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| Winter 2014 - ARGH! |
Winter has left his footprints all over my garden.
When I took this photo of my front garden this week I felt so discouraged and
yes, even depressed. If I didn't know better, I would think my garden would never recover
from the intense cold and brutal ice of the past weeks, and this winter is only
at the mid-point.
I remind myself that this fallow ground is temporary
and necessary for the health of the plants. Spring and summer will bring
renewal. Tending a garden is quite a lot like writing. Parallels abound.
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| Summer 2013 - Nice! |
In Wade Graham's nonfiction book, American Eden,
Graham says, that those who create a garden draw a map of their mind on the
ground. It occurs to me that designing a garden and working for its survival is
not unlike dreaming a story that exists only in the imagination. We attempt to dream what is possible and make
it real. Our gardens, like our writing, are tempered sometimes by the events
beyond our immediate control, and yet we can work to exert influence upon the
results, because we have hope that our inner vision will prevail.
Graham says that our gardens are meaningful. They say
a lot and we can read them as stories not only about their makers, but also
about ourselves as a culture. He says that we ask our gardens "to speak
for us, often assigning them certain lines in the play that we write about
ourselves that we are hesitant to utter in our own voices. The drama of
self-creation isn't straightforward, but rather it is full of diversions, deviations,
dodges and impersonations."
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| Vision Gives Hope - July 2013 |
About Jan Bowman
Winner of the 2011 Roanoke Review Fiction Award, Jan's stories have been nominated
for Pushcart Prizes, Best American Short
Stories, and a Pen/O’Henry award. Glimmer Train named a recent
story as Honorable Mention in the November 2012 Short Story Awards for New
Writers.
A recent story was a
finalist for the 2013 Broad
River Review RASH Award for Fiction,
another story was a 2013 finalist in the Phoebe Fiction Contest; another was a 2012 finalist in
the “So
To Speak” Fiction Contest. Jan’s fiction has appeared in numerous publications including, Roanoke Review,
Big Muddy, The Broadkill Review, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo Spree (97),
Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes and others. She is working on
two collections of short stories while shopping for a publisher for a completed
story collection, Mermaids & Other
Stories. She has nonfiction publications in Trajectory and Pen-in-Hand. She writes a weekly blog of “Reflections” on the writing life and posts regular interviews
with writers and publishers. Learn
more at: www.janbowmanwriter.com or visit
blog: http://janbowmanwriter.blogspot.com
Facebook: janbowman.77@facebook.com
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