Charles Baxter, an author, poet and English professor from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, made appearances at the University last week as part of the creative writing program’s annual awards ceremony. Prior to coming to Oregon, Baxter helped judge University student writers’ work.
Each spring, the creative writing program sponsors a well-known author to judge the Kidd Tutorial Program submissions. Baxter, nationally renowned author of “Feast of Love” and “Imaginary Paintings,” was chosen to be this year’s judge for the awards.
Fans filled Gerlinger Lounge to standing-room capacity as Baxter spoke Thursday. Creative Writing Program Professor Garrett Hongo spoke briefly about Baxter’s background and described his literary style as “Midwestern realism.”
“Please help me welcome the very brilliant, very boyish, very genial, Charles Baxter,” Hongo said.
Baxter approached the podium amid raucous applause, sporting small glasses, short brown hair and a slight beard.
He began the reading with “County Road H,” a poem he said is dedicated to people who don’t feel like giving names to roads. With a soft, determined voice, his words echoed through the room.
Baxter finished his reading with a chapter from “Feast of Love,” his latest book, in which a young man crosses paths with a tornado.
“I want to get a tornado into something I write,” he said, explaining his thought process that went before writing the chapter. “Writers in my generation haven’t written enough about shopping malls. I know, I’ll have a tornado hit a shopping mall!”
After the reading, fans waited in line to get books signed and meet with Baxter.
University Bookstore Events Coordinator Tom Gerald sold books for Baxter to sign.
“I like the way he combines his humor with very serious approaches to life,” said Gerald, who resigned his bookstore position Friday.
The awards ceremony was sponsored by the Kidd Tutorial Program, an intensive one-year writing tutorial created by Hongo in 1991. During the year, the program matches students with graduates to study writing and humanities.
“(Students) find their subject, deepen their passion, and once they leave the tutorial, they take with them the tools they need to sustain writing on their own,” Kidd Tutorial Director Shelly Withrow said.
Withrow announced this year’s Kidd Tutorial student winners in poetry and fiction before Baxter spoke Thursday.
After the event, fiction first-prize winner Amanda Coplin said, “I’m very, very pleased. And you can have the second ‘very’ in there.” Coplin, a junior English major, won for her story “Sleeping With Eugene,” about a young autistic boy and his mother.
Friday afternoon in the Knight Library Browsing room, Baxter spoke to a group composed mostly of writers about writing dialogue. His presentation dealt with the subtexts in stories — elements present in stories that characters don’t directly acknowledge.
Baxter covered character interaction, creation of aliases and how dialogue affects characters.
“When people aren’t paying attention to each other, well then (writers) have to pay attention to that,” he said. “That’s the first line of the job description.”