Venue for prose

Columbia doesn’t fit the mold of a literary hub. Aside from the intense focus on a single institution, it’s not much more than a sleepy burg. But, in fact, writers are perfecting their craft and making their mark in Columbia and beyond.

Contributing to the success of a number of award-winning writers with local connections is MU’s creative writing program; the presence of a renowned literary magazine, The Missouri Review; and access to a great public library. Its compact layout and affordability make Columbia an easy place to live, allowing writers the freedom to focus on their craft.

“It’s a great place to write,” says Anthony Varallo, who is completing his doctorate in English and creative writing at MU. “It’s quiet, a good walking town, and everything’s accessible.”

The constant intellectual activity and abundance of highly educated people in Columbia also stimulate public interest in literary readings and poetry slams hosted by bookstores and coffeehouses around town.

Many writers are drawn here from other places. Though their stay is temporary, writers often make mid-Missouri and the Midwest present in their work in ways both subtle and conspicuous.

The predominantly Midwestern settings of Scott Kaukonen’s short stories are reflective of his Michigan upbringing. Kaukonen explores how his characters construct their identities and how who they want to be comes into conflict with how others define them. A doctoral student in MU’s English department, Kaukonen wrote seven out of the eight stories in his debut collection, “Ordination,” here. The book won The Ohio State University’s Short Fiction Prize last year and will be published by The Ohio State University Press this month. Kaukonen also won the Chicago Tribune’s esteemed Nelson Algren Award for Short Fiction for his story “Punnett’s Squares.”

Kaukonen came to MU after completing his Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at the University of Arizona. While he found Arizona more interesting from a writer’s perspective, Kaukonen says Columbia is more conducive to the actual process of writing. He can often be found in the Cherry Street Artisan, which he’s made a regular workspace.

“A good place for any writer is where you can get your work done,” he says.

Kaukonen credits the nurturing nature of MU’s creative writing program, as well the opportunity to work at The Missouri Review. He and Varallo are both on the review’s staff and say it was a major incentive to come to MU.

“It’s one of the best known literary magazines in the country,” says Speer Morgan, the publication’s editor-in-chief. “It invites a lot of people in the literary world. It’s part of what the university does culturally in the larger world.”

Most of The Missouri Review’s editorial assistants and student interns are graduate students from the English and creative writing programs at MU. Morgan says working at the magazine both adds to students’ abstract education and gets them involved in the practicalities of publishing.

Morgan finds he is continuously amazed at the quality of graduate students who attend MU’s program. He says one of the reasons many of them are so good is because they come to the doctoral program in their late 20s or mid-30s rather than right out of college. Morgan says he thinks these students have had the significant life experience necessary for mature writing.

Varallo, 34, has won significant accolades during his five years in the program. In December, he learned his debut collection of short stories, “This Day in History,” won the 2005 John Simmons Short Fiction Award from the University of Iowa Press, which will publish the book in October. Varallo also received a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2002.

Many of the stories in “This Day in History” are about children negotiating the onset of adulthood or about adults attempting to make sense of their childhoods. Of Varallo’s collection, Kevin Brockmeier, a judge for the John Simmons award, wrote, “The worlds he creates will ring true to anyone who remembers that fascinating time of life when childhood and adulthood first began to mingle and throw off sparks.”

Varallo says his writing has always been characterized by a suburban sense of place. For the last few years, Varallo has shared a little white house at the end of a gravel road off Cliff Drive with another prizewinning writer, his wife, Malinda McCollum. Varallo says the tranquil surroundings have inspired a couple of his stories.

“I wanted to get something of this Missouri neighborhood in them,” he says.

McCollum joined Varallo in Columbia in 2003 after completing a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, where she also taught creative writing. Last year, McCollum won the Plimpton Prize, awarded by the famed literary magazine The Paris Review for her short story “The Fifth Wall.” The award is given annually for the best work of fiction or poetry published in the review by an emerging writer.

McCollum, who works from home while caring for her son, Gus, says Columbia’s low cost of living means writers don’t have to devote all their time to making ends meet. Also, being in the vicinity of other writers can be motivational, she says.

“Knowing there are writers working close by keeps you on your toes,” she says.

McCollum is working on a collection of stories set in her hometown of Des Moines, Iowa. The state is also the setting for a novel she is writing . In an e-mail, McCollum explained that her writing often explores how flawed characters negotiate their mistakes.

“Whether or not their struggles result in happiness or security or success, I’m interested in exploring their efforts as they attempt — as we all do — to muddle through the world,” she says.

British writer Naeem Murr is doing his second tour of duty in Columbia, this time as MU’s writer-in-residence. Murr says the character of mid-Missouri often finds its way into his work. He draws information from a few uniquely Midwestern elements, such as farms and the Mississippi floods that threaten the region’s subconscious.

Murr is the author of a number of award-winning short stories as well as two novels, “The Genius of the Sea” and “The Boy,” the latter of which was a New York Times Notable Book in 1998. Murr recently completed a novel set during the 1950s in a small mid-Missouri community. The story focuses on three children. One, named Raju, is of Indian descent, an outsider whose perspective offers a unique window into the world described in the novel.

“Almost all my fiction comes out of place,” Murr says.

Although MU contributes a sense of community to writers affiliated with its writing program, Murr and Kaukonen agree the work they do is a solitary pursuit. Once completed, however, they are eager to engage with the public and other writers at readings and literary events.

The Cherry Street Artisan and Ragtag Cinemacafé host regular poetry slams, which are part reading, part performance art. Columbia also has a chapter of the Missouri Writers’ Guild, which holds monthly prose and poetry workshops where writers can receive critiques of their work.

“It’s helped people get out and network,” chapter president Karen Heywood says. “It’s helped me get out as a freelance writer.”

Ten years ago, poet Walter Bargen began the Columbia Reading Series at the Legacy Bookstore, which has since closed, to bridge the gap between the literary interests of MU students and faculty and other Columbia residents. The series is now held at Columbia Books on South Ninth Street. The series has welcomed writers affiliated with MU, as well as those from mid-Missouri and other states.

Varallo, McCollum, Kaukonen and Murr all say they frequent the series as advocates for the literary ambitions of local writers, and they encourage their students to attend as well.

“I try to expose my students not just to big names, but also to rising stars,” he says. “There are enough rising stars in Columbia to make it an interesting place.”