Tag Archive: extinction

Vanity Fair’s Alex Shoumatoff: At the service of the planet

Alex’s investigation into the ivory trade went viral (www.freefoto.com)

In the digital world, journalists are faced with a choice. They can write in ever-shorter forms for websites so readers need not scroll down, they can come up with short-form text designed for phones and tablets, and they can send their work in 140 characters to Twitter.

Or they can try the Alex Shoumatoff method: Write nearly 10,000 words and see it go viral – which was the result of his investigation into the ivory trade across Africa.

Alex believes a writer needs at least 10,000 words to do justice to the complexities and ambiguities of their subject.

“There is still a market for the long fact piece, as I’ve learned from the huge response to my last two outings,” he says.

Alex’s 9,720-word piece on the ivory trade, Agony and Ivory, was published in Vanity Fair last year, and was later nominated for a National Magazine Award.  His 11,050-word excavation of the history of a vanishing New York civilisation, Positively 44th Street, came out in the magazine this summer. And his latest non-fiction book, Legends of the American Desert, a cultural and natural history of the Southwest which met with rave reviews, spans 500 pages.

Write a ‘vomit draft’

The question is what is the secret of producing top-class writing at speed?

“The guy who could really write fast, knocking off a whiskey-fuelled single draft that was print-ready, was Christopher Hitchens,” Alex says. “I am not a fast writer. It is always a tortuous process.”

Alex starts with a “vomit draft”, a process that he describes as letting your mind run free. He achieves this by putting down any association and anything that comes to mind.

Later, he prunes and shapes his work. And even Alex, who has been described by one of his Vanity Fair editors as “one of the great prose stylists of this or any century”, can struggle to find the right word. Sometimes, at that stage in the process, the right word can come to mind while he walks or sleeps, Alex says.

“But this said, when I am in the zone, on a roll, I do write fast,” Alex says. “The best writing is the most straightforward. Often, as I am explaining something to somebody, it comes out the most naturally and clearly – more so than when I am straining for how to put it while sitting at my computer.”

‘Battle for our planet’

According to Alex, a good writer is made by work, tremendous intellectual curiosity, and knowing how to write by reading the great. A good piece of writing is “like good music,” he says. But when asked which writers today will become the great writers of the future, he answers: “Not many that I can think of.”

Alex has put himself on the frontline of the battle for our planet, with his writing about the fast-disappearing natural world. In 2001, he founded DispatchesfromTheVanishing World.com to raise awareness of the current unprecedented extinction rate of species and traditional cultures and man’s dramatic impact on his habitat.

His writing has already saved ancient redwoods in California and halted a project to install a hydroelectric transmission line in Manotiba. And his investigation into the ivory trade is changing opinions of the nouveau riche on ivory carvings and jewellery in China.

When Alex gives lectures and workshops, he covers his own huge range of writing styles. His list includes literary journalism, writing to effect positive change, writing for the world, investigative journalism, advocacy journalism, literary travelogue, “far-flung” reportage, nature writing, writing about the natural sciences, popular science writing, ethnography, poetry, song-writing, family history and memoir.

However, while his writing styles may be numerous, Alex’s aim is simple and in line with his overriding concern. “To make audiences aware of the seriousness of our ongoing deepening planetary emergency and the thousands of things each of us can do to be part of the solution and not the problem.”

Information on the workshops and lectures that Alex will be giving this November at our Hever Castle conference is available on the Abroad Writers’ Conference website.

Competition details

Conference schedule

‘Roll, adapt or die’ – meet Nancy Gerbault

A series of paintings by Nancy and Alan Gerbault focused on extinction – the action of blotting out life

In the years before life as a literary impresario, Nancy Gerbault travelled the world as a flight attendant, produced internationally-recognised work as a painter, and for a while pursued her passion for food – working as a restaurant chef in California.

Her love of art and letters and creativity may lead one to believe she is “arty”, but Nancy, owner and founder of Abroad Writers’ Conference, finds her inspiration in nature and science.

During her career, she has studied Art, History of Art and Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, she has exhibited her paintings in exhibitions around the world – with one project receiving recognition from the then Minister of Culture for France, Jack Lang and the archaeologist Richard Leakey – and she has studied prehistoric rock art, hunter-gatherer societies and Food History at California State University, Sacramento in where she received her MA in Anthropology/Archaeology.

Nancy’s love of Food, History and Literature was the foundation of what drove her to create Abroad Writers’ Conference. She loves to create modern day Salons in historic settings where guest enjoy the company of others who love Literature, History and wonderful food.

But how did a love of science lead her to set up Abroad Writers Conference, and more recently the Nancy Gerbault Literary Agency?

Nancy explains. “I have had to adapt in numerous situations, and after you do, several times, you realise that you just don’t have control in life.

“You have to roll, adapt or die. Just like in evolution. Anyone who stays rigid is not able to survive. Evolution teaches you that, and it applies to life.”

So this is how it all came about.

‘An idea in mind’

In 2003, Nancy wanted a new direction and she found a simple equation.

The painted birds became representatives of colour no longer seen, and of a voice no longer heard

She had already worked in the travel industry as a Trans World Airlines (TWA) flight attendant and she had completed both her degrees. So she put travel and academia together and came up with Abroad Writers Conference where writers of any discipline get together.

She also took aspiring authors and put them together with international authors. Many of the participants, she noted, would never have had access to the tutors she worked with, were it not for the events that Abroad staged around the world. So she took talented new writers and helped to shape their careers.

Literature became the primary focus, although history and science had been the original driving force. Writers such as Dame Margaret Drabble, Alan Lightman, Michael Ondaatje, Andrew Motion, Robert Olen Butler and director Sally Potter took part in some of Abroad’s first events. Later events: Rae Armantrout, Sarah Gristwood, Paul Harding, Edward Humes, Michele Roberts, Jane Smiley, Rebecca Walker, Alison Weir.

This improvisational, evolutionary approach was deliberate. Painterly, even in how she looked at her conference events.

As Nancy puts it: “To me, it is like painting. I go to a canvas with an idea in mind, but the painting directs me. I know when it’s becoming alive. That’s when I no longer control it.”

And for anyone who remains unconvinced, this is how the Hever Castle conference or Lismore Castle came about, because it’s no secret that renting a castle steeped in history, and one that is in need of loving maintenance and conservation all year round, could be a pricey endeavour.

‘Life is uncertain’

“We went with our dreams,” says Nancy. “Hever or Lismore Castle was more expensive than anything else we were looking at. But we were drawn to it.

The Dodo Bird became a symbol of beauty and freedom that is now annihilated

“If we had gone by the book we never would have selected it as our first choice. We just allowed ourselves to experiment and it allowed us to feel free.”

“Remember that humans only want to control all aspects of life because they hate uncertainty, but life is uncertain.

“Everything around us can change in a second. So, we cling to what we know, and we believe that it makes us feel more secure.”

Often, when we want to make something right – or correct – it becomes too heavy and it no longer breathes. It’s our problems we stack on top, layer by layer, until we kill the magic inside.”

“Certainty creates so many problems, because life just doesn’t go according to plan.”

So how best to proceed?

“One thing I’ve never understood is why anyone would want tomorrow to be the same as today,” says Nancy.

“Adapt. Be flexible. Evolve. Embrace change.”

Abroad Writers’ Conference 2012 fellowships: Competition details

Hever Castle: Conference schedule