16th Annual
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Literary Conference
Saturday,
October 22, 2011
Montgomery College,
Rockville, Maryland
“So we beat on,
boats against the
current, borne back
ceaselessly into
the past.”
– The Great Gatsby
Sponsored by:
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Literary Conference, Inc.
In partnership with:
F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference
111 Maryland Avenue · Rockville, Maryland 20850
301-309-9461 · www.montgomerycollege.edu/potomacreview/fscott
F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference Award Recipients
YEAR
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004 2005
2006
2007
2008 2009
2010 2011 AUTHOR
William Styron
John Barth
Joyce Carol Oates
E.L. Doctorow
Norman Mailer
Ernest J. Gaines
John Updike
Edward Albee
Grace Paley
Pat Conroy
Jane Smiley
William Kennedy
Elmore Leonard
Julia Alvarez
Alice McDermott
Maxine Hong Kingston
“The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter.
In the best sense one stays young.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald never lived in Rockville, Maryland — so why is he buried here?
The author is associated
with the glittering, romantic and
dissipated excesses of the Jazz
Age — a phrase he coined —
and venues such as Princeton’s
rarefied halls of ivy, the glamour
of New York, Paris, the French
Riviera and Hollywood. Yet,
Fitzgerald’s Maryland roots were
so deeply embedded that when
he died suddenly in Hollywood,
there was little question that
Rockville would be his final resting place.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota. His mother,
Mollie McQuillan, was the daughter of a prosperous
wholesale grocer there. While his mother’s family had
the money, he carried his genteel Maryland pedigree
in his name. His Maryland connections were his father’s. Edward Fitzgerald was from a well-established
Montgomery County family. Young Fitzgerald regularly visited his father’s relatives at Locust Grove, their
farm in Montgomery County, returning home fascinated with family and Civil War stories. The 6-year-old
was a “ribbon holder” at his cousin Cecilia Delihant’s
wedding at Randolph Station, south of Rockville, on
April 24, 1903.
Even as a youngster, Fitzgerald led a nomadic
life. His father’s unfulfilled search for success in
business took the family to Buffalo and Syracuse,
New York. Eventually they returned to live with his
mother’s family in St. Paul. Fitzgerald dropped out of
Princeton, enlisted in the army, and in Montgomery,
Alabama, he met Zelda Sayre. The two were married
in New York City following the publication of his first
novel. They never owned a house; after their marriage, they lived in Europe and in numerous locations
in the United States. From 1932 to 1937, the Fitzgeralds lived in Baltimore while Zelda was undergoing
treatment for mental illness.
He completed Tender Is the Night (1934) in
Baltimore. People, places and experiences in
Rockville found their way into that novel and his other
writings. Fitzgerald maintained his life-long connection to Rockville through correspondence, family
ties and visits and, ultimately, his final resting place.
As an adult, Fitzgerald may have visited Rockville
more than research has revealed. We do know that
12
he returned from Paris in 1931 to attend his father’s
funeral at Saint Mary’s Church. A passage in Tender
Is the Night describes his feeling: “It was very friendly
leaving him there with all his relations around him...
Dick had no more ties here now and did not believe
he would come back... ‘Good-bye my father — goodbye, all my fathers.’”
Fitzgerald died at age 44 on December 21, 1940,
in Hollywood, California, and was buried in Rockville
Cemetery. When Zelda died in 1948, she was buried
with him beneath a common headstone. In 1975, they
were reinterred at Saint Mary’s Church cemetery on
Veirs Mill Road. In 1986, their daughter Scottie was
buried in the family plot. Today, 15 members of the
family — Fitzgeralds, Delihants, Scotts and Robertsons — rest in peace at historic Saint Mary’s Church.
Before he died, Fitzgerald considered himself
as a failure. He had written five novels — This Side of
Paradise (1920); The Beautiful and Damned (1922);
The Great Gatsby (1925); Tender Is the Night (1934);
and The Last Tycoon (1941, left incomplete at his
death). While he worked as a contract screenwriter
in Hollywood, he had only one credited screenplay.
Fitzgerald churned out short stories to pay the bills
— first to support an expensive lifestyle and later to
provide for Zelda’s medical treatments and Scottie’s
education. Of more than 150 short stories, 46 were
published in four collections. He was an early success — his writing spoke to a time. At the time of his
death, there was little market for his writing, perhaps
because during the Great Depression, the glamour
and wealth of his characters seemed less relevant.
Following World War II, his work and exquisite
craftsmanship gradually received the appreciation
and acclaim that it has today. The Great Gatsby, a tale
that chronicles the corruption of the American Dream,
is not only a staple of English classes but also, in two
recent surveys of the best 20th century English-language novels, was rated as No. 1 and No. 2.
Each year on his birthday, visitors find their way
to Fitzgerald’s gravesite at Saint Mary’s Church cemetery. They leave flowers, packs of cigarettes, martini
glasses and gin bottles in silent homage to F. Scott
Fitzgerald, the romantic legend, chronicler of the Jazz
Age.
16th Annual
F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference
Saturday, October 22, 2011 • Montgomery College, Rockville, Maryland
About F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald spent his childhood summers with relatives in the Rockville area. Author of
The Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night and other
novels and short stories, he lived and wrote some of
his greatest works in Maryland. He, his wife Zelda,
their daughter Scottie, and other relatives are buried
at historic Saint Mary’s Church in Rockville.
About the Partners
The 2011 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference
is organized by the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference, Inc. The conference committee thanks its
partners, whose generous contributions of services,
facilities, staff and/or funds make the conference
possible:
• City of Rockville
• Montgomery College
About the Conference
Celebrating the 115th birthday of the great
American author and the art of writing, the 16th
Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference offers the unique opportunity for aspiring writers to
have their work critiqued by accomplished writers
in the specialty field of their choice, whether fiction,
memoir, or non-fiction.
Supportive Sponsors
The committee also thanks the following
organizations for help with publicity and in-kind
services.
• Peerless Rockville Historic Preservation, Ltd.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald Society
• Montgomery College Foundation
• Montgomery Commission for Women
• The Potomac Review
Short Story Contest Sponsor:
• City of Rockville Cultural Arts Commission
F. Scott Fitzgerald Board of Directors
John Moser, President
Joseph Monte, Vice President
Jackson R. Bryer, Secretary
Pat Chickering, Treasurer
Carolyn Terry, At Large
Dawn Downey, At Large
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Short Story Contest History
The conference’s short story contest was
created in 1996.
All entries were read, pre-screened, and judged
by the editorial board of the Potomac Review. They
selected semi-finalists who were subsequently read
and judged by Richard Peabody. Peabody teaches
fiction writing for the Johns Hopkins Advanced
Studies Program and made the final selection of the
winner and the three runners-up.
Potomac Review, a biannual journal based in
Rockville, supports the conference and also
publishes the short story winner in its Spring issue.
The conference committee and participants are
most grateful to the journal and Montgomery
College for their support, time, and effort.
The F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary
Conference Committee comprises a diverse
and talented group of individuals who all share one
common interest — an appreciation for the art of
writing and a love of literature.
Erika Koss, Conference Director
Linda Bishop, Administrative Assistant
Betty Wisda, City of Rockville Liaison
Jackson R. Bryer
Pat Chickering
Dawn Downey
Eleanor Heginbotham
Joseph Monte
Carolyn Terry
1
2011 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference Honoree
Photo Credit: Michael Lionstar
Honoree: Maxine Hong Kingston
…is the author of The Woman Warrior, China Men,
Tripmaster Monkey, The Fifth Book of Peace, and
I Love a Broad Margin to My Life, among other
works. She is the recipient of numerous awards,
including the National Book Award, the National
Book Critics Circle Award, the presidentially
conferred National Humanities Medal, and the
Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American
Letters from the National Book Foundation. For
many years a Senior Lecturer for Creative Writing
at UC Berkeley. She lives in California.
Maxine Hong Kingston is a celebrated author whose famous works The Woman Warrior (1975) and China
Men (1980) continue to be widely taught in college classrooms across the nation. Both books are cherished in
American and beyond, having been translated in several languages. Her seminal work continues to shape the
fields of Asian American literature, women’s literature, and postmodern fiction. Kingston’s The Woman Warrior
and her social influence as an author take center stage in Karen Tei Yamashita’s recently acclaimed novel
I-Hotel (2010). Despite the Kingston’s subtitle—“Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts”—the novel has come
to represent the empowerment of many others who have historically been minoritized (within their respective
milieus) through aesthetic experimentation and the act of telling stories (“talk-story”).
In response to her mother’s words that begin the novel, “You must not tell anyone…what I am about to tell
you[,]” the protagonist takes on the persona of the mythical Chinese woman warrior in order to fight the racism,
sexism, and classism that she and her ancestors face as she tells their forbidden stories: She declares, “The
swordsman and I are not so dissimilar. May my people understand the resemblance soon so that I can return
to them. What we have in common are the words at our backs. The idioms for revenge are ‘report of crime’
and ‘report to five families.’ The reporting is the vengeance—not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words.
And I have so many words—‘chink’ words and ‘gook’ words too—that they do not fit on my skin.” As enduring
examples of social empowerment, Kingston’s words and stories continue to whistle in the ears of her readers
and writers who have come after her.
~Audrey Wu Clark
2
come back until now, but why did I come back at
all? I asked myself that question. Why me? And
only me?
“Where is your mother?”
“You have seen Mama for the last time,” I say
truthfully. “Mama did not want to leave you. But she
did need to leave bedclothes that smelled of vomit,
and other women’s lipstick on your shirts.”
He snorted as he turned toward me, and I
notice his eyes. They are my eyes, deep brown,
penetrating. I decide to go on.
We were sick of the fear, I tell him, we were all
sick of Mama having to beg for the grocery money,
Felipe being nagged to successes he was unsuited
for, Consuelo was tired of being his princess and
the perfect one in the family. We were tired of never
knowing if he would be a devil or an angel. We
were fed up, as the Americans say.
I am heaving deep breaths when I finish, and I
go to the window to inhale Bogota’s non-existent air.
I stare up at Montserrate, its statue of Christ barely
visible in the day’s haze.
I haven’t mentioned the beatings received by
Mama and Felipe. I haven’t mentioned the sexual
advances that Consuelo and I had to defend
ourselves against as soon as we began to become
women. I remember these things but as I spoke I
realized that it was my dearest hope, my deepest
desire, that my father was too drunk at the time to
remember those very same things.
Is that forgiveness?
I don’t know.
Turning back to him, I see that he has lit a cigarette, and is puffing contentedly away.
“You are very beautiful.” And he smiles a
skeletal smile. “But you are not as beautiful as
your mother.” He pauses. “Does she have anyone
else?”
“No,” I say truthfully.
“You don’t need to stay. I will die alone.”
“We all die alone,” I snap. “Put that cigarette
out and put your oxygen on.”
He is surprisingly obedient, twisting the butt in
the cheap ashtray, and inserting the plastic tubes
back into his nose.
continued from pg. 10…
dived for Missy, ducked past him, and headed for
my room.
He was not going to leave me alone—grabbing
my arm, he slapped me again.
“Where is she?”
“Where is who?”
“Where is she?”
He was talking about Consuelo, who had left
home two weeks before. None of us had heard
from her.
“Who, who,” I moaned. I had seen my mother
in this box a thousand times, always viewing her
predicament with sour detachment. Didn’t she
know about timing? Couldn’t she figure it out?
“Where is she?” He had me by the shoulders
now, and was using my body as a club to beat the
wall with.
But suddenly a calmness came over me, and I
looked him in the eye.
“I will never tell you. Kill me. Go ahead, kill
me.”
And he stopped. He stopped. Just like that, he
stopped.
In truth, I had no idea where Consuelo was.
She had wisely told me nothing. But my ruse, my
pretense had put me one up with my father. Admiration and curiosity got the best of his brutality. For
the rest of that year I pretended to know more than
I did, pretended to be the stubborn non-informant,
pretended I was stronger than he. He respected
that, and he did not hit me again. Even Mama
thought I knew something. It wasn’t until she,
Felipe, and I were all in the states, that Consuelo
reappeared, coming by bus from Cincinnati, via
Miami, via Medellin. She told us very little, and we
didn’t ask.
The priest leaves, and I go back to the room.
“Why did you come so late,” he asks me.
“Late? Father Bernardo just left.”
“I mean late. You have been gone twenty
years. I would have sent you the money.”
I pause. Twenty years have gone quickly, and
I have never missed him. I know why I have not
11
In my childhood, I would only have been in
this part of the city during Holy Week—when our
family—aunts, uncles, cousins included—led by
grandpa—would make a pilgrimage to this very
hospice—to bring food and money—and to visit
each patient personally. It was grandpa’s tribute to
his Catholicism, and his piety, lasting as it did for
the few hours he was here, was very moving to me
as I remember viewing it through my childish eyes.
Is his ghost here with his educated son, I wonder?
Our family lived north of the city, in an elegant
suburb, and a beautiful house, which I left one October afternoon to look for my cat, Missy Foo. Missy
Foo was my substance that year, with the fights
getting more frequent and bitter, and the silences
getting more oppressive, and the secrets getting
larger. Success was wearing out. The kitchen appliances worked about half the time, the CD player
was broken, and the wall-to-wall carpeting was
shot. For years, when people came into our house,
one could hear a faint gasp at its glamour, but the
glamour had been gone for awhile. I had taken to
barricading my bedroom door.
It was getting dark fast, and as I walked up and
down Calle Ocho, I thought how futile it was, for
when Missy Foo wanted to come back, she would
come back. But I kept looking, for I needed that
cat, needed her steel and velvet body to hold and
coo over, her delicate Siamese beauty to ponder.
Missy Foo was my constant, my sanity, rhythm, and
ballast. Where was she?
Night was about to fall, and this was Bogota. A
violent city. Women did not walk alone curbside in
Bogota after dark. Common sense began to crowd
out my emotional needs, and I ran toward my home,
up the flagstone steps when I spied, slinking toward
me, Missy Foo. Scooping her up, I cried with relief,
and bolted through the front door.
Slap. Full across the face.
“Streetwalker. Whore!”
My timing. I had always prided myself on it,
held Consuela and Felipe, even Mama, in secret
scorn because they didn’t understand timing. But
my timing was off, the first time I every remember it
being off. Missy Foo fell to the floor, and I held my
burning face, saying nothing, looking furtively at my
father.
“I was looking for my cat,” I said feebly, and I
continued from pg. 9…
vantage of our mother’s absence, leaping on the
furniture, twisting and turning, twirling and stretching
the scarves and our bodies.
Manuel came into the living room, still in his
robe, went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a scotch. I remember this, but it did not seem
unusual. All grown-ups drank, sometimes in the
morning, sometimes in the evening. It was very normal. We liked Manuel best of all our uncles, and as
soon as he settled on the couch, we were climbing
on him, teasing him, treating him for the favorite he
was.
But Manuel was sullen that day, completely
out of sorts. Finally he pushed both of us away,
and handing Consuelo his empty glass, he told
her to get him some water. Still giggling, she took
the glass to the bathroom to fill it. He rose from the
couch, and following behind her, pulled the bathroom door shut.
I remember the quiet. I remember her face
as she emerged. I remember my own guilty relief
about something…that I had not been the temptation? I remember Mama’s face, for she appeared
shortly after that, and eyed us all apprehensively. Of course, I am projecting. That’s what maturity
tells me, that’s what common sense tells me. But
why, when years later, Consuelo told me what had
happened, did I recall the day so precisely, remember the details so clearly?
I would have my turn, for Consuelo left the
house while still a teenager. Then I found out that
Papa also did strange things when drunk. While
Mama worried herself sick about Consuelo, and my
father’s drinking took on a sullen seriousness that
even I, at age fifteen, came to realize was very, very
sick, I would wake up at night and find him in my
bedroom.
During the hour or so it takes for Papa to visit
with the priest and make his confession, I take a
walk in Bogota’s airless atmosphere. I am nine
thousand feet in the air, surrounded by mountains.
This is the poorer section of the city, and I see a few
men—paisanos—who still wear the ruana over their
suitcoats. I never saw my father wear one, although
his father—my grandfather—self-made, illiterate,
charming, and immoral even by my father’s rather
warped standards—would happily throw one over
his shoulders at family gatherings.
continued on pg. 11…
10
2011 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference Speakers and Workshop Leaders
Keynote Speaker
Maureen Corrigan, book critic for
NPR’s Fresh Air, is a critic-in-residence
and lecturer at Georgetown University.
She is an associate editor of and contributor to Mystery and Suspense Writers
(Scribner) and the winner of the 1999 Edgar Award
for Criticism, presented by the Mystery Writers of
America. Corrigan’s literary memoir, Leave Me Alone,
I’m Reading!, was published in 2005. Corrigan is
also a reviewer and columnist for The Washington
Post’s Book World. In addition to serving on the advisory panel of The American Heritage Dictionary, she
has chaired the Mystery and Suspense judges’ panel
of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Best Book of 2009. A Bennington College MFA
graduate, Kim teaches fiction at Fairfield University’s
low-residency MFA Creative Writing Program. She is
the 2011 Stanford Calderwood Fellow at The MacDowell Colony, and a fellow at the Virginia Center for
Creative Arts. She lives in Washington, DC.
A native of Yazoo City, Mississippi,
Caroline Langston is a widely
published writer and essayist. She holds
an MFA from the University of Houston,
and her fiction has been anthologized in
the Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South
series. She has been a commentator for NPR’s All
Things Considered and is also regular blogger for
Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion’s Good
Letters blog. She was received into the Eastern
Orthodox Church at St. George Cathedral in Wichita,
Kansas, in 1996. She lives with her husband, a
Roman Catholic, and their two children in Cheverly,
Maryland.
Featured Musician and Workshop Leader
Pamela York is a Canadian-born
jazz pianist, composer, and vocalist, who
audaciously invites her audience to enter
her life for a moment in time. To Pamela
York, what matters most is connecting
with people as she tells a story through her music.
Since beginning her piano studies at age eight,
York has garnered many awards and taught music
in various venues across the United States, including
several community colleges. A graduate of the Royal
Conservatory of Music in Toronto and Berklee College of Music in Boston, she has conducted master
classes for the Thelonius Monk Institute and has
studied with jazz greats Ray Santisi, Diana Krall, and
Donald Brown. Ms. York won the 2007 Great American Jazz Piano Competition in Jacksonville, FL, and
her last Washington, DC, appearance was as a finalist for the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Piano Competition
at the Kennedy Center (2006, 2007).
Her recordings Blue York and The Way of Time
have received outstanding reviews from jazz fans
and critics alike and are available on her web site
www.pamelayork.com. She lives with her husband
and two children outside of Houston, Texas.
E. Ethelbert Miller is a literary
activist. Born in 1950, he grew up in the
South Bronx. A graduate of Howard University, he was one of the first students to
major in African American Studies. Today
he is the board chair of the Institute for Policy Studies
in Washington, DC, and the director of the African
American Resource Center at Howard University. He
holds an honorary doctorate from Emory and Henry
College. The author of several collections of poetry,
he has also written two memoirs, Fathering Words:
The Making of an African American Writer and The
5th Inning. Fathering Words was selected by the D.C.
Public Library for its 2003 DC WE READ, one book,
one city program. His poetry has been translated
into many languages, and he is often heard on NPR.
For several years he was a core faculty member
with the Bennington Writing Seminars. He lives in
Washington, DC.
Writing Workshop Leaders
Eugenia Kim’s debut novel, The
Calligrapher’s Daughter, won the 2009
Borders Original Voices Award, was
shortlisted for the 2010 Dayton Literary
Peace Prize, and is a Washington Post
3
Richard Peabody is the founder
and co-editor of Gargoyle Magazine and
editor (or co-editor) of nineteen anthologies including Mondo Barbie, Conversations with Gore Vidal, and A Different
Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat Generation.
2011 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference Speakers and Workshop Leaders cont.
Literary Workshop Leaders
Jackson R. Bryer is Professor
Emeritus of English at the University of
Maryland, where he taught undergraduate and graduate courses for 41 years.
He is the co-founder and president of the
F. Scott Fitzgerald Society. Among the books he has
authored, edited, or co-edited on Fitzgerald are Approaches to Teaching Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
(2009), Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters
of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (2002), New Essays
on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Neglected Stories (1996), The
Critical Reputation of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Bibliographical Study (1967; 1984), The Short Stories of F.
Scott Fitzgerald: New Approaches in Criticism (1982),
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Critical Reception (1978),
Dear Scott/Dear Max: The Fitzgerald-Perkins Correspondence (1971), and F. Scott Fitzgerald in His Own
Time: A Miscellany (1971).
continued from pg. 3…
The author of a novella, two short story collections,
and six poetry books, he is currently working on
Amazing Graces: Yet Another Collection of Fiction
by Washington Area Women (forthcoming 2011/12).
Peabody teaches fiction writing at Johns Hopkins,
where he has been presented both the Faculty
Award for Distinguished Professional Achievement
(2005) and the Award for Teaching Excellence: Master of Arts in Writing Program (2010-2011).
Amy Stolls is the author of the novel
The Ninth Wife, just out from HarperCollins in May 2011, and the young adult
novel Palms to the Ground (Farrar, Straus
& Giroux), published in 2005 to critical
acclaim and a Parents’ Choice Gold Award. She
spent years as a journalist covering the Exxon Valdez
oil spill in Alaska before she received an MFA in
creative writing from American University. Currently,
she is the literature program officer for the National
Endowment for the Arts, where she has worked since
1998, collaborating with thousands of writers, translators, editors, booksellers, publishers, educators and
presenters nationwide to keep literature a vital part of
American society. She lives in Washington, DC, with
her husband, two-year-old son, and newborn son.
Audrey Wu Clark is an Assistant
Professor of English at the United States
Naval Academy where she specializes
in Multi-Ethnic American literature, Asian
American literature, and African American literature. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with
a Bachelor of Arts in English and a concentration in
Asian American Studies from Cornell University. She
received her doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, where she completed a dissertation
on conceptualizing the field of early Asian American
literature. She is currently developing her work into a
book that examines Asian American racial formation
at the intersections of modernism, regionalism, and
the proliferation of the little magazine culture at the
turn of the twentieth century. She also currently has
articles under consideration by the Journal of Asian
American Studies, Amerasia Journal, and MELUS.
She and her husband live in Annapolis, Maryland.
Raised in the U.S. and Africa by Swiss
parents, Susi Wyss traveled to or lived
in more than a dozen African countries for
her 20-year career in international health
before becoming an author. Set in Africa
and inspired by her travels, her debut novel-in-stories,
The Civilized World (Henry Holt, 2011), was called
a “smart, urbane debut” by Publisher’s Weekly and
listed as a “Book to Pick Up Now” in the April issue of
O, The Oprah Magazine. Wyss has received various
grants and awards, including two Artist Awards from
the Maryland State Arts Council. Her short stories
have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Bellevue Literary Review, Cream City Review,
and The Massachusetts Review, and she served as
an associate editor for Potomac Review. She holds a
B.A. from Vassar, an M.P.H. from Boston University,
and an M.A. in fiction writing from Johns Hopkins
University. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, where
she is working on a second novel.
Eleanor Elson Heginbotham
has taught Fitzgerald and other American
authors for over 40 years in places as
far as Liberia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and
Hong Kong (the last as a Fulbright Senior
Scholar), and for 18 years at Bethesda’s Stone Ridge.
During her years there she earned her Ph.D. with a
dissertation (and later a book) on Emily Dickinson.
4
were American priests: I remember Fr. Luke from
Chicago. He was dark, lithe, and had a scar on his
face, and would listen to Mama very seriously and
intently.
Papa’s priest is a Colombian priest, a tiny
eunuch with frail white hands, and a soft child-like
voice, melodic and diffident. Papa would have despised him years ago, especially for his effeminacy.
That is what priest meant to him, and he was always
perplexed and threatened by the very masculine
American priests Mama knew.
But he is happy to have Fr. Bernardo come
and happy to go to confession every day, do you
believe it? My agnostic, atheist father, is happy
to listen to tender tales about the Good Shepherd
from this little fairy of a man.
“Fr. Bernardo is a real priest,” he will tell me
happily. “He is what a priest should be.”
And my thoughts come to rest again, in that
stagnant pool of unforgiveness I suppose we all
have, where our unsolved questions are asked over
and over.
It was Father Luke my bewildered American
mother had gone to see that day. She did not
understand her husband, her marriage, and Catholicism Colombian style. Probably a holy day, Assumption or Ascension, and Tio Manuel had stayed
at our home the night before.
Often he came over to talk with Papa. Manuel
was Papa’s favorite brother, and they thought one
another very clever. They would talk and drink
until three or four in the morning, until one or both
passed off into sleep on the couch.
Papa left early that morning, and Mama left to
go to mass—yes, it was a holy day, because Consuelo and I were not in school. And my memory
presumes that Mama lingered after mass, for she
usually did—to say a rosary, go to confession, or to
talk with her favorite, Father Luke.
Manuel was showering when we became
aware of him in the house. Consuelo and I were
in the living room, a CD was playing. We each
had a couple of scarves and were doing our own
prepubescent version of a scarf dance. Papa had
recently acquired a CD player and some disks—
classical disks, most of which we disdained, except
for one—Ravel’s Bolero. Now that was music to
dance by, and Consuelo and I were taking ad-
continued from pg. 8…
would watch his face relax into a grimace, as if he
was fighting heartburn or had tasted something really foul.
“She writes you?”
“Yes.”
He was not talking. I had actually gone to see
Consuelo before I left Oakland, wondering if perhaps she wanted to join me in this pilgrimage home.
Consuelo, how shall I say it? Consuelo has
been born again. All her childhood memories have
been healed, she tells me, and her life is devoted
to Jesus. We live less than twenty miles apart and
I see her at most once a year. And I go to see her,
she does not come to see me.
“Felipe? Do you hear from Felipe?”
“Ah, stupid Felipe.”
“And Mama, what do you hear from Mama?”
He has, thankfully, quit saying ‘your mother is a
whore’ when I ask him this. He reaches for his cigarettes, and a thoughtful expression graces his face.
Maybe it’s just gas, I think to myself uncharitably.
Neither Consuelo nor Felipe wanted to come
with me. I think their choice—to choose not to
remember—is mistaken. Mama, of course, remembers too much. Love and hate have short-circuited
each other, and she is still paralyzed.
For me, memory is more real than my father’s
presence, it is like the bodies recently buried in a
battlefield, only lightly covered with soil, oozing with
pus and odor, with pain not yet extinguished. What
did I come for if not to deal with memory?
Most of the time, I just sit by Papa. Sometimes
I bathe him, sometimes I read to him – the newspaper, what is happening on the streets of America
– he likes that, because he can warn me about
being raped, or mugged, or hopefully, even axemurdered, in the city of Oakland, where I live.
After I have finished the washing, the turning,
the changing of linens, the freshening up of his
water pitcher—I cannot seem to get him to drink
enough—I will sit dream-like in the straight-backed
wooden chair by his bed. He will ask me what time
it is, even though he has a watch and a clock is in
full view. I look at him and he looks at me.
At some time during the day, a priest will appear. This priest is not like the priests who used
to come and counsel my mother. Mama’s priests
continued on pg. 10…
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2011 F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest Winner
2011 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference Guide, Guest and Director
To Live Without Air by Tracy Alig Dowling
continued from pg. 4…
My American friends who visit Bogota always
ask ‘Where is the air?’ and I don’t tell them that I left
my mountaintop city for air many years ago. However, I have always known one can live without it,
that, in fact, sometimes life demands we do exactly
that.
That is what death is about, I suppose. Death
is about learning to live without air.
When first I came back to Bogota to see Papa,
that very first day, I recognized him by his pajamas.
His black hair was gone, so was his fleshy face.
But the navy silk foulard pajamas, so very expensive, a luxury so out of place in the hospice where
he is cared for by the little sisters, those pajamas
only Papa would buy.
But he recognized me, he really did. Twenty
years it has been since I left Bogota, running away
from…well, everything …but still he recognized
me. He seemed to be sleeping when I entered the
room, but he lifted his head and stared.
“Surprise, Papa. It’s me, Lydia,” I said, and
he said only “I know who you are.” Even though I
hadn’t written I was coming, had simply stepped
back into his life after twenty years and an occasional Christmas or birthday card…from me, not
him…he knew who I was.
Then he asked. “Where is your Mother?”
“Mama didn’t come.” I was expecting this
question.
He spat into a metal basin on the bedside
table. “Your mother is a whore.” I guess I was
expecting that too. Maybe not so soon, maybe not
first thing, but I know no one changes very much as
we go about our business in this world. We learn
to make do, we learn to think more clearly if we’re
lucky, but the pangs and hurts and yes, I suppose
the thrills and the joys, are pretty constant in our
spirits. And if love is eternal, probably hate is too.
My father isn’t living with much air right now.
What he gets is given him by a tank, feeding oxygen into little plastic tubes that attach to his nose.
These tubes he pulls out periodically to puff on a
forbidden cigarette. Drinking ruined my father’s life,
and smoking is finishing it.
Three months back in my native country, I am
wondering if I ever left. California has melted into an
irrelevant mist. I come daily to this little hospice to
care for my father, to feed him, to brush the crumbs
off his clothes after he’s fed, to make sure he has
clean clothes. I even know how to anchor the
catheter into his penis. The nun-nurse showed me
how. I don’t talk to him at all, I just listen as he says
the same thing over and over. What he says, by
the way, is never “I am sorry I slapped your mother
around,” nor is it “I’m sorry you had to listen to me
beating Felipe in his bedroom in the middle of the
night.”
No, he talks about the streets of Bogota, about
growing up a bastard child, with seven bastard
brothers and sisters, about how he…he, Silvio
Cristo Diaz Alonzo, started from nothing, became a
mechanical engineer, built his own home in Chico,
the wealthiest suburb of Bogota, and how all of his
family have left him alone to die.
“I am here with you, Papa” I tell him. “You are
not dying alone.”
He grabs my hand unexpectedly this day.
“Why did you come?”
“I came because I didn’t want you to feel sorry
for yourself.”
This gives him something to think about, I can
tell. He is lucky enough to have a window in his tiny
room, and he can see Montserrate, Bogota’s holy
mountain. Pilgrims climb to the church at the very
top to pray and get healed.
“Would you like me to take you to the top?” I
ask him.
“No.”
No healings for Papa. My sister Consuelo will
be disappointed. Should I, I wonder, tell Papa the
latest about her? Perhaps he knows more than I
think he does about this sister who has joined a
cult, wears a veil, and hands out tracts on street
corners in Richmond, California.
“Do you hear from Consuelo?” I ask.
“Yes.” There is a sour expression on his face,
but I know it means nothing. Even as a child, I
Conference Director
A native Californian, Erika Koss
wears several colorful literary hats, including Director of the F. Scott Fitzgerald
Literary Conference, Inc. She teaches
literature at the U.S. Naval Academy in
Annapolis, Maryland, and she has served as the
Executive Director of the Robinson Jeffers Association and the Festival Co-Director for the National
Steinbeck Center. From 2005-2010, Koss served on
the founding creative teams for The Big Read and
Poetry Out Loud at the National Endowment for the
Arts. As a Literature Specialist there, she managed
the “Literary Landmarks” program, which supported
poetry-related historic sites (Longfellow, Jeffers,
Dickinson, Poe) and was the series editor for the
31 Big Read Reader’s Guides that have been used
by more than 850 communities across the United
States, Egypt, Russia, and Mexico. Koss holds a
B.S. from The Master’s College and a M.A. from San
Diego State University. She has taught literature and
writing several universities in San Diego and Maryland. She lives in Rockville, Maryland, with her two
sons and a tortoise named Byron.
At Concordia University Saint Paul, where she was
Professor of English (now Emerita), she co-chaired
the first celebration for F. Scott Fitzgerald held by the
FSF Society in the writer’s hometown, and she has
participated in other celebrations for him around the
world. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland.
Fitzgerald Tour Guide
Eileen McGuckian was executive
director of Peerless Rockville for 30 years
and believes in preserving historic places
for the benefit of future generations. She
is the author of four books on Rockville history, including Rockville: Portrait of a City (2001) and F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s Rockville: A Guide to Rockville MD in the
1920s (1996). She enjoys taking visitors around to
places F. Scott knew.
Featured Guest
Julie Wakeman-Linn, while on
sabbatical from her dual Montgomery
College roles as Professor of English and
editor of Potomac Review, volunteered as
a creative writing instructor at the Bethsaida Secondary School for Orphan Girls. The result of her
teaching and subsequent editing will be a 48-page
book of the stories written by the girls. This book,
Their Voices, Their Stories: Fiction by the Bethsaida
Girls, will be published in early October 2011 and is
financed by a Tanzanian bank.
The F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference is
honored to be the first audience who will see and be
able to purchase this book. All proceeds from book
sales will go to the school.
Bethsaida Girls’ Secondary School is a home
and educational center for more than 130 young
women orphans from all across Tanzania. As the
outreach arm of the Olof Palme Orphans Education
Centre, a Tanzanian non-governmental organization,
their mission is to deliver a quality secondary education and provide the necessary psychosocial support
for its students. They rely on donor support for all
their continued activities. www.oloforphans.org
Honoree Introducer
Susan Richards Shreve is the
author of 14 novels, most recently A
Student of Living Things and a memoir,
Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood.
Her next novel—titled You are the Love of
my Life—will be published next spring.
A Country of Strangers has long been under option
for film. She has written thirty books for children and
has been the editor or co-editor of five anthologies,
three with her son Porter Shreve, who is also a novelist. She’s the founder of the MFA Degree at George
Mason University where she is a Professor of English
and has been a Visiting Writer at several universities.
She has received a Guggenheim and a National
Endowment award for Fiction, as well as the Service
award from Poets and Writers.
“All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.”
continued on pg. 9…
8
5
2011 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference • Saturday, October 22, 2011
2011 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference Acknowledgements
8-9 a.m. Registration Opens
2011-2012 Members
9-10:30 a.m. Morning Workshops
• Beale Street Blues and Beyond (Literary and Musical) Pamela York
• Turning Stories into a Novel-in-Stories (Fiction) Susi Wyss
• “The Green Light”: Longing, Hope, Understanding (Non-Fiction) Caroline Langston
• The World of Maxine Hong Kingston (Literary) Audrey Wu Clark
• Everything Experimental (Fiction) Richard Peabody
Sponsor ($1,000 and above)
Scott and Cathy Ullery
10:45 a.m.-Noon
Welcome and Opening Remarks
• Erika Koss, Director, F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference
• Carolyn Terry, Dean of Humanities, Montgomery College
• Mayor and Council, City of Rockville
Special Presentations
• Julie Wakeman-Linn announces the publication of Their Voices, Their Stories, an
anthology of stories written by the Bethsaida Orphaned Girls’ Secondary School
• Pamela York plays “Mama’s Midnight Hour” and “Ain’t Misbehavin”
Keynote Presentation
• “Why I Love The Great Gatsby,” Maureen Corrigan
Noon-12:30 p.m. Book Signing with Maureen Corrigan and morning workshop leaders
Noon-12:45 p.m. Lunch
12:45-2:15 p.m.
2:30-4 p.m.
Greetings
• Erika Koss, Director, F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference
• Judy Ackerman, Vice President and Provost, Rockville Campus, Montgomery College
Award Ceremony and Reading
Presentation of 16th Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest Winner
Judge: Richard Peabody
Winner: Tracy Alig Dowling
1st Runner-Up: Amani Elkassabany
2nd Runner-Up: Barrett Warner
3rd Runner-Up: Judith O’Neill
Afternoon Workshops
• Mining the Mind for Memories (Non-Fiction) E. Ethelbert Miller
• Creating “Great” Characters (Fiction) Amy Stolls
• Writing Your First Novel: Creative and Practical Advice (Fiction) Eugenia Kim
• A Great American Novel?: What Makes The Great Gatsby so Great? (Literary)
Jackson R. Bryer and Eleanor Heginbotham
• Turning Stories into a Novel-in-Stories (Fiction) Susi Wyss
3:45-4:15 p.m.
Book Signing with Maxine Hong Kingston and afternoon workshop leaders
4:15-5:30 p.m.
Fitzgerald’s Haunts in Rockville Tour with Eileen McGuckian
Presentation of 16th Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Award for Outstanding
Achievement in American Literature
Introduction: Susan Shreve
2011 Recipient: Maxine Hong Kingston, acceptance and reading
6
Thank You to the following individuals, whose
commitment of time, talent, and publicity deserves
special attention:
Friend ($100-$249)
Jackson R. Bryer
Boo Law
Diane Isaacs
Eleanor Elson Heginbotham
Judy Ackerman
Om Rusten
Richard Peabody
Zachary Benavidez
Josephine Reed
Michael Brown
Debbie Reis
Jann Logan
Carl Shorter
Andrea Pawley
Family ($40)
Marshall and Suzanne Fisher
Joseph Jeffs
Joseph and Mary Monte
John and Marlene Moser
Lawrence and Sharon Rothman
Individual ($25)
Han Hwangbo
Leona Illig
Andre Okoreeh
We also gratefully acknowledge David Phillips,
Director of the Montgomery College Arts Institute,
whose support has made Pamela York’s visit possible.
Senior ($20)
Dino J. Caterini
Pat Chickering
Maurice R. Dunie
Dennis Freezer
Carol Reinsberg
Anita Winters
Mary-Ann Wren
Special Thank You to our Sponsors and Supportive Partners
Rockville Cultural
Arts Commission
Montgomery
College Foundation
F. Scott
Fitzgerald
Society
Montgomery
commission for women
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