Zen Master, Barroom Bouncer… Workshop Leader

There aren't many topics as divisive in the writing world as writers groups. Self-publishing, maybe. Submission fees. Maybe the Oxford comma. But really, many writers feel very strongly about writing groups, and I'm one of them. I hate them.

Well, except for the one I lead each week.

Which is to say of course there are good - and great - writers groups out there, but they're thin on the ground. Since most writers are not highly remunerated (at least not for their writing), many groups are "all-peer, no-pay." That means there's no leader getting paid, and no one shells out a dime unless it's their turn to pick up doughnuts and coffee. 

In theory, that's great. In practice, not so much. Leaderless workshops can be meandering and without direction, becoming gripe sessions about the vagaries of the profession rather than focused on craft. But directed workshops can be pretty lame, too.  Not every writer can teach, not every writer can edit, and certainly not every writer can embody the combination of average joe, zen master, and barroom bouncer necessary to successfully lead a group discussion. I work with adult poets and writers in a variety of contexts, and it's distressing to me how often my clients - many of whom are rather accomplished professionals, currently publishing - tell me the horrid edits they've made to their work were based upon the input of writing group peers. I've had writers cry telling me how everyone in a group piled on to repeat a single picayune criticism. And more often, I've had writers complain that everyone in their writing group loves their work, yet editors seem not to. That should be a red flag to a thinking person, but we writers are long on imagination and have a terrific ability to kid ourselves, present company included.

Writing is a solitary endeavor (sorry, TV-writing brethren; it is, for most of us). The best thing most people - even fellow writers - can offer the nascent scribe is encouragement, and perhaps a bit of camaraderie over a cup of coffee or a wee flacon of wine. So why join a group?

Writers join groups for a handful of reasons: to get feedback from others in their field, to talk craft, to have a social experience in a very solitary occupation, to connect with someone who might - please, dear God - provide an introduction to an agent, and so on. And also, I'm sorry to say, to engage in a writing-adjacent activity that allows one to feel as though he or she is officially A Writer, Writing, without actually having to put in a lot of fingers-to-keyboard time. 

As Epictetus advised us, if you want to be a writer, write. If you haven't averaged four hours a day at the keyboard all week (two, if you have a full-time day job), could be you've got no business showing up for coffee and pastries at the Saturday workshop. Your time is limited - everyone's is – and you ought to spend that afternoon at your desk, doing what writers do. You know. Writing.

But time management is the least of my quibbles with the typical group. If it were just a matter of frittering away the day without getting words on paper, we all can (and do) find plenty of ways to do that: nine-to-five jobs, significant others, children who need their dinner, dogs that need walking, gas tanks that need filling, bills, emails, e-vites, ad infinitum. Right? So the biggest problem with writing groups isn't that they glom up time that would be better spent writing. The real problem is that many - dare I say most - groups are not only not constructive, they are actively destructive. Yeah, I said it. Here's why.

Most fiction writers groups - knowingly or not - follow some variation of the MFA workshop format. Everyone emails around a few pages that the others are supposed to have read before the meeting. Then each writer reads his or her own work aloud as the others nod, or gasp, or whistle admiringly under their breath. Then they go around in a circle and each person shares his or her ideas about the piece – what's great, what needs work, and so on. (Poetry workshops are conducted similarly.) 

The writer whose work is being discussed doesn't respond to any of the comments, not even with a lifted eyebrow or a strategic harumph. They just listen. Some writers groups do allow a bit of leeway - for example, the writer may humbly and succinctly advise the group at the end of the discussion that it really was a "bridle shower" and not a misspelled "bridal shower," or that they confused Jim Higgins the parole officer with Tim Wiggins the police officer and thus completely misunderstood the story's denouement. Other groups hold so strictly to the rules that they forbid what is annoyingly referred to as "crosstalk," which is something normal people refer to as "conversation." That is, if Maria says she thinks Bob's use of metaphors is over-done and heavy-handed, Louanne cannot jump in and say that she admires Bob's abstractions and thinks the piece could use even more of them. 

A lot of idiosyncrasies of the typical MFA workshop model made sense originally. Having the writer read aloud is a CYA move for those who didn't pre-read the story, and it also tells the listener how particular bits of dialogue and oddly punctuated passages are supposed to be heard. Consider, for example, this tidbit:

John picked up the gun and moved it to the shelf. "This is dangerous," he said, smiling.

Now, at some point, either before or after this passage, the author is going to have to tell us what's happening here. Many questions could be answered if she inserted the word "angrily" or "kindly" or "sarcastically" or "firmly" after the "he said." Many more, if we knew how John is smiling: Sinisterly? Dismissively? With amusement, or perhaps with disapprobation? When the author reads aloud, the listener gets clues that may not be in the text about what the author intends, and in theory, can then provide suggestions: "I wasn't sure John was actually threatening his landlady until I heard the scary way you read that line," and so on. In theory, this tells the writer that something is missing from the words that are on the page, because after all, the author will not be there to whisper the text into most readers' ears. 

In actual practice, what tends to happen is that what is read by the eye and heard by the ear get conflated, so the writer ends up not being told that the line needs clarification. Instead, she gets positive reinforcement for what's wrong with the bit: "I got chills when you read the part where John picks up the gun. Terrifying!" Are the words actually terrifying? Not at all. But the author's intonation told us they should be. We think we read what we actually only heard. We praise the writer for what she meant, not for what she wrote.

Another problem with leaderless workshops is that honest, constructive criticism – and especially back-and-forth discussion – is often perceived as the dread "crosstalk," especially by those with MFAs. Yet another issue is that writers don't always use good judgment about which points to dwell on and which to let go. I have been in writing groups where every single participant (of eight or ten) mentioned the same misspelling or punctuation error. And I've been in groups where every single participant offered insipid comments like, "I love your writing. This is so good." 

Compliments like that have absolutely no value. They mean nothing. Okay, they do mean something. They mean "I like you and I don't want to hurt your feelings." But compliments that have actual constructive value are specific. For example, "I like the way you made us think Erin was the thief, until she threw open the door and we saw Carmen standing there with the gold dust,"  or "I never heard the word enormity used that way, so I looked it up and saw that you are right. Very interesting, thanks!"

Of course the same is true of criticisms - they are of value only when they are specific. In writers groups, criticisms are often couched as questions or as personal failings of the reader: "I wonder why the flautist was at the ballpark at 11:10, but was also at the police station across town at 11:08. I'm probably missing something!" 

That's okay – it's great to point out a plot hole or solecism, and helpful for the writer – but the fact is that writers should listen to criticism only from those who clearly like their work. Hang on, there, before you argue that you're tough enough to take it. This is not because writers are fragile hothouse flowers who should cancel people who don't appreciate their stuff. Not at all. It's because years of teaching creative writing have shown me that when someone doesn't like a piece, and the writer is in the room, the critic will struggle to find a reason to give, a suggestion for improvement, that may actually have nothing at all to do with whatever is wrong with the piece (if anything). The reader dislikes the piece at a gut level, but feels pressured to verbalize a reason, something that can be "fixed." Too often, they just pull stuff out of thin air. "It takes too long to get to the murder," or "I wanted the dog to live at the end, instead of drowning," or "something about that rainy cafe scene just seems off," are criticisms that people may come up with when they don't like a story and don't know why. And the writer gets back to work trying to please a critic who is probably not ever going to be pleased by that particular piece. My suggestion is, if you don't like the story, don't offer any feedback. If you do like it for the most part, but see something wrong, hallelujah! By all means let the writer know. 

Think of it as the old "prom dress rule" your parents probably taught you. If your best friend asks if she looks good in her prom dress, and she just doesn't, whether you answer truthfully depends on whether it's four hours till prom, or four months. Offer criticism only when it's sincere, justified, and is something that can be fixed. If you just despise stories that include friendly clowns and madcap capers, when Lamont reads his, smile cryptically and keep your mouth shut. If, however, you really like clowns, capers, and Lamont's writing style, but notice the clown sits down to lunch right after dinner on page eight, or that his dialogue bits are so long they qualify as dramatic monologues, by all means, speak up.

The biggest problem with all-peer writing groups is that everyone is equal. I know, I know, we are all equal and everyone's opinion is of of identical value, blah blah blah. Except, no. Not here. A workshop needs a leader, a person who knows more than the others about many or most of the topics that will arise in discussion, and who is able to direct the flow when necessary. If you have ever sat through a ten-minute monologue in which the "critiquer" mumbled, hemmed and hawed, repeated himself, apologized, belabored inconsequential points, and repeated what other participants had already covered in detail, you know what I mean. As a workshop leader, I sometimes have to cut people off – and I'm not afraid to do so – when they talk too long ("I know I'm running way over, but I just want to add…") or make inappropriate comments ("I love the sex scene – is that move something you yourself enjoy?") or expect everyone to wait around while they figure out something to say, rather than succinctly delivering thoughtful, pre-written notes. But the most common and egregious of all errors is that a critiquer will turn the conversation to himself: "I like your story, Glenda! It reminds me of my own story, Murder Under the  Christmas Wreath, published in 1991, in which I blah blah blah bladdedty blah…"  I will give a critiquer one gentle reminder - "Hey, Lenny, sorry to interrupt, but let's focus on Glenda's work here." And if he slides back into it, he gets ruthlessly cut off. Sorry, again, Len.

One element of the typical MFA-style workshop that can be tough to accept is the idea that writers shouldn't respond to comments about their work during or after the critiques. This means that they can only listen, allowing them – forcing them! – to hear how their work strikes the reader without their mind racing ahead, trying to gather evidence to use on the defensive cross ("I did explain that Miss Pettiwad is a bookkeeper – you just didn't get to that part yet!"). I find this stipulation tough to follow and tough to enforce, but worth the trouble, both in fiction and in poetry workshops. We're writers – we've got a lot to say. Sometimes it's really helpful to be forced to just listen.

Other rules seem simply intended to pander to the ultra-sensitive sensibility that sometimes dominates conversations about art. Trigger warnings are a nice idea, but have been taken to ridiculous extremes. I think it's acceptable – even commendable – for a workshop author to note at the beginning of a written piece, and before reading it aloud, that it contains lengthy passages of graphic violence, or a great deal of foul or offensive language, or some other truly objectionable element. That allows those who do not want to read or hear to bow out.

But to announce ahead of time that piece briefly references something appalling undermines the elements of the work that should be revealed with reading. There is a very real difference between one sentence reading, "Carolyn slid the knife neatly between Mr. Andrews's ribs, careful to keep blood from staining her pinafore," and a two-page depiction of the full, grisly details of the violent crime. The latter might justify a trigger warning, I think, but not the former. (But the latter would probably also have a gross-out factor far outweighing any literary merit.)

I've been in workshops where writers included trigger warnings for guns, knives, a bottle of pills on the counter, overeating, childbirth, a construction worker wolf-whistling, drunks talking in a bar, dog poop on the sidewalk, raw beef, and…allergies. Yes. Allergies. Like, hay fever. This is where the wise workshop leader steps in and inquires gently, "Are you out of your freaking mind?"

So, back to crosstalk and constructive criticism. If it would thoroughly crush Michaela's spirit to be told that Amani disagrees with her, Michaela may need therapy more than she needs to participate in a writing group. This is not to say that courtesy and respect for others should not be paramount in every group; of course they should. You may find Rick to be a blithering idiot, and his work best used to line the recycling bin, but there's no law that you have to say so. So don't. You can always (yes, I will die on that hill – always) find something good to say about someone's work. But the fact is, you won't normally need to. No one will mind if you just hush up and let the others talk. Most people have lots to say and really like to hear themselves say it.

So what about the good workshops out there? What sets them apart? 

The very first thing a workshop leader should do is establish ground rules. I'd suggest the basics: a sincere compliment should precede every criticism (including those couched as questions or personal failures). That might go like this: "Audrey, your story made me laugh out loud, first at the part where Doug fell off the bridge, and then again when his wife asked why he was all wet. There is something I noticed, though. When Audrey and Doug speak, they never use contractions, so the dialogue seems a bit stiff and unnatural." Note that it is not necessary to then cite every instance of stiff dialogue. The writer can consider your note later, in private, and decide whether it has value to him or her.

But hang on. What if you have a really, really great criticism but just cannot think of a single compliment to precede it? Scroll up. If you didn't like the story enough to single out something great about it, don't offer any comment at all. Really. Just zip it. Not kidding.

A second rule might be no seconding and thirding the comments of others rather than to say, "I agree with Dylan about the tone." (Do not then proceed to repeat everything Dylan said.) Be aware that each person in a workshop will not get equal time to speak about every story. That would not make sense, because by the time you get to the eighth or ninth person, almost everything has already been said. Therefore, the workshop leader should choose a different writer to start the comments each go-round.

Third, the workshop leader should let everyone know that commenting on a comment or disagreeing with a comment are perfectly acceptable – if the remarks are made with courtesy and respect. "Sorry, Bob, I don't agree with you about the dog breeds in Jane's story. Lots of people have pit bulls that are friendly," or "Tammy, it's possible that your character should say uninterested, not disinterested." However, rude or hurtful remarks will result in immediate shut down (or mic-muting, if on zoom). The leader should be willing and able to say firmly, "Doris, I'm cutting you off right there, sorry. Let's discuss it later."

One of the best workshops I've attended was a one-off led by a fairly well-known writer who announced at the start, "I'm very direct. If I offend you, sorry – if you just slip out during the break, I'll understand." He was direct, and some people did take umbrage and leave, but for those of us who stayed, wow – great learning experience in how to give and receive constructive criticism. Unfortunately, too many groups are led by writers who are too damned nice to stop the train by interrupting a speaker or turning off a mic. (I've been accused of a lot, but being too nice is apparently not one of my flaws.)

This is why I often advise clients, students, and colleagues against joining all-peer, no-pay groups. If you're considering a directed, pay-to-play group, ask to sit in on a session before you commit. I've just had too many writers receive bad advice, or get piled on by the crowd about something inconsequential, or get pumped up about something that really wasn't great, in these groups. But I'd love to be mistaken. If you belong to a fantastic writing group that has helped you become a better writer, please share details in the comments. And of course horror stories will be devoured with relish!

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Anna Scotti's most recent release, It's Not Even Past, went out of print with the recent closure of Down&Out Books.  It will be available from a new publisher soon – but if you can't wait, contact the author via her website. She has a few copies available.

Anna's latest story for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, "Season of Giving", appears in the January/February issue of the magazine.

Get Up. Fall Down. Get Up Again.

I will admit that I, too, thought "The master has failed more times than the beginner has even attempted" was a Chinese proverb. Apparently not – most sources give Stephen McCranie, the comic book artist, credit. Regardless, it's my favorite aphorism and at this point I've probably said it more times than McCranie.

Because I fail a lot.

When I was young, I dreamed of being a lab researcher, but a stint at the National Institutes of Health put paid to that.

I still cringe when I think of the way chimpanzees were housed in tiny crates in the labs, how experiments were scrapped and living animals "sacrificed" by the scores because the scientists wanted to attend a wedding or hit the slopes.

It would have been a dream job for some – I reported directly to two Nobel Laureates. But I was miserable and gave up my plans for a career in science.

I modeled for a time and I was terrible at it. I had the height but not the élan. I couldn't wear contact lenses so I had to whip my thick glasses on and off continually for pictures. I was clumsy in heels and once stepped right off a runway. Oops.

Acting was fun and I was good at it. So were a thousand other young actors with thicker hides than mine. Failed again.

I was doing pretty well as a soft-news journalist. I wrote a snarky and very popular column for Buzz, then a hot new magazine billed as "the talk of Los Angeles." I covered parties for InStyle and scandals for Redbook and the other "seven sisters" magazines.

Then I stepped away for a hot minute to have a baby and when I was ready to get back to work, the editors who had once supplied me with a steady stream of assignments had moved on. Nobody knew my name. Failed again.

My first novel was a chapter book for kids published by Bantam Skylark. The acquiring editor left the house before Dog Magic came out. Death knell. Same for my next two books, one horror and one suspense, both from a major house, and both "orphaned" before their debuts.

When a book is orphaned, there's no one at the publishing house to schmooze buyers at book fairs, treat drinks, and fight for you to get reviews. They save those efforts for their own discoveries, for understandable reasons. The results were predictable. There's that F word again.

I abandoned writing and decided to become a teacher. With no credential and no training, I landed a job at at a yeshiva, then segued that into a spot at a top independent school. Then another. After classes, I worked on a young adult novel I called Big and Bad and How I Got My Life! Back. That book was so damned good. I knew it would be a hit and I would join the ranks of superstar YA authors John Greene and Laurie Halse Anderson. I sent Big and Bad off to one publisher, who rejected it. Then I tossed it in a drawer and sulked for the next fourteen years. Not kidding.

One day I came across the manuscript on my hard drive, read it, and liked it a lot. I polished it up and shipped it off to a contest sponsored by Texas Review Press. Big and Bad came in second but they published it anyway, and the following year it won the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People. Big and Bad got a rave review in School Library Journal, which is the go-to nearly all schools and libraries consult when stocking their shelves. Shoulda been a contender - but that dang pandemic thing got in the way. Since you're all writers, I don't need to explain. No stock, no ship, no shelf, no sale.

So. Teaching. I love teaching and I love kids. I don't love schools and I can barely abide administrators. I've been fired from more schools than some states have in their school system. In fact I've been fired from almost every job I've ever held, although a couple of times I managed to squeak out a quick I quit before they could lower the axe.

So you're picking up a theme here, right? Failure after failure, sometimes my fault, sometimes just the way the cards were dealt. But every single failure taught me something. Lots of things, actually, and I use all of those things in writing fiction and poetry.

When I was a kid, my sister and I would fight over Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock when they arrived each month. (Yeah, it was a long time ago - they were both still monthlies!) I can truly claim to be a life-long fan, but it didn't occur to me to try selling a story to Ellery Queen until I was sixty years old. Sixty! According to Guardian Life Insurance, the average American retires at sixty-two - and here I was trying something brand-spanking new. Scary!

Janet Hutchings rejected my story, of course - it was all wrong for Ellery Queen. She rejected the next one, too, but then she bought Krikon the Ghoul Hunter, and then a whole bunch more.

My stories from Ellery Queen have been recorded in podcasts, nominated for awards, given prizes, published as a collection, and selected for "Best Ofs." And of course I publish elsewhere, too - sometimes in the strangest places. I've published a poem in Fungi Magazine (yes, all about mushrooms!) and a story I wrote for The Saturday Evening Post is part of the national high school curriculum of Fiji. Yep. The island nation. Don't ask. I'm just grateful.

It's a crazy writing life, this one. Some mystery writers my age have been publishing short stories for fifty years, not seven years. I'm kind of a newbie. My heart still beats fast when Jackie Sherbow tells me she'll take a story for EQMM, or when an editor asks me to write a story for an anthology, or a literary journal picks up a poem, or a university professor tells me he's teaching one of my poems or stories. I still sulk when a piece gets turned down, and I have cried more than a few late-night tears over rejections from editors I thought adored me.

I'm still trying, and I'm still failing. I've failed a lot.

And I've succeeded a lot, too.

Because that's the only way to get anywhere in this world. Try, and fail. Then try and fail again. Because the master has failed more times than the beginner has even attempted.

The Secret to Never Growing Old

My name is Anna Scotti, and I am delighted to present my inaugural blogpost for SleuthSayers (though I did guest post for Liz Zelvin in September). Coincidentally, I was given a debut date close to my birthday, and that got me thinking about characters' ages… and my own.

For millennia, people have searched for a cream, elixir, recipe, spell, or fountain that will grant eternal youth. Literary characters from Peter Pan to Dorian Grey have grappled with the wish to be forever young. Jay-Z, Alphaville, and Bob Dylan sang about it. One of the best kids' books ever written, Tuck Everlasting, deals with a family's discovery of a spring that grants immortality. Snow White's stepmother and Death Becomes Her's Madeline and Helen tried for eternal youth, too.

Few of these tales end happily, but if these pitiable literary figures only knew! The real secret to slow aging is to be the main character of a series that takes place over years, or even decades.

Nancy Drew is a dewy 18 in all of her 175 eponymous adventures, except when she occasionally, inexplicably, becomes 16. Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple didn't start young, but aged erratically – and sometimes backward – from their initial late-middle age inceptions.

Sherlock Holmes is in his late twenties – perhaps even early thirties – in A Study in Scarlet, and is sixty in His Last Bow, which takes place in 1914, and finds him already retired to the English countryside to keep bees.

All 58 stories and four novels Doyle wrote about the sleuth take place during that span, which means Holmes is living – and aging – at a different pace from the rest of us. Kinsey Millhone is 32 in A is for Alibi, but just 38 in Y is for Yesterday, although Sue Grafton's series was written over a span of thirty-five years. This kind of sliding timescale, or floating timeline, isn't at all uncommon in fiction. You can probably think of examples of your own.

Mid-thirties may be a sweet spot for female protagonists to linger. When I created my "librarian-on-the-run" character in That Which We Call Patience (Ellery Queen, 2019) I had no idea I'd be writing a series. I made Audrey Smith – who is eventually known as Cam Baker, Sonia Sutton, Dana Kane, Lori Yarborough, and by a handful of other monikers over the course of her fourteen-story saga – "thirty-something," and she'd already been on the run in witness protection for a few years as the story opens.

The age just seemed right to me – I wanted her to be young enough to be fit, active and still fairly naive, someone who could step into an entry-level job without raising eyebrows. But she also had to be old enough to be well-educated and to have a bit of experience under her belt (she's working on a PhD when her life is interrupted by witnessing a crime).

In the fifth story of what became the series, The Longest Pleasure, Lori says she's thirty-two, and in It's Not Even Past, the sixth story, she's thirty-four. When Lori finally comes out of WITSEC, in Traveller from an Antique Land, she says she's thirty-eight, and that she's been on the run for eight or nine years. That would mean she went under in her late twenties, which fits the timeline established in Patience. So the ages add up, sort of, except that there are gaps between stories that must surely equal months or years, and references to other adventures not yet chronicled… and all together, they add up to far more than nine years on the run unless our girl is stumbling over a random corpse every five or six months.

Readers who get hooked on a series know when we're pulling a fast one with a character's age. But what Coleridge identified as a "willing suspension of disbelief" works in our favor as writers of fiction. If a character is engaging enough, and stories are good enough, to compel readers to demand more, time can be manipulated to serve us.

The trick is to make everything else believable. Lori may age at a third the normal rate, and she discovers corpses with alarming frequency, but she is in other regards perfectly ordinary. She's attractive but not a knock-out. She's smart but can be fooled. She drinks Earl Grey Tea, drives a beat-up Honda CRV, enjoys a trashy beach-read, and behaves recklessly – even inappropriately - with more than one man over the course of her adventures. In other words, she's very much like a real person, warts and all. And that's how we pull off the magic trick. Don't ask your readers to believe a dozen strange things – just ask them to believe one. Then make everything else absolutely plausible- even commonplace.

So, yes, if readers keep asking for librarian stories, Lori will eventually grow old – just not at the same, sometimes distressing, rate as her creator. 

Anna Scotti's librarian-on-the-run collection, It's Not Even Past, went out of print when Down&Out Books folded in October. She is hoping a white knight publisher will swoop in soon, but in the meantime, if you'd like to order a copy, go to annakscotti.com. Watch for the next "librarian" installment, When Bright Angels Beckon, early next year. Anna's short fiction appears frequently in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Black Cat Weekly, and her poetry can be found in The New Yorker and other literary magazines.  She's also a young adult author - Big and Bad was awarded the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People in 2021.

Why A Librarian? by Anna Scotti

Anna Scotti, our guest blogger today, is a fellow member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society whom I knew and admired, but I became an enthusiastic fan a few pages into her new novel in short stories, It's Not Even Past. Everything she writes is a pleasure to read and deserves the awards her work has won.

Lori Yarborough is a bad-ass. She walks the mean streets of Los Angeles with only a battle-scarred pitbull for companionship, sleeps alone in the national forest, and - when finally pushed beyond endurance - slits a man's throat on a sunlit beach on Maui. She's also a librarian.

As It's Not Even Past opens, Lori is already on the run. She has traded demure sweater sets and a prim bun for raggedy yoga pants and flaming red hair. As the story progresses, Lori works as a nanny, a private secretary, a nurse's aide, a teaching assistant - she'll take pretty much any job that will allow her to keep a low profile and hide her education. She evolves from a naive, rather prissy pedant to a streetwise cynic. Lori changes a lot over the course of the ten-story collection. But make no mistake - she is a librarian to her core.

I knew, writing that very first librarian-on-the-run tale, that I wanted Lori to be smart and that she had to be brave. I couldn't think of a better job for her than librarian at the world-famous Harold Washington Library in Chicago, that owl-topped mecca for books and art and education. Lori is in many regards my alter ego - younger, smarter, fitter and a lot more courageous than I'll ever be, but like me in her fondness for Shakespeare and Donne, science and nature, good food, good wine, and good-looking men. I've held many of the jobs Lori has - teacher, personal assistant, lab rat - and I've worked with children and chimpanzees. If I can't blithely quote the classics as Lori does, I do know how to efficiently search my dog-eared Bartlett's. But I've never been a librarian, though I've admired them all my life.

Illustration by Helen John from
All of A Kind Family

My first hero was Kathy Allen, the "library lady" from Sydney Taylor's All of A Kind Family, who treated everyone with gentle but firm compassion. Ella, the family's eldest daughter, had an entirely inappropriate crush on Miss Allen's fiancé, but it was the lady herself I worshipped - her soft hands, her brisk manner, the swirl of hair she wore like a nest atop her pretty head. The librarian at my neighborhood public library in Washington, D.C., was not as young and pretty as Miss Allen, but she was just as kind, allowing me to check out books all summer long despite our family's terrible record for returning them. My siblings and I devoured books. We hiked with books, slept with books, read while standing at the bus stop, while waiting our turn at bat, and while hiding under the bed or behind a tree during hide-and-seek. We dropped books in mud puddles and bathtubs and left them behind in restaurants and at sleepover parties. But that wonderful lady never said no, just ran my tattered card through the check-out machine, sighing. She knew we were home alone while my parents worked, and she probably thought a few missing books were worth the cost of keeping us from running wild in the streets.

Our school librarian was a boss, too. The Alice Deal Jr. High library was a safe haven for weird kids, fat kids, foreign kids, new kids, smart kids, and anybody else who didn't quite fit in. When I became a teacher myself, decades later, I strove to make my classroom that kind of sanctuary. Along with the art room, the library, and the theater, my English classrooms were a hideout for anyone who needed to escape the vissicitudes of adolescent life.

Librarians have always been heroes; in World War II, the American Library Association provided not only reading material but lifesaving technical manuals to American servicemen, and in Cuba after the revolution, librarians hid "subversive" books from Castro's forces. In 2012, Abdel Kader Khaidara helped smuggle half a million books out of Timbuktu in order to protect them from extremists, while Saad Eskander defended Iraq's national library against Islamists and U.S. forces alike. American librarians have traditionally been champions of the First Amendment, standing in bespectacled unity, pastel sweater-clad elbows linked, to defend our right to freely access information.

But it's Barbara Gordon, equal parts sex appeal and erudition in granny glasses and skin-tight tops, who stands above all other librarians as a model of courage and hotness. Although she was the Head Librarian of a major city, chief tech advisor to a pantheon of superheroes, and a one-time candidate for the House of Representatives, you might know Dr. Gordon better by her other name: Batgirl. Maybe Brenda Starr, girl reporter, carried equal weight in my starved-for-female-role-models, pre-adolescent world. Brenda had a killer dimple and juggled two handsome boyfriends and a challenging career with ease. But Barbara was an intellectual. She would not have been ashamed to know the difference between placental mammals and marsupials, or how to count in base nine, or where to find Comoros on a map.

All of these librarians, fictional and real, swirled in my head as I wrote the first librarian-on-the-run tale for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine back in 2018. (“That Which We Call Patience” is actually the second story in the collection, because I added two new stories to supplement those that originally appeared in the magazine.) I suppose the librarians who made my childhood bearable have since returned to dust, but I hope their successors will read these words and will recognize themselves lovingly reflected in the pages of It's Not Even Past.

Want to know more about librarians or the books and resources I've mentioned here? Check out The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer, Let's Talk Comics: Librarians by Megan Halsband, Sydney Taylor's All of a Kind Family series, and How Librarians Became Free Speech Heroes by Madison Ingram on Zocalo Public Square.

Anna Scotti's short stories appear frequently in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and can also be found in Black Cat Weekly, The Saturday Evening Post, and in various literary magazines and anthologies. Stories from her new collection, It's Not Even Past (Down & Out Books), have been selected three times for Best Mystery Stories of the Year (Mysterious Press). Scotti is also a noted poet and the author of the award-winning young adult novel, Big and Bad (Texas Review Press). She teaches poetry and fiction online. Learn more at annakscotti.com.