Lenard-Cook, Lisa 1952–

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Lenard-Cook, Lisa 1952–

(Lisa Lenard)

PERSONAL: Born June 23, 1952, in Buffalo, NY; daughter of Baryl (a company president) and Donna (a homemaker; maiden name, Krohn; later surnames Goldman and Fliegler) Lenard; married Michael E. Kushner (an attorney), April 8, 1978 (divorced April 9, 1984); married Bob Cook (a musician, composer, and project manager), May 1, 1995; children: (first marriage) Kaitlin. Education: State University of New York at Buffalo, B.A. (with honors), 1974; Vermont College, M.F.A., 1993. Politics: Independent. Religion: Jewish. Hobbies and other interests: Reading, travel, hiking, music, art, science.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Anne Hawkins, JHA Literary, 71 W. 23rd St., Ste. 1600, New York, NY 10010. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Novelist and editor. Fort Lewis College, Durango, CO, visiting professor of English, 1992–97; teacher of private writing classes. Chamber Music Albuquerque, board member; Friends of Corrales Library, member.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America, Associated Writing Programs, Corrales Historical Society, PEN New Mexico, New Mexico CultureNet.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fellow, Colorado Council on the Arts, 1995; New Millennium Award; Jim Sagel Prize for the novel, 2003, for Dissonance; citations for Southwest Book of the Year, Tucson-Pima County Library, 2003, for Dissonance, and 2004, for Coyote Morning.

WRITINGS:

(As Lisa Lenard) K.I.S.S. Guide to Dreams, DK Publishing (New York, NY), 2002.

(As Lisa Lenard; with Arlene Tognetti) The Intuitive Arts on Love, Alpha Books (Indianapolis, IN), 2003.

Dissonance (literary fiction), University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 2003.

Coyote Morning (literary fiction), University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 2004.

UNDER NAME LISA LENARD; "COMPLETE IDIOT'S GUIDE" SERIES

(With Madeline Gerwick-Brodeur) The Complete Idiot's Guide to Astrology, Alpha Books (New York, NY), 1997, 3rd edition, 2003.

(With Arlene Tognetti) The Complete Idiot's Guide to Tarot and Fortune Telling, Alpha Books (New York, NY), 1998, 2nd edition, 2003.

(Coauthor) The Complete Idiot's Guide to New Millennium Predictions, Alpha Books (New York, NY), 1999.

(With Kay Lagerquist) The Complete Idiot's Guide to Numerology, Alpha Books (Indianapolis, IN), 1999, 2nd edition, 2004.

(With David Hammerman) The Complete Idiot's Guide to Reincarnation, Alpha Books (Indianapolis, IN), 2000.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Drawing, illustrated by Lauren Jarrett, Alpha Books (Indianapolis, IN), 2000, 2nd edition, 2000.

(With Carolyn Flynn) The Complete Idiot's Guide to Palmistry, revised edition, Alpha Books (Indianapolis, IN), 2004.

Author of column "Art of Fiction," for Authorlink.com.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Novels Best Girl, Men in White Horses, Long Division and Mercy; a stage adaptation of Dissonance; and the short-story collection After the Fire.

SIDELIGHTS: Lisa Lenard-Cook told CA: "Where does fiction come from? My favorite definition is from McCauley and Lanning's Technique in Fiction: 'Fiction originates in direct personal impression linked by imagination with the writer's resources of experience.' When I think about my own writing process, I like to begin with the first part of this equation, direct personal impression. For example, you might be walking down the street one day when you see a striking woman, beautifully dressed, striding purposefully toward you. Let's say that woman suddenly stops short and turns, and you realize that the hastily dressed, runny-nosed child a few steps behind in fact belongs with her. Let's say the woman yanks the child's hand (let's say the child is a girl), spits a few stern words, and then marches resolutely past you, child in tow.

"If you're a fiction writer, scenes like this will get stuck in your head. That's my term, and maybe there's a better one, but that's precisely what happens: The scene gets 'stuck,' and plays over and over again. I call this a fictional seed, and it forms one axis of that 'direct personal impression.' But I can't begin to write. Not yet. It's only one seed.

"That's because, for me, it takes at least three seemingly unrelated seeds to start writing. I never know what three seeds will come together to grow a story. I only know that when the moment happens, when the third seed is planted, I am compelled to write. After I've illustrated the other two axes of this equation, I'll come back and show you how this works with a story of my own.

"The second part of the equation is linked by imagination. Chances are, when I painted that fictional woman, you began to imagine a history for her even if you aren't a fiction writer. We can't help it. Humans are, above all, creatures of imagination, and when we see something we can't explain, we imagine an explanation.

"You might imagine, for example, that the woman is not what she seems, a fact that's revealed by the child. Perhaps she doesn't know how she'll pay for their lunch, even where they'll get lunch, and is on her way to an appointment that could change not only that, but the direction of her life. But she's saddled with this child, and she doesn't have a babysitter, and—Well, you can see my direction. It's only one possible scenario amongst many, of course.

"The last part of the equation is the writer's resources of experience. If you've ever laughed or cried, been angry or overjoyed, loved, hated, or anything in between, you have your own resources of experience. In the best fiction, you use these resources to translate this emotion onto the page for the particular fiction you're writing.

"Now here's that example I promised you. About ten years ago, both a friend's mother and a neighbor in the remote corner of southwest Colorado where I then lived were diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I noticed a number of parallels in the two women's behavior: how polite they were; how both seemed to find joy in simple things they could no longer name. As I drove back and forth to Durango every day, I often found my thoughts turning to something one or the other had said or done. I knew this obsession was a seed. But I wasn't ready to write—not yet. It was only one seed.

"Meanwhile, in that drought summer, the fires burned. In the evening, my daughter and I would sit on our porch and watch the planes shuttle back and forth to Grand Junction. When a plane dropped its slurry, the sky would flare pink. My daughter, an artist, and I, a writer, would sit entranced, night after night after night. This direct personal impression too became a fictional seed. But it still wasn't enough.

"Then, late that summer, I read a story in the Rocky Mountain News about wild horses that were starving on BLM land in New Mexico. BLM management believed their only choice was to kill the horses before they became a nuisance to nearby ranchers. This brief news item became the third seed. I know this because as soon as I read it I sat down and wrote the first line of my short story, 'Wild Horses.'

"'Wild Horses' is told from the point of view of a rancher in southwest Colorado whose wife has Alzheimer's. He oscillates between his memories of the woman he married and the daily reality of the woman she's become. In the evenings, they sit on their porch and watch planes ferry slurry to nearby fires. Then a BLM functionary announces that the wild horses that live in the canyon beyond their ranch are going to be shot. Throughout this story, we see the wife only through the husband's eyes, and yet, because the husband has the use of my imagination and my direct resources of experience about things like bewilderment, anger, and most of all, love, in this story's few pages we are able to connect deeply with these characters and their particular predicament.

"Let's review how the three axes work for this story: Direct personal impressions: the Alzheimer's, the fires, the wild horses; Imagination: this couple—who they were and who they are now; The writer's resources of experience: bewilderment, anger, love. Fictional seeds can take years to germinate, but ultimately, it really is this simple. The key is to trust your instincts enough to allow the magic to happen."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, September 1, 2003, Lisa Rohrbaugh, review of Dissonance, p. 208; October 1, 2004, Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, review of Coyote Morning, p. 70.