The great quake struck Petaca just before dawn.
Don Fernando felt the shocks at once for he had been lying awake for several hours. He shouted for Chavela but she did not hear him. Angry, he spouted to himself:
"I've got to get out of here. Where are my glasses? Bed's going to break. Damn that Chavela, not coming, never coming when I need her. Who does she think she is? Bring me a cigarette! Where are my glasses? Got to light a candle."
He shouted at the quake now:
"Get me out of bed. All right ... I'll get up. Stop you—sure I'll stop you. I'll stop your rocking. You stone devil of the Indians!"
His quavering hands worked at his sheets. Shoving himself against his pillows, he began to sit up. Groaning and puffing, he reached for his matches but knocked them on the floor.
Finding it possible to swing his feet over the side of the bed, he sat up. Moonlight whitened the tiles near the big window and he detected the light. On the edge of his bed, his arms bearing part of his weight, he gained confidence.
"My wheel chair's nearby.... I'll get out of this place. Raul, Raul," he called, forgetting that Raul was upstairs. "Raul, there's a big quake—the floor...."
He heard shouting and rifle fire but could not, except for an instant, separate the sounds. The blurred noises, growing in intensity, disturbed him and he lifted his head and cried: "What's that? Who's making that noise?"
He tried to rise but crumpled onto the floor. His mind blurred.... Someday ride to Colima, jacket with silver buttons ... ride to Colima ... drink beer. The snake coiled over the fallen log, and the mayordomo shouted: Watch out, I'm going to shoot it! I pulled my .45 and shot him.... There he was ... there my father was, on his white horse, outside the tienda door....
His father and the snake writhed in the old man's brain and the quake returned and red flared through the window. Fernando crawled toward the light. He was trying to find his bed now. The red blurred and faded and he turned and began to crawl in the other direction. A man in a dark blue suit, a neat blue suit, tapped him on the arm and said: "You must stop taking money from the store without my permission." Papa spoke calmly but he was on a white horse, just outside the tienda door.... I swiveled my chair at the desk and shot him, as he rode away.
The quake grew more severe and large blocks of masonry loosened in the inside wall, on the patio side, and fell on Fernando. He died at once.
Outside, men went on shouting and shooting.... They had set fire to the mill and the flames soared high.
Raul had jumped out of bed and grabbed his trousers and shirt. Carrying his shoes, he rushed down a tottering stairs—through the pale dawn—into the patio, where water sloshed out of the fountain, across the cobbles. Servants were screaming and shouting. Toward the mill, flames gushed up; the wall of Fernando's room crumbled: as Raul stood by the fountain, he saw blocks bulge, lean forward, crash to the floor, dust rising, as fine as flour from a smashed flour barrel.
The door to his father's room was ripped from its hinges and thrown to the ground. Rushing into the dusty room, Raul opened the outer window. Then he found his father. Death, in the midst of this disaster, seemed natural to Raul—yet not the gaping mouth and angry eyes. Their anger and derision drove him out of the room, into the patio.
"Are you hurt?" asked Sandoval, rushing up to him, a crowbar in his hand, his hat around his neck on a cord, his shirt ripped.
"My father's dead ... buried under that wall," said Raul, buttoning his shirt, wiping a smudge from his face.
"Somebody set fire to the mill; it's all in flames. I just came from there.... There's shooting."
"Do what you can at the mill—I'll find you later," said Raul. "I'm going for Manuel, I'll see about Father Gabriel.... Find Velasco. Get Esteban. Let's fight 'em off at the mill. Let's fight for this place!"
In the living room a fine old set of ivory dominoes had been hurled to the floor, the box splintering into many pieces. He saw them, as he lit a table lamp and put on his shoes. For a moment, he knelt to pick them up and then remembered his father. Suppose Manuel or Gabriel or someone else had been pinned down?
"Gabriel!" Raul shouted outside the hacienda, aware of the whitening sky. "Gabriel!"
"Raul?"
"Where are you?"
"At the chapel."
Gabriel had taken an injured girl just inside the chapel door, and was working over her by a vigil lamp.
"Can you find Velasco for me?"
"I haven't seen him!" Shall I tell him about my father, Raul thought? No, that can wait. I'll go for help.
"I'll see if I can find Velasco. I'm looking for Manuel."
Flames from the mill transfixed him as he went out the chapel door; the light seemed to spout above Petaca, threatening every wall, the forecourt, the chapel. Gabriel, in the doorway beside the girl, tried to give her water.
Was the earth shaking again? Raul thought. Was everything to be lost? Flames blazed over the dining room now; rifle shots came from the same direction. Petaca....
Petaca, 1619, Indian land, Medina land.... He began to run toward the back of the house, toward thetienda de raya, thinking he would get a rifle from the gun case and then find Manuel.
He ran inside, wrenched a carbine from the case and loaded his pockets with ammunition.
Petaca—the name sounded in his blood—they were burning Petaca, the mill, the dining room, then....
"Raul!"
It was Luis, waving a Winchester.
"Luis, get them out of the dining room. Come on, Luis!"
But the raiders were gone; there were only flames in the dining room. Kerosene had been sloshed over the furniture and drapes and the conflagration roared, driving them outside.
Raul dashed for Manuel's room, his own armed men passing him, headed for the walls and turrets.
"Save the house, the living room ... use dirt and sand ... beat out the fire!" he shouted, and wondered whether anyone heard him or cared.
Among the frightened horses, in the stable, he leaned over Manuel. A terrified horse had kicked him and knocked him unconscious. Raul brought water and rubbed a cold wet cloth over his face, arms, and chest.
"Manuel ... Manuel ... let's get out of here! Manuel ... are you badly hurt?"
"Raul..."
"Now, now can you sit up?"
"Raul—I was running toward the mill.... It's on fire," said Manuel, groaning, feeling his arms and chest, peering at Raul with eyes dulled by pain.
"Let's get out of the stable," said Raul.
Manuel struggled to his feet.
"Can you make it?"
"I'll make it. Where?"
"To the house ... they doused it with kerosene."
With other men they returned to the house and began to fight the fire in the dining room with sand and dirt, hauling and shoveling it from the second patio.
Manuel had armed himself at thetienda, as they passed. In spite of the pain from his head injury, he helped haul sand. Raul and Salvador worked close to the dining-room door, throwing sand from buckets. While they battled the blaze, men broke in thetiendadoor and dumped kerosene over the desk and walls.
There, outside thetienda, they trapped Pedro.
Raul raised his rifle: the sight cleared the bandolier, raised to the shoulder, dropped lower: was this a man?
The trigger moved.
"Pedro, that's Pedro!" yelled Manuel.
The men were hurling burning wood away from the front of thetiendaand a flaming board fell across Pedro's body.
"Take the board off that man!" someone shouted.
"It's Pedro. He's dead," said Manuel.
"Pedro's dead!" shouted Salvador.
"Pedro's dead!" others shouted.
Rifle fire began all along the walls and soon men came and informed Raul that they had beaten off the attackers; presently, others reported that the dining-room fire had been extinguished ... ashen faces, wounded men ... Raul, his clothes ripped and filthy, stared at them. They went up to a water pail and splashed and drank, saying little.
"Shall we take a look at the mill?" Raul asked Manuel.
"Yes ... yes."
Raul stood by the smoldering ashes a long time before he said: "The bastards, to burn it! They might better have stolen the corn and wheat. They could have eaten that. This way everybody loses!"
A gentle mist was falling and he and Manuel stood under a jacaranda, the body of a scorched rat near their feet. The wind shook the damp leaves and pigeons flew low, avoiding the mill. The chapel bell tolled, telling the story.
"Well, we've seen the mill," said Raul.
"What a fire!" said Manuel. "Look how the beams burned."
Raul noticed the charred beams in the ruin.
"The quake knocked down the mill," he said. "The fire got going, then the quake pulled down the beams." He nodded toward the volcano, now drowned in mist.
Raul pulled Manuel's sleeve.
"We have things to do, Manuel. I want to go back to the house. I must bury my father."
"What ... he's dead!"
"The quake killed him. Help me take his body away, Manuel. It won't be easy."
And he welcomed the rain, for now the mist had changed to rain; he welcomed the cool of it, walking back to the house: he liked the fresh smell.
The chapel bell had stopped tolling but now someone dragged at its rope again and the sound seemed to bring great gouts of rain and Raul and Manuel hurried toward the kitchen. They sat down at a table near the tiled stove and gulped coffee. Manuel touched the side of his head and the side of his neck, barely brushing the skin. Raul wanted to ask him how he felt but he couldn't put the words together.
A bearlike man, dirty and rain-soaked, came in, asking for food. No one had seen him before. He spoke out, both hands on a crooked staff, his voice quavering and wild:
"I've just come across Petaca. The peons are leaving. I've seen 'em ... many of them. They're just walking away."
Raul gouged a line across the rough table with his thumbnail: the line divided Petaca: so much for the workers, so much for himself. He wouldn't relinquish more.
He damned the blundering peasants: without proper clothing or food they were forsaking Petaca for more insecurity, hunger and beatings. They were deserting their families.
The bearlike fellow droned on about the peasants. Then, suddenly he stopped, put down his staff, and spat:
"Have you heard about General Matanzas?"
"No, I haven't," said Raul.
"He's sided with the revolutionists!"
My God, today ... tomorrow ... so we change to save our skins, thought Raul. He asked his maid for cigarette paper and tobacco and rolled a cigarette as he finished his coffee.
"We came back to the house to bury my father," he reminded Manuel. "We're burying the past too," he added.
It took hours to dig Don Fernando free, even with the help of Luis and Gabriel. In the late afternoon they carried his body to the grove and Gabriel knelt by his shallow grave and prayed. The sky was clear, the sun hot; the wind whipped Gabriel's robe. His spectacles in his hand, he prayed for decency, a better world, kinder men. Parrots snickered and whispered in the grove while Esteban covered the old man.
Raul had anticipated his father's death too long to be moved. He felt relieved, but it was an unbalanced sense of relief, for he could not forget Pedro's death or the burning house and the ravaged mill. Did it mean anything that both these men had died on the same day? Sitting close to Caterina's grave, he thought of the prayers that lay buried everywhere in the world. I believe in God ... why? Because ... because some people are kind and faithful. Lucienne. Manuel. Farias. Caterina. Vicente.... Birds from the nearest palms drifted past him, their wings sighing.
The men left the cemetery.
A little smoke rose from the volcano as Raul and Gabriel returned to the house. Gabriel made a remark about the swift changes.
"Life has become treacherous too," said Raul sadly. "I wanted changes to be slow, remember? You said: Don't take the law in your hands. I have killed today. Pedro. Did you know?"
"I didn't know," said Gabriel, and crossed himself. "Our old world has gone. God help you, my son." It hurt him that Raul had killed; he had promised Pedro to the law but more than that he had promised Raul a clear conscience.
"I'm giving up Petaca," said Raul.
They paused in front of the old house, where further earthquake damage was obvious: part of the reconstructed veranda had fallen; Fernando's room gaped; the living-room roof had caved in at one end and smoke seeped out, blowing low over the house and garden.
"I'm giving it up. I won't risk more lives. We can't go on defending the house indefinitely. We'll save what we can, before all is lost." He remembered the broken box of dominoes. Hands in his pockets, he faced Gabriel, savage disappointment on his face.
Gabriel had removed his glasses and was wiping his eyes. He wished he need not reply.
"Of course ... yes," he said, wanting proper words, feeling Raul's gaze. "Yes ... Raul ... you must."
What would Raul do? Live in Colima perhaps? Perhaps Guadalajara? In spite of his weariness, in spite of his sadness, a ray of hope returned: could it be Italy, before he died?
Velasco appeared on the veranda and waved something. Raul turned toward the steps.
"Someone's hurt," he said.
"I'll come," said Gabriel, putting on his glasses.
Raul said, going up the steps:
"I'll look after you, Gabriel. Perhaps I can hold my land ... I'll fight for the property ... I'll do what I can for you."
He repeated his words to himself. They seemed impossibly clumsy; the whole situation was impossible.
Velasco had a letter for Raul. Roberto had gotten word through from Guadalajara. Before Raul opened it and read it, he told Velasco what he had decided, and the doctor nodded approval before returning to the injured, digging with a finger at his goatee.
Yes, the letter from Guadalajara, creased, greasy, lacking a stamp. Who brought it? How did it get here? News from Roberto. He found brandy in the living room and sat down to read but smoke, blowing in from the dining room, sent him to the patio and the fountain. He took the brandy, and sat on the edge of the fountain, smoothed out the letter, hesitant, wanting to reconsider his decision, wanting to pause. That was it. Pause. Hold back. Draw a clean breath.
People kept crossing and recrossing the patio. They stopped before him and questioned him, oblivious of the letter fluttering in his hands. As long as he sat and talked, they felt strengthened. How can I abandon them, all of them, my friends, my servants ... they'll be lost without me! Lost? They want land, houses of their own, freedom.
The smell of his own burning house made him cough.
He turned to the letter again and read:
"Dear Raul,
"I hear that things have been going badly at your hacienda, at most of the haciendas in the Colima area. I am very sorry. When I left you, after the equestrian party, I had hoped for better things. Here we have serious problems, too. But our most serious problem is Angelina. You must come here at once. Angelina is ill, is completely deranged. I am sorry to be so blunt, Raul, but what can I do? I must tell you the truth, however painful to me and you.
"María is ill. That is why Angelina stayed with us awhile, though now she is at Holy Cross Hospital.
"You have to know, too, that Guadalajara has suffered. The San Francisco church has been burned. The bishop's residence has been sacked. There's garbage on the street corners, stacked high. There's no water in our homes, there's no sewage disposal.
"Angelina has felt all of this tragedy. Unfortunately, she saw men hanging from lampposts in the plaza.
"I have taken her to several doctors. They all say she is unbalanced. She's gentle and kind. But she sees a dog, a dog that doesn't exist. It's her illness. She's trapped in fear. I hesitate to tell you this, but she doesn't care to eat.
"Vicente is doing all right; he doesn't know the truth yet. He's with us. His school has closed. He doesn't get about much. It's too dangerous.
"Come when you can, Raul. She asks for you. This has been my first chance to get a letter to you. I hope you understand I have tried to communicate, in various ways. Yours, Roberto."
He filled his brandy glass again, and reread the letter. Sweat had broken out on his forehead; it trickled over the backs of his hands, ran down under his arms. A man stopped to question him but Raul ordered him away, not so much as glancing at him.
He felt Angelina's eyes focused on him accusingly; their luminosity made him get up and leave the patio. Down by the pool, he found the silence he wanted. On a bench he stared at the leaf-dotted water, fighting his sense of nightmare.
Such a letter—at such a time.
Yet he read it once more and began to think of leaving, riding horseback, catching a freight to Guadalajara. Some said freight trains went through, once in a while.
He folded the letter, put it in his pocket, and walked away. He must find Manuel. In his simple, small room, on his bed, leaning against the wall, Raul was able to think straight. To Manuel he explained his decision to give up Petaca. A lamp burned below the old Chiapan hanging ... some old clothes dangled from the wooden peg. The room was quiet. Lamplight brought out Manuel's kind features, his weariness.... How he had aged!
"I want us to eat together and then I'll ride to Colima tonight. I must go to her. You will be in charge here. Save what you can, Manuel."
Raul was glad Manuel did not talk: he wanted the silence, the silence of his room, their silence. He remembered to ask about Manuel's head injury. Then there was the silence again.
"You'll be all right in Guadalajara. You'll be able to reach her," Manuel said, that old bond coming to the fore. "I'll be waiting for you here, or in Colima. I can't eat now, my friend. Go with God, Raul." And he stood up, knowing how hard it was for him to go.
"Goodbye, Manuel."
For Raul, it was easier to get to Guadalajara than he had supposed. By the next day he found a freight that carried him and others as well—a slow ride, but not hazardous. They had bad water or no water. Some of the people were ill. At the many stops they got fruit,tacosand tortillas. Those who had money paid; those who had no money begged. Raul made a little corner for himself in an old red boxcar, the splintered floor full of holes. He sat among rich and poor. Since the train seldom moved fast, the heat poured on them and they looked forward to the night. And they arrived in Guadalajara in the small hours of the night, their second day out of Colima.
Guadalajara was filthier and more degraded than Roberto had painted it. Poor Vicente, thought Raul. Poor Angelina. Stinking garbage cluttered nearly every street corner. There were no street lamps. Wild dogs ran about. Barbed wire had been flung over benches and around trees in the plaza. Machine gunners had sandbagged the roofs of the municipal buildings ... buzzards were everywhere. All the way to Roberto's house, along Vallarta, the main street, barricades of cobbles had been erected, topped by wrought-iron benches and smashed grilles and balconies. It was amazing to Raul that the hack driver was able to get through to Roberto's home.
"Not much of a homecoming," said Roberto, "but we're still here."
Vicente danced with joy and yet was troubled by his father's haggard face.
"Papa, isn't it awful the way they've torn up the city?" he said, backing away a little.
"It is. Now for the bathroom. I hope there's water. I want to get cleaned up."
"Is Petaca all right?"
"We're still there," he said, and glanced at Roberto.
When he had washed and rested, Raul left the house with Vicente, for the Holy Cross Hospital on Calle Molière. Hollow eyed and thinner, Vicente did not have much to say as they trudged along. Raul talked horses but Vicente seemed to have forgotten his passion for them. He said he was sorry his school had closed and wondered what his friends were doing in Colima? Was it so bad in Colima?
The sun was streaming into the garden patio of the charming pillared home that had been converted into a hospital by the Sisters of Charity long ago. One of the Sisters asked them to wait in the patio and Raul and Vicente sat on a bench, facing a bed of roses. They said nothing until Angelina came.
She shook hands with Raul, but disregarded Vicente. She was quiet-spoken and aloof. Vicente went gladly into the Mother Superior's office when she beckoned to him. His mother frightened him.
Angelina wore a yellow dress Raul could not remember seeing; when she sat beside him, he saw how much weight she had lost; her face was older, threaded with tiny lines; her eyes could not focus on him but glided away, across the garden, to the tiled roof, then, to her hands.
"Do you like me in black?" she asked. "I think I look my best in black." Her voice called up a hundred sensations in him. "Estelle has come to see me ... she comes often," she whispered. "It's not very easy, but we slip away to the theater, to hear Clavo read his poems.... We go to a play." Her eyes lifted to the roof line. "How are things with you?"
"Fine, Angelina."
"That's nice. Shall we walk around the patio? It's such a nice place."
Raul took her arm and she did not object.
White and yellow roses were in flower; a pet raven sat on a bench and clicked its bill as they passed; Raul tried to summon wisdom; he wanted to speak of Petaca, but Petaca represented every kind of painful failure and transition. He did not dare mention his father's death.
Wanting to say something, he said, "Father Gabriel's well."
"Yes?" she said. "Is he?"
"He sent his love."
She smiled, and glanced away.
He wanted to explain that Gabriel's leg was all right.
"How is Garcia?" she asked.
"Garcia?" he fumbled, trying hard to place him. "He's fine," he said. He must say something cheerful. Again he tried to place Garcia.
She sat down abruptly on a bench and said, "I'm never going back."
"No," he said, sitting down too.
"I like it here. Everyone's kind to me."
He was speechless—he felt his heart had turned to ice. When had she been so frail?
"Here I see no killings. It's quiet. I can rest. The Sisters are nice to me."
One hand shaking, she reached out and seemed to pat something. Then, with a sharp cry, she got up, swayed, and fled into the hospital, her yellow skirt fluttering.
Back in Colima, Raul and Lucienne took Vicente to his school, where his friends swarmed about him, asking him if it was really true that the revolutionists had taken pot shots at his train as he came from Guadalajara. How he enjoyed being back, gabbling! Raul and Lucienne watched him for a while from the school gate, then walked away.
The sun made a tropical wad of itself and Lucienne and Raul kept on the shady side of the street, where breadfruit and coco palms made walking comfortable. A water cart rocked slowly by, pulled by a donkey.... The sloshing water added to the coolness of the shade. A pleasant street, it curved in a long curve toward the center of town, little homes on both sides with a tree now and then, like a jack-in-the-box, popping out of some patio or garden.
Lucienne wore freshly starched white, loose at the waist and shoulders, and carried a pink, blue-lined parasol. She was bareheaded and he was bareheaded. His white clothes had been made by a poor hacienda tailor, and had had the freshness taken out of them, but he, too, looked comfortable, part of the tropical town.
At La Lonja they decided to have something cool to drink and went inside, through a low, arched doorway. La Lonja had been the seventeenth century home of a French merchant. In the center of the grassy patio stood an ugly statue of a sans-culotte woman, chipped and beaten, discolored by bird droppings, yet wonderfully alive, rising up valiantly out of a huddle of bougainvillaea and honeysuckle.
There were quite a number of Colimans at the tile-topped tables, in the shade of a high wall. Someone greeted Raul, as he and Lucienne walked to the back, away from everyone, and farther from the biting sun.
Raul wiped his forehead.
"Vicente has already forgotten Guadalajara," he said. "Children are lucky."
"We're lucky too, to be here," said Lucienne, settling her parasol against her chair.
The waiter brought menus and filled goblets with ice, chatting a one-sided chatter. While he fussed around the table, Lucienne thought of Raul, his fatigue, his sadness. She thought of Angelina's illness: she could see her yellow dress; she could sense some of the fear that had closed in around her.
"It seemed such a long trip, coming back," he said. The train windows had been open on cornfields, on low rolling hills, on sunny villages. A child had cried for hours, her head in her mother's lap.
"What does she do all the time?" Lucienne asked. She did not have to use her name.
"She stays in her room most of the day. She goes into the patio sometimes. The doctors say she's afraid at night."
"Of the dog?"
"Yes."
"But what does she do?"
"She sits alone ... or talks to the Sisters. They try to favor her." He lit his pipe but let the smoke curl up, with the bowl between his fingers.
"I wish I could help her," Lucienne said.
Yes, he thought, we'd like to help. He wanted to tell her he had bought the Sicre house, transacting the business while in Guadalajara, concluding the sale in Colima. I'll bring the furniture from Petaca, he thought, probably next week. A moment ago, I was speaking of my wife's insanity; now, now I must talk about the house I've bought in Colima. Life cheats us of time to adjust. He gazed at her with a sad, hurt expression.
"I bought the Sicre house. You know where it is, out beyond the hospital, on the right, set back in that old garden."
She smiled reminiscently. "I'm glad," she said.
They ordered chilledcayumitofruit; rum, lime and ice—the waiter standing close to Lucienne, admiring her. A young man, new to Colima, he had already heard of her and her interest in plants.
"I've been told that the Sicre house needs many changes," Raul said, as they waited. "I haven't been inside it for years. Shall we go and see it in a day or two?"
"I remember the garden, as a girl. There's a fountain at the back ... somewhere." She looked at him lovingly, fingering her water glass, recalling those days, so long ago. Her mother had taken her to parties then, and introduced her to young men, wanting her to be popular.
She bent forward and said gently:
"I remember some of the trees in the garden, an old carob, an almond.... One had a split trunk and we used to hide messages inside, love notes too. I remember seeing you there, in the garden...."
Taking her hand away from the glass, he felt the cool of her fingers. He leaned forward and kissed her, tasting her mouth. She gripped his hand, her eyes serious. After all these years, no words were necessary.
In 1910, Mexico was in the throes of revolution. In this painful period of exchanging old values for new, the upheaval was felt everywhere. This is the story of a private revolution—a conflict between father and son whose family estate extends for more than a million acres in the western part of the country. Raul Medina, with liberal ideas he gathered at school in Europe, determines to take over control of the hacienda. His bedridden father, Don Fernando, is among the last of a governing class for whom possession had been a law unto itself. With the support of a vicious servant, Don Fernando inflicts great cruelties on the workers. Raul is able to withstand the opposition of his father, but, from the beginning, his ideals are powerless against the realities of hunger and disease.
Woven into the large scale panorama of Mexican life and landscape is Raul's personal story: the failure of his marriage with Angelique, a delicate city woman who hates and fears hacienda life; his friendship with his loyal aide and servant Manuel; his love for Lucienne, the sole inhabitant of a neighboring plantation, who is strong enough to accept romance along with realities of life.
Along with his narrative skill, the author has lent this novel a great love: love of the land in all its variously colorful details; love of the people, their weaknesses and their strengths, their dreams and their disappointments. This is a novel of haunting significance, published in the year of the fiftieth anniversary of the Mexican Revolution.
PAUL BARTLETTPAUL BARTLETT
Paul Bartlett is well-acquainted with the country he describes so vividly inWhen the Owl Cries. He has spent over eight years in Mexico, living in desert areas, mountain villages, tropical islands and remote haciendas.
He has had over forty short stories published in magazines such asAccent, The Kenyon Review, The Literary Review, The Chicago ReviewandNew Story. Nine of his stories have received honorable mention in Martha Foley'sBest American Short Stories of the Year. He is a recipient of a Huntington Hartford Writing Fellowship for 1960, has taught creative writing at Georgia State College, and has conducted Writer's Conference Workshops.