Gina Berriault on our contemporary culture's inability to venture or artificial limitation of venturing into writing about certain necessary subjects/themes

"We write to be acceptable. Some thing I wanted to write about, I haven't because I was afraid I wouldn't be published.... I like to believe... that I wrote truthfully, but I've always felt the presence of anonymous and not-so-anonymous authority."

--Gina Berriault from Passion and Craft interview

Has this trend gotten worse?

Gina Berriault on characters

"The way to escape from the person you figure you may be is to become many other in your imagination.... I haven't roamed far enough."

--Gina Berriault from Passion and Craft interview

"[Why there is a gap between books is] a question that should never be asked. It opens a wound. What can a writer say about gaps and silences?"

--Gina Berriault from Passion and Craft interview

Gina Berriault on the failing of contemporary writers

"In Unanmo's Tragic Sense of Life he speaks about poets' desperate longing to be remembered, to be immortal. I think that concept of immortality is long... gone from our consciousness.... Now the vying with one another is only for present gain. When I asked the students if they'd read this-or-that greatwriter, most had read only contemporary writers."

--Gina Berriault from Passion and Craft interview

Gina Berriault on learning the craft with others

"I regret not having a formal, organized education.... I wish I'd studied world history, philosophy, comparative literatrue, and... several languages... [T]here is no excuse for my lack... of intellectual exploring.... [L]earn more about everything... rove... be curious, and... read more great writers from everywhere.... [Enter] a creative writing program... [to learn] how to shape what's already known and felt. Sometimes, when I taught workshops, I was glad I hadn't subjected myself to the unkind criticism of strangers. There's so much competitiveness, concealed and overt."

--Gina Berriault from Passion and Craft interview

Gina Berriault on learning the craft alone

"One thing I'd do was put a great writer's book beside the typewriter and... type out a beautiful and moving paragraph... and see those sentences rising up... and... think, 'Someday maybe I can write like that....' It was like a dream of possibilities for my own self. And maybe I began to know that there was no other way for the sentence... to... arouse the same feeling. The someone writing whose words were rising from the typewriter became like a mentor for me.... You shouldn't do it more than a few times because you must get on with your own work."

--Gina Berriault from Passion and Craft interview

Gina Berriault, author

Here's a writer I'd heard of but doubted I read anything of hers. It turns out I had. I suspect a number of us have read "The Stone Boy" by Gina Berriault:

1. Story (in Points of View anthology) -- definitely read this one. I must have read at as a lad and it's still stuck with me.
2. Film, won the 1972 New York Teenage Kodak Movie Award for Best Cinematography. It seems pretty bad until you realize these guys are amateurs. Then it's impressive. They pull off some good moments despite limitations of budget and acting classes. Kudos.

Other stories:

1. "The Woman in the Rose-Colored Dress" at Narrative
2. "The Infinite Passion of Expectation" at Vice
3. "Around the Dear Ruin" [page down] at Vice 

Interview and articles:

1. Passion and Craft interview (Here's an author who takes early influences seriously. She includes genre fantasists like George MacDonald. Usually names get rattled off.)
2. Daphne Kalotay
3. Marianne Rogoff's student remembrance
4. Here's Richard Yates on the beginning of "Around the Dear Ruin"
5. Here's Whitney Otto on its ending
6. The best I can't find, but if you can find another here's a place holder