Author Interview: The “Friday Night Lights of Hockey” — Jay Atkinson’s “Ice Time” Turns Twenty

By David Daniel

“Hockey gets in the blood—you develop an intense passion for the game, and either you leave it—too many early mornings, bus rides, urine-smelling rinks—or you just love it.”

Author Jay Atkinson — he anchors his writing in his home ground, Photo: Paul Bilodeau for the Eagle-Tribune.

Local writer Jay Atkinson is author of eight books, including the bestselling Legends of Winter Hill and the prize-winning Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston’s Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America. A new collection of stories, The Tree Stand, will be published in October by Livingston Press. I sat down with Atkinson recently to talk about his book Ice Time: A Tale of Fathers, Sons, and Hometown Heroes, newly reissued in a 20th anniversary edition, and his friendship with his mentor and writing teacher, Harry Crews. (Atkinson’s remembrance of Crews for The Arts Fuse.)


Arts Fuse: In his foreword to the new edition of Ice Time, Peter Fornatale, remembering first seeing it, as a junior editor at Crown, writes, “I was immediately transfixed by Jay Atkinson’s clean, muscular prose, and I could tell from skimming the first pages that his blue-collar, hockey-obsessed New England town was going to be an exciting storytelling milieu.”

Jay Atkinson: He came to Methuen in 2000 for the original book party for Ice Time. It was at the American Legion hall (laughs, remembering) — my rugby friends came, a lot of the teachers and coaches from high school came.  Pete came up from New York. That was the first time we met in person, other than when I went to NY when he bought the book. He was a young New York guy, grew up on Long Island, and he was taken with the northern Massachusetts rough-around-the-edges humor, the Boston-esque accent and sardonic humor. “No wonder you write about this,” he said. I told him I don’t know anything else.  A lot of my stories are set in the Merrimack Valley. I need to anchor the work in my home ground, which is something I learned from Harry Crews. The ground that you sweated and bled into is the ground you should write about. In this case, the hockey rinks you bled onto. (Laughs.) Which I have.

At that time, the late ’90s, I was doing features for the Globe, outdoor stories, literary stuff, writing for magazines. I had a new novel I wanted to shop. I’d sent a copy of my first published novel, Caveman Politics, to the Michael V. Carlisle Agency and they liked what they saw and asked one of their  agents to reach out. So, I got a call from Neal Bascomb — probably their youngest agent. We’ re talking on the phone—our first time — and he asks what I’m working on. I told him I have this idea for a magazine story,  said I’d like to do the “Friday Night Lights” of hockey. This is twenty years after I’d played on the first team ever from Methuen High School, and I explained I’d go embed myself — and before I even finished the second sentence, he said, “That’s a book. That’s what you should do next.” Not the novel I was trying to get them to represent. “If you could get total access…” Which I could. I knew everybody in town. I wrote up a proposal and it happened. Next thing you know I’m going to NYC and having all these meetings, talking to editors. Several publishers were interested and the advance offers were all in the same ballpark but Pete Fornatale at Crown was the guy I wanted to work with.

AF: That was twenty years after you’d played, and the book came out twenty-five years after. Now fast forward twenty years since the book’s publication, and you’ve got a 20th anniversary edition.  That has to feel good.

JA: Fornatale made it happen. He was like the angel investor. He said this book deserves another life. He got the rights from Crown. Got the electronic file. I played for the team in 1975, so, yeh, forty-five years. Pete reached out of the blue. He’s long gone from Crown. Said he was going to start this company PTF Press and publish only books he really likes and said, “What do you think?” He’s a one-man operation . . . and there ended up being a lot more work. But it’s out now.

AF: You speak often about Harry Crews—who, by the way, was featured in a recent New Yorker piece. He’s been an important figure in your life . . .

JA: Yeh. After I graduated from college in Nova Scotia, I enrolled at University of Florida. It’s funny, in years since, I’ve met people who went there specifically because of Harry Crews. I didn’t even know of him back then. It was an accident I got to know him. He’s a definitive authority on narrative structure, voice, character development, use of dialogue. Other than my father, he’s had the most influence on me of any man I’ve ever met. On a lot of levels, we had very little in common — he’s a Southerner, I’m a New Englander. We had a brusque first meeting. He’s a man with his emotions on his sleeve, a bit of a loose cannon. The first meeting in class I had just come from rugby practice, I had a black eye and it was my first week of playing rugby for the U of F team that ended up being a big part of my life. He spoke with a deep Georgia accent that was hard for me to understand, so I asked him to repeat something, and he must’ve taken it wrong. My first time in his creative writing seminar and he challenged me to a fist fight. I’m thinking, like what kind of a (expletive) college is this? Because at Acadia it’s guys from England and Wales and Scotland, they’re all super-genteel guys in tweed jackets. So, Harry says, “I don’t (expletive) like your accent, let’s go out and settle this.” I said, “Okay. Let’s go.” He liked that.

He outweighed me by fifty pounds. But he was heavyset, a drinker, I figured I could just wear him down, like rope-a-dope. Everyone in class was shocked. As we start walking out, a classmate — a quiet-spoken Army Vietnam vet named Mike Costello who I’d spoken to only a couple times and who knew Harry — says, “Harry what are you doing? The guy’s new to the class. He didn’t understand what you were saying.” Harry had been a Marine.  “Yeah, well I don’t (expletive) much like his accent, either. What do you think of his accent?” Costello looks him in the eye and says, “It’s memorable. Just like yours.” Perfect. Harry backed off, and commenced the class. He asked if anyone had brought a story to read. No one spoke up. I said I have.

AF: And you read it?

JA: It was about a fistfight I’d been in college in Nova Scotia. A guy picked it with me. I ended up getting the better of him. It made a big change in my life. All of a sudden, I was universally accepted by everybody in the athletic community there. You know, ‘He’s the guy that beat up that guy.’

Harry listened, head down the whole time, occasionally nodding. When I finished, he leaned across the conference table. He’s six feet, long arms. I’m seated, he extends his hand. (Imitating gruff voice) “My name’s Harry Crews. We’re gonna get along just fine, Slick, just fine.” And we did. I spent six semesters in the writing workshop, and on Friday afternoons, when he was in his office I go and see him. I tell my students (at Boston University) if we you want to learn storytelling, you should come hang around my office. I went by Harry’s over the course of a year-and-a-half — maybe twenty times — where it was one on one. He knew I respected the craft.  After I left the program, we’d be in touch intermittently. And I saw him one more time in person, two years before he died. Visited him in Gainesville. That was the last time I ever talked to him. So, yeah, I talk about him because he taught me a lot.

AF: You were a collegiate two-sport athlete. Talk about the Skate & Read youth hockey program you founded in your hometown.

JA: One of the things I realized is that I’m in a different world athletically than I used to be. I’m not playing full contact hockey and rugby anymore, but I’m mountain biking, open-water swimming, hiking, some trail running. I went rock climbing recently for a story I’m writing for a magazine. So, I still have an athletic career going at my age, but when I think back, the two great loves of my life were rugby and hockey. Once I couldn’t play competitively anymore — after I left Canada, where I’d played at a certain level, I just played men’s leagues. Hockey gets in the blood — you develop an intense passion for the game, and either you leave it — too many early mornings, bus rides, urine-smelling rinks — or you just love it. Writing the version of Ice Time that was published in 2001, I loved skating with the kids every day, I’d be on the ice every day,  gym class and everything. I wanted to be able to keep doing this, so I thought I’ll just start my own youth hockey program.

My son has a disability. The youth hockey coaches were ignoring him because he wasn’t going to be a big star in high school; but I knew he could learn to skate well enough to play the game. I said, screw these guys, I’m going to form my own program. In 2001 I didn’t realize any of this. I figured I was  just creating Skate & Read as a way of keeping my connection with the high school, that I was getting a chance to be nostalgic about the year I played in high school. But now, writing the epilogue to the new edition of Ice Time, I realize that the book is a paean to my love of the game, and how I share that love of the game with people through Skate & Read. The goal is to perpetuate the love of the game in our town. I’m paying my respect for how much I got out of the game, starting when I was thirteen — being a goalie and playing with twenty-year-olds. That was an experience I wrote about when I was in Harry’s class. It was the only story I ever wrote that he ever liked.

So, Pete coming around with this offer to republish Ice Time had given me the perspective, and I can now contemplate why it’s important to me that the book is rereleased, why I’m still doing the fun league twenty years on. The book taught me that reason. A chance to mentor players to coach and, in turn, mentor the kids below them, the five and ten-year-olds. To respect the game and play for the love of it. And this ties in with my passion for writing. It all comes full circle.


David Daniel is author of many books, including White Rabbit, a novel of the Sixties and Inflections & Innuendos, a collection of flash fiction. He teaches part-time at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and blogs regularly at richardhowe.com.

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14 Comments

  1. W Joe Taylor on June 16, 2022 at 5:55 pm

    Very nice interview. Didn’t know that Jay and Harry were actually walking out to tangle. Praise the lord for Mike Costello.

  2. Sophia Falbo on June 16, 2022 at 9:41 pm

    Wow! This is such an interesting interview to read. I loved getting to know about the backstory behind Jay’s book “Ice Time,” and hear so much more about his relationship with Harry Crews. Jay has spent so much class time giving us advice as future freelance writers, especially what he’s learned from Harry Crews on imitating the structural underpinning of writing. After taking Jay’s course last semester, I’ve learned how to be a more clear and concise storyteller, and I’ve even got my first article published from a profile I wrote at the end of the semester! Overall, great interview and all the luck to Jay’s 20th anniversary edition of “Ice Time!”

  3. Jay on June 17, 2022 at 10:16 am

    Sophia you’re on the right track for learning what Harry was teaching!

  4. Suzanne Crow on June 18, 2022 at 1:32 pm

    Great interview and even better professor! Jay brings his industry experience into the classroom and truly cares about his students and wants to see them succeed. I’m excited about the rerelease of “Ice Time!”

  5. Erin Sullenberger on June 19, 2022 at 12:27 am

    Last semester, I was in Jay’s communications writing class at Boston University, and he often spoke about Harry Crews, his hockey/rugby backgrounds, his son, etc. His love for sport, writing, and teaching was clear, and this interview does well to tie these passions into the release of the 20th anniversary edition of “Ice Time.” The premise of this book sheds light on Jay’s teachings from the importance of simplistic (“clean, muscular”) prose to the value of education, and reading about “Ice Time” feels like sitting in on another of Jay’s classes—it’s exciting!

  6. Morgan Mulligan on June 19, 2022 at 6:24 pm

    By the end of my first class with Jay, he had already mentioned the relationship he had with his mentor Harry Crews. He spoke fondly of his time at UF because of the tools he was able to acquire, but he also emphasized how tough of an experience it was to write for a professor who never seemed satisfied by his work. Nevertheless, Harry’s tough demeanor and feedback helped Jay succeed as a writer. He now carries this lesson with him as a mentor to his own students. Jay is critical and not afraid to give his honest opinion on your work, but he does this to make you create something more meaningful and become a better writer. His Harry-like approach to teaching has undoubtedly made me a stronger writer and student.

  7. Jason Trask on June 20, 2022 at 4:20 pm

    Great interview. I especially love the part about Harry Crews, who is one of my all-time favorites. His story telling is so great, it takes a second or third read to notice that his prose can be sloppy in places.

  8. Gabriela Romero on June 22, 2022 at 5:09 pm

    After just one semester in his class, I came to majorly respect and admire Jay. He often mentions Harry Crews’ impact on him and I believe he is now playing a similar role in many of his students’ lives (including mine). I love storytelling and Jay has proven to me that your career can be what you love most. He once told us that he sometimes has trouble falling asleep because he is so excited for the next day and I really didn’t know a future like that was possible. The 20th anniversary edition of “Ice Time” is just another reminder of the professor’s expertise in this field!

  9. Tammi SB Wilson on June 22, 2022 at 5:35 pm

    Great interview with an author who writes what he lives from where he lives. Raconteur and adventurer. Authentic stories from full contact living. Time to add another Jay Atkinson book to my collection.

  10. David Wilson on June 22, 2022 at 7:58 pm

    Great interview Jay.

  11. Sarah Wilson on June 26, 2022 at 8:37 am

    Great interview! Excited for the book!

  12. Megha Bharadwaj on June 28, 2022 at 3:27 am

    Great interview with a great guy!
    I took Jay’s class recently and he taught the tenets of great storytelling. I’ll never forget “brief, simple, clear.” 🙂
    Jay always credited the people who came before him, people like Harry Crews.
    Sad I never got to meet Harry, but I’m glad people like Jay are making sure his lessons are taught to the next generation of writers.
    Proud of all your work Jay, can’t wait to see what your future holds!

  13. Francesco Montali on June 29, 2022 at 5:27 pm

    Jay was one of the first professors I met when I transferred to Boston U. Told by a friend to take his class because he “understood the college athlete schedule”, I obliged. Easily one of the best decisions of my college years. After one week in Jay’s class, I knew how much I would enjoy coming to class three times a week and speaking with Jay before/after class and countless times in his office hours. Jay has an extensive knowledge in narrative storytelling, mostly through his time with Harry Crews but also through the countless books and movies that he has enjoyed over the years. If you are ever in need of a book or movie recommendation, stop by Jay’s office and he’ll have you covered. Great article!

  14. Jim MacDonald on June 30, 2022 at 11:33 am

    Once again, another spin back through my memory that somewhat paralleled Jay’s childhood experience in Methuen. We played as teammates on the first Pop Warner football team and we played hockey as opponents on both the high school and Midget levels. Our paths occasionally crossed in a social level in high school as I attended a Catholic high school in the next town over. But no matter what, we always had and always will have common bonds forged through sports / especially hockey. My oldest son Eric was a prominent character in Ice Time all those years later- how COOL is that! I am proud of my upbringing and my sports buddies , now lifelong buddies that I had the privilege of knowing. Some are gone now but the rest of us forge on, knowing that we will always have that special bond – and one that always resurfaces every time I read Jay’s work. It is a drug to me- and it is legal! LOL

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