Wesley Brown
Wesley Brown, M.A., The City College, C.U.N.Y; B.A., Oswego State University, S.U.N.Y, is the author of two novels, Tragic Magic (Random House, 1978) and Darktown Strutters (Cane Hill Press, 1994; University of Massachusetts Press, 2000) and three produced plays, Boogie Woogie and Booker T., A Prophet Among Them, and Life During Wartime, the latter of which was published in Action (Simon & Schuster, 1997), an anthology of plays from the Nuyorican Poets Café Theatre Festival. He is the co-editor of the anthologies, Imagining America (Persea Books, 1991) and Visions of America (Persea Books, 1992), and editor of The Teachers & Writers Guide to Frederick Douglass (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 1996). In addition, he wrote the narration for one of the segments of the 1997 PBS documentary, W.E.B. DuBois: A Biography in Four Voices. Brown’s work has been recognized through an Ingram-Merrill Foundation award, a New York Foundation for the Arts grant, and the AUDELCO Award for Excellence in Black Theater. He has been a writer-in-residence at numerous conferences and institutions, including the Great Basin Book Festival, Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, Spalding University, and the University of Minnesota. A professor emeritus of Rutgers University, Brown currently teaches fiction workshops at Columbia University. He will be teaching The Short Story: Developing Characters at the Split Rock Arts Program from July 22-27, 2007.

How and why did you become a writer?
I worked in Mississippi on voter registration during the 1960's. The Civil Rights Movement was pivotal in shaping the person I became and my desire to write about a world where the official version of events is often at odds with what people actually experience.

In which literary forms do you most often work?
The literary forms I work in most often are fiction and drama.

Who are some of your favorite writers?
The writers who have had the greatest influence on me are: Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Flannery O'Connor, James Baldwin, E.L. Doctorow, and Toni Morrison.

How would you define a successful work of literature?
A successful work of literature reveals the paradoxes in human behavior and undermines our assumptions about what we think we know about the world.

What are the most rewarding parts of the writing process for you? What are the most difficult?
The most rewarding part of the writing process is the discovery, in the act of writing, of perspectives on human behavior that I hadn't considered before. The most difficult part of the writing process is persevering when I'm confronted with obstacles that seem to resist my efforts to overcome them.

In which parts of the world have you lived?
I am a citizen of the United States and have lived most of my life in the northeast. I have lived, for brief periods, in the midwestern and the northwestern parts of the U.S.A. I have also traveled extensively throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

Which literary forms do you prefer to work on with clients?
My preference is to work with writers of fiction, which is the area where I have published and taught.

How much and what kinds of background or experience would you expect your clients to have?
My only expectation is that each client be serious about his or her writing, not be too wedded to the idea of a story that they began with, but allow the act of writing, itself, to determine what a story becomes.

Do you have some ground rules that you would expect clients to follow?
My only ground rules are that writing be sent to me on the agreed upon dates. But if there are reasons why deadlines cannot be met, I should be notified beforehand.

What advice would you offer prospective clients as they consider choosing a mentor?
My advice to prospective clients, as they consider choosing a mentor, would be to choose someone who doesn't want to rewrite your story to fit his or her literary tastes, but who wants to help you bring out the best in the story you want to tell.