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The Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference  The Mayborn Tribe At a time when we’re told long-form literary journalism is facing extinction, the Mayborn has evolved into the very lively center of the literary nonfiction universe. Each summer, the nation’s most acclaimed nonfiction storytellers gather for an annual pow-wow in Dallas to demonstrate their devotion to their craft, and to their tribe. Bob Shacochis, a literary journalist extraordinaire and National Book Award winner, once thought of Dallas as “a literary wasteland…a venue championing a seemingly aggressive disregard for fine books, writing and the writing life.” Then, in 2007, in the death-grip of a Dallas summer, Bob came to the Mayborn, sat in on our lectures, workshops and question-and-answer sessions and began to see Dallas in a new light. “Now, thanks and ever thanks to the Mayborn tribe of storytellers, I have to think of Dallas as a preferred destination, a center of literary gravity, perhaps the very heart of the universe these days for nonfiction writers in America.” At the Mayborn, our tribe talks about subjects seldom discussed at other literary conferences: about how to harness the precision, emotion and power of poetry in our nonfiction prose; about the physicality of words and the need to serve up language that is crunchy and pleasant to caress on the tongue; about how travel narratives can sometimes be a form of “mental illness theater;” about how in writing memoir we can count on losing our privacy, our best friends and sometimes our sanity; about the awkward two-step writers and editors dance every day, but especially on deadline; about how it’s okay to digress, sometimes far from home, when we’re writing about, say, iceberg lettuce or pine trees; about how we can play with chronology on the page without changing the truth of the story; about the value of becoming Zen-like to earn the trust of our subjects and the treasure of their story; about approaching every story, no matter how long we’ve been doing it, as an amateur--as though we’ve never written a narrative before. After deliberating all day about such great verities of literary nonfiction, the tribe can be heard hooting and hollering all night in someone’s hotel room, rehashing and debating the hottest issues of the day - like the claim by Vanity Fair’s writer, Bryan Burrough, at this summer’s conference that he pretty much knows what a story is going to say before he even begins to report it. Poor Bryan. He became a punching bag for every speaker that followed, including our Saturday night keynote, Mark Bowden, who proclaimed that unlike his prophetic tribesman, he goes into every story feeling as “ignorant” as he did on his first assignment as a cub reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Yet Mark and Bryan reveled in every minute of the Mayborn. As Mark said, after spending three days at the Mayborn -- sharing ideas and methods and sometimes sparring with other storytellers like Bryan - he came away feeling like he had joined a vibrant literary community that cared deeply for one another. Where else but the Mayborn, he told me, can you find speakers and conferees “drinking and laughing and swapping stories until three in the morning…like normal human beings. You wouldn’t want to miss that.” Bryan left me an autographed copy of his latest book, “The Big Rich” with a note inside: “George, you’ll never know how much I owe you.” Lee Hancock, a narrative writer for The Dallas Morning News who brought her 13-year-old daughter and her daughter’s friend to the conference, kept reflecting on her Mayborn experience, periodically starring at Bob Shacochis’s words scribbled on yellow post-it-notes: “Writing is an essential act of community.” She began thinking: “What if this annual gathering acted like a community, welcoming youngsters and introducing them to the ideas and excitement and possibilities of the craft? What if you could catch a kid before they’d been convinced that writing was either the colossally boring stuff of English composition classes or the impenetrable mysteries of something called ‘literature.’” Afterward, Lee called me, so excited she was breathless, saying she wanted to start a $5,000 scholarship program starting next year to bring seventh through twelfth graders to the conference, with the idea of creating a new generation of nonfiction storytellers. (Read about The Mayborn Young Spurs Excellence and Opportunity Initiative). Lee’s generous act, and our speakers’ generous words, make clear that the Mayborn matters. And that’s why I have faith that the Mayborn Tribe of Storytellers will flourish from now ‘til kingdom come.
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ContactMayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism
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