Meeting Denise

The highlight of my week was meeting Denise Giardina. She came to the institute Tuesday to lead a discussion on her two historical "West Virginia" novels, Storming Heaven and The Unquiet Earth. She began by reading an excerpt from a novel she's currently working on about the Bronte sisters. She's reading their diaries, and writing a fictionalized historical account of some aspects, or a certain period in their lives. After reading the introduction to this work, she fielded questions about her two novels that were set in Appalachia - works that's she's most famous for even though she has written books about other subjects, including Deidrich Bonhoffer (Saints and Villians), and another about an English king (Good King Harry).

I was so nervous to meet her. Nobody that I have read captures what it's like, and what it means to be from West Virginia. When I first read both of these books they brought me to my knees. It was a physical, gutteral reaction and an emotional one as I felt like someone was telling my story, and the story of my family(ies)in a powerful, critical way. I love the righteous anger of these books, and the way she exposes the forces that originally and continue to exploit this region of the country. Denise Giardina made me feel vindicated in my anger, and she also gave me an appreciation of my history. No other books have impacted me the way these two books have. Thus, I was nervous as hell to meet her. I wanted to tell her this, to explain what these books have meant to me, and my reactions to them. But I didn't. I couldn't. It would have sounded cheesey and gushing.

So, when introduced to her at a formal dinner, I just said "It's nice to meet you. I'm from West Virginia too.I love your work." She was gracious, yet terribly shy. I had the opportunity to sit at the table with her that night, but was too fucking nervous so I grabbed a chair at a nearby table with Lisa, Dan and Stephen.

After dinner we attended a reception for Giardina at Peter's house. There were a lot of people there, so I only had a 15-20 minute conversation with Denise, Gloria and Deborah. Basically we talked about dogs as Denise had brought her old mutt, Phyllis, along with her. She explained that Phyllis had been in a kennel for 10 days while Denise was in England doing research for her book about the Brontes.We also talked about fiction verses non-fiction and discussed recent memoirs by James Frey, Jennette Walls, and someone else who wrote a memoir about growing up in West Virginia, but was later exposed to be from Brooklyn N.Y. with no connections to the area.

After Denise's presentation to the institute I had lunch with her along with Barbara, and Deborah. Again Denise and I talked about dogs, and also famous West Virinians. She revealed that Jennifer Garner's sister had recently taken one of her classes. Aftet lunch I walked her back to the seminar room for the afternoon seminars. We both grabbed desert (me a cookie, and Denise a brownie) wrapped in up in a napkin and took it with us. She asked if I was going back to the seminar room too as she didn't really know how to get there from the cafeteria. On the way we talked about her recent stroke. She's only 55 and had a stroke last year, which has affected her gait, and her left arm. She said she uses it as an excuse when she can't remember people's names.

Anyway, after the morning seminar on Tuesday I asked her to sign my book. I almost cried when I read what she wrote. I kept looking at it all day, and would get choked up everytime. In case you can't read it, the translation from latin is "mountaineers are always free."

Pretty cool. I wanted to ask her to take a picture with me but didn't feel comfortable doing that because she seemed so shy and fragile. So, I'll have to settle for an autograph in my book.

jb