Encore!

I can’t get the catchy lyrics of “Delta Dawn” out of my head, and it’s been months since writers serenaded a surprised Wade Rouse at the close of the 2024 Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop.

The impromptu, rousing sing-along capped the most highly rated conference in our history. It was one of those serendipitous, pop-up moments that few of us will forget.

During a keynote talk that sparked both tears and laughter, Rouse recounted how he grew up gay in the Missouri Ozarks under the watchful care of his mother and grandmother “who swept me under their wings and apron strings and loved me unconditionally and refused to let anything or anyone hurt me.” During a middle school talent show he said he made “the horrific mistake of “singing ‘Delta Dawn’ while holding a faded rose, no less, in front of a crowd that made the fellas from Deliverance look like the Jonas Brothers.” Heckled off stage, he angrily asked the women how they could let him be humiliated.

“No one should ever stand in the way of you being you,” his grandma told him.

That was 17 bestselling books ago. Today, he writes under the pen name of Viola Shipman to honor his grandmother, a seamstress who stitched a sense of self worth and confidence in him. It’s no surprise that his protagonists tend to be “hardworking women who get knocked down by life and get back up and forge on with as much humor, heart, dignity, grace and faith as they can muster.”

His books, Rouse said, “are filled with laughter and remind readers of what matters most in the world: each other. My books are a reminder about what my grandma called the ripple effect of kindness in this life. … She was a woman overlooked by society at the time because she offered nothing of value, but look at the legacy of her life and the power she had on me and this world simply by loving unconditionally.”

One other woman deeply influenced Rouse and fueled his dreams of becoming a writer. With Erma Bombeck’s children, Betsy and Andy, sitting within eyesight of the podium, he recalled how his mother and grandmother regularly read Erma’s columns at the pink Formica dining room table. The women would smile, often double over in laughter, and then place the day’s clipping on the refrigerator “under a magnet of a spotted bovine that read, Holy Cow, I Can’t Believe I Ate the Whole Thing.”

“I remember thinking, if I could do that — if I could make those I love — and those I didn’t even know — smile or laugh or just escape for one moment and forget their troubles, boy, it would be the greatest job in the world,” he told writers. “I started like Erma did. I locked myself away in my bedroom and wrote stories in longhand about my family, (about) how crazy they were.”

When his grandparents gave him an aquamarine Selectric typewriter for Christmas, he promptly tapped out a note to Bombeck telling her how much he loved her writing and how he dreamed of being just like her. “My family gently warned me I might not hear back from her, but I knew better … I felt just like Ralphie in A Christmas Story. My dream was going to come true,” he said. “I waited and waited, and then, one day, my dad brought home a big padded envelope addressed to me. Inside was an autographed picture of Erma Bombeck as well as a handwritten note on a card that read: ‘Keep writing, laughing and believing, Wade!’”

Rouse left writers with the same pep talk. “The key inside of you will open up the world if you just lock away your fear and open up your heart to a dream,” he said quietly. “All the power resides in you. All you have to do, as Erma wrote me nearly 50 years ago, is keep writing, laughing and believing.”

After Rouse received a standing ovation, the crowd jumped to its feet to sing  “Delta Dawn” during the Q&A session. He was visibly moved by the gesture, yet it’s his words that still move us.

“It’s amazing how a few lines of response from Erma, and an autographed photo, set the course of his life,” one attendee wrote in the post-workshop survey. “I came away from his keynote more convinced than ever that our stories MATTER.”

Essayist and faculty member Amy Paturel may have best summed up the full force of his talk: “I’m still trying to figure out how Wade Rouse managed to make me ugly cry and belly laugh inside the same sentence.”

And finish the night in song.

(Illustration by Bob Eckstein. For a compilation of essays and videos about the 2024 Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop, visit “The Erma Experience.”)