Welcome to
Writers4Higher
This issue, Writers4Higher features
Saundra Kelley
Hi, Saundra. Welcome to the
Writers4Higher family!
1.
Tell me about yourself, Your books, your
life, your inspiration:
I am a writer, born and bred in Tallahassee, Florida.
With five generations on my dad’s side—in the Woodville/St. Marks area, and
seven on my mom’s—Cody and Monticello . . . white sand, red clay and blue/green
water permeate my sense of being. I am also a professional storyteller—a
traveler with a rate card for hire. I tell the legends and stories of Florida,
of my family and the world. Always, Mother Earth is the star.
I was a shy child—the one you never saw on the playground
after school. That’s because I went straight home to grab a book and slid into
my favorite place under the old oak tree with my cat. Dreaming about trees,
animals, and faraway places consumed me then and it still does. I was a
‘creative’ from the time I began to talk, so when I learned to read and write,
it was a given words were going to be my thing. My mother, who named me after
an author, gave me full access to her library and bought horse books for me to
read that I still have. A discussion about how I diverted from that life would
clutter this page. Let’s just say that I eventually found my way back to the
path and it feels good. Now, let us examine the journey I took to rediscover
that illusive trail.
After divorce, I returned to Florida State to finish my
neglected studies, attending with both of my daughters and walking the aisle
with one. When I graduated, it was to embrace a not-for-profit service career.
I used my writing skills at work, and fiddled around with stories, but due to
lack of self-confidence, refused to identify myself as a writer. It took
repeatedly trying to fit into jobs that were not right for me, nearly losing my
mind and practically everything I had including my health, before I allowed the
creative part of me to achieve its rightful place. I found it again during the
years I lived on Alligator Point on the Gulf of Mexico, and took great joy in
writing about that wonderland of nature’s artistic pleasure.
Still, I was desperately afraid to step out into a
sinkhole with no bottom in sight. By that time, my association with the
Tallahassee Democrat had netted me the opportunity write a chapter in the
environmental anthology, Between Two Rivers, Stories from the Red Hills
to the Gulf, edited by Susan Cerulean, Janisse Ray and Laura Newton. That
experience brought me into contact with other environmental writers. From that
point forward I began to think of myself as a writer—a frame of mind that
eventually set me free.
Still, I clung to the safety of home until two triggers
conspired to shoot me out of my quasi-safety zone: someone clear-cut a stand
of virgin long-leaf pine in Wakulla County on public lands--one
day it was there, the next, gone. Then, while I was living on the coast and
playing with an egret named Snow, Hurricane Dennis showed me it was time to
leave.
Concerned by the rapid loss of Florida’s native ecology,
I decided storytelling in the oral tradition would be my sword. For a time, I
saw myself as an environmental Joan of Arc, but no longer. Today I
find my ardor tempered by a drop or two of wisdom. Interactive communication is
the key to true change.
I moved to Jonesborough, TN and entered the East
Tennessee State University masters in storytelling program. It was an intense
experience filled with creativity, performance and the expectation of academic
excellence. After graduation, I signed a contract with McFarland Publishers to
do Southern Appalachian Storytellers: Interviews with Sixteen Keepers
of the Oral Tradition for their Appalachian Studies division, index,
and all. It was published in 2011.
Once on the track, I couldn’t stop, nor did I try. The
result is Danger in Blackwater Swamp, formerly Swamp Woman, begun
long ago in a different life. As the story evolved, my passion and love of
place spoke through the characters. They became as real to me as my own family,
and then evinced opinions not necessarily my own. When the characters decided
they had expressed themselves fully and were ready to release me, I
specifically looked for a North Florida publisher with a naturalist bent.
Southern Yellow Pine Publishing found me; I liked what they were doing and
signed on. Danger in Blackwater Swamp releases May 31,
2013.
2.
Where do you see your writing taking you
in the future?
I have discovered in myself a sweet blend of the spoken
and written word that I find delicious, thus my future revolves around stories;
it is my intention to enter the university lecture circuit as a writer, and a
storyteller.
As for future projects, there are many. Three children’s
books await a publisher. A time-travel historical fiction, working title
Red-tail Hawk, will involve some of the characters featured in Danger in
Blackwater Swamp. I’ve written enough short stories to generate a
collection for publication and performance, and then there is performance
poetry.
3.
How do you use your talents/time to help
others?
As the president of the Jonesborough Storytellers Guild
and a member of the National Storytelling Network, I promote the art of storytelling
through mentoring and community service. In addition to our weekly concerts at
the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, the guild performs
concerts at a facility for those with brain injuries, the Veterans
Administration Hospital, and for local service groups. Recently, we purchased a
cataloging computer for our local library after getting almost 4,000
storytelling resource books donated to their shelves! As such, my community
work is reaching out to others so that they may find and explore their own
stories and learn to tell them, and to provide pleasant/stimulating
entertainment to those who want or need it.
Would you like to find Saundra?
Check out the links to this talented author:
Books by Saundra Kelley:
Southern Appalachian Storytellers:
Interviews with Sixteen Keepers of the Oral Tradition, McFarland Publishers, 2011. www.mcfarlandpublishers.com
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Rhett
DeVane
Fiction
with a Southern Twist
I like the idea of using stortytelling to highlight both the world's natural habitats as well as the threats to them.
ReplyDeleteMalcolm