SCOTT DOWNEY
Special to The Leader
Have you ever wished to be transported to a different time and place?
Author Carolyn Turgeon believes the power of a good story can take your mind and your body as close to another world as you can get — to feel like you can really be there.
As part of the Mary Louise White Visiting Writers Series, Turgeon came to Fredonia for two events in McEwen Hall last week.
In her first appearance, she spoke to students about some of the challenges and joys of being a writer. The later appearance was a book reading and signing.
Turgeon has used the oldest of stories, the fairy tale, and has written it in a new way. She has taken well-known stories, broken them apart to look at them from different angles and made them her own. She said she is amazed that fairy tales have captivated an audience for such a long time.
“It is really magical to imagine anything you want, as beautifully as you want [it to be] and to write it down to transport someone else that you have never met there, too,” said Turgeon. On her web page, http://www.carolynturgeon.com, she adds, “I also love the combination of gritty reality with gorgeous, lush fantasy.”
Turgeon spent a great deal of time discussing one of her books, called “Mermaid.” It’s the book that many Fredonia students have been reading, as it is required for several classes.
The author led her audience through some of the creation process that went into the book. She discussed some of the challenges that she faced and some of the rewards that came from telling her story. She also read from the book and conducted a short writing exercise.
Turgeon suggested new writers in the audience work on their imagination.
“Go somewhere to stop and daydream, even if it is in a bathtub or in a field,” she said.
Turgeon said a writer has to imagine the world that they are trying to create and immerse themselves in it, answering questions like, “How does it smell and sound and feel?” She thinks that it forces the writer to play and have fun as he or she writes.
According to her website, Turgeon graduated from Penn State, attended graduate school at UCLA and now teaches at The University of Alaska. She received a master’s degree in medieval Italian poetry before she left to write books. Her first novel was published in 2006.
Turgeon is the author of four other novels besides “Mermaid.” These are available from links on her website and through Amazon, Kindle and Barnes & Noble.
Turgeon promised that a new novel is in the works and is based on the myth of Amazon women. Only some of her many new ideas and projects require the need to wear a tail.