Weymouth Begins Writers Reading Events

Staples’ Aug. 10 reading at Weymouth is autobiographical.

“I woke up on June 14, 2007, with a headache, and it’s never really gone away,” she says. “At this point in my life I’m a fully functioning person who doesn’t think about this fact all THAT much, but for a few years, this pain basically took over my life, and I became obsessed with the question of why, what it meant that it happened to me. That question went from being physical to something metaphysical, and that’s where my main character, Marisa, finds herself.”

Staples is associate editor of Lookout Books and the literary journal Ecotone. She teaches books and publishing, publishing practicum and special topics in publishing at UNC-Wilmington.

Staples edited Mathew Neill Null’s awarding-winning debut novel. Null read from his work, “Honey From the Lion,” at Weymouth while on tour last fall.

Staples’ editing affects the way she approaches the art of writing fiction. “The editing hat is very comfortable for me to wear, and flattering, and appropriately sized,” she says. “I like using both sides of my brain at once — a logical mind in support of something beautiful. I like the variety involved in editing.”

Spending so much time editing of course has affected her writing.

“In some ways I think I’m better at it, smarter about how good writing works,” she says. “In other ways, I think I’m worse; it’s so hard to knock that know-it-all editor off of my shoulder. It’s sometimes painful for me to sit and stare at a piece of my own writing with nothing for company but my own thoughts; sometimes I feel so limited in that capacity. But ultimately I also think it’s more edifying. When you surprise yourself, articulate your own imagination in some satisfying way, that’s one of the best feelings ever. So I suppose it’s a push and pull between the two tasks, and that each one has made me smarter about the other.”

Staples is assistant director of the Publishing Laboratory at UNCW.

“The Publishing Lab is part of the Creative Writing Department at UNCW,” says Staples. “It is firstly a classroom space, where we hold many of the department’s publishing classes for both undergrads and graduate students. We have a full curriculum of publishing classes including topics in editing, the culture and commerce of books, and book design, and hands-on applied learning classes where students work on Ecotone, Chautauqua and Lookout Books. We teach publishing as an art form, and the classes are designed to help both writers looking to publish their own work and students who want to go into publishing as a career.”

The reading and discussion begins at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 10, in the Great Room at Weymouth Center, 555 East Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines.

The program is free. A light wine and cheese reception will follow.

Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities a 501 (c)(3) not-for-profit organization and home to the NC Literary Hall of Fame. For more information, call (910) 692-6261 or look online at www.weymouthcenter.org.