Tribute to Ian Macmillan
In 1997, I took my first fiction writing class. Ian Macmillan was my professor. He was the first novelist I’d met. He wrote books about WWII and Hawaii--eight novels, five short story collections, over a hundred short stories published in magazines and journals. He won the O. Henry Award, a Pushcart Prize. He won the 2000 PEN-USA-West Award for Fiction for his novel Village of a Million Spirits.
As a writer, there are maybe one or two in Hawaii in his league. As a teacher of fiction, dedicating some forty years to University of Hawaii creative writing students, he is unparalleled.
I got lucky in graduate school. I wasn’t there for any reason in particular. All I knew was I didn’t want to be a valet at the Pacific Beach Hotel for the next forty years. As an unclassified grad student, I took courses from any instructors who would have me. His class was full, but Ian Macmillan took me in. He showed interest in my writing. And a year or so later, when we were taking a smoke break outside Kuykendall, and I told him I wanted to write a novel for my master’s thesis, he simply said I should if I felt like doing it. That’s the kind of teacher he was. He wasn’t there to help me make decisions. He was there to help me with my decisions, regardless of whether they were good or bad.
The Tattoo was my thesis. Macmillan was one of my thesis directors. After I graduated, Macmillan was the one who recommended I send the manuscript to Mutual Publishing. A couple years later, when I wrote my second novel, The Queen of Tears, Ian agreed to look it over before I submitted it. By the time I wrote my third, I didn’t even want to ask him to read it. I knew he’d say yes, and I started to feel bad.
And I’m not the only one. There are dozens of former Macmillan students who published and continue to publish today. In fact, I’d venture to guess that about half of Hawaii’s local writers under sixty took a Macmillan class at one time or another. Names off the top of my head: Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Darrell Lum, Eric Chock, Gary Pak, Nora Okja Keller, Rodney Morales, Robert Onopa, Robert Barclay, Mavis Hara, Michael Tsai, Alexei Melnick, Chris Kelsey, Samrat Upadhyay, Tamara Pavich…
When people retire from the UH system, they usually receive a handshake and a twenty-dollar pen, something along those lines. When these retirees die, former colleagues pass each other in the halls and may tell an amusing anecdote or two about the deceased, then resume the work of correcting terrible essays on Alexander the Great or Macbeth.
This guy deserves more than that. He deserves a statue.
During the 2009 Fall Festival of Writers at UH Manoa, writers will be paying tribute to Ian on Wednesday, November 18. A reading will be held at 4:30PM at the Queen Lili'uokalani Center for Student Services, room 412.
It's not a statue, but at least it's something.
