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Writers of 'what is honest and real'
GA04093
July 1, 2004

Writers of 'what is honest and real'

Writers Guild presents awards to magazine editor, novelist

by Bill Lancaster

RICHMOND, July 1 - The Presbyterian Writers Guild honored two Presbyterian
writers during its Assembly luncheon Thursday - Eva Stimson, editor of
Presbyterians Today magazine, received the David R. Steele Distinguished
Writer Award, and novelist Ruth Linnea Whitney	was presented the Jim Angell
Award.

Stimson was honored for her more than 20 years of service at the
award-winning denominational magazine and its predecessor publication.

Whitney's award, which is for the best first book by a Presbyterian author,
was for her novel, Slim, which is about eight people dealing with the scourge
of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

Stimson said she wrote hundreds of poems as a child, and "thought I was a
pretty good poet, too - until I began to realize that there's more to poetry
than rhyme and meter. ... A good poet selects and polishes each word with
care, distilling volumes of truth about the universe into a few glorious
lines."

In her 20s, she said, she began to "get serious about fiction writing," and
took a story to a writing workshop to be critiqued by a Presbyterian writer
she admired, Katherine Paterson.

"She got right to the point," Stimson said. "'The only problem with your
story,' she told me, 'is that nothing happens. You've done a good job with
character development and dialogue, but there's no plot.

"Oops. At that point I realized I probably was not destined to be the next
John Grisham," she said. "I don't hold this against Katherine Paterson at all
- in fact, a decade or so later I interviewed her for my first article in
Presbyterian Survey. But fiction joined poetry on the back burner, at least
for a while."

One of her most memorable experiences as a journalist, Stimson said, was
interviewing Fred Rogers, the host of the children's TV program, Mr. Rogers'
Neighborhood. When the interview ended, she said, Rogers spent some time with
her husband, Jerry Van Marter, coordinator of the Presbyterian News Service,
and their children, Luke and Rachel, twins who were 6 at the time. "It was an
experience our family will never forget," she said.

Stimson said Rogers told her during the interview, "I think we don't realize
how hungry people are for what is honest and real." She concluded her
address, "God calls us - both as writers and people of faith - to offer to
the world what is honest and real."

Whitney said she wrote her novel from the point of view of an African boy.

She said she chided herself for "the audacity to take on the vision and the
voice of a 6-year-old African boy," but heard another author say that writing
from such an alien point of view is "an act of friendship."

Seeing through another's eyes - those of someone very different from oneself
- "is part of what we are called as writers to do."

"The more deeply we explore this life called Christian, the more we see
through the eyes of those who are so apparently different from ourselves,"
she said. "It's the kind of seeing we Christians are called to embrace. And
when we do, we see that beneath the appearances, we are all so much alike."
The Steele award is named for the Rev. R. David Steele, an author who was
probably best-known for his whimsical "Tuesday Morning" column in The
Presbyterian Outlook. The Angell award is named for the Rev. James W. Angell,
who wrote 19 books, notably including How to Spell Presbyterian.

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