According to novelist and short story writer Kevin Brockmeier, good fiction has to happen at its own pace and cannot be hurried onto the page.

"If you love a story, you have to give it all the time it needs," he told the audience gathered to hear him speak at Lyon College. "And we have to love our story."

The Washington Post has called Brockmeier a "thrilling" storyteller, The Chicago Tribune gave him its Nelson Algren Award, and The Oxford American named him one of the Best Writers of the South.

And on Tuesday, he visited Lyon College as the inaugural event in this year’s Contemporary Writers Series.

Brockmeier is the author of the novels, "The Brief History of the Dead" and "The Truth About Celia," the story collection "Things That Fall From the Sky," and the children's novels "City of Names" and "Grooves: A Kind of Mystery."

Some of Brockmeier’s other awards include three O. Henry Prizes, the Italo Calvino Short Fiction Award, and the James Michener/Paul Engle Fellowship. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he also taught, Brockmeier is a native Arkansan and lives in Little Rock.

Even though Brockmeier is dedicated to the art and craft of creating literary fiction, he says writing is second in importance to reading. He said there are volumes of writing guides available that espouse the theory that writing is "holy," but he disagrees with that notion.

I hate that," he said. "Writing is work, not holy. What’s holy is reading… Reading helps me see my own life more clearly."

He said the ideas for his fiction come from everyday life.

"Everybody has ideas, but writers make a living out of chasing those ideas down," he said. "Of the hundreds of ideas we all have every day, the ones that are worth something are the ones that keep coming back to you over and over."

Some of his work contains elements of fantasy, but Brockmeier is also fascinated by reality.

"The oldest living thing in the world is a 4,600-year-old bristlecone pine tree in California, and the biggest living thing is a 2,200-acre fungus in Oregon," he said. "Things like that have always been extraordinary magic to me."

Though creating fiction requires an active and nimble imagination, truth is what elevates craft to the level of art.  "How powerful simply telling the truth can be," he said.

The Lyon College Contemporary Writers Series, the Visiting Fellowship in Creative Writing, and the Heasley Prize Reading Series all provide outstanding opportunities to anyone interested in reading – or writing – fiction, poetry, drama and creative non-fiction.

Andrea Hollander Budy, Lyon’s Writer-in-Residence, initiated the Visiting Writers Series in 1991 when she joined the faculty, and the series immediately began drawing both Lyon students and members of the community to hear authors read from, and speak about, their work.

But since she will be one of the featured writers this year, the name of the series has been changed to the Contemporary Writers Series.

The next event in the Contemporary Writers Series will be held Tuesday, Oct. 24, when poet Jason Sommer visits the Lyon campus.

Sommer grew up in the Bronx, N.Y., in a house that held secrets. Eventually he learned that his immigrant father, uncle and aunt had survived labor camps, including Auschwitz. Later he would incorporate his family’s stories into award-winning poems that have earned him the prestigious Whiting Foundation Writers’ Award, the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award and the New England Prize, among others.

Budy will be the featured author on Tuesday, Nov. 28, when she’ll celebrate the publication of her latest collection of poems, "Woman in the Painting," just released by Autumn House Press. Her previous books include "House Without a Dreamer," winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, and "The Other Life," which garnered high praise by reviewers in such publications as The Washington Post and The Georgia Review.

Budy is winner of the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship, the Runes Award in Poetry, a Pushcart Prize for Memoir, and writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Arkansas Arts Council. Since 1991, she has taught at Lyon College, which awarded her the Williamson Prize for Excellence in Teaching.

For more information on the Contemporary Writers Series, contact Budy at ahbudy@lyon.edu.