Living in the American West has inspired Judith Freeman to write books that not only reveal a beauty and appreciation for the landscape but also tell compelling and unique stories.
"Writing started in Ketchum in the 1970s when I was teaching skiing," Freeman said. "I would come down from the mountain and try and write. I am a self-taught writer, and I didn't know quite how to do it, but the stories, I knew, would come out of the West."
Freeman will be giving a free lecture at the Community Campus in Hailey on Thursday, April 30, at 6 p.m. titled "On Becoming a Western Writer." She is an adjunct instructor at the University of Southern California's Masters of Professional Writing two-year program and teaches a fiction writing workshop. Freeman has received several awards for her work, including the Western Heritage Award and the Utah Book Award. She splits her time between her farm on the Camas Prairie and Los Angeles.
"We see the land change," Freeman said. "Idaho has changed so much with the influx of Mexican, Latino and South American peoples. There is a change in population and how the land is occupied."
Freeman said a writer can always return to the land to find a story and reading books are the greatest cure for the soul because they take a reader to a different world. Landscape is always a character, she said, whether it is Los Angeles in her book "The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved" or the landscape of southern Utah in "Red Water."
"Journals are a rich archive for writing on the West and are available to everyone," Freeman said. "You don't have to have relatives in the West to write about Western history."
Research for Freeman's "Red Water" came from a regional library. She said it was wonderful to look at photographs, as well as diaries and letters. For a writer, she said, archives are rich in history and photographs can be used for prose and stories. In addition, Freeman said she keeps a small journal, which is more for ideas than for personal documentation.
"When I am working on a book and think of something or read a passage, I want to record it," she said. "For 'Red Water,' my husband would drive and I would look out the window and record the shadows and the shapes, the landscape and the sky. I take many descriptions from my journal and put them directly into novels."
Freeman's talk will be held in conjunction with a symposium for Idaho's high school and college English teachers. It is sponsored by College of Southern Idaho and the TumbleWords programs of the Idaho Commission on the Arts.
Sabina Dana Plasse: splasse@mtexpress.com
Judith Freeman will share her inspirations on Western writing at the Community Campus in Hailey.
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