I drove up to Monroeville, Alabama on Thursday. Monroeville is home to Harper Lee. Alabama Southern was hosting the Alabama Writers Symposium. Patti Callahan Henry and Michael Morris were on the agenda. If you haven't read these authors, you should. Henry has been compared to Anne River Siddons and Michael has been compared to Harper Lee -- both are natural storytellers. More importantly, they are good, good people, and lawd, they are funny.

We ate pork for lunch, catfish for dinner. Patti & I threatened to heckle Michael from the front row, as he read from A Place Called Wireglass. Here's a tidbit that you won't find out from reading the book -- Miz Claudia's name was lifted from Lady Bird Johnson. Michael said it's her real name.

Kate Campbell, then took to the stage with her guitar: http://www.katecampbell.com/bio.html

Kate is very unassuming. Not a glamour girl. But I bought her Sing Me Out CD and it is so pure and the stories in the song captivating.

A superstar of sorts did follow  -- Beth Neilsen Chapman

http://bethnielsenchapman.blogspot.com/ 

You know the hit song This Kiss? Chapman wrote it. Chapman has a dramatic personal story that includes the death of a husband due to cancer, and her own struggle with cancer. But what left Morris, Henry and me slack-jawed was her insights about creativity. Here are a couple of her remarks that I wrote down:

"Loving someone is a creative art."

"We need to be an instrument for the arts to come into the world."

"Divine intervention is always looking for the place to show up next."

"Place your fears into the glove compartment. You keep them confined that way."

"Anything that involves expectation is coming from the thinking side of your brain, not the creating side."

Chapman is a person who has turned the discordant notes of life into beautiful harmony.

Patti introduced me to Ace Atkins, author of the hit Wicked City. And to one of my personal favorites -- Daniel Wallace, who wrote Big Fish. Don't know what happened to Ace but here's the group of us...

Morris, Chapman, Henry. Wallace and the poppy-clad, me.

Chapman on stage.

Listening to all that was pleasurable enough but after the catfish dinner Patti, Michael and I had tickets to the To  Kill A Mockingbird production on the square. The town puts on the play only for a short time period every May. It starts outside but then moves into the courtroom inside the courthouse. It looks exactly the same as when Gregory Peck filmed it. Patti and I sat behind the prosecutor's table, while Michael was pegged as a juror -- all men, all white. The choir sang out from the balcony. Scout and Jim and Dill called out their lines right above our heads.

The actors did a superb job. It was humbling to be in Monroeville, listening to Harper's words, thinking was an incredible talent she was, what courage she displayed in writing such a story, at such a time. Not a wasted word in the entire book. If you've not read the biography on Harper Lee, Mockingbird., do. Michael says it is really excellent. I plan to get a copy.

It is good as a writer to be reminded of how powerful the word can be -- how it can transcend time and place, from generation to generation. The townfolk say that Harper has had a stroke. That's she's in a home and not doing well. It occurred to me yesterday that as hard as we work, all of us, at whatever our jobs may be, in the end it comes down to that. A stroke. A fall. A heart attack. A cancer.

What matters most is how we use our time, our gifts, our efforts to create something that will transcend time and place, and carry a message from one generation to the next -- the way Harper Lee has done.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz7jGDG8fM8&NR=1

Lucky! I would love to see that play. I need to try and get down there sometime. To Kill a Mockingbird is about my favorite book. Well, next to yours, of course :)