Horse Farm’s Little Girl Lost

At the first meeting of the current season, the members of the Indian River Literary Society were treated to two other firsts—author Aryn Kyle speaking for the first time about her first novel.

When introducing Kyle, society president Charlotte Terry reminded the attendees that this is the eleventh season of the Literary Society and thanked Bob Bauchman and Mary Beth Vallar, both with Northern Trust Bank, for founding and directing the organization. She also announced that the current season would be dedicated to the memory of Charles Pistole, a founding board member who passed away last summer.

Aryn took to the podium with unusual aplomb for a 29-year-old author giving her first talk. She began by thanking Mary Beth for her phone support when Aryn’s flight was rerouted the day before, causing her to miss the traditional author’s dinner on the eve of their presentation. “I was really stressed out by the time I arrived in Vero Beach,” she said, “but, as I gazed at your beautiful ocean, my stress just melted away.”
She previewed her presentation by telling the group that she would talk about how the book came to be. Of necessity, and to our amusement, a good deal of how the author came to be was also included.

Aryn was born in Peoria, Ill., but grew up in Grand Junction, Mont., where, she said, “I was the only member of my family not in the family-owned heating and air-conditioning business.” Instead, she studied literature at the University of Montana and received a Master’s of Fine Arts degree in fiction writing.

Her first novel, The God of Animals, is set on a horse ranch in Colorado. Aryn, right from the outset, let everyone know that the book is “not autobiographical.”

She always knew she wanted to write, she said, and described her training at Montana’s MFA program as invaluable. “The creative writing workshop is a pretty mysterious beast,” she said. “But the combination of deadlines, instruction and just the permission to devote a couple of years to writing really worked for me. Overall, being able to live in a community of other writers was hugely important. And I was lucky to go through the program with a group of students who were writing really well; as much as I learned from the instructors, I learned way more from the other people who were in my workshops.”

Anyone who has ever been fortunate enough to participate in a writing workshop will concur, as a good instructor will have each member read their work for all to hear, then offer gentle criticism.

Read the entire article in the January 2008 issue