An internationally acclaimed author is making two Iowa appearances this week, in Iowa City and the Des Moines metro, in hopes of inspiring future writers.
Bret Anthony Johnston, an alum of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, is director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.
Johnston says his latest short story collection, “Encounters With Unexpected Animals,” took him years to complete as it offered a creative distraction while working on his most recent novel, “We Burn Daylight,” which is a national best-seller.
“That thing would try to kill me every once in a while, and it would break my heart, and it would ram my head into a wall,” Johnston says. “And then I would think, ‘Okay, this isn’t going to work, so I’m going to go over here and write a story about an animal.’ And then that story about an animal would ram my head into a wall and try to kill me and try to run me off a cliff. So I’d think, ‘Well, the novel wasn’t so bad,’ so I’d jump back to the novel.”
Before returning to his native Texas, Johnston was director of the creative writing program at Harvard University for more than a decade. Still, he says he finds writing to be one of the most difficult things he’s ever done, and unlike riding a bike or practicing tennis, Johnston says writing gets harder the longer you work at it.
“I really sort of hate writing, but I love having written,” Johnston says. “It’s a kind of exhilaration and comfort that, for me, sort of borders on the divine. You feel like you’re a part of something else, but the actual daily labor of getting there? It’s miserable.”
One of the short stories in the new collection is about a grieving father and son who attend a clown convention together. Johnston says it’s based on something that happened to him years ago when he walked into a large hotel lobby and was stunned to find some 400 clowns.
“If I were someone who had a phobia of clowns, I would have vaporized on the spot,” Johnston says. “But I found myself in the middle of this weekend-long clown convention, and so every morning, I would sneak into their panels and take notes on all the things that they were doing and learning. I just kept thinking, ‘There’s a story here, there’s a story here,’ and then eventually, there was.”
Johnston’s making his third trip in two years to Des Moines Area Community College as part of the campus’ Celebration of Literary Arts. He says DMACC offered him the choice between putting some money is his pocket or buying copies of his book to give away to students at the event. He says he immediately chose the latter.
“I was a student in community college in south Texas and reading changed my life,” Johnston says. “It’s a long way to connect the dots, but it’s all because I went to a community college and a professor there found a way to ignite my imagination and open up the doors of possibility — for my life — all through the pages of a book.”
Johnston appears tonight at Prairie Lights in Iowa City, and tomorrow at the DMACC Ankeny Campus. Both events are free and open to anyone.
Hear Matt Kelley’s full interview with Johnston below: