By Greg Robinson – Online Editor
Saint Leo University was fortunate enough to have award-winning writer Diane Glancy on campus from Monday, November 7 to Wednesday, November 9. The prolific writer, who has authored a number of short stories, novels, plays, collections, and poems, spoke to classes, read from some of her works, and held a screening of her first full-length film, The Dome of Heaven.
Glancy’s visit started on Monday with a visit to Dr. Kurt Wilt’s English 498 class, where she fielded questions about her writing style, inspiration, part Native American heritage, and extensive travel. Later that evening, she held a screening of The Dome of Heaven in the Greenfelder-Denlinger boardrooms, an independent film she wrote and directed, as well as partially financed. Glancy was also gracious enough to answer questions about the film after the screening.
On Tuesday afternoon, November 8, Glancy read from some of her work and had another question and answer session in the Cannon Memorial Library. She stayed around on Wednesday, November 9, and sat in on an English 324 Playwriting class to discuss her plays and how she approaches writing for the stage.
Glancy was born in Kansas City, Missouri, to a mother of English and German ancestry and a father of Cherokee descent. She worked as a professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, teaching Native American literature and creative writing, and recently served as a visiting professor at Kenyon College in Ohio.
Glancy identifies strongly as a writer and artist and believes it is an integral part of her. In an interview with senior Brittany Rathbone, she said “It [writing]was definitely my calling. I can’t do anything else. A longing for work, a longing for story.”
When speaking to the English 498 class, Glancy said that most of her writing was an attempt to reconcile two very different identities, that of her mother’s European ancestry and her father’s Cherokee heritage. She reiterated this in the interview. “It was a longing for what I was but did not know,” Glancy said.
Many of Glancy’s books and plays have won awards. She has twice received a National Endowment for the Arts, in 1990 and again in 2003, a Juniper Prize from the University of Massachusetts Press in 2003, an Oklahoma Book Award in 2003, a Sundance Screenwriting Fellowship from U.C.L.A. in 1998, an American Book Award in 1993, and the Emily Dickenson Poetry Prize from The Poetry Society of America in 1993, to name a few.
