After reading Doug Nordfors’ contribution to a recent C-VILLE cover story—a few hundred words pondering the lackluster literary scene in Charlottesville—I began pondering the same question myself, specifically regarding the under-35 literary demographic. Being on break from my own MFA program, I decided to investigate ways to get the local, under-35 literary demographic off their asses and collaborating on something (a webzine, perhaps?). Of course, my first step was to somehow locate some local, under-35 literary types.
My friend Julia (a poet) was on board from the beginning, but I turned to the Internet to find other possible young, local wordsmiths and came across One Star Watt, the blog of local writer and editor Wistar Watts Murray. I scrolled through her various posts and immediately e-mailed Julia the link to Wistar’s site saying, “I want this girl to work on ‘Protagonist.’” (“Protagonist” is the working title for our vague project.) Julia e-mailed back a few minutes later: “Yes, definitely.”
Wistar is funny. And smart. And funny. And smart. And so is her blog. While the superficial content of the blog is the same general stuff of most blogs (i.e. blahblahmeblahblah), she makes blahblahmeblahblah fun to read and that, I think, is the sign of a really good writer. My favorite recent post is entitled “I Am Most Brilliant When I Am Sleepy.” Wistar writes: “It was about 3 in the morning when I woke up with an exciting new perspective on human pollution. I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be weird if people had special habitats for yawning and sneezing in the same way they have special habitats for peeing and defecating?’ Like if someone was sitting at a dinner table and had to hiccup, she would have to excuse herself to the hiccup room and everyone would judge her if she didn’t wash her hands afterwards.” OMG, TOTALLY, Wistar! I SO agree!!! Seriously, call me. We’ll tawk.