Having their way with words

With world-renowned artisans and an array of galleries, Chico has earned distinction as an art town. What many people don’t realize is the city also cultivates another breed of artist: the writer. Novelists Raymond Carver and John Gardner; poets George Keithley, Gary Thompson, Dennis Ross and Allison Zier; and screenwriter Matt Olmstead are just some of the wordsmiths who have called Chico home.

Honing the craft themselves, students in Leslie Layton-Flores’ magazine-writing class at Chico State University profiled published authors currently creating here in Chico. They found a successful romance novelist, an acclaimed poet, a yoga expert, a short-fiction writer and a restaurant manager who penned his first book at age 50.

Their personal stories are as distinct as their works. Sit back, relax, and take a literary journey with five local writers.

Romance with a twist
At first glance, Susan Aylworth looks like a well-groomed librarian, squinting through her scarlet-rimmed spectacles and intently at her desktop computer. In fact she is a Chico State lecturer teaching composition and literature, who turned her passion for writing into a career as a romance novelist.

Everything about her says “happy ending,” from her 36-year marriage to her seven kids to the plethora of family portraits lining her office walls. But her novels are far more than happy endings. Aylworth, 55, has raised the quality of the romance genre with books that portray believable characters who want more for themselves than a mate.

She has written seven novels, six in the Rainbow Rock series. Her first, Beneath Sierra Skies, was published in 1990 under the pseudonym Shannon Gale and sold 122,000 copies.

Aylworth has always wanted to write. As a 9-year-old girl growing up in northeastern Arizona, she started a book on a great big legal pad about a horse. “His name was Buff, like the color, but he was black,” she said. Her love for writing carried into her adult life, but she wasn’t exactly sure how to break into the business.

“In 1982 I was a new mother sitting down to nurse my new baby, Paul, and I was reading a Life [magazine] article about meter maids who became romance novelists,” she said. She thought this might be her way into writing for publication. So she started researching the romance genre and was introduced to the stereotypes.

“No wonder they call this trash,” she said of the first novels she came across.

But when she finally ran into a romance novel with substance—subtle symbolism and characters who were real people—she changed her mind. “This I could write,” she said.

Aylworth started working right then.

Beneath Sierra Skies is the only romance novel Stephen Metzger has read. Metzger, who teaches in the English, American Studies and Journalism departments at Chico State, said she really knows how to write for her audience.

“It was fun to read,” he said. “It seemed a bit tongue-in-cheek in places, especially when she was describing the lusty doctors and nurses. Of course, I might have only been aware of that since I know Susan.”

Since her first novel, she has crafted the Rainbow Rock books, set in Arizona. With her upbringing near Navajo and Hopi Indians, she couldn’t help letting some of this culture creep into her writing.

Aylworth described the process of writing the second book of the series, At the Rainbow’s End, as a manic sort of thing, with characters possessing her till she got them on the page. She wrote it start to finish in 10 days.

Of course, it isn’t always like that. Aylworth remembers a time when she was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling. Her husband came in and asked what she was doing, but she interrupted him.

“Shhh,” she said, “I’m writing.”

Although she has been successful, it has not been easy getting her works published. She has been orphaned by two publishers, and it has been a good 10 years since she’s had the urge to publish fiction. The urge is coming back, she said—she’s working on a new novel that involves a jilted heroine who chases men away with her unfinished business.

Romance novels contain themes that are a continuation of ancient folklore, she says—timeless themes found in Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella, the same stories that mothers have told their daughters for years. In modern-day romance novels such as Aylworth’s, the heroines succeed in so many more ways than just finding a partner.

“In the end, you know she is going to win, and you know that when you pick up the book. They are empowering. She can win, and I can win,” Aylworth said.

She doesn’t have to resort to steamy sexual scenes to pique the reader’s interest, either. “I can write sex scenes as well as anybody, but I don’t want to embarrass my kids,” Aylworth said.

A happy ending is one of the traditions of romance novels that Aylworth does not omit: “That’s one of the things that’s hard-wired into us.”

­Antonia Nunes

World-wise dream realized
When Ali Ataman was a child in Diyarbakir, Turkey, he told his friends that when he turned 50 he would start writing. And indeed, when Ataman was 50, living in Chico, he awoke one morning with a story in his head. He said all the details were there already—the beginning, the middle, the end.

The result was his novel, Children of the Sun: Beneath the Centuries. Released in June, it is the first piece of writing Ataman, 52, has ever had published and the fulfillment of a lifelong goal.

Ataman, a soft-spoken man who’ll insist on paying for a younger writer’s coffee, is the manager of the Chuck E Cheese’s restaurant on East Avenue. The job takes a lot of his time and energy, but that didn’t stop him from putting on paper the story he could already see in his mind.

His book is the story of a Brazilian archeologist who travels to Guatemala to solve the mystery behind the disappearance of two missing children and ends up discovering the truth behind ancient Mayan myths. Ataman is fascinated by the Mayans’ advanced civilization that disappeared so suddenly.

He finished Children of the Sun in only five months.

“It came to me as a vision—I could see it. It was like watching a movie,” he said. “Writing was easy; the details were all in my head.”

Ataman has never been to Guatemala or seen a Mayan ruin in person, but through extensive research, he learned as much as he could to make the book realistic. Although not a religious person, he enjoys studying mythology and theology; the novel gave him the opportunity to learn about the Mayans.

He said he would write at least 20 to 30 pages a night almost effortlessly: “I would go into a trance-like state.”

When the novel was complete Ataman enlisted an editor to help with certain grammatical issues, as English is not his native language. After a couple months of reworking, Helm Publishing accepted his work.

“When I read Mr. Ataman’s book, it fascinated me,” Helm Publishing CEO Dianne Helm wrote in an e-mail. “I love ancient history and especially mythology. I promote books which challenge the reader to think, imagine and discuss.”

Ataman is no stranger to different cultures. When his father came to the United States to be a guest professor at Columbia University, Ataman came with him and attended the school. He finished his education at Temple University in Pennsylvania and graduated in 1983 with a business administration degree.

After college, Ataman worked for international trade companies in countries such as Russia, Kazakh- stan and Hungary. He also spent two years in Baghdad, which he said was a beautiful city when he was there.

He ended up moving to Chico when his brother-in-law needed someone to run the family-owned Chuck E Cheese’s. Because Ataman takes familial obligations seriously, he came.

Despite his commitment to the business, Ataman’s passion is writing. He hopes the completion of his first novel is just the beginning. The book—available on Amazon.com—has sold approximately 300 copies since its release, and he said he needs to sell at least 3,000 to get the attention of large publishing houses and well-known reviewers. This is important because Ataman said he hopes to find an agent who will make the novel into a film.

Ataman is working on a sequel and has other ideas for novels. He said he would like to write stories about his own culture, in Turkey, as well as science fiction.

If he did not have the family obligation of running Chuck E Cheese’s, Ataman said he would spend his time traveling and writing. He draws inspiration from Bono, lead singer of U2, to whom he dedicated Children of the Sun.

“I want to tell the world how beautiful and loving people are everywhere,” Ataman said. “The media are not telling the truth. The politicians are not telling the truth.”

­Valerie Hazen

Poetry in motion
“In poems we make a blind charge into ourselves and hope what emerges has wings.”

Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge wrote that lyrical sentence a decade ago, in a book about the power of poetry. Oh, does her blind charge have wings!

Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life With Words is in its 14th printing, with sales exceeding 60,000 copies. It has made Wooldridge a coveted teacher, despite the fact that her fame has been spawned mostly by word of mouth. In hundreds of workshops across the country, she inspires emerging poets from ages 5 to 80 to express themselves.

She is working on a second book, Foolsgold: Making Something From Nothing, about the creative process, due out next June.

Wooldridge, 60, a Chico State alumna, writes about making poetry by collecting words. “Words grow into poems,” she explained. She records them in her journal.

“My journal is my life,” she said, now that her grown son and daughter have lives of their own and her marriage of 28 years has ended. She held up her latest black leather notebook, bulging with words and collages made from twigs and flowers she has gathered for inspiration at Big Chico Creek in Bidwell Park. “Some of the pages are smeared from having been dropped in the creek,” she laughed, explaining that’s where she does most of her writing, calling it her “office.”

Wooldridge’s playfulness turns to the magnitude of a mission when she talks about the power of poetry for inner healing.

The reason is this: Wooldridge has personally witnessed this transformational inner-healing aspect of poetry at Butte County Juvenile Detention Center, as well as at Chico’s Loma Vista School, where she works with severely emotionally disabled (SED) youth.

“These SED kids are geniuses,” she said. “They don’t want to hear it, though. They have to be shown— have to see it coming forth out of themselves.”

Wooldridge is adept at putting people at ease. In a recent reading of her poetry at the 1078 Gallery in Chico, she warmed up the audience with her harmonica-playing, while making self-deprecating jokes about feeling guilty and being Jewish. Her poetry about life in Chico made the audience swoon.

Living in Chicago shaped her poetry. Writing had been important to Wooldridge since childhood, and was especially so after a “pre-freshman” English class when she was 14. In the heart of the University of Chicago’s neo-gothic campus, she followed her teacher’s lead and learned to “probe the unknown,” as she calls it: “There’s something about writing that allows one to plumb.”

Appreciative of that creative spark, Wooldridge dedicated Poemcrazy to Jack Maybie, despite the fact she hadn’t seen him in 36 years. Fortuitously, Maybie’s ex-wife, a reviewer for Booklist, found the dedication and contacted her ex-husband, who called Wooldridge. As a result, the mentor and student have become the best of friends.

Poemcrazy took her about seven years to author, and Foolsgold is taking about the same. She calls herself “a process person,” doesn’t map everything out in advance; that thoughtfulness may be the key to her art.

“I’ve seen secret after secret spill out in people’s poems, and I’ve spilled secret after secret about myself. The poem speaks in confidence, the reader feels included, honored, and keeps the secret.”

­Pat Gage

Mind, body and spirit
In May 1997, Chico yoga instructor Annalisa Cunningham was injured in a car accident. She was unable to stretch because of the damage to her ligaments and soft tissue in her body. She used chanting and breathing techniques from yoga, but she found herself in pain when she would attempt a posture.

“Every time I would try to go back, I would end up on ice,” Cunningham said.

Since her accident, Cunningham has adapted her yoga to accommodate her injury and written a book on her style of yoga, Gentle Yoga for Healing: Mind Body Spirit, which is used as the text for her class at Chico State.

She wrote her first book, Stretch and Surrender: A Guide to Yoga, Health and Relaxation for People in Recovery, at age 35. (It was revised and reprinted as Healing Addiction with Yoga: A Yoga Program for People in 12 Step Recovery.) She also has written two travel books: Yoga Vacations: A Guide to International Yoga Retreats and Spa Vacations: Your Guide to Healing Centers and Retreats, each featuring more than 100 locales.

Now 49, Cunningham can bend in ways some 5-year-olds can’t. But yoga has more to it than stretching—"it’s about finding inner peace.”

She began teaching yoga when she worked at a 12-step recovery program in the North Bay, counseling people overcoming addictions. She saw that her patients needed more. They needed to learn how to relax.

She approached her boss and proposed the idea of teaching yoga with a 12-step philosophy. He accepted her proposal, and she crafted a program to include the patients’ families. Once a week, she offered class to the family members alone, and on Fridays, both the patients and families were in class.

Cunningham now teaches yoga at Butte College and Chico State. She also runs a yoga travel business, taking people to places such as Machu Picchu, along with writing. All five of her books are sold on Amazon.com.

Melanie Vanella took a yoga course from Cunningham in spring 2005 and says Gentle Yoga for Healing still benefits her.

“The examples in Annalisa’s books are very clear and concise compared to other yoga books,” said Vanella, 22.

The best thing about writing is the response Cunningham receives from people she has inspired. She says she receives phone calls and e-mails every week from people her books helped, such as a woman from Ireland who called to tell her that she was feeling suicidal until she found Healing Addiction with Yoga.

“It’s a way to reach people. It’s just another method of communication,” Cunningham said, adding: “As a result of my books, I have created a lifestyle where I am living my passion. I don’t think a lot of people get to do that.”

­Stephanie Cefalo

Adventure of a lifetime
When Robert Davidson got his first copy of his first published book in 2001, he hugged it. Then he showed his 5-year-old daughter the dedication page. Holding the book open with his fingers, she read it: “For Sophie.”

Davidson said she was old enough to know what that meant, and he knows she appreciates it. And that means a lot to him. “If your daughter is proud of you,” he said, “it’s pretty cool.”

Davidson, an assistant professor at Chico State for four years, has published two books in the past five years and is working on the third. Balancing teaching and writing is not always easy to do, but he finds being a writer makes him a better teacher.

“You gotta know your stuff and communicate it clearly. You use the tools in your tool box to discuss things,” said Davidson, a creative-writing instructor. “That’s the great thing about teaching.”

On a Wednesday morning in his office, Davidson looked like an adventurous writer underneath an educated professor shell. With a pierced left ear and rainbow-striped socks peeking out from under his dark slacks, he didn’t show his 39 years.

Davidson got his doctorate in American Literature in 2002 from Purdue University. Before that, he and his wife were in the Peace Corps, from 1990 to 1992. He joined because of Linda, who had more of an idealistic “do-good-in-the-world” mind-set.

“I wanted to travel,” he said. “My intentions weren’t as noble.”

The couple spent two years in Grenada, a Caribbean island. While there, he taught students about reading and writing, but found there wasn’t much to do in his spare time except read and write. He hadn’t always wanted to be a writer—"It whetted my appetite, I guess.”

There, Davidson learned discipline. He would wake up at 5 a.m. and write for two or three hours almost every day before work.

“At first, that sucked,” he said, the experience still fresh in his mind 16 years later. “Then I realized I had to do it. I liked doing this every day.”

Davidson used that trip for inspiration in his first book, Field Observations—a collection of nine short stories, his personal expertise. His most recent book, The Literary Criticism of Henry James and William Dean Howells, is a scholarly work released in 2005 that looks at the 19th-century American novelists and their importance as literary critics.

Field Observations won the 2002 Maria Thomas Fiction Award, an annual prize for the best new fiction book by former Peace Corps volunteers. Davidson has the award hanging on the wall above his desk, along with Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan posters.

Davidson’s Peace Corps experience changed how he wrote about people. He said he learned to “see with a new set of eyes.” Having to live in the 13-square-mile country for two years made him adapt to their way of life, instead of them adapting to his.

“I recognized I had biases, preconceptions I didn’t know I had,” he said. “It was really hard to let go of that.”

English professor Paul Eggers, a fellow fiction writer at Chico State, has read most of the short stories in Field Observations. Eggers said Davidson is able to simplify any complicated story line with his selection of clear, descriptive words, and can write from any person’s point of view.

“With Rob, you’re never going to know what you’re going to get,” Eggers said. “His style is purposely plain with an underlying lyrical quality put in the simplest terms he can.”

Davidson says he makes his fiction “rich in character” and focuses on average people—people everyone could imagine knowing. Exploring them fuels his passion for writing.

“I don’t write for money or fame, God knows,” he said, with a chuckle. “But writing has to be life and death to you. Not everyone has that.”

­Kourtney Jason