An Apple of Gold in a Setting of Silver

by Kim (Weaver ’96) Maxwell

Evelyn “Dindy” Bence ’74 didn’t dream of writing award-winning novels or poems. Cs in freshman composition classes proved discouraging. As a senior she took another creative writing class, from Lionel Basney, because it seemed slightly less painful than the alternate public speaking requirement. She recalls, “Struggling to write a personal essay for Professor Basney, I thought: There are people who do this for a living. Why would anyone put herself through this torture?”

Although majoring in business administration, Evelyn audited several literature classes and surrounded herself with English and writing majors. As the one who could balance the checkbook, she signed on as business manager for the Boulder and Star. She says, “Houghton’s liberal arts base and friends who drew me into campus publications sent me on my life path.” Her first job was in the purchasing department of Christian Herald magazine, then edited by Kenneth Wilson ‘41. Bored with the business aspect, she took an editorial position with their book club division. She relates, “Two years of reading potential book selections and making subconscious judgments—this works, that doesn’t—taught me to write.”

In 1978 Evelyn submitted a B-graded essay written for that “Basney class” to Campus Life Magazine. They bit, and the adrenaline rush from that initial publication carried Evelyn through subsequent rejections. While employed as an editor first for Doubleday and later Today’s Christian Woman magazine, she continued to write poems, articles, and later, books. The professional network and credentials she established there laid the groundwork for self-employment—for 13 years now.

Though varied in genre—personal narrative, novel, devotional, prayers—her books carry the stamp of the author’s voice. Each offers moments that snap you into awareness, like stepping from a warm room into a crisp autumn night. Mary’s Journal, a biblical novel, garnered a Christianity Today Critics’ Award, though the project had been turned down by four or five prospective publishers. “I’d put it in a file drawer and figured it would be discovered after I’d died,” she says, “but then a friend got on me for lacking courage and an editor coaxed the pages out of the folder and I signed a contract.” The novel proved the most challenging to write. “Mary’s Journal is start to finish about a mother and son. People who read it and then find out I haven’t had children are quite amazed,” she explains. Moving from wonder to humor, the journal conveys both the uniqueness and human quality of Mary’s motherhood.

Evelyn’s latest publication, Prayers for Girlfriends and Sisters and Me, sparkles with tongue-in-cheek laughter and simple wisdom. Dedicated to a Houghton roommate and four older sisters (all Houghton graduates), the prayers create word pictures of decades-long friendships. “Each one takes me to a specific conversation or time in my life or potential time in my future life,”

Evelyn says. On a good day Evelyn can write three or four pages, 1,000 words. The process is still torturous. As for her days spent wrestling with words, crossing them out, staring out the window, and beginning again, she explains, “I didn’t choose this search for words as much as I was drafted – like the servants in Jesus’s Matthew 25 story to whom the master entrusted coins known as talents.“ For Evelyn, finding the word that, when fitted between other words, becomes an apple of gold in a setting of silver makes the labor well worth it.

“I love having written,” she admits.