Shortly after I applied for this grant my research took an unexpected turn, and I was given exclusive rights C.D. Wright's biography by her widower, Pulitzer poet Forrest Gander; I applied for and was awarded a Beinecke Fellowship at Yale which provided financial support for 4 months of research in New Haven.  As I began to plan my trip I discovered that not only are Wright's archives extensive (Over 70 boxes, plus scores of digital files), but the Beinecke also houses the papers of Wright's former lover, Frank Stanford, those of her widower, and the archives of Lost Roads Press, founded by Stanford and Wright. I began to realize that I would need much more than 4 months.

The CLRT Grant allowed me to extend my first trip to New Haven from 8 weeks to 10 weeks. This was a great boon as it took me some time to get my bearings given the extensiveness of Wright's archives and the content descriptions are spare. In addition to spending weekdays in the archives, on weekends I traveled to other parts of New England to interview Wright's friends, family and colleagues. I now have over 100 hours of audio which includes interviews with many esteemed poets, writers and artists.

The scope of my project has expanded to a cradle-to-grave biography tracing the literary and personal development of a major American poet who came of age amid the violence of Civil Rights reform in the 1960s, was scarred by trauma in the the sexual liberation of the 1970s and whose poetic innovations, literary citizenship, and legacies of teaching, activism and editorial midwifery make her one of the most influential poets of the age.

To this end, I altered my research strategy, focusing first on letters and documents that illuminate Wright's early life, and acquaint me with her friends and colleagues so that I could conduct interviews with those persons who were still alive.  Given that numerous important people in Wright's life have died and many others are in their elder years collecting these oral histories feels urgent. Thus far, through the archived letters, I have been able to track down numerous friends that were not among the list of contacts provided to me by Wright's widower and have filled in some substantial holes in the timeline of Wright's life. I learned a good deal about the tragic relationship between Wright and Stanford that has affected my reading of her work and her other literary and artistic relationships. In an unpublished memoir, I learned of two pre-Roe abortions, the circumstances of which seem particularly relevant in light of recent history. I discovered that Wright was an undergrad student at Memphis State University when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was there assassinated.  In an interview with Wright's roommate, one of 8 Black students enrolled at Memphis State, I learned that when news of King's murder reached the campus, happy cheers broke out.

I am now a little over a year into a project that will likely take anywhere from 5-10 years.  Though I have barely scratched the surface, this grant has helped me to achieve much more than I could have anticipated when I first applied.

This work with primary sources has inspired me to get students into the archives at the University of Michigan and has redoubled my dedication to integrating field research and oral testimony into major writing projects.  The ethics of story-telling is also something I emphasize in my classes, and this work has given me a greater appreciation for the ethical dilemmas writers face. My project involves telling the story of a writer only recently dead, whose life was entangled with many people who are very much alive, and who will be to varying degrees affected by my work.