In the early 80s when I discovered Rosemary Daniell's autobiography Fatal Flowers: On Sex Sin and Suicide in the Deep South, I devoured it. I'll never forget the night: I slept in the hallway in a sleeping bag with my seven-year-old daughter, kept awake by a raw tornadic wind. My husband slept through it after a few stiff nightcaps. Daniell's toughness and honesty in the face of family problems like incest, mental illness, alcoholism, and eventually the suicide of her mother inspired me to take charge of my life.

Ten years later, my husband and Rosemary were both on tour with William Morrow novels. She walked up to him in the lobby of the hotel where we were staying and introduced herself. She was dressed in a chic black dress and suede heels that accentuated her sexy legs. She was so striking, so soft and pretty that I thought she couldn't be the survivor, the country girl who had written that book. Then I realized that the description might just as well fit me, and I threw my arms around this stranger/sister and laughed. "Well hey, hon," I said, in my best Southern drawl. It was like embracing the softness of Patsy Cline at 50.

Then came Daniell's novel, Hurricane Season. Here was this bard, largely unsung, telling my life again. The character, Easter, comes from an incestuous, abusive, poverty-stricken existence in Alabama, and is passionate about art. Like a good Southern girl, she puts that urge for art behind her and marries a "catch" from New Orleans, who gives her and her illegitimate son respectability for a while. Easter channels her creativity into dinners instead of art.

As the novel unfolds, Easter becomes a very successful artist who takes on New Orleans and all its sensual snares. Her beautiful daughter becomes a junkie and her adored son is hopelessly deranged. Not a pretty picture, but her art pulls her through.

This spring, Rosemary has a new book coming out, The Woman Who Spilled Words all over Herself: Starting to write the Zona Rosa Way. In this book, she tells again about the healing power of art. She tells about the Writing groups she has conducted for women (and now men) in Savannah for more than 15 years (and, during recent years, in Atlanta as well). writers like Josephine Humphries, John Berendt, and her good friend Pat Conroy often visit.

Last fall, I visited the group in Atlanta. The experience was more like an old-fashioned prayer meeting or a 12-step group than a Writing seminar. I've just returned from a visit with the women's group in Savannah. Many of the members had their first glimpse of the book that contained accounts of their own struggles as writers. The visit left me hungry for the interview that followed.

Tripod: You say you feel good about helping all kinds of people discover the healing power of Writing. Do you think your work as a younger woman teaching poetry in a women's prison influenced you?

Rosemary Daniell: Yes, it was one of the many influences at that time. Also, teaching and doing workshops in public schools, especially high schools, allowed me to see how traditional models fell short. In prison the women there were so — contrary to what we believe — traditional in their thought patterns. Staying with a man was so important.

Tripod: ...at any cost

RD: Yes, often at very high cost. The women I worked with in the prison system — their self esteem was incredibly low, nearly always centered on a man. I remember a GED teacher in the prison system said, "Those women aren't interested in poetry." Then we had a poetry reading, with mostly black women reading their own work. The women who were there went bananas.

Tripod: Apparently, there was some interest in poetry, as opposed to, say, studying for the GED.

RD: I tried to have their poetry anthologized, but was told it was not suitable for rehabilitation purposes. I saw the imprint of culturation as the reason for their being there, how often their being there had to do with hanging in there with the Women's Zoneong men, following some cultural imperative. So many of them were there because of jealous murder, robbery to help a man, things like that.

Tripod: Initially, your groups were just for women. Why was that?

RD: When I first started the group in Savannah, I asked only four women, and I thought it would last six months. I had asked only women because sometimes when a man enters the room women become inhibited. It was in the literature at the time.

Tripod: Yes, Steinem did some good Writing about that phenomenon. I like remembering the groups I've visited in a soft pink light. Why do you call your groups Zona Rosa?

RD: At first we didn't call the group anything. Then when I went to Mexico with my daughter, and we spent time in the Zona Rosa, the bohemian section of Mexico City. The area used to be the red light district. For me, it stands for the feminine self. My teaching approach is definitely a feminine approach — a non-linear, non-goal approach — to creative Writing, with lots of permission to explore the unconscious feminine zone. "Zona Rosa" also means my method of teaching. It has worked really well for me, that term; it's also a beautiful phrase. I definitely have a very strong inclination to pink.

Tripod: Yeah, even your stationery is pink.

RD: Rosa also goes with my name. I love the idea that feminine can be the strong way. I Women's Zoneote an article for Atlanta Magazine called "Bad Girls and Artists." It's really about women who integrated both parts of themselves. When I was on tour with Fatal Flowers, I had a pink cowboy hat. Since I had been outspoken the book, telling my truths in an honest manner, I felt free to be nice, to wear as much pink as I pleased. One of my goals has been to integrate these parts of myself, to find some kind of unifying force ...not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Tripod: Yes, wholeness is the idea isn't it?

RD: Yes, one of the things I talked about in the novel is that in the South, folks confuse tradition and character. Southerners tend think of the woman who follows tradition as strong, but the truly strong woman may not do that at all. Many women are terrified of breaking the rules, the fate that will befall them. Telling the truth is a whole lot easier in the long run; adhering to truth has given me a lot of clarity in my life.

Tripod: Did you find that clarity, that truth telling, altered in your groups when you began to include men?

RD: At first there were a few problems with men who were used to holding the floor. We had a retired army colonel as well as a retired school superintendent. As time went on, men who were not comfortable quickly fell away. The men who are now in the groups are very compatible. A dentist whose son, a philosopher, said, "Dad, I can't believe you're in a group led by a woman who's a feminist." But he, as well as the other guys who are with us now, are comfortable with our non-linear approach.

Tripod: The experience is probably a relief for them.

RD: Yes, some of them are very masculine guys — military men, pilots — one of whom highjacked a United Airlines jet to Cuba with the intention of assassinating Castro. A member of the Green Beret reserves, he was acquitted on grounds of insanity. The guys have all been involved in extreme situations. They are men who have reconsidered their position and frequently have a story to tell as a result.

Tripod: Your reviewers are responding warmly to your book, which surely is gratifying. I like the Kirkus quote that praises the book as "a demonstration of the unique nature of the 'Southern literary woman." Isn't it nice to see being a Southern woman cited as a positive?

RD: I covered that rude attitude toward Southern women in my book in a funny little scene. A vodka-swilling New Yorker who visited the group talked down to the group, even went to the bathroom without closing the door while giving her monologue. Later, over dinner, she insulted one of the Zona Rosans, calling her a cracker who didn't know anything. The Southern woman, a reporter, Women's Zoneote a very negative article, covering the visiting writer's "holding forth" at the group's meeting — accompanied by a full color photo of the New Yorker, "her gray-blond bun askew, her mouth twisted in a sneer."

Tripod: Those of us who have struggled with the yoke of being Southern women, pleasers and givers to the extreme, do welcome recognition that some things are changing for us. Still, our nurturing is a great strength. Is that why you still have one group that is exclusively for women?

RD: Oh yes, I wanted to keep one of the groups exclusively for women, because to me this is the core of the whole thing. The source of the development of my teaching of creative Writing, how I developed a nonlinear way that stressed feelings, subtext and exploring the dark side ...a way that would not have been possible at first with groups that included men. The group had to become strong, my ideas had to be stabilized. After that point, we could include men without a loss of focus.

Tripod: Don't you think this also reflects a change in our society in the last decade?

RD: Yes, because feminine values have more credence in our world today. We are not just materialistic, secular beings with the aim of achieving a worldly goal. There's more to us than that.

Tripod: You've said before that you consider giving up the groups because of the time you devote to them. Do you really think you can?

RD: Probably not at this point. It's one of those positive addictions like going for a walk in the morning. My fears were whether teaching would interfere with my work in terms of time, and also whether reading so many student texts would influence my taste. I've learned through the years that neither one of those fears has to materialize. In fact, the groups are a support system for me as well as for the participants.

Tripod: Yes, you said in your book that Faith Popcorn had predicted that Writing groups would replace the 12-step groups of the '80s.

RD: Isn't that a positive development to look forward to!

Tripod: Do you think your best writing is ahead of you? What are your plans for your next work?

RD: That's a hard question. I usually have ideas that extend five or more years, even ten, into the future. The older we get, the more we recognize the shortness of life. Yet, the trick about art is you can't hurry it. Many creative writers have left such good unfinished manuscripts behind. I guess that's good in a way, because you work up until you die. I have four complete notebooks. I just completed a manuscript of poetry entitled The Murderous Sky, after a painting by Rene Magritte. This work is somewhat a departure from my earlier poems, dealing primarily with loss, grief, conciliation. I'm also collecting essays I've written through the years. My Short Life as an Army Wife, and other Tales of Dislocation is, tentatively, the title of the lead essay and of the collection. None of these have publishers yet; they're just works in progress. Walking on Hot Coals — again a memoir — is a history of mental illness and addiction in my family that has been germinating for a very long time. These are three primary projects in my mind at the moment. I've put off Hot Coals because I like to write funny things and I think it's gonna be painful. And now, I've started a novel about a charismatic woman leader, a story I started before The Woman Who Spilled Words All over Herself.

Tripod: You've proven through your other works that you are not afraid of the pain, the dark side. Are you waiting for some family members to die?

RD: Both my parents died within a month of each other, and I must admit it was liberating for me as a writer. That sounds harsh, but it was easier for me to write Fatal Flowers, no doubt. Students are always asking me about this. Pat Conroy said to them, "If you can't do that, just give it up." However, there is a price to be paid; Writing puts a great strain on family relationships. However, I can honestly say that my relationships have not been made worse. If they were good, they were better; if they were bad, at least it was laid out on the table. Truth can be quite thrilling. The shock of it can be refreshing.

Tripod: What advice would you have for someone trying to write?

RD: Poet Jack Grapes said, "Shock yourself." I believe in shocking myself. Sometimes it's difficult. When I wrote Fatal Flowers, I wrote about things that were hard for me to talk with a therapist about. When Writing that manuscript, I'd have to stop and walk in the middle of the day to cope with the anxiety. However, I am resilient psychologically. I am willing to go through the price to get to the truth. As 12-steppers say, "Walk through pain to peace." In the novel The Alchemist, a shepherd boys asks, "Why don't more people listen to their hearts?" Because it is painful. Nonetheless, I see it is as the only way. Many feel that exploring the unconscious can stifle creative Writing.

Tripod: Yes, I once heard Edward Albee say something like that. I also remember hearing it said of John Berryman, and look how he died.

RD: I have found it a blessing. I wanna know what's in there. For me, a sense of psychological resolution is very important. There is a progression from narcissism to denial to acceptance that I wanted my character Easter to go through, and which I think many of us go through in our lives.

Tripod: Who do you think should read your new book?

RD: This is a twin theme memoir of becoming a writer and teaching creative Writing. I hope it would be fun and informative for anyone who is interested in memoir or in the literary creative Writing process, or really anyone interested in Writing themselves. I hope many will read it just for fun. I tried to write a book that would describe my teaching and methods in a humorous way. It is also a story in its own way that can be read by anyone interested in literature, creative Writing, or in teaching creative Writing. I hope it is not only useful, but also a good read.

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