By Anna Herod
National award winning authors of fiction and poetry travel from all across the country to interact with students and Kyle residents thanks to the Visiting Writers Series, hosted by the Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center.
The Katherine Anne Porter house, situated on Center Street, is home to the Writer-in-Residence program in which a graduating master’s of fine arts student in the creative writing program at Texas State is chosen to live in the KAP house for three years.
Jeremy Garrett, the current writer-in-residence, is in charge of coordinating the Visiting Writers Series, which is free of charge.
The series has hosted writers such as Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx, the first writer to read at the house, as well as National Book Award winners Tim O’Brien and Robert Stone, Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle, Pultizer Prize winner Richard Ford, and U.S. Poet Laureates Robert Haas and Charles Simic.
“The Porter house feels strongly that bringing major writers – Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners among them – to Kyle is a community service, and we welcome
Kyle residents to attend as many events as they can,” said Tom Grimes, director of operations at the Porter house.
Scheduled readings by the visiting writers take place on Fridays in the Porter house. Garrett began attending these events before he even graduated from Texas State, and has noticed the impact it has on the community.
“There’s a mother and she brings her two daughters with her and (has been) for at least four years, probably longer,” Garrett said. “It has really rubbed off on one of the daughters. She just graduated from high school, it’s her first year in college and she wants to be a poet now. And it’s all because she’s been coming to these events.”
The Porter house has been a source of inspiration for Garrett as well, especially since he began living in it. Built shortly after the city of Kyle was founded, the structure served as the childhood home of the famous author of American literature it was named after from 1890-1902.
Following the restoration of the house in April of 2000, the designated National Literary Landmark began to infuse not only history into downtown Kyle, but culture as well.
Garrett first read Porter’s writing at Texas State when he took a southwestern literature class. Now that he lives in the house Porter grew up in, his enjoyment has increased when reading her work.
“There’s one of her stories Old Mortality, and it is basically based off of her grandmother and her family,” Garrett said. “When I read it I imagine the opening of the stories actually set in the house because this was (Porter’s) grandmother’s house.”
He said the story opens with two young girls going through their grandmother’s boxes, looking at her fabrics and old family photographs.
“I just felt like it was set in that room over there,” Garrett said. “Her grandmother had such a big influence on her, and I think the year’s she spent in this house with the grandmother who was the storyteller of the family, that really inspired her to be a storyteller and a writer.”
Garrett is happy that he has a chance to extend that inspiration to Kyle residents too. The Kyle Public Library engages with the Porter house as well, he said.
“We just started something with the library where we bought them a bunch of copies of Lesly Jameson, one of our first visiting authors this year,” Garrett said. “They actually had a book club at the Kyle public library and they came down here. It was neat.”
Garrett believes the Visiting Writers Series offers the people of Kyle a resource that isn’t available in many places.
“It’s a smaller town and people aren’t used to going to literary readings, so it’s kind of something unique to have in a town so small,” Garrett said. “I would boast that it’s the best thing going on in Kyle because we have Pulitzer prize and Booker prize winners coming to read here.”
Upcoming readings at the Katherine Anne Porter House:
Laurie Ann Guerrero, Friday, April 15 at 7:30 p.m.
Rob Spillman, Friday, April 29 at 7:30 p.m.
