Author Meredith Willis Links Ethics With
By LINDA COMINS Arts & Living Editor
POSTED: March 9, 2008
West Virginia native and author Meredith Sue Willis believes that “people who read fiction and who write fiction are engaged in an ethical project.”
Speaking at a Lunch With Books program at the Ohio County Public Library in Wheeling Tuesday, March 4, Willis commented that as a writer of fiction, she is following “an ethical imperative to do this job of pretending and being someone other than yourself.” The ethical side of the practice of writing, she explained, comes into play through “the effort to imagine being in someone else’s shoes.”
The award-winning author commented, “Everyone in the world, but especially Americans because we are so powerful, we need to make that leap of imagination to think of what it’s like to be someone extremely different.” Reading fiction and certain biographies is “one of the most important things we all should be doing today,” she remarked.
Willis, who grew up in Shinnston where her parents were teachers, said that many of her works of fiction for adults are set in West Virginia, yet the characters lead lives dissimilar to her own experience. For example, Oradell Greengold, the title character in Willis’ novel, “Oradell at Sea,” grew up in north-central West Virginia, but was the child of an alcoholic and was a generation older than Willis. The fictional Oradell grew up poor and became rich as an adult, while “I’ve stayed in the middle,” Willis said.
Making her first visit to Wheeling, Willis, who now lives in New Jersey, read a selection from “Oradell at Sea” to the library audience. “The main reason that I write fiction,” Willis said, is as “an extension of what I consider children’s main work ... pretending and exploring through play.” While she takes being a writer and artist very seriously, the practice works best when it is most fun for her.
Willis has lived in a small “commuter” town on the edge of Newark, N.J., for 15-20 years, and has been involved “in an organization that is trying to make integration work for people.” Relating that a biracial girl she met in that setting was the inspiration for one of her works, the author said, “I’m always doing that — I’m always using some of my life and imagining what it is like to be someone else.”
The author of books on writing and the teaching of writing, she also serves as a writer in schools for grades 3-5 and teaches adults at New York University. The schoolchildren provide Willis with “a lot of great ideas” for her children’s writing. Her works include a series of “Marco” books for young readers; a children’s novel, “Billie of Fish House Lane,” and a science fiction novel for young adults, “The City Built of Starships.”
In addition to “Oradell at Sea,” Willis’ other West Virginia novels are “A Space Apart” and her Blair Morgan trilogy: “Higher Ground,” “Only Great Changes” and “Trespassers.” Her first novel, “A Space Apart,” has been re-released in a new paperback edition. She also has written a collection of Appalachian short stories, “In the Mountains of America.”
Currently, Willis is working on a second collection of short stories set in West Virginia. Her nonfiction work includes two entries — on the 1944 Shinnston tornado and on Wheeling native Rebecca Harding Davis’ “Life in the Iron Mills” — for “The West Virginia Encyclopedia,” which was published in 2006.
Asked about her literary influences, Willis said she first read comic books (“Uncle Scrooge Goes to the Klondike” and “Little Lulu”). She became a great fan of 19th-century American and British literature and of Russian literature. Later, she discovered Appalachian literature. Saying there are “some terrific writers who identify themselves as Appalachians,” she observed, “They don’t teach this — it is one of the great losses.”
Regarding language, Willis added, “I grew up very much in a church family. The King James Version of the Bible was in my ears many times a week.”
The Ohio County Public Library’s next two Lunch With Books sessions (Tuesday, March 11, and Tuesday, March 25) will feature Women’s History Month-related programs. The library’s West Virginia Writers Series will resume Tuesday, April 1, with an appearance by Kevin Stewart (“The Way Things Always Happen Here”) and will conclude with Jeff Walmsley (“Mothman: Behind the Red Eyes”) speaking on Tuesday, April 26.
