at all.” Hudson herself is all literary.

 

Ellen Douglas is actually the pen name for Josephine Haxton. Her first novel was based closely on the lives of two of her aunts, who asked that she use a pseudonym when she published the book. Since her grandmother had given her the conviction that it was possible to write, Haxton used her name—Ellen.

 

It took Ellen Douglas six years to write her first book. “I had three kids and I was busy with them.” Her first paycheck was $1000 and “I bought a little boat my boys could ski, water ski on.” Ten books—including six novels—later,  Douglas is respected as one of the south’s finest authors.

 

Tayari Jones’ first novel, Leaving Atlanta, won the Hurston Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction in 2003. Early on, she wanted to be a writer or a hairdresser, “and my mother said, ‘Maybe you should think about the writing.’” These days, Jones publishes her own fiction and teaches creative writing to others. With a motto of “real people, real stories,” she has joined the faculty at Rutgers-Newark.

 

Hudson, a prize winner early in her career, also teaches. Her class consists of “a dozen seventh graders and instead of language and grammar, they have me for reading and writing.” With students who are open and expressive, Hudson enjoys an atypical curriculum. “Instead of analyzing sentences, subject, verb, they can actually write and work with language. I have them for two years in a row.”

 

Douglas was in her sixties when she began teaching at Ole Miss, and the late acclaimed author Larry Brown was among her students. When he came to her class, he had already written a hundred short stories and had three novels in progress. “He was a very serious writer from the beginning,” she says.

 

All three authors stress the importance of time and place. “I always say a story takes place in a specific year,” advises Jones. “I teach my students to think where their characters are when their story’s taking place,” Hudson adds. “That brings it to life.” Douglas relies on “the sense of the reality of a character in the real world,” and then she begins “to think, well, what would happen to this person or what would happen under these circumstances. And you go from there to fiction.”

 

Douglas has never shied away from writing about race. “It seems to me that for the whole period I’ve lived, the last 85 years, that racial issues have been what we’ve lived through. Writers choose to write about their time,” she continues, “and that brings you right to the guts, so to speak of everybody’s life.”

 

Hudson, who is white, has faced criticism for writing black characters. “If you’re honest about your character, however you frame your character, it’s going to strike a chord with someone.”

 

Jones takes black literature one step further. She believes in the black interest section of bookstores instead of general shelving. “Only for really, really famous black authors would it benefit them to be shelved out there. I think we would be sacrificing our careers to make some kind of general point about the universality of literature. I think the culture would have to change and the shelving should follow.”

 

As for the future of writing, “I think there’s been such a profound change in the way people perceive the communicative world,” comments Ellen Douglas. “And now blogs. It’s just astonishing.” Jones, an active blogger, jumps into the conversation. “I think you should blog. I would read your blog every day.” For Jones, blogging means she can connect with people anywhere with common interests. “Think about it. Your friends in real life do not want to talk about character development with you.”

 

Jones advises would-be authors to write every day. “Just do it consistently and if you have lots of other responsibilities, it will take you longer, but you’ll get there.” Douglas adds, “Read. Read. Read while the time is passing. Read everything.” And when people approach Hudson saying they want to write, she says, “Don’t write. And if they can’t not write, then they should write.”