Write livelihood
ALUMNI AUTHORS SIZZLE ON OUR SUMMER BOOK LIST
Reviews and profiles by Liz Massey

Ah, the lazy days of summer. For some alumni, June, July and August offered a welcome respite from the demands of reading for classes when they were in school; for others, the blazing heat meant that reading for summer classes in front of the air conditioner or swamp cooler just sounded that much more enticing.

We’ve assembled a collection of books by alumni authors that we think you’ll enjoy. Whether you’re looking for a charming bedside book to help you wind down, or a thought-provoking tome for the bus ride to work, we have a book to tickle your grey matter.

STRAIGHT SHOT
Ex-cop, casino dealer BarNes advises writers to "play in a much larger sandbox"
The Author: H. Lee Barnes '92 M.F.A.
The Book: "The Lucky"

Some writers seek inspiration from muses, some ponder the eternal truths, but H. Lee Barnes’s career as a writer began when he killed someone.

Barnes, a state narcotics agent working in Las Vegas in the 1970s, shot a suspect and was arrested (and released) twice in connection with the man’s death. The experience touched him deeply enough that he wrote a 597-page novel based upon the shooting and the court case that followed.

“It was terrible,” Barnes asserts. “But after that, I knew I had the discipline to do novels.”

Barnes has taken a route to writing that differs from that of many younger M.F.A. students. Born in 1944, Barnes served in the military during the Vietnam War. His remembrances from that period influenced his first book, “Gunning for Ho,” a collection of short stories.

He’s made his home in Las Vegas for the better part of 39 years, and worked as a police officer, narcotics agent, martial arts instructor, and casino dealer. After graduation from ASU, Barnes labored as a part-time community college instructor and worked simultaneously at the casinos on The Strip, grading his students’ papers on breaks. His experiences there are reflected in his 2002 novel “The Lucky,” which covers a boy’s adolescence in 1950s Mob-era Vegas and in “Dummy Up and Deal,” a narrative nonfiction book.

Barnes follows a demanding schedule as a professor at the Community College of Southern Nevada, arranging 12-hour days on campus so that he has several days a week to write at home. He encourages new writers to put their fingers to the keyboard as often as possible. He also thinks that students who go directly into master’s writing programs from undergraduate degrees might consider taking time off to, uh, season themselves.

“They’re writing from such a small box,” Barnes says.

“Go out and play in a much larger sandbox — if possible, go out and get shot, or shoot someone!” Figuratively speaking, of course.

PRACTICAL PROSE
Editor sheds light on the mystery of literary publication
The Editor: Mary Gannon, '92 M.F.A.
The Book: "The Practical Writer: From Inspiration to Publication"

Don’t pick up “The Practical Writer” if you want a blueprint from which to build your blockbuster novel, or if you need rivet-by-rivet instruction for assembling your poem, memoir or collection of short stories. Comprised of articles from Poets & Writers Magazine and essays commissioned especially for the book, “The Practical Writer” is more of a map than a blueprint — one designed to help writers navigate the publishing world, which for too many is a terra incognita.

Mary Gannon co-edited the collection with Therese Eiben. With the growth of creative-writing MFA programs, Gannon said, reams of material exist on how to write well; fewer resources accurately guide writers through marketing their work commercially.

“Writers do need an extra dose of practicality,” Gannon said. She said her own experience in the poetry track of ASU’s creative writing graduate program was“life-changing” but acknowledged that such programs cannot completely prepare graduates for the hurly-burly of selling their work.

The book is divided into five sections, with articles on how to submit a manuscript, snag an agent, give a reading of one’s work, and garner publicity for a book published by a small press. One of the most significant roles the book plays, Gannon asserts, is helping readers understand the changes that literary magazines and publishers have undergone during the last generation, as mega-publishers have gobbled up imprints, authors are now rated on how well each title sells, and editors often spend more time planning and marketing than reading new work.

“The industry has changed so much in the last 20 years,” she said. “It’s not a cottage industry anymore — it’s about the bottom line.”

Lest anyone think that her book is about adjusting one’s art to the marketplace, Gannon cautioned that adapting a work purely for commercial gain rarely succeeds.

“Writing is not about becoming a best-seller, it’s about committing to the writing life. This is a lifelong endeavor — and an important one.”

Lords of the Scrolls: Literary Traditions in the Bible and Gospels
By Donald K. Sharpes '68 Ph.D., Peter Lang Publishing

All writers, no matter what time period they’ve worked in, are influenced by the stories and traditions of others, and those who penned the Bible are no exception, argues Sharpes, an adjunct professor of education at ASU and a nationally known humanities scholar. This book illustrates parallels between Biblical stories and the Epic of Gilgamesh, Homeric epics, and Canaanite, Egyptian and Greek legends.

The Goat Bridge
By T.M. McNally '87 M.F.A., The University of Michigan Press

American photographer Stephen Brings is on the run— not from the law, but his own painful past. After his son is kidnapped and his relationship falls apart, Brings travels to the war-torn Balkans and contents himself with bringing oranges to an embattled woman and child he has chosen to protect. How Brings reconnects with his profession and his humanity form the basis of this novel, which Booklist called “far-reaching and scorchingly beautiful.”

50 and Out: A Guide for Getting a Job and Keeping It in the 21st Century
By John C. Kelley '71 B.A., AuthorHouse

In some respects, Dec. 17, 2001, was more of a day of tragedy for John Kelley than even Sept. 11 had been. He was fired from his job, and it took him more than a year to find a new one. In plain language, Kelley offers insights from his 13-month journey as a job-seeker and helps readers of all ages, but especially older workers, identify the strategies that will help them cope with the anger and fear surrounding job loss, as well as those that will garner an employer’s “yes” more quickly.

Sunshot: Peril and Wonder in the Gran Desierto
Photographs by Michael P. Berman '85 M.F.A.,
Text by Bill Broyles, University of Arizona Press

Michael Berman’s stunning black-and-white photographs and Bill Broyles’s text underscore desolate beauty found in the Gran Desierto, a stretch of borderland desert that nibbles off the southwestern corner of Arizona and the northwestern corner of Sonora, Mexico. Some call the area the “Devil’s Highway,” but Berman and Broyles illustrate why people continue to explore the area, which, they say, will endear itself to you, if it doesn’t kill you first.

My One-Night Stand with Cancer
By Tania Katan '97 B.A., Alyson Books

At 21, Tania Katan was a breast-cancer survivor who went on to write an award-winning play about her illness. Ten years later, she was diagnosed with cancer in her remaining breast, and the result, after surviving that experience, was this book, which blends sharp-edged, laugh-out-loud humor with the pathos of experiencing two bouts of life-threatening illness in one decade. Katan’s memoir is populated with toxic lovers (and one who is definitely not), colorful (read: troubled) co-workers, and a supportive cast of family and friends.

The Inn of a Thousand Days
By Alan Tongret '92 M.F.A., Singularity Press

When Alan Tongret’s parents bought a hotel to renovate
in the sleepy historic town of Augusta, Kentucky, the then-struggling actor decided to ditch New York for a chance to help his folks realize their dream — and to pursue his own dream of becoming a writer. Four years later, Tongret’s family had weathered several broken bones and enough building-improvement disasters to fill a book, yet the hotel remained unopened. Was Tongret able to risk everything to save the family dream and succeed — using his skills as a playwright, no less? Read this delightfully droll memoir to find out.

William J. Spillman and the Birth of Agricultural Economics

By Laurie Winn Carlson '91 M.Ed., University of Missouri Press

Sustainability and the plight of the family farm are not new issues. At the turn of the last century, as the frontier was closing and industrialized agriculture was beginning to gain prominence, William J. Spillman was an iconoclast at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, preaching the importance of agricultural education and crop rotation over one-crop corporate farming and policies that moved farm families off their land. Carlson’s book provides an interesting look at a man whose work influenced the agricultural components of the New Deal, as well as the farm allotment programs of today.

One Girl Babylon

By Ruth Ellen Kocher '94 M.F.A., '99 Ph.D.,

New Issues/Western Michigan University Press

Searing, haunting, wearying truths await the reader of Kocher’s poems. Kocher, who has won a number of national awards for her poetry, carves out three-dimensional portraits with her words. Poems in this collection cover coping with a traumatic past, the hopelessness of public-housing projects, and the sharp indignities of living black in a white world.

Spirits Distilled
By Jeffrey Coleman '93 M.F.A.,
Red Hen Press

There’s nothing esoteric about the poems Coleman writes. In spare, illustrative lines, he touches on his day-to-day thoughts about a variety of topics, ranging from the death of his father, political unrest in eastern Europe, and the hate-driven murder of James Byrd, Jr. Always lucid, Coleman’s poems speak to the part of us that looks for meaning in everyday events and our reactions to them.

EMPERORS R HIM
Napoleonic scholar completes"… For Dummies" tome
The Author: J. David Markham '91 M.Ed.
The Book: "Napoleon For Dummies"

Before going very far into the legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte, historian J. David Markham would like to get one thing straight about the man he has studied intently for the last 18 years: he wasn’t short.

“Napoleon was five-foot-six or five-foot-seven, and that was the average height for a French man at the time,” Markham chuckles, acknowledging the myth that is one of the more trivial misunderstandings that lay readers have about Napoleon, who ruled France, and large portions of Europe, for the first decade and a half of the 19th Century.

More significant facts to know about Napoleon, he says, are that more books have been written about Napoleon (300,000) than about any other historical figure, and that the man known for his brilliance on the field of battle was also responsible for fixing the French economy after its post-revolutionary chaos, for promoting religious freedom, for significantly improving the country’s education system, and for developing the Napoleonic Code, a legal framework whose influence is still seen in the law books of France and Louisiana.

Markham, who by day teaches high school history near his home in Olympia, Wash., is the executive vice president of the International Napoleonic Society, a scholarly organization devoted to the study of Napoleon’s life and times. Markham’s interest in Napoleon was fueled by a French history class he took at ASU. A paper about Napoleon that he wrote for the class provided the basis for his first published magazine article on the topic; the course helped him “get beyond being interested in Napoleon, and (do) something with that interest,” he said.

“Napoleon for Dummies” is Markham’s fourth book on the topic and he pops up with regularity as an expert on History Channel documentaries. He says his house resembles something of a Napoleonic museum, as he owns more than 1,000 books about the emperor and the world’s largest collection of Napoleonic-era snuffboxes.

“(The collections) inspire me to keep at it,” he says.

HOLDING A WINNING HAND BUSINESS GRAD WINS BIG IN POKER, LIFE
The Author: Tom Schneider '81 B.S.
The Book: "Oops, I won Too Much Money: Winning Wisdom from the Boardroom to the Poker Table"

Poker has been good to Tom Schneider. Very good. He can make more in a few days of tournament play than many business owners make in a year. But there is at least one element of the business world that Schneider, who is currently plays full time, misses.

“ Poker is a win-lose proposition,” Schneider, who recently won $256,000 when he came in third on the World Poker Tour, said. “Business, if you do it right, is win-win. It’s more fun to … celebrate our success than it is to be the lone ranger all the time.”

Lone ranger or not, Schneider has parlayed a modest start in cash games at Arizona casinos in the early 1990s into a career as a poker player, one which he hopes will help him become a card-dealing household name. With his World Poker Tour finish broadcast nationally in June on the Travel Channel, it appears he’s on his way.

Schneider said he came up with the idea of writing a book after playing in a tournament with Phil Hellmuth, known on the circuit as “the poker brat.”

“I started writing because (Phil) treats people badly,” Schneider said. “If he can write books, I thought, why can’t I write one that teaches people to behave at the (poker) table?”

Schneider’s book is largely about how to play the game of business, and life, with integrity. He intersperses sharp-witted anecdotes drawn from the card tables with stories from his career as a businessman. In the end, Schneider says, what matters isn’t whether you’re holding a full house, but if you have a happy one.

“When you finally ‘get’ it, you realize that doing for others is more important than things,” he said.

Schneider is enjoying the current poker “craze” and its effect on professional-level play. Poker has a fascinating intersection of luck and skill that other games can’t match, he asserts.

“People like poker, because there’s enough luck involved that a bad player can win occasionally,” he said. “But there’s also enough skill involved …(that) a good player will win in the long run.”