by Eva Dameron
Daily Lobo
Rudolfo Anaya said he writes every morning.
The New Mexico author is nominated for the Southwest Book Award for Serafina's Stories, a collection of 12 New Mexico folk tales translated from Spanish into English and set in the context of a story.
He said the first Spaniards who came to New Mexico brought many folk tales and passed them down in the old story-telling tradition for many generations.
"I have a historical context for telling the stories," Anaya said. "It takes place in Santa Fe in 1680, three months before the Indian Pueblo Revolution. It teaches a better history of what was going on at the time."
The Southwest Book Award is sponsored by PEN New Mexico and PEN Texas, a human rights organization that preserves the freedom to write and also promotes literary endeavors.
"It's wonderful," Anaya said. "I had no idea. I feel honored."
He said he's also honored that his book Bless Me, Ultima was chosen for the Albuquerque Readfest Discussion, a program designed to bring the community together by the collective reading and discussing of the same book.
"If the city can read one book, then you have a lot of discussion and sharing of ideas and maybe it draws people together," he said.
He said people may or may not like the book, but what's important is that people are talking to each other.
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There's a reason why he thinks everyone should be talking to each other. His favorite thing about New Mexico is the people, Anaya said.
"I have known some very fabulous people," he said. "The context and history from which they come is so incredibly interesting. That's why there's always a source for stories. People are just fascinating to me."
He said there is always a story, but it takes discipline to sit down and make sense of the images and epiphanies that come to us. Anaya said writing every day keeps him from suffering writer's block.
"Because I'm always thinking of stories, there never seems to be a block," he said. "The block comes in the discipline to sit down and write the story. I have always written every single day of the year. I have the discipline to nurture them and re-create them on paper."
Although daily writing is a lot of work, he said writing gives him a sense of elation.
"It's a lot of damn work, hard work, but you get a high out of what you are discovering with your characters and you want to continue that high," he said. "I have learned the discipline to bring about that high, which is an insight into human nature, you might say. That insight allows me to keep going back. That holds for musicians and dancers and poets and painters - everybody that's creating something."
He hopes he has gotten better over the years, he said, laughing, with emphasis on the word hope.
"It doesn't get any easier," he said. "I'm the type of writer that revises a lot, so the work is still there. But the perceptions about life and nature seem richer and deeper, and every day is more interesting."
