Terence Winch GSAS '71: Acclaimed Writer, Musician, and Editor

By Peter Krause

Terence Winch, who received a M.A. in English from Fordham in 1971 and completed all requirements for the Ph.D. except for the dissertation, is the author of many books, including That Special Place: New World Irish Stories (Hanging Loose Press), a collection of non-fiction pieces about his life in Irish music. He has published eight poetry collections, among them Irish Musicians/American Friends (Coffee House Press), an American Book Award winner, and The Great Indoors (Story Line Press), winner of the Columbia Book Award. He is the author of the short-story collection Contenders (Story Line Press). His work has appeared widely in numerous journals and anthologies. Terence is the editor of The Best American Poetry blog.

Terence is also the co-founder, button accordionist, and principal songwriter for the acclaimed traditional Irish band, Celtic Thunder, which first performed in 1977. Celtic Thunder has twice performed at The White House. His song, “When New York Was Irish” has become a standard in Irish America.

Celtic Thunder, 1977. Left to right: Terry Winch, Linda Hickman, Steve Hickman, Nita Conley, Jesse Winch.

From 1986 to 1992 Terence was the Senior Editor and Acting Chief of Publications at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. From 1992 to 2009 he was the Head of Publications at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI).

Winch’s first novel, Seeing-Eye Boy (Four Windows Press), published in 2020, brings to life the Irish immigrant world of 20th-century urban America. The vivid and engrossing story of Matt Coffey, set in the Bronx in 1957, offers an inside look at a lost universe, where two cultures---Irish and American---blended together in the new world.

Please visit Terence’s website for more information. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Peter Krause: Thank you very much for being with us today, Terence. Could you talk about how your time in the graduate program at Fordham prepared you for a long and successful career in editing and publishing at the Smithsonian?

Terence Winch: I was at The Smithsonian for twenty-four years. Richard Giannone [now Professor Emeritus of English] was my mentor at Fordham. I’ve always told people that in many ways Richard taught me how to read. In his class on the modern American novel, there were some students who found Richard frustrating because he didn’t approach fiction in terms of plot, character, and structure. Rather, he was focused on a novel’s language. He would center on metaphorical patterns, repeated images, and other linguistic elements that you might overlook if you were reading in a more conventional way. I credit him with turning me on to that method of deep reading. I must also mention Elizabeth Sewell, who was a wonderful scholar, poet, and novelist. Overall, my education at Fordham helped sensitize me to the complexities of language, enhancing those critical thinking skills that come into play in many fields. My scholarly background also meant that when I worked in the museum world I was not mystified or intimidated by academic language, which became a valuable asset.

I played music for a living for almost ten years, from 1977 to 1986. As I got older, that became less tenable for lots of reasons. So when I thought about what I could do in “the real world” that might provide a more stable income, I thought: “well, I can certainly be an editor.” I was already a fairly well-established writer. I wrote for the Washington Post for six years as a book reviewer. I freelanced for various other publications, including The Wilson Quarterly. My writing skills were eclectic, but well-developed.

One day I was in a bookstore in Dupont Circle in D.C. where I had worked for four years—Discount Bookshop, which is long gone now—and John Olsson, the owner, said, “Terence, I’m going to start an in-store magazine. Do you want to be the editor?” I immediately said yes, thinking this would be a way to build up some editing credits for my resume. So, I took on the task of originating and editing the bookstore’s magazine. They paid me in store credit, not actual money, but that was okay with me. I got The Chicago Manual of Style, Words into Type, and a few other usage books. I taught myself how to do editing marks. Later, when I pondered about where to take my weird assortment of writerly and editorial skills, the Smithsonian immediately came to mind. There were more than a dozen Smithsonian museums in D.C.  and all of them had publications departments. I went into networking/job-seeking overdrive, and eventually that paid off.

At first, I snagged a free-lance gig with the Smithsonian’s direct-mail book operation, where I copy-edited a book called Space, Time, Infinity: The Smithsonian Views the Universe. This was subject matter—physics—that was way beyond the pale for me, but the experience of copy-editing it was wonderful, a real brain workout. I had to understand what I was reading, of course, in order to edit it, and that was the challenge. In the end, the task paid me pretty well and gave me a bit of credit with the Smithsonian. From there, I was able to get the job at the American Art Museum. Some combination of luck, perseverance, and skill helped me to climb up the ladder over the subsequent years.

Getting a position at the National Museum of the American Indian presented a wonderful opportunity. The museum came into being via Congressional legislation in 1989. We opened a New York branch in 1994 and a major museum on the National Mall in 2004. Hired in 1992, I was among the first employees; and because it was a start-up, I was able to largely invent the publications department. We produced all kinds of projects at the time, in many ways standing out at the Smithsonian. We had a very successful co-publishing program, collaborating with publishers such as HarperCollins, Abbeville, Smithsonian Press, and others. We did a number of important publications with National Geographic’s book publishing division. As far as I know, that was the first time that The Smithsonian and The National Geographic Society really collaborated. For the books we published with National Geographic that accompanied the opening of the Mall museum in 2004, we got the largest advance, as far as I know, that anyone had ever gotten at the Smithsonian. It was a great job. I was able to build and develop a really excellent staff. We did everything from scholarly books to commercial books and other products. We started two distinct series of childrens’ books. We even began a recording line, producing music and spoken arts recordings. I had a lot of background as a recording artist with Celtic Thunder, of course, and that was all invaluable in my role at NMAI.

We initiated projects that no one had ever pursued before. For example, we released an album called Wood That Sings, which explores the ubiquitous presence of the violin throughout the indigenous world, both in Latin American and in North America. No one had ever had that notion before. But when we looked into it, we discovered that the violin (or fiddle)  is a central instrument throughout the Native world. We did a general anthology of Native music from throughout the hemisphere. We also put out a wonderful album called The Beautiful Beyond, which I thought of as our “faith-based initiative”: an album of Christian songs in Native languages. Part of the museum’s mandate was to preserve and foster Native cultures and languages. Quite often, for some tribes, the only existing example of a Native language would be the Christian hymns that had been handed down for generations. These recording projects were all immensely satisfying.

We also started a series of in-house scholarly books. My department was generating a good bit of money from royalties and sales (and we had to fight to retain control of those funds).  One use we made of that money was to launch an in-house publishing operation called NMAI [National Museum of the American Indian] Editions. That was politically smart, if I don’t say so myself, because often curators would want a book to complement what were often fairly esoteric, academic projects, and I knew it would be near impossible to interest a co-publisher in these projects. But by starting an in-house publishing operation, we could simply publish these books ourselves. We had the staff. Cranking out a thousand copies of a book that we designed and edited in-house suddenly became possible. We set up some distribution deals for those books as well, and also sold them through our museum shops and online. It made everyone happy, and it was a good use of the money.

I think that having worked for a long stretch in the “real world” as a musician and freelancer helped me to make astute business decisions. Of course, I also grew up the child of immigrants in The Bronx. That was relevant when I arrived at the Smithsonian because I had an unabashed entrepreneurial streak and an acceptable level of “street smarts.” I’ve always believed that my upbringing helped me connect with my Native colleagues. Like many Natives, I grew up in a very traditional way. My neighborhood in The Bronx was a tight-knit immigrant community. Everyone practiced the same religion; we all went to ceilidhs, which are traditional community dances; music and storytelling were of pivotal importance.  At the museum, Native Americans who grew up on reservations saw in me someone who came from a not all-together dissimilar background.

Ultimately, I was not hired because I knew a lot about Native American culture. I knew very little. I was hired because of my experience in museum publishing and, importantly, because of my skills as an editor and writer. 

PK: Being a musician, editor, and manager all involve extensive collaboration. Collaboration is often difficult but necessary, both in academia and in business. Could you say more about that?

TW: That’s right. At NMAI we had the added vital elements of cultural validity and cultural sensitivity to consider. For instance, I wanted to do a “question and answer” book that would be the Smithsonian’s response to the public’s common queries about Native Americans. Our New York City branch had an information desk, and one day, while up there for a meeting, I heard one of my colleagues, a Native woman, talking to someone about the bizarre questions that the information desk had gotten that day. Do all Indians live in teepees? Do Indians wear socks? They got those kinds of questions all the time. So, I asked if they kept a record of all the questions and the answers, and she said yes. I thought this would be the basis for a very useful and important book. In order to ensure that the book would be free of errors and cultural sensitivity issues, however, we had to put the manuscript through something like five or six levels of review. If no one was available among my Indian colleagues, we would always hire Native guest editors to take the lead on our projects. That kind of collaboration and that level of scrutiny always increases the difficulty of publishing a text, but there was no responsible way around it. The Q&A book, by the way, is called Do All Indians Live in Teepees? and has been a steady seller for the Smithsonian for years.

Here’s another quick anecdote. At the museum we had 15 or so gorgeous paintings by an Absentee Shawnee Native American artist named Ernest Spybuck. One of his pieces, Procession Before War Dance, depicts a beautiful Native procession. We used that piece in one of our first major publications called Creation’s Journey. I thought that since we had such marvelous works of art by Spybuck we could publish a calendar showcasing them. This was at a time when those lavish, four-color calendars were pretty popular. I assigned my best editor the task of obtaining permission from the tribal councils to use the artworks in a calendar. After a year or so of diligently trying to secure permission, she finally came to me and said it wasn’t going to happen. We would never be able to get permission. The tribal councils believed that Spybuck had violated sacred ceremonies by depicting them in his painting. Despite the fact that we “owned” the artworks, which were about a hundred years old at that time, we were unable to bring attention to this wonderful artist in the way we envisioned. That was frustrating. Non-Smithsonian organizations might have been able to pursue a project like this, but we, of course, wanted to respect the decisions of the tribal councils.

PK: How have you balanced your own passions for music and poetry with your professional life as an editor and manager?

TW: Creativity is an incredible asset. If you are a creative person and you bring that gift to whatever your job is, you will be way ahead of the game. There’s no question about it. When I started out in the publishing industry, I was constantly coming up with ideas. I didn’t have to start a recordings division at the museum, but I did because I had all of the background, experience, and, frankly, the energy to do it. If you have an innovative spirit and are willing to take on multiple projects at once, you stand a better chance of not only being more successful but having more fun at the same time. Creative people are also often more flexible, which I think can help make them successful. My wife used to always say that I could be making a fortune in the corporate world, which was flattering, but I think there’s some truth in that. A creative person with an excellent scholarly grounding possesses a mighty combination to bring to the world. And if you use it right, the world might even reward you.

PK: Thank you again, Terence, for sharing your thoughts with us.

TW: My pleasure.