Anne Hillerman’s Thursday evening lecture at UNM was centered on a simple message: fiction is good for the brain.
Although Hillerman touched on her latest novel, “Tony Hillerman’s Landscape,” a book about her father’s favorite scenes that he incorporated in his writing, she touched on fiction as a way to stimulate the mind in a way that other genres simply cannot.
“Deep reading is a slower, immersive process we use to understand long, complex stories rich in sensory detail and emotional and moral questions,” Hillerman said in her lecture. “It is as different from the mere decoding of words for useful information as heating up a pizza is making lasagna from scratch.”
While Hillerman said she applauds readers who seek out non-fiction, short stories and other forms of literature, she said those doesn’t stimulate the brain in the same way a long novel does.
The decorated writer began her career as a reporter for the high school paper at Saint Pius X. She later received accolades for writing as a food columnist in the Albuquerque Journal before becoming a novelist.
“When I was growing up, my dad wasn’t really famous yet,” Hillerman said. “I was able to develop my own career in journalism and non-fiction books without both the benefits and challenges of having a famous parent.”
However, Hillerman’s introduction to fiction writing was somewhat unorthodox. Her first piece happened to be the completion of her father’s unfinished story, “Spider Woman’s Daughter”.
“It was a challenge in that I knew people loved those characters and they knew that series very well,” Hillerman said. “If I did anything that was out of the tradition that my dad set up, I knew that would be curtains for me as a novelist.”
The process that Hillerman described as a “double-edged sword” certainly did not hinder her career. Her second appearance in genre fiction featured a New York Times best-seller, “Rock with Wings”.
Hillerman, along with her husband Don Strel, made the 45-minute drive from Santa Fe to give a speech at the 2015 Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Lecture on the Literature of the Southwest. Hillerman is the first genre fiction writer to speak at the annual Anaya lecture series, which started in 2010.
“When they invited me to do this, I didn’t know what to expect. They’d had such wonderful presenters before ... those were some big shoes to fill,” Hillerman said after the lecture. “I figured all I could do was the best I could do, and whoever came, I would just hope they would enjoy it, but I was thrilled to see standing room only.”
Hillerman filled those shoes inside the George Pearl Hall auditorium as well, located in UNM’s architecture building. Fans of Hillerman and her father packed the lecture hall, leaving several audience members scattered across the two staircases.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
“A lot of the writers we’ve had before were well-known, but they were well-known in an academic setting,” said Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán, assistant professor in the English Department and chair of the speaker selection committee for the series. “This is the first time that we’ve brought a popular fiction writer ... Her work is much more mainstream in a different kind of way than our other writers have been.”
Plenty of buzz has been surrounding the Hillermans, aside from Anne Hillerman’s success in genre fiction. Currently, the Tony Hillerman collection is in the process of becoming digitized, making it more accessible to those interested in his work.
Vizcaíno-Alemán said she was very pleased with the turnout and excitement generated by Anne Hillerman and her family’s appearance.
One of the reasons Anne Hillerman was picked to speak at the event was that the English Department wanted to turn more eyes toward Southwest fiction, in hopes of facilitating a newly introduced fellowship fund in Rudolfo Anaya’s name.
UNM has been hosting the event for the lecture Anaya series fund, which Vizcaíno-Alemán classified as a spending account. But the newly placed fellowship fund is meant to award an undergraduate or graduate of Hispanic descent in order to help continue his or her collegiate career.
Vizcaíno-Alemán expects to reach the $2,500 goal for the fellowship fund by the end of the school year — something she said she is very proud of.
“I really see this as a turning point,” Vizcaíno-Alemán said. “(It shows) that we can do something different that’s connected to something we’ve done before, but that really expands and is much more inclusive of a larger audience to bring much more attention to what we’re doing.”
Liam Cary-Eaves is the sports editor for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at assistantsports@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Liam_CE.
