A City Writes a Book

A city can read a book; we've seen that quixotic idea come to life in the "One City, One Book" program initiated by the Washington Center for the Book in 1998. But how can a city write one?

It started with the public library—an ambitious programming committee from the St. Paul Public Library's Friends organization, to be exact—looking to do something spectacular for the reopening of the central branch after two years of renovations. Stewart Wilson, the Friends' director of public awareness and communications, says, "It came out of a brainstorming session and was kind of a naïve 'gee whiz, let's put on a show' moment." Or as Marvin Anderson, chair of the program committee, recalled in the book's introduction, "Why don't we chain-write a book?"

The idea quickly evolved from "gee whiz" to "how do we do this?" and gradually became a community effort that has so far involved, according to Wilson, more than 600 people. The Friends' planning group enlisted help from COMPAS (Community Programs in the Arts), Coffee House Press, and various arms of the library. The St. Paul Pioneer Press ran a series of free ads, and significant grants helped get the project off the ground. Finally, a surplus of hard work and creative energy headed off in the same direction, resulting not only in Twelve Branches: Stories from St. Paul (see review, p. 130 of the print edition), a polished collection that allots one story for each branch of the library, but a community project that increased awareness of the public library and got the central branch off to an exciting new start. Says Wilson, "The library's profile in the local literary community (which is extremely strong on the Twin Cities) has changed significantly. Both the Friends and the library are more positively viewed now as active, participating members of that community."

The flexibility of those involved was certainly key to turning the idea into a published book. First ideas weren't always the best ideas, participants learned, and instead of hiring one professional writer to work on the project full-time, as intended, they hired four writers part-time—which only enhanced the diversity of the project, one of its many goals. The writers' job was to gather stories from the community and finesse them into publishable form.

"The most rewarding piece for me was watching the stories transform," observes collaborator Julia Klatt Singer. Stories arrived "in the form of character descriptions, recipes, life experiences, misunderstandings, typed and written stories about a family member, or a family story," and it was up to her, as well as the other writers—namely, Twin Cities residents Nora Murphy, Joanna Rawson, and Diego Vázquez Jr.—to fashion these bits into a whole. Stories were gathered from all 12 branches of the St. Paul Public Library, as well as from community centers, schools, senior centers, and from anyone, to borrow a phrase from the book's final story, "who might care to surrender an anecdote from their own singular drama."

Of course, a book needs a publisher, and St. Paul was fortunate to have Coffee House Press from across the Mississippi to shepherd the project into final form. The press's senior editor, Chris Fischbach, provided some guidance, but he didn't "impose some kind of 'tone' to the book," which is why it's surprising to him that people note how consistent the prose is. "From the get-go we wanted as wide a range of stories and voices as possible," he says. "Maybe it is magic or something. The ghost of F. Scott." Nevertheless, the final book does not feel like a scrapbook of anecdotes but rather a coherent group of stories, where names like Rice Street and Summit Avenue reappear in new contexts and where people from a variety of backgrounds and cultures—Cambodian, Mexican, Polish, Swedish, etc.—populate the same streets.

"When the final book came out [in April], we placed 30 copies for check-out in the library system (as well as offering them for sale at all branches). Since that time, the great majority of the copies have been checked out, and when I looked this morning, all the copies were checked out and there were a number of holds," says Wilson. "I think the book will be read, at least locally, for many, many years—expanding its impact in unexpected ways."

Has the "chain-write" method lived up to the library's expectations? Would they do it again? According to Wilson, it has and they would. And he has even given some thought as to how the method would be different next time. For those interested in trying it in their own library or organization, he has written an afterword to the book called "Write a Book in Your Community," complete with his contact information (ask for Wilson or for Andrea Moerer at 651-222-3242 or Friends@TheFriends.org). It may not be simple, and it still might be a crazy idea, but for those willing to give it a try Stewart Wilson has plenty of notes to spare.