Aug. 24, 2009 issue
Writers encouraged
By Katie Funk Wiebe Wichita, Kan.The obituary of Maynard Shelly mentioned his courageous editorial stance. Maynard was also a leader in another area: development of writers.
In 1966 he organized a vanload of 16 Mennonite writers from the Kansas area to travel to Wisconsin for the Green Lake Writer’s Conference. I believe freelance writing in the Mennonite world was given a big push at that conference. Altogether we were about 50 Mennonites in that large interfaith conference, many of whom went on to successful careers in writing and publishing.
Maynard coached new writers, advocating simpler, shorter sentences and fewer abstractions and generalities popular in devotional writing writing then. I took his advice to heart. He deserves commendation for this contribution to Mennonite writing.
Comments
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Thank you Katie, not only for the tribute to Maynard but for heeding his counsel with your own contributions!
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