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It’s been a month since the Paperboy musical had its world premiere at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. My feet are just now returning to terra firma after that remarkable weekend. I have many wonderful memories. I’ll share just one here.

Stan Petree, my cousin Caroline’s husband, tapped me on the shoulder before the matinee on Saturday, March 25, and asked: “Isn’t that Steve Young standing there near the stage?”

“Steve Young?”

“You know,” Stan continued, “Steve Young, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who won three Super Bowls.”

I looked more closely. He did look like the commentator I had seen most recently on ESPN.

“I think you’re right,” I said. “Let’s go see.”

Stan and I walked up to the man who was near the orchestra pit talking to another gentleman.

I interrupted: “Are you Steve Young?” I asked, somewhat cautiously.

“Yes, I am,” he said with a big smile.

I then heard these words spill out of my mouth with a clumsiness unusual even for me: “So, what are you doing here?”

Another big smile from Steve Young.

“My son, Braedon, is playing the part of the Paperboy’s father,” he said.

“Well, I’m the real Paperboy,” I said. “I mean . . . I’m the guy who wrote the original book.”

I think I eventually formally introduced myself and then we chatted. He said that he threw a newspaper route when he was in high school in Greenwich, Connecticut. In another round of clumsiness, I offered that he probably threw the papers left-handed. “Indeed, I did,” he said.

Stan and I returned to our seats. Steve played his college ball at Brigham Young University. I quickly checked Google on my phone before the musical started. I read:

Steve Young was raised in Connecticut, where he was all-state in football and baseball at Greenwich High School. He was the great-great-great-grandson of Brigham Young, an early leader of the Mormon church, and he later attended Brigham Young University, where he earned a law degree in 1994.

At the evening performance of Paperboy, Steve was again in the audience to see Braedon, a talented singer and actor, perform as the Paperboy’s father. I was determined to have a conversation with the MVP quarterback for once without my foot in my mouth.

“Kolter Erickson first workshopped the Paperboy role about three years ago, but he has grown a lot taller since then,” I said to Steve. “I was afraid that Kolter would be taller than the actor who played his father.”

“Braedon is 6-5,” Steve said.

“Thank goodness for that,” I said, finally getting something appropriate out of my mouth.

Steve introduced me to his wife, Barbara, and to his father (Braedon’s grandfather), LeGrande “Grit” Young, who talks about Steve’s newspaper route in this video. 

The Young family is as gracious and down-to-earth as they are talented.

Braedon Young as father of Paperboy

The post The Paperboy meets one of his heroes first appeared on Vince Vawter.

My best friend from my days at Rhodes College (known as “Southwestern” at Memphis back in the day) is John Verlenden, a writer, poet, translator and retired as a tenured professor of rhetoric at the American University in Cairo. We have been friends for more than half a century. We are continually running ideas by each other.

John read early versions of PAPERBOY, my novel about growing up with a stutter, when I was writing it and knew the story well. I mentioned to him during a phone conversation in 2016 that I was thinking about writing a drama for stage based on my story. I thought it might transfer well to the stage because of its finite universe (my Memphis neighborhood) and small cast.

Without missing a beat, John said (and I can still hear his words): “It should be a musical.” At first, I thought my friend John was joking.

“Well, that’s all well and good,” I said, “but I know less about musical theatre than I do about stage drama.”

John said that I needed to get in touch with a friend he grew up with on Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, Tenn. Jim Wann is a Tony nominee for a musical he wrote and starred in on Broadway in the 1980s –– Pump Boys and Dinettes. Betty and I had enjoyed the musical at the New Harmony Theatre in Indiana in the early 2000s. I investigated Jim’s many other projects involving musical theatre.

I wrote Jim an email and waited . . . and waited. I almost had forgotten about it, but it turned out I had used an email address that he didn’t check often. We eventually exchanged pleasantries on a few phone calls. Jim read the book . . . and then the magic began to happen. Jim started sending me MP3 files of songs he had composed on his guitar. His lyrics were captivating. He understood my story implicitly and its Memphis roots. I could finally see how a musical could grow out of my autobiographical novel.

For 18 months, Jim and I dabbled with the musical book and Jim continued to write songs. We did a presentation at a private school on St. Simons Island, Ga., and a full reading with a theatre group in Asheville, N.C. Jim performed the music on his guitar.

We thought we had something, but we realized we needed help to take it to another level.

In 2019, Jim called on two of his theatre friends with whom he had worked, Don Stephenson and David Shenton. Don, an actor/director based in New York, is also from the Chattanooga area. David, a well-known composer and orchestrator, is from the United Kingdom and performs nationally and internationally on the piano and violin, occasionally at the same time (you need to see it to believe it.)

Don and his wife, Emily Loesser, the daughter of the late Broadway legend Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.), have four children. In addition to her stage and screen credits, Emily is a practicing speech-language pathologist. You can’t make this stuff up, folks.

In November of 2019, we all met at the Stephenson’s apartment in New York. Don and Emily had taken my meager attempts at the script and had translated them into the true language of musical theatre. David worked his composer’s magic on Jim’s songs. We were off and running . . . and then COVID hit. All five of us used the next two years to massage and reimagine every scene.

Don and Emily workshopped the musical with students at the Manhattan School of Music in 2021 and 2022. Liza Gennaro, dean of the musical theatre department at MSM and an outstanding choreographer herself, agreed that the school would produce the musical in March 2023. Student tryouts began in the fall of 2022, a cast was chosen in December and nightly rehearsals began on Jan. 11, 2023, for the March 24-26 performances.

I have been fortunate enough to Zoom into some of the rehearsals. Don is a whirling dervish as a director, using all his experience and directorial savvy gained on and off Broadway. Emily adds her soft touch as a speech pathologist as well as a veteran performer. Jim continues to tweak lyrics to the 22 or so original songs. (I think he may have written close to 35 songs to get to what we needed.) David has his computer whirring to work out the score for a 16-piece orchestra. Liza Gennaro takes off her dean hat at night, adding artistic vitality as choreographer. The talent of the MSM students is amazing.

PAPERBOY has been translated from English into 16 languages. The 17th – the language of musical theatre – might be the most exciting.

The post The Story Behind PAPERBOY, THE MUSICAL first appeared on Vince Vawter.

Designing book covers is an art that would appear uncomplicated at first glance, but look at it another way: how do you tell a 60,000-word story with one image?

I just received four copies of the Japanese edition of COPYBOY from its publisher, Iwanami Shoten of Tokyo. The cover thrilled me. Here are four reasons why:

1. The Mississippi River Bridge at New Orleans, which figures prominently in the story, is barely visible at the top of the cover, but it’s a wonderful replication. The river is extremely wide at that point and the bridge reaches out dramatically at each end to find its foundation. The placement at the top of the cover is perfect.

2. The typewriter in the passenger’s seat, also a key part of the story, brought back a wealth of memories for me. My old Royal typewriter from my teen years –– it had to weigh at least 25 pounds –– perched in that seat beside me on many trips. On some of the trips, I never rolled a sheet of paper in it, but it was always a comfort to have it next to me.

3. I realize this is a detail lost on most, but it rings true for me. The small rearview mirror that you see on the dashboard of the car is exactly like the one in my old Austin-Healey Sprite that I drove to Louisiana from Memphis on several occasions in the 1960s. I don’t know if the artist researched this or not, but the mirror is mounted perfectly — in the exact spot where it was totally useless. I don’t know if this story is true, but someone told me in later years that the car company was forced by the USDOT to put a rearview mirror in the middle of car instead of just on the fenders like the United Kingdom version. I trust the USDOT never tried to use the mirror so mounted.

4. The map that the boy is reading is the key to the cover. Here’s a passage from Chapter 7:

Reading maps was one of my favorite things to do. I liked the idea of knowing that my body was actually at a certain place on the planet Earth but also was at a spot on a paper map that I could put my finger on. I thought of the map as fiction, and my body as nonfiction. Mr. Spiro had told me that often there was more truth in fiction than nonfiction, like there was more truth in a good painting than in a photograph. The more I thought about that, the more right he seemed to be.

Wikipedia says that Iwanami Shoten Publishers was founded in 1913 and is the foremost publisher of scholarly works in Japan. The dictionary the company published in 1955 is said to be the most authoritative in the Japanese language. Did I mention the publisher also creates great covers for its books?

The post Four reasons I like the Japanese cover for COPYBOY first appeared on Vince Vawter.

I have donated my collection of books on writing to my local library. Why? We will get to that.

The books were gathered over a period of 40 years or so. I didn’t publish my first novel until 2013, but I cannot recall a time I didn’t think about telling my stories on paper.

The books, more than 50, are a hodgepodge. Some are wonderful (Anne Lamont, Natalie Goldberg, John Gardner, Elizabeth George); some are nuts-and-bolts guides; some need to be recycled into pulp – immediately.

Curious about the monetary investment I had made in the books, I started a quick calculation of the retail prices. I stopped counting at $750, knowing full-well that return-on-investment of both money and time don’t come into play in the writing and publishing game. I can say that each book I purchased filled a specific need at a specific time. I have no regrets.

So, to the question of “why.”

No — at 75 years of age I’m not about to croak. At least I have no plans in that regard.

No — I’m not downsizing. One of the main reasons we bought our house was due to the abundance of bookshelves.

The reason must be, then, that I think I know all there is to know about writing. The exact opposite is the truth. I have found the best approach to writing fiction is to convince yourself that you know absolutely nothing. In my case, that seems to be easy to do.

The abandonment of rules and strictures — that sense of freedom — is necessary if one hopes to write well.

However, one can’t play tennis without a net.

When I speak at schools, I’m often asked why there are no commas or quotation marks in “Paperboy.” I give my reasons, which I maintain are solid, but I’m always careful to remind students that you have to know all the rules of grammar and punctuation before you have license to break them.

A reoccurring character in my fiction might have the best answer for why I’m donating my collection to the library. In Chapter 28 of “Copyboy,” Mr. Spiro says:

“We don’t own books. We borrow them and pass them on. What we own is what the books leave inside us.”

Thanks, Mr. Spiro.

However, the poet T.S. Eliot has the ultimate answer:

“We shall not cease from exploration.
And the end of all our exploring.
Will be to arrive where we started.
And know the place for the first time.”

Thanks, Mr. Eliot.

The post The reason I’m giving away my books on writing first appeared on Vince Vawter.

When I was asked to write an essay for the 25th Anniversary Edition of “The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963,” I jumped at the chance. I had met Christoper Paul Curtis in 2014 in Las Vegas at the Newbery Awards presented by the American Library Association. Here is my essay, which is included in the anniversary edition that has just been released:

In my videotaped acceptance of the 2014 Newbery Honor at the American Library Association ceremonies, I remarked how The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis gave me confidence that my first novel, Paperboy, would find an audience.

When I taped my short message weeks ahead of the ceremonies, I had no idea Chris would be in the audience and that I would have a chance to meet him. The warmth of his writing came to life in his smile and gentle countenance. A fan of his books, I quickly became a fan of the writer and the man.

I went on to comment in my pre-taped message that Chris seemed to follow the three guidelines that I mandated of myself in writing a book for young people:

In my view, Curtis excelled at all three of my self-ascribed mantras.

What, you ask, could the 10-year-old Kenny Watson of frigid Flint, Michigan, have in common with an 11-year-old paperboy growing up in a privileged home in the summer heat of Memphis? In truth, they share the most common bond of all. They are brothers of bias: Kenny with his lazy eye and the color of his skin; the Paperboy with his life-defining stutter.

The Watsons Go to Birminghamwas Curtis’s first novel. I don’t know how old Chris was when he wrote it, but I was 60 when I began writing Paperboy, my first. Now, more than a decade later, I’m declaring I have earned the right to add a fourth and urgent mantra to my guidelines. 

  4. Write to understand.

I see now that I wrote to understand how a debilitating speech impediment can shape a young person’s world. Chris wrote to understand a murderous and senseless bombing in Birmingham.

Can either be understood? I’m not sure, but I know our society is doomed if we stop trying.

A contract crew was in our neighborhood recently trimming trees away from power lines. I walked across the road to ask the crew chief if he would dump a couple loads from his woodchipper so I could line my garden paths. He said he would be glad to. Green woodchips don’t make good mulch, but they are great for paths.

We walked across the road and I showed him where to dump the chips on my property. We talked a minute. He was engaging.  As I turned to go to the house, he surprised me with a question: “Do you mind if I ask you something personal?” “Go ahead, shoot,” I said.

He proceeded to tell me about a young man on his crew who was a person who stuttered. He said the guy was a good worker, but he didn’t communicate well with the other workers because of his stutter. Then the crew boss said: “I notice you stutter a little but it don’t seem to bother you none. I was wondering if you could talk with my guy and just tell him we don’t care about his stutter and that he should talk more to us. Good workers are hard to come by, and I don’t want to lose him.”

I told the crew chief he had paid me a high compliment and that he was correct, that my stutter didn’t bother me anymore, but I knew exactly what the young man was going through.

We walked back across the road and he introduced me to his worker with a not so subtle: “Come on over here. This here homeowner who lives cross the road wants to talk to you.” The crew chief left us.

“What’s your name?” I asked the young man, who looked to be in his late teens or early 20s.

He dropped his head, clinched his lips like a fist and began a verbal block with which I was all too familiar. I gave him an appropriate amount of time and then spoke: “Look, my name is Vince and what you need to know is that I once couldn’t say my name either. I even wrote a book that told a story about me passing out on somebody’s front porch trying to say my name.”

He finally raised his head and looked at me.

“I’m not a speech therapist, but I know exactly what you are going through, and all I want to say is that there’s nothing wrong with you. You stutter. So what. You can’t let it define you.”

He nodded his head. I pointed to one of his co-workers who was watching our conversation from his truck about a hundred feet away.

“Go over and tell that guy, with a big smile on your face, that you are the best damn tree trimmer on the crew and you stutter. And then ask him: ‘What’s the big deal?’

I was rewarded with a faint smile.

“When your truck comes over to dump the wood chips, I’m going to give you something that tells you about my book. Read it. You’ll find out how much we are on the same journey.” I stuck out my hand and at the last minute remembered to do a fist bump.

“Good luck,” I said.

“Th-th-th- . . . ‘preciate it,” he said.

“Don’t worry about sounding like everybody else,” I said. “That’s just chasing fluency. Concentrate on finding your voice, being who you are, saying what you want to.”

I walked back across the road, thankful that the proper words and tone had come to me. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.

The crew chief dumped a large load of woodchips on my property several hours later. He was in the truck alone. I had written my phone number on one of my PAPERBOY bookmarks.

“Can you give this to our friend?” I said.

“Yeah. His name’s Lance,” the crew chief said. “He’s at lunch now but I think he’ll be back. He had a little spring in his step after you talked to him.”

Good luck to Lance and blessings to those wise crew chiefs out there. I could tell by his English that the boss man may have been short on formal education, but he’s a genius as far as I’m concerned – almost like Mr. Spiro.

This blog I started more than seven years ago was intended to be about books and writing. I find myself, however, occasionally slipping into something else I love – dogs.

In a blog post from last April, I reflected on Willie, my writing dog. Today’s post is devoted to Willie’s best friend, Cletus.

Cletus was not your average dog. What dog is average?

It would be easy to say that Cletus belonged to Larry, my neighbor. But Cletus adopted Larry, not the other way around. Cletus’ first “owners” left him behind when they vacated their rental house when Cletus was little more than a pup. He chose to remain, and we are all the better for it.

A veterinarian who lives in the neighborhood said that Cletus most likely was a mix of rottweiler and some kind of hound.  At around 80 pounds, he was an outside dog. As far as I know, he never spent a night inside unless Larry accidentally locked him in his shop overnight. Cletus had an unmistakable deep bark. He was the sergeant of arms for the neighborhood, keeping everything on the up and up. He didn’t like stray dogs nosing around and he had to approve of any new dogs that came into the neighborhood.  As “wild” as he was, he loved to have my granddaughter’s arms wrapped around him.

Larry and Cletus would go on long afternoon walks, but the “L-word” was never mentioned – leash. Cletus ranged far and wide. I remember clearly one summer afternoon when Larry and Marilou were out of town that I came home around 3 p.m. and there was Cletus, about to begin his afternoon walk up Deerfield Drive by himself. I hurried to the house, leashed up Willie and the three of us had a nice stroll.

Stories about Cletus abound, such as the time a neighborhood chihuahua got lost to the deep woods of Deerfield. Several days later, here comes Cletus out of the woods he knew so well, leading the little dog home.

And then there’s the skunks. Cletus hated skunks almost as much as he hated the baths that Larry would have to give him with Dawn detergent.

The picture of Cletus that accompanies this post is one of my favorites. He‘s in Larry’s shop, surrounded by tools and old car parts. If Larry was in his shop, you can bet Cletus was there also.

I had the privilege of feeding Cletus when Larry and Marilou would go out of town. Sometimes he was waiting on me on the porch, but other times after a few whistles, he would emerge from the woods. There’s no doubt that Cletus was happiest in the woods. What also made him happy was me slipping him a few leftovers from Marilou’s refrigerator. Cletus and I decided it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

On Larry and Marilou’s last trip overseas recently, I got to feed Cletus for two weeks. I could tell he was not doing well. He had grown terribly arthritic, had lost weight and was not eating.  He usually guarded the house, but on this day he came over and laid down in front of my barn, the first time he had ever done that. He didn’t want to be alone.

Unlike Willie, Cletus hated riding in cars, but Larry loaded him up today for his final trip to the vet. Cletus is buried beside his friend Willie and two Boston terriers, Nelly and Ruby, high on a hill overlooking the land he roamed.

As a last word, I’ll say that Willie and Cletus left us with a lesson because dogs can always teach us something. Willie was a couch potato of a boxer and Cletus was free-ranging and wolf-like. No two dogs could have been more different. The first time they met, teeth were bared and the fur flew, but soon after they came to an understanding, a mutual respect.  They got along fine, best friends for a dozen years. All of us should take note.

My books – PAPERBOY and COPYBOY – have been published in 15 languages, but there’s a new wrinkle that is intriguing.

PAPERBOY has just come out in a bilingual edition, Romanian and English. In the 366-page book, English is on the left and Romanian is on the right-hand facing page.

I’m discovering all manner of interesting tidbits.

The title of the book is Băiatul cu Zaire, which Google translates as “Boy With Newspaper.” The phonetic mark over the “a” is called a “breve.”

The Romanian language has Latin roots and when compared to all modern languages, it most resembles Italian.

I took a little spin through the book to check certain words. A “knife” is a “briceagul.” “Stutter” is translated as “balbai,” but it can also mean “babble.” I happen to be adept at both.

I was curious what the Romanian publisher would do with the corrupted spelling of “spaghetti” in Chapter 7. The paperboy called it “splishghetti.” The Romanian paperboy says “splasghete” for “spaghete.” So, whether you splish or splash, it works the same way.

My books seem to travel the world readily. I’ve lost count of the number of printings that the books have gone through in the Turkish language. I’ve been told that one reason for this might be that the books are being used in English as Second Language (ESL) courses. I can see this. The writing style is simple (not simplistic) without a lot of complex sentence structures and tongue twisters.

Also, the themes of PAPERBOY and COPYBOY are universal.

I’ll let the Romanian paperboy have the last word:

Cuvintele dispar din aer imediat ce le spui, dar pe harte raman pentru totdeauna.

Translation: Words in the air blow away as soon as you say them but words on paper last forever.

One of the joys of having books published in this age of instant communication is hearing from readers.  In the last seven years I’ve heard from hundreds (dare I say “more than a thousand”), but every now and then one comes along that stops me in my tracks. Consider this one.

Dear Mr. Vawter:

May I take a moment of your time. 

Last fall, I accompanied my daughter to Memphis for a YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) conference.  She is a librarian for teens in Salt Lake City.  I simply wanted to see Memphis and Graceland, so I tagged along.

My daughter attended a session in which you spoke and offered COPYBOY to those in attendance.  Because many received your book already, your line at the author signing was relatively short, so I went to your line.  You were very gracious; and I was happy to receive an autographed copy of COPYBOY.

I am not a reader at all, in fact I have always disliked reading.  About a year ago, my daughter suggested that I read to pass the time when I exercise indoors, or when I am waiting in some line like at a doctor’s office, or while I am waiting for my court cases to be called.  I took her up on this suggestion, and I have now read numerous books.  

The other day, I finally picked up COPYBOY and decided to read it.  Today, I finished it.  

I feel compelled to let you know how I feel at the moment.  COPYBOY is astounding, the deep meanings profound, the life’s lessons invaluable.  I have shared your story with my daughter (who assures me she will read COPYBOY next and order copies for the library) and with my other family members and many work colleagues.  The powerful messages within its covers, I thank you.  I thank you for being an excellent writer; your story is easy to read and grasp.  Your pages kept me spellbound.  I find myself often thinking about COPYBOY throughout the day.  I have laughed out loud and cried while reading and retelling your story, and I am grateful for your skill in putting together a powerful story that rings true with rich meaning and messages.  COPYBOY is an award-winning book.

I intend to go back and read “The Old Man and the Sea.”  But first, I am slated to go backwards and read PAPERBOY, of which I now have a copy.

Thank you most sincerely for introducing me to Victor Vollmer and Philomene Moreau, and the late Mr. Spiro.  I wish I could meet them in person.