One cannot be pessimistic about the West, right?
I find myself increasingly struck by the optimism of the West.
By that I mean that there are all these great writers doing all this great work. Claire Vaye Watkins and Alan Heathcock and Ben Percy and Jen Percy and so many more.
Not only that but there is a vital literary culture that incorporates many inheritances. We might have to drive or fly a bit to get there, but it’s all brainstorming time, right? Or listening to a book on tape.
So I just haven’t been able to let Native Home of Hope go.
Another thing happened. I became a Wikipedian and had a set-to with gatekeepers about the legitimacy of the literary West. Apparently we aren’t a legitimate group ~ and I suspect they don’t believe we’re legit in other ways.
Go here to read more about it as it relates to gender, though region is mentioned toward the end, and
go here to see the Wiki Talk about my entry on Contemporary Writers of the American West.
See, the problem is that there is no place to go online to get a list of all the great writers of the West who are doing great work now. If you search for western writers or writers of the West, almost all entries are for the genre of Westerns. Westerns are great, but they by no means encompass what we’re trying to accomplish, the great questions we’re exploring. And they leave a lot of people out.
So I had created a list for Wikipedia that they rejected, and I wanted some place to put it.
Why not Native Home of Hope? It’s perfect. And along with that, I’ll reboot the site, making it less time-intensive for editors by creating evergreen content and not posting as often.
My vision for Native Home of Hope has always been to be a gathering place and clearinghouse for writers of the America West. Please join me. If you have something you’d like to have posted here, send it our way. If you have a new book out or a book tour coming up, let’s post about it here. We're taking fiction and poetry too.
This is your site. Submit! Email us at
NativeHomeOfHope at gmail dot com.
