James McGrath Morris brings New Mexico writers to the table

He started an online newsletter, The Biographer’s Craft, issuing an open letter in 2008 calling for an organization dedicated to enhancing the field and encouraging aspiring biographers. A year later, a group of writers he helped curate officially formed the Biographers International Organization. Morris saw the same need here in New Mexico eight years ago, but this time, he inverted the process. He started in 2017 with the New Mexico Writers Dinner, which in turn spawned a group, New Mexico Writers, that now has awarded $40,000 in grants to writers over the last few years.

“What’s interesting is that I make a video every year of the previous year’s grantees,” Morris says of the dinner, which will be held April 25 at La Fonda. “It’s kind of like a report back to the rest of us, ‘What did I do with the money?’” he says. “As I recorded them this year, I kept thinking, ‘We’re making an extraordinary difference.’ They may be called micro-grants, but they have macro power in how they’re changing and shaping the lives of writers in our state.”

Supporting other writers wasn’t his original chosen the path. Morris says he’s an example of a Mark Twain precept: He never let his schooling get in the way of his education. Morris started out without a high school diploma and worked for years as a journalist, living in New Mexico for the first time in 1977 and then moving to Missouri and later Washington, D.C.

A few years later, he decided he wanted to teach, so he went back to school and earned not just a bachelor’s degree from American University but also a master’s degree from George Washington University, both in D.C.

“When I used to teach high school, I had three degrees on the wall,” he says of the time in his life before he became a biographer. “One was my high school degree, which I got later, my college diploma, and my master’s diploma. And they weren’t chronologically in the right order. A student every once in a while would raise their hand and say, ‘Mr. Morris, is that like a typo?’ And I’d tell them the story that, ‘No, I was uneducated for many years.’”

His interest in biography, he says, likely stems from his childhood interest in obituaries; to him they read like mini biographies.

He settled in Tesuque about 20 years ago, and his first biography, The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism (Fordham University Press) was published in 2004. He’s written books on Joseph Pulitzer, journalist Ethel Payne, and about the friendship between Ernest Hemingway and fellow novelist John Dos Passos during WWI. His most recent work, Tony Hillerman: A Life, was published in 2021 by University of Oklahoma Press.

Despite the deep research that goes into writing biographies, Morris is prolific, a trait he credits to his background as a journalist. Morris spent nearly four years working on the Pulitzer book, but he also knew when to wrap it up.

“You’re done when the deadline rolls around. You could keep it for another two years, but it wouldn’t be worth it,” he says. “Each of us approaches biography differently. I come at it from a storyteller’s perspective, and you can figure out when the story has been told. Could I have told another anecdote? Could I have told another story? Sure. But at the same point, you need patience from the reader. They don’t want to read a 700-page tome anymore.”

Noted historian Hampton Sides is the keynote speaker at the Thursday, April 25, New Mexico Writers Dinner, and a couple of weeks later, Morris will interview Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Kai Bird at the Santa Fe International Literary Festival on May 19. That aspect of his job — luring noteworthy authors to speak to local authors — is actually pretty easy, he says.

Most writers enjoy giving back to other writers, Morris says, and have a trail of other writers who helped them and feel it’s their duty to continue the cycle.

The Writers Dinner doesn’t only connect people of like-minded professions across the state; it also gives aspiring writers a chance to ask questions to authors who have had their work published. It gives them a chance to network and possibly meet someone who might even provide a blurb for their first book.

The literary festival, Morris says, has the same kind of impact.

“It’s making a huge difference,” he says. “There are a lot of literary festivals in the country that celebrate only local writers, but this one is an international literary festival that celebrates local writers and also celebrates writers from around the world,” he says. “New Mexico has been really good at pointing out its art forms; its music, painting, and pottery. But the literary art form is often forgotten. By having the dinner and having the festival, it’s a reminder to the public at large that New Mexico is a center of writing as well.” ◀

The New Mexico Writers Dinner is a celebration of grant recipients and offers the opportunity to network with New Mexico writers of all genres. It’s open to both writers and non-writers. This year’s speaker is Hampton Sides, author of the newly released The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook (Doubleday).

Writing their ticket

New Mexico Writers don’t take anything for granted.

The writers advocacy group dedicated to nurturing local projects sponsored 13 grants this year that will directly benefit 15 New Mexico artists. Twelve of the grants were individual grants, and one went to a team of collaborators working on a screenplay.

Carmella Padilla, the chair of New Mexico Writers’ grants committee, says they received 41 submissions this year, and they come from New Mexico and the Navajo Nation.

The annual grants range between $500 and $2,000, says Padilla, and over the years, the New Mexico Writers have distributed more than $40,000 in grants.

“We fund a lot of things,” Padilla says. “Sometimes, people want to take a little time away from their jobs. Sometimes they need some editorial help. Sometimes they need research travel funding. We try to make it fairly loose to meet a lot of needs. Writers, especially people who are not professional writers — may not have a lot of costs covered for them.”

The following writers were chosen as recipients for this year’s grants :

• Vivian Arviso, Albuquerque
• Robin Babb, Albuquerque
• Erin Elder, Albuquerque
• Damien Flores, Albuquerque
• Janet Gotkin, Santa Fe
• Emma Hine, Santa Fe
• Ginny Leise, Albuquerque
• Susan Mihalic, Taos
• Dena Moes, Santa Fe
• Katie Singer, Santa Fe
• Anna Sochocky, Santa Fe
• Grace Spulak, Valencia County
• The screenwriting team of Sara Grab, Rowen Kahn, and Maiana Rose (all from Santa Fe)