Kate Wilhelm Guest of Honor Speech

Kate Wilhelm - IK really want to thank Scott and Kathy for having me and a wonderful time. And I've never seen so much food. I will go home -- I refuse to say fatter - but with more reserves.

I don't have a prepared speech. I thought I'd address a question I get all th etime: why do you write what you write. It's a good question and ...

I've been touched by magic. ... That was a magic moment. And all the talk about the magic moments that resulted in who I am today. [is it not working? laughing. technical problems.] The first magic happened when I was a small child, many when I was a teenager. ... So formative. ... nothing superficial about it, the kind of magic I'm talking about. I was born with a speech defect--nobody could understand a word i said. And we were a reading family--this was before tv, computers -- so I read. ... one of the great [?] was when my mother went to the library and when one of us went with her. i was the 4th of 6 children so my turn didn't come up too often but when it came i was ecstatic.

so my turn -- we went -- cleveland -- So she left me in the children's department and went about doing what parents do. And after a while I decided I wanted to go home and I couldn't find my mother. ... nobody bothered me. I decided to go home. I knew I could get there, all I had to do was follow streetcar tracks. It didn't occur to me that this was 70-something, and we lived [a long way away]. I went outside and didn't recognize anything. ... taken to police. lots of ice cream. my brothers were extremely jealous when they learned of my adventures.

but that was magic. ...

but i learned that a library of books, magic, words can touch you and change your world.

the next incident, still when i was quite young, when i had a ruptured appendix, and i was desperately ill, and in those days we had oxygen tents. ... in hospital for a long time. one night i woke up and the tent was gone and i was surrounded by fire. and i was burning up with fever. i thought i'd died and gone to hell. i was seven. late that night i was caught almost to an outside door and captured and taken back to bed and put in restraints. but i learned something else. that was another magic moemnt. i learned: you don't give in; you escape if you can.

[audience applause] I was on my way out of there.

I learned later -- my mother was a strict southern baptist. her best friend was an equally strict catholic. and because the baptists don't baptize until age of reason ... her best friend ... i'm not sure if i was baptized or given last rites ....learned that night, you don't give in, you don't surrender, you escape.

so in these years, not communicating with anybody, being isolated, being ignored. little child you are ignored. and i was most invisible because i couldn't talk. i learned to read. i don't remember learning to read. but my earliest memories are hiding behind a chair and reading. and that was satisfying. i told myself stories -- that started when i was 3 or 4. i told myself elaborate stories. but i couldn't share them.

they found that my problem was what they called clatter; all my words ran together. and it was very easy to correct because i could read. they made me pro-nounce-e-ver-y-single word and things ngot a little easier. but i had already learned what it is to be alone, not communicating, and i learned what it is to fight back.

.... later my mother insisted that i was the age of reason and i was baptized again. i was saved twice. but for whatever reason i objected to this big man ducking me under water. and i objected strenuously and i fought him. i fought him like a devil. he got as wet as i was. he complained to my mother; my mother was humiliated. i did not want to be drowned and i resisted. a year after that at the age of 12 - which in my case was the age of religion - i turned my back on all organized religion. i thought any religion which fills a child with terror and makes me think that i had died and gone to hell is not for me. (applause) of course that's -- ? ... and if anybody -- (applause) -- of course we have an administration that relies on fear ...

so moving on ... my father read zane grey and so did i. my mother read pearl buck and faith baldwin and so did i. i read my brother's tarzan books and a little later all of his thorne smith books. and of course i didn't understand them but i read them all. and i read my sister's hollywood magazines and romances. i read everything. so i got pretty b ored with children's section pretty quickly.

i remember getting my adult library card. we lived in the woods ... kentucky? -- so i walked into the adult section of the library, the proud possessor of a library card, and i was overwhelmed. and it wasn't anything except the thought: i have to read every book in here. and i began. i devised this system. two novels, two nonfiction books, and the other four divided by biography, poetry, plays and anthologies. and once a week i hit the library and took all my eight books and i read them. and this continued for many years. in high school i was chastised when the teacher caught me reading a robert benchley book. he was a very funny man. but i didn't tell her at home i was also reading dostoyevsky. and dostoyevsky led me to the other russian writers tolstoy and golgo ... i read by association but mostly by alphabet.

and nothing in our library was segregated by genre. i read wells and jules verne and they were in general ... a few things had their own and agatha christie had her own section ... i loved them all. most undiscriminating writer god invented.

all through school ... you're a writer, you're a writer, you should be a writer. and i always told stories. i told my little brothers stories. the only way i could think of taking charge of two little brothers was by telling stories. and i reinvented the serial. i have left more people danglingn off cliffs [laughter] andn facing fearsome monsters - and they loved it - ... so i was making 'em up as fast as i could.

one of my brothers i visited him 3 years ago in florida, and he's a deacon in the baptist church byu the way. he assures me that i've been well saved. he tells me he still remembers some of the stories i told, and i have no recollection.

... in high school they told me i was a writer. i wanted to be a chemist. i was good in science and good in math. i thought it was so exciting to find what was in a rock, what were its parts, what was it made of. and then the dean took me aside and she said no, if you ... chemistry, you will be a teacher, or a man's lab assistant ... i had four brothers and i'd learned to fight real young and i knew i would tangle with any man who was my boss. that was not going to work. so i dropped chemistry and got married right after high school instead. but i kept reading.

then ten years after graduating high school -- i didn't go to college, i had a scholarship, but if i couldn't be what i wanted to be, i didn't want to go at all -- 10 years after college i was reading an anthology ... i said to myself this is really bad, and i said "i could do that" and that day i gave myself permission to write a bad story. and it was calle d 'the ..?ridealong?. station' and john campbell bought it. i wrote it in longhand ...

and i got a letter from john campbell a few weeks after i sent him the story. i had to notarize a document sasying that i was the writer of this story. and i've asked other writers did they have to do that? and they all said no. but ... got check for $17 and bought a typewriter. [applause] and i've been writing ever since.

... and second story sold. so i knew i could tell stories and sell them. ... when they told me all through school that i should be a writer, i didn't see any way on earth that a girl from a working class family, i had never met an editor, ... i didn't see how anybody could bridge that gap from where i was to publishing stories; i just couldn't see it. ...

sold two stories, just kept writing ... still had no mentor, and nobody to tell me how to do it, what i was doing right or wrong ... just selling ... There weren't in those days as many sources of information as you hguys have. and i didn't come across any. ... i never saw a science fiction magazine in those days. i saw the anthologies, and that was all. i learned later there was one story in louisville that sold -- ? magazine. and ... bookie. of course louisville is home of kentucky derby ... and this bookstore had a sign that said no women allowed. i couldln't believe it. so i never came across a magazine. and in those days ... writing everything ... i wrote a mystery story. and the only ones that sold were science fiction. so i became a science fiction writer of sorts. and it wasn't really by choice. ... i was telling stories; that was all i've ever done. i was telling stories. and i've never put a word on paper until i've told the entire story to myself. i tell the story to myself first so that when i write it it goes very fast. ... then can take a long time because i have to rethink and rethink ... it doesn't matter how long, i tell myself first and then i write it.

and i've always written those kind of stories ... and i've always buried them because i make no distinction between this kind and that kind, because that was how i learned to read, reading everything, and that seemed normal to me ... and that's been my mode ever since. in the early days some of the criticism i got, some of the reviews, would say things like another strong wilhelm woman and another weak man. i never saw it that way. i was writing about the kind of women i either knew or admired or wanted to know. i was writing about normal women. and normal men. [applause & laughter] but that criticism persisted quite a while. and you might think it's over & done with now. but one of my novels - this was in the 80s, i was bpublishing at harper & row, this was a novel that i submitted called the clewiston test, and ... the other ? turned it down, and he told me, a man cannot rape his wife ... and that was a pivotal part of the novel, that was the novel, that was what it was going from word one. so i couldn't rewrite it to suit him, i wouldn't have any way. so my agent took it back, i took it back, farrar straus published it. but then farrar straus wrote of a novel of mine called faultlines about a 70-year old woman who has an illegitimate son who is rebelling against his mother b/c she won't conform ... and the son was very unhappy and so was the editor. he said no, this old woman is mistreating her son. i think he had a mother issue. we took it back ... harper & row. so i've been bounced around a lot and it's all been something like this, wehre the editors said, well i don't know or i don't understand or can you change this and i've always said no and i've always found somewhere else.

i've learned to define myself instead of letting them define me ... i write what i want, i won't use a pseudonym. that was advice i got, separate it out ... i said no, i'm the author, and i won't hide, no matter what it is. so i've had a checkered career, i've had a very fulfilling career. the best kind of editor for me is one who doesn't get in the way [laughter] who lets me have my head, who lets me do what i want, without complaint, and they're hard to find. [laughter] gordon ben hill was the first one, and bless gordon ben hill, he took everything i did, i wrote a novel called The Good children ...

good novel, i like it; they didn'tn want to take it. i said if they don't want to take it i'm out of there. ... i do what i do ... and somebody else would have taken it; ... i always win.

... it's been like that; it hasn't been easy; there's been one struggle after another; and if you define yourself and what you're going to do and persevere ... i think what i did is the best way ... i don't let them tell me what i'm going to do b/c they're driven by the market, and i'm not.

the most recent bit of magic that happened to me was with my granddaughter. when she was about 2, she and her father, my son, and his wife ... and every night we took turns, we all read to her, and her parents did ... and one night she brought me one of those hideous supermarket books that used to sell for a quarter or something ... garish ... and i knew she had good books because i'd given her good books ... and it was the same kind of book ... and she pouted. what will you read. and i said i'll read my hands. and i opened my hands and i told her a story ... about a dragon ... the baby dragon who eats the fox and hen. she loved it. so the next night when it was my turn, i said what shall it be, and she said read your hands! [applause] so i read my hands, and for two years, every night, "read your hands" and i made up a story every night for two years at least. so one night ... she was about four ... i cut one of the stories off very short. always at the end i said "the end" and closed my hands and that was it. never any fuss about it until that night and she opened my hands and said "no" and opened my hands and put her hands and told me a decent ending for the story. [applause]

in her ending a magic mermaid came out of the ocean and grabbed that mean old fox and flew back over the ocean and dropped him in and then just to be sure she flew back and got mrs. fox and dropped her in too, and then she closed her hands and said the end.

and i realized i had witnessed real magic - ... storytelling technique ... adult struggle. and she grasped it. she has storytelling technique down pat. and she is now a 15year old and she is a wonderful writer. so i saw magic. but it hasn't been easy. i have to admit ... i worked hard ... i find joy in my work. ... i'm never happier than when i'm writing ... i'll never retired. all of you young people waiting for us old people to get out of the way ... [applause] some of us aren't going away soon. and thank you all. [applause]