“Don’t ever hesitate to push me into wider and deeper thinking.”

February 4, 2021 4:55 PM

"Madeleine L’Engle’s mail arrived in prodigious batches by the summer of 1976, 14 years after the publication of A Wrinkle in Time. From her study in Manhattan’s Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, where she served as librarian, the 57-year-old author attended to editorial correspondence, fan art, manila envelopes stuffed with middle-school-reader responses, royalty statements, and speaking requests from around the world. >Amid the usual haul, one correspondent stood out: Ron Irwin, inmate #130539 at the State Prison of Southern Michigan, a 25-year-old former member of the Black Panther Party." Abigail Santamaria for Vanity Fair on the writing relationship between the prolific author of A Wrinkle in Time and a Black Panther imprisoned for a murder he didn’t commit.
posted by ChuraChura (6 comments total)

What an interesting article. I live in southeast Michigan so I was familiar with the "Free Ahmed" campaign, but certainly not the rest of the story.

Thanks for posting it.
posted by Orlop at 5:43 PM on February 4, 2021 [4 favorites]

Thanks so much for this!
posted by Wretch729 at 5:56 PM on February 4, 2021 [1 favorite]

I haven't read the article yet. But I'd like to say that when I was in grade school we had a class in which we had to write a letter to an author, and I wrote to Madeleine L'Engle. And she replied to my letter! It was such a wonderful feeling, one that has stuck with me all these years, to have that connection.
posted by medusa at 6:34 PM on February 4, 2021 [8 favorites]

Well that's just fascinating. Makes me want to reread The Other Side of the Sun, which I know I read many years ago.
posted by suelac at 10:48 PM on February 4, 2021 [2 favorites]

Damn, I want his memoir published, I wonder what would need to happen now?

By September 2015, Voiklis was trying to find Rahman a literary agent. “His writing was so good and beautiful, and his story so compelling, that I wanted to help get it out there,” she says. But he abruptly stopped responding to emails. Months later, she learned that Rahman had died on September 21 of a sudden heart attack at the age of 64. The memoir has never been published.

Would also love to read their correspondence if they wanted people to.
posted by away for regrooving at 10:53 PM on February 4, 2021 [4 favorites]

Fascinating, and I agree I'd love to read more of the letters. Thanks for posting!
posted by grandiloquiet at 12:12 PM on February 5, 2021 [1 favorite]