Collegian

Goldberg [Click to enlarge]

Heinemann [Click to enlarge]

Lorain County Community College hosted award winning poet and novelist, Beckian Fritz Goldberg and Larry Heinemann Thursday, April 20 at 7 p.m. in the Stocker Art Center's Black Box Theater.

Goldberg and Heinemann each read pieces from their works to the crowd.  The audience was made up of faculty, students, and the public.

Heinemann began by giving examples of his own personal experiences while in the Army. He read from his novel, Black Virgin Mountain, a story about an army platoon in Vietnam.

Heinemann, who was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, began writing at 25.

 He has taught a variety of writing courses at Mills College, the University of California at Davis, the University of Southern California, Northwestern and DePaul University. 

His short stories and non-fiction essays have appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Harpers Bazaar, Playboy, and Tri-Quarterly.

The audience looked taken back while he read a story about a single man struggling to get through a "spider hole". This is a tunnel dug underground for troops to hide in, and the man in the story is always fearful that he may not make it out of the hole.

The two years in the Army as an ordinary soldier and the one-year overseas were the sparks that fueled his interest in writing, Heinemann said.

"I became a writer because of the war, not in spite of it," Heinemann said.

Heinemann said his stories, are for mostly young men that could be potential soldiers.

Heinemann did not have any family inspiration, except for his grandfather. 

"My grandfather was gifted with the ability to bullshit, my mother then received it, and now I have it. It is a wonderful gift to have," said Heinemann.

Beckian Fritz Goldberg was the second speaker of the night.

Goldberg is the author of several collections of poetry that include Body Betrayer, In The Badlands of Desire, Never Be The Horse, Twentieth Century Children, Lie Awake Lake, and many others.

She has been awarded the Theodore Roethke Prize, The Gettysburg Review Annual Poetry Award, The University of Akron Press Poetry Prize, and the Field Poetry Prize from the Oberlin College Press for her poetry.

 Goldberg read a series of poems and introduced one of her reoccurring characters, entitled Burn Boy.

Goldberg said she was about nine years old when the thought about being an author first occurred. 

"But at that time I also wanted to be a mountaineer, concert violinist, astronaut and a spy."

She was inspired to become an author by simply reading, she said, and her family is also a huge influence on the way she writes. 

Goldberg said it firmly, by the look on her face, that family is great to use especially if they are dead, because then they cannot take offense to anything she writes.

Article Tools