In Books on the Border news, two local authors, Caroline Starr Rose and Philip Connors, were nominated for the National Book Festival's Great Reads from Great Places to represent New Mexico at the festival in Washington DC. They will read from their works, both about fire lookouts in the Gila National Forest, in Silver City at 10 a.m. Saturday at the WNMU Miller library. The writers spoke with KRWG's Susan Morée.
Susan Morée:
I'm so excited. This sounds like so much fun. Caroline, let's start with you. Tell us about your book.
Caroline Starr Rose:
Well, it's a middle grade verse novel. So let me define that for listeners. Middle grade novels are for 8 to 12 or 10 and up. And a verse novel is a novel told through poetry. And so this story is called The Burning Season, and it takes place in the Gila Wilderness during fire season.
Susan Morée:
But also it's kind of exciting because the person who I believe inspired the main character is also with us here today. Philip, what does it feel like to be the inspiration for this children's book?
Philip Connors:
I'm deeply honored to know that my own work has inspired the work of others. I mean, to know that someone somewhere picked up my book, my first book, Fire Season, and was inspired by it to try to add to the literature of fire lookouts. I mean, wow, it's just humbling and cool. And then you add that to that the fact that we're going to appear together and talk about our respective fire lookout books. I mean, it just doesn't get any better than that.
Susan Morée:
I agree. And Caroline, even though climate change and wildfires are scary and not fun subjects, it sounds like your book has made it kind of fun. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Caroline Starr Rose:
That's interesting. I don't know. Fun is an interesting word. Complicated. I think fire is complicated. As I learned from Phil through his work, that it is both terrifying, but it's also something that regenerates the forest. And it's something that is part of New Mexico. It's something that's here to stay. But I did want to bring. This book essentially is a love letter to New Mexico. This is my home. I've lived here off and on since 1980. It's just my favorite place. And I wanted to bring to readers a story of a young person from New Mexico to both represent this state to the rest of the country, because so many children's books are not set in this part of the country, but also to share New Mexico with New Mexican kids to create a story that they could both identify with and be proud of. Now most kids have not lived in the Gila as the character in my story does, but I hope that there are elements of the story that will feel familiar to them.
Susan Morée:
And Phil, let's talk a little bit about your book.
Philip Connors:
So my book is essentially a diary of one season as a fire lookout overlooking the Gila. And it's told in a form practiced by Japanese haiku poets where they would intersperse their diary entries with haiku. So, it toggles back and forth between prose, diary entries, just what I was thinking that day or seeing that day, and then a haiku or three or five that are kind of in dialogue with the entry before it. And so it was my first stab at writing poetry. And also, I'm delighted by the coincidence that Caroline's book is a book about a fire lookout in the Gila told through poems. And you know, around the same time there I am trying to write a book about being a fire lookout in the Gila and expressing some of what I'm seeing and feeling through poems. So that's a really cool coincidence that we were both kind of doing that at the same time, unbeknownst to each other.
Susan Morée:
And I also want to add your book, The Mountain Knows the Mountain, A Firewatch Diary, had additional contributors besides yourself, Phil. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Philip Connors:
Yeah, I've always been intrigued by the idea of complicating the notion of the solitary writer genius who just hatches something fully formed out of his or her own mind.
Susan Morée:
Wait, you're not a solitary genius up there in the Gila.
Philip Connors:
I wouldn't claim that. I mean, if others want to label me that, I'm not going to stop them, but I don't really feel that way, to be perfectly honest with you. One of the traditions in Japanese haibun, which is the form where you blend diary entries with haiku, is you throw in stuff from your friends and your traveling companions. And it's a form that's kind of collaborative in a way. And I wanted to nod to that tradition. So, I brought in my wife, Mónica. And then of course, at the end, I have an afterword from my friend Bobby Byrd, who paid a visit to the mountain.
Susan Morée:
Well, thank you, and I look forward to your reading on Saturday.
Caroline Starr Rose:
Thank you.
Philip Connors:
Thanks, Susan.
