An internationally best-selling novelist and an alum of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop is appearing in Des Moines and Iowa City this week, while headlining the opening of the 22nd annual DMACC Celebration of Literary Arts.
Bret Anthony Johnston is director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin and says he’s thrilled to be returning to the Hawkeye State, saying, “my time in Iowa changed my life.”
“We’re going to talk about the making of literary art and this new book that I have, but mostly I’m going to be there to listen and to learn from the readers and writers who are there,” Johnston says. “Everybody thinks that I’m somehow the main attraction, but really the main attraction are the readers and writers of Des Moines.”
Johnston’s latest novel, “We Burn Daylight,” is something of a reimagining of the 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, in 1993. He watched the events unfold on his parent’s TV, events that led to the deaths of more than 82 of the group’s members, including more than 20 children, as well as four ATF agents. Johnston says Texans, and eventually the world, were enthralled by the story.
“You were either in one of two camps. You were in a camp of, these people deserved it. They’re part of this crazy doomsday cult, and they had it coming,” Johnston says. “Or you were in this other camp of, why is this happening? What led to this and why wasn’t it prevented when it seemed so incredibly preventable?”
While many readers may already know what happened to cult leader David Koresh — or in the book, Perry Cullen — works of historical fiction aren’t just about the past, Johnston says, but they’re also about us, right here, today.
“We keep reading them, and we keep writing them, hoping that something is going to finally make sense and we’re going to understand how this happened,” Johnston says. “The irony, of course, is I think that’s also what draws people to these marginalized systems of belief, of there is an answer, and this person is going to have it, and suddenly everything is going to make sense.”
He says returning to Iowa for these appearances is both a gift and a privilege.
“I don’t know that there are any other places in the world who value reading and writing the way that the people of Iowa do,” Johnston says. “That’s no shade on New York City or Paris or London, but per capita, the number of readers and writers in Iowa, it always feels like coming home, even if you’re not from there.”
Johnston is appearing tonight at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City, at Des Moines Area Community College’s Ankeny campus tomorrow morning, and at Beaverdale Books in Des Moines tomorrow night.
