We’re so excited to welcome Randon Billings Noble back to HippoCamp! This returning speaker will lead two events: first, a pre-conference workshop on the lyric essay and second, a break-out session on finding a home for an essay collection. (And a perfect time for this one, as Randon will soon celebrate the release of her own essay collection from University of Nebraska Press!) To get ready for her HippoCamp appearance, we asked her a few questions.
HM: Tell us a little about your involvement in HippoCamp this year. What are you most excited to share during your panel?
I’m leading a pre-conference workshop, “Crafting the Lyric Essay,” and a break-out session, “The Long and Winding Road: Publishing an Essay Collection.” I’m excited for the workshop because it will lead to new work (we’re going to talk but we’re also going to write), and I’m excited for the break-out session because it will show essayists what they might do with the work they’ve already (mostly?) written.
Why do you love true stories?
I love true stories because I think they do something different to our brains (and hearts) than made-up stories. Both have their place in a literary life, but when we read a story that moves us – a story that’s true – we see how we relate to others, how our lives intersect, how when we think we are at our lowest, our darkest, we are in fact not alone in all the tangled realities that make up our gorgeous, messy lives. And to craft a story like this – to take the straw of everyday life and spin it into gold – that’s just magic to me.
What made you decide to participate in HippoCamp this year as a speaker? If you’re a returning speaker, how did your past experiences encourage to want to come back?
HippoCamp is one of my favorite conferences. I love that it’s focused on creative nonfiction, that it’s relatively small, and that in mood and temperament it’s inclusive, welcoming, smart, keen, and kind.
Aside from preparing for HippoCamp 2018 (of course!), what are you working on? Any recent or upcoming projects/publications you can share?
My first book, Be with Me Always, is coming out from the University of Nebraska Press in March. It’s a collection of personal essays that explore hauntedness – not through conventional ghost stories but by considering the way certain people or places from our pasts cling to our imaginations. In a way, all good essays are about the things that haunt us, that get under our skin and into our minds and won’t leave until we have at least in some small way embraced or understood them.
The title comes from a line from Wuthering Heights – when Heathcliff says to Cathy after she has died, “Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!” He wants to be haunted – he insists on it – and I do too. Instead of exorcising the ghosts of my past, these essays stand at the window, hoping for their cold hands to knock, their plaintive voices to ask, “Let me in.”
Since you’ll also be attending the conference, what are you most looking forward to learning or doing when you’re not wearing your “speaker hat?”
I’m really looking forward to being a writer among writers. One way I like to do this is at the breakfast “topic tables.” If you’re an introvert (like I am) it’s lovely to sit at a table with people who are interested in talking about the same thing you are – essays, teaching, the writing/life balance, etc. The little sign that announces the topic breaks any ice and allows you to jump right in before you have time to get shy. The coffee helps too.
Randon, we can’t wait to see you in just a few months!
And, reader, register to reserve your place today.
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