Bread Loaf Writers' Conference mentor Elkin inspired Shiloh

Aug. 5, 2010 - PRLog -- The 85th Bread Loaf Writers' Conference is under way this August 11-21. Writers and students converge upon the Bread Loaf campus of Middlebury College at what The New Yorker magazine calls "the oldest and most prestigious writers' conference in the country."

The power of small life moments as moments that shape is a key element in the new in-progress novel "Waiting for the End" by Doug Shiloh. One of Shiloh's key small moments happened 25 years ago in August, 1985 when he met at Bread Loaf Stanley Elkin, one of America's eminent novelists.

Elkin, who died in 1995 of a heart attack, won the National Book Critics Circle Award twice and a finalist for the National Book Award. He earned a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

The moment influenced Shiloh so much that he is dedicating "Waiting for the End" to Elkin.

"His sage advice still keeps me going all of these years," Shiloh said.

Elkin was on staff at that year's Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, which was founded by poet Robert Frost and others in 1926. Shiloh was a Fiction Manuscript Contributor attending the two week 1985 conference, which is held at Middlebury College's Bread Loaf campus in the scenic Bread Loaf mountains.

"That experience that has stayed with me to this day," Shiloh said. "That time frame became a story of personal will and belief, along with encouragement from a mentor. That's really a life lesson.

"I was blown away. I was from a Midwestern town and found myself in the company of major literary influences like Mark Strand (former Poet Laureate of the United States), Tim O'Brien, Donald Justice, Ellen Brodkey Schwaam, Robert Pack, Linda Pastan and Nancy Willard. I had first heard about Bread Loaf from a cover article in TIME magazine on John Irving. In it, Irving is pictured with Elkin. So here I met an influence of one of my top influences."

Elkin ran a 10-member workshop which Shiloh was part of.

"We had a few moments to devise a storyline and then we had to tell it to the group and get critiqued," Shiloh said. Shiloh, who sat directly to Elkin's left, listened intently to all of the students. "The waiting was nerve wracking."

Then it was his turn.

Finally, Elkin said of Shiloh's storyline, "It reminds me of Kafka."

Shiloh made a face of displeasure.

"No," Elkin said. "That's a compliment."

During that workshop, Elkin also told the group to not have the main character "off-the-dime."

"I would be curious to see what Professor Elkin thought of Katlin Hillmacher," Shiloh said of the main character of his first novel POOKOO. "The main character in my new work is an ordinary man in extraordinary times."

Shiloh has nothing but high praise for Elkin, whose dynamic story lines such as "The Magic Kingdom" and "The Dick Gibson Show" set a high watermark for any author.

"Stanley Elkin's energetic fiction is one-of-a-kind," Shiloh said. "His scenarios are as vital to literary fiction as Philip K. Dick's are to science fiction."

LEARN MORE ABOUT ELKIN:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Elkin

Stanley Elkin at Literary Encyclopedia:
http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1412

Links to Stanley Elkin books:
http://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-American-Literature-Dalkey-...

NOTE: Nancy Willard was the first author to ever win the Caldecott and Newbury awards for the same book (1982, A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers).

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