Donna Seaman on Writing, Editing and “River of Books”

Many readers who closely follow the release of new books know that Donna Seaman, recently named editor-in-chief of Booklist, where she’s also the adult books editor, is an expert, incisive critic. I’ve long marveled over how, issue after issue, she’s able to write highly specific reviews that cleanly summarize a book’s subject matter and assess its artistic merits—often in under two-hundred words.

Along with her demanding work for Booklist, she is a frequent conversation partner for local and visiting writers during the Chicago Humanities Festival and Printers Row Lit Fest, among other literary events of note. In the interstices, Seaman has written and edited several books, “Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists,” “Writers on the Air: Conversations About Books,” the short-fiction anthology “In Our Nature: Stories of Wilderness,” and now the engrossing “River of Books: A Life in Reading,” her most personal book to date.

The pleasures of reading Seaman’s new book are manifold. Not only does she offer readers an insider’s look at her formative years as a writer and critic, we float down the titular river with her as she shares a coming-of-age story that includes her peregrinations from the town where she grew up, Poughkeepsie, New York, to art school in Kansas City, to Chicago, her home now of many years. Her warmth, intelligence and surpassing love of books and their authors grace every page of “River of Books.”

Donna Seaman and I corresponded about her new book via email.

“River of Books” is part memoir, part encomium to books and reading. In the first chapter, while recounting your earliest memories of the books you were introduced to as a child, you artfully segue to fascinating historical details about your hometown of Poughkeepsie. This interleaving of the public and historical with the personal is present throughout “River of Books.” Did you settle on this form from the beginning or did it evolve over time?

It’s odd to say this, since, as you note, “River of Books” is part memoir, but I really didn’t want to write about myself! When I was invited to contribute a title to Ode Books, a series of book-length essays about books and places devoted to books, I knew I couldn’t write about the work I do at Booklist—there are too many sensitive aspects to that. So I decided to tell the story of how I ended up doing what I do. I intended to write most about the books that inspired me, but I also wanted to create a context for the early years of my “life in reading.”

I began writing about Poughkeepsie, my hometown, and because I love doing research, I found myself delving into many aspects of the river city’s past. So, yes, the combination of the personal with the historical and the communal was there at the start.

Instead of majoring in English at a more traditional college or university, you went to art school in Kansas City (although later you earned a master’s degree in literature from DePaul University). How did art win out over books after high school? Like your mother, did you plan to make a life and a living as a visual artist?  

I had a love-hate relationship with school, finding much of it boring and oppressive. I felt so confined. And as much as I loved to read, I was restless. I needed action. So I gravitated to making art, to working with my hands. That way of thinking with your entire being, of working in three dimensions, of engaging with the physical world, nurtures the body, mind and soul. I love being in studios and workshops as much as libraries and museums. Art school seemed like the ideal place for me to pursue my passion for making things and my ardor for books, since I knew that liberal arts classes would be in the mix.

I had no practical ideas about earning a living. I had no career in mind. I was focused on learning about art and making art, on reading and writing. I had only the haziest of notions about finding a job of some sort that would keep me solvent enough to do what I loved. I knew the odds against supporting oneself as an artist or writer were extremely high.

I was deeply influenced by my mother and her passion for visual art. But the world I came of age in was very different from the one she grew up in, including expectations for women. My mother did not go to art school or college, though she would have loved to. Instead, for many reasons, she married right out of high school and always put family and home first. Unlike now, when so many families need two salaries to get by, my father was able to support our modest middle-class household on his own, so my mother didn’t have to work. She always hoped to sell her paintings in the many gallery shows and exhibitions she participated in, and she often did, but that didn’t provide much income. I always knew I would work; I wanted to be independent. I started working when I left home and I’ve been extremely fortunate in finding work I love.

One of the revelations that surprised me most, which you mentioned above, is that you found high school to be a grind—until you began attending a private day school in tenth grade. I have to think, however, that as early as junior high school, you were more well-read than most of your teachers. Would you comment on the chasm between your voracious reading habits and your experience with enforced “book learning” in school?

I have many vivid school memories of junior high and high school, but none of them involve English classes! This feels very strange. What am I blocking? Maybe I need a hypnotist. I surely did all my assignments, but I have no recollections of what we read and discussed in class; I can’t recall a single paper I wrote. I must have found it all rather dull.

Curiously, I remember science classes much more clearly, and geometry, which was the only math class I enjoyed in public school. I loved the diagrams. I remember Latin and French classes. Why not English? I’m sure I learned useful interpretative skills, and I assume I enjoyed at least some of the books and certainly Shakespeare, but somehow other experiences have overwritten all that. Instead I clearly remember the books I read on my own.

Along with chronicling the joys of a life enriched by avid reading and artmaking, you write about tragedy in “River of Books”: the loss of your adored younger sister to a house fire when you were both in your twenties, and the drowning of a brilliant teaching artist you studied with at the Kansas City Art Institute. Do you recall the books you turned to during those intense periods of mourning? Which books do you periodically return to as if they’re Vitamin C (or antibiotics or Xanax)?

When I lost my sister, I turned to poetry. I read Wordsworth, Keats and Yeats. I read Dickinson and Whitman. I read Dylan Thomas. I was especially taken with Wallace Stevens and Sylvia Plath, her poetry and her fiction.

Books that have been strong medicine for me include works by all of the above, along with the writings of Virginia Woolf, Flannery O’Connor, Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg, Amy Clampitt, Jane Hirshfield, Edward Hirsch, Annie Dillard, Terry Tempest Williams, Diane Ackerman, Cynthia Ozick, Sandra Cisneros, Marilynne Robinson and Toni Morrison. I’ve also found myself rereading “King Lear” in grim times.

Studs Terkel, Nelson Algren, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lorraine Hansberry, Carl Sandburg, among others, are presiding spirits in “River of Books.” Similarly, the city of Chicago is a main character. I love how you describe it here:

…Chicago is a bricky town of harsh weather and bluster, hard work and avid play, pragmatism and creativity, violence and kindness, competition and comradeship… The little yards and parkways were alive with sparrows, robins, cardinals, mourning doves, crows, squirrels… .

After college in Kansas City, you write that you thought you’d eventually return to New York, a city ostensibly considered more literary than any other U.S. city (certainly up for debate!), but ultimately you settled in Chicago. How would you characterize Chicago’s literary scene in comparison to New York’s?  

Chicago’s literary community has grown so much since I first moved here. For years it seemed that once a Chicago writer landed a book contract, they would move to New York. To Brooklyn. Now people stay. Chicago is a much more affordable and manageable city than New York, after all.

The blossoming of creative writing programs at Chicago colleges and universities has provided more opportunities for writers, which strengthened our community. All kinds of literary groups and indie bookstores provide venues for author events, readings and conversations, and Chicago has a small but ardent array of publishers. All this has sustained and vitalized the city’s literary community. I’m always hearing about writers I didn’t know were living here. Chicago is home to poets, children’s authors, graphic novelists, mystery writers, romance writers, creative nonfiction writers, literary novelists, essayists, memoirists, you name it. And best of all, there is remarkable camaraderie among Chicago writers and other literati; there’s so much mutual support, it’s phenomenal and deeply inspiring.

The vibe is different in New York because there are so many more writers, more of nearly everything. And having so many major publishers there raises the stakes.

When the American Writers Museum was just a dream, the founders considered all the major cities in the country, and ultimately decided that Chicago was the ideal location. They liked that it wasn’t the obvious choice; that would be New York. They were impressed with Chicago’s strong, if somewhat underappreciated literary history, its robust public library system, its community of caring and generous writers, and the continual round of many literary events held by the Chicago Public Library, the Chicago Humanities Festival, Printers Row Lit Fest, the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, bookstores, colleges and universities. They saw that this is a city of ardent writers and readers.

You write so movingly about the natural world in “River of Books.” the titular river a metaphor for the flow of books through your life, perhaps most apparent in the Booklist offices where you’ve long been an editor and reviewer and are now editor-in-chief. Chapters are titled “The Hudson River, the Source,” “The Blue River, a Tributary,” “The Chicago River, Changing Direction,” and “River Styx.” Like toxic pollutants in the natural world, book banning threatens our intellectual and cultural ecosystems. What do you think is the best way to turn the tide?

People calling for book bans are a tiny enclave at odds with most of the public. We must not let book-banners seize power over our freedom to read and interfere so harshly with the expert work of librarians and educators, let alone threaten their well-being and their very lives and those of their families. Many people who object to books are doing so based on political propaganda; often they haven’t even read the books they’re railing against. A trove of information about book bans and how to combat them can be found at Unite Against Book Bans.

Book lovers do have a say. Public libraries and public school libraries belong to the people. To all of us. Vote for candidates who support the funding and freedom of libraries and schools. Let government officials know that you object to censorship. Let librarians and teachers know you support them. Attend library and school board meetings; run for library and school boards. And read! A lot. Read to children, read to adults. Go to your public library and check out books; visit the library’s website and checkout ebooks. Buy books. Give people books. Buy banned books.

I write about book bans in “River of Books,” but in earlier drafts I included a lot more material, such as the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights. It’s worth reading.

You end with a list of the dozens of books celebrated in “River of Books.” All on its own it’s a remarkable testimony to your life so far in books. What books are you looking forward to reading next? And what are you working on now?

I’m looking forward to reading fiction due out in early 2025, including new novels by writers I much admire: “Another Man in the Street,” by Caryl Phillips; “Rosarita” by Anita Desai, and “A Fool’s Kabbalah,” by Steve Stern. I also love reading debut novels, and I have high hopes for “All the Water in the World,” by Eiren Caffall.

As for writing, I wrote much more than we ended up including in “River of Books,” particularly more extended looks at books and authors. I’m hoping to turn some of that material into essays, especially a dive into the forgotten books by one of my most memorable professors in graduate school, Bernard Brunner. I’m a bit obsessed about lost books and I have a feeling that’s going to lead to something.

Upcoming events for “River of Books”: Thursday, November 21, 7pm, launch party hosted by Women & Children First at the Swedish Museum, 5211 North Clark;  and Monday, December 16, 6pm, Seaman in conversation with AWM President Carey Cranston at the American Writers Museum, 180 North Michigan, 2nd floor.