Previous | Next 

CURRENTLY IN WRITING
Celebrating words


More than 280 writers, editors, readers and fans from across North America and beyond gathered for a four-day examination and celebration of how Mennonite literature and Mennonite writers have impacted both the Mennonite and secular worlds. “Mennonite/s Writing: An International Conference” was held Oct. 24-27 at Goshen College in Indiana. The first Mennonite conference to intentionally gather creative writers from both the US and Canada, it attracted more than 20 authors who read from their work – both creative writing and academic papers, from poet Di Brandt, the first reader at the conference, to poet Jean Janzen, whose work ended Sunday’s final session.

Rudy Wiebe speaks to conference participants

Much of the discussion in the conference, sponsored by Goshen College and Conrad Grebel University College, centred on the works of Rudy Wiebe, the two-time Governor-General’s Award for Fiction recipient who released his landmark novel Peace Shall Destroy Many 40 years ago. Conference organizers honoured Wiebe; Japanese poet and pastor Yorifumi Yaguchi; Harry Loewen, one of the first people to teach Mennonite literature; and Barbara Claassen Smucker, author of Henry’s Red Sea and other prize-winning juvenile fiction novels.

Co-organizer Hildi Froese Tiessen of Conrad Grebel University College said Wiebe may not have fathered the writers present, but those writers may not have flourished without his work.

Wiebe, when talking about his own writing in an open forum, said Mennonites should continue to explore the depths of creativity. “The wonderful thing about writing fiction is you can go as far as your imagination can go, and then you have to go a few steps farther.”

Froese Tiessen assembled a 60-page tribute to Wiebe featuring letters and notes from 49 friends, colleagues, translators, students and fellow authors, including a cartoon by Canadian author Margaret Atwood titled, “Teaching Rudy to Dance”.

Co-organizer Ervin Beck of Goshen College also lauded Pennsylvania poet Julia Kasdorf, saying her first volume of poetry, Sleeping Preacher, published in 1992, did for Swiss-German Mennonite writers what Wiebe did for Russian Mennonites: “It showed us that we could write really good literature.”

In a paper he presented on Wiebe’s role and importance, Maurice Mireau said Mennonite writers were contradictions, in part because of their separatist past and worldly present. “The past lets us build a type of perception and a type of literature that is our own and also everyone else’s, that maybe belongs only to God,” Mierau said. “We live in a world that is radically at odds with the value system and language of our Mennonite predecessors. . . . It is up to artists from the Mennonite community to practise their art with the kind of integrity that will shed a little light on their contradictory experience. For whatever it turns out to be worth, we are Mennonite writers, we are in the world, and we are not.”

Rudy Wiebe

Poet Ann Hostetler, Goshen College associate professor of English, said Anabaptism permeates the work of the entire body of writers assembled, even if it is not explicitly expressed. A wide variety of Anabaptist topics were approached during the conference, including censorship of Russian Mennonites’ letters during Soviet rule; relationships between victims and perpetrators; and the passion, sensuality, history and faith found in so many texts. Sandra Birdsell and Patrick Friesen read from their prose and poetry, respectively, during an all-campus convocation as Goshen College’s 2002 S.A. Yoder Lecturers. Other presenters who read from their published work included Todd Davis, David Wright, Rosemary Nixon, Omar Eby, Jeff Gundy, Barb Nickel, David Waltner-Toews, Keith Ratzlaff, Dallas Wiebe, Raylene Hinz-Penner, Armin Wiebe and Sarah Klassen. Cate Friesen, Larry Warkentin, Bonnie Loewen, Carol Ann Weaver and Rebecca Campbell provided musical performances.

Presenters showed variety in the types of writing they examined, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, journalism, scriptwriting and songwriting. While many sessions featured writers reading their work, workshop topics also focused on how Mennonite writers can get published, improve their writing styles and express the uniqueness of their voices. An open reading session included writers from college-age to a poet in his 70s.

Froese Tiessen said, “These writers are telling my story. That is not only important to me, it’s important to the other readers and it’s important to the writers too. This was very much a writer’s festival . . . to promote and to stimulate Mennonite writing.”

While the international conference followed successful national conferences in Canada and in the US, Beck said what marked this conference was the improvement in the academic study of Mennonite literature, which he attributed to growth in the ranks of Mennonite authors, helped, in part, by the first two conferences. “That’s what conferences do – they stimulate creative writing. They stimulate research,” Beck said. “This was a democratic conference which had very high interest from readers as well as in the academic world. Everyone could find something they liked. . . . And this is not the end, it’s still a beginning.”

 – Goshen College news release

Previous | Next 

Last modified January 9, 2003.

© 2003 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
Masthead and usage information.