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Printer-Friendly ModeFirst-time novelist shares writing, tips with students
March 1, 2010 —
Up-and-coming novelist Natalie Baszile visited SVSU on Wednesday, speaking about and reading from the novel that she has been relentlessly working on for more than ten years.
Baszile lectured to creative writing classes, and Wednesday evening she presented a passage from her newly completed book at Founder’s Hall.
Baszile’s visit was made possible by the Voices in the Valley series, in conjunction with the King-Chavez-Parks Initiative.
Always recognizing her love for writing, Baszile left the family business more than ten years ago to pursue her writing career. She was selling steel at the time and realized she needed to follow her dream.
“I’m happy to have taken the leap to pursue my dream,” said Baszile.
From there, she began the novel SVSU students heard Wednesday night.
“I hope it gets published,” said communications junior Alli Bennett. ”I want to read it.”
She described the difficulty of revising such a big project seven to ten times, and the constant struggles of completing a first novel.
Her story of the courage she obtained to stick with such a grueling project was both gripping and inspiring.
“When I completed the novel, I was exhausted — physically and mentally,” said Baszile.
Although she hails from San Francisco, her novel is based in southern Louisiana. The book, “The Grinding Season” is about an African-American mother who inherits a sugar cane farm, and the struggles of getting the crop prepared in time for what sugar cane farmers call the “grinding” season — the crucial time of harvesting the sugar crop.
More so, it is seemingly about the struggles of diversity and growing within a new environment. There are similarities much like Bazile herself: a middle-aged African -American mother, who is from a different environment than southern Louisiana.
“I’ve learned a lot about myself in the process,” stated Baszile.
Luckily for her, a close friend owns a sugar cane farm, so she was able to research sugar cane farming by visiting more than ten times in a twoyear period to become familiar enough with this art.