Melinda
Bell
moved
to the Pacific Northwest in November 1973 and has lived here ever
since. Her early career was in reporting, photography, high
school teaching, and public relations for a small college.
She’s studied with many Northwest authors and credits the
late Jack Cady (“Tinker,” “The Burning”),
with whom she studied at the University of Washington, as her
mentor. She’s gained many insights from Northwest writers
Ursula Hegi, Jody Aliesan, Kathleen Alcalá, Carol Glickfeld, Bharti
Kirchner and others. She belonged to a “steady, fantastic”
writing group in Olympia for many years.
She’s published articles on various issues and has performed
poems with the Vancouver Poetry Connection and for a Friends of
William Stafford event in January 2001. One of her poems
appeared in Spindrift 1999, and a poem appeared in the
Padilla Bay Poets’ Anthology for 1998-2001.
A short story was included in Crab Creek Review’s
ten-year anniversary issue in 1994 (under Melinda Bell Howard).
"Placitas, New Mexico" by Melinda Bell
Living in three
areas of the country—New England, New Mexico, and the Northwest—has
influenced her work. Until she was fifteen she lived in
rural towns in Massachusetts. From age fifteen to twenty-eight
she lived all over New Mexico, where she earned her B.A. at the
University of New Mexico. After she moved to Washington
State she settled in Olympia for many years, then moved to the
Portland area while earning her MA in English at PSU in 1994-97.
She and her husband live in Vancouver, Washington.
Questioner: What are you doing now?
Melinda:
Well, last year I realized the novel I was working on was based
on too easy a premise and I put it aside to think it over.
Questioner:
Too bad.
Melinda:
Yeah. Global politics and how they affect what’s
going on in the U.S. have been rapidly changing, and thus, I bowed
out of using the future as a backdrop.
Questioner:
That’s a bad sign, isn’t it?
Melinda:
What, the future?
Questioner:
Isn’t that just giving your power away to the critics?
Melinda:
No, it’s common sense. And I’ve got other projects
to work on. I need to finish a manuscript of New Mexico
poems, mainly about my fractured family, and I need to get back
to my memoir.
Questioner:
Have you published anything lately?
Melinda:
No. And I’ve hardly written anything lately.
Questioner: Are you still a writer, then?
Melinda:
Really a good question. I take heart from Dorothy Allison
(Bastard out of North Carolina)’s admission that
she had a long stretch of not writing. I think I’m
coming out of it. Maybe my life was going too well or something.
Maybe I’m too well fed.
Questioner:
You hear that writing autobiography is so self-absorbing, a narcissistic
activity.
Melinda:
It can be. It depends on your point of view and why you’re
doing it. Joelle Fraser, who wrote The Territory of Men,
says you need to have a good heart to write good memoir.
One’s motivation can become evident in the writing, and
that’s okay. Keep writing anyway.
Write yourself out of that space by going back into it,
no matter how ugly it looks. Your attitude will show—yes,
and that can be good if you see it and use it as an opportunity
to grow, and by extension, to help others.
Melinda
Bell can be reached at
mbdav@juno.com
What’s
up:
Look for a workshop on “Finishing one’s Work”
in 2008. It will be held in Vancouver, WA.
In 2006 Melinda offered “In the Heart of Winter, Women
Write from the Heart,” a series of Saturday workshops
in Vancouver, WA. Topics included: writing what scares you,
what’s poetry got to do with it?, doldrums and ecstatic
vision; the mystical process of writing; daily practice; markets;
and—“Am I too old to write?”— a resounding
no). Special guest Dorothy Blackcrow Mack (see elsewhere in this
site) delighted us for a whole day.
Melinda’s
Favorites:
www.galfromdownunder.com
Lynette Chiang, traveling dynamo, has written such a wonderful
travel memoir about her bicycle trip to Cuba. Even though
she says that at one time she was too busy studying science and
technology to ever study “great works,” her prose
is honest and literary (and quite humorous). The
Handsomest Man in Cuba earned a Silver award from
ForewordMagazine.com Book of the Year, 2004.
www.dorothymack.com
Kirkus Reviews,
April 1, 2001: “Some, like Dorothy Blackcrow Mack, recall
the lessons they learned from older women such as her Black Crow
mother-in-law Emma (who taught her how to pick sage for the sweat
lodge, butcher cattle, and cook native dishes like ‘puppy
soup’).” Dorothy is the only Oberlin Ph.D. I’ve
ever heard of who helped raise a herd of sacred buffalo.
www.hevanet.com/grand/
My next-door neighbor when I lived in Portland, Carmen T.
Bernier Grand, is a former mathematician and a children’s
author whose novel, Under the Shade of the Nispero Tree,
Orchard Books, 1999, took a Smithsonian Notable Award. It’s
an important book that looks at how even young children can become
little racists.
Carmen’s 1995 book on Don Luis Muñoz Marin, although written
for youngsters, is a sourcebook for adults who wish to be knowledgeable
about Puerto Rico.
www.kojischiropractic.com
A gentle, inspirational, and knowledgeable chiropractor in
the Vancouver-Portland area. If it weren’t for John
I might still be hiding at home in pain. I’ve really
been feeling strong, and even began an aerobics regime (necessary
for writing, don’t you think?).
