When Ron Riekki decided to put the work of women writing about Michigan’s Upper Peninsula together, he included Kalamazoo’s Bonnie Jo Campbell. “I’ve been studying her short stories and she’ll make very strange juxtapositions of images in her stories.”
Strange is good. Wild is good. Above all, the quality of writing is the top priority for work included in Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (Michigan State University Press, May 2015) edited by Ronald Riekki with a foreword by Alison Swan. It features stories, poetry, essays, and novel excerpts by 36 writers.
“I was born and raised in Marquette, Michigan,” says Riekki. “So I’m pretty passionate about the area. When I was growing up, I felt like there was no literature about the area and it made me somewhat angry.”
Fired by that passion, Riekki, an author himself, took on the mission of representing the Upper Peninsula with this selection of work by new and established writers, up-and-coming literary voices, and classics from the past. The selections are a diverse group of culture, genre, and time period.
Although a “troll” (someone who lives “below" the Mackinac Bridge that connects Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas), Bonnie Jo Campbell nurtured her connection to the U.P. by visiting about 30 book venues on a 2012 tour at Riekki's invitation. She also contributed to his earlier anthology, The Way North.
“I got the opportunity to meet all kinds of U.P. writers,” Campbell says. “And it was such a pleasure! Just to hang out with all the folks who hang out in some of the most beautiful landscape in the world.”
Riekki says he decided to include only female writers in his new anthology because, when he asks others what U.P. writing means to them, he usually hears the names of such well-known males writers as Jim Harrison and Ernest Hemingway.
“When I asked people for nominations of great U.P. writers, someone sent me an excerpt from a Jim Harrison novel. And it was set in Montana,” Riekki says. “That’s not U.P. writing. Harrison and Hemingway, I think, definitely do not see themselves that way. I was really interested in people who embrace that land.”
To ensure that his selections were fair and diverse, Riekki invited guest editors to help him choose the contributors from the thousands of pages he was sent.
“I think this anthology, more than any I’ve ever seen, seems to really draw the place it’s from,” Campbell says. “We can feel the wildlife. We can feel the lakes. We can feel the wildness of the terrain in a way that really is surprising. Something magical came out of this.”
Bonnie Jo Campbell will read with three other authors from the anthology - Kate Bassett, Alison DeCamp, and Charmi Keranen - at Bookbug, 3019 Oakland Drive, in Kalamazoo on Friday, July 17, at 7 p.m.
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