Braddock is opening its doors to a world-travelling writer who says, "It’s good to be at a place that isn’t looking back nostalgically at itself -- which is, in many ways, what places like New York City and Paris are about."
Josh Barkan, late of those places and, lately, Mexico City, will be the first
Into the Furnace writing resident, a 9-month program organized by former Gist Reading Series Artistic Director Sherrie Flick, Braddock Mayor John Fetterman and others. He will live in a two-room suite in the former St. Michael’s parochial school convent, next to UnSmoke Art Space and the community pizza oven, where he will give a reading in October.
Barkan learned about Braddock from another residency organizer, Marc Nieson, a fellow Iowa Writers’ Workshop alum.
"He was very up front about the economic challenges the city is facing," Barkan says of Nieson. "… I was instantly interested in the dynamics of what role promoting the arts might have in the future of Braddock. I have no illusion that art can bring back the jobs lost from the decline of the steel industry, but it seems to me that creating a space where visual artists, writers, musicians and others can work hard on their craft can only bring about something positive."
Barkan plans to work on a new short-story collection while in Braddock, but it will likely be set in Mexico. He expects Braddock will enter his writing most readily after he leaves it. "… I have always found that places I am unfamiliar with change the way I think; they cause me to see my assumptions," he says. "I expect my time in Braddock will alter the stereotypes that we are fed about what the ‘rust belt’ is," he says.
"There's a writing community that's been forming organically out in Braddock," adds Flick, and each year the visiting writer’s presence will add creatively to the mix.
"My guess, already," concludes Barkan, "is that the raw energy of the artists who have moved to Braddock will inspire me, and that the people working in the urban gardens there will inspire me, and that the people who are facing economic challenges in Braddock will have something to teach me."
Writer:
Marty Levine
Sources: Sherrie Flick, Into the Furnace; Josh Barkan
Image courtesy of Into the Furnace