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About
the Author
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Born in the heart of the Great Depression, Peggy Ullman Bell grew up in
books, dozens of books, as many as 12 a week the summer she was 15.
Reared in historic Gettysburg and York, Pennsylvania, Ms. Bell yearned
to learn what women were doing while men were fighting battles and
making revolutions. The history books did not tell her, and thus her
search began.
FIXIN' THINGS, a coming of age novel set during and after the
Battle of Gettysburg was Ms. Bell's gift to her mother, Eva May Lightner,
deceased.
An accomplished poet
in her own right, Ms. Bell became interested in Sappho, The Poetess of
Lesbos in the flamboyant Hollywood of the 1960s when everyone around her
seemed to know The Lesbian's name, but no one could answer any of Ms.
Bell's questions about her. Long hours in the library, and an endless
supply of books obtained through Interlibrary Loan showed Sappho to have
been a woman of genius, so well respected that men quoted from her work
three hundred years after her death, and yet what few of her words
escaped the destruction of the Library of Alexandria were lost through
the philosophical purges of an 11th century Pope.
To
Peggy Ullman Bell, the challenge was inescapable. Psappha, as Sappho
called herself, was an enigma calling to her across the centuries,
begging for resolution. How could a curious Aquarian resist?
With her innate appetite for answers aroused, Ms. Bell spent so much
time reading ancient tomes that an editor wrote "Forget your college
education and write in English," on an early rejection slip. Quite a
compliment considering that she was a High School drop out with a night
school diploma at the time. She changed that when, in 1973 she
matriculated as a Freshman at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock
where she became active in Pi Gamma Mu National Social Science Honor
Society.
The youngest of her considerable contribution to the Baby Boom was a
teenager by the time she graduated four years later when she rewrote her
novel draft yet again as an English honor student at the University of
Tulsa, Class of '77, where she was founding president of the Oklahoma
Delta Chapter of Pi Gamma Mu.
Published in truncated form (Upstart Press 2000) and sold out, Ms.
Bell's beloved manuscript has been re-released as SAPPHO SINGS (CreateSpace
2008).
When
asked why it took so long to get from first draft to this, the "Author
Preferred" edition, Ms. Bell smiled and said, "It takes a long time for
an ancient culture to become a worthy tourist attraction."
Author Interview
DLH
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What made you decide to write about Gettysburg. What with all of
the Civil War books in circulation, I would thing the subject has been
pretty thoroughly covered?
PUB - Not at all. In recent years, the public has heard a little, but
until recently not much was written about the activities of women during
that time, or during any time in the men's history for that matter.
DLH
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You say that little is known, yet you paint it
very clearly. How did you do your research?
PUB - First,
I need to remind you that I started school in Gettysburg. In the
winters, when I was in elementary school we sledded on what we
called Seminary Hill. Spring Street actually, but you know how
children are about naming things for themselves. In the summers,
while my mother worked I wandered the battlefield and the National
Cemetery wondering what local girls were doing while the men lay
dying. I went back as an adult to find out.
DLH
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Why did you decide to make it a novel, rather than write a non-fiction
book?
PUB -This takes
us back to your original statement. There is so much out there
about the Battle, I felt it would be difficult to make my book noticed
as a non-fiction account. Besides, as I was writing several
authors put together fine non-fiction books. With properly
researched historical fiction one also works with facts, but in the
process of filtering facts through the mind of our imagined characters
we get a sense of the truth. With non-fiction, one is confined to
facts and as has been amply proven in this age of statistics and rapid
commedia facts in and of themselves are too often incomplete.
PUB -
By writing FIXIN' THINGS as a novel, I have been able to let my readers
see events through various eyes and judge their impact and meaning for
themselves.
DLH
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What part of you is woven into your novels?
PUB -
It’s not so much what part of me is woven into the novel, but rather
how much of the novel is woven into me. In the process of creating
SAPPHO SINGS, I have become Psappha. She is my soul, my
lover, and my life. Over the years, I have spent many
more hours in her world than I have in my own. With FIXIN'
THINGS, I've added others to my collection of fictional
companions. I think it would take all of the characters I have
create plus all I have yet to create and more before even I will begin
to touch the surface of the totality of who I am.
DLH
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What is your writing process like?
PUB -
When I started writing about Sappho, I had my old Remington Standard
set up so that when I faced the keyboard I also faced the window.
The primary reason for this was so I could watch my children while
I worked but, as it turned out, it became a perfect writing tool for me
because I did not stop writing and planning when the children came
inside. Instead, I spent my evenings staring at that black window
(we lived far from streetlights) and I watched my scenes play out as if
on screen. With FIXIN' THINGS, I turned off my computer monitor
and used its blackness as a backdrop for the action. I get more
work done now than before because now I don’t have to wait for night.
Of course, no longer having children underfoot also has
advantages.
DLH
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What was the most challenging part of writing?
PUB -
Wow! You ask tough questions.
There are many challenges. I suppose that convincing myself to
stop researching and begin writing is the most difficult. I LOVE
research. And now, with the world at my fingertips through the internet I
find it hard to pull myself away. Setting virtual reality aside to create
new worlds is hard for me. I mean, let’s face it. Writing is hard
work whereas learning is FUN!
DLH
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Who were your influences among writers?
PUB - To
be perfectly frank, sorry, couldn’t resist. My two most
influential writers were
Frank Yerby and
Dr. Frank G. Slaughter.
The first because his research was sloppy at times. The
second because his never was. I’ve written to both of them.
I was about 10 when I wrote to Yerby to scold him because he had
his hero using something years before it was invented. I
forget what it was, but I knew I was right as only an adolescent can.
I wrote to Dr. Slaughter maybe 20 years ago with a research
question to which he responded immediately and in depth.
DLH
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Where did you go to school?
PUB - For elementary, Gettysburg Pennsylvania; Junior High, York, PA; High
School, Phoenix, Arizona, where I dropped out of 11th grade. 4
years and a failed marriage later I graduated from an adult school in
Corona California. Then, in 1973-75, I earned an Associate Degree
from the University of Arkansas @ Little Rock. My BS came from the
University of Tulsa, Class of ’77 in more ways than one, but we don't
need to go into that here.
DLH
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What do you hope readers will take away from your books?
PUB -
The
same thing that drove me to write them. A love of history and an
insatiable need to know.
DLH
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What are you working on now?
PUB - An hystoric trilogy, but I’d rather keep
the details to myself until the project is farther along.
MySpace
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(Simon & Schuster, N.Y., 1939)
“Sappho was a marvelous woman," said
Strabo...
"Psappha, as she called herself in her soft Aeolian dialect, was born at
Eresus, on Lesbos, ...Pittacus, fearing her maturing pen, banished her...
"Eager for an active life, she opened a school for young women, to whom she taught
poetry, music, and dancing; it was the first 'finishing school' in history....
"Her verse was collected into nine books, of some twelve-hundred lines, six-hundred survive,
seldom continuous."
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A
new Sappho poem
Martin West
21 June 2005 |
e
~Versing Hystory
