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Cleaver Magazine

Fresh-Cut Lit & Art

 
 

Category Archives: Interviews

A conversation with Nancy Ludmerer, author of Collateral Damage: 48 Stories by Kathryn Kulpa

Cleaver Magazine Posted on February 14, 2023 by thwackFebruary 14, 2023

FLASH-WRITERS: TRUST YOUR READER: a conversation with Nancy Ludmerer, author of Collateral Damage: 48 Stories (Snake Nation Press, 2022)
by Kathryn Kulpa

I had the pleasure of interviewing Nancy Ludmerer, a student in one of my Cleaver flash fiction workshops, about her full-length flash collection Collateral Damage: 48 Stories, published by Snake Nation Press. Nancy’s work, both fiction and nonfiction, has been widely published in journals, and she moves effortlessly from brief, lyrical microfiction to longer, more complex stories that push the boundaries of flash fiction. A master of compression, she can unfold a lifetime in a paragraph, as she does in this piece from the collection, originally published in Night Train:

Bar Mitzvah

When Benjy started to choke on a piece of celery stuffed with scallion cream cheese, I turned from the buffet table and asked, are you okay, and when he shook his head, I said raise your arms but he kept choking, so I slapped him on the back of his fancy new suit, and then two words clicked in my head Heimlich maneuver so I punched my fist into his stomach even though this was the wrong way to do it, but I couldn’t think, couldn’t think of the right way, his gray eyes huge and terrified, I had never seen him that scared, so I cried we need help over here Benjamin is choking and then she was there, Dinah, the wicked stepmother in her fuchsia gown, the airline stewardess (flight attendant, Benjy had corrected me once, don’t be sexist, ma) and she clasped her arms around him from behind and jerked back hard and the celery flew across the room on angel’s wings and I said thank you God while this woman who had wrecked our lives ten years earlier hugged my son and I knew then, on his Bar Mitzvah day, that for everything there is a purpose under heaven.


Five Questions for Nancy Ludmerer:

Kathryn: I love your cover image! Was it something you chose, or did the publishers provide it? Can you tell me a little bit about the photographer and the subject?

Nancy: After accepting the book for publication, Jean Arambula of Snake Nation Press almost immediately asked my thoughts for the cover. The book is in two sections: Part I “Collateral Damage” and Part II “In the Repair Shop.” The stories in Part I turn on a loss and end in uncertainty. Those in Part II tend to offer hope or redemption at the end. It may be fleeting but it’s there. Before responding to Jean, I looked at the websites of three or four artists who are friends and whose work I admire. Chrystie Sherman is a brilliant photographer; the cover photograph, featured on her website, immediately spoke to me because, as I perceived it, it depicted an artist repairing a massive sculpture. There were so many details I loved, from the relative size of the artist and the work to the small mannequin of a graceful woman off to one side. Given Snake Nation’s limited budget, I paid to use the photograph and was thrilled with how it came out. Something else rather extraordinary: Chrystie took the photo several years ago in Ukraine, one of many journeys she took—to India, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, Cuba, and Eastern Europe—to photograph the remnants of Jewish communities there. You can see more of her wonderful work at chrystiesherman.com

Kathryn: Thanks, Nancy! I love the sense of scale in that cover photograph, from the larger-than-life sculpture to the human artist to the tiny wooden figure. Everything is relative, and the details are perfect, down to the smallest object. That’s also true of the stories in this collection. “Bar Mitzvah” was one of my favorite pieces, especially the airline stewardess/flight attendant correction and “Don’t be sexist, Ma!” The story’s form, the mad rush of that one breathless paragraph, fits the subject perfectly, and it’s a wonderful exploration of some of the recurring themes, like the mysterious role of fate in people’s lives, also seen in “Dream Job” and “There I Will Take Your Hand” and “Tale of a Fish.” 

I think this is leading me to question two. Do you see fate—the working of chance, or perhaps God—as one of the themes of the book? There are stories where characters agonize over what is the right action to take, sometimes to comic effect, as in “Hal’s Sleep Showroom” and “Reasons Why You Should or Shouldn’t Sleep With Your Son’s Piano Teacher,” and other stories (“Dream Job,” “There I Will Take Your Hand”) where a random happening or thoughtless choice have life-shattering consequences. How much control do any of us really have over our lives? 

Nancy Ludmerer

Nancy: Your question reminds me of Hamlet’s response to Horatio in Act V, Scene II: “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.” The book recognizes the things we cannot control, yet that doesn’t stop the characters from trying to “shape [their] ends.” None of us can escape loss, but how we respond to it can shape the future. In some stories, the protagonist cedes control—an example would be “St Malo” where the protagonist stays with a man who diminishes her. In others, the narrator has made a decision she wishes she could undo. One of these, addressed to a cat, is aptly called “The Decision.”

For me, one of the most heartbreaking stories is “Clementine” where a young girl, forced to take her dog Clementine to the ASPCA because her family can’t afford to keep her, dreams of a bright future for Clementine (in spite of her friend’s dire prediction) because the dog’s bark is always saying “yes!” As readers (and as the writer), we worry terribly for Clementine’s future—and the narrator’s—but for all of us, saying “yes” is critical to continuing after devastating loss. In “There I Will Take Your Hand” the grandfather finally tells his adult granddaughter a long-held secret about his childhood in Vienna, revealing that he had a sister who perished in the Holocaust when she was unable to go on Kindertransport and he went in her place. What happened certainly was not in his control (he was six at the time) but telling his granddaughter about his sister, after not speaking about her for decades, most definitely is.

I often say I know I’ve found the perfect ending to a story when I read it aloud and can’t help crying as I approach the end. I usually get over it with repeated readings but “Clementine” and “There I Will Take Your Hand” are among the stories where I still have a difficult time reading aloud the final sentences.

Kathryn: Those two stories and “The Decision” definitely got to me as a reader. Another question I have is about the structure. As someone who has worked on putting together flash chapbooks, but not yet a full-length flash collection, I’m fascinated by how writers structure a long(ish) collection of very short pieces. In your acknowledgments, you thank your son for suggesting you put together a collection a decade ago, and I wonder if you see this as a kind of career retrospective—your best work over a number of years? Or did you pick stories that fit together best, or that expressed the ideas of ‘collateral damage’ and ‘repair’? Did the title come first, and then the stories, or did you choose the title after looking at how the group of stories you’d chosen worked together as a whole?

Nancy: Collateral Damage: 48 Stories is definitely a career retrospective.  The “oldest” story in the collection was published in 1996; the two most recent in March 2022.  That said, there are many stories that didn’t make it in. The four stories in Collateral Damage that are not flash fiction still are no more than around 2000 to 2700 words; I have other 5000- to 7000-word stories that I never considered including. There are also many flash stories I’m proud of—“How Are You?” (published in Vestal Review) and “Learning the Trade in Tenancingo” (published in KYSO Flash), among them—that are not included in Collateral Damage because they are ‘making the rounds’ in other collections with a different focus. Regarding those two stories, I have under submission to various presses a story collection (both full-length and flash) in which all the stories concern the law in some way (tentative title In the Shadow of the Law).

When I first thought about what stories might belong in Collateral Damage, I was aware that many of my stories concern children, who are often the collateral damage of their elders’ mistakes and bad behavior.  But soon that expanded to include stories where a marriage or relationship itself is the collateral damage, or even a narrator’s self-image is damaged, as in “Do You Remember Me?” As for the title Collateral Damage, it came first. Indeed, before it was the title of the collection, it was the title of a microfiction, the first story in the book. With most stories, I remember the moment or experience or prompt that eventually led (perhaps years later) to the story, but with this micro “Collateral Damage”—where a common housefly, a witness to domestic violence, is the “collateral damage”—its origins remain a mystery.

Kathryn: Another structure question, but focused more on individual stories. There are many kinds of stories here, from tiny micros to flash fiction to traditional-length short stories, but flash definitely dominates the mix. Can you talk a little about how you came to writing flash fiction? I know you mentioned Pamela Painter’s class in your acknowledgements. Are there other workshops, anthologies, or writers who inspired you? Does flash feel like your natural voice now, or do you find yourself alternating between flash and long-form prose depending on what kind of story you want to tell? I noticed some of these pieces, like “13 Tips for Photographing Your Nephew’s Bar Mitzvah When You Still Can’t Forgive Your Brother-in-Law,” make excellent use of a hermit crab structure. Do you find that writing to a specific form, such as a list, or setting a strict word limit can be a way to make creativity bloom?

Nancy: I began writing flash fiction over 30 years ago in a workshop taught by the wonderful Pamela Painter at the University of Vermont summer program. The next summer I followed her to the Kenyon summer program, where I returned many times, frequently studying with Nancy Zafris, another extraordinary teacher and writer. (Collateral Damage: 48 Stories is dedicated to the memory of my parents and Nancy, who became a dear friend.)  Having to produce one or two stories a day in Pamela’s and Nancy’s workshops was exhausting but also confidence-building, as were some acceptances that followed.

Back at home, where I was a full-time lawyer and single mom, I could manage to revise and polish a flash fiction; this was harder with a 15- or 20-page story. The form is one I particularly love. Indeed, some of my favorite writers are masters of flash (as well as longer works), including Chekhov, Kafka, Paley, and Tillie Olsen. In terms of creative inspiration, I don’t consider myself a master of the hermit-crab form (“13 Tips” is one of my rare hermit-crab successes), but do find prompts and word limits helpful. For years, Beth Ann Bauman’s weekly Filling the Well workshops (previously at the West Side Y in New York City, now on Zoom) have kept me writing even when life intervenes. As to whether flash is my natural voice, I’m not sure. I’m thrilled to say that my novella-in-flash chapbook, set in 17th-century Venice, is soon to be published by WTAW Press. When it comes to my longer work, Karen Bender’s advice and guidance have been invaluable.

Kathryn: Finally, so many of these stories are about failed relationships and family structures. Romances that fizzle out (“Waiting,” which reminded me of that wonderful Stuart Dybek story “We Didn’t”), children disappointed by their parents (“Foley Square, July 2019,” “Fathers,” “Family Day”), single parents struggling to cope after death or divorce (“Adventureland,” “Security Device”) and partners conflicted about the overwhelming responsibility of parenthood (“Hal’s Sleep Showroom”). Yet other stories, like “There I Will Take Your Hand” and “Cara Cara,” present a more tender picture of family bonds. This makes me think again of the titles of the two sections, “Collateral Damage” and “In the Repair Shop.” Did you think consciously about including more ‘hopeful’ stories to balance out the darker pieces?  More broadly, is it necessary for art to provide us with hope or redemption, or is it enough for it to reflect something true about life, even if it’s a tough truth?

Nancy: I definitely chose to include stories that end on a more hopeful note in Part II of the book. The original manuscript I submitted to Snake Nation Press had the same number of stories as the published version, but was not divided into “damage” and “repair.” Given the two years that elapsed between submission and acceptance (mainly due to COVID), SNP let me revise the manuscript to include around ten new stories and make other changes and deletions. In that process I realized it made sense to divide the book into two sections, giving readers some breathing room. As it is, readers occasionally tell me they need to stop after reading a story and continue later because each story creates its own universe. Another way I see this is that, in flash, the reader must fill in the blanks, what’s left unsaid. As a writer of flash, you must trust your reader to do some work and engage readers enough so they are willing to do it. (And yes, Stuart Dybek’s brilliant story “We Didn’t” remains an inspiration; I was beyond thrilled that he wrote a blurb for Collateral Damage).

There are several stories that could have worked in either section, ‘damage’ or ‘repair.’  In the final revision stage, my goal was to make the sections roughly equal. In response to the final part of your question, I don’t think a story has to provide hope or redemption. If it changes or engages the reader in some way, that is enough.


Collateral Damage:48 Stories (134 pages, $20, ISBN 978-1-7346810-7-9) is available from Snake Nation Press and signed copies are available on Amazon. Additional purchasing information is available at nancyludmerer.com.

Kathryn Kulpa is the author of Girls on Film, a flash chapbook (Paper Nautilus); Who’s the Skirt?, a micro-chapbook (Origami Poems Press); Pleasant Drugs, a short story collection (Mid-List Press); and Cooking Tips for the Demon-Haunted, forthcoming from New Rivers Press. Her work can be found in Flash Frog, Five South, Ghost Parachute, Milk Candy Review, Unbroken, and Wigleaf, and her stories have been chosen for Best Microfiction and the Wigleaf longlist and nominated for Best Small Fictions and the Pushcart Prize. Kathryn is a senior flash editor at Cleaver and leads writing workshops.

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Published on February 14, 2023 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

A conversation with Christopher M. Hood, author of The Revivalists by Hannah Felt Garner

Cleaver Magazine Posted on January 30, 2023 by thwackJanuary 30, 2023

I Tell My Students All The Time, “Your Job Is to Make Art. Your Job Is Not to Explain Shit,” a conversation with Christopher M. Hood, author of The Revivalists (Harper 2022)
by Hannah Felt Garner

I met Christopher M. Hood in the English teacher’s lounge at the Dalton School in New York City, where he’s been a teacher since 2008 and where I periodically substitute. Starting out as a high school English teacher, Christopher went on to found Dalton’s Creative Writing Program, which he now runs full-time. My first impulse for this interview was envy-tinged curiosity: how does he approach creative writing to college-bound high-achievers? And how did building a curriculum for teenagers impact his vision of the craft? Which brings me to the interview’s other major impulse: to discuss Christopher’s debut novel, The Revivalists. The premise: Bill (our narrator) and his wife Penelope are surviving in Westchester in the aftermath of a devastating shark-flu pandemic in the near future. When they hear disturbing news from their daughter Hannah, stranded in California, the couple set out on a cross-country road trip beset with obstacles both comedic and horrifying. Christopher and I sat down to chat during school lunch hour, where Christopher reflected on the making of his pandemic-inflicted family drama, and the impact of its release last fall.

Hannah Garner: While I was reading your book, I found myself thinking a lot about genre. Maybe the obvious generic traditions that we could put it in are the pandemic novel, the dystopian novel, disaster, road trip…But then I noticed the structure of the narrative, which is rather episodic. I was starting to see how different episodes seem to veer into different genres. For example, there’s a little Wild West moment, there’s a man-versus-nature moment with the lions, Utopian moments where we encountered the black feminist collective,  maybe even the gothic, the comedic? So I was wondering if we could start there, by asking: how were you thinking about genre as you were writing this book?

Christopher M. Hood: First of all, part of that episodic nature is that every chapter is directly inspired by a book of the Odyssey. And so that gave me some of the creative impulse moving along. I think of it as literary fiction but my definition of literary fiction is pretty expansive. I loved Zone One, Colson Whitehead’s zombie novel. I think some of the tropes that you find in genre—so many of my favorite books use those in literary fiction! I think to me, what keeps it from being a dystopia novel is that it’s about a marriage. And it’s interesting because the feedback to the book—when I do get negative feedback—can be people saying like, “This isn’t what I wanted it to be. This was a dystopian thriller, but I didn’t get the conclusion that I wanted to get.” Because to me, the conclusion is: we’ve arrived at the family, you know? Like if it’s the Odyssey, and he’s trying to get back home, that’s where he has arrived at the end.

Hannah: Still keeping in that genre line, I was thinking that there’s an arc in which you go through all these disaster genres—or genres of violence you could say—and what wins out, what the book ends up being is domestic fiction. I wanted to read a passage where your book was telling me this. It’s towards the end of the novel, when Bill has finally been reunited with his daughter Hannah.

“We just want you to be hap—” My voice trailed off as I saw her mouthing the words along with me.

“To be happy. Yeah, I know,” she said. This is so fucking classic.”

“How is this classic?” I waved my arms at the Armageddon-haze of the cult encampment around us, but I knew precisely what she meant. Like a tsunami casually obliterating a seaside resort, our domestic drama was sweeping over the firelit scene and drowning it. A man with a rifle could have dropped into the ditch, barking orders and firing warning shots into the dirt at our feet, and we would have spun toward him in unison and said, “God, do you mind, we’re talking!” until he backed away, apologizing, palms up.

Christopher: That was so much fun to write by the way. I was like, this is exactly it, right? This is the thesis of the book: sure, the world ended, sure, the majority of the population died, sure, it’s dystopian yada yada yada—we’re still going to be fighting about the same shit. If there’s a thing that made me write the book, it’s that. This sense of like: all these things are going to survive the end of the world—gender, or like the family dynamics. Bill’s still going to say this wrong thing and Penelope’s still going to be like, why did you say that?

Hannah: It seemed to me that one of the things the book is most interested in figuring out is what survives after devastation. What it is that withstands in humanity. Thinking more specifically about what survives in America—since this book takes place in America and we don’t really have a sense of what’s happening elsewhere in the world—what ideas about America informed the writing of the book and then maybe did new ideas about America come to the fore for you?

Christopher Hood

Christopher: I think the way I survived the writing of the book is really by focusing on the couple. For me as a writer I’m more trying to stay narrowly focused and then hoping that this all says something about the broader picture. I’m not going in saying “I shall now share my thoughts about America.” But I think it’s inevitable that they would come in. I think the easy answer is that I’m writing about race and class and gender and the ways that those survive the apocalypse and the ways that those split apart and unite and stratify America. A friend of mine was talking about why novelists aren’t being asked to explain our moment. I guess I find myself shying away from that idea—that that’s a novelist job. I don’t think I can really explain for anybody. On some level I’m just trying to talk about this couple and trying to get it right. I tell my students all the time: your job is to make art. Your job is not to explain shit. Your job is not even to necessarily know what you have written. Maybe you just feel like it’s done. It’s the reader’s job to figure out what it means.

Hannah: I want to start making a connection to your teaching. The central couple in your book leaves their very verdant, fertile home in Dobbs Ferry, where they have certain resources to get through the pandemic world they live in. And then those get stripped down over the course of the narrative. There’s a pivotal moment in the desert in the West where they no longer have any means of transportation and—it’s kind of a funny moment—all they’re left with is a gold bar and a San Cristobal necklace, which are just vestiges of things that used to be useful in their former lives. That felt like a very symbolic moment of this stripping down process that happens in disasters. Colloquially, we talk about the COVID pandemic this way, that it brought us down to bare bones. That was one thing that I really connected to in your book, that felt very true. And it got me thinking, by an association with the metaphor of “bare bones,” of what you might do in the classroom when you’re teaching writing. This seems like a weird connection but I’m curious, what your “bare bones” of writing are, and then maybe has this kind of stripping down effect we’ve been experiencing over the last couple years affected what your take on that is?

Christopher: My teaching—the core belief—is that I take my students seriously as writers, even before they take themselves seriously as writers. So, some of my baseline things. One is: your goal as a writer, the baseline, the very rock bottom goal, is to keep the reader turning pages. So that’s partially why I wrote something that is sort of a page turner. Because that’s the goal! Then the other piece as it relates to fiction. You were talking about the gold bar and the necklace with San Cristobal. Both of those things end up serving these super important purposes at the end of the book. And a reader could think, “Oh how smart, he knew he was going to need these things.” And if you’re writing a paper about the book, you might write about the symbolic importance of St. Christopher who protects travelers and why that necklace, dadadada…Why did I put those in the book? Because with the necklace I had some lines of dialogue and I was like, “Oh, I need a thing because I’ve had too many lines of dialogue.” So I put in a thing. I tell my students all the time: this is how it works! You don’t plan it all out, you don’t have to know. That’s not your job. I put stuff in the book, like I populate it with things, because then those things give me material, they build the world of the book.

A huge part of what I do is I have all these students who are very earnest and hardworking. And they’re high school students, which means they have an incredibly difficult job. They’re being asked to juggle seven subjects, to get an A in all these subjects, and it’s all so much stuff that the only way to survive is to be organized, efficient—all of which are death to writing. So much of what I do is I’m like, “Just play, stop trying to make sense.” My theory of writing that I’m trying to teach them is you build the world and you populate it with characters and with things—and then you see. Because otherwise you’re just trying to be super smart. And it may be that there are people who are just super smart and that’s the way they write, in which case: great. But I think for the most part when writers are writing a poem or a story or a novel, they know some of what they’re doing, but they’re also trying to create something where things will happen.

Hannah: I want to ask you about your article, “The Gold Standard” that you wrote for Writers and Teachers. In it you write that one of the problems you see with schooling’s emphasis on grades is that students start to lose the connection between the works of literature they study for class and the writing they produce for class. You write:

“Many students today don’t really understand that writing can be judged on its own merits, that it can be good and bad, more and less interesting. They only know that it can be graded.”

You argue that teaching creative writing in high school, as you do, helps them make that connection by teaching “contextual thinking.” Quoting you again,

“I’m not trying to teach Joey to write Heart of Darkness or The Great Gatsby. But I am trying to teach him that they are written documents; that they are the product of human decisions made on the basis of criteria that he can understand. They have lessons to teach. Not moral ones (although they may have those as well) but stylistic ones. Lessons about writing.” 

I was curious if that’s still how you’re thinking about teaching and also if you have any anecdotes of instances where you see that working in the classroom.

Christopher: I think that even more than I used to. One of the things that I say to my students—and let’s be very clear that I am really aware of my privilege that I teach creative writing and run a creative writing program in a high school. I tell my students, “I will read whatever it is that you write. Do you know why? Because they pay me! It’s my job! But your goal is to produce writing that I would read even if I wasn’t being paid. In other words, your goal as writers is to transcend this dynamic.” Because that’s how writing works. You go into the bookstore and you’re not like, “Gosh look at all these books, the writers must have worked so hard, I better buy all of them.” No! You are selfish, you read what you want to read, you read what you like. What I’m saying is: if you’re teaching writing, the goal has to be to produce writing that matters. I have multiple students—lots of students!—that have written poems or stories that rattle around in my head along with ones by Emily Dickinson and John Berryman and James Baldwin and all these writers that I love. Because they’re great! They’re really good poems. Or, wow, that was a really good story. And the kid wrote it eight years ago, and I still remember it. Because when I was reading that story, I wasn’t a teacher evaluating a piece of writing within a rubric. I was a reader wanting to know what happened next.

Hannah: You shared with me some documents that go into your teaching. One of them is articulating the ethos of your classroom which is informed by this workbook Dismantling Racism. One of the tenets of white supremacy culture as outlined in the workbook is “urgency.” And I thought that one was particularly interesting for aspiring writers, for writers, for young people who might be even more susceptible to the sense that they need to achieve a certain thing in a certain amount of time. I was curious how you integrate resisting this culture of urgency in your classroom.

Christopher: So, I just finished writing a new essay about running and commitment and talent. And one of the things I write about in it is that I thought for a long time that as a runner at Haverford College, I’d been a failure. Because I was never an All-American, which I had somehow arbitrarily decided would be the thing that was my apotheosis. And then I could finally, as Emily Dickinson says, “put myself away as a completed man.” And of course, it’s just a piece of paper, right? And at some point I realized, “Oh, I’m just beating myself up for no reason.” And I would never in a million years say to one of my teammates who wasn’t an All-American, “Oh, so you were a failure.” Oh my God! Like, I don’t think that: that’s horrible! And yet I totally said it to myself.

Publishing a book is a complicated thing, partially because you have all these ideas of what it’s going to be like. And then it isn’t! And you know, there’s disappointments in that. Then you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t make this list and I didn’t make that list and I didn’t this and that and the other thing.” And like, I don’t know, there lies madness. I mean, I’m human. I feel that stuff. There are things I wish had happened for the book that haven’t—at least yet. But also, there’s all these people who have read it and loved it and had a real experience reading it. And wouldn’t it be just a terrible shame if I let attachment to whatever and that sense of urgency deprive me of feeling proud of this book that exists in the world and that is meaningful to people? There are people who are like, “I love that book,” and that means that to them, that book belongs to them. And that’s amazing.

One of the great blessings of this fall has been that it has been a great fall of teaching. My classes are absolutely wonderful. I love the work I’m doing with them. It’s super meaningful. I’ve got great students. And I don’t want it to stop. So do I want the book to explode in the zeitgeist and start selling like crazy? And would I love to see it on the New York Times best-seller list? Of course. That would be amazing. But I also don’t want to lose the thing that I have. And why this interview is really fun. Because I’m a teacher. I was a teacher before I was a writer. I love teaching high school. And I think you can hear it. Probably if we listened to this interview, we would hear that when my voice is most excited is when I’m talking about my students and my teaching. And I’m lucky that the teaching and the writing are—I’m clasping my hands together—because they’re one and the same, you know?


Hannah Felt Garner is a writer and teacher of prose living between Brooklyn and Paris. Her short stories and criticism can be found in Cleaver, Paris Lit Up, and Revue Profane. Besides teaching literature and composition, Hannah also contributes editing to Mother Tongue and Cleaver’s own interviews section. You can follow her writing on Instagram @hannahfeltgarner.

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Published on January 30, 2023 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

A Conversation with Alison Lubar, author of Philosophers Know Nothing About Love by Michael McCarthy

Cleaver Magazine Posted on January 11, 2023 by thwackJanuary 11, 2023

Wisest is she who knows she knows nothing: a Conversation with Alison Lubar, author of Philosophers Know Nothing About Love
Thirty West Publishing House, 2022

by Michael McCarthy

Read Alison’s poem “Grand Slam” in Issue 39 of Cleaver.

I first met Alison Lubar at Fergie’s Pub in Center City Philadelphia. Kind of. The Moonstone Art Center runs poetry open mics every Wednesday there. One night I took to the stage to read a poem I had written in an online workshop. When I stepped down, Alison came up to say they recognized my poem. Only then did I recognize them as the leader of the very same workshop for which I’d written it. A digital interaction became a real-world one, though I suppose COVID-19 collapsed the border between digital and real-world realms a while ago. Anyway, we met. I went to Fergie’s every week and often heard Alison read there. Their debut poetry collection, Philosophers Know Nothing About Love, draws upon their encyclopedic knowledge of Western philosophy and retells select myths in bracing, piercing, harrowing verse. This makes it sound rather heady, but it’s also a delight for the senses, a playground for the intellect, and a cleansing of the soul. Take, for example, this excerpt from the poem “Two Carbon Atoms Reunite After 500 Years”:

            I was on the wing of the last bird
            too—those nitrogens party
            until what’s left of champagne
            are sticky tire prints. I stumble
            into the metaphysical.

            Anyway, it doesn’t matter.

            Science is a shadow of the divine

In this interview, which has been edited for clarity, we discuss finding a poetic voice, the Orphic turn, and the philosophical implications of stubbing one’s toe.

Michael McCarthy: So we met for the first time at Fergie’s, first time face-to-face at least. You saw me read a poem, and I saw you read yours. One question I have for you as somebody who reads their poetry frequently is: what do you think is changed about a poem when it’s performed as opposed to read on the page?

Alison Lubar: A lot of my writing uses brackets and line breaks, and that doesn’t always translate. Actually, I don’t want to say that. I think it’s different when it’s read aloud because it’s hard to mirror—or no, honor those in reading aloud. But I think something to be gained through reading a poem aloud is a setting of tone or a removal of some ambiguity, which is in some ways a removal of some possibilities.

Michael: It’s interesting that you spoke of tone because the tone of the chapbook is the subject of my next question. Fantastic, first of all.

Alison: Thank you!

Michael: I thought it weaved together a lot of different themes and ideas, but I still got the impression of a single poetic speaker. I saw that some of these poems were first published in 2020 and 2019. That caused me to wonder: how did you find the voice for Philosophers Know Nothing About Love?

Alison: The real grounding for the voice lies in the title, really. A philosopher can’t know everything about love—or they know nothing about love. But then, if we’re thinking of that in the Socratic way—that “Wisest is she who knows she knows nothing”—then in a way she knows the most. I approached this chapbook [by] organizing the voice around someone who’s trying to figure out what that means in terms of a dawning or awakening as happens in the cave. It’s the way that knowledge is both a narrowing and expanding of the world. The speaker is really caught in all these limbos between knowledge and experience and understanding.

Michael: Is that something you find yourself trying to sort out in your own life?

Alison: Yeah. I mean, I always think of what else is shared besides the physical. Obviously, there are atoms, and I always tell my students, “Oh, you could be breathing the same atoms of oxygens as the dinosaurs breathed, and how cool is that.” But then I think about what kind of metaphysical exchanges are there that we have no physical measurement for because they’re metaphysical. We can’t know what those are. So is there some kind of larger, invisible, cosmic exchange that we just don’t know about? I have a line in the collection about “what metaphysical building blocks / have we shared to shape a soul?” What kinds of things exist that connect us to other people and that we carry around. We shed our skin cells every seven years. I think that’s true; I don’t know. But what about things that are emotional or things like memories?

Michael: We’re in some dense philosophical territory here, and philosophical ideas appear many times in the book. You hold a degree in philosophy, as a matter of fact. In what way do you think that education informed Philosophers Know Nothing About Love?

Alison Lubar

Alison: (Laughs) I feel like I had struggled with dualism my entire life! My dad was a philosophy major, so I guess it runs in the family because [philosophy degrees] are incredibly useful (pauses for a laugh). Sarcasm.

I was really trying to find answers to aspects about identity, and even though the book isn’t explicitly queer or about intersectionality—right now I’m doing a lot of writing about being mixed race—it was a lot of trying to figure out what things are and what things aren’t, trying to figure out where I fit in and who I fit in with. If we think of Aristophanes’s speech in Plato’s Symposium, that’s also in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, it was such a formative myth for me. I realized at the end of the film that no one else completes you. The speech really understands how the parts of you complete who you are because at the end Hedwig walks off with the complete face tattoo. It’s not two different people fitting together. It’s the parts of herself uniting.

I think studying philosophy has been a way to understand the world and my experience. Once I started getting into yoga teaching—and not being scared of having feelings—I realized, wow, this Western priority on solely the intellectual is so incomplete. There’s that Hamlet quote, “There are more things in heaven and earth […] than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” I’m constantly overwhelmed in the best way by what I don’t know. The more I do know, the more I realize I don’t, and that’s really fascinating and liberating, rather than scary now.

Michael: Speaking of dualism, the collection definitely engages the intellect, but it also engages the senses in very tangible ways. I was wondering what role the body plays in your poetry.

Alison: The body is one way to access knowledge and understanding in a non-intellectualized way. Using sensual imagery connects the mind and the body in the same way that the breath does in yoga practice or a running practice. It’s something that draws the whole self together because even though we can imagine ourselves unembodied and say, “Oh, am I a bodiless brain in a vat? Am I in the matrix? Let’s have some philosophical thought experiments,” my stomach is still going to growl. If I stub my toe, it’s still going to hurt.

Michael: Would you consider the feeling of love to be one of those experiences like hunger or the pain of stubbing your toe in that it’s directly tied to the body?

Alison: Yeah. With the types of love that I know I’ve experienced, there’s been that love that feels like your heart’s been ripped out of your chest, and there’s the feeling that you’re being swept up. In the Divine Comedy, in the Inferno, there’s Paolo and Francesca, the lovers that are being whipped around in this wind and they can’t find each other, so this sense of love and love lost—which are two separate questions—is a warming. It can be a sense of warmth and expansiveness. I think of love as blue and calm, but the speaker in the book doesn’t necessarily experience that. They’re also experiencing the tremendous loss and absence of love. Another question is: does self-love feel the same as love with another person?

Michael: Sharing however much you’re willing to share, what kind of personal experiences informed this collection?

Alison: Names are omitted to protect the guilty, of course. But will people recognize themselves? Maybe. I want to take the Carly Simon approach—if you think this poem is about you, maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. But everything that I’ve written is based on some experience I’ve had whether it’s dreamt or real or imagined.

Michael: Speaking more specifically to your professions as an educator, have your experiences as a high school English teacher and yoga instructor informed your poetry?

Alison: Absolutely. I actually only started writing seriously as I was ending my yoga teacher training because I had been so confined in many ways in my past and hadn’t felt the freedom to access that aspect of the emotive, hadn’t felt a safe creative space. With the amount of journaling we did in yoga teacher training, it just opened that little zipper or valve or plug and it started pouring out. I had always loved poetry, and I ran poetry club in school. Granted, I don’t have an MFA, I haven’t taken English classes, I’ve never taken a creative writing class. A lot of it came from the deep study of poetry in my teaching. I have to know a poem really well to be able to teach it. Learning poetry with my students is really getting into it, really scrutinizing craft. I always try to get my students to find something they love. If they say, “I don’t like poetry,” I say, “Go on poets.org or poetryfoundation.org. I dare you to find something you love.” I feel like I’m a bit of a poet-pharmacist in that way.

They’re all things that work well together and can still stand in a singular way and have a separation, that none of them is exhausting in their totality. But teaching can be . . . I’m very tired.

Michael: If I can hastily construct a Venn diagram, who are some of the poets you teach who you are also personally inspired and influenced by in your own writing?

Alison: Going back to my tenth-grade English teaching experience as a student, my high school English teacher had us read “Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note” by Amiri Baraka. This poem exploded my world in that I realized I didn’t have to fully explain something to love it. A good friend who’s a poet and a sculptor—his name is Zach Osma—has this bumper sticker that says, “Don’t let me intellectualize this experience.” I always think about that. But that Amiri Baraka poem is the first place I learned that. I may or may not have gotten a tattoo of my favorite stanza at one point. I bring my students the poems I love and am also trying to keep myself, by virtue of being a poet, on the pulse of what poets are doing. Two years ago, C.A. Conrad posted part of their shard series on Instagram, and I decided, “We’re doing this poem tomorrow as poem of the week.” So I love C.A. Conrad and what they’re doing with form. Chen Chen’s writing has given me the permission I didn’t know I needed to write explicitly about my identity being mixed-race and queer. I’ve always loved Gwendolyn Brooks. Rita Dove has an incredible two-part poem called “Parsley” that’s about the Parsley Massacre. The first part is a villanelle, and that’s a way I really love tying history and humanity to the role of poetry, which I think is to deepen our humanity.

Michael: Your collection uses many allusions to Greek myth and Christian imagery, and two that I found to have a particular resonance were one, the allegory of the cave and two, Adam and Eve eating from tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Do you see those two stories as being resonant in a similar way?

Alison: Absolutely! That’s a great observation. They’re about the warnings that happen regarding wisdom. To know is to increase suffering. There is increased suffering when there is more knowledge. If we think of Plato’s prisoner freed from the cave, he comes back and tells everyone the truth, and in some versions, they beat him to death. They kill him. Ideas are dangerous. No one wants to change the way they think. If we think of being expelled from the Garden of Eden for wanting to know things and for being curious, there’s definitely a common thread. Does knowledge increase capacity for pain and suffering? And does it do so for compassion? I don’t think so. I mean, it might. But that’s a really great connection. Thank you for making that!

Michael: The way the Allegory of the Cave was described in the book was intriguing to me because you also invoke the myth of Orpheus, which involves the famous Orphic turn which causes Eurydice to be plunged back into the underworld. I noticed the back cover quote is “If I was leading you out of the cave / I would turn around.” Is that a reference to the Allegory of the Cave or the myth of Orpheus or some concatenation of both?

Alison: Directly, I would say, to Orpheus. But it also pertains to that idea of the danger of knowledge. If you’re experiencing something with someone else, to what extent are you both complicit? Or is there someone who is more responsible than the other for that knowledge? It’s almost Adam-and-Eve-ing the connection among the three, of Eve offering the apple and Adam saying, “Oh sure!” But Eve faces the fallout. What is our responsibility to the other person in a relationship or in that experience of love? Especially if it’s something that’s dangerous or something that can’t be continued or pursued. Is it best to end it and let this be the death of something, rather than to draw out the suffering?

Michael: I was so intrigued by what compelled that Orphic turn because it’s something that Orpheus couldn’t help doing but also ensured Eurydice’s doom. That provides a lot of insight into what compels the lover to look back towards the beloved.

Alison: And he knew it! He knew what would happen, and he did it anyway. He couldn’t help himself. And therein is the question: can you know something and still think, “I have to do it anyway”?

Michael: Earlier, we talked about your use of parentheses in your poems. When did that become a facet of your poetry?

Alison: It’s always appeared in my writing. I remember being high school and being told “You use too many parentheses” and I would say, “But that’s how I think.” In poetry, I can do whatever I want, so I can use those parentheses to add meaning, to flex meaning, to add clarification. I have a poem called “Conservation of Matter” that uses brackets really heavily and essentially has two different poems in it. So it’s a tool that I think I’ve always gravitated toward. Only in the last two years have I really enjoyed using them.

Michael: Do you have any poetry projects planned for the future?

Alison: Oh absolutely! My second chapbook came out right before the New Year: queer feast, making the bitter sweet with Bottlecap Press. I have another coming out in March 2023 with CLASH!, an imprint of Mouthfeel Press. It’s called sweet euphemism and examines my relationship with my great aunt, who survived imprisonment during the Japanese Internment in Tule Lake, along with my grandfather and their mother. In fall 2023, It Skips a Generation comes out with Stanchion Books—I’m super excited to collaborate with another Philly-area publisher. Both 2023 titles are part of a larger, full collection that I’ve been working on, that’s still looking for a publishing home. I also have a hybrid work I’ve been flirting with and making slow progress on. As always, there are some other seeds, but they’re still subterranean for now.

Michael: I have just one more question for you. Are you still reading at Fergie’s?

Alison: Yeah! I try to get there whenever I have a friend who’s featured. A friend of mine who reads there just went to pursue her MFA in California, so she won’t be there. But if I can get a crew together or find a friend who’s going, I’ll try to show up. It’s a great community.

Michael: If you find yourself there soon, let them know that Mike says hello!

Alison: I will!


Michael McCarthy HeadshotMichael McCarthy’s work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Antithesis Journal, Barzakh Magazine, and Prairie Schooner, among others. His debut poetry chapbook Steve: An Unexpected Gift is forthcoming from the Moonstone Arts Center in 2023. He is currently an undergraduate student at University of Carlos III in Madrid, Spain.

 

 

 

 

 

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Published on January 11, 2023 in Interviews, Interviews with Poets. (Click for permalink.)

I LIKE TO THINK THAT ALL OF MY CHARACTERS HAVE A GOOD SENSE OF HUMOR: A Conversation with Chaitali Sen, author of A NEW RACE OF MEN FROM HEAVEN by by Gemini Wahhaj

Cleaver Magazine Posted on December 16, 2022 by thwackDecember 16, 2022

I LIKE TO THINK THAT ALL OF MY CHARACTERS HAVE A GOOD SENSE OF HUMOR: A Conversation with Chaitali Sen, author of A NEW RACE OF MEN FROM HEAVEN
Sarabande Books, January 2023

by Gemini Wahhaj

Chaitali Sen’s short-story collection A New Race of Men from Heaven (Sarabande Books, January 2023) won the 2021 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. Her novel A Pathless Sky was published by Europa Editions in 2015 and her short stories have appeared in Ecotone, Shenandoah, American Short Fiction Online, New Ohio Review, and Colorado Review. The daughter of Indian parents, Sen grew up in the US and now lives in Austin, Texas, where she is an important part of the literary community. In the fall of 2022, we participated on a panel about Bengali women writers at the Conference on South Asia and I was lucky enough to read an advance copy of her manuscript.

In “Uma,” a young woman emigrates from her native Calcutta to the US, where she is ultimately reduced to a guest in her brother’s atomized suburban home on Long Island. In the opening pages in Calcutta, though, Uma is surrounded by an abundance of human relationships and hilarity: she is deeply connected to the city, the streets, and the local politics. A romantic portrayal of her husband opens onto a rumination on the leftist heritage of West Bengal:

After eight years of marriage, his smile still excited her. He held a booklet they both knew well—Make the 1970s the Decade of Liberation. She always liked the simplicity of the first line, “The year 1969 has ended,” while the next two sentences were poetic, extolling the great victories of the revolutionary masses, culminating in the exclamation “What a year it was!” She wondered if those words had tethered their revolution to a kind of nostalgia in lieu of progress. They sounded distant to her now, from another time and place that could not be revisited.

Rereading A New Race of Men from Heaven, I became aware of the bones of Sen’s stories, as well as the laborious work of laying down their skeletal structure. I had to go back and ask, as a jealous writer, how she did this. I found, underneath a perfect skeleton, a long set-up.

Gemini Wahhaj: In so many of the pieces in the collection, you think you are following one story, but then at the end, it opens up, cracks open, and becomes a much bigger story. This happens for me in the title story, in “The Immigrant,” and also in “The Matchstick, by Charles Tilly.” You’re following a rather enjoyable, contained narrative about a woman trying to get a date, or a little boy lost, or identity theft, and then suddenly there is the gut punch, and you are forced to see a whole universe. Can you talk about how you make this happen, as much are you are willing to share? Is that how your stories operate, by entertaining us, by offering the plot we enjoy and expect, to lead us to a deeper question at the end. And for writers, are there ways we can set up our stories in this way?

Chaitali Sen: Thank you, that’s such a wonderful observation and I’m glad that the stories open up a kind of universe at the end.  For me, short stories are like puzzles or codes that have to be cracked, unlike novels, which are less mysterious to me. It is somewhat a subconscious process, but I think the universe, or maybe what could be understood as the theme, is what I’m interested in, even if I don’t know exactly what that is when I’m starting or where the story will end up. I start with the characters in a situation, confronting a certain problem. Without that, I can’t really get anywhere. But once I have that, I look for the unexpected places the story could go and unexpected ways the problem could be solved or not solved. There is also a fair bit of trial and error. I have many, many stories that never get to that next level, or never even get off the ground. One thing I tell students is to think about what the story is about after a first draft after you’ve done some exploring. Then, once you have a handle on what the story is about, let that be your guiding star to help you make decisions during the revision process about what stays and what goes. Which choices best support what the piece is about? Even if the readers have their own interpretations of the story, if you have a sense of what you are trying to say, you’re more likely to have a well-structured and satisfying story.

Gemini: The title of the book A New Race of Men from Heaven is the title of one of the stories in the collection, but how do you think it defines the whole collection? After I read the last story, I looked back through all the stories again through new eyes, and they all seemed to come together for me. In one way or another, they lay bare the pretenses of our lives, the injustices of society, or colonial violence. As if the stories expose the fragility or imperfections of our humanity. Also, each story brings us to such deep, heart-breaking empathy in the end. It’s such a tense experience. On the one hand, you lay bare the pretense or violence or flaws of the characters we are following, and on the other hand, we are left with such a feeling of empathy for someone else at the end.

Chaitali Sen

Chaitali: First, the title comes from what I believe is a mistranslation of a Latin inscription of a painting at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, England, depicting the arrival of the royal House of Hanover. The official translation is something like, “A New Generation of Men from Heaven.” But when I was doing research, the first blog I read translated it as “A New Race of Men from Heaven” and this was one of those uncanny, serendipitous, ‘divine’ interventions—I say that as an atheist—that gave me the title of that story and the collection. I think it points to the whole absurd way human society has been organized around hierarchies and divisions by race, religion, gender, sexuality, class, caste, and other arbitrary distinctions, and how much that affects our lives whether we are aware of it or not. So in every story, there is some straining against or grappling with these divisions and hierarchies as a constraint or chain on our aspirations. Maybe the empathy comes from the fact that we all live like this, under these constraints, and no one can escape having their lives shaped by them. We may experience them differently, depending on our circumstances or social status at any given time, but we are all shaped by them.

Gemini: You have mentioned that you do not speak from one identity, and you are not trying to represent an identity. And this is true. Many of the stories are not necessarily about Bengalis or Indians. In many instances I was surprised at first, reading from a wealthy, older male writer’s perspective. And yet, would you say that there is a philosophical consistency? That you’re rooting for the underdog? The children, the secretary, the young man in prison?

Chaitali: I’m definitely interested in the underdog, and I think it’s fair to say that I’m rooting for them. But in general, I’m also interested in power and powerlessness, and the ways that can shift from one moment to the next even though there are definite entrenched power relations in society that are set by the system we live in: class structure, patriarchy, colonialism, white supremacy, ethnic hegemony, etc. I’m interested in vulnerability because no one is invincible and no one is immune from the chance that their world might be turned upside down. I’m interested in those small moments of instability, and how people get back their equilibrium, often going back to the status quo or some semblance of normality. And in the background, perhaps unstated within the story itself, I’m interested in the lingering question of what going back to normal means for all the people we don’t see and we don’t hear from. In “The Matchstick, by Charles Tilly,” only one person ultimately benefits from that situation, while the other disappears.

Gemini: There is a lot of wicked fun in some of the stories. You seem to be poking fun at characters that could be most like you/me/readers of short fiction: a writer, a liberal woman living in Texas, a yogi, an academic. And yet, there are very sincere, painful stories told from the perspectives of people who are very removed from these positions of narrative power. For example, the story “Uma” is told in a very serious tone. What do you have to say about that?

Chaitali: Honestly, I wish I could write more stories that are outright having “wicked fun.” The tone of the story, like the structure, sort of asserts itself as I write. I like to think that all of my characters have a good sense of humor, even if the story is serious, and then sometimes there is a narrative voice that is poking gentle fun at the characters, because people like me—writers, liberals, middle-class people, Americans, immigrants—we are full of contradictions and often delusional about ourselves and how we live. For example, in “The Catholics,” every single character is lying to themselves about their convictions. So yes, I think sometimes if we are able to poke fun at ourselves, if we are able to recognize our own tendencies in a character that is lying or acting irrational, we can also come to ask more questions and think more deeply about our lives and our world.


Gemini Wahhaj is the author of the novel Mad Man (7.13 Books, fall 2023) and the short-story collection Katy Family (Jackleg Press, spring 2025). Her fiction is in or forthcoming in Granta, Chicago Quarterly Review, Press 53, Allium, Zone 3, Northwest Review, Cimarron Review, the Carolina Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, Chattahoochee Review, Apogee, Silk Road, Night Train, Cleaver, Concho River Review, Scoundrel Time, Arkansas Review, Valley Voices, and other magazines. She has a PhD in creative writing from the University of Houston, where she received the James A. Michener award for fiction (judged by Claudia Rankine) and the Cambor/Inprint fellowship. She is an Associate Professor of English at Lone Star College in Houston.

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Published on December 16, 2022 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

Lucian Mattison, author of the poetry collection Curare, speaks with Will Huberdeau 

Cleaver Magazine Posted on November 4, 2022 by thwackNovember 4, 2022

 

Will Huberdeau speaks with Lucian Mattison about his new collection of poetry Curare from C&R Press.

Will: Starting with the title, what does “curare” mean to you? I had to Google it and got a variety of definitions and explanations. How did you develop the concept for this collection?

Lucian: I’m not normally a big obscure reference kind of guy. Usually, I like to lean more into “Let’s all get along and understand each other.” But in this case, I made an exception for a couple of reasons. On a more surface level, I read the book Shaman’s Apprentice about a scientist from Berkeley who goes into the rainforest to study medicine. He tries to get the ingredients for this poison called curare that is applied to the tips of arrowheads and darts. It becomes this elusive thing, and no one has a recipe. Or they don’t trust the white guy enough to give it up. It really got me thinking. Where does a medicine turn toxic or poisonous? A drug in small doses might turn out to be medicinal or helpful. And then there’s other cases where a higher dose might be good medicinal practice. But I wanted to highlight the idea that there’s a thin line between what we see as poison and what we see as a healing salve. 

On top of this, in Spanish, the word means to heal. It would actually be a future construction: “I will cure.” Ultimately, it feeds more into the idea that we are messing around with a bunch of tools that we don’t understand. Some things seem to hurt us. Some things seem to be good for us. We don’t really know what we’re doing. We’re fucking up the environment. We’re fucking up ourselves with our relationship to technology. But there’s also within these things a way out—a goodness that we can find through it. Within what looks like a poison to us in our world right now, I think–I hope–there’s also some kind of healing property. 

W: Much of what you write about seems to reference such existential cycles as grief. One example comes in “Démicas for the Patron Saint of Dogs” where the canine “licks death with charity’s tongue,/ licks the earth’s canvas until oils/ fade to beige, the mutt, so loyal,/ licking itself to exhaustion.” And in the end of “Trucker” the trucker is hanging by the ankles “from the exhaust like a wet flag” just like the bats he caught and forced to smoke cigarettes. I wonder was there any intentional effort to stand outside of these existential cycles and look within?

L: To some extent, I think it’s part of human nature to bear witness to these cycles. We all know that we keep repeating the same mistakes, right? We tend to assign importance to the idea that things are the best they can be at any moment in time that we’re in. We keep getting wise to that over and over again. So when it comes to cycles, I wanted to maybe point out the fact that we are probably within a moment that we don’t understand just yet, and there is this end product that we’re not going to be able to predict. Maybe it’s a positive message about human resilience and our ability to come out alive. Because we’ve done it pretty well it seems for now. But we’re also reaching what seems to be a critical mass. I think maybe the way out is partly through the tools that we’re inventing. I think that’s kind of where the ideas of the poems entitled  “[clouds]” come in. In terms of information and shared memory as shared witnesses, everyone wants to know everything. They want to be on top of stuff. And this tool, our phones, that we have right next to us is that key. It’s like having a second brain. It actually should be really beneficial to us. We should be adapting ourselves in order to use our brain power for something more important than storing garbage short-term memory. That’s why we’re still in this very raw moment of our relationship to what we’re creating. We don’t really know where we’re going or what we’re doing. But hopefully, we’re stumbling forward.

W: What would a forward outcome look like for you?

L: I think a positive outcome would look like accountability. Something that people can’t flout anymore. That’s something that I’d like to see this collection address. Take, for example, police with body cams who still murder people. They’re wearing a camera, and there’s still this disconnect. I have a feeling at some point that connection is going to click into place, and people are not necessarily going to be able to get away with that.

Although the spread of misinformation complicates things, too. But I have a feeling we’re working toward truth. More truth, a clearer truth. A more universal truth. And I think that’s where the salvation really lies. If we start to establish our baseline truth–something irrefutable–then people have to start listening and we get accountability.

W: This might be a good time to ask you to name names. Were there any current events that act as plot points while you were writing that are especially important to you?

L: We know the one glaring event that doesn’t even need a name is obviously the 2016 election. I wrote this book between 2016 and 2020, so it was directly after that. There’s no really getting around that. 

But particular things that really affected these poems? I would say a lot of it has to do with the violence people get away with. The uptick in mass shootings was a spark for some of these poems, these incidents of people having an immediate window into what a consequence is and choosing to not acknowledge it. Or police murdering people even while on camera. It’s those events I think that really drives some of these poems. They’re not all about that, but I think it really got me thinking about accountability and technology and what we can do to hopefully limit this kind of violence. Or at least hold people accountable.

W: How did it feel to put together a collection like this? This project seems to be done out of duty more so than pleasure.

L: Most poets will say that we’re writing because we have to. There’s something that’s driving us. Our brain decides to hold on to certain things. I have to honor that because in the end, I’m going to trust that my unconscious mind is doing something better than what I could do in my waking life. Or at least is making better associations than I can. 

W: What would you like your reader to do in response to your poetry? Or think? Or believe?

L: I’d like the reader to witness and to be aware of what we do. In being aware we have a lot of power that we haven’t really tapped into yet. We tend to demonize technology because it does govern and hurt us. But at the same time, I think part of it is to embrace that and see how this really is actually going to save us. The second is to honor the natural world. We’ve been taking advantage of it for so long, taking advantage of each other. We need to be a little kinder to animals, to nature, to everything around us, to each other. 

I think that’s the other big one. We have our relationship to the natural world that we need to keep furthering even though it seems like technology is robbing us from it. It’s our responsibility to keep engaging within it. A part of it is being present, being able to spend your time really soaking in what is around us, and appreciating those things. If you start to really focus in on specific instances of joy and euphoria in nature that’s when things start to really have more value. You can look at a flower and be like that flower is cool. But if you don’t really know what ecosystems or neat niche-like things are happening around this flower, you miss something. Who depends on it? What does it do? What has it done? If you study what cycles it goes through, it’s impossible not to love that. It says something about just caring. Because when you really truly study something, you start to see how beautiful it is, and you get to see the intricacies of it. Nature has a lot of value that’s not just about joy. It’s about compassion and empathy. It’s about becoming a better kind of human where we’re not just consuming left and right.

W: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

L: I can’t not talk about a certain amount of spirituality that is in the collection. Not in a prescriptive or dogmatic manner, but the relationship to the divine and our relationships to nature and those kinds of things. I don’t want to undermine spirituality. It’s a very important thing for everyone to have their personal connection with the earth, with ourselves, with others. Some people do this through a divine being. That’s always going to be part of my life because I was raised for the first eighteen years to believe that there was something very big and very important and very beautiful and present in this world. But that changed shape. It no longer was just a guy in the sky. It’s an old story. But it kind of shifted into more of a bunch of us in the sky, invisibly interacting.

It’s really important to see the world, to be present in the world that way, to keep reminding ourselves that we are just these things breathing. We’re just a vessel, just a thing. That’s important. And we have to really take in the beauty around us. I think spirituality means a million different things to a million different people. I believe our brain is this powerful, beautiful thing. And interacting with the world around us is a meaningful experience. It’s very meaningful for us to take our time and notice and be present with things like in our world because we’ll care about it a lot more if we do.


Will Huberdeau is a high school English teacher in Newport News, VA, and a low-res MFA candidate at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN.  His work appears in Faultline, Forge, and the 2009 Wordstock Ten finalist anthology, among others.
US-Argentinian poet and translator, Lucian Mattison is the author of three books of poetry, Curare (C&R Press, 2022), Reaper’s Milonga (YesYes Books, 2018), and Peregrine Nation (Dynamo Verlag, 2017). His work has won the Puerto Del Sol Poetry Prize and appears in numerous journals including Catamaran, CutBank, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hobart, [PANK], Sixth Finch, and the South Carolina Review. He is currently based out of the Bay Area and is an associate editor of poetry for Barrelhouse.

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Published on November 4, 2022 in Interviews, Interviews with Poets. (Click for permalink.)

emet ezell, author of BETWEEN EVERY BIRD, OUR BONES speaks with Cleaver Poetry Editor Claire Oleson

Cleaver Magazine Posted on October 6, 2022 by thwackOctober 6, 2022

Poetry Editor Claire Oleson speaks with emet ezell on their debut poetry chapbook, Between Every Bird, Our Bones, out now with Newfound.

Claire: This book gives us bite-sized poems in paragraph-like vignettes. What drew you to this form, this body, for your language?

emet: In BETWEEN EVERY BIRD, OUR BONES, the text and the body are unapologetically queer— which is to say, they never fully solidify into a single shape. No table of contents, no capitalization, and no titles. Instead, these poems fly through the sky with infinite beginnings and infinite iterations.

I found this poetic form by listening deeply to the physicality of language. Sparked by images and sounds, I wrote slowly by hand. This allowed me to prioritize the carnality of language, its cadence and direction. When I listened long enough, the writing told me what it wanted: wide margins and solid blocks of text. I needed a form that could hold oscillations between insurmountable paradoxes; I needed a form that acknowledged the fact that not everything resolves.

In threading the vignettes together, I found resonance with Etel Adnan. Adnan writes in a similar form in her book In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country, grouping the text into chunks that prioritize the image. There is something about these blocks that shifts the pace of time: their brevity allows for focused attention amidst movement.

For me, poetic form and gender expression are always intertwined, perpetually asking: what shape does now need? I want poetry to be as vibrant with form as our bodies are with gender. It is my hope that this chapbook might shimmer across the sky to other trans poets, helping us find one another as we write into expansive and genre-breaking forms.

C: Things cost money in this book. Yeast infections, MRI’s, underwear, clementines, and the reclamation of Palestinian cars seized by Israeli Occupation Forces. These show up in definable, convertible currency. Why is that important?

e: Things cost money in our lives— and those costs, translated to dollar amounts, carry distinct somatic sensations.

emet ezell

My poems rigorously research emotion and materiality. What do I feel when I spend $169.29 and why? My mouth goes dry and I start to sweat. My eyes dart fast, my breath quickens. I want to know where these reactions come from. Are these feelings mine or was I taught to feel this way? What can these feelings teach me about class and power? How does money occupy the intersection between my family history and global histories? How does the specific amount of money I have (or do not have) impact my capacity to engage with myself and the world around me? What does precarity look like on the page?

Inspired by Eula Biss’ Having and Being Had, I made a rule for myself: anytime I had an emotional reaction to a dollar amount, I named it explicitly in the poem. Part of the perversity of wealth inequality is that we don’t talk publicly about money and the sensations which accompany it. Even when we try to talk about class, the psychological toll of poverty and precarity remain unacknowledged. What do rich people obscure when they hide their wealth, either through offshore accounts or social pretense? How do the rest of us maneuver around money? The Occupy Movement had a huge role in shifting our collective discourse. But we are still lacking the emotional language to have conversations about our economic realities.

As a community organizer, I know that if we can’t talk about something, we can’t change it. One of the ways our bodies metabolize and spit out the violence of capitalism is through language. Perhaps a poem can be a spell that allows us to move towards economic justice. By bringing visceral cost into the poem, I am smashing the illusion that poetry could ever exist outside the material conditions under which we live.

C: Could you speak on the Venn diagram between closing a door on a place and closing a door on a gender or sex? These feel like wholly different subjects at first, but in reading your chapbook, I felt them holding hands in some of your lines.

e: In my body, gender is a place, bound up with birds and dirt and trees and sky. When I departed from Texas and from the gender I was expected to inhabit, it upset many people in my life. Much of my family cannot call me by name or acknowledge a world beyond Christian conceptions of male and female. As I wrote the poems in BETWEEN EVERY BIRD OUR BONES, I wanted to investigate: How does place shape our experience of gender? How does gender shape our experience of place?

I didn’t know I was queer until I was 21, kissing another trans body in the middle of nowhere at a Jewish farm in Connecticut. What I had thought to be true about myself disintegrated beneath my feet. I was in gender and sexual whiplash; when I returned home to Texas, I had no way to integrate the huge shifts I was experiencing. It took failure and practice and patience and community, like learning a language— like learning your way around a new place.

I know now that girlhood and womanhood are places I cannot physically return to in my body. And yet, I can return to their ephemeral imprints in my interiority. I can remember the gendered ghosts I carry, the years in which I had giant pink bows pressed into my hair. Can I hold these ghosts of my life with fondness? Somehow, it feels similar to the way I can return to the familiar shape of oak trees in my grandmother’s yard, even though they are no longer there.

C: The language you give us shows hospital waiting rooms alongside border checkpoints. It feels as though roosting pigeons and ultrasounds both carry immediate medical knowledge. Can you tell us about your birds? This book is dense with them; share with us a bit about your augury.

e: The birds have been following me since I was a child, although it’s the dead ones that demand the most attention. With the climate crisis, I find more and more dead birds. They follow me across continents and arrive dead on my doorstep. Usually, they carry information or a request. Sometimes, I feel their blessing.

When I lived in Jerusalem, I saw a dead bird every day for two weeks straight. The message was clear: I needed to go meet my family, who live in an Ultra-Orthodox religious neighborhood of the city. When I finally arrived at their apartment, my grandmother’s cousin Zelig had just died. He was a rabbi who specialized in studying the Jewish laws about bird sacrifice in the Temple. Suffice it to say, augury runs in the family.

I’m doing my part to trace the death of birds and the stories of my ancestors. When I handle a dead bird, either by burying it or by preserving its wings in salt, I’m listening for my ancestor’s instruction. Speaking with birds is my way of interacting with the wisdom and eventuality of death. The more I dig into my own lineage, the more I find myself singing: how can I inherit the sky?

C: Do you have a favorite bird?

e: I’m currently obsessed with the Cassowary bird.

These birds are massive, flightless beings that only eat fruit and are found near the tropical forests of Papua New Guinea and West Papua. They have a giant, horn-like bulge on their heads called a casque that both protects their skulls and allows them to pick up sounds at lower frequencies.

What evolutionary brilliance! Could I also simultaneously cultivate protection and perception? Can I grow a bone-like bulge, one that assists me in listening to different frequencies? How do I protect my skull? Is this what it means to be a poet?

C: What are you working on now?

e: For the past few months, I’ve been writing into questions of inheritance. What is the spiritual work of ending a blood line? What’s passed down when there is no down? For me, these questions carry a queer, diasporic materiality. They are also questions that evoke poverty, eviction, bankruptcy, and debt.

While writing poems about my grandmother in South Carolina, I found myself confronting the perpetuation of poverty and incarceration in my family. Many of my relatives in South Carolina have been in and out of prison, and it’s worth noting that South Carolina has one of the highest incarceration rates in the United States.

I’m working with these poems, shaping them into a full-length collection that situates my familial lineage inside the syntax, history, and cost of incarceration in the US South. Amidst my research, I’m trying to give the poems time and space to sit in order to figure out what it is they have to say.

C: Thank you so much for your time and your answers! emet’s chapbook, Between Every Bird, Our Bones is available from Newfound Press here


On November 3, 2022, emet ezell will be reading with poet Mónica Gomery at Philadelphia’s oldest LGBTQ+ Bookstore, Giovanni’s Room. You can find more of emet’s work online at www.emetezell.com


Cleaver Senior Poetry Editor Claire Oleson is a writer hailing from Grand Rapids Michigan. She’s a 2019 grad of Kenyon College, where she studied English and Creative Writing. Her work has been published by the University of Kentucky’s graduate literary journal Limestone, Siblíní Art and Literature journal, Newfound Journal, NEAT Magazine, Werkloos Magazine, and Bridge Eight Magazine, among others. She is also the 2019 winner of the Newfound Prose Prize and author of the chapbook Things From the Creek We Could Have Been. Contact her by email. 

emet ezell, author of BETWEEN EVERY BIRD, OUR BONES speaks with Cleaver Poetry Editor Claire Oleson

emet ezell, author of BETWEEN EVERY BIRD, OUR BONES speaks with Cleaver Poetry Editor Claire Oleson

SHORTING THE CIRCUITS: A Short Story Workshop with Claire Oleson, October 1 — November 5, 2022

SHORTING THE CIRCUITS: A Short Story Workshop with Claire Oleson, October 1 — November 5, 2022

EKPHRASTIC POETRY: The Art of Words on Art, taught by Cleaver Poetry Editor Claire Oleson, October 15 — November 19, 2022

EKPHRASTIC POETRY: The Art of Words on Art,  taught by Cleaver Poetry Editor Claire Oleson, October 15 — November 19, 2022

POETRY SCHOOL A Workshop in Poetic Movements taught by Cleaver Senior Poetry Editor Claire Oleson, June 4—July 9

POETRY SCHOOL A Workshop in Poetic Movements taught by Cleaver Senior Poetry Editor Claire Oleson, June 4—July 9

EKPHRASTIC POETRY: The Art of Words on Art, taught by Cleaver Poetry Editor Claire Oleson, January 22 — February 26, 2022

EKPHRASTIC POETRY: The Art of Words on Art,  taught by Cleaver Poetry Editor Claire Oleson, January 22 — February 26, 2022

VOICE LESSONS Identifying and Creating Perspective in Poetry, taught by Claire Oleson, October 16 – Nov 20, 2021

VOICE LESSONS Identifying and Creating Perspective in Poetry, taught by Claire Oleson, October 16 - Nov 20, 2021

VOICE LESSONS Identifying and Creating Perspective in Poetry, taught by Claire Oleson, July 10 – August 14

VOICE LESSONS Identifying and Creating Perspective in Poetry, taught by Claire Oleson, July 10 - August 14

ADDING APPETIZERS by Claire Oleson

ADDING APPETIZERS by Claire Oleson

POETIC ANATOMIES, taught by Claire Oleson |  March 20 to April 24, 2021 [SOLD OUT]

antelope skeleton

POETIC ANATOMIES: Dissecting Form and Formlessness in Poetry, a workshop taught by Claire Oleson | January 16 to February 20, 2021 SOLD OUT

antelope skeleton

THE PROPULSIVE PICTURE, Image as an Engine in Poetry, a Workshop taught by Cleaver Poetry Editor Claire Oleson | September 19 to October 24, 2020 [SOLD OUT]

THE PROPULSIVE PICTURE, Image as an Engine in Poetry, a Workshop taught by Cleaver Poetry Editor Claire Oleson | September 19 to October 24, 2020  [SOLD OUT]

THE PROPULSIVE PICTURE, Image as an Engine in Poetry, a Workshop taught by Cleaver Poetry Editor Claire Oleson | July 11 to August 15, 2020 [SOLD OUT]

THE PROPULSIVE PICTURE, Image as an Engine in Poetry, a Workshop taught by Cleaver Poetry Editor Claire Oleson | July 11 to August 15, 2020 [SOLD OUT]

MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CARSON MCCULLERS, a memoir by Jenn Shapland, reviewed by Claire Oleson

My Autobiography of Carson McCullers Book Jacket

An Interview with Claire Oleson, author of THINGS FROM THE CREEK BED WE COULD HAVE BEEN, by Andrea Caswell

Things From the Creek Bed jacket copy

BURIED ALIVE: A TO-DO LIST, poems by Carole Bernstein, reviewed by Claire Oleson

jacket art for Buried Alive

99 NAMES OF EXILE, poems by Kaveh Bassiri, reviewed by Claire Oleson

Jacket cover 99 Names of Exile

PORTRAIT OF A BODY IN WRECKAGES, poems by Meghan McClure, reviewed by Claire Oleson

PORTRAIT OF A BODY IN WRECKAGES, poems by Meghan McClure, reviewed by Claire Oleson

TART HONEY, poems by Deborah Burnham, reviewed by Claire Oleson

TART HONEY, poems by Deborah Burnham, reviewed by Claire Oleson

BLACK GENEALOGY, poems by Kiki Petrosino, reviewed by Claire Oleson

BLACK GENEALOGY, poems  by Kiki Petrosino, reviewed by Claire Oleson

FLOWER WARS, poems by Nico Amador, reviewed by Claire Oleson

FLOWER WARS, poems by Nico Amador, reviewed by Claire Oleson

HEMMING FLAMES, poems by Patricia Colleen Murphy, reviewed by Claire Oleson

HEMMING FLAMES, poems by Patricia Colleen Murphy, reviewed by Claire Oleson

THE LOVERS’ PHRASEBOOK, poems by Jordi Alonso, reviewed by Claire Oleson

THE LOVERS' PHRASEBOOK, poems by Jordi Alonso, reviewed by Claire Oleson

YOU ASK ME TO TALK ABOUT THE INTERIOR, poems by Carolina Ebeid, reviewed by Claire Oleson

YOU ASK ME TO TALK ABOUT THE INTERIOR, poems by Carolina Ebeid, reviewed by Claire Oleson

DISINHERITANCE, poems by John Sibley Williams, reviewed by Claire Oleson

DISINHERITANCE, poems by John Sibley Williams, reviewed by Claire Oleson

THE DEAD IN DAYLIGHT, poems by Melody S. Gee, reviewed by Claire Oleson

THE DEAD IN DAYLIGHT, poems by Melody S. Gee, reviewed by Claire Oleson

EDIBLE FLOWERS, poems by Lucia Chericiu, reviewed by Claire Oleson

EDIBLE FLOWERS, poems by Lucia Chericiu, reviewed by Claire Oleson

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Published on October 6, 2022 in Interviews, Interviews with Poets. (Click for permalink.)

IN WHICH LIFE?: A Conversation with Chauna Craig, author WINGS AND OTHER THINGS, speaking with Emily Huso

Cleaver Magazine Posted on September 26, 2022 by thwackSeptember 26, 2022

IN WHICH LIFE?: A Conversation with Chauna Craig
author WINGS AND OTHER THINGS, Press 53
speaking with Emily Huso

Chauna Craig’s second story collection, Wings and Other Things, speculates about the possibilities that exist beyond fear, self-doubt, and patriarchal control. Most of the collection’s sixteen stories are set against Midwestern expanses and center female protagonists who dare to imagine the roads not taken and to re-imagine themselves.

In these narratives, Craig explores moments of silent but irreversible rupture: an unwelcome revelation about a significant other, words that can’t be unspoken, a dream dashed. Like the exposed anatomical heart depicted on the book’s cover, Craig’s prose demonstrates vulnerability, a rawness of syntax and image. Through sharp sentences and halting fragments, we are shown not just the breaching whales and the prairie’s sky of infinite stars but the wiped snot, feet scraped raw in a field of corn, mouths that taste of mint, smoke, and betrayal.

Like the illustrated heart, the collection has a distinct rhythm and pace. If the book’s flash fictions are like skipped heartbeats and its longer stories sustained throbs, then the female characters are the collection’s steady pulse. In their quiet assertions of self, their desire for “other things,” the women in Wings demonstrate profound resistance to silencing and disenfranchisement.

Corresponding via email, Craig and I discussed fiction as an exploration of unlived lives, movement and suspension in story, and the power of small, quiet actions.

—Emily Huso, September 2022


Emily Huso: In “Impossible Blue,” the opening story, you write, “There was no her. Or maybe there were millions of her and she just hadn’t discovered the right one” (10). I love how this line invites the reader to think about the multiplicity of selves, the lives not lived and unrealized versions of the self. Why did you decide to lead with this particular story?

Chauna Craig: Most of the stories in the collection are quite limited in timespan—the length of a phone conversation, a night, maybe a couple weeks—but this one spans years, hinging on the moments when something changes and exploring how, even if you’re content with your present life, you can simultaneously spin back to the past to reconsider choices and spool forward into the imagined futures where you might feel spontaneous grief for losses that never felt like losses before. I wanted to open the book with a character who becomes conscious of the multiple lives compressing and expanding in her every moment because that’s my experience as a writer with a head full of characters, and I hope readers feel the same, that some characters linger and live on in the mind. Maybe this story is my ars poetica for this collection? The idea that writing and reading fiction is about the chance to live multiple lives and explore opportunities we couldn’t or shouldn’t in the “real” world? I just came up with that, but it feels true. The protagonist of “Impossible Blue,” told by a shrink to explore something in her life, asks, “In which life?” As a reader and writer, I take her question very seriously.

EH: It’s such a provocative question, and I appreciate that these stories never land on an easy answer. That resistance to resolution along with the thoughtful story sequencing left me with a feeling of suspension. The flash fictions in the book feel like quick updrafts, the longer stories like gliding. What are your concerns when thinking about the overall arc of a collection?

CC: My original ordering of these stories was consciously built around the elements of water, air, earth, and fire, and I’m fortunate that my editor recognized that I was forcing stories into that structure, which prevented me from seeing the more organic connections. When I returned to the table of contents, I realized I had to cut at least one full-length story that simply didn’t fit in. I went through finished stories that hadn’t been included originally and found flash-length stories that amplified in bursts some emotions that were drawn out in longer stories. So it delights me that you mention the reading experience as updrafts and gliding! Even though a lot of people don’t read story collections in their published order, I wanted that reading experience of sustained narrative interrupted with little, concentrated bursts.

EH: So many of these stories begin and end in places of uncertainty or possibility, depending on your perspective—mid-flight somewhere between a reckless recently divorced girlfriend, a protective husband, and two daughters; balanced on railroad tracks stretching “in either direction, infinitely”; frozen at a knock on the door, steeled for whatever is on the other side. How do you think about beginnings and endings? In a story, what do beginnings and endings need to accomplish?

Chauna Craig

CC: The standard position on story beginnings is that they need to pull the reader into the fictional world and make them want to keep reading or, as one of my old teachers said, “begin with trouble then make it double.” And I’m still all about that because I will pick up a book in a store and read the first page to see if it entices me to turn the page. The older I get, the more I’m aware that I don’t have time to read everything I want to, so something better hook me right away.

Endings are less clear cut for me. Some readers require resolution to the story’s external events, but as you point out, a lot of my stories end in suspension, a pivotal pause that could go many ways. I think what’s important is that something has been resolved, though. With the knock-on-the-door ending you referred to, the character recognizes she can’t stop or hide from whatever’s coming, but that she can and must reframe her own desires around what she previously accepted as fate. That’s a significant realization. Even when character epiphany is out of fashion, as it sometimes is, the reader needs a sense of movement, change, significance. You have to leave a reader feeling that the time spent reading a story was an investment, that they’ve been left with more than they started with, and that might mean something different to every reader.

EH: Speaking of movement and suspension, the women in this collection frequently seem trapped not just by their circumstances but by their social conditioning. This feeling of limitation makes me think about the trapped chimney swift in the title story. Even if the bird could escape its fate, it seems highly unlikely that it will abandon its nest. Maternal instinct seems to dictate the choice the swift makes, perhaps even eliminates choice entirely. What does agency look like for characters who feel trapped by their circumstances or whose social conditioning limits their ability to make their own choices? How would you respond to the common workshop critique that characters must have agency to be round, complex, and/or interesting?

CC: I have certainly been the object of that particular workshop critique! I do think it’s important that characters make choices and act on them—that’s part of what makes well-rounded characters, and we read fiction to consider the range of choices humans make, the possibilities for all of us. No one wants to read about the human doormat who remains a human doormat. That said, as a culture we pay a lot more attention to the loud people who live large. We expect heroes who grab guns and right wrongs, women who run with the wolves. I love those characters too, but as an avowed introvert, I know how much we underestimate the power of small, quiet choices and actions. I think of women in controlling relationships, like Elise in “The Sweet and the Heat,” and I’m keenly aware of her constant calculations about when and how to resist her partner’s control. While she lives largely in reaction to Levi, she demonstrates genuine agency in forging a friendship with her neighbor and in searching for her runaway stepdaughter. She is not one-dimensional or merely passive, and I think the challenge with characters like her is to find ways to explore why and how someone surrenders agency or doesn’t.

EH: You mentioned “The Sweet and the Heat.” That story along with “The Ferryman’s Smile” and “Smoke, Iowa” stands out to me from the rest of the stories in the collection for how it centers women’s relationships with other women. The specter of male violence and control moves to the periphery, making space for questions about “the culture,” as Camille puts it in “The Ferryman’s Smile”—about the ways that social norms dictate what women’s relationships with other women look like, perpetuate the harmful ways we talk about and treat women, and teach girls to perceive themselves. What issues were you turning over in these particular stories? How do you see them in contrast or synchronicity with the other stories in the collection?

CC: I think a couple of other stories try to explore women’s central connections to other women, i.e. the sisters in “Big Sky Blue,” the narrator/her mother and mother/best friend in “The Empty Set,” but in those ones, the looming threat of marriage and the father’s release from jail seem to pre-emptively close that space you mention. I dedicated this book “to the women who give me wings and keep me aloft, and to those who help me land safely” because, with a few exceptions, women have been the people who show up for me in my times of need, who celebrate with me, who make me believe there is always more me to become. And as much as I wish these themes about control and cultural norms were dated or irrelevant because we live in a post-patriarchy, we don’t. Control of women is literally being codified right now by state legislatures deciding vital questions of personal autonomy. Women are presumed incapable of knowing their own minds and making their own decisions, and the further outside of the patriarchal lines those desired lives are, the tighter the cultural control. Jenn Shapland in her fabulous memoir, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, talks about McCullers’ first biographer describing her “ambivalences” and how that seems to be code for her love for other women, also implying confusion or “a woman who doesn’t know her own mind, her own wants.” Hear that enough, and it’s easy to start to believe that about yourself.

At the beginning of “The Sweet and the Heat,” the runaway stepdaughter leaves a note that Elise fixates on: I want other things for myself. The character doesn’t have context for understanding what that might mean because she has so deeply internalized the message of not wanting, of equating expressing a self with “selfishness.” To even be able to hear the voice of the self, we have to unlearn the powerful messages that women only know themselves by their service, even submission, to others, whether men, the family, or their workplace. And men have to unlearn those messages about women too. These issues are so persistent and pervasive and often personal that I can’t help but explore them in the lives of my characters.

EH: That thematic thread definitely feels urgent in these stories, whether it is explicitly explored through characters or implied through metaphor. Speaking of metaphor, I have to ask how you go about creating the startlingly vivid images in your stories that carry so much symbolic weight. For example, in “Scrap Moon,” the narrator’s ailing mother describes the moon as “a withered hangnail. Throwaway,” and the reader can’t help but think about things that, like a hangnail, hold on—the residents at the assisted living community who hold onto life, onto fractured memories—and about what we discard: a hangnail, a severed part of ourselves; the people society dismisses, like the narrator’s unmarried son or the elderly, including our own parents. Can you talk about your process of discovering and developing loaded metaphors?

CC: Definitely a “loaded” question, but I appreciate how you describe “discovering and developing” metaphors because that really is the process as I experience it. If I’m writing regularly and paying attention to the concrete world of the story, I trust the unconscious to show up and do its job. As I steadily build scenes with attention to sensory detail, my mind tosses up images and descriptions that create or reinforce patterns. That’s how our minds work: we seek order, patterns, balance. More, I have to let go and let readers make the smart, intuitive connections you made about images in “Scrap Moon.” In revision, I do often look for how images and ideas echo each other, but I confess I never thought about the hangnail moon image tying into the themes you note, and now I think “that’s so smart, I wish I’d thought (consciously) of it!”

Writing is first and foremost discovery for the writer, but I don’t pretend I can control what readers discover for themselves, and that’s part of what keeps stories alive.

EH: Do you have a favorite craft technique to use? If so, which one, and why?

CC: I don’t know that I have a single favorite technique, but I have always loved collage and montage where the reader has to work to make leaps, white space where everything is hinted at, happening off scene. I tend to experiment like that in creative nonfiction, and the stories in this collection are more traditional narratives, but there is an irresistible energy in stitching bits together into a living Frankenstory.

EL: As a writer, what artistic transitions are you in the midst of? In what ways are your aesthetic imperatives shifting?

CC: I love this question. I also find it terrifying because at this point in my life, I don’t have an answer, not a good one. My impulses seem to push toward weirder, more fragmented writing while fear of “wasting my time” drives me to be more “marketable.” I know those aren’t mutually exclusive directions and that there is no single market either. I’m not good at patience, but I am trying, as Rilke famously noted, to “learn to love the questions themselves.” Still, like so many of my characters, I’m waiting for the lightning strike to tell me what’s next, so I really hope I haven’t failed to recognize the subtler nudges all around me.


Emily Huso’s stories and essays appear or are forthcoming in The Roadrunner Review, Reflex Fiction, and Watershed Review. A graduate of the MFA program at the University of Washington, she has received support from AWP’s Writer to Writer Mentorship Program and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Find her on Twitter @emilyhuso.

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Published on September 26, 2022 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

MAKING EACH STORY ITS OWN: A Craft Conversation with Tony Taddei, author of THE SONS OF THE SANTORELLI, speaking with fiction editor Andrea Caswell

Cleaver Magazine Posted on May 16, 2022 by thwackMay 16, 2022

MAKING EACH STORY ITS OWN
a Craft Conversation with Tony Taddei
author of  THE SONS OF THE SANTORELLI
speaking with fiction editor Andrea Caswell

Tony Taddei’s debut story collection, The Sons of the Santorelli, is a fast read: the prose is smart and snappy, the characters are funny and flawed, and we can’t look away from the situations Taddei has put them in, situations he believes “best evoke their mortality and individual points of view.” I recently had the opportunity to speak with the author about his book and the craft of short fiction. The discussion included reflections on writing family sagas, the do’s and don’ts of assembling a linked story collection, finding just the right words, and how Taddei’s training as an actor has helped him as a fiction writer. Our conversation has been edited for clarity. —AC, May 2022

Andrea Caswell: Tell us about the title and the title story.

Tony Taddei: The title came to me after I’d finished a couple of stories about the “sons of the sons” – the second-generation boys of the Santorelli family. Those were the first stories I wrote, and I’d already decided on the surname “Santorelli,” which in Italian means “little saints.” I remember rolling around the words “the sons of the sons,” and at a certain point I scribbled down the “The Sons of the Santorelli” in a notebook. Reading it out loud, I liked the alliteration of it, and I also liked the way the words themselves captured the entire saga of multiple generations. Even use of the article the before Santorelli seemed to be a way to signify a whole clan rather than just a single man. Everything about it felt right to me.

It was quite some time after I came up with the title that I wrote the book’s title story, which I’d planned on being the collection’s origin story. By then, using the title “The Sons of the Santorelli” for both that story and the collection had become an easy choice.

You have to find a way to become receptive and very loose in your mind and body when you write. You need to open the pathways to let in those words and phrases that, when you look at them again, make you feel as if they came from somewhere outside yourself.

AC: The collection covers a span of 60 years or so, across the lives of three generations of the Santorelli family. How did you decide where their family saga would begin, and where it would end?

TT: I didn’t know the timespan the stories would cover when I started to work on them. I always knew there’d be a story for each of the first- and second-generation sons (eight in all). I also knew that I wanted an origin story and at least one story about the patriarch of the family, but I wasn’t sure if that would be a single one or multiple stories, and I wasn’t sure in what time period I’d set them. It was only after I’d written each of the above stories that I started to get the sense that the book would span at least 50-60 years – from the early 1930s to the late 1980s. After that, I started to play around with other stories that I thought needed to be added to round out the collection. For instance, I wrote “Commedia dell’Arte” because I sensed that the collection needed at least one story from Aida’s (the matriarch’s) point of view. I also finished drafts of four other stories that took the grandsons into their adulthood, as men in their 40s and 50s. Those stories would’ve taken the collection well up to the 2000s, but once I started to assemble the book, I felt the sensibilities of those stories were part of a different collection. I took those out of the running, and it remains to be seen if I’ll use them as the start of another collection someday.

The circumstances and driving aspects of a story can be a metaphor for the story’s protagonist as well.

AC: There’s a tremendous intimacy to these stories, in that we get to know each character well and see them at some of their most desperate moments. We meet the sons as children, and by the end, they’re adults with their own problems. Yet each story can stand on its own, without needing to rehash previous plot points. Can you share some of the challenges of creating a linked collection like this? Another way of putting it: how did you do that?!?

TT: Once I came up with the family tree, so to speak, and I knew whose point of view I wanted to tell a story from, I just wrote the most honest and surprising, stand-alone stories that I could, trusting that the stories would eventually link in ways I may not have even planned. Of course, as you write a linked collection, you do know each of your characters, and once you’ve written the first few stories, you can use small details from the previous stories in the story you’re currently working on to link them together. But it’s not something I would recommend a writer think too much about when they’re creating a linked collection. A lot of the work of linking stories takes care of itself automatically in the writing, as well as in the reader’s mind. Once the collection is finished, you can always go back and embroider more links to make the connections stronger. What’s most important is to make each story its own, knowing that if you understand how the characters are related, the links will come naturally.

AC: A successful short story creates a sense of immediacy, a sense that something momentous is happening to a character, and I loved that quality throughout the book. Each story is exceptionally focused: an evening walk home from work, one hour of a bachelor party gone wrong, the first time someone uses a snowblower. How did you decide on these singular moments to communicate larger truths about each character?

TT: Again, each of the characters in these stories has their own strengths and failings. Keeping these characters and their personalities in mind, I wanted to draw out the most acute aspects of who they were, and I waited until I found a circumstance to put them in that would best evoke their mortality and individual point of view. I also wanted the book’s stories to have a dark sense of humor as well as a bit of a slapstick quality—humor and slapstick being about surprises, and surprises being what I most wanted these stories to deliver.

I believe that the circumstances and driving aspects of a story can be a metaphor for the story’s protagonist as well. In writing these stories, I waited to find just the right match between character and circumstance. When I found it, a lot of the rest of the writing took care of itself.

AC: Building on the previous question, is the short story your favorite form? At any point in time, did you think you might try to write a novel about this family?

TT: Yes, I like writing short stories most of all. The time frame for writing a short story can give you a more immediate payoff (if by ‘immediate’ you think in terms of the couple of months it can take to write and polish a story, as opposed to the couple of years it can take to write a novel). I’m impatient and tend to lose focus if I work on one single thing for longer than a few months. Short stories allow me to make something good out of that failing of mine. Though I might have tried to write a novel about the Santorellis, writing about them in the short story form not only felt like the right way to do it, but I also think it best suited my talents.

I wanted to help the reader to feel what it might be like to be inside the heads of these characters as they experience the world in their own peculiar ways. 

Contradicting the above just a bit, I should add that despite my love of short stories. I have managed to write one pretty good novel, as well as a novella that I’m fond of (if anyone out there would like to read them, feel free to get in touch with me). I’ve also recently finished the first three chapters of a longer work (I don’t want to jinx it yet by calling it a novel). That said, short stories are my go-to form, and I have another full collection I’ve just finished. They give me a more immediate feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment that none of the longer forms offer.

AC: I learned from your bio that you’re also a trained actor. Has a foundation in acting been helpful to you as a fiction writer? If so, how?

TT: Absolutely. In fact, my writing career started with me writing plays and sketches for performances in small venues around New York City. It was only when I got tired of having to find people to perform my work (not to mention places to have it performed) that I turned to fiction. Once I did, I found that it was the form I had been meant to write all along.

When it comes to writing fiction, my acting training has been undeniably helpful in a couple of critical ways. First, being an actor, you learn to break down a script and understand a character’s and a play’s objectives, beats and actions. In short, you learn to parse dramatic structure, which is table-stakes for writing any good piece of fiction. Second, many good fiction writers fall short when it comes to writing dialogue. Because I was an actor and was taught to find a way to think and speak like whatever character I was playing, I can more easily put myself into the role of the characters I’m writing. Hence, the dialogue I put into their mouths will more often ring true because I find myself – quite literally – speaking it first in their voice before I write it down.

AC: You’re very skilled at conveying background information with a single sentence or short paragraph. There are many examples throughout the book, but I loved this sentence in “The Great Dream,” in which you wrote of the character Vittorio, “The donkey his father used to make a living ate better than he and his brothers did.” Can you share insights on finding just the right words to convey an entire way of life like that?

Keeping these characters and their personalities in mind, I wanted to draw out the most acute aspects of who they were, and I waited until I found a circumstance to put them in that would best evoke their mortality and individual point of view.

TT: I’m not sure there are any insights I can share here. All I can say is that you have to find a way to become receptive and very loose in your mind and body when you write. You need to open the pathways to let in those words and phrases that, when you look at them again, make you feel as if they came from somewhere outside yourself. There’s a physiological feeling I get when the right words, conveying just what I want to say, come to me. It’s a sort of frisson that ripples through my mind and when it does, I know I nailed it. Even though I may not know where it came from or if I’ll ever be able to do it that well again.

AC: These stories are gritty and realistic; we recognize the messiness of humanity in them right away. Yet two of the stories, “Little Man” and “The Son of the Sheik,” contain fabulist or supernatural elements, and you seem comfortable in that realm as well. Can you talk about those two stories in particular, as far as their departure from strict realism?

TT: Those two stories are the most obvious instances of me deploying a little magical realism in the work. But if you look at the rest of the stories, I think you’ll find that a lot of them are also a bit “fabulist,” as you put it. In one story, “We Now Conclude our Broadcast Day,” you have a guy talking through his TV set to 1960’s television celebrities, who sometimes answer him back. In another, “Deus Ex Machina,” you have the protagonist carrying on a dialogue with God, who answers him in some very eerie ways. In writing these stories, I’d have to say that I tried to thematically keep all of them just a little off-center. I thought this might make them more compelling to read, but I also wanted to help the reader to feel what it might be like to be inside the heads of these characters as they experience the world in their own peculiar ways.

AC: David Gates has praised the collection for its “unsentimental departure from the conventional immigrant family saga,” and for your intimate knowledge of these characters’ dreams and disappointments. As a child or younger person, did you interact with family members who, like Vittorio and Aida, came to the U.S. from Italy?

TT: I am a first-generation Italian American. My parents were born in Italy and came to this country with their parents when they were small children, nearly 100 years ago. I was also lucky enough to have grown up with all four of my immigrant grandparents, so yes, I did interact with family members who had some similar sensibilities and attitudes to Vittorio, Aida, etc. David is right when he says I have intimate knowledge of these characters’ dreams, and I do have a strong first-hand understanding of the types of people who live (and die) in The Sons of the Santorelli.

That said, I wouldn’t want a reader to think that the characters in this collection are members of my family, thinly disguised. I purposely gave the people in these stories broad characteristics beyond those of the family I grew up with. I also pushed them into circumstances that did not happen. What’s on the page here is fiction, and the most you might say about how I tapped into my family and their dreams to write these stories is that the stories bear an emotional imprint of who they were. Never a literal one.

AC: You’ve included film, television, music, and literature references throughout the collection. Some of your characters seek solace and escape in these art forms, which deepens our understanding of their emotional lives. Were any of these arts formative for you, as far as your ultimate path to becoming a writer? I’m thinking of “To Build a Fire” by Jack London, for instance.

TT: Early on I came to depend on the comfort and inspiration that the arts brought to my life. Reading, listening to music, and watching TV and movies allowed me to escape the small life I was living, to dream of worlds and ways of being that were just not available to me in the dreary Northeast town where I grew up. Like just about everyone else (then and now), my parents and extended family consumed their share of television, movies, and popular music (though none of them ever read anything more than a newspaper). What I realized when I was young was that books, movies, television, and other popular art forms had a far different effect on me than they had on others in my family.

I didn’t purposely set out to weave references to music, television, etc. into the work when I began writing the Santorelli stories. As I got into writing them, however, I found that using pop music, literature, and cultural artifacts from TV and movies as reference points for the characters made the work more accessible and, for me, more truthful. It was also a great deal of fun to have Jack London, or Sly and the Family Stone, or Dean Martin or G.I. Joe come along for the ride as their own minor characters and/or period anchor points in the work. It allowed me to reconnect with what art and pop culture meant to me as a boy. It also sunk me (and I hope the reader) into the stories in a way that would not have been possible without it.

AC: The cover design for The Sons of the Santorelli recently won gold in the prestigious Hermes Creative Awards. Congratulations to you and to all involved in the publication of this beautiful book.

TT: Thank you so much.

The Sons of the Santorelli, Bordighera Press, 160 pages, is available for purchase here.


Tony Taddei was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. His humor and fiction have appeared in publications including Story Magazine, Folio, New Millennium Writings, The Funny Times, Pif Magazine, Animal and The Florida Review. Tony holds an MFA from the prestigious Bennington Writing Seminars and is a recipient of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship for fiction. A trained actor, for many years Tony created characters on stage before turning his attention to inventing life on the page. Tony currently resides in New Jersey where he raised three daughters and lives with his wife Karen and their 2-year-old Cockapoo Brodie.

Andrea Caswell is a fiction editor at Cleaver Magazine, where she runs the Short Story Clinic to provide feedback on short fiction (submit here). Her work appears or is forthcoming in Tampa Review, River Teeth, The Normal School, Fifth Wednesday, Columbia Journal, and others. In 2019 her fiction was selected for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. A native of Los Angeles, she now lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts. For an opportunity to write with Andrea, you can register for her upcoming class, The Write Time, here.

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Published on May 16, 2022 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

A Conversation with Ann de Forest Editor of the Anthology WAYS OF WALKING by Amy Beth Sisson

Cleaver Magazine Posted on April 22, 2022 by thwackApril 22, 2022

A Conversation with Ann de Forest
Editor of the Anthology WAYS OF WALKING
New Door Press, 258 pages
Interview by Amy Beth Sisson

I met writer Ann de Forest many years ago, but during the pandemic we formed a new connection around poetry. We became critique partners and attended Claire Oleson’s Poetic Anatomies class. Ann is an accomplished writer in multiple genres who often focuses on the resonance of place. When she mentioned she was editing an anthology of essays about walking, I knew it was something that I, as a walker, reader, and writer, wanted to get my hands on. After reading the advance reader copy, I was impressed not only by the excellent essays but by the thoughtful structure of the collection. I was delighted to have this conversation with Ann about the project. (The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.) —ABS, April 2021

Amy Beth: Tell me how you came to edit this compelling collection of essays about walking.

Ann: In 2016, I was involved in Swim Pony’s Cross Pollination artists residency with Adrienne Mackey, JJ Tiziou, and Sam Wend. Together we decided our collaborative project would be to walk around the perimeter of Philadelphia. That experience, which I wrote about in an article for “Hidden City”, changed my perspective on many things: the city, my writing, and especially walking. After, whenever I told people about that project, I was amazed by how many wanted to tell me their own stories about walking. People like to talk about where they’ve walked and how they’ve walked. It struck me that there were all these possibilities for writing about walking.

Amy Beth: It’s funny that you mention people wanting to tell you their stories because after I read the collection, I wanted to tell you one of my walking stories. When my youngest was in sixth grade, we lived in Silicon Valley. He walked a mile to school. He was one of the few students from our neighborhood who did this. Some parents expressed their concern for his safety. I felt like they were worrying about the wrong risk. They were worrying about stranger danger which is rare, rather than the slow dangers of obesity or of climate change.

Ann: I love the idea that we focus on the wrong danger. On the first day of our walk around Philadelphia we encountered that. People at a driving range on City Line Avenue were saying, oh, you better be careful when you get up to X part of the city. These where white guys, and their fear of other parts of the city is fundamentally racist. It’s all the same city, but we mentally create these danger zones in our heads. And of course, that wasn’t the experience for us at all. The most dangerous places on our walk were the many places not designed for pedestrians.

When you walk you see how connected everything is. That one thing flows into the other. The other thing your story makes me think of is how the automobile dominates and controls our environment. So the “wrong danger” is not just the slow dangers like climate change. Cars themselves are lethal. Think how many car accidents there are. Yet we’ve built this society and infrastructure around the automobile and label that mode of transportation “safe.”

Amy Beth: This makes me think of the essay in the collection by Tom Zoellner, “Nobody Walks to LAX” about airports. They’re not created with walking in mind. That was one of the most surprising stories for me.

Ann: One of Tom’s great insights is how hard it is to walk in or out of airports but you walk so much once you get inside. Inside the airport walking is demanded of you. And it’s not the most pleasant walking.

Amy Beth: Several stories explore how identity influences walking. In your essay “Aberrant Angeleno,” you talk of your vulnerability as a woman walking alone. There is that striking moment in Lena Popkin’s essay “Tread Lightly” where men ogle her while on a walk with her oblivious father and brother and her struggle to get the men who love her to understand. Dwight Sterling Dunston’s essay “A Walk with Hawk” tells a compelling story of his father’s peril while walking in a white neighborhood as a Black man. Can you talk a little bit about that contradiction of things being both safer than we think they are and for some more dangerous?

Ann: Who you are influences how you walk. For some people, walking is not as easy as for others. Walking while Black is perilous. We see the tragedy of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder and other stories about people who are unsafe in certain places or neighborhoods. Places anybody who’s white doesn’t have to think about being in. It was important to me to get that perspective.

Victoria Farmer, who has cerebral palsy, wrote about her experience walking in London. She wanted to walk through London like Virginia Woolf, but she had to come to terms with her differences. She couldn’t walk as freely and unencumbered as Woolf. There’s this moment where she and her husband are waiting for a bus on a day that she is using her wheelchair. The bus passes her by because there is room for only one wheelchair. Disability is another identity that influences one’s way of walking in the world.

Amy Beth: In those diverse ways, the anthology takes the reader through history, time, and necessity.

Ann: Necessity is an important consideration. There’s a story in the anthology where the walk was a necessity. Yasser Allaham in “Crossing to Jordan” wrote of having to leave Syria in 2013 during the war. His city and his university were bombed. His family got out but he, because of various technicalities, was not able to go with them across the border. He spends a month in a no-man’s land between Syria and Jordan, trying to figure out how to get there. It reminds us that not all walks are leisurely or planned. And this same forced movement is happening right now. I’ve heard two million people have left Ukraine, many on foot. [Note: as of our conversation on 3/14/2022. The number is now much higher.]

Amy Beth: In the preface you say walking is subversive. Tell me more about that.

Ann: Walking is counter to the things our culture values. We live in a society that values speed, efficiency, and the arrival more than the journey. Walking contradicts all those things.

Nancy Brokaw’s essay, “The Hiker and the Flâneur” opens the collection with a history of walking and the ways writers and thinkers have looked at walking. Both the idea of a hike and the idea of being a flaneur, or someone who ambles through the city, are inventions of the modern era going back to the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century. They arise from the anxiety that’s attached to living in a fast-paced civilization. Walking is an antidote. Our culture tells us we have to have all this stuff to get through daily life. To walk is to say, I have my own body and my two legs, and I don’t really need any more than that.

Kalela Williams, at the end of her essay, “The Three Century Walk” talks about marching in protest after the killing of George Floyd, and the power of bodies walking together demanding justice. The protest marches of the summer of 2020 belong to a long legacy of walking alongside others in solidarity and protest to effect change. That’s another form of subversive walking.

Amy Beth: That brings me to Mark Geanuleas, whose subversive act is to walk absolutely everywhere.

Ann: Mark made a decision that he wasn’t going to use any other form of transportation. He lives in Lancaster and his parents live in Elkins Park. If he wants to visit them, he must decide to walk about seventy-five miles to Philadelphia. He also does a very long walk every year. For him it’s a philosophical choice about how to live. For Mark, to live fully in the present, walking is the only option.

Amy Beth: Which shows in another way the different ways people with different bodies experience walking. I was also struck by the idea that walking allows us to connect more deeply with history.

Ann: Kalela Williams writes about giving tours of Black history in Philadelphia so that people will see things that they might not notice otherwise because not all of it is acknowledged or commemorated. Walking in her case is a kind of commemoration and a way to be a witness to the past. When you walk you’re so much in the present tense, but I think you’re also more attuned to the fact that others have walked before you.

Jeeyeun Lee is a visual artist who has done amazing walking projects. For her the walk itself has a performative aspect as well as an aspect of discovery and witness, it’s almost like a form of moving land acknowledgment. In her essay “100 Miles in Chicagoland” she explores how Chicago got to be what it is today, with buildings and highways constructed on what were once native paths and native lands. She is walking with the heightened consciousness of what was there before, exposing the theft and displacement that underlies American expansion and settlement.

In a similar vein, Nathaniel Popkin’s essay “Finding Purchase: Walks of Witness on Stolen Land” is about tracing the steps of the Walking Purchase, the theft of Delaware Indian lands in 1735. He conceives his walk as an act of penance, and so it’s very ritualistic. He’s experiencing the river he loves and grew up alongside, but that he also realizes is part of stolen land. He links this to a walk along another river, in Chile, also wrested from the Indigenous inhabitants to build a hydroelectric dam.

Amy Beth: I noticed the strong connections between walking and writing. Kathryn Hellerstein in her essay “Walking on Shabbes” drafts poems while walking.

Ann: Yes, and Rahul Mehta in his essay “Tunnels” writes that he is tapping the essay we are reading on his phone while walking in Carpenter’s Woods.

Christine Nelson’s essay “Five Thousand Walks Toward Thoreau’s Journal” is about the relationship for Thoreau between walking and writing. In his diaries, he’s “keeping track” of the things that happen to him. I love that image because the idea of keeping track is related to the tracks you make while you’re walking. And that idea that the marks you make on a page look like tracks on a page. For Thoreau, it’s not just about walking; it’s about walking in order to be a writer, to be a thinker, to experience the world in a sauntering way. It’s not that there’s one or the other, but that those things become part of a holistic creative life.

Amy Beth: What are some of the other themes or surprises that emerged?

 Ann: I was surprised so many writers wrote about their fathers. There are a few beautiful essays about walking with fathers but only one essay about a mother: Mickey Herr’s essay, “A Walker’s Paradise.” It explores how her recovery from leukemia and getting stronger intersects with her mother’s getting weaker and more immobile. I was also surprised that given the power of nocturnal walks in literature there were only a few on the topic. Justin Coffin’s “The Way Home” is about walking through suburban subdivisions at night; it’s a walk he doesn’t want to be taking. When he arrives he experiences a revelation about home.

It was a delight to discover how the essays speak to each other. The anthology feels like this great conversation. Read all the essays and you may end up with an expanded view about what walking is and maybe it will encourage you to go out for a walk yourself.


Amy Beth Sisson lives in a small town outside of Philadelphia. Her day job is in software development. She tells programmers what business people want and tells business people why they can’t quite have it. She recently completed the University of Pennsylvania’s online Modern Poetry course, ModPo. Her fiction has appeared in Enchanted Conversation and Sweet Tree Review. Her non-fiction for children has appeared in Highlight’s High Five and Fun for Kidz magazines.

 

Ann de Forest’s work often centers on the resonance of place. Her short stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in Coal Hill Review, Unbroken, Noctua Review, Cleaver Magazine, Found Poetry Review, The Journal, Hotel Amerika, Timber Creek Review, Open City, and PIF, and in Hidden City Philadelphia, where she is a contributing writer. Her anthology WAYS OF WALKING WAS inspired by having twice walked the entire perimeter of Philadelphia, the city she’s called home for three decades.

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Published on April 22, 2022 in Interviews, Interviews with Nonfiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

A CONVERSATION WITH NAMRATA PODDAR, AUTHOR OF BORDER LESS

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 22, 2022 by thwackMarch 22, 2022

A CONVERSATION WITH NAMRATA PODDAR, AUTHOR OF BORDER LESS
7.13 Books, 157 pages
Interview by Grace Singh Smith

Full disclosure: I met Namrata Poddar—writer, editor, UCLA professor of writing and literature—in a room filled with Vermont sunlight, at Bennington Writing Seminars. But what I should actually say here is that I met Joohi Mittal, a widow whose fortunes have fallen (“Poor Joohi, Mount Sinai duplex to Malava cubicle!” Mount Sinai. Need we know more?). Joohi appeared in Namrata’s story, “Silk Stole”, which we were “workshopping.” I don’t remember any of our comments, helpful or not; what I remember is a day in Joohi’s life unlike no other in her recent memory, where, thanks to an unexpected return from an investment, this mother of three—who works “three plus jobs”—allows herself a window into her lost life. She buys a designer silk stole, a drink at an Americanized café (Coffee Keen!), and—if only for the length of a facial massage, a Prada purse-wielding snooty fellow customer notwithstanding—Joohi feels “the lines on her forehead dissolve.” Ahhhhh. But then the story’s last two words disturb Joohi’s, and our, brief equilibrium. She “. . . sank deep.”

Several years after I wanted to clobber that Prada purse-wielding woman who checks out Joohi’s chipped toenail polish, “Silk Stole” appeared—has just appeared—as part of Namrata Poddar’s debut novel Border Less. Joohi appears, of course, but she is part of a large cast of border-crossing characters who are searching for a better life. Border Less traces the migratory journey of Dia Mittal, an airline call center agent in Mumbai, and as Dia journeys to the United States, the stories of other border crossers—travel agents, immigrant maids, fashion designers, hospitality industry workers, Bollywood artists (junior and senior), hustling single mothers (like Joohi), academics, tourists in the Third World, refugees, and more—appear, not so much vignettes as threads in a vast web. And true to the complexities and struggles of immigrant life, the lines on these characters’ foreheads, if they do dissolve (figuratively speaking), only do so at a price.

Namrata and I talked over email about what inspired this many-voiced novel, her publication experience, how she navigates writing male characters (and tackles racism and classism), why she chose to end Border Less with a story written in the voice of the goddess Shakti, her advice for aspiring debut authors, and so much more. This interview has been lightly edited. You can read more about Namrata on her website.

—Grace Singh Smith, March 2022

GSS: Congratulations on this gorgeous symphony of a novel that challenges so many preconceived notions of form. When I first heard the title—Border Less—I was very intrigued. Why not, you know, Borderless? Then the novel’s epigraph, by Édouard Glissant, a stunning confirmation of the novel’s power and potential, answered my question, or at least I think so. Can you tell us a little more about the novel’s title (and the epigraph)—how it informs, inspires, and is also driven by the voices within it?

NP: On the title, it’s definitely the verb over the adjective. Meaning, it’s less “borderless” because we live in a world with a rising wave of nationalism in so many countries including the U.S. and India, increasingly under Trump erstwhile and Modi’s current leadership. To suggest that we literally inhabit a  “global village” with no borders—even if it’s true somewhere within a digital universe composed of Facebook, Twitter, and the like—would be to suggest a political utopia, a reason I didn’t care to name the novel “borderless.” That said, most characters centered in the book have experienced geographical dislocation in one way or another, and are borderless to the degree that they do not claim allegiance to just one nation-state. Also, a spiritual interrogation and a yogic worldview punctuate Border Less along with its political exploration around the word “border.” Among several ideas, I see the novel offering a meditation on what it takes for women to let go of all the expectations and “ borders” placed on their being by society, families, parents, children, lovers, husbands, arty gatekeepers and more, and to tune into themselves and truly feel borderless.

The title as a verb—Border Less—also has multiple interpretations in the book. But if I’d to boil it down to a dominant one, Border Less alludes firstly to the novel’s closing chapter, an epilogue of sorts where the Hindu goddess of creation Shakti is calling out the Euro-American literary establishment and asking it to borderless forms of literary storytelling, especially the novel.

Lastly, the epigraph by the Nobel-nominated Afro-Caribbean writer and intellectual, Edouard Glissant, that opens the novel reinforces this circularity in the novel’s structure; it alludes to communities who have endured oppression and historic marginalization and how they have produced other forms of storytelling that subvert the assumptions of mainstream Western storytelling. Much of Glissant’s oeuvre explores forms of postcolonial storytelling and was a big influence on Border Less.

GSS: This novel defies the traditional form of the mainstream Western novel, with many voices and narratives. There is Dia Mittal, the airline call center agent in Mumbai, India, whom we meet in the first story Help me Help you and who eventually journeys to greater Los Angeles. Then there are all the stories that intersects with Dia’s—all border-crossing characters like Dia. Related to the first question, too—did you always know you would write a novel in this form? How did Dia appear to you as the fount of Border Less?

NP: I did not ever imagine I’d write a novel (even if I wanted to), let alone a polyphonic novel like Border Less. Maybe that’s because, for the longest time, I saw the novel, at least for my own writing aspirations that progressed over my U.S. years, via the American literary establishment and its market forces. Here, the novel follows the psychological drama of a few protagonists, is character-driven, and the plot often involves tracing a character arc on the page, a story movement from conflict to some sort of resolution in a way that won’t interrupt what John Gardner famously called the ”vivid and continuous dream” of an implied bourgeois reader’s experience. What I’m paraphrasing here are the assumptions of the modern realist novel and a decisive rise of the Anthropocene in storytelling, both of which, to me, have their origins in the West. Across much of the world and throughout history, storytelling hasn’t worked in this specific way.

As a brown woman with desert roots who grew up in a coastal, postcolonial India, who then migrated to the U.S., and who continues to live in a global patriarchy, my individual and communal history is marked by gaps, fissures, and ellipses. So it made more sense to me that my novel’s form reflects my own history over the history of my colonizer.

As a literary critic, I spent many years focusing on the realist novel as it manifests in 21st-century literature by writers of color; it’s a body of writing I still love. As a fiction writer though, this template of the novel did not inspire me at all—I don’t viscerally connect with its assumptions of continuity and wholeness, zooming into one or more main characters. To me, these arty assumptions come from white male history, assumptions that have been laid bare in works by several writers of color including Amitav Ghosh, Matthew Salesses, Gish Jen, and Edouard Glissant. As a brown woman with desert roots who grew up in a coastal, postcolonial India, who then migrated to the U.S., and who continues to live in a global patriarchy, my individual and communal history is marked by gaps, fissures, and ellipses. So it made more sense to me that my novel’s form reflects my own history over the history of my colonizer. All this critical reasoning, though, happened in the later stages of writing the book when I was thinking about form in serious ways.

As for Dia, she kept reappearing in my drafts over many years—an insistent voice of a lower-middle-class Mumbai girl, one who doesn’t come from the Bombay of writers like Salman Rushdie or Suketu Mehta, all Bombays I deeply love; one who crosses multiple borders between languages and cultures, like so many Mumbaikars have; one who insisted I put her story down on the page. That said, her voice rarely came to me as the dominant voice amid the multiple voices and stories I drafted toward the book; it came interspersed with other voices that spoke in my head. It’s this juxtaposition of voices that I’ve tried in many ways to capture within the book.

GSS: As someone who’s been slogging over a first novel for years, I find your journey and the novel’s publication inspiring. How long did it take you to write Border Less, how many drafts did you write, and how did the work evolve through the various iterations? For example, did you have a sense from the beginning that you’d split the novel up into the two sections on which these interconnected narratives hang, Roots and Routes?

NP: From its earliest drafts that I wrote while on a sabbatical from grad school to the time it was done with its final stage of line-edits in 2021,  Border Less took seventeen years to write. I rework compulsively most things I write. Even a story or an essay of 5,000 words takes me, at the least, around twenty-five to thirty drafts. So you can imagine the various versions that must’ve happened over seventeen years with a manuscript of about 50,000 words.

Honestly, I didn’t feel inclined to keep a precise count as I feared the results would create a limiting belief in my head that would interfere with the process. That said, Border Less did evolve over many, many drafts, especially since I was revising not just its content and doing the developmental as well as line-edits at different moments, but also, thinking seriously through questions of form at each step.

Border Less first started as standalone scenes and vignettes, many of which evolved into stories that often connected organically to become a collection of interconnected stories. This collection then morphed into a novel, yet a novel that draws inspiration from a BIPOC legacy of novels and storytelling at large over a white legacy of the novel.

GSS: I love how you use slang, of the sort you’d heard on the streets of Mumbai and also Hindi terms/words—“bhunkuss,” “jaan,” plus the names of Bollywood songs—without explaining, or even giving hints, as to their meaning in English. What kind of considerations go into that—do you worry about uninitiated readers stumbling over it?

…when white writers write in a Caucasian English that’s specific to say, working-class London or middle-class California or New York suburbs, they don’t pause on the page to translate for a brown Anglophone reader like me the communal idioms or slang they import into their use of English. When using hybrid English in my novel—one inspired from both South Asia (especially Mumbai), and a South Asian diaspora in the West—I allowed myself the same freedom most writers I love wield within their writing.

NP: One of my biggest motivations in writing Border Less was to see more Anglophone fiction in both my homes—India and the U.S.—reflect the English my people and I speak. After all, every Anglophone writer reflects the world they come from in the way they use language—whether it be Toni Morrison or Salman Rushdie, Sandra Cisneros or Raymond Carver.

And yet, when white writers write in a Caucasian English that’s specific to say, working-class London or middle-class California or New York suburbs, they don’t pause on the page to translate for a brown Anglophone reader like me the communal idioms or slang they import into their use of English. When using hybrid English in my novel—one inspired from both South Asia (especially Mumbai), and a South Asian diaspora in the West—I allowed myself the same freedom most writers I love wield within their writing. In fact, this non-explanation of one’s world and an opacity with language is the only way I’ve ever encountered and consumed “literary” writing. I felt no desire to play a literary pioneer here and pursue the goal of full linguistic transparency as if that were possible.

GSS: In Firang, the narrator’s husband’s friends, a slightly cringe-inducing group (IMHO), call her Firang, foreigner because she spent her childhood in Mauritius before moving to India, France, and Northern California for school, then finally to Orange County where she settles down with her husband, Vish. Firang is a very loaded term. The narrator’s journey across borders aligns with yours—or at least the places where you’ve lived. How much of your own immigrant experience informed Border Less?

NP: Firang is certainly a loaded term, although like with any word or concept, it gains and shifts meaning with context, something I hope cultural insiders will recognize within Border Less, too.

I believe Noor, the narrator in Firang, and I have overlapping life journeys to the extent that we have both lived in India and France, but I haven’t lived in Northern California and Noor hasn’t lived in the East Coast cities of India and North America as I have. Where our life journeys overlap is in the fact that we have both crossed borders and lived in more than one place. Although that’s the case with most characters in Border Less.

Migration or the constant navigation between countries, continents, languages and cultures,  impacts my life in crucial ways. If it seeps into all of my work—fiction, nonfiction, translation, teaching, and editorial work—that is because it’s a huge part of who I am. It’s a topic that can never not interest me, on the page or otherwise. 

GSS: Brothers at Happy Hour has unlikable men complaining about the women in their lives (it doesn’t exactly end on a complimentary note for these bros). There’s this character, TJ, who’s finally settled down at the age of thirty-four with a distant cousin, after a month of “rumored dating,” causing everyone to be “surprised yet relieved he wasn’t gay.” (That yet, though.). TJ is the first brother—“brothers”, since they aren’t related, after all—we hear from in this story. He launches into a bitter complaint about his “super Type-A wife.” I found myself feeling mildly sorry for TJ, in spite of myself. How hard—or how easy—it is for you to write sympathetic—and, conversely, unsympathetic male characters?

Of course, the feminist in me may rationally believe that it’s hard to create sympathetic male characters, but as fiction writers, we don’t write with a political label attached to our pen. We write by learning to listen and letting our characters guide us moment by moment into the next step of a story.

NP: I agree. With all the moments you share from the novel above, TJ comes across as a fairly unlikeable character. That said, there are other moments within the novel where TJ is also relatable to readers, or I hope, especially when it comes to his loyalty for his friends, or the inside jokes they share as Indian American “brothers.”

Like other male or female characters in the book, I see TJ as an ambivalent character—he embodies the good and the bad, and I hope this makes him more than a one-dimensional character.  Of course, the feminist in me may rationally believe that it’s hard to create sympathetic male characters, but as fiction writers, we don’t write with a political label attached to our pen. We write by learning to listen and letting our characters guide us moment by moment into the next step of a story. TJ to me was as hard or as easy as writing other male or female characters within the book, whether it is Dia the protagonist, or perhaps the most likable of all male characters in Border Less, Jeetendra, a motel owner in Southern California, the narrator of the chapter, “Victorious”.

GSS: Another question from Firang. “Every cliché on India I’d heard from white folks in the west, my new brown family in the West was recycling, joke after joke on the motherland’s lack of civilization, the poverty, the population, the heat. . .” I found it easy—too easy—to identify with the narrator’s irritation, and it is evocative of the layered racism often invisible from the outside (that is, most people are aware—or such is my hope—of colonial and post-colonial attitudes of Westerners towards Indians but then there’s the racism, discrimination, and classism within the nation itself, part of my experience growing up in rural northeast India.). I note, too, where the call center supervisor in Help me Help you makes a jab at the way “interns from Ahmedabad” pronounce certain English words. Did you intentionally create these moments, these nods to the often invisible reality of inter-Indian racism and classism, or did the story produce these moments “organically”?

NP: I didn’t intentionally create these moments. They showed up organically because like you, I’m quite aware of racism, classism, and casteism within our South Asian communities—in the subcontinent or its diaspora worldwide. In the later stages of writing the book, though, when I did wear a critic’s hat, these moments stood out to me as a key highlight. After that, I did my best to hone these moments, as a storyteller, for the reader.

GSS: Kundalini, the closing story, is a brilliant, fierce takedown of patriarchy in all its avatars, from religious to literary, and it is written in the second person! By the goddess Shakti, no less, she who “[owns] that ancient game of Form and Illusion”. I think it is important for readers of Border Less to know why you chose to end Border Less with her voice. Please tell us more.

NP: Glad you enjoyed the ending. Although to be honest, I didn’t always choose to end my novel with Shakti’s voice. When I think of storytelling in rational or conventional terms, ending the novel of Dia’s journey and her eventually finding “home” made sense to me. And yet the last chapter came to me almost as is, that is, Shakti, speaking directly to some of the big figures of South Asian history and mythology, not to mention the Western literary establishment and other characters in Border Less. When I was transcribing the voice I heard, I loved what I had on the page, except that I didn’t know what to do with the epistolary short fiction I’d downloaded, as if from ether. I put it away in my digital folder for “extras” yet Shakti’s voice kept insisting that I put her back into my novel and also that I give her the last word.

This led me to think of the manuscript I had in deeper ways, to think through the questions of form, and a postcolonial legacy of storytelling including hybrid novels that I was already familiar with, thanks to my life in and involvement with teaching and literary criticism. And surely, in the structural revisions of the manuscript, ending the narrative with a secondary character who repeatedly comes up in the book as a leitmotif made sense, especially since Border Less is less about character-driven fiction, and way more about community-driven fiction. “Kundalini,” especially in its performance of the great cosmic dance of destruction and creation, the Tandava,  heralds a new world order; it echoes the epigraph by Glissant that opens the novel by reaffirming an alternative world with other forms of storytelling that come from communities who have endured historic oppression and marginalization. It thus also reinforces a circularity over linearity of “plot”; it echoes the circular movements of the Rajasthani dance ghoomar that punctuate the novel; it creates a frame that encases Dia’s story as well as her community’s, and frames are crucial to Rajasthani art forms from my ancestral home in India, from our performing arts to haveli architecture with its specific forms of windows or the jharokha.

In short, ending with “Kundalini” made so much more sense than with Dia’s journey that appears in the novel as its penultimate chapter.

GSS: You are an author, an editor, a professor of literature and creative writing at UCLA, and last, but not the least, a mother.  Who have been your greatest influences, people who have anchored you?

NP: My biggest influences as life anchors or as a working mother are my mother and my sister, who’ve always had to work very hard to earn a living and yet have been very present for their families, especially their children. Other big inspirations on the road are a whole community of mother-writers who also raise children, produce books, hold day jobs and are active literary citizens. Watching multitasking working women who’re no suckers to patriarchy or systemic oppression at multiple levels lead their day-to-day lives and simply be themselves in all their light anchors me on the road. This list of peers and role models in my life is very long, although my mentors, Dr. Francoise Lionnet and Dr. Shu-mei Shih at UCLA, and Jill McCorkle and Angie Cruz from my time at Bennington Writing Seminars first come to mind, as do peers like Camille Dungy, Tiphanie Yanique, Bich Minh Nguyen, Sonora Jha, Pooja Makhijani, Anajli Enjeti, Chaya Bhuvaneswar, Kaitlyn Greenidge, among others. Another huge life anchor of mine is a close circle of friends, working mothers of color, who keep life very real for me, and who uplift me when I trip, and it’s my hope that I do the same for them—shout out in particular here to SoCal writer-sisters Shilpa Agrawal and Aline Ohanesian, and academic sister from Mumbai, Dr. Urmila Patil. 

My two cents, then, for aspiring debut authors trying to finish and shop their manuscript in the American market: Learn as much as you can about the publishing landscape. Put out your work as much as you can to discover who is truly your reader. Know also what you seek first—a paycheck from your book sales or a book that deeply reflects you. For minority writers, these two goals in the current literary landscape can often be incompatible.

GSS: And lastly, what has been the publication journey like, for Border Less? What were some obstacles that you had to reckon with? Do share any advice you might have for others who, like you, are laboring over work that challenges the literary status quo.

NP: As with most BIWOC—more so, those not born and raised in the U.S. and those who don’t strictly center the U.S. in their work—I had a hard time shopping for my manuscript within an American literary industry known to be eighty-five percent white at all levels of executive decision making. And while I talk openly, teach, and write about these structural inequities in American publishing in most of my recent nonfiction and editorial work, I reckoned early enough with the fact that my manuscript was unlikely to get a pass by the Big Five. Firstly, because I didn’t have an agent until I already signed the contract for my novel, and secondly, because of all the “rules” Border Less resists when it comes to “literary storytelling,” and because the novel’s last chapter in calling out the literary establishment is fairly incendiary.

After a point, I shopped my manuscript mainly with small and indie presses known to take an interest in BIPOC voices. Here, too, while the manuscript was a contender for three literary awards for first books from Feminist Press, Black Lawrence Press, and C&R Press, it didn’t garner enough interest toward an actual publication. I’m someone who doesn’t believe in giving rejection too much energy so at some point, I just stopped tracking the numbers—but I did submit and receive rejections continuously, until one day, Leland Cheuk, an Asian American author, the founder and publisher of 7.13 Books, reached out to me with an offer for publication.

My two cents, then, for aspiring debut authors trying to finish and shop their manuscript in the American market: Learn as much as you can about the publishing landscape. Put out your work as much as you can to discover who is truly your reader. Know also what you seek first—a paycheck from your book sales or a book that deeply reflects you. For minority writers, these two goals in the current literary landscape can often be incompatible.

Beyond the completion and circulation of a book, get clear on what you want from your writing path. Then start looking for ways to make that happen. Walking the road as a “minority” writer who takes her work seriously is already a pretty demanding path, no matter what choices you make, unless you come from generational wealth or financial privilege. Every choice on the road to publication is a tradeoff, but once you know what you truly want, paying the cost toward your choices will come easier, I think, as will contentment and hopefully, joy.


Namrata Poddar writes fiction and nonfiction, serves as Interviews Editor for Kweli, and teaches literature and writing at UCLA. Her work has appeared in several publications including Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Longreads, The Kenyon Review, and The Best Asian Short Stories. Her debut novel, Border Less, was released in March 2022 from 7.13 Books, and was a finalist for Feminist Press’s Louise Meriwether Prize. She holds a PhD in French literature from the University of Pennsylvania, an MFA in Fiction from Bennington College, and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Transnational Cultures from UCLA. Find her on Twitter,  @poddar_namrata, and on Instagram, @writerpoddar. Author Photo Credit: Elena Bessi

Grace Singh Smith’s stories and essays have appeared in Shenandoah, AGNI, Arrowsmith Press, Santa Monica Review, Cleaver, Aster(ix), The Texas Review, Home (Heady Mix), and elsewhere. Her story “Oshini” was selected for the 2018 Best of the Net anthology, and her story “The Promotion” was cited as notable in The Best American Short Stories 2016. She is Santa Monica College’s spokesperson and is the blog editor at AGNI.

 

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Published on March 22, 2022 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

An Interview with Kathleen Courtenay Stone, author of the collective biography, THEY CALLED US GIRLS

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 1, 2022 by thwackMarch 3, 2022

A Conversation with Kathleen Courtenay Stone, author of the collective biography, THEY CALLED US GIRLS: STORIES OF FEMALE AMBITION FROM SUFFRAGE TO MAD MEN
Cynren Press, 222 pages
Interview by Jean Hey

I met Kathleen Stone during a residency at Bennington College while we were working toward our MFA degrees. We were both from Boston, and Kathleen invited me to attend BookLab, a vibrant literary salon that she runs. But our friendship really took off in coffee shops. Once a month we met — and would still, if it weren’t for Covid — to discuss our projects, share writing advice and cheer each other on. Kathleen was working on a collective biography about women in male-oriented jobs in the mid-twentieth century, when prejudice and gender discrimination were the order of the day. She told me she was struggling with certain aspects of it, such as whether or not to insert herself into the narrative. She didn’t ask me to read any of it, and it seemed simpler to us both not to share work. As her project neared publication, though, I welcomed the chance to interview her about it. After reading an advance copy, I was struck by how skillfully she’d woven her own story into the biographies, and how it offered echoes and contrast to the women’s experiences from a generation older.
—Jean Hey, March 2022

Jean Hey: Tell us how you decided on the title for the book, which contains a diverse collection of oral histories that span several decades.

Kathleen Stone: The title comes from something one of the women featured in the book told me. When Rya Zobel graduated from law school in 1956, she couldn’t get a job with a law firm. Firms were not hiring women and, as she said, “We were not called women; we were called girls.” This turned out to be pretty typical of the era. Women, no matter how talented and accomplished, were thought of as ‘girls,’ and incapable of succeeding in certain fields where men were dominant. As it turned out, Rya Zobel was the first woman to serve on the federal court in Massachusetts. She has been a judge for forty years, proving just how wrong men were to underestimate her. 

Similar to Judge Zobel, the other women I write about were successful in their own fields, including medicine, science and executive leadership, to give a few examples. The women are pretty much contemporaries – all born before 1935 – and they came of age in the middle of the 20th century when women were expected to stay home, or at least not to take “men’s” jobs.  But these women had ambitions that exceeded such expectations. My goal in writing the book was to find out where their ambition came from and how it flowered despite an adverse environment.

JH: Female ambition is the most obvious theme in this biography, and many of the women in this book are remarkably single-minded in their pursuit of their career. Did you enter Bennington’s MFA program with the same focused determination, in your case to write this book?

KS: Yes, I arrived at Bennington with my book project in hand. I had already interviewed some of the women who appear in the book and written a few early drafts of chapters, but things were in a very preliminary state. I had doubts whether this could really turn into a book. The slogan of the MFA program was “Read 100 Books, Write One.” As I struggled to figure out what I might accomplish, that became my holy grail.

JH: What made you want to write this particular book and to focus on female ambition?

KS: When I was young, I fantasized about women of my parents’ generation who had what were then considered “men’s” jobs. After working for almost 30 years as a lawyer, I found myself still wondering about women like that. Where had their ambition come from and how did they pursue it, particularly when the hurdles they faced were so much higher than those I faced? Being at a stage in my own career when I wanted a new challenge, I decided to find out. From there, the book took shape.

JH: This book took ten years to write. How did your vision for it change along the way?

KS: I should confess that ten years is a modest estimate. In reality, it took longer. The biggest change in my work was how personal my writing became. At the start, I was writing in a very impersonal way, entirely in the third person. Also, I stuck strictly to what was said in the interviews, without even minor edits. That was a product of my legal background: when you quote testimony, you don’t change even a comma. But writing a book is obviously different. I had to become comfortable with editing for clarity. The real breakthrough, though, was putting myself in the book. All my teachers and classmates at Bennington could see this is what I needed to do, but it took me a while to see it for myself. I ended up adding mini-chapters I call intermezzos, where I describe some episodes in my own life. I use them to compare how things were for me, a baby boomer, to what an older generation of women experienced.

Women, no matter how talented and accomplished, were thought of as ‘girls,’ and incapable of succeeding in certain fields where men were dominant.

JH: The seven women here are inspiring, not only because of their achievements but for their humility, drive and continued engagement in the world. Why these women? How did you find them, and how did you decide who would make it into the final book?

KS: To find the women, I relied on a combination of strategy and serendipity. On the strategic side, I started by reading books on women’s history, mostly for general background but also to generate a list of notable women. I added to this list through Internet research, always keeping in mind that I wanted diversity of profession, race and ethnicity. In a few instances, I targeted a “dream” interview, but knew that a personal introduction would help open the door. Friends and colleagues were generous in that regard. Also, when friends heard what I was working on, they sometimes volunteered suggestions. Some terrific interviews came about because of those spontaneous conversations.

In the end, I had more good candidates than I could use, which meant I had to make some tough decisions. I wanted to illustrate what things were like in the 50-year period between 1920 and 1970 when, statistics show, the percentage of women in male-dominated professions did not increase for a full half-century. To make the final cut and decide the sequence of chapters, I thought a lot about the era they lived in and tried to illustrate how opportunities evolved even though, overall, women’s progress was static.

JH: Time has a strong presence in this book. Not only did their careers in some instances span fifty years, but you interviewed these women at the end of their lives. Did you find any common threads in how time played on their memories? Would they have done anything differently, as they looked back on their lives and careers?

KS: You’re right about time having a strong presence in the book. Sometimes when I was talking to a woman, it felt as though we were time-traveling together, all the way back to her childhood. She was my guide, but sometimes a question prompted her to reflect, or bring a heightened intensity to the memory. Mildred Dresselhaus, for instance, achieved tremendous things in science, but clearly had not forgotten her impoverished childhood.

As for doing something differently, I think Cordelia Hood, who had as much experience in intelligence as her husband, probably wished for an honest conversation with him about how both of them could fully realize their professional potential in the CIA, where they worked after the Second World War. But given the era’s narrow conceptions about the work women should do, they never did. Nor did the agency break from its circumscribed thinking and give her the kind of recognition that her husband enjoyed.

JH: One of the things I love about this book is the sense of your growing relationships with each of these women over the course of your interviews. There’s a sweet moment in your interview with the nonprofit activist Frieda Garcia, when she says, “Talking to you…  I now realize, I should have asked my mother a hell of a lot of questions.” I get a sense that these women might have started out reluctant interviewees, but warmed to it with time, and ultimately found it gratifying. Can you comment on the trajectory of the interview process?

KS: Some were reluctant to start, others not at all. You mention Frieda Garcia. She was reluctant but only because she’s so modest. She didn’t think she fit the mold of what I was looking for, because she is not a doctor or a lawyer. But she held leadership positions in social service agencies, was on a boatload of nonprofit boards and spent her life as a community activist. We developed a rapport, which led her to reflect on what she might have asked her mother. That, in turn, triggered my own memories of missed opportunities with my own mother.

JH: I find it curious that at a time when society expected women to be housewives, so many of these women had fathers who encouraged them to seek fulfilling work. I wonder if this is tied to the fact that all but one of the women were from immigrant families.

KS: I do think immigration played a role. Several of the families came to this country with the hope they would find better opportunities than what they had left behind. The fathers of these women felt driven to succeed, and passed that on to their daughters as much as to their sons. That was definitely true for Dr. Muriel Petioni, whose family came to the United States to escape colonial oppression in Trinidad. Her father became a doctor and she followed in his footsteps, attending medical school at Howard University, his alma mater. On the other hand, fathers were not a factor in every woman’s life, at least after a certain point. Frieda Garcia came from the Dominican Republic when she was eight, when her parents’ marriage was on the rocks. Her mother, not her father, was the constant in her life. Rya Zobel, who became a federal judge, lost both parents at the end of World War II in Germany. She arrived in 1946 on one of the first ships to bring refugee children to this country. The best I can say is that lives are complex, and while immigration and fathers are two factors that played a role, neither explains everything.

JH: Each biography stands alone, but together they form a vibrant collage that shows that every path to professional success is a little different from the others. Near the end you write, “In my head is a Venn diagram of the women’s lives, with overlapping circles and clusters of experience.” What would you say were the most significant “overlapping circles”?

KS: Education was key for all the women. Without higher education, these women would not have had the careers they did. The one exception was Dahlov Ipcar. As an artist, she did not need a degree. Still, she had grown up in a house where art was made every day. That gave her an exposure that school learning could never match.

Families were also important in every case. That is how values are passed on, expectations set and encouragement given. It sounds so basic, even old-fashioned, but one way or another, families were the bedrock for these women.

I will add that the prevalence of immigration was, to me, a striking conclusion. Of seven women in the book, three were born outside the country and another three had at least one parent who was an immigrant. I think that probably was a factor in the values and expectations the families passed on.

JH: Racial prejudice was an obstacle that the Black doctor Muriel Petioni faced in addition to sexism. Yet it seems that she, like the other women, wanted to talk more about overcoming barriers than dwell on discrimination she suffered. Do you agree?

KS: You’re right about Dr. Muriel Petioni. She experienced not only discrimination but actual Jim Crow segregation in the South. In our conversation, she wanted to share how she used her perch as a Black woman doctor to affect change in the Harlem community and through national organizations. In the racial dimension of her life, she stood apart from other women in the book, but was similar in having a positive outlook, despite having faced steep barriers.

JH: You say at one point that you came to an interview with certain of your own perceptions and misperceptions. What assumptions did you have to rid yourself of during the course of all these interviews?

KS: My experience of the world is colored by having grown up in an affluent, predominately white suburb with good public schools. Given who my parents were, I had a clear path to college and encouragement to find interesting work after that. I also assumed, and my parents never contradicted me, that I would be financially self-sufficient. Not everyone grew up in similar circumstances, not by a long shot. I had to make sure that my assumptions about how life unfolds did not overtake the stories I was actually hearing, because these women came from a variety of backgrounds, and a different historical era.

Interview edited by Andrea Caswell


Kathleen Stone knows something about female ambition. As a lawyer, she was a law clerk to a federal judge, a litigation partner in a law firm, and senior counsel at a financial institution. She also taught seminars on American law in six foreign countries, including as a Fulbright Senior Specialist. Kathleen’s work has been published in Ploughshares, Arts Fuse, Los Angeles Review of Books, Timberline Review, and The Writer’s Chronicle. She holds graduate degrees from Boston University School of Law and the Bennington Writing Seminars and lives in Boston. To learn more about the author or They Called Us Girls, visit her website kathleencstone.com

 

Jean Hey’s essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Plain Dealer, The Chicago Tribune, Solstice Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, The MacGuffin and Arrowsmith Journal. She holds a dual-genre MFA in fiction and nonfiction from Bennington College, where she won the Sven Birkerts Award for nonfiction. She is at work on a collection of memoiristic essays about immigration and identity.

 

 

 

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Published on March 1, 2022 in Interviews, Interviews with Nonfiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

Five and a Half Questions for Michelle Ross on her new collection SHAPESHIFTING—Interview by Kathryn Kulpa

Cleaver Magazine Posted on November 17, 2021 by thwackNovember 18, 2021

Five and a Half Questions for Michelle Ross on SHAPESHIFTING
from Stillhouse Press
Interview by Kathryn Kulpa

Michelle Ross has published short fiction in Cleaver (“Lessons,” Issue 13; “My Husband is Always Losing Things,” Issue 23; “Night Vision,” with Kim Magowan, Issue 34). She spoke to us recently about her new short story collection Shapeshifting.


Kathryn Kulpa: This is such a strong collection! One thing I really like about Shapeshifting is the diversity of points of view, style, and even genre. There are short, flash-like pieces, longer stories, realistic and often funny pieces like “After Pangaea,” with the parents sleeping in cars to keep their place in line to sign their kids up for kindergarten, and darker, more disturbing stories like “Keeper Four” and “A Mouth is a House for Teeth.” Did you worry that the stories might be too divergent, or that publishers might want a more uniform voice?

Michelle Ross: Thank you so much, Kathryn, and thanks for talking with me about the book!

I can’t say I worried about the range of the stories in that regard. Many years ago, I accepted (and have since embraced) that I’m a writer who needs to work in a variety of forms and styles.

Sometimes I’m in the mood to write realistic fiction, and sometimes I’m in the mood to write more speculative fiction. Sometimes I’m in the mood to write short and sometimes long. Sometimes funny, sometimes more serious. Sometimes to borrow forms, sometimes to follow more traditional story structures. I don’t try to restrain myself in that regard. I’m not even sure I could. Rules and restrictions bring out my rebellious nature. Also, I think writing is at its best, not to mention more fun, when it’s playful. So I follow whatever interests me at the moment. What I think unites these stories are their concerns, the questions they ask. If there’s anything in terms of range that I was a little uncertain about early on, it’s the inclusion of the couple of stories that are written from the point of view of daughters—“The Sand and the Sea” and “Life Cycle of an Ungrateful Daughter.” In a book of stories that take the point of view of mothers, these stories diverge a bit. However, in “The Sand and the Sea,” the protagonist is a mother herself and a central question she considers is how her relationship with her mother might have been different if her mother had received the mothering she’d needed. In “Life Cycle of an Ungrateful Daughter,” the daughter imagines her mother’s perspective. Another outlier is “The Pregnancy Game.” The girls in that story are not quite teenagers yet; none of them are mothers, either. Yet all these stories grapple with questions about motherhood in one way or another. Ultimately, I felt these stories not only belonged, but that they made the book stronger.

KK: I agree! The theme of motherhood, viewed in different ways, is an anchor for the collection. Sometimes the stories are written from the point of view of daughters with difficult mothers (“The Sand and the Sea”), young girls enacting motherhood (“The Pregnancy Game”), or women who have taken on a caregiver role in some other way (“Keeper Four”), but often the point of view character is a mother. Are there stories you think you would not have written if not for your own experience of being a mother?

MR: I probably wouldn’t have written most of these stories if I hadn’t first become a mother myself. I don’t think I would have been drawn to write about motherhood if I weren’t grappling with motherhood, if it weren’t something that occupied my mental energy. The only story in the book that I drafted before becoming a mother is “Life Cycle of an Ungrateful Daughter,” and that one is from the point of view of a daughter imagining her mother’s point of view.

KK: “Keeper Four” and “A Mouth is a House for Teeth” are stories that really resonated with me, and both have dystopian elements that seem especially timely right now, although I’m guessing they were probably written before the pandemic. Can you talk about the origin of those stories?

MR: “A Mouth is a House for Teeth” is easy to recall. That story came to me more fully than most stories do. That is, I knew before I started writing that I wanted to capture the intense feeling of isolation that I felt in early motherhood. I was no longer going to the office each day. I was no longer going anywhere, really. On the one hand, I was very much taken with my son, and, sure, I had him as a constant companion. On the other hand, he couldn’t speak, and the relationship between mother and baby goes one direction—it’s all about the baby’s needs, never about the mother’s needs. My partner worked long hours some days. He worked out of town some weeks. When he wasn’t working, he often seemed to be disappearing to go run errands that took longer than they should. I recall feeling kind of out of my mind sometimes because I was so damn exhausted and so alone. To really capture that feeling, I felt like I needed to exaggerate. I needed to put the mother in this story alone in a house with her child for years. I needed her to not be allowed to leave that house ever.

“Keeper Four” emerged from a few different scraps. One of those scraps were scenes I had cut from a failing story—scenes of a woman trying different tactics to get a bear to eat. Another scrap was a book that someone had gifted my son: Unlikely Friendships: 47 Remarkable Stories From the Animal Kingdom. The book’s photos and stories are endearing, yet at the same time, something about it nagged me. Some of the unlikely “friendships” in the book were, in fact, mother-child relationships—a dog mothering a monkey, for example. From this nagging was born the idea of humans experimenting to develop a drug to try to induce this mothering behavior in women. Also, I wanted at least one story in the book to be from the point of view of a woman who rejects motherhood, so “Keeper Four” naturally became that story. Why is the story so apocalyptic? I think that nearly every time I set a story in a corporate office, the story tends to get a little apocalyptic. Corporate offices and apocalypses go together like peanut butter and jelly.

KK: I’m always interested in the decisions that go into putting a story collection together. I know that, in addition to writing solo stories, you also collaborate with Kim Magowan. Were there any collaborative pieces you wished you could include in this collection? Or other work that was originally part of this book, but ended up being cut for thematic or other reasons? At what point along the way do you look at stories you’ve published and say, “Hey, I think I’ve got a collection here”?

MR: I see the collaborative writing Kim and I do as separate from my solo stories. We have a manuscript of collaborative stories we’re peddling right now to presses, in fact. Also, I just generally tend to work on multiple projects at once even within my own work. As I was writing the stories for Shapeshifting, I was also writing stories for my forthcoming collection, They Kept Running, as well as stories for a few other projects that are still in progress. Selecting the stories for Shapeshifting was mostly straightforward because I knew early on, when I hadn’t written even half these stories yet, that I was working on a collection of stories that interrogate motherhood. Thus, I was writing stories with this book in mind. But along the way, I also kept a list of all the stories I’d written that were motherhood related and I went with my gut about which stories felt like they should be in this collection and which stories felt like they belonged in They Kept Running. The story I was most uncertain about was a flash titled “Manhandle.” Stillhouse Press ended up making that decision for me. The editors felt it didn’t belong in Shapeshifting, so now it’s in They Kept Running.

KK: You publish a lot in journals, both flash and longer work, and I’m amazed by how prolific you are—especially considering you’re also a working parent. Do you follow a writing schedule, or write at random moments when an idea strikes you? Do you have a writing group, or do you ever take workshops for inspiration?

MR: I get up at about 4:30 each morning and write for a minimum of two hours. Same goes for weekends. I don’t have a writing group per se, but Kim Magowan is the first reader for everything I write. Yasmina Din Madden, who I’ve known since we both got our MFAs many years ago at Indiana University, has been one of my regular readers lately, too. Once in a blue moon, the three of us do a mini flashathon together, sometimes with other writers, such as Brittany Terwilliger. I don’t take a lot of workshops, but I have occasionally turned to workshops or other courses when I’ve felt like I needed a little change, some inspiration. “The Sand and the Sea” came out of the Kathy Fish workshop I took some time ago.

KK: Finally, I just wanted to say how perfect the cover design is! Did you have any say in it?

MR: Thanks! I think so, too. Stillhouse asked me to send them images of a few book covers I love and to write notes detailing what I like about those covers. The designer then created two very different cover options based on that information as well as, I assume, their feeling about the book. This was the cover that immediately snagged me. There was no question for me that this was it.

KK: Thanks so much, Michelle! Shapeshifting is available from Stillhouse Press.


Michelle Ross is the author of the story collections There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You (Moon City Press 2017), winner of the 2016 Moon City Press Short Fiction Award and Finalist for the 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Short Stories, and Shapeshifting, which was selected by judge Danielle Evans as the winner of the Stillhouse Press Short Story Award and is forthcoming in 2021. Her fiction has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, The Common, Epiphany, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, TriQuarterly, and other venues. Her fiction has been selected for Best Microfictions 2020 and the Wigleaf Top 50 2019, as well as won prizes from Gulf Coast and other journals. She is fiction editor of Atticus Review and was a consulting editor for the 2018 Best Small Fictions anthology. A native of Texas, she received her B.A. from Emory University and her M.F.A and M.A. from Indiana University. She currently lives in Tucson, Arizona, with her husband and son. She works as a science writer.

Kathryn Kulpa was a winner of the Vella Chapbook Contest for her flash chapbook Girls on Film (Paper Nautilus) and has had work selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction 2020 and 2021 (Pelekinesis Press).  Her flash fiction is published or forthcoming in Flash Frog, 100 Word Story, Monkeybicycle, Smokelong Quarterly, and Wigleaf, and she serves as chief flash editor for Cleaver Magazine. Kathryn has been a visiting writer at Wheaton College and has led writing workshops at the University of Rhode Island, Stonecoast Writers Conference at the University of Southern Maine, Writefest in Houston, Texas, and at public libraries throughout Rhode Island.


A conversation with Nancy Ludmerer, author of Collateral Damage: 48 Stories by Kathryn Kulpa

A conversation with Nancy Ludmerer, author of Collateral Damage: 48 Stories by Kathryn Kulpa
February 14, 2023
FLASH-WRITERS: TRUST YOUR READER: a conversation with Nancy Ludmerer, author of Collateral Damage: 48 Stories (Snake Nation Press, 2022) by Kathryn Kulpa I had the pleasure of interviewing Nancy Ludmerer, a student in one of my Cleaver flash fiction workshops, about her full-length flash collection Collateral Damage: 48 Stories, published by Snake Nation Press. Nancy’s work, both fiction and nonfiction, has been widely published in journals, and she moves effortlessly from brief, lyrical microfiction to longer, more complex stories that push the boundaries of flash fiction. A master of compression, she can unfold a lifetime in a paragraph, as she does in this piece from the collection, originally published in Night Train: Bar Mitzvah When Benjy started to choke on a piece of celery stuffed with scallion cream cheese, I turned from the buffet table and asked, are you okay, and when he shook his head, I said raise your arms but he kept choking, so I slapped him on the back of his fancy new suit, and then two words clicked in my head Heimlich maneuver so I punched my fist into his stomach even though this was the wrong way to do it, but I couldn’t think, couldn’t ...
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MICRO MENTORING: Flash Fiction Masterclass, taught by Kathryn Kulpa, October 1 – October 30, 2022

MICRO MENTORING: Flash Fiction Masterclass, taught by Kathryn Kulpa, October 1 – October 30, 2022
September 9, 2022
MICRO MENTORING Flash Fiction Masterclass Taught by Cleaver Senior Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa 4 weeks Saturday, October 1 - Sunday, October 30; asynchronous with 4 group Zoom sessions, plus an optional one-on-one Zoom consult with each student. $300 Class limit: 6 This class is intended for writers with experience in flash fiction. Questions: [email protected] This class is intended for writers with experience in flash fiction. You are invited to begin the class with work you would like to complete and revise, but we will also offer group exercises to generate new work, accountability, and feedback. Previous students are welcome! Kathryn Kulpa was a winner of the Vella Chapbook Contest for her flash chapbook Girls on Film (Paper Nautilus) and has had work selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction 2020 and 2021 (Pelekinesis Press).  Her flash fiction is published or forthcoming in Flash Frog, 100 Word Story, Monkeybicycle, Smokelong Quarterly, and Wigleaf, and she serves as chief flash editor for Cleaver Magazine. Kathryn has been a visiting writer at Wheaton College and has led writing workshops at the University of Rhode Island, Stonecoast Writers Conference at the University of Southern Maine, Writefest in Houston, Texas, and at public libraries throughout ...
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MICRO MENTORING: Flash Fiction Masterclass, taught by Kathryn Kulpa, July 8 — August 6, 2022

MICRO MENTORING: Flash Fiction Masterclass, taught by Kathryn Kulpa, July 8 — August 6, 2022
June 22, 2022
MICRO MENTORING Flash Fiction Masterclass Taught by Cleaver Senior Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa 4 weeks Friday, July 8—Saturday, August 6; ZOOM meetings on Sunday, July 10; Sunday, July 17; Sunday, July 24; and Sunday, July 31. $300 Class limit: 6 This class is intended for writers with experience in flash fiction. Questions: [email protected] SOLD OUT This class is intended for writers with experience in flash fiction. You are invited to begin the class with work you would like to complete and revise, but we will also offer group exercises to generate new work, accountability, and feedback. Previous students are welcome! Kathryn Kulpa was a winner of the Vella Chapbook Contest for her flash chapbook Girls on Film (Paper Nautilus) and has had work selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction 2020 and 2021 (Pelekinesis Press).  Her flash fiction is published or forthcoming in Flash Frog, 100 Word Story, Monkeybicycle, Smokelong Quarterly, and Wigleaf, and she serves as chief flash editor for Cleaver Magazine. Kathryn has been a visiting writer at Wheaton College and has led writing workshops at the University of Rhode Island, Stonecoast Writers Conference at the University of Southern Maine, Writefest in Houston, Texas, and at public libraries throughout ...
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MICRO MENTORING: Flash Fiction Masterclass, taught by Kathryn Kulpa, Sunday, May 1—Saturday, May 28

MICRO MENTORING: Flash Fiction Masterclass, taught by Kathryn Kulpa, Sunday, May 1—Saturday, May 28
March 25, 2022
MICRO MENTORING Flash Fiction Masterclass Taught by Cleaver Senior Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa 4 weeks Sunday, May 1—Saturday, May 28 Asynchronous, with weekly (optional) Zoom meetings on Thursday evenings or Sunday afternoons. $300 Class limit: 6 This class is intended for writers with experience in flash fiction. Questions: [email protected] SOLD OUT! This workshop, for experienced flash fiction writers, is limited to six students and will feature a combination of generative writing prompts and in-depth discussion of works in progress. In addition to the optional twice-weekly Zoom meetings, students may also, if desired, schedule a one-on-one Zoom consultation with the instructor. Kathryn Kulpa was a winner of the Vella Chapbook Contest for her flash chapbook Girls on Film (Paper Nautilus) and has had work selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction 2020 and 2021 (Pelekinesis Press).  Her flash fiction is published or forthcoming in Flash Frog, 100 Word Story, Monkeybicycle, Smokelong Quarterly, and Wigleaf, and she serves as chief flash editor for Cleaver Magazine. Kathryn has been a visiting writer at Wheaton College and has led writing workshops at the University of Rhode Island, Stonecoast Writers Conference at the University of Southern Maine, Writefest in Houston, Texas, and at public libraries throughout ...
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WRITE, REVISE, PUBLISH! Flash & Microfiction Practice taught by Kathryn Kulpa, Feb 20—March 27 2022

WRITE, REVISE, PUBLISH! Flash & Microfiction Practice taught by Kathryn Kulpa, Feb 20—March 27 2022
December 6, 2021
WRITE, REVISE, PUBLISH! Flash & Microfiction Practice Taught by Cleaver Senior Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa 5 weeks February 20—March 27 Asynchronous, with weekly (optional) Zoom meetings on Sunday evenings $200 Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected] SOLD OUT Do you tend to procrastinate? Do you often do your best work under pressure? Do you sometimes start stories but never get around to finishing or revising them? Do you find the whole process of submitting work for publication stressful or depressing? This five-week workshop is designed for busy writers who want to put writing time and accountability into their schedule with a combination of online prompts, real-time writing sessions, constructive revision suggestions, submission tips, and a group of writing buddies willing to take the submission plunge with you. We will focus on short flash (up to 500 words) and microfiction (up to 400 words). The first two weeks, we will work on generating new stories; in the third week, we’ll focus on revision; and by the fourth week, everyone will commit to submitting three stories for publication (as your classmates cheer you on). Kathryn Kulpa, THE ART OF FLASH; AFTERBURN; FLASH BOOTCAMP; WRITE, REVISE, PUBLISH!, (flash fiction and nonfiction) was a winner of ...
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Five and a Half Questions for Michelle Ross on her new collection SHAPESHIFTING—Interview by Kathryn Kulpa

Five and a Half Questions for Michelle Ross on her new collection SHAPESHIFTING—Interview by Kathryn Kulpa
November 17, 2021
Five and a Half Questions for Michelle Ross on SHAPESHIFTING from Stillhouse Press Interview by Kathryn Kulpa Michelle Ross has published short fiction in Cleaver (“Lessons,” Issue 13; “My Husband is Always Losing Things,” Issue 23; “Night Vision,” with Kim Magowan, Issue 34). She spoke to us recently about her new short story collection Shapeshifting. Kathryn Kulpa: This is such a strong collection! One thing I really like about Shapeshifting is the diversity of points of view, style, and even genre. There are short, flash-like pieces, longer stories, realistic and often funny pieces like “After Pangaea,” with the parents sleeping in cars to keep their place in line to sign their kids up for kindergarten, and darker, more disturbing stories like “Keeper Four” and “A Mouth is a House for Teeth.” Did you worry that the stories might be too divergent, or that publishers might want a more uniform voice? Michelle Ross: Thank you so much, Kathryn, and thanks for talking with me about the book! I can’t say I worried about the range of the stories in that regard. Many years ago, I accepted (and have since embraced) that I’m a writer who needs to work in a variety ...
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WRITE, REVISE, PUBLISH! Flash & Microfiction Practice, Taught by Cleaver Senior Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa, October 24 to November 21. [SOLD OUT]

WRITE, REVISE, PUBLISH! Flash & Microfiction Practice,  Taught by Cleaver Senior Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa, October 24 to November 21. [SOLD OUT]
August 14, 2021
WRITE, REVISE, PUBLISH! Flash & Microfiction Practice Taught by Cleaver Senior Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa 4 weeks: Sunday, Oct. 24 to Sunday, Nov. 21 Mostly asynchronous with one weekly Zoom meeting: Sunday, October 24 - Intro; 11 am Thursday, November 4, 6:30 pm Sunday, Nov. 7, 11 am Thursday, Nov. 18, 6:30 pm $200 Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected] SOLD OUT Do you tend to procrastinate? Do you often do your best work under pressure? Do you sometimes start stories but never get around to finishing or revising them? Do you find the whole process of submitting work for publication stressful or depressing? This four-week workshop is designed for busy writers who want to put writing time and accountability into their schedule with a combination of online prompts, real-time writing sessions, constructive revision suggestions, submission tips, and a group of writing buddies willing to take the submission plunge with you. We will focus on short flash (up to 500 words) and microfiction (up to 400 words). The first two weeks, we will work on generating new stories; in the third week, we’ll focus on revision; and by the fourth week, everyone will commit to submitting three stories for publication (as your ...
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FLASH BOOTCAMP, taught by Kathryn Kulpa, Four Weekend Sessions in June-July, 2021

FLASH BOOTCAMP, taught by Kathryn Kulpa, Four Weekend Sessions in June-July, 2021
May 3, 2021
FLASH BOOTCAMP 4 Summer Weekend Bootcamps Taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa June 4 - 6 June 18 - 20 July 9 - 11 July 23 - 25 Saturday and Sunday Zoom sessions 2-4 pm ET $150 for one session; $275 for two sessions; $375 for three Sessions; $425 for all four sessions. *Get focused!* *Get motivated!* *Get writing!* This generative mini-workshop is designed for busy writers who need to carve out some writing time to generate new work, and who crave deadlines and accountability to stay motivated. This class combines writing prompt "homework" you do on your own with group writing and discussion sessions. In just three days (Friday through Sunday), you will have six new micro-stories ready to revise! Format: Combines asynchronous (writing prompts you do on your own time Friday and Saturday) with two, 2-hour Zoom sessions on Saturday and Sunday. Focus:  Flash pieces 500 words and under. The exercises and feedback were excellent. I also appreciated the Zoom classes which helped me connect with other writers and discuss work. The workshop was incredibly helpful. Kathryn's critiques, prompts, and synchronous sessions were marvelous. The community of writers that formed was strong and committed. Plus, three ...
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AFTERBURN: Flash Revision, taught by Kathryn Kulpa | April 4-April 25 2021 [SOLD OUT]

AFTERBURN: Flash Revision, taught by Kathryn Kulpa | April 4-April 25 2021 [SOLD OUT]
January 29, 2021
AFTERBURN A Workshop in the Art of Flash Revision Taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa 3 weeks April 4-April 25 $175 Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected] Flash fiction may be born in a lightning flash of inspiration, but crafting works of perfect brevity requires time and patience: sometimes cutting, sometimes adding, and sometimes starting all over again. In very short stories, every word must work, and revision is as much a part of writing flash as it is of writing longer prose. In this hands-on workshop, we'll practice the art of revision. Flash fiction writer and editor Kathryn Kulpa will share first drafts, revisions, and published versions of her own work and that of other flash and short fiction writers. Students will learn different revision strategies and how to apply them to their own work. We will create new flash together and work on taking it through several revisions, and students will also have the chance to bring existing stories to the workshop to revise with a goal of publication. I loved having the ability to work on the material at my own pace, at my own time. I met several writers who I will continue to stay in ...
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THE ART OF FLASH, taught by Kathryn Kulpa | Feb. 25-March 28, 2021 [SOLD OUT]

THE ART OF FLASH, taught by Kathryn Kulpa | Feb. 25-March 28, 2021 [SOLD OUT]
January 29, 2021
THE ART OF FLASH A Workshop in Fiction and Nonfiction Taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa Feb. 25-March 28 5 weeks $200 Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected]  Flash is a genre defined by brevity: vivid emotions and images compressed into a compact form. We most often see flash fiction, but flash can also encompass prose poetry, micro memoir, lyric essays, and hybrid works. In this class, we will take a close look at different styles and forms of flash fiction, as well as flash nonfiction, hybrid, and experimental works. Each week, we will read and discuss one or more example-works and generate new work from prompts. Students will share their work for peer and instructor feedback, then will choose one story to revise for the final class. This workshop has weekly deadlines and assignments to help motivate you to write, but the work can be done at your own pace and on your own time—there are no required meetings (although we may have an optional Zoom pop-up or two and bonus prompts for those who are interested). We welcome both new and experienced writers looking for motivation, structure, and constructive criticism. Kathryn Kulpa was a winner of the Vella ...
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THE ART OF FLASH, Workshop in Fiction and Nonfiction, taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa | January 3 to February 7, 2021 SOLD OUT

Neon Lightning Bolt
September 17, 2020
THE ART OF FLASH A Workshop in Fiction and Nonfiction Taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa 5 weeks SOLD OUT Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected]  Flash is a genre defined by brevity: vivid emotions and images compressed into a compact form. We most often see flash fiction, but flash can also encompass prose poetry, micro memoir, lyric essays, and hybrid works. In this class, we will take a close look at different styles and forms of flash fiction, as well as flash nonfiction, hybrid, and experimental works. Each week, we will read and discuss one or more example-works and generate new work from prompts. Students will share their work for peer and instructor feedback, then will choose one story to revise for the final class. This workshop has weekly deadlines and assignments to help motivate you to write, but the work can be done at your own pace and on your own time—there are no required meetings (although we may have an optional Zoom pop-up or two and bonus prompts for those who are interested). We welcome both new and experienced writers looking for motivation, structure, and constructive criticism. Kathryn Kulpa was a winner of the Vella Chapbook ...
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AFTERBURN A Workshop on the Art of Flash Revision Taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa | November 15 to December 12, 2020

AFTERBURN A Workshop on the Art of Flash Revision Taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa | November 15 to December 12, 2020
September 17, 2020
AFTERBURN A Workshop on the Art of Flash Revision Taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa 3 weeks November 15 to December 12, 2020 $175 Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected] Flash fiction may be born in a lightning flash of inspiration, but crafting works of perfect brevity requires time and patience: sometimes cutting, sometimes adding, and sometimes starting all over again. In very short stories, every word must work, and revision is as much a part of writing flash as it is of writing longer prose. In this hands-on workshop, we'll practice the art of revision. Flash fiction writer and editor Kathryn Kulpa will share first drafts, revisions, and published versions of her own work and that of other flash and short fiction writers. Students will learn different revision strategies and how to apply them to their own work. We will create new flash together and work on taking it through several revisions, and students will also have the chance to bring existing stories to the workshop to revise with a goal of publication. Kathryn Kulpa was a winner of the Vella Chapbook Contest for her flash chapbook Girls on Film (Paper Nautilus) and has had work selected for inclusion ...
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THE ART OF FLASH, Workshop in Fiction and Nonfiction, taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa | October 3-November 7, 2020 [SOLD OUT]

Neon Lightning Bolt
July 23, 2020
THE ART OF FLASH A Workshop in Fiction and Nonfiction Taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa 5 weeks October 3–November 7 $175 Early Bird before September 3, 2020 $200 Regular Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected]  [Sold Out] Flash is a genre defined by brevity: vivid emotions and images compressed into a compact form. We most often see flash fiction, but flash can also encompass prose poetry, micro memoir, lyric essays, and hybrid works. In this class, we will take a close look at different styles and forms of flash fiction, as well as flash nonfiction, hybrid, and experimental works. Each week, we will read and discuss one or more example-works and generate new work from prompts. Students will share their work for peer and instructor feedback, then will choose one story to revise for the final class. This workshop has weekly deadlines and assignments to help motivate you to write, but the work can be done at your own pace and on your own time—there are no required meetings (although we may have an optional Zoom pop-up or two and bonus prompts for those who are interested). We welcome both new and experienced writers looking for motivation, structure, and ...
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AFTERBURN A Workshop the Art of Flash Revision Taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa | August 3 to August 22, 2020 [SOLD OUT]

AFTERBURN A Workshop the Art of Flash Revision Taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa | August 3 to August 22, 2020 [SOLD OUT]
May 29, 2020
AFTERBURN A Workshop in the Art of Flash Revision Taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa 3 weeks August 3 to August 22 $125 early bird / $150 regular Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected] SOLD OUT Flash fiction may be born in a lightning flash of inspiration, but crafting works of perfect brevity requires time and patience: sometimes cutting, sometimes adding, and sometimes starting all over again. In very short stories, every word must work, and revision is as much a part of writing flash as it is of writing longer prose. In this hands-on workshop, we'll practice the art of revision. Flash fiction writer and editor Kathryn Kulpa will share first drafts, revisions, and published versions of her own work and that of other flash and short fiction writers. Students will learn different revision strategies and how to apply them to their own work. We will create new flash together and work on taking it through several revisions, and students will also have the chance to bring existing stories to the workshop to revise with a goal of publication. Kathryn Kulpa was a winner of the Vella Chapbook Contest for her flash chapbook Girls on Film (Paper Nautilus) and has ...
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THE ART OF FLASH, Workshop in Fiction and Nonfiction, taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa | May 9 — June 6, 2020 and June 20 — July 25, 2020 [both sections sold out]

Neon Lightning Bolt
May 6, 2020
THE ART OF FLASH A Workshop in Fiction and Nonfiction Taught by Cleaver Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa Both sessions of Kathryn Kulpa's The Art of Flash are sold out—new classes by Kathryn will be announced shortly! Session 2: 5 weeks June 20 — July 25, 2020 $125 early bird / $150 regular Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected] [sold out] Session 1: 5 weeks May 9 — June 6, 2020 $125 early bird / $150 regular Class limit: 12 Questions: [email protected] [sold out] Flash is a genre defined by brevity: vivid emotions and images compressed into a compact form. We most often see flash fiction, but flash can also encompass prose poetry, micro memoir, lyric essays, and hybrid works. In this class, we will take a close look at different styles and forms of flash fiction, as well as flash nonfiction, hybrid, and experimental works. Each week, we will read and discuss one or more example works and generate new work from prompts. Students will share their work for peer and instructor feedback, then will choose one story to revise for the final class. This workshop has weekly deadlines and assignments to help motivate you to write, but the work can ...
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A Conversation with Melissa Sarno, author of JUST UNDER THE CLOUDS

A Conversation with Melissa Sarno, author of JUST UNDER THE CLOUDS
August 27, 2018
A Conversation with Melissa Sarno author of JUST UNDER THE CLOUDS published by Knopf Books for Young Readers Interview by Kathryn Kulpa Melissa Sarno reviews children’s and young adult books for Cleaver and has just published her debut middle-grade novel, Just Under the Clouds (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2018). It tells the story of Cora, a middle-school girl trying to find a place to belong. Cora’s father always made her feel safe, but now that he has died, she and her mom and her sister Adare have been moving from place to place, trying to find a stable and secure home they can afford. Cora is also dealing with bullying at school and is sometimes challenged by looking after her sister, who has learning differences. But her life holds some good things, too, like a free-spirited new friend and her father’s tree journal, where he kept notes about the plants he took care of. Cora has kept his book and uses it as a way to record her own observations and feelings as she looks for her own true home in the world. While many children experience homelessness, it’s a subject that is seldom explored in contemporary children’s fiction, ...
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NINETY-NINE STORIES OF GOD by Joy Williams reviewed by Kathryn Kulpa

NINETY-NINE STORIES OF GOD by Joy Williams reviewed by Kathryn Kulpa
September 22, 2016
NINETY-NINE STORIES OF GOD by Joy Williams Tin House Books, 151 pages reviewed by Kathryn Kulpa Joy Williams is an author whose work I sought out because once, in a review, someone compared me to her, and since I hadn’t heard of her before, it seemed like a good idea to read her. It was a happy discovery. Still, she was not an author I associated with flash fiction. Her dense, full short stories seemed more like novels writ small. Things change. In Ninety-Nine Stories of God, Williams has pared away all but the essentials. These very short prose pieces are novels written in miniature, pocket epics and cryptic parables etched on the head of a pin. Most are not more than two pages, some are a single paragraph, and a few are just one or two sentences: simple, even stark, yet weighted. The sixty-first story, “Museum,” for example, is one rueful sentence: “We were not interested the way we thought we would be interested.” Williams’s small stories, like the best flash, keep most of the iceberg under the water, leaving us with as many questions as answers. Each story ends, rather than begins, with a title, which often serves ...
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A CONVERSATION WITH KATHRYN KULPA, author of Girls on Film

girls-on-film-cover
September 15, 2016
A CONVERSATION WITH KATHRYN KULPA author of Girls on Film Paper Nautilus Press, 2015 Vella Chapbook Winner interviewed by Michelle Fost I had the chance to catch up with fellow Cleaver editor Kathryn Kulpa about her chapbook, Girls on Film. It is just out from Paper Nautilus and was a winner of the press’s Vella Chapbook Contest. An intriguing part of the prize is that the writer receives a hundred copies of the beautifully designed chapbook to distribute as she likes. Kathryn will be selling signed copies through her Etsy shop, BookishGirlGoods, and she’ll also have them available at readings, writing workshops, and other events. Paper Nautilus will also have the book on sale. For more about the Vella Chapbook contest and Paper Nautilus Press, have a look at the press’s website.—M.F. MF: Congratulations on winning Paper Nautilus’s Vella Chapbook Contest, and the publication of Girls on Film. I wondered if you might talk a little about the process of writing the chapbook. KK: All the pieces in the chapbook were already written, and most of them had been published by the time I put it together, so it was more a process of selecting and matching complementary stories to create a cohesive ...
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A HOUSE MADE OF STARS by Tawnysha Greene reviewed by Kathryn Kulpa

A HOUSE MADE OF STARS by Tawnysha Greene reviewed by Kathryn Kulpa
August 12, 2015
A HOUSE MADE OF STARS by Tawnysha Greene Burlesque Press, 189 pages, 2015. reviewed by Kathryn Kulpa In the very first scene of A House Made of Stars, Tawnysha Greene’s debut novel, the ten-year-old narrator and her sister are awakened by their mother, who spirits them to a darkened bathroom where all three sit in the bathtub, towels piled over them, while the house shakes with thuds so loud even the narrator’s deaf sister can feel their vibrations. Their mother tells them it’s a game. She tells them they’re practicing for earthquakes. But even at ten, the narrator knows it’s not nature’s rage they need to fear. It’s their father’s. Greene’s voice in this novel is pitch perfect, an eerie and convincing combination of innocence and prescience. The hard-of-hearing narrator is homeschooled and isolated; her mother believes public schools will not teach “Godly things.” Yet her understanding of their family dynamic and her father’s mental illness are intuitive and profound. Without adult labels or filters, we see his depression, his paranoia, his moments of happy, expansive mania that can change in an instant to brutal  outbursts, and the scars he carries from his own violent childhood. We see her mother’s ...
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THE BOOK OF LANEY by Myfanwy Collins reviewed by Kathryn Kulpa

THE BOOK OF LANEY by Myfanwy Collins reviewed by Kathryn Kulpa
June 23, 2015
THE BOOK OF LANEY by Myfanwy Collins Lacewing Books, 200 pages reviewed by Kathryn Kulpa When terrible acts of violence occur—as they do all too often in America—our thoughts naturally turn to the victims and their families. But what about the families of those who commit violent crimes? What if someone you grew up with was a school shooter, a terrorist, a mass murderer? That’s the reality fifteen-year-old Laney is living. Her brother West and his friend Mark, two high school outcasts, boarded a school bus armed with machetes, knives, guns, and homemade bombs. Six people died; twelve were wounded. Mark blew himself up, but West made his way home to kill his mother, and he would have killed Laney, too, if police hadn’t stopped him. Left with the wreckage her brother left behind, Laney feels completely alone, unwanted, even hated. Her father died when she was young, and her mother’s boyfriend is only interested in leaving the state as soon as possible. Strangers phone the house with death threats. This is her only identity now: the killer’s sister. The Book of Laney is a young adult novel about facing the worst things the world can hand out and learning ...
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YVONNE IN THE EYE OF DOG by Kathryn Kulpa

YVONNE IN THE EYE OF DOG by Kathryn Kulpa
December 13, 2013
YVONNE IN THE EYE OF DOG by Kathryn Kulpa If God looked for Yvonne would he find her? If God looked down, past stars and satellites, through storm clouds thick and grey as dryer lint, would he see Yvonne in a stolen van, Yvonne in a darkened shopping plaza with Ma’s Diner and A-1 Hardware, Crafts Basket and Pets Plus? Yvonne is down on options, down on her luck. Listening to the sighs and snores of her dog asleep in the back seat, the beat of rain on the roof. Her world the smell of wet dog. Her face in the mirror, hair wild, curling in the damp. Everything about her seems high-contrast, vampirish. Face white, except for that bruise her cover-up won’t cover. Tired eyes. White eyeliner is the trick for that, Teena had taught her. No white eyeliner in Yvonne’s make-up bag. No black, either. Almost out of tricks. She pats more cover-up on her eyelids, feels the oils in the makeup separate. Always something red and raw to show through. Yvonne likes to think that in this whole world not one person knows where she is right now. A parking lot, a strip mall, two hours ...
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LOCAVORE by Kathryn Kulpa

LOCAVORE by Kathryn Kulpa
March 4, 2013
LOCAVORE by Kathryn Kulpa The streets smell like fried dough and there’s the carnival sound of an outdoor mic, a tinny crackle that makes him think of Little League games and awards day at summer camp. It sounds like the end of summer. The locals are celebrating something, the patron saint of clam cakes. They’re selling raffle tickets, but he’s not buying chances. The sky is dark blue, but he’s not watching the sky. The café door is open, inviting him to a darker world of scratched wooden floors and mismatched tables and hard metal chairs: the world of Latte Girl, whose sweet smile is only for the locals, whose cups she graces with sailboats and dragonflies and long-eared dogs, while his foam never holds more than an indifferent swirl. There’s a line—there’s always a line—but he doesn’t mind. He likes to watch her tamp and pull; he likes that everything is done by hand on one old espresso machine; he likes that they are her hands, small and plump, still childish, with chipped black polish on her short fingernails. As often as he tries to touch those hands, she pulls back. Leaves the change on the counter, slides ...
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Published on November 17, 2021 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

A Conversation with Amy Koppelman, author of A MOUTHFUL OF AIR by Michael McCarthy

Cleaver Magazine Posted on September 14, 2021 by thwackSeptember 14, 2021

A Conversation with Amy Koppelman
Author of A MOUTHFUL OF AIR
Two Dollar Radio
Interview by Michael McCarthy

I spoke with Amy Koppelman as she was finishing making her first book, A Mouthful of Air, into a feature film. Though she wrote the novel eighteen years ago, it still seemed fresh in Koppelman’s mind. As I spoke with her over Zoom, she searched for the right words to describe her first novel. In this work, Koppelman engaged the experience of postpartum depression when conversation about the topic was rare. The book was first published in 2003 by MacAdam/Cage (a small press that has closed) and is now being reissued by Two Dollar Radio.

In this interview, which Koppelman and I have edited for clarity, Koppelman discusses how she began writing, the encouragement she received from Joan Didion, and whether writing is a world in which she feels safe. —MM

◊

Michael McCarthy: There are a lot of words that could describe this book: masterfully written, engaging, suspenseful. But one word that also describes it is important. In it, you talk about an issue that has still not received much attention: postpartum depression. When was the moment when you knew you simply had to write this book?

Amy Koppelman: I didn’t know that I was writing this book. I don’t think that anybody sets out to write this book. When I wrote the second-to-last scene in the book, my fingers jumped off the keyboard because I just couldn’t believe that was what I wrote. I knew I wanted to write about shame, how we perceive shame within ourselves, and what we allow for ourselves within the confines of that shame, but I had no idea what the story was.

I started writing the day Kurt Cobain died. My husband called me about the news while I was lying in bed in a dark room. He didn’t know about my depression because I was really good at acting. I remember thinking, “I don’t want to be like Kurt Cobain. I don’t want to die, even though I really want to die.” So I had to figure out how to get better. I called a therapist that day—a name I’d been carrying around on a card in my wallet—and I also started writing around then. So I think originally, to answer your question, I was putting my emotions on paper. It’s not an autobiographical book, but the feelings of shame and self-loathing and all those feelings that one feels when they’re depressed—those were all mine.

MM: The main character Julie Davis is a character who, in modern lingo, really “goes through it.” She endures a depression that could register on the Richter scale. As a writer, you chose to go deep into her thought processes on a day-to-day level. Was it ever emotionally difficult or personally strenuous to spend so much time with a character who was going through that kind of depression?

Amy Koppelman

AK: I had two little kids, who I loved spending time with, so I would drop them off at school, then go home and work. Being able to put all that sorrow and ugliness into the computer gave me the ability to be the most present, happy mom. There was always this huge disconnect between the shit I was writing about and how I was feeling with them, which was very happy. And very grateful.

There was nothing—is nothing—I like more than being a mom. I wasn’t writing about that pain at the same time I was feeling it. I was remembering it, so the emotional whiplash wasn’t as bad.

MM: What kept you going through the writing of this book? What was your routine?

AK: I have no writing routine. My kids and my husband always came first. If somebody was sick or needed me, a couple weeks could go by before I got back to it. But if no one needed me I would just do my “housewife” stuff—my chores—and sit down and work for a couple hours until I picked up the kids from school.

MM: The protagonist of the book leads a rather privileged life. She lives in a nice apartment in Manhattan. She has a supportive family and a nanny. She has access to mental healthcare as well as more conventional healthcare. As an author, was there a conscious decision to choose a character who led a life with such privileges as a way of talking about depression?

AK: Yes, that was an intention. Eighteen years ago people were just beginning to talk about depression as an illness. It was important to me that people understand that depression was no different than asthma or diabetes. You need to go to the doctor. I didn’t want the reader to find an “excuse” for Julie’s behavior so I removed every obstacle.

Julie had the time, support, and means to get any help she needed and she still couldn’t figure it out. She was trapped in a loop of self-hatred. “You’re not a good mother. You’re going to fail. You can’t help but fail.” So imagine a single mom, raising kids, working two jobs. How is she going to find the time and/or seek out the resources—especially when the very nature of depression makes everything feel futile?

MM: Were you ever frustrated that she couldn’t get better, or perhaps made decisions that made getting better unnecessarily difficult?

AK: She’s extraordinarily selfish, right? There’s nothing more selfish than killing yourself. Julie leaves her husband, her son and her baby girl. Even if they get better and are able to move on, the collateral damage of suicide is so vast and awesome. It’s nearly impossible to recover. It has a ripple effect on every subsequent generation. Of course, I was frustrated with her. But in a way that was the point. I wanted Julie’s story to serve as a cautionary tale. Don’t be like Julie. Make different choices.

Live.

MM: If my research serves me well, this book had a difficult publication history. It was difficult to find someone who would be willing to publish a story that was so dark and relentless in its depiction of depression. I believe there was even an interaction with Joan Didion. Could you take me to that moment?

AK: Sure. No one wanted to publish this book. I didn’t even take it personally. I was frustrated, though, because I knew there were so many women who were pushing strollers down the street and were in so much pain behind their smiles. At the end of the day, all you can really do is write the truth as you see it, as you hear it.

That said, after several hundred rejections you start to wonder: what if the reason I’m being rejected is because I’m not a good writer. Maybe the book just sucks. I had seen some article that said where Joan Didion lived, so as a gift to myself, I dropped off the manuscript for A Mouthful of Air and a note. I told her how much she meant to me, and then I asked her, “Am I a real writer?” Because if I’m not a real writer, I should start doing something else.

Everyone I knew was like “Joan Didion’s not gonna write you back.” But she wrote me back! She said that she had read the manuscript and, “Yes Amy, you are a real writer.” When you’re a writer you face a lot of rejection, that’s okay. Don’t pay attention to the rejections. Just collect the positive things people say—hold onto those words. (Amy waits a beat, smiles.) Most of the time they’re not from Joan Didion. That was super special.

MM: And after that bit of encouragement, how was the publication process?

AK: After getting rejected by virtually every agent in New York City, I finally found an agent in San Francisco. Randi Glass took my query out of the slush pile and gave it to Amy Rennert. Both women believed in me, they weren’t scared of the story. And they even found a mainstream publisher. This was my first novel. I was offered something like $10,000 from Doubleday (I think it was Doubleday)—a really nice advance—all I had to do was change the ending. But Julie has a psychotic break. She couldn’t pick up the phone and call 911. It just wasn’t true.

And that’s always been my “north star” as it were. To tell my characters’ truth. To depict the inner pain of someone with a mood disorder. No matter how ugly it is. So, I didn’t change the ending.

At that moment, I basically chose the trajectory of my career. Indie presses didn’t (and still don’t) get the same shelf-space or table-space in bookstores, which was everything back then. But Amy didn’t pressure me. She continued to hunt for a publisher and ultimately Pat Walsh, the editor at MacAdam/Cage said yes and published the novel in its purest form. And now Eric and Eliza Obenauff, the publishers of Two Dollar Radio are giving the novel a new life. I feel so proud to be part of the Two Dollar Radio family and part of the indie community. Independent presses are vital and I think very underappreciated.

MM: Depression seems like a near-impossible illness to write about because at its core, it makes day-to-day life seem nearly undoable. It seems that it would be almost impossible to get a book out of a character for whom daily life is so trying. What obstacles did you face in dramatizing depression, and how did you overcome them?

AK: The stories I tell are very small. They’re like a photograph—an image of a woman in a specific place in time. Writing something with any kind of through-line is always the hardest obstacle for me. I write freehand for many years—with little idea where I’m going. I know the feelings I want to convey, the mental illness I want to portray but I have no idea how I’m going to accomplish it—translate those ideas into a novel. Eventually, I write a scene that reveals the answer: “Oh, that’s what this novel is about.” Then I go back and piece together the story. Your subconscious is smarter than you. If you keep writing, you will find the answer. 

MM: What challenges did you face moving A Mouthful of Air from the page to the screen?

AK: As I was adapting the novel I’d ask myself the following questions:

  1. What’s the action of this scene, the physical action? —for example, Julie crosses the room.
  2. What is happening in the scene emotionally? What are you conveying about her mental state? — Julie starts the scene self-assured and happy but ends the scene insecure and anxious.
  3. Is this emotional beat necessary to convey? —Yes, because now we know that when she’s in a group of people, Julie gets anxious.
  4. Why does the emotional beat matter? —Because we see that Julie is disproportionally fearful. Depending on where the scene is placed in the novel, this bit of information tells us something important about her character. About her POV. And about what’s at stake.
  5. After the first draft I went back and asked myself how many times was I making the same point? — There might be four scenes that show Julie anxious. Do they build? Are they all the same? If so, how many should I keep?

Amanda (Seyfried) said she wanted Julie to have a career, so I made her a children’s book author and illustrator. When my daughter Anna was little she had crossed eyes and wore an eye patch. Kids would make fun of her relentlessly, so at night before she went to bed I’d tell her about this little girl named Pinky Tinker ink who was born with an ugly, wrangled finger. And just like Anna, kids made fun of Pinky. It turns out, though, that Pinky’s finger is actually a key that helped her unlock doors no one else could see—this helped Pinky solve mysteries—find the answers. The idea was that the very thing that Pinky was ashamed of is what made her special.

I thought Pinky was a good—alter ego? Is that the right word?—for Julie. In the film Julie is well known for her books about a little girl named Pinky Tinkerbink. Through Pinky, Julie helps kids unlock their fears but can’t figure out how to unlock her own. And I think somewhere in there is the tragedy of Julie’s story.

MM: It’s interesting to see this book being made into a film nearly twenty years after its publication. Do you notice any change in the conversation surrounding postpartum depression?

AK: When I wrote this book, I had no idea that this category of depression existed. I remember when the book was published I was invited to attend a conference on postpartum depression in Jersey City, and there were like twenty people there. Today there are hundreds. So, yes. There have been huge strides. People are aware of it, “postpartum depression” is a term that people are familiar with.

In 1998 when I was a new mom, people rarely talked about postpartum depression and it remained largely undiagnosed. Today we know that one out of every five women suffers from postpartum depression. In a bunch of states now, there are laws that require gynecologists to screen new mothers to see how they’re doing. But there is still no national protocol—no system in place to check on a new mom’s mental health. That’s very upsetting.

People take antidepressants much more regularly now but I still think most people are undermedicated—no matter what the hip magazines say. Most moms—most people struggling from depression are still profoundly ashamed to ask for help. My biggest hope for the movie is that someone will see themselves—or someone they love—in Julie’s character. And they will get help. Postpartum depression is very treatable.

MM: I have one more question that involves a quote from the book. Julie goes to see her brother perform his music. You write, “Gently, forcefully, he manipulates his world. This, the only world in which he feels safe.” The question I want to ask you is this: is writing a world in which you feel safe?

AK: No one can hurt you when you’re in a room by yourself with your computer. The characters in your head certainly can’t hurt you. The keyboard can’t hurt you. Not being able to string two sentences together is frustrating—you may want to bang your head against the wall, but even that can’t hurt you. And if your thoughts and feelings get to be too much you can simply shut your computer. There is no judgment.

Writing for me started as a safe place to put all of my sadness and I think in many ways that’s still what it is for me—a safe space to process grief and trauma. I learn through my characters’ choices. The good choices and the bad ones. So yes, to answer your question writing is a safe place for me—for everyone actually.

Because everyone is a writer—all you have to do is allow yourself to write. If you can tell a story to your friend at the coffee shop, you are a writer. You don’t need permission. Writing is a safe place to put your thoughts. But that doesn’t mean your writing needs to be safe.


Michael McCarthy headshotMichael McCarthy is an aspiring writer of prose, poetry, and nonfiction from Braintree, Massachusetts who attends Haverford College, where he intends to major in English. His work has been published in Prairie Schooner.

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Published on September 14, 2021 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

Michelle Ross Interviews Dan Crawley, Author of STRAIGHT DOWN THE ROAD, a novella in flash

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 16, 2021 by thwackMarch 16, 2021

Michelle Ross Interviews Dan Crawley, Author of STRAIGHT DOWN THE ROAD, a novella in flash

Dan Crawley’s novella-in-flash, Straight Down the Road, was highly commended by judge Michael Loveday in the 2019 Bath Novella in Flash Award and published by Ad Hoc Fiction. His debut short story collection, The Wind, It Swirls, is forthcoming from Cowboy Jamboree Press this year.

Michelle Ross: Straight Down the Road is set during a family road trip. There’s a kind of out-of-time feeling to the trip. Are they on the road for a couple of months? Is it years? For the reader, it feels like the road is home for this family. Is the road home for them or do you know this family in other times and places that don’t appear on the page?

Dan Crawley: I love this question, Michelle. Yes, the “out-of-time” feeling is very intentional.

When I first started writing these stories, I was constantly debating whether to give a timeframe and if I might place these characters in a static setting, like a home. I decided the dad would briefly mention a rental home in a micro but came down on the side of not wanting to specify the length of time they’re on the road. These characters are wanderers, traveling to no real destination.

So the station wagon, the Plymouth, and the road became their only homes. That feels right for the “world” of this novella, which delves into the feelings that emerge from the lack of a safety net. And the changing settings, I think, add to this anxiety the characters feel, especially the mom. I wanted the change of sceneries to be recognizable to any reader, too, maybe reminding them of their own past road trips.

MR: I love how you call the parents “the mom” and “the dad” (as opposed to “the mother” and “the father”). It feels just right. Was this a quick, instinctive choice?

DC: Since this novella is set in the 1970s, I went back to my own childhood. I’ve never called my parents mother or father. Mom/Dad is so much less formal, and I am anything but formal with my own parents! It was an instinctive choice, more endearing, I think.

MR: Let’s talk about titles. In particular, I’m struck by “Ran Out of Money.” The title does so much work for that story, work that might have been otherwise tricky to accomplish in the piece itself. Do you recall whether that title came to you early on or later in revising? In general, do you tend to title stories early in the drafting or later?

DC: Generally, I tend to grab a phrase or a few words from the story for its title. Or even a word that gives a reader the gist of what the story may be about. This happens after a draft or two.

I’m glad you bring up this particular story. My initial thought was to write a flash about this family running out of money. I wanted to place them in a dire situation, with no money for even a motel room or a proper dinner. What would they do? How would they get through a night? So, even though I didn’t realize it at first, this title was there before I even wrote a sentence. I loved shaping a story around this conflict, using such a stylized tone. Here I had a dark moment in this family’s plight but wrote the flash as a romp.

MR: Recently, when you talked about Straight Down the Road for the Desert Flash series hosted by Sudha Balagopal and Rudri Patel, you said you found beginning with the last piece of the book, which had been published first,  helpful. You said, “I need to know where I’m going.” Is that often true for you in your writing?

Dan Crawley: Knowing the ending line for a given story in advance is beneficial when it happens, but most of the time I struggle with endings. I am a big proponent, though, of letting the characters guide the narrative with their dialogue or actions. More times than not, they propel me toward a satisfying conclusion.

For this novella, it was a huge advantage to be writing toward an already known conclusion. It helped me create some of the foreshadowing in the earlier stories, like the dad telling his story of driving a truck when he was young.

MR: Did you write the rest of the stories in random order or in the order in which they appear in the novella?

DC: Including a strong conflict in the second story (“Jumping Off A Cliff”) helped a lot in writing the stories that followed. That thread of the dad’s rash decision was always there in my thinking as I worked on the other flashes although a few of the stories were written outside the chronological order of the novella, like “Five Sugar Cookies and Two Pieces of Beef Jerky,” “Lamb Chops,” “A Classmate,” and “Protective Services.”

MR: I’m curious if there are any pieces that could have been arranged differently and the novella still work as a whole?

DC: I am so happy you asked this specific question. I did spend some time thinking about where to place “Lamb Chops.” I decided it should come after the diner story because the tension is heightened in the stories that follow.

In ordering the stories, I also thought about the mom and dad each having their say. This approach guided the set-up of many of the stories, which made the whole process more feasible to me.

MR: What immediately comes to mind is this series of three flashes toward the middle of the novella: “The Story About the Inebriated Bread Truck Driver,” “Anyplace Can Be Home,” and “Unmoored.” The tension between the mom and the dad escalates in moving back and forth from his point of view to hers.

DC: I’m so glad you brought up these specific stories. The bread truck story is the first moment the mom shows her anger with her husband, snapping back at him. The micro fiction that follows, “Anyplace Can Be Home,” returns to the dad’s POV. I wanted the dad to reveal his view as the provider in their family. He will find a stable home where they all can live together, “which is the way it should always be.” It’s a plea to his wife, really, even though he’s speaking to everyone.

“Unmoored,” which is from the mom’s POV, reveals her anxiety as the family is forced to down-size from the LTD station wagon to the Plymouth Duster, kind of like moving from a large, comfortable house to an apartment. The piece culminates with a story she tells her son about how his dad broke her heart. A desperate appeal for sympathy, really. She does this again in “A Classmate,” divulging her early relationship with her husband. More digs at him to show the rising tension.

I placed “Leaving Zion,” “Let’s Play Ball, Cecil,” and “Powers” together because they represent the moments when the vacation is still at full steam, and the children are not yet aware of their parents’ conflict.

MR: How did you know when the novella was done? That you didn’t need to write any more stories for it?

DC: Okay, I’m one of those weird writers (maybe I’m not so alone in this thinking?) that a piece of writing is never complete. Even with published work, I’m revising stories all the time, a line here or there, typically with work that appeared in journals a long time ago. Regarding the novella, I have had fleeting ruminations about a few other flashes that could’ve fit. One takes place in a drive-in movie theatre. And I’ve got ideas for a few other places this family can travel in their wanderings.

To be honest, though, I am happy with the length and how this novella turned out. At the last moment, when I submitted the novella to the Bath Flash Fiction Award, I had written seventeen stories, and I think they all do the job nicely.

MR: Flash novellas are not a form I’m versed in, but your gorgeous book has convinced me I should read more of these things. Do you remember what the first flash novella you ever read was? Also, do you have a favorite flash novella?

DC: Thank you so much for your kind words, Michelle. I’m glad my novella has encouraged you to seek out more novellas-in-flash to read.

I read Sophie Van Llewyn’s Bottled Goods when it came out in 2018. I was struck by her use of stand-alone flash fiction stories for chapters. And even though its length puts it closer to a novel, I found the brevity of chapters and the interlinked stories dealing with the same characters fascinating. Then I heard the term “novella-in-flash” in the lit community and started looking for these shorter books. Since then, I’ve read a lot of novellas. I love the form. For me, a few standouts are The Loss Detector by Meg Pokrass, The Way of the Wind by Francine Witte, Three Sisters of Stone by Stephanie Carty (Hutton), Three Men on the Edge by Michael Loveday, The Neverlands by Damhnait Monaghan, and The Chemist’s House by Jude Higgins. I’ve read a lot of novellas from Ad Hoc Fiction, too. I just finished two of their recently published novellas: The House on the Corner by Alison Woodhouse and When It’s Not Called Making Love by Karen Jones. Brilliant writing by these two writers. And there are so many other novellas-in-flash out there that I’m excited to read. I really hope this form continues to grow in popularity in the future.

MR: Your book of short stories The Wind, It Swirls is being published this year by Cowboy Jamboree Press. Tell me about that.

DC: I am proud of the work I’ve produced in this collection. It was very kind of Adam over at Cowboy Jamboree Press to see something in these stories, and I’m grateful for such a perfect home for my first full-length collection of stories.

The collection consists of thirty stories, some in long-form and some flash fiction. I think it is a good mix of my realism, image-driven aesthetic. I would say most of the characters in the stories are trying to hang on against the rough winds of relationship or financial woes. Really, this book encompasses the last few decades of my writing. The oldest story goes back to 2002, a long piece I published in The North American Review, with other pieces appearing recently in literary journals. Many of the stories first appeared in now-defunct journals (both print and online), so for many readers, it’ll be like checking out new work from me. I’m beyond excited and look forward to everyone reading it.

MR: What are you working on now?

DC: I’m trying to write a lot of micros and some flash fictions right now. I want to complete a full-length collection of these small stories, and I have about three dozen written so far. I don’t know how long it will take me to finish; I’m such a slow writer. Also, I’m envisioning these stories as belonging to two different categories: “When I was a child,…I thought like a child” and “But when I grew up, I put away childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:11). So my storytelling is going back and forth between these two character perspectives, wants, conflicts.


Michelle Ross is the author of the story collections There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You, winner of the 2016 Moon City Short Fiction Award, and Shapeshifting, winner of the 2020 Stillhouse Press Short Fiction Award (and forthcoming in November 2021). Her fiction has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, Electric Literature, The Pinch, and other venues. Her work has been selected for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, the Wigleaf Top 50, and other anthologies. She is fiction editor of Atticus Review. www.michellenross.com

Dan Crawley is the author of the novella Straight Down the Road (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019) and the short story collection The Wind, It Swirls (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2021). His writing appears or is forthcoming in a number of journals and anthologies, including JMWW, Lost Balloon, Tiny Molecules, and Atticus Review. His work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize.

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Published on March 16, 2021 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

A MEMOIR CONVERSATION with David Marchino and Beth Kephart

Cleaver Magazine Posted on February 10, 2021 by thwackFebruary 10, 2021

A MEMOIR CONVERSATION
with David Marchino and Beth Kephart

A former student (now a writer and a teacher) finds himself in his once-teacher’s memoir. A conversation ensues about mirrors, facsimiles, and blankness.

Hello, friend. Before we get into the thick of this, I’d like to thank you for having this conversation with me. I’d been anticipating Wife | Daughter | Self for a while now. I must admit though that one of the reasons I was excited was that in a few places throughout the book I show up and rear my head. Just last night, I read one of these sections—“The Four Times I Became a Teacher”, which originally appeared in LitHub—to my partner just before bed.

My reading started as a joke, some faux bravado: I’m in a book. But that section so moves me, and it did last night. I hear your voice in those words, and, boy, does your writing insist on being read aloud. It became an intervention almost, my reading: That’s who I was then, and that’s where I came into now. Reading it aloud, then, closed a distance for me.

I know you’ve recorded yourself reading the book, a days-long marathon session. What was that experience like for you?

—David

Dear Mr. Marchino—

Remember all the different ways you would sign your emails to me, and to others—your great talent at the sign-off? May your jawn be pristine, you’d write. Keep Warm and See You Tuesday. Or: Walk. Don’t Run. I am thinking about that now as we have this email conversation—how to address you, what to say, how we will begin (now that we’ve begun) and how we will sign off. 

But what I want to say first is that having you read WDS and having a conversation about it with you is, to me, a big thing. WDS is a memoir about relationships, of course—who we are in relationship to others and who we are in relationship to ourselves. But it is also a meta creation, a reflection on memoir as genre and craft woven into the memoir that is being made and unmade. I learned memoir by reading, writing, and teaching it, by walking into a classroom with students such as yourself and realizing all I didn’t know and had better find out soon. You are in the book because you’d have to be in the book. And what a privilege it has been to watch you emerge as a teacher in your own right—you teaching memoir to communities of those who grieve, teaching memoir to the young, writing memoir as you teach memoir. Teachers open the door, make room for the next. The next lives inside WDS, which is to say, you do

To answer your question: Reading this book aloud for the Blackstone audio version was tremendously challenging. There were the technical bits—the cold room, the Covid era, the fact that I was a child lisper and still have trouble saying some words. But mostly it was deeply emotional. It was like reading one long prose poem and not trying to cry when confronted with the hard stuff again. I actually got very emotional reading the pages you reference here. Because, gosh, being a teacher is really beautiful and exceptionally hard. I was thinking how I almost blew it with you, while trying to advise you on your honors thesis. How I pushed you to the brink—and yet you didn’t fall.

Something I’ve been thinking about lately is Charles D’Ambrosio and his book of essays, Loitering. Do you remember how you’d go to the Penn bookstore and read the volume, sitting on the floor? Well, there’s an essay in there called “Any Resemblance to Anyone Living,” where D’Ambrosio is talking about what it’s like to find himself in the pages of an ex-lover’s novel. WDS is memoir, of course, but doesn’t the D’Ambrosio essay echo for us—this experience of being in another’s book, this experience of writing another into your book? 

Loitering–yes! That was my escape text back in college. When I was overwhelmed by class readings, I’d drift into the bookstore and hide somewhere with that book. Thinking about the essay you mention, I’m drawn to D’Ambrosio’s use of the word “redecorated”. He’s portrayed in a work by an ex-lover but finds that this representation is redecorated: his rough edges are smoothed out. His character is neutered, he says, less interesting. I read this and think shag carpet over hardwood, a bathroom tile wallpapered over. Not bad necessarily but absent something. Robbed of a certain, well, character.

When I’ve taught memoir, I’ve always stressed that writers should take care of their characters, but that language is reductive, too, not far from D’Ambrosio’s redecorating. Really, I should have said, “Show your characters from all sides. Give us the good and the bad.” That’s the trick, I think. Just as no one wants to be made out as the antagonist–and I wonder if such a thing can even exist in a memoir–nobody wants to be sanctified. Our nostrils burn should the writer blow too much smoke. Honest, I think the greatest kindness a memoirist can do for the folks they write about is show them as richly complex as they are. Nobody really wants to be damned or revered, only seen. And seen completely.

I think that’s why reading myself in that section of WDS impacted me. It was clear you had seen me, and you were sharing that in this book. You did push me with that thesis, but, also, I was a bit of a jerk. You were my writing coach, and I was skipping practice.

On the subject of being written, you’re the main character of this book, but what I find interesting is how much time you spend looking to others. Even the title is telling, you define yourself by what you call “the apostrophes”: someone’s wife, someone’s daughter. Your exploration of self–your reflection–came through the lens of so many others. Could you talk about this decision, or why you decided to structure the book this way?

A Mirror,
—David

Dear A Mirror: One of the best parts of (still) learning how to teach is trying to imagine the right books for the right writers at the right time. Loitering was, at that time, the perfect book for you. D’Ambrosio is, actually, always current, always pressing, and this notion of his, of redecorating—which you beautifully articulate (hey, did you ever think about teaching D’Ambrosio yourself?)—holds great currency with me. So do your words about burning nostrils and anti-antagonists and wanting to be seen.

(Also, I don’t think I’ll ever quite be able to think of you as a jerk, A Mirror. Just as a student writing the hardest story of his life. A story with consequences.)

WDS is, in many ways, a recursive book. I return to themes, reexamine assertions, untie the conclusions, start again. I wanted the book to mirror life in that way. We never really do know, do we, about others. Nor do we ever truly know about ourselves. We are endlessly compromising and negotiating our path toward and away from the family we were born into, the people we have chosen, and all of those in between. We want to please them or we want to extract ourselves from them, we want to know them, we want them to know us (or we don’t). We hold parts of ourselves in check, eternally. But what parts of ourselves? Who are we when in the company of a lover or a father—a version of ourselves, or our actual selves? Who are we when we are alone, in the company of memories that haunt us precisely because we cannot—we never will—fully establish these memories as true or truly interpreted.

Did my father love me? Did I love him in the best possible way? Was I less of me because I gave so much time and care to him? Or is caring who I naturally am? Is caring me at my finest?

I wrote to find out. That is part (but only part) of what memoir is for.

I remember you and I once having a conversation about these sorts of things. One of your lines from that conversation is also floated through the book. Have you found it yet?

Dear Beth,

I can’t pin down my line, which actually feels appropriate for this conversation. I think we’re circling around the idea that it’s exceedingly difficult to truly “see” yourself. Whatever line of mine you included, held some essential quality of me for you. For me, it was just noise to fill the air, a passing thought. That you’ve held on to it and included it is more evidence of your keen eye, but, for me, it proves it’s near impossible to observe your own life while you’re still in the thick of it.

I asked you about reflections earlier and about finding the right lens so to speak. But, even a perfect reflection transforms its viewer. All these recent hours spent on Zoom have taught me this. We can examine ourselves but only obliquely. We catch glimpses from the periphery. This has me thinking about WDS as a search for a more perfect mirror: the person or relationship in your life that will fully reveal you to yourself. You keep returning to themes because you never get that perfect view. The search continues.

This search, this attempt to find out, you say is part of what memoir is for, and this brings me to my last (and most unfair) question. Throughout the book, you make brief gestures to current events or the news, and your characters try to find ways to withdraw from all of it. In the course of the pandemic, at one point or another, everyone I know has wished for an escape. As a writer, myself, I thought my writing would be the way out, but I’ve been frozen by all that’s happening. Frequently, I’ve asked myself what room is there right now for one person’s story? And so, I ask you (unfairly) what can memoir do for us who feel immobilized by the world around us? I ask you, who teaches memoir at the University of Pennsylvania and through your own Juncture Workshops. I ask you, who has written extensively and profoundly on the memoir genre in Handling the Truth and, again, in your memoir workbook Tell the Truth. Make It Matter. I ask you only because I can think of no one more equipped to answer.

Good Luck, My Friend,
—David

Friend:

And yet. Look at this question. Look at all the interludes that are yours, in this conversation of ours. You are writing. You have written. Your words (beautiful as always) are here.

To answer your perfectly fair and considered question: A blankness settled in with this pandemic. Suddenly, we were all turning off pieces of our lives—taking long, masked walks on the opposite sides of the street from other masked walkers, standing far apart in grocery stores trying to express ourselves through the slivers of our faces still available to others, closing our doors, watching doors close on us, sending cards and tiny handmade things in lieu of — so many things. Our lives became in-lieu-of lives, and yet we memoirists, or many of us, felt that, with words, we could at least persist. We were alone. We had time. We didn’t need to travel anywhere but into the contours of our own minds.

But how hard that writing became. How hard it was to believe that our struggles, our sadness, our loneliness, our losses, our stories meant anything at all in the face of Covid news. How hard it was to stop feeling anonymous, just one of many millions waiting, fearing, hoping for hope. Some of my dearest friends took notes on their days, so that they would have these notes later, for when they were ready to write truly again. Some stopped writing altogether. I began to make blank books, a symbol for the vast wordlessness I was so often feeling.

But slowly, very slowly, I began to write essays again. Small pieces. No big book in mind. I found that I had begun to pay attention to different things—the sound of silence, say; the artifacts we might leave behind; the intensity of the love we’ve felt but hadn’t taken the time to fully language. I found that, in the stark surrounds of the pandemic, within the blankness, I was feeling, seeing, hearing the world in new ways, in ways that challenged me, in ways that changed my relationship to the world and to myself.

This, then, is the answer to your question. We must allow ourselves to experience the paralysis. We must not force the words. We must sit with ourselves until the world is made new to us, and when we have the words for that newness—of observation, of reckoning, of emotion—we write those words down. We write them so that others might be awakened with us, so that their paralysis might quietly shift, so that we might, quietly, leave a trail away from blankness.

I hate leaving a trail away from this conversation, but we are more than 2,000 words in. I wondered, when we started, how I would sign off, but I’ve decided. I’m not signing off.


David Marchino is a Philadelphia-based creative nonfiction writer and educator whose work has appeared in The Penn Review, RKVRY Quarterly, Cleaver, and elsewhere. His essay “No Goodbyes” won the 2016 Penn PubCo Award for Best First-Person Narrative, and his personal narrative “Going Places” was nominated for a 2018 Pushcart. In the past, he served as a citizen-artist on behalf of ArtistYear, teaching a creative writing curriculum at Alexander Adaire Elementary in Philadelphia. Currently, he is assistant director of the Summer Workshop for Young Writers at the Kelly Writers House and the administrative assistant at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing.

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of three-dozen books in multiple genres, a teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, co-founder of Juncture Workshops, and a widely published essayist. Her memoir-in-essays, Wife | Daughter | Self, is due out from Forest Avenue Press on March 2. More at bethkephartbooks.com

 

 

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Published on February 10, 2021 in Interviews, Interviews with Nonfiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

DUMP TRUMP, Illustrated T-Shirts by William Sulit

Cleaver Magazine Posted on September 4, 2020 by thwackSeptember 4, 2020

DUMP TRUMP
Illustrated T-Shirts
by William Sulit

"Dump Trump" four illustrations in 19c cartoonist style

Many artists have the ability to verbalize their thoughts with great clarity and eloquence—sadly, I’m not one of those. This must be a great source of frustration for my wife Beth, who is an extremely accomplished writer and well versed in the art of verbal communication. But she does not complain; she smiles and lets me babble aimlessly until I get distracted by a squirrel or something. Oh well. As I used to say to my mother when she was yelling at me for something I did (or didn’t do): That’s just the way God made me.

In any case, I should stop rambling and get to the point which is to write a few words about this image. I decided to make a series of drawings that chronicle the pure and unadulterated stupidity perpetrated by the current occupant of the White House. I really didn’t want to spend too much time staring at reference photos of Trump so I picked a character that visually had similar characteristics: bottom-heavy, awkward, graceless, has difficulty drinking water with one hand, etc. And so I landed on a duck, even though I am fully aware that even the dumbest of ducks is far more capable than Trump.  

And so I draw and then I print those drawings on t-shirts, and when I sell the t-shirts I donate 20% of the profits to The Lincoln Project, sort of like a bake sale. The material is endless so I plan to continue drawing, perhaps until the duck is finally wearing an orange suit.

—Bill Sulit, September 2020


William Sulit headshotWilliam Sulit is an award-winning illustrator, ceramicist, and designer. Born in El Salvador, he studied design at North Carolina State and received his Masters of Architecture degree from Yale University. He is the co-founder of Juncture Workshops and frequently collaborates with his wife, the writer Beth Kephart, on book projects.

Buy his illustrated t-shirts here.

 

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Published on September 4, 2020 in Art, Interviews. (Click for permalink.)

An Interview with Mike Avery, author of THE COOPERATING WITNESS, by Andrea Caswell

Cleaver Magazine Posted on July 2, 2020 by thwackJuly 2, 2020

An Interview with Mike Avery
Author of THE COOPERATING WITNESS
Literary Wanderlust Press
by Andrea Caswell

In Mike Avery’s debut novel, an ambitious law student is determined to find the truth to save an innocent man accused of murder. But the truth is never black-and-white, and the secrets she discovers hit close to home. The Cooperating Witness is a compelling legal thriller in which the moral ambiguities of justice are on trial. Mike Avery mines his fifty-year career as an attorney and law professor to craft a suspenseful story of murder, the mob, and a young woman’s determined idealism. In the following interview, conducted via phone and email, the author discusses his novel, the freedom of writing fiction, and the complex intersection of our legal system and morality.


The Cooperating Witness book jacketAndrea Caswell: You have extensive experience in the legal profession. What insights did this give you in writing The Cooperating Witness?

Mike Avery: My legal background was very helpful. I’ve known a lot of people like my characters: burned-out lawyers like Bobby Coughlin and idealistic students like Susan Sorella. I felt I knew how they might think, and how they’d react to situations that presented themselves in scenes. I’m also very familiar with FBI frame-ups, having litigated a well-known case over a period of several years. My goal was to create a story that was true to life, in the sense that it could actually happen in a courtroom, but was also dramatic.

AC: Susan struggles with feeling alienated in the male-dominated world of criminal law, and sexism adds to her challenges. She needs a strong mentor, but finds that mentors are “still few and far between for a young woman interested in criminal defense.” Why do you think that is, and are there solutions on the horizon?

MA: The opportunities for women as criminal trial lawyers have been gradually improving. During most of the time I was active in court, there were very few successful women criminal attorneys on the defense side. There were more women prosecutors, because Government agencies were required to have equal employment opportunities. Women are saddled with the macho notion that the public has, the stereotype that a criminal defense lawyer has to be aggressive and combative. No doubt that influences the choices that clients make when it comes time to retain a lawyer. There is, however, more than one way to be effective in the courtroom.

AC: Your novel explores the complex relationship between the law and justice. Susan discovers that the law isn’t always about right and wrong, and many of us might be surprised by that fact. Is that an inherent contradiction in our justice system?

MA: I think Susan discovers, particularly in terms of the relationships she and her father have with mob boss Frank Romano, that right and wrong as defined by the law do not always take into account moral imperatives. Or to put it another way, as she tries to seek justice, she finds she is confronted by conflicting obligations. In TV shows and police procedural novels, it is a cliché that private detectives or the police have to cut corners to nail the bad guy. I think that concept is overused and probably encourages police lawlessness. In this book we see what happens to the FBI agents who believe that the end justifies the means.

AC: The novel is set in Boston, from its gritty wharves to the elegant Parker House Hotel. One scene takes place in the Rosebud Diner, which was a local dive when I was in college and is still there today. What makes Boston the perfect setting for your novel?

MA: I lived in Boston for almost forty years and practiced criminal law there for nearly thirty of them. I know the culture. There is a rich diversity of characters in the community to draw upon when writing fiction.

AC: We experience the action from multiple characters’ perspectives, including Susan’s boss Bobby, FBI agents, prosecutors, the accused, and even the charismatic mob boss Frank Romano. How did you decide to inhabit those different minds, and what were some of the challenges these POVs presented?

MA: When I started writing fiction, I knew nothing, niente as my murder victim Tony Francini would say, about writing from a given character’s point of view. My first drafts were all over the place as I flitted from one character’s perspective to another in the same scene. So, point of view became an object of study for me, with the assistance of my teacher Stuart Nadler from the Bennington Writing Seminars. One of the things I read, and I’m sorry I can’t recall who wrote this, was that you can’t answer the question, “What does a barn look like?” You can only imagine what the barn looks like to a specific person. In each chapter I tried to imagine what the action looked and felt like to the character whose point of view I was using, and then to describe it in the language that he or she would use.

AC: How difficult was it to write a female protagonist, to give voice to her inner thoughts and feelings?

MA: That was very difficult. Whether I did a good job or not is something readers will decide. I got a lot of help from strong women in my life, including Jill, the woman I live with. In particular I have to thank my daughters Katie and Samantha, who are young, very independent, smart, and feminists. From time to time I’d ask them to read a section of the book to tell me whether I was off-base. To the extent I got things right, I have to give them credit. But to the extent that I made mistakes, I’m afraid I have to take the blame.

AC: The novelist Susan Scarf Merrell has said that “responding to art with art is what artists do.” You reference other art forms, such as Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, the movie Casablanca, and a painting by the German expressionist Max Pechstein. How did those works find their way into your novel?

MA: What characters respond to, whether in literature or film or the visual arts, can deepen a reader’s understanding of them. When Susan first goes to the co-defendant’s lawyer’s office, she notices a painting on the wall, a Pechstein that I was fortunate to see at the Brücke Museum in Berlin. As Susan reflects on the exploitation of one of Pechstein’s models, it  mirrors her own feeling of being sexualized as a woman in a professional role. The painting captured that sense of vulnerability very well.

AC: Food figures prominently in the book. Susan works at her family’s restaurant in the North End, where we enjoy strolls past Italian grocery stores and cafés. Characters dine on traditional antipasto platters, and homemade pasta with puttanesca sauce. Is it fair to say you’re a foodie?

MA: I love to cook and love Italian food, so I spiced up the story with it. One of my favorite scenes in the book is when Bobby Coughlin is attempting to get himself together to try the murder case and prepares chicken marsala as a metaphor for what he has to do to get ready to walk into the courtroom.

AC: The late film scholar Robert Warshow posits in his classic essay, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero” (1948), that gangsters are portrayed as mythological figures who we know we should condemn, yet we can’t help but admire them too. Susan experiences this conflict with Frank Romano, the local mob boss. He’s charismatic, “an elegant criminal,” but ultimately his success will be his downfall; he’s recognizable as a tragic or anti-hero. How did you conceive of Frank Romano?

MA: Romano is a man whose life took an irrevocable turn early. Maybe he could have been someone else, or done something else, but he is a mob boss. At the same time, he is generous, intelligent, highly literate, and capable of tender feelings. No person is all good or bad and Romano shows us that.

AC: You’ve published legal treatises, and more general nonfiction books about law and politics. How different was the experience of writing fiction?

MA: Writing fiction is very different. I love that I can just make things up. When writing about law I have to footnote everything. In law one has to attempt to be logical and have everything make sense. When there are contradictions, one has to explain or resolve them. Usually one is attempting to be persuasive, or to craft an argument. In fiction, things can happen, as they do in life, that are unpredictable and make no sense. One of the things I have to work on as a fiction writer is to let that happen and ignore my legal personality that wants to put everything in order.

AC: Have you started your next project?

MA: I’m writing the sequel now. Susan is practicing law and working with a strong female mentor to defend a new client charged with murder.

AC: You’ve devoted much of your career to civil rights law and social justice reform. Which organizations do you see doing great work in these areas right now, and how best can we support them?

MA: There are many organizations doing excellent work at the moment. I work with the National Police Accountability Project (NPAP), a project of the National Lawyers Guild. We assist lawyers who bring lawsuits against officers and police departments for misconduct by the police. We are expanding our work to assist community organizers who are struggling to hold the police accountable for civil rights violations and to bring about needed changes in how police departments operate. NPAP can be found at https://www.nlg-npap.org/.

To learn more about the author or The Cooperating Witness, visit his website.


Mike Avery author photoStarting as an ACLU staff lawyer during the Black Panther murder trial in New Haven in 1970, Mike Avery enjoyed an exciting career as a civil rights lawyer. He represented victims of police abuse and racial and sexual discrimination and defended people charged with everything from peaceful protesting to murder. In 2007 he obtained the largest judgment ever awarded against the FBI, $101.7 million, for the wrongful conviction of four innocent men for murder. The crime was actually committed by an FBI informant. He has served as the President of the National Lawyers Guild and was one of the founders of the National Police Accountability Project. Avery spent 16 years as a law professor at Suffolk Law School in Boston. He has published several non-fiction books, is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, and spent a year as an exchange student in the former Soviet Union at the University of Moscow. After retiring as a professor of law, he obtained a Master of Fine Arts from Bennington College.

Andrea Caswell holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and is a fiction editor at Cleaver Magazine. Her work has been published by River Teeth, The Normal School, Fifth Wednesday, Columbia Journal, and others. In 2019 she was selected as a fiction participant for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. A native of Los Angeles, Andrea now teaches writing in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

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Published on July 2, 2020 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

An Interview with Sharon Harrigan, author of the novel HALF, by Virginia Pye

Cleaver Magazine Posted on June 15, 2020 by thwackJune 15, 2020

An Interview with Sharon Harrigan
Author of the novel HALF
University of Wisconsin Press
by Virginia Pye

Book Jacket Cover Art for HALFWriters have a way of finding each other in Virginia, thanks to several strong literary non-profits. Sharon Harrigan teaches at WriterHouse in Charlottesville and I used to help run James River Writers in Richmond. We met years ago at the annual JRW Writers Conference. When my first novel came out, Sharon generously reached out and offered to interview me for Fiction Writers Review. I moved to Cambridge several years later, but we continued to keep track of each other’s careers, cheering on each new publication. I’m delighted to interview her now about her debut novel, HALF. In sparse, lyrical prose, it tells the story of identical twins who speak in one voice, until they can’t any longer.

Virginia Pye: It’s a daring idea to write a novel from the perspective of identical twins. I gather that you’re not a twin yourself, which makes me curious why you chose to tell the story this way?

Sharon Harrigan: I didn’t set out to write about twins. What I wanted to do was write about empathy and intimacy, the kind of platonic closeness I had with my older brother growing up. So originally, the characters were singleton siblings, different genders. But then when I took this concept of sibling bonding further—because exaggerating our real-life can distill the experiences and make them clearer—these characters became so close they were indistinguishable. That’s when I realized they had to be twins or my readers (and I!) would get confused.

I’m also using sibling love to say something about all non-romantic love. That when we empathize with someone, we feel their pain—and their joy. It’s as if what happens to them happens to us. That’s something we especially need to be reminded of during these increasingly divisive times.

VP: When the two sisters are children their story is told in vignettes that have an immediacy to them. The scenes and other characters are described in poetic detail, using the senses and focusing on how a child might process the world. How do you think that showing the story through the twins’ eyes in this intimate way helps your reader relate to them?

Sharon Harrigan author photo

Sharon Harrigan

SH: Children don’t yet know a lot about the bigger world, so they experience things more close up, more focused on what they can immediately perceive with their senses. There’s something magical that we lose once our world enlarges, and as a child, I promised never to forget what it felt like to be small. I’m trying to remember on the page that helpless quality, that sense of awe for people who are bigger, and the credulity, as well as the fluidity between the real and the magical. That’s a lot of what the novel is about: the blurred lines between the actual and the imaginary, the spillover between mythology and mental illness, the lies we tell each other and ourselves so much we believe them, the truth that stares us down but we don’t see it because we’re in denial and the crushing disillusionment that sometimes arrives at the end. Isn’t that an apt description of what it means to grow up?

VP: The twins share the same perceptions and perspectives in their early lives, but as they grow and start to know other people, they begin to become distinct from one another.  This transition comes about slowly and leads to a surprising rupture. Can you talk about the way that difference is introduced as a crucial element in your story?

SH: We know at the beginning that the girls can’t speak in one voice forever, and it’s that instability that drives a lot of the dramatic tension. I tried to make their gradual separation feel natural. That’s the way it often is when we drift apart from people—whether it’s our twin, our best friend, or our spouse. Sometimes we don’t see it coming, and it’s a shock when we can no longer deny it. One of my readers described the separation like this: “The narrator dissolves before our eyes.” The whole book is held together by the dual narration, so when that is gone, it’s like the floor falls out from under our feet. At least that how I wanted it to feel.

When my daughter read the novel, on the other hand, she said the twins’ separation felt like a relief. “The twins were never exactly the same,” she said. “Nobody is. But their closeness is so important to them that they hide all their differences, not just from each other, but from themselves. When they finally break apart, they don’t have to cover up anymore.”

People suppress their differences in order to be part of a group all the time. Think about high schoolers and their desire to fit in. They end up dressing the same, talking the same. We also do this when we join a church or a profession or a political party. I had my students do an exercise using the “we” voice and one of them said something I found fascinating. He is in a men’s group, and the facilitator tells people not to use the “we” voice when they are sharing because it is often used to hide from personal feelings or assert unity where there is diversity. The “we” voice allows people to hide. And yes, that is true for my twins.

VP: One crucial way the twins are bonded to one another is through their understanding of their abusive father. And yet his death is what finally separates them. In this way, he has a divisive effect on them in both life and death. Was it difficult to write such a destructive character?

SH: He became more intense in later drafts because I let myself give him mythic proportions. He is, in a way, Zeus. At least some people think he is. And just like a Greek god he can destroy things on a whim. He can also be so powerful and charismatic that he’s irresistible. He’s a hero-monster, like some of the men we see in the news every day. He is also a real man, the kind of real man I’ve read about in memoirs. I read a lot of them, because that’s what I teach. One of my early readers said the father exemplifies a Midwestern type: the tough but truly loving father who is determined to make his children strong by bullying them. And yes, this is how I remember my own father. He truly thought he was doing the right thing.

VP: Without giving away too much, I’d love to hear you say more about the end of your novel when the twins reveal their very different views of the past. The distance between them becomes vast. Can you share more about how memory plays a role in defining who they are and who they aren’t to one another?

SH: That’s a great question. One of the reasons I used the structure I did—one chapter for every year from ages five to twenty-two—is to give readers the sense that they are seeing a life being lived in real time, the way it is for the characters themselves. Then by the end, when the twins are adults and remember that life in two different ways, we can recognize how memory works, how it is not an objective truth but something filtered through an individual’s biases.

VP: Finally, I love to hear about the journey debut novelists have traveled on their way to publication. Can you share yours?

SH: I remember when your first novel was published, and I was so inspired by your success. It made me feel hopeful. Thank you for that!

I’m a late bloomer. I’m 52 and this is my first novel. My first book, a memoir, was published three years ago. It’s funny because I started writing seriously when I was 14 and thought I was getting an early start! I took poetry classes at the Detroit Institute of Arts. My brother and I got special permission to be able to attend because these were adult writing workshops. I gave a reading at the DIA when I was 18. I’m pretty sure I was the youngest person ever to do so. In my early twenties, a small press was going to publish my poetry collection. It was typeset and everything, and then they went bankrupt. (That collection has still not been published, but I now have a press that’s interested, all these years later!) I became a mother too young and then a single mother, working as an editor full time and also freelancing, hustling to make rent in New York City. My writing became something it didn’t feel like I could afford to do. Only many years later, after I remarried, did I get an MFA and start writing prose and restart my stalled writing career.

I love to hear stories about other writers publishing late. Margaret Renkl, who wrote the amazing memoir-in-lyric-essays Late Migrations, one of my favorite books of the past year, published her first book at age 57. And that book has brought her acclaim, including an invitation to become a New York Times columnist. People like her inspire me to think: It’s never too late!


Sharon Harrigan teaches at WriterHouse, a nonprofit literary center in Charlottesville, Virginia. She is the author of Playing with Dynamite: A Memoir. Her work has appeared in the New York Times (Modern Love), Narrative, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.

Virginia Pye author photoVirginia Pye‘s collection, Shelf Life of Happiness, was awarded the 2019 IPPY Gold Medal for Short Fiction. Her debut novel, River of Dust, was an Indie Next Pick and a 2013 Finalist for the Virginia Literary Award. Her second novel, Dreams of the Red Phoenis was chosen as a Best Book of 2015 by the Richmond Times Dispatch. Her stories and essays have appeared in Literary Hub, The New York Times, The North American Review, The Baltimore Review, and elsewhere. She’s taught writing at New York University and the University of Pennsylvania, in high schools, and most recently in Boston at GrubStreet. She can be found on FB, Twitter, Instagram, and at www.virginiapye.com

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Published on June 15, 2020 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

An Interview with Claire Oleson, author of THINGS FROM THE CREEK BED WE COULD HAVE BEEN, by Andrea Caswell

Cleaver Magazine Posted on April 28, 2020 by thwackApril 28, 2020

An Interview with Claire Oleson
Author of THINGS FROM THE CREEK BED WE COULD HAVE BEEN
Newfound Press, 64 pages
by Andrea Caswell

Things From the Creek Bed jacket copyClaire Oleson’s chapbook, Things From the Creek Bed We Could Have Been, is the winner of the Newfound 2019 Prose Prize, awarded annually to a chapbook-length work of exceptional fiction or nonfiction that explores how place shapes identity, imagination, and understanding.

In the following interview, she discusses the work, and how making art can reshape our understanding of what we see in the world.

Andrea Caswell: The stories in this collection are language-driven, intensely intimate, and saturated with beautiful images. Did any of these stories begin as poems or prose poems?

Claire Oleson: I enjoy navigating in the spaces between prose and poetry; in Creek Bed, I hope a poetic dedication to the individual word is visible alongside the breathing space that prose gives to its subjects. I wanted the size, the “living room” of a story, with the minutia and pace that poetry can offer. Also, somewhat in retrospect, I’ve found my writing across genres is often propelled by sight more than distinct action. I wanted image to offer propulsion, like plot can, but I wanted everything I included to belong to sensation, to be incapable of happening anywhere outside of a body.

AC: The artist Corita Kent said, “Art does not come from thinking, but from responding.” To what are you responding with Things From the Creek Bed We Could Have Been? 

CO: Alongside this desire for the writing to feel embodied, I also want the readers who come to it to feel like they belong inside its feeling. Here, I don’t mean that they “belong” in the sense that there’s a neat space carved out for an audience-surrogate, but far more that the story isn’t complete until someone is in it, feeling it. Following the quote you provided, I think it’s fair to say that if I wanted to be easy, to be point-blank, and solely focused on convincing, I would have written an extended essay on image, gender, bodies, and ownership. This would have been neater than what I’ve chosen to do: a slew of surreal-adjacent and often absurd stories that take longer to tell you what a thesis could blurt. But I come to you with no footnotes and more mess because I agree with Corita Kent here; this isn’t art until it’s being responded to, occupied, waded in. In that same vein, certainly everything I’ve written can be taken as a form of response. I’d love to say I’ve involved some thought too, but absolutely, the best feelings and needs and evenings I’ve communicated in Creek Bed come from having carried feelings and needs and evenings.

I want these stories to be spaces people come to live in, if only briefly, and to encounter as potential lives or ways of living. —Claire Oleson

AC: Tell us about the title.

Claire Oleson

CO: I thought about pulling a title from one of the interior stories, but this felt like a missed opportunity to sneak more writing in, and I didn’t feel it would envelope everything included with a flexible but precise name. Things From the Creek Bed We Could Have Been is a stupid title because it’s long, it takes time to write out, type out, google, or tell someone. I sort of love it for being a little bit stupid, but in all earnestness, I made it and picked it because I feel it presents a sense of possibility, calmness, fear, and absurdity in one (labored) breath. I want these stories to be spaces people come to live in, if only briefly, and to encounter as potential lives or ways of living. There’s a lot of water in these pieces and the first piece opens inside a creek, so I feel invoking an immediate sense of setting from the cover that flows right into the first story offers an organic and (forgive me) fluid entrance. Oh also, god, I will confess that I was thinking of the poet C.D. Wright who has a book legitimately titled The Poet, The Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, A Wedding in St. Roch, The Big Box Store, The Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire & All. To me, this is superb. It gushes and it leaves things behind with you. A title like this feels like someone is standing in front of you, continuing to hand you delicate things you can’t possibly carry but also can’t afford to drop. You just have to be overwhelmed. I thought of doing something more stupid and longer than Things From the Creek Bed We Could Have Been, but in the end, I thought C.D. Wright has already done this so well, I might as well be humane to my publisher and cover artist.

AC: Visual arts, such as photography and painting, are integral to many of these stories. How would you describe the role of other art forms in your creative life?

CO: There is a lot of visual art and I put it in to continue to ask people to see as they’re reading. I love knowing that every piece hung/illuminated/shoved/presented in these stories is going to be completely different, reader to reader, despite their semi-static existence in the inked word. Everyone leaves with their own different gallery and there’s no one right, Platonic canvas or neon light. The seeing done by reading makes them, again and again, and it recruits the reader in their making. Because many of my characters are teetering on deciding whether or not what they’re making is “good” or “beautiful” or “ignorant, insufficient, unworthy,” some of that decision gets to come from how the reader decides to hang, frame, and know them. In my life outside of writing, I like to keep up drawing and a pinprick of painting when supplies are handy. I think I know just enough of each to know that I’m a hobbyist (but, with adoration). Having worked at both has taught me the delightful truth that, all day, we are seeing wrong. It’s not until you sit to commit something in front of you to paper or canvas or cardboard that you process what you think a face looks like is entirely wrong, in a series of minute but critical ways. It’s really wonderful to be so incorrect about what we take to be the basics. Seeing, a lot like reading, is often taken as a passive task, something that just inhales. Making art and looking at art is quick and elated to show you that seeing is something you do and can learn to do better but not perfectly. Reading, too, is a work. Reading is deciding to believe in small and nonexistent rooms and move things around in them for a while. Please, if you’re reading this, come into the Creek Bed and mess up the furniture.

AC: Each story in the collection is narrated in the first person. What were some of the narrative decisions you made as you wrote these?

CO: I wanted everyone written to feel like they were speaking for themselves. I wanted every protagonist to have both the freedom and constraint of being steeped in their own thoughts alone. With some free indirect discourse, the reader gets gleams of other characters’ priorities, but the bulk of narration is dedicated to one person at a time. This is, I think, the hardest number of people to be at a time. Amidst the teetering moments of emergency or non-emergency that my stories center on, the feeling of being in one brain can manage to be both the most comforting and most alarming thing. First-person is an allowance to be candid alongside the pressure to be impressive, coherent, and interesting, for both the characters and writer; so I hope my teetering, one-at-a-time people are just that. And if they’re average and incoherent, hopefully they’re at least devastatingly fascinating to make up for it.

AC: Tell us about Newfound. What inspired you to enter their chapbook competition? What have you enjoyed most about working with them?

CO: I’d seen Newfound’s chapbooks prior to submitting and I think the physical books they produce are made with such detail, care, and clear desire to thoughtfully make a fitting physical body for a work of writing. Coming to the end of my undergraduate career, I had begun to amass pieces from workshops that I still liked even after bringing them through everyone’s teeth. I wanted to do something with them that would let them belong to and with one another. I think these contests offer a wonderful gateway into publishing for authors who are looking into the world of books after having appeared in journals. Chapbooks are also so digestible and offer a lot for the short prose or poetry writer while still providing the distinct and individual object that’s dedicated to one author. Working with Newfound has been lovely; they’re responsive, kind, invested, and showed enthusiasm for my work from the time of my initial submission to the binding and distributing of the books.

AC: What are you working on now?

CO: Ooh, surviving. Some writing is happening. I’m mostly invested in finding productive and lucrative-enough work in the current climate. But I’ve made some poems I’m not unfond of, some lavender simple syrup I’m very fond of, and I’m preparing to prepare to cultivate the desire to make a full-length manuscript.

To purchase a copy of Things From the Creek Bed We Could Have Been, click here.

◊◊

Claire Oleson is a queer writer hailing from Grand Rapids, Michigan. She has a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Kenyon College, where she won the Propper Prize for poetry and the Denham Sutcliffe Memorial Award. Her writing has been published by Limestone, Newfound, Bridge Eight Magazine, Sugar House Review, and the Kenyon Review online. She is the senior poetry editor for Cleaver.

Andrea Caswell holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is a fiction editor at Cleaver Magazine. Her work has been published by River Teeth, The Normal School, Fifth Wednesday, Columbia Journal, and others. In 2019 she was selected as a fiction participant for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. A native of Los Angeles, Andrea now teaches writing in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

 

 

 

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Published on April 28, 2020 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers, Interviews>Interviews with Cleaver Editors. (Click for permalink.)

CLAIRE RUDY FOSTER MADE YOU A MIX TAPE, an interview by KC Mead-Brewer

Cleaver Magazine Posted on November 2, 2019 by thwackNovember 3, 2019

Author Claire Rudy Foster on a park bench

CLAIRE RUDY FOSTER MADE YOU A MIX TAPE
author of the story collection Shine of the Ever
Interlude Press, 194 pages
interviewed by KC Mead-Brewer

I got to know Foster’s fiction through their first story collection I’VE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Foster doesn’t disappoint with their new collection, SHINE OF THE EVER, thirteen stories full of humor, beauty, sincerity, and refreshingly nuanced queer and trans characters. Foster’s dedication to challenging mainstream preconceived notions about queerness is well reflected in all their works, from their essays to their flash to their upcoming novel. In SHINE OF THE EVER, they focus their vibrant, energetic style to a deceptively simple task: no sad endings. To learn more, go here.

—KC M-B

KMB: I’m so excited about this collection! After your last collection, I’ve Never Done This Before, I’ve been eagerly looking forward to seeing your next big project. How long have you been working on these stories? Did they come together organically, long after you’d written some of them, or did you start out writing these with a book in mind?

CRF: Thank you—I’m excited to share it! The stories in Shine of the Ever run the gamut from very recent to some of the earliest I’ve written. The title piece, a novella, started out as my undergraduate thesis. I finished it in 2006. Since then, it’s changed about as much as I have. Living with, and in, a story is an intense experience. That novella inspired the rest of the collection, which includes a flash fiction piece that is contemporaneous with “Shine” and more recent pieces from last year.

Shine of the Ever is very close to my heart. As I started to come out as both queer and transgender, I struggled to find representations of myself in literary fiction. The stories I wrote reflected a yearning to see my experience and the experiences of the people I loved on paper. My identity came into focus through and with my creation of this book. The process was intimidating at first, but as I looked back, I saw that many of my stories included queer and trans characters. It seems that I’d been working on Shine of the Ever and its themes and people for a lot longer than I thought.

KMB: I love that Shine of the Ever includes both a flash story exploring a bisexual romance and a novella deepening this exploration (albeit in a very different way). How did you decide on the order of the book’s stories? Would you prefer your readers go at the collection from start to finish, or do you mind if they take a hodgepodge approach?

CRF: I associate bisexuality with feeling partly invisible. Bi erasure is common: there’s a sense, for me, of hiding in plain sight. I chose to include two stories about bisexual characters who deal with the ‘seen’ and ‘unseen’ in their relationships. They worry about seeming queer enough, or disappearing into heteronormative-looking partnerships. In both stories, there are many layers of intimacy. Platonic attraction can become sexual, or the reverse, or flow into another kind of relationship altogether. The collection can be read in any order; the stories are not linear, just as people are not. Sexuality and gender are complex—my hope is that the reader will appreciate the collection’s diversity of queer identities, loves, and people.

KMB: You let nothing go to waste in these stories; every detail has an echo somewhere, creating a powerful resonance throughout. I was especially taken with the story “Domestic Shorthair,” where the tension between burying “evidence” and unearthing “evidence,” at hiding identities and revealing identities, is wound tighter and tighter in every paragraph. Are these resonant details brought forward during your revision process, or do they rise up naturally during drafting?

CRF: My goal with Shine of the Ever was to collect stories that oppose, mirror, or challenge one another. I also explored tension within each piece, playing with what each character knows, doesn’t know, and isn’t willing to see. Amit came into my imagination complete, a very smart person with a blind spot that’s at odds with their incredible attention to detail. Amit is not ‘out’ in the conventional sense, but to the outside world, it’s obvious who they are. As “Shorthair” unfolds, the things Amit doesn’t see, about themself and their roommate, force them to come to terms with the consequences of staying closeted. As you said, the circle tightens around Amit, and the evidence they can no longer ignore provides a moment of insight that changes their perception of themselves.

The revision on Shine of the Ever was, I’m glad to say, not a brutal one. I think of my writing as music, a mix tape. The tones have to be right. When the collection was put together, it was easier to hear which sections were falling flat.

KMB: What books/stories/authors were you reading as you wrote these stories? How did they affect your writing process?

CRF: The way the stories feel was really important to me with Shine of the Ever. It wasn’t enough just to write about LGBTQ characters. I wanted the stories to feel queer, too. While I was working on this collection, I gravitated toward books and authors who were dreamy, unusual, and smart. Mostly domestic. I read Maile Meloy, Tessa Hadley, and Alexander Chee. I read Brandon Taylor’s tweets, of course, because he never fails to delight and provoke. I watched Personal Shopper over and over, and Certain Women.

In each of these, I was looking for a private moment of self-identification. A moment like this: a trans girl, alone in her kitchen, looks up from making a sandwich and thinks to herself, Damn, I’m super gay right now. And then she goes back to her sandwich. There’s no reveal; no ‘coming out,’ which we put so much emphasis on. The character is just hanging out with herself. Straight characters do this in fiction all the time. I sought to do the same with characters and voices that were like mine instead.

KMB: This collection reads as a celebration of the complexity and humanity of queer and trans women, characters who are simply and exquisitely themselves. I admire how artfully you build on your characters’ flaws instead of magically “curing” them in the end. How do you go about constructing your characters?

CRF: Queer characters are so frequently shown as two dimensional, or as supports for the straight main character. In art as in life, queer people aren’t allowed the same complexity as straight characters—at least, not without paying a terrible price in exchange. Some of the most nuanced images we have of LGBTQ characters are in film, yet they inflict terrible suffering on queer bodies and hearts: Moonlight, Boys Don’t Cry, and Brokeback Mountain. Although there’s been some positive change in representation, I think there’s still a real lack of queer characters who are not good or pure in a way that is a rhetorical device to invite sympathy and who also do not face painful consequences for being ‘imperfect.’

My characters come from my observation of life, other people. I look in the mirror. I listen to how people talk about themselves and others. What’s omitted. I’m especially interested in flaws, the things we struggle with and why. Redemption bores me.

KMB: In many of these stories, but perhaps especially in the titular piece, the question of authenticity is considered from a variety of angles. The energy and empathy with which you tackle this tricky issue is very refreshing. It reminds me a little of what you’ve spoken about in previous interviews regarding your personal struggle with addiction: “When I was in active addiction … I felt powerful, mysterious, complex. Like a real writer, whatever that is. Even as my drug use destroyed my brain and my body, I held onto the idea that I was part of something meaningful.” How has your wrestling with the idea of being a “real” or “authentic” writer informed your characters’ related struggles with authenticity?

CRF: I sometimes struggle with rejection and self-doubt. Who doesn’t? As a nonbinary trans person, in particular, it’s hard to feel invalidated at every turn. I’m not ‘trans enough.’ The language I have to describe myself is imperfect. I’ve lost important relationships because the people I cared about couldn’t ‘see’ me as I wished to seen, or know me as I desired to be known. However, I’ve never not felt like a real writer. The issue, in my creative work and in my gender expression, is finding people who see what I see—who see me the way I see myself. It’s the same for my characters. They don’t seek acceptance, necessarily. They want to be seen. Identity is a powerful thing. It can also be painful, to wear an identity that other people don’t notice or understand how to see.

Funny, I never feel shame in isolation. I am very accepting of myself. I only start to feel insecure or uncomfortable when I’m around people who don’t accept me. Whether it’s my recovery, my identity, my sexuality, or the way I choose to live—I’m good with myself. I struggle when I have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up.

KMB: As a writer, what things do you particularly love to see in a story when you read? What things aggravate you?

CRF: I read a lot, so my tolerance for trends is pretty low. I think there’s so much emphasis on writing something clicky. Clickbait is dull and formulaic. Every week, I see articles about how people don’t read long stories anymore, or how to optimize your reading with flash fiction. Many writing guides have tips about crafting a “hook,” or using other marketing techniques to grab the reader. That drives me crazy. I don’t even engage with those posts or the insipid debates they incite. Let literature be literature. I hate to see aspiring writers breaking their necks trying to stand out of the slush pile with cheap, attention-grabbing hooks or front-loaded stories.

I love to read stories that are compelling, and flirt a little. I like it when a story can be patient with itself, and when the reader is led into its world slowly, one sentence at a time. This is one of the things I loved about Aimee Bender’s fiction when I was younger; I see it less frequently now, as a style in fiction.

KMB: I know you’ve also been working on a novel recently. How does your writing process change as you move from a story collection to a novel?

CRF: Well, the submission process is more grueling. With stories or essays, I can write one in a day, send it to the journals, and get a response in about a month. With novels, there’s no such thing as spontaneity. The idea may come quickly, but the execution takes time. A novel is not a one-night stand. The novel I’m working on is in the rewrite phase, and my time frame is open-ended. I keep digging in, and it keeps giving me new material, so who knows.

I usually know right away if a story is boring or no good, and I can move on to the next thing. Novels are different—a different frame of mind. A project of that scope requires patience. You work, and you wait, and maybe the story comes along.

KMB: Some of Shine of the Ever’s strongest, most practical-minded characters are also those who engage in practices like tarot and crystal healing. Do you see any conflict or contradiction between these things? Do you practice tarot yourself? If so, are there other ways that it’s inspired or affected your writing?

CRF: I don’t see a conflict between those things. Tarot and other magic are invaluable tools for getting new insight, or seeing a problem in a different way. Who doesn’t want to see the future? We dedicate so much energy to scientific methods, mathematical predictions, and other theories that are supposed to tell us how things will be. I think tarot and other practices are incredibly practical. In my stories, it’s also a marker of time and place: witchiness is enjoying a resurgence in popular culture right now. From Lisa Marie Basile to Joanna C. Valente to the Becoming Dangerous anthology, I’m seeing a smart reinterpretation of what these ancient crafts mean to us in a digital world.

I think superstition, faith, and magic are important to a lot of people in the queer community. Feeling protected, integrated, and healed, connecting to a world that we don’t necessarily see, believing that there’s a higher purpose, even when life is difficult—people need hope, always.

KMB: Your stories here are so full of hope—something I haven’t often encountered in stories about queer and trans people. What does it mean to you to be writing stories of hope right now?

CRF: Representation is so important for growth: when you see it, you can be it. In Shine of the Ever, the rule is ‘no sad endings.’ That’s it. I didn’t want to sensationalize my characters or replicate the stories I see that focus on the extremes of queer life. It’s not all coming out, and gay bashing, and oppression. I object to packaging and marketing of queer suffering. That’s one of the things I appreciate about Interlude Press: they don’t publish books that fetishize queer pain. Making LGBTQ people into exotic or doomed creatures is just another way of other-ing us. We’re people. At the same time, Shine of the Ever is not inspiration porn. I didn’t want to create characters who were just so brave. I’m so tired of that. The constant overcoming. I wanted to write about everyday life, as I see people like me experiencing it.

I hate that being queer is a liability in our culture. I want that to change. There is so much joy for us, too. It’s my responsibility to show that. We deserve to be happy. We deserve to see ourselves happy. We deserve more.


Claire Rudy Foster is a queer, nonbinary single parent in recovery. Their short story collection, I’ve Never Done This Before, was published to warm acclaim in 2016. With four Pushcart Prize nominations, Foster’s writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, and many other journals. Their nonfiction work has reached millions of readers in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Narratively, among others. Foster lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. (Author photo by Elizabeth Ehrenpreis)

K.C. Mead-Brewer lives in Ithaca, NY. Her fiction appears in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Carve Magazine, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Tin House’s 2018 Winter Workshop for Short Fiction and of the 2018 Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. For more information, visit kcmeadbrewer.com and follow her @meadwriter.

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Published on November 2, 2019 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

A Conversation with Greg Sestero Author of THE DISASTER ARTIST: MY LIFE INSIDE THE ROOM, THE GREATEST BAD MOVIE EVER MADE

Cleaver Magazine Posted on October 29, 2019 by thwackOctober 29, 2019

A Conversation with Greg Sestero
Author of THE DISASTER ARTIST: MY LIFE INSIDE THE ROOM, THE GREATEST BAD MOVIE EVER MADE
Simon & Schuster, 288 pages

Interview by Brian Burmeister

The Disaster Artist.jpgPerhaps no other film has so improbably risen from obscurity to cultural significance than 2003’s The Room. Grossing just $1800 in its original theatrical run, the film now famously dubbed “the Citizen Kane of bad movies” went on to connect with audiences through years of midnight screenings and an insightful, entertaining, and sometimes heartbreaking book about its making.

Greg Sestero, star of The Room, wrote this book in 2013, titling it The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made. The memoir was hailed by Patton Oswalt as “A surprising, hilarious, and compelling account of the making of the modern Plan 9 from Outer Space” and by Rob Lowe as “Hilarious, delusional, and weirdly inspirational.” In 2017, Sestero’s book was adapted into the critically acclaimed film The Disaster Artist, starring James Franco, Alison Brie, and Dave Franco (who portrayed Sestero).

Through his twenty-year career, Sestero has acted in a wide range of movies, including the cult horror films Retro Puppet Master and Dude Bro Party Massacre III. More recently, he wrote and starred in the Best F(r)iends films alongside The Room’s enigmatic Tommy Wiseau.

In this interview, Brian Burmeister asks Sestero about his experiences on set, his current projects, and advice he has for fellow writers and actors.


Brian Burmeister: While The Room had slowly built a following in the years following its release, your book The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made deserves a lot of credit for introducing the film to much of the world. Going back to 2003, could you have envisioned the amount of love that would eventually outpour for The Room and yourself?

Greg Sestero: Nooo. I thought it was just a movie that was going to be made by Tommy—and it was sort of his accomplishment, and that was going to be it.

Best Friends coverBB: There are a lot of inherent challenges for any writer working on an autobiography or memoir. In writing such a personal story, were there parts of your life and your experience that were hard for you to write about? Or concerned you because of what people might think—including those you wrote about?

GS: Yeah, I mean, I made sure to interview everybody from the story. And I thought it was very important to be as honest as possible and as respectful as possible because the story doesn’t work unless you share what you’re also not proud of. I think that’s what sets a lot of the events in motion. And I wanted to make sure to tell as much of the story as needed—and just be honest. I wrote it from the heart, and I think when you do that, you’re probably going to be okay.

BB: There were 15 years between when you worked with Tommy Wiseau on The Room [which he wrote, directed, produced, and starred in] and when you worked together on the Best F(r)iends films. In your book, you obviously wrote a lot about your experiences working on The Room. With Best F(r)iends, you took on different roles—this time you wrote the script, and Tommy was no longer in the director’s chair. By contrast to The Room, what was the experience of working on the two volumes of Best F(r)iends like?

GS: I definitely had more experience. I’d grown up a lot. And I knew Tommy could be very captivating in an acting role if it was composed properly. The goal was for us to try to make something new and have him be able to focus as an actor—and not have to burden all the pressure of producing. I really enjoyed making Best F(r)iends. I tried to take everything I’d learned and pour it into it.

BB: Earlier this year, a hilarious, jaw-dropping trailer for Big Shark was released. Any updates on the film’s progress?

GS: I know it’s something Tommy is really passionate to make. He’s on that, and hopefully it’s something special.

BB: What’s next for you? Are you planning to write more films? Focus on acting?

GS: I’m working on a horror film that I’m writing and putting together. So hopefully next year we’ll bring some interesting entertainment.

BB: Is the horror genre where you see yourself focused moving forward long-term?

GS: Yeah, it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I think The Room is great and everything that’s come from it has been fascinating. But I hope to go in a kind of different direction and make some new things.

BB: One of the true highlights of the entire internet last year was the recreation of an iconic scene from The Dark Knight starring you as Batman and Tommy Wiseau as the Joker. Where did that idea come from? And what was it like filming that scene?

Greg Sestero headshot

Greg Sestero

GS: We were fortunate to get Lionsgate to release Best F(r)iends, so we did a promotion with the Batman scene. And it was a director at Nerdist who made the Batman/Joker audition tape who said, “Let’s go make a scene.” So for me, being a big fan of The Dark Knight, it was one of those things that was an experience you couldn’t pass up.

BB: On behalf of everyone who has seen it, thank you for not passing it up. As of right now, you’re on a mini-tour of the country with live readings of The Room’s script. Having just attended one of these readings myself, I can definitively say these events are pure fun and a great opportunity to pick your brain in the Q&A. Can fans expect more opportunities like these to see you in person?

GS: Yeah, I’ve done it a couple times. I think it’s something that’s very interactive and gives people a chance to be part of the film. So, we’ll see. I’ve got these other projects to make, but it’s always fun to get out there, meet fans, and interact.

BB: Final question. One of the major themes in The Disaster Artist is Tommy Wiseau’s one-in-a-million, limitless belief in his own dreams. That’s one of the many qualities that really separates him from most of us. If you were to offer one piece of advice to all the struggling writers and actors out there, what would it be?

GS: Follow the fun. If you’re not having fun, you need to figure out why that is. Creating should be fun. We sometimes put pressure on ourselves—which can be a good thing—but at the end of the day, as creators in that process, there needs to be some enjoyment. So try to drown out the negative voices. Just focus on your story or your music and follow the fun.

◊ ◊ ◊ 

The author wishes to thank Mr. Sestero for generously taking the time to sit down for this interview following his live reading of The Room in Des Moines on 10/25/19.

Brian BurmeisterBrian Burmeister is an author, cat cuddler, and educator living in Iowa. He can be followed on Twitter: @bdburmeister.

 

 

 

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Published on October 29, 2019 in Interviews, Interviews with Nonfiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

A Conversation with Elizabeth Mosier, author of EXCAVATING MEMORY: ARCHAEOLOGY AND HOME. Interview by Nathaniel Popkin

Cleaver Magazine Posted on April 1, 2019 by thwackApril 29, 2019

A Conversation with Elizabeth Mosier
Author of EXCAVATING MEMORY: ARCHAEOLOGY AND HOME
from New Rivers Press, 96 Pages
Interview by Nathaniel Popkin

Excavating Memory: Archaeology and Home book jacket (vintage road map)

Elizabeth Mosier logged one thousand volunteer hours processing colonial-era artifacts at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park Archeology Laboratory to write EXCAVATING MEMORY: ARCHAEOLOGY AND HOME, which uses archaeology as a framework to explore personal material, including her mother’s memory loss, the layering of shared experience in creating family or community narratives, and the role that artifacts play in historical memory. The essay titled “Believers”, a 2015 Best American Essays Notable pick, first appeared in Cleaver.

Novelist and essayist Elizabeth Mosier has twice been named a discipline winner/fellowship finalist by the Pew Fellowships in the Arts, and has received fellowships from Yaddo, The Millay Colony for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her nonfiction has been selected as notable in Best American Essays, and appears most recently in Cleaver, Creative Nonfiction, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She writes the “Intersections” column on alumnae lives for the Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin. More information at www.ElizabethMosier.com.


Nathaniel Popkin: You write, early in the collection, in regard to your work processing objects from an archeological dig near Independence Hall in Philadelphia, that “digging and processing of primary sources creates a record of life that is both detailed and fragmented, much like memory.” Excavating Memory is a stirring exploration of this idea. Would you say then the book is less a search for truth (about your life) and more a complication, perhaps of what you had perceived to be real?

Elizabeth Mosier: I’m fascinated by how artifacts that form the archaeological record constitute and, in some cases, correct the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and how we live. Like archaeologists, writers are always looking for artifacts that support or subvert what we think is true.

Headshot of Elizabeth Mosier

Elizabeth Mosier

As a volunteer technician at the Independence National Historical Park Archeology Laboratory, I got to practice looking closely at small things, and looking beneath the surface of the city I knew mostly by its buildings, monuments, and celebrated citizens. Washing, labeling, mending, and cataloguing a colonial neighborhood’s glass fragments and ceramic sherds trained me to see broken, discarded things as material evidence—of social class, consumer patterns, cultural practices, politics, and relationships. I became more conscious of how we construct reality, create history, from pieces we’ve saved by choice or accident.

The most important thing I learned from the archaeologists is that the real treasure isn’t the artifact, but the information gleaned from it. And after 1,000 hours in the lab, I viewed my own material through this new lens. I realized that writing is like repairing a broken bottle from the base up, then taking it apart again to fashion a story from what you’ve found.

NP: This book ought to have an analog map or maps—you’re tracing paths as you go. These are maps that extend from Philadelphia to Phoenix to Indiana. And there are maps within maps and some that only exist in your head or others’ (I’m thinking of your mother’s floor plan map of her farmhouse growing up and E.B. White’s, too). Maps, whether in our heads or on paper or computer, are objects. “I don’t question objects,” your mother says in the essay “Once More to the Barn.” What do you think of this—is there a way in which all the maps are right, even when they obscure, or get details wrong, or leave key things out?

EM: Maps that obscure, obliterate, distort, or falsify details aren’t accurate but, in their inaccuracies, they can reveal what the cartographer values or wants to hide or doesn’t (want to) acknowledge. Despite my mother’s protest, which she made not from a lack of curiosity but from midwestern pragmatism, drawing a floorplan of her childhood home in “Once More to the Barn,” mentally walking through that physical space, prompted a traumatic memory. In “From Scratch,” my father’s hand-drawn map of Lynn, Indiana, circa 1950, accurately depicts the location of the railroad tracks that no longer run through his hometown. But I am able to find him in that landscape because he keyed the map with personal details like his mother’s flower garden and the “X” that marks the spot where he found and pocketed a bat on his way to school.

I agree with memoirist Patricia Hampl, who says we write not about what we know, but to find out what we know. Writing is a way of mapping reality. But if we want to write truthfully, we have to “question objects” and fact-check the maps we’ve plotted against other evidence.

NP: I once was enamored of the idea of the “poetry of history” and I wrote about it in Song of the City—“I walk the same streets as Franklin, Capone, Whitman, and Baldwin…” But reading your essays makes me think this is the opposite of what is really interesting about a street, or a corner, or a building, or a life. Those other people are ghosts, after all, and we are real. What seems to matter to you about a place is the personal, the material (like the bark of the Big Tree), the tracings of your own life. The rest is accidental. Why do these personal tracings matter to you?

EM: The “poetry of history” is what drew me to The President’s House dig, after I heard the head archaeologist, Jed Levin, speak about its stone foundation being “a tangible link to the people who lived in this house, and a link between the enslaved and the free.” I wanted to help memorialize the nine enslaved Africans: Oney Judge, Moll, Austin, Hercules, Richmond, Giles, Paris, Christopher Sheels, and Joe Richardson. But the dig became meaningful to me in other ways, too.

My time at the archaeology lab coincided with my mother’s mental decline, due to Alzheimer’s disease. Her memory loss haunted me, warning me to make something tangible to account for my life. And yet I was too distracted and distraught to write. This book began to take shape as I recorded details and observations about the lab in my journal and in short blog posts. Four years in, I put these brief pieces together in a narrative essay, “The Pit and the Page.”

But also, during that seven-year period, I had to empty four houses full of objects collected by my declining parents and deceased parents-in-law, and so I thought a lot about why we keep what we keep while we let other things go. This “grief cleaning,” as I call it, is an emotional process. For me, the decision is guided by a familiar visceral feeling that serves me in writing, too: this is something I can use.

NP: You began writing these essays about ten years ago, I think, and they piled onto each other like markings on the map. How different is this collection in its final form from what you might have intended? At what point did you realize you were searching for fragments of your own life—or rather trying to piece them together? Is the composition of the fragments—that is, both the essay collection and the memories redrawn on a map—a satisfying picture or are you still searching and tracing lines?

EM: I actually didn’t intend to write about my volunteer work at the lab, but I’m a curious person and a compulsive notetaker. My supervisor, Deborah Miller, generously shared her expertise, teaching me lab procedures and answering my many questions. And as I took notes, I began to find connections between the work archaeologists do and the work writers do: digging, processing, and repairing the artifacts of experience in order to find meaning. This insight suggested a methodology I could adopt, a lens I could apply to a collection of personal artifacts in order to process my personal loss.

As I went on, my literary interest in archaeology expanded to include contemporary objects and their owners, including the college diaries of classical archaeologist Dorothy Burr Thompson, to explore a larger question: What do salvaged or sacrificed objects reveal about how people form identity, or how a community creates its history? That’s a vein I’m still pursuing.

NP: The chapter “From Scratch,” with its repeated invocation, “let there be…” reads and feels different from the rest of the collection. It is prayerful rather than observational, a search for moral courage of some sort. How important was that invocation to you as you set out to excavate these personal, sometimes beautiful and sometimes painful memories? Did you have to say, please, “let there be words for all of this…”?

EM: Mourning, like writing, is labor—putting severed parts together, restoring order from chaos—but its process is internal and its product often invisible. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve coped with sadness by making things. And so I “processed” my grief over my father’s death by making his favorite rhubarb pie, using a recipe from my grandmother’s 1927 Farmer’s Guide Cook Book that I had already studied as an artifact. I was curious: how much of my ancestors’ knowledge had passed down to me? The pie-making was part ritual, part writing prompt.

I’d read all these scholarly articles by anthropologists on recipes as a form of rhetoric—social narratives that encourage and enact dialogue between the giver and the receiver. Intellectually, I was interested in the idea of a recipe as an “unauthorized” text—communal, reproduced, improvised, revised—that requires creative interpretation including modifications, deletions, substitutions, and experiments that enable the cook to reproduce the text in her own way and thereby claim her creative authority.

But really, I just wanted my father back. And so I ditched the narrative essay I’d drafted, and wrote this raw expression of scorched-earth despair. I wanted the invocation to echo its source in Genesis 1:3, and to sound like a daughter naming and grasping for concrete detail, imagining altered pasts and alternative futures to reorient herself as she writes her way out of the void.

In other words, I honored the emotional component in archaeology. This book of essays is an artifact, forming the record of my midlife reconstitution in the wake of loss.


Headshot of Nathaniel PopkinCleaver reviews editor Nathaniel Popkin is the author of five books, including the 2018 novel Everything is Borrowed, and co-editor (with Stephanie Feldman) of the anthology Who Will Speak for America? His essays and works of criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Kenyon Review, LitHub, Tablet Magazine, and Public Books. If you are an author or publicist seeking reviews or a writer hoping to write reviews for Cleaver, query Nathaniel.

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Published on April 1, 2019 in Interviews, Interviews with Nonfiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

A Conversation with Stephan Salisbury, author of BRITT & JIMMY STRIKE OUT. Interview by Sue Laizik

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 24, 2019 by thwackMarch 24, 2019

A Conversation with Stephan Salisbury
author of BRITT & JIMMY STRIKE OUT
Alternative Book Press, 341 Pages
Interview by Sue Laizik

Stephan Salisbury has been a cultural writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer for more than three decades. Britt & Jimmy Strike Out, his first novel, is a dystopian, satirical quest story about branding, live streaming, social media, and commercialization of lived experience. Britt and her friend Jimmy set out into a blighted urban landscape to find answers when Britt’s online brand starts to fail, friends start disappearing, and mysterious men show up at her home to intimidate and threaten her for not getting in line with the President’s brand. Ken Kalfus describes it as the “first great novel of the Trump Era.” Stephan Salisbury is also the author of a non-fiction book Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland about the anti-Arab hysteria after 9/11 and its devastating effect on people’s lives.

Stephan and I had many great conversations about books in the 1980s, when I worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer as a clerk for the book review. Years later, we reconnected through (of course) social media. This conversation took place via Google Docs over several days. Following our conversation are two excerpts from Britt & Jimmy Strike Out.—SL

Sue: I know you as a very good investigative and cultural journalist (for over thirty years!), so my first question when I learned you had written a novel was, Why fiction?

Stephan: Yes, I’m still a journalist. All writers who take fiction seriously are journalists of a sort. But instead of reporting on woman found dead in concert hall, they report on what they think about woman found dead in concert hall. Some writers, of course, make their reporting explicit. Dreiser comes to mind. Whereas Proust was shining a light into his own head and reporting what was rattling around inside. Journalism, at least as it’s practiced in newspapers today, is formulaically rigid, and that’s where fiction and the novel, remain alluring. It’s the freedom of the form, rather than the freedom of the subject that’s attractive: in fiction, a writer can do the police in different voices (to quote Dickens); the journalist, not so much. Britt & Jimmy is completely driven by voice, largely Britt’s voice (she is the narrator, after all), but also the cacophony of voices that’s swirling everywhere and swooping in on us, like pesky birds. Journalism remains the foundation for everything I do, though. It keeps the digital self-indulgence from floating away, like an overly gassy blimp.

Sue: I want you to talk about Britt—the novel’s protagonist and narrator—and her voice. (She turns into a bit of an investigative reporter herself.) But, first, some context might be helpful: Explain a little bit about the world of the novel, as well as what you call the “cacophony of voices,” including the voice of the President in the prologue.

Stephan:  The novel takes place at an indeterminate time, presumably the future, over the course of one night when Britt and her friend Jimmy are forced to flee from her digs through the streets of the collapsing city. Clearly there has been some catastrophic event in the far past, but its effects—crumbling buildings, gaping sinkholes, ash sifting down everywhere, the obliteration of economic and social life—are far more important than the causes. The physical is giving way to the virtual, the material to the immaterial. This is a world in which everything touchable has been debased and every habitable oasis has been depopulated, scattered, re-worked, and remarketed.

Stephan Salisbury

The President and the corps, his network of private partners, preside over this territory, leaving ordinary people to scrabble for a few pennies gained via branding and selling themselves and their wares online, where life is robust and good and, not surprisingly, dominated by the President. Who is he? He is the creation of every imagination in his great country. He is the President, the P, the guy with the biggest, most powerful brand of all. Ride with the President and you move with Presidential speed, the fastest of all speeds. The President, who is the focus of the novel’s opening section, is not unlike an oddly thoughtful frog, watching, tongue at the ready to snap out and snare whatever he seeks to snare. He sits in his bed and reviews the overnights, recounts what may or may not be prophetic dreams, watches various livestreams of himself, conducts millions of simultaneous chats, engages in endless self-promotion, and above all, worries that the overnight numbers might suggest a flagging presidential brand. In such times of stress, the President, as all presidents before him, going back and back into the foggy and unknowable past, launches an outside threat. Nothing welds a populace to its leader better than a decent, old-fashioned threat.

Britt and Jimmy flee Britt’s place because they are visited by two mysterious presidential agents who tell them they and their friends are not pulling along with everyone else in this difficult moment. The President has noticed and identified the disappearance of Britt’s good friend Deb as the reason for disruptions in the smoothly flowing system. Deb had become known as the President’s Girl, the hottest of the hot brands. But she took a wrong turn, her brand disintegrated, and now she has vanished. The agents tell Britt and Jimmy to find her. Britt and Jimmy are fleeing the P and his world in search of Pluto, the ruler of the pits, the city dump where everything goes to die.

Sue: Your answer makes me think of several follow-ups. They all have to do with different elements of the novel, so I’ll just put them out there and let you have a go. 

  1. “The physical is giving way to the virtual, the material to the immaterial”: that’s a wonderful description. Yet, the physical world—mise-en-scène—is so vividly realized on the page (which is one of several ways irony is employed in the novel). In what ways was Philadelphia an inspiration for the setting?
  2. Britt is a great narrator and character. She reminds me of a younger, more innocent Oedipa Maas (from Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49). Talk about her character and her voice.
  3. And speaking of characters, the President in Britt & Jimmy Strike Out seems eerily familiar in a way that makes the skin crawl, yet you wrote the book before the 2016 elections. How is that possible?


Stephan:
The novel was written before Trump announced his candidacy, but what does Trump represent if not the political culture and the wider forces shaping our world? It’s been almost forty years since Reagan, so his genial corruption and corporate spokesmanship have evolved and ripened, if that’s the right way to put it. Add a huge dollop of the internet with its self-branding, its intense commercialization of everything, its drive to entropy, its nastiness, and—voila!—Trump.

I think that I’m more acutely aware of these kinds of cultural shifts because of the severity of the problems facing newspapers. Newspapers back in the day—a few years ago, lol—were really flags of community. You’re walking down the street, see a paper in a box or on a newsstand and you know exactly where you are. Read it, and you’re reading things that your neighbors are reading. So papers are binders, they tie people together in a shared experience. But digitization works differently. No flag of community. No sign of place on the street. No shared experience with neighbors. Life becomes increasingly fragmented and disembodied. All of the things that have become commonplace in the Trump era were latent before—the ubiquitous branding, the lies and deceptions, the self-aggrandizement, the surveillance, the kleptocratic corporate fascism. All of it. That’s what I picked up on.

Listening to the new online producers at the Inquirer gave me Britt’s voice, by the way. I was struck not so much by the naiveté as the disinterest a lot of these people had in the world and people around them. So I paid attention. Britt is someone who evolves from a kind of pure version of self-marketing to a self-awareness geared toward actual understanding. She moves, I guess you could say, from Fake News to real life. I mean, here she is, living her life, livestreaming everything, and her brand falls apart, her friends disappear, she’s visited by weird emissaries of the President who tell her fantastical stories of people going OFF THE TRACKS! Aunt Rita smothered by tsunamis of waste as she livestreams from the pits! Britt is, to put it mildly, unnerved. She wants to find out more. I guess what distinguishes her is that she doesn’t want to double down on the stuff that got her to such a bad place to begin with.

All that said, I’m still sometimes amazed myself, how much in our daily world now was prefigured in Britt & Jimmy—everything from the use of social media to influence behavior in the election to really specific policies like family separations at the border. Eerily Trumpesque. Philadelphia is absolutely in the book, but the city is all jumbled up, kind of falling over itself. The signs and ghost signs, the fires, the dilapidation—all scream Philadelphia. And there are specific places and people described. The Gurney Boy, the leader and singer for the Nighttime Echoes, really used to be at the corner of 15th and Chestnut Streets, late at night, about forty years ago. The city was empty as an old paper bag back then, but I’d run into him most every night about two in the morning. It’s a city, you know.

Sue: I know you have thought a lot about the cultural shifts and the (d)evolving political climate, as is apparent in much of your writing, not just this novel. It’s there in much of your journalism, in your previous (non-fiction) book, Mohamed’s Ghosts, and, hilariously, in your satirical blog CSI: American Carnage, a daily narrative commentary on the current administration and politics. There have been a couple times when your blog has narrated events before they happened, which is impressive given how unpredictable the goings-on in Washington have been. Talk about the blog.

Stephan: Ah yes, CSI: American Carnage, my daily take on the world descending. You know, it started out purely as a jokey riff on Trump and his reality-teevee world filtered through the news shows and their reality-teevee world. That was back in January of 2016. Since then it’s been a scramble—how do you keep one step ahead when there’s always a porpoise close behind who’s treading on your tail? I do the voices, again. When in doubt you ask yourself, how would the President say it? That immediately takes you down the rabbit hole of language. We have broken a number of stories, many eventually picked up by the Fake News©. If you live in the shit, you stink too—that’s how we continue to live in the future even when it’s become the past, because, you know, the past is always prologue. Our team of crack reporters, for instance, has been way out front on the coming Venezuela unpleasantness, and we were completely on top of the President’s takedown of Spike Lee at the Oscars. We had his diss of Spike before the President even picked up his cell and logged onto his Twitter feed. We are also following closely the babies that have been ripped from their mothers’ bosoms on the southern border. We’ve tracked them every step of the way through the backchannels and the tunnels that crisscross beneath the country. A harrowing story. We’re on top of it. As Les Moonves, one-time head of CBS, said a couple of years ago about 24/7 coverage of Trump’s ridiculous campaign: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” That was before poor Les got called out for serial sexual misconduct and was forced out. Then, of course, he lied and destroyed evidence. No word if he is getting advice from the White House.

Sue: I notice the CSI: American Carnage “editors” took over your response to that last question midway. Did that shift happen consciously? Between the blog, your journalism, your fiction, and other writings, you have many voices. Talk about yourself as a writer and difficulties you’ve encountered in writing (especially the novel). 

Stephan:  As I mentioned, voice drives a story. If you have voices, they can overcome even a lackluster story. I learned that as a kid. Look at something like Catcher in the Rye. It really is a weak book—except for Holden’s voice. It keeps younger readers enthralled. Voice is what draws readers to Dickens over and over again. I’m surely not in that league, but the lesson is a good one. Inhabit the voice and you can get into all the fancy restaurants. Actually, writing Britt & Jimmy, the trickiest part was melding the virtual and the actual. Or is it the other way around? There are many scenes in which what is happening online takes on a very real presence. For instance, when B&J stumble upon Briggs’ outpost store on the far edge of the city. The encounter seems to include some kind of missile attack which leaves Britt and Jimmy sprawling in the street. Does it really? Or when they are resting by the side of the road and a parade of gimpy soldiers staggers by, followed by a wave of rodents, which morphs into an actual parade reminiscent of one held in Philadelphia, followed, at last, by a VICTORY parade celebrating the End of the Burning Season! All is narrated on camera by Britt and Jimmy who are, in fact, watching from the side of the road. If I’m successful for readers, it all blends together, seamlessly. Such mashups lead to some of the funniest parts of the book; and we need that kind of laughter.


The parade scene Stephan mentioned in his final comments is a good illustration of the melding of the virtual and the actual along with other aspects of the novel that came up during our conversation. Jimmy and Britt, far along in their journey, are on a deserted, dilapidated street when an incongruous line of wounded soldiers followed by a frightening mass of rats pass by. Britt has used the camera on her pad to stream the procession live with voiceover. Logging on to Britt’s site with their pads, Britt and Jimmy see that Britt’s video is looping (and getting many “hits”). After a disruption, the video starts over yet again on her site. The beginning is the same, but the parade that follows has been transformed into something else entirely. The actual is subsumed by the virtual in this excerpt:

I still have the pad in my hand. My stream opens up again. There is the street we’re on.

Jimmy, the stream is back up on my site.

A rhythmic metallic sound begins faintly and grows louder. There’s the cloud of dust rolling toward us, must be the gimpy soldiers. Do I want to watch this? Do I want to see all that again, the great rodent ocean?

We are beyond the Ville, I hear myself say, just as I said before, that’s my VO! The cam is still focused down the street, in the direction of the sound.

The streets have been empty, I say. But this is happening now. You are seeing this as we do.

Far down the street on the screen I see small figures, sheathed in white, marching along, the gimpy, blood soaked guys with the white headbands? No, no gimpy guys. No band of brothers. They come closer and I see they are little ghosts from a children’s tale, the diminutive white-sheeted dead. The front rows bear enormous banners uplifted on poles:

Triumph Over Occupation!

Then behind it:

Little Caesars Sporting Club

A third:

End of the Burning Season

And the last:

Victory!

I hear myself saying, Here comes the Victory Parade right now.

That is my voice!

We are reporting directly from the WHBS Studios, or I should say, the street, where these events are being beamed to you live. The Caesars have just come into view, right on schedule. Aren’t they darling, James?

Indeed, says Jimmy’s voice. This is one of my favorite moments in the celebration, he says. The Caesars have been presenting their colors for, what? As long as anyone can remember, that’s for sure. And they are always a treat, Brittany. Here they are with their balloons, folks! Let’s watch.

The ghastly little buggers glide by us like oil slicks, their white coverings completely concealing whatever might be inside, if anything. They could be little rat automatons for all we know. Their banners have precise lettering, as though stenciled in laser labs. The Caesars fill the street, a moving rectangle, a wavy white flag of twisted anonymity. The dead.


This passage illustrates the zeitgeist of the novel world. An authority figure uses a cautionary tale to teach about the potentially fatal dangers of going off-message and losing focus on one’s brand. In the end, video images are buried and mourned instead of an actual person.

Finally, one day, I’ll never forget, she’s streaming from down in the pits—actually in the pits!—and one of the Nutri-Waste chutes opens up and masses of plugs come hurtling all around, a load showers down like brackish hail. It overwhelmed her, knocked her silly, and her vidstream gets jumpy and frazzly and then blotchy and then nothing. Dark.

They never found her, he says. Not WRMS, not Sentry, no one. And for what? For what did she do it?

I don’t know, I say. For her site? For her fans? Revs?

Sheesh, Morrie says. Her site? Her revs? Here’s what: she lost her focus, she lost her fans, she even lost her feed, her micros, and she lost her whole self. And we lost Aunt Rita. All we had left was her jerky final stream, which we buried in our own plot, with services and all. Buried images of Auntie Rita buried in a looping shower of digested plugs—that’s all that was left for us. There was upset in the family. Upset for all who followed her. It was a long time before all that subsided, before the perplexities washed away, and there are still questions that come into Central about it. Poor Aunt Rita. And it was all so unnecessary.


Sue Laizik is a reader living on Long Island, NY. In addition to her stint at the Philadelphia Inquirer, she has worked in publishing, IT, and academic administration. She also attended graduate school in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and taught English at Columbia and Barnard Colleges. She currently tutors high school students studying for the college-entrance exams.

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Published on March 24, 2019 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

A Conversation with Ada Limon author of THE CARRYING, interview by Grant Clauser

Cleaver Magazine Posted on September 28, 2018 by thwackJanuary 6, 2019

A Conversation with Ada Limon
author of THE CARRYING
published by Milkweed Editions

Interview by Grant Clauser 

Ada Limón is the author of several poetry books, including the National Book Award finalist Bright Dead Things, which was named one of the Top Ten Poetry Books of the Year by the New York Times. This year Limón released her fifth book, The Carrying, to wide acclaim, including being named a Best Book of Fall 2018 by Buzzfeed. Since the release of The Carrying, Limón has been traveling extensively for poetry events but was able to take some time out for Cleaver to discuss the new book and aspects of craft in her poetry. She lives in Lexington Kentucky. —Grant Clauser


Grant Clauser: All of your books, including the new one, include some mix of past events and present. Does a certain amount of time/space between events and the writing about the events affect your approach to it?

Ada Limón: Sometimes I write right in the white heat of the moment. Sometimes I need to do that just to work through what I’m trying to process. Other times I wait and need significant distance. Usually, the perspective changes with time. Writing about the present moment allows some freedom, however; there’s a familiarity with the moment that doesn’t need to be unearthed so the poem can come from a very authentic place without much need for research or personal mining of a certain event.

GC: When you wrote Bright Dead Things you worked for a media company (I think) in New York City. How did the change in environments from NYC to Kentucky affect the writing of your newer poems?

AL: I was actually already living in Kentucky by the time I wrote Bright Dead things, but I had just left New York. I was the Creative Services Director for Travel + Leisure Magazine. Moving to Kentucky gave me two much-needed things: time and space. My writing changed significantly because I was able to have long moments of silence and breath. I was also surrounded by wild things, green trees, grasses. The landscape gave me a new mode of writing.

Ada Limon

GC: In the new book, noticed recurring images of recovery, repair, rebuilding, remaking (such as in “Dandelion Insomnia”). Did that kind of theme-building happen spontaneously or does that come to the surface once you begin sorting poems into a manuscript?

AL: I think you’re right about those themes, and I do think they occur naturally. It’s usually because there is something big that I am going through. I am feeling some overwhelming need or question and the poems reflect it. Even when I’m unaware of what the I’m processing, the poems tell me. When the book starts to come together I look at what it is that I’ve been writing toward, and then I’ll start to give myself prompts so that I can go deeper into those themes—push myself further.

Naming is really important to me because I think when we name things we are more tender to them, we care about them, we understand them better. But I am also very aware of the hubris of naming things.

GC: The Carrying opens with a poem in which Eve is naming animals and ends with you thinking to yourself about the name of a bird. In between, there are other instances of naming or coming to know things. Is naming a kind of understanding or a kind of possessing or does it mean something different in your work?

AL: Naming is really important to me because I think when we name things we are more tender to them, we care about them, we understand them better. But I am also very aware of the hubris of naming things. Who are we to reach out and name something without language? I think that’s why I see the Eve in the poem trying to get the animals to name her, she realizes that they may have more wisdom.

GC: In “The Last Drop” which comes almost at the end of the book, there’s a feeling of resolve–that even the struggles in life are good. Could you talk about that and how it fits in the scope of the book? (one of my favorite poems in the book, by the way)

AL: Thank you! I wanted to get to a place where I was accepting of the mess and whirl of my world. That poem is all true, and I was feeling overwhelmed by everything: the horrid disease of Alzheimer’s, the death of my husband’s ex-girlfriend, her cats we were adopting, all of it was so much. And a month before our wedding, so this prose poem was a way for me to accept and absorb all of that without being too overwhelmed by it, it gave me a place to put it and a way to talk about it. I’m glad you like that poem; it’s one of my favorites too.

GC: This book shows a wide variety of lines lengths and stanza choices. Some are dense and some use a lot of open space, but the single stanza poem and couplets seem to be used most frequently. What attracts you to those forms, and how do they work differently for you?

AL: You know, I am always guided by what the poem wants. The poems that want to be slower have shorter line breaks, and the poems that want to be faster have long lines, the fastest are prose poems. The couplets usually are quieter, and they tend to be dialogues of a sort. I love working with form. My first book has a crown of sonnets. I’m interested in how form can both constrain and free you at the same time. It allows for each poem to operate differently.

GC: In “The Leash” and other poems there’s a kind of snowball effect (more in the single stanza poems than others) where the poem gathers emotional weight as it rolls down the hill. I imagine the hardest part of that kind of poem is how to end it. What are the challenges you go through in that kind of composition?

It’s easy—or rather satisfying—to always make the endings big and really stick the landing, but you need to stay true to the poem and make sure you’re responding to what you’ve already written, not what you had in your mind.

AL: Ah yes, you are not wrong about that, it’s all about the ending with the poems that have a certain kind of momentum or guided unraveling. The biggest challenge I face with poems like “The Leash” or “Bust” or “Dead Boy” is trying to make sure that everything is working together and that any tangent you go on still brings you back to the core of the poem. And then, of course, the ending, it’s easy—or rather satisfying—to always make the endings big and really stick the landing, but you need to stay true to the poem and make sure you’re responding to what you’ve already written, not what you had in your mind. You have to listen to the poem at that point and follow the poem’s instincts and not force an ending that might feel inauthentic.

GC: The poem “Trying” travels an obstacle course of subjects and emotions to get to a kind of resolve. What’s the key to maintaining control in a poem that operates like that? Or is control not even a consideration?

AL: I think it’s less about control there and more about release. “Trying” is a very natural poem, so that it has to feel like it’s effortless—even though of course it’s not—and it has to move in a way that feels like the mind moving. So you have to let go a little, allow the poem just to be and not worry it away. Poems that take place in the world of the now and the world of the body can easily get won over by the mind, so it’s more about releasing them before the mind turns it all into an intellectual project.

Marie Howe once told me that a teacher had told her: don’t listen when they say your work is no good and don’t listen when they say it’s great.

GC: In “American Pharaoh” the line “racing against nothing but himself” seems prescient to other moments in the book—that you can be successful when you measure yourself against yourself, not the judges, not the other horses, not society. That seems like a good lesson for everyone, but could that be especially important for poets who are constantly measuring their success against others?

AL: Oh I think any time we can have a lesson about not measuring ourselves against others, it will be highly beneficial. For the most part, I think the poets I love and admire are always trying to out-do their last poem, they want to get better, to get deeper, smarter, realer at all times. But, of course, when awards get listed or prizes come out, it’s easy for any artist to feel that sting of failure or ache of envy, but none of that tends to serve us. None of that is why we write. We write to connect, we write to figure out the meaning of life, to feel better about our world, our being, we write to make sense of the mess, to question, to rail against something, we write to save ourselves (sometimes from ourselves). So in some ways, you’re very correct in drawing that parallel between poets and the horse, our only enemy is time itself.

When awards get listed or prizes come out, it’s easy for any artist to feel that sting of failure or ache of envy, but none of that tends to serve us. None of that is why we write.

GC: Can you tell us one of the best bits of writing advice you’ve received from a teacher, mentor or friend?

AL: Marie Howe once told me that a teacher had told her: don’t listen when they say your work is no good and don’t listen when they say it’s great. Which I think is very true once you’ve reached a certain amount of success. And it makes me keep my head down and do the work. Nikky Finney once told me, at a particularly tumultuous time of my life, “know the elders are there doing what they do and be at great peace.” I think of that often too. These help me a great deal because they are both about trust and surrender, and I know I need that. I need to surrender and I need to trust this work. This work that is such a privilege to get to do in the first place.


Poetry craft essays editor Grant Clauser is the author of four poetry books, Reckless Constellations, The Magician’s Handbook, Necessary Myths and The Trouble with Rivers.  Poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Cortland Review, Gargoyle, The Literary Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry and others. He works for a New York media company and teaches poetry at random places. Find him @uniambic.  Email craft essay queries to [email protected].

 

Ada Limon author photo credit: Lucas Marquardt

 

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Published on September 28, 2018 in Interviews, Interviews with Poets. (Click for permalink.)

A Conversation with Nathaniel Popkin author of EVERYTHING IS BORROWED and Grant Clauser 

Cleaver Magazine Posted on August 31, 2018 by thwackFebruary 7, 2019

A Conversation with Nathaniel Popkin
author of EVERYTHING IS BORROWED
published by New Doors Books

Interview by Grant Clauser 

Nathaniel Popkin, Cleaver Magazine’s fiction reviews editor, published a new novel this year, Everything Is Borrowed (New Door Books). It draws deeply from his love of Philadelphia history and his passion for research, but is also a compelling story about one person’s obsessions and regrets. In addition to the new novel, he’s the editor of a new anthology, Who Will Speak for America, author of the novel Lion and Leopard, and three books of non-fiction, Philadelphia: Finding the Hidden City, Song of the City, and The Possible City. We recently asked Popkin to talk to us about Everything is Borrowed.—Grant Clauser


Grant Clauser: In your new book, Everything is Borrowed, the city of Philadelphia is as much a character in the book as the people. How is infusing a city with personality different from developing a human character?

Nathaniel Popkin: Novelists struggle to compose characters who are complex but also readable. That is, a character should not be so contradictory that she doesn’t make sense. A city, on the other hand, is intrinsically contradictory and almost impossible to figure. Its personality is some kind of amalgamation of built form, size, scale, and of course the people who animate and imprint themselves on it. The imprinting to me is the way to figure the city as a character. To what extent can a character imprint herself on the city, and how so? What form does it take? Or is it impossible? How does a city reveal these (even minute) imprints, how does it store and reveal memories? Or maybe it doesn’t at all. In my first (non-fiction) book, Song of the City, I worked up an urban concept, that a city, or its parts, exists on a scale between the infinite and the parochial (the infinite city is cold and unimpressionable but also wide open, the parochial city smothering and malleable but also nurturing). I invented the concept after reading the novel The War of the Saints by Jorge Amado, in which Salvador de Bahía through its intensely parochial Carnival grants the main character infinite freedom to be and to express. So one way to figure the city’s personality is using the scale between infinite and parochial.

The city in Everything is Borrowed is figured in the accumulation of layers—in physical form and in mind and memory (the layers forming in the tension between the infinite and the parochial). This accumulation is its most tangible characteristic and it mirrors the mind of the main character.

GC: There are several different storylines running throughout the book, some even on different timelines, yet you weave them in and out through each other. Did they evolve at the same time as you were crafting the story, and how did you decide on their intersection points?

NP: This is the formal experiment of the novel—to present the historical past, the recent past, and the present all in the present tense. This written form is the analog to the city’s mounting layers, which collect and store all of it. The intersections came quite naturally as I wrote the book in one gesture. For this reason, I’ve found it hard to choose passages to read at book events—the main character Nicholas Moscowitz passes through fields of time sometimes all in one paragraph or page. I’ve always worried this would be confusing for a reader confronted with only a small section of text. Yet because the time fields shift naturally (at least I hope) they come to form a dreamscape to mirror the cityscape and Nicholas’s inner life.

GC: Again, thinking about timelines–it seems to me that the mind naturally exists outside of linear time. Our thoughts constantly wonder from the past to present to future. What are the challenges of working that kind of flux in a novel?

NP: The most obvious challenge is that it could be frustrating for the reader: hard to follow, annoying, distracting. Sometimes a writer wants to announce a form—the form becomes the subject of the book; it’s meant to be visible (and sometimes those novels break ground and sometimes they’re insufferable). In some sense this is what’s happening in Everything is Borrowed for all of the reasons described above. But Nicholas is an architect, the kind who believes that the best design is invisible. In a meta sense and as the architect of the novel, I agree. The natural movement among these mental time fields should feel intrinsic to the character’s experience.

There’s danger in a novelist trying to replicate human life too carefully—the result is flat, airless. The best dialog, for example, doesn’t reveal how people really speak. The same for the wandering thoughts.

Another thing: there’s danger in a novelist trying to replicate human life too carefully—the result is flat, airless. The best dialog, for example, doesn’t reveal how people really speak. The same for the wandering thoughts. To replicate that manifestation of a person’s inner life would destroy the text’s capacity to move the reader.

GC: As the novel progresses, Nicholas gets drawn increasingly deeper into the rabbit hole of history, as well as the rabbit hole of his own life. Did you feel their same draw as you were researching for the tale? Is there any danger for a novel (or novelist) that draws so strongly on history that one might get lost in it?

NP: I did much of the research that Nicholas does, but I did so with a different and more distant sense of curiosity. I did it as a novelist searching for serendipitous moments, for ways to move the plot, for ways to deliver the atmosphere the novel needed. I did it to build Nicholas’s world.

On the other hand, a critique I often hear is that the novel goes too deep into history—and maybe that’s because I was blinded by discovery. So in this way, yes, there’s danger—you might lose the storyline. On the other hand, a novel emerges out of some kind of strange obsession.

GC: As Nicholas learns more about the history of that part of Philadelphia, and more about the history of the people, he seems to learn more about himself. The external and internal discoveries parallel each other. Do you think that’s one way the mind works—that focusing on a goal outside ourselves can bring about different ends? Sometimes complementary and sometimes conflicting?

NP: Maybe it’s a novelistic trope to have a character learning about himself by seeking something else. But Nicholas is seeking himself, even if he doesn’t know it. He’s pawing at an itch, pawing and pawing. But to answer your question directly, I think the mind is constantly imbibing the world, digesting and adjusting to it—and you never know how something drunk one day will seep in another. It must be a dynamic process.

GC: On one level this is a story about avoiding truths as much as digging them up (or realizing them). Why does avoiding something in front of your face seem to also trigger another discovery? Is it nature that eventually brings a person around full circle?

NP: Oh yes, repression never really works does it? You can’t really erase or avoid or ignore. Whatever’s lurking there will find a way to make itself known—because you need it to. Nicholas needs to deal with his own personal memory, his own sense of shame. But I don’t believe in the full circle. Who knows where it will take him? Maybe not full circle. The novel ends before the end; Eva is returning, that’s all we know. And Nadia? Nicholas comes full circle in terms of some plot developments but emotionally we aren’t sure where all this will lead. I’m not sure there are ever clean resolutions.

GC: Anarchy plays a significant role in this book. How did you come upon the story of the anarchist Moskowitz (I’m assuming he’s real) and why did you choose to build a story around him and that movement?  

NP: I came upon the story of the anarchist Moskowitz in the same place Nicholas does—the history book by Harry Boonin. I read the story of Moskowitz carrying out his Yom Kippur protest in a physical place quite well known to me and his subsequent transformation to be president of the Holy Burial Society and I was fascinated (reading the passage was one of the seeds of this book). I put it away until I had the right character, whose own issues found resonance with the anarchist Moskowitz’s.

Moskowitz was an immigrant anarchist at the end of the 19th century and so I had to do quite a lot of research into that time—and the world and ideas of anarchists. This led to a significant thematic exploration of the book, between anarchists who in popular imagination tear down and architects who in popular imagination build up. In the world of this book if not in real life, though, anarchists espouse a philosophy of building organic community without state interference—almost in exact opposition to conventional wisdom—and architects, who all too often are the ones, out of ego or desires of the marketplace, to tear down.

GC: What are the greatest pleasures you get out of writing a novel?

NP: The chance to compose music, to rupture language toward the ineffable, to pose questions.

[Philadelphia] is a remarkable city for an artist because the eyes remained fixed on the ground, with the people, and not in the stars (only Calvino could make real art out of the stars). It is a remarkable city for the triumphs and scars that it bears, for its humanity and humility. And, of course, it’s cheap, relatively speaking, always good for an artist.

GC: What do you like best about Philadelphia? Is it a good city for an artist?

NP: It is a remarkable city for an artist because the eyes remained fixed on the ground, with the people, and not in the stars (only Calvino could make real art out of the stars). It is a remarkable city for the triumphs and scars that it bears, for its humanity and humility. And, of course, it’s cheap, relatively speaking, always good for an artist.

Another thing: it is a dynamic place, more dynamic than I think I would have said previously, and that creates the currents for art and literature.

GC: One of your many roles is as an editor of the website Hidden City Philadelphia. How does that work overlap or influence your literary work?

NP: My experience of the city feeds everything, even in my work for Cleaver as a book review editor. The city is a text to read, and actually to be read in various languages. As a writer, I enjoy playing with subjects and themes. So one subject I wrote about as a journalist and then incorporated into the essay-photo book Philadelphia: Finding the Hidden City also appears in a fictional form in Everything is Borrowed. Maybe better to say, for me, everything is related.

GC: In addition to your new novel, You’ve also recently co-edited an anthology called Who Will Speak for America? Can you tell us a little about that?

NP: The multi-genre anthology Who Will Speak for America? confronts the rising nativism and corruption of the Trump era with voices of reason, despair, and hope. With co-editor Stephanie Feldman, we sought to gather a wide range of contemporary America literary voices to answer a question originally posed by Congresswoman Barbara Jordan in her 1976 address to the Democratic National Convention. In the speech, she stated, in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam:

Many may fear the future. Many are distrustful of their leaders, and believe that their voices ar never heard. Many seek only to satisfy their private work—wants; to satisfy their private interests. But this is the great danger America faces—that we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual; each seeking to satisfy private wants. If that happens, who then will speak for America? Who then will speak for the common good?

The Congresswoman used the question to inspire people to stand up for America’s cherished ideals of liberty and justice for all. A few of our contributors took the question this same way, while others addressed the corruption of those ideals. But to most, Jordan’s question was a call to be heard, as Trump and his allies seek to limit who can call themselves American–targeting refugees, asylees, immigrants, and even naturalized citizens. For many, claiming American identity is an act of bravery. This, after all, is the tradition of American writing: to widen the meaning of “American” by writing our freedoms, challenging their limitations, and defining for ourselves the future.


Cleaver reviews editor Nathaniel Popkin is the author of five books, including the 2018 novel Everything is Borrowed, and co-editor (with Stephanie Feldman) of the anthology Who Will Speak for America? His essays and works of criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Kenyon Review, LitHub, Tablet Magazine, and Public Books. If you are an author or publicist seeking reviews or a writer hoping to write reviews for Cleaver, query Nathaniel.

Grant-ClauserPoetry craft essays editor Grant Clauser is the author of four poetry books, Necessary Myths (Broadkill River Press 2013) and The Trouble with Rivers (Foothills Publishing 2012), The Magician’s Handbook (PS Books, 2018) and Reckless Constellations (Cider Press Review Books, 2018).  In 2010 he was named the Montgomery County Poet Laureate by Robert Bly. In 2014 he was a guest poet at the Sharjah International Book Fair in the United Arab Emirates. Poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Cortland Review, Gargoyle, The Literary Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry and others. He also writes about electronics, teaches poetry at random places and chases trout with a stick. His blog is www.uniambic.com. Email craft essay queries to [email protected].

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Published on August 31, 2018 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

A Conversation with Melissa Sarno, author of JUST UNDER THE CLOUDS

Cleaver Magazine Posted on August 27, 2018 by thwackAugust 27, 2018

A Conversation with Melissa Sarno
author of JUST UNDER THE CLOUDS
published by Knopf Books for Young Readers
Interview by Kathryn Kulpa

Melissa Sarno reviews children’s and young adult books for Cleaver and has just published her debut middle-grade novel, Just Under the Clouds (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2018). It tells the story of Cora, a middle-school girl trying to find a place to belong. Cora’s father always made her feel safe, but now that he has died, she and her mom and her sister Adare have been moving from place to place, trying to find a stable and secure home they can afford. Cora is also dealing with bullying at school and is sometimes challenged by looking after her sister, who has learning differences. But her life holds some good things, too, like a free-spirited new friend and her father’s tree journal, where he kept notes about the plants he took care of. Cora has kept his book and uses it as a way to record her own observations and feelings as she looks for her own true home in the world.

While many children experience homelessness, it’s a subject that is seldom explored in contemporary children’s fiction, and Melissa Sarno has given these children a voice that speaks from the heart. The Horn Book Magazine called Just Under the Clouds a “thought-provoking debut about the meaning of home and the importance of family,” and Kirkus Reviews praised it as “troubling, affecting, and ultimately uplifting.”

I had the chance to speak with Melissa recently about Just Under the Clouds and her journey as a first-time novelist.—Kathryn Kulpa


Kathryn Kulpa:  First, I’d like to congratulate you on the publication of your first novel! I’m sure it’s been a journey of many steps. Can you talk about some of the exciting moments along the way? Did you find an agent first? When did you get the news that Just Under the Clouds was going to be published, and how did you feel? 

Melissa Sarno: Thanks so much, Kathryn! It’s been a long journey and I’m thrilled that my debut novel is finally out in the world.

I wrote three novels over the course of eight years before writing Just Under the Clouds; two that never found an agent and one that was submitted to publishers but never sold. Shortly after that experience, my first agent left the business. So, it was a huge and happy moment when I found a new agent who was enthusiastic about this book. She has been the perfect advocate for my work.

I learned that Just Under the Clouds had sold when my agent called to share the offers from the book’s auction. I heard the news while my then two-year-old son was tantrumming in the middle of the parking lot at the playground (imagine one hand holding the phone, the other trying to hold him up while he screamed and went body-limp on the pavement, refusing to leave.) When I finally got home to sit with the news, he napped and I cried (happy tears) all by myself because I had just moved to a new town and I literally knew no one. There was barely even any furniture in my home! Soon after my agent sent me a photo of a little blooming tree. My editor had sent it to her for me because Just Under the Clouds features a tree. I knew it was the beginning of something really lovely in my life. I’ll never forget that moment of knowing things were about to bloom.

KK: On your website, you talk about writing ‘secret stories’ for years, starting as a kid. I can relate! Did any of those stories make it into this novel? Do you have others that you have, or may want to publish?

I wonder how many of us wrote “secret” stories as kids. I wrote a lot as a child and I still have many of those stories in notebooks and binders.

MS: I wonder how many of us wrote “secret” stories as kids. I wrote a lot as a child and I still have many of those stories in notebooks and binders. None of those ideas made it into Just Under the Clouds. But my next book, A Swirl of Ocean, which will be out next summer, actually features a strange neighbor I had as a kid. We called her Turtle Lady, because she kept pet turtles in her backyard. I had a lot of weird interactions with her throughout my life. Truth is always stranger than fiction and I can’t tell you how many times I have written pieces of her story over the years (my first attempt was when I was 14.) I’m happy she has finally found a place in this book.

KK: One of the things that really struck me about Just Under the Clouds was that there isn’t just one way to be homeless. I think many of us tend to think of “the homeless” as a permanent group of people who may be older, mentally ill, and/or substance abusers. But Cora and her family challenge those stereotypes. They’re not actually living on the streets. Maybe you’d characterize them more as “housing insecure.” They have places to stay, but not the safety and stability we usually associate with “home.” Can you talk about how you came to write about Cora? Any research, personal experience, or people you met that inspired these characters? 

MS: When I first starting writing Cora’s story, I had intended to write about a city girl who loved to climb trees. As I tried to understand why she gravitated toward trees, I came to understand that I was writing about a girl who was looking for stability and permanence, which led me to write about a child seeking home.

Cora’s story is not based on personal experience or anyone’s experience I know. But I did talk to some friends who experienced homelessness as children and I read Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott in the NYTimes. That powerful and heartbreaking piece about a homeless girl in New York City really opened my eyes to that experience and I learned that I had a lot of misconceptions about homelessness that fit the stereotypes you mention here. Unfortunately, many more families live the way Cora’s family does, moving from place to place struggling to find that safety and security.

KK: I love how Cora keeps her father’s tree notebook and how this keeps her connected to his memory and gives her a way to map her own life. Was the notebook always a part of the story? 

MS: Yes, the notebook was always part of the story. I wanted Cora to have a way to connect to her father through his field journal. It becomes a place for Cora to make sense of the world around her, through art and through tracking and surveying trees and plants around Brooklyn.

KK: And speaking of trees, the use of the “tree of heaven” and the urban setting made me think of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Was it a deliberate homage? Was that a book that influenced you as a young writer? 

MS: It’s funny, I always felt that Just Under the Clouds was connected to my love of The Secret Garden and the ways we can help one another grow. I was even going to have Cora love that book but I felt it was a little too on the nose.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn must have been rattling around in my subconscious for a long time because I read Betty Smith’s beautiful book when I was a teenager. It wasn’t until my editor said, “isn’t the “tree of heaven” the same tree from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?” that I even made the connection. I remember running to my bookshelf and frantically re-reading the first few chapters for the first time in two decades. I thought, well, I’ve created an homage whether I meant to or not! Talk about on the nose!

KK: As an adult reader, it was hard not to feel, at times, that Cora’s mother’s determination not to accept help from her friend, Willa (with the subway pass, for example, or Adare’s learning differences) was hurting Cora and Adare or putting them at risk. I sensed she had her own complicated backstory—one Cora wouldn’t know. Would you like to talk a little more about this aspect of the story? 

MS: Cora learns a little bit about her mother throughout the story but I do imagine that her mother has a more complex backstory. She has lost her husband and, with that loss, an entire support system. She alludes to the fact that there is no one to lean on where she grew up. And her oldest friend, Willa, doesn’t approve of her life choices (her career as an artist or the man she married) so it’s hard for her to let Willa in. That pride felt important for me to uphold, even if it might lead her to making choices others might not agree with. I hope that readers recognize her fierce love for her children and empathize with her plight.

KK: If a child Cora’s age who is experiencing homelessness reads this book, what would you hope they would take away from it? 

MS: I hope it allows all readers to question or redefine their concept of home and see that they are deeply connected to the world around them in different ways. And I hope it helps those who need the mirror of this experience feel less alone.

KK: Who are some children’s or YA authors that have been important to you? Were there some books that really resonated with you as a child or teen?

MS: As I mentioned, I always loved classics like The Secret Garden and Anne of Green Gables. As a kid, my favorite author was Cynthia Voigt, who has written many books for children, including the Tillerman cycle. That series was the first realistic fiction about contemporary life I remember reading. I also love children’s authors Ali Benjamin, Jaqueline Woodson, Kate DiCamillo, Gary D. Schmidt, Rita Williams Garcia, and Rebecca Stead because they show me what’s possible when writing for young readers

KK: I see that you have a new book coming out next year. Is it about the same characters? Can you tell us something about it? 

MS: A Swirl of Ocean will be out next summer and it’s a separate standalone novel for young readers. It’s about an adopted girl who swallows the ocean to understand something about who she is and where she came from. It’s all about dreams, and secrets, and the surprising ways we are all connected.


Melissa Sarno is a freelance writer and editor with an MFA in screenwriting. She lives in the Lower Hudson Valley of New York with her family. Just Under the Clouds, her debut novel for middle grade readers, is out now. Read more about her at melissasarno.com.

Author Photo: Katie Burnett

Kathryn Kulpa was a winner of the Vella Chapbook Contest for her flash chapbook Girls on Film (Paper Nautilus) and received the First Series Award in Short Fiction for her story collection Pleasant Drugs(Mid-List Press).  Her work has appeared in Jellyfish Review, Monkeybicycle, Smokelong Quarterly, and Evansville Review, and she serves as flash fiction editor for Cleaver magazine. Kathryn leads writing workshops in public libraries throughout Rhode Island and has been a visiting writer at Wheaton College. She was born in a small state, and she writes short stories.

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Published on August 27, 2018 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers, Interviews with YA Writers. (Click for permalink.)

A Conversation with Janet Benton, author of LILLI DE JONG, interviewed by Colleen Davis

Cleaver Magazine Posted on May 9, 2018 by thwackAugust 27, 2018

A Conversation with Janet Benton
author of LILLI DE JONG
published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
Interview by Colleen Davis

Janet Benton’s debut novel, Lilli de Jong, has received praise from critics and readers alike. Kirkus Reviews called the book a “monumental accomplishment.” Both National Public Radio (NPR) and Library Journal recognized it as a Best Book of 2017. Lilli de Jong was also a 2017 Goodreads semifinalist for Best Historical Fiction, sharing space on the list with works by Pulitzer Prize winners Michael Chabon and Jennifer Egan. Read Joanne Green’s Cleaver review here.

While this is Benton’s first published novel, she has maintained a presence in metropolitan Philadelphia through years of work as a writer and editor. Her pieces have been published in magazines and newspapers (including the New York Times “Modern Love” column), and she’s taught writing at four universities. She also serves as a mentor and teacher at The Word Studio, a creative center that’s been a talent incubator for local writers. While the triumph of her first novel may look like an overnight success, her achievements are the product of decades of diligent effort. Benton’s mastery of craft elevates the tale of Lilli de Jong to a tour-de-force that harkens back to the great Victorian novels, which continue to transform college students into aspiring writers.—Colleen Davis 




Colleen Davis: Thank you for meeting with me today. I’d like to start by saying congratulations. Critics and readers have applauded your wonderful book, Lilli de Jong. I’ve looked at a lot of the reviews, and I’m wondering whether or not you were surprised by any reactions you got back from readers.

Janet Benton: Yes, there has been one surprising reaction. It never occurred to me that the presence of breastfeeding in a book about newborns and wet nursing would seem out of place to some people. I actually find it amusing. If you’ve ever nursed a newborn, you know nursing happens quite often—not to mention that, at times, Lilli was nursing two newborns! I barely mentioned breastfeeding compared to the number of times it would have had to happen. But then other people said the descriptions of breastfeeding were one of the strengths of the book. There aren’t many books that really describe breastfeeding. A lot of mothers have told me how grateful they are for how I highlighted that relationship.

…people said the descriptions of breastfeeding were one of the strengths of the book. There aren’t many books that really describe breastfeeding. A lot of mothers have told me how grateful they are for how I highlighted that relationship.

CD: Did the book find any new audiences that you hadn’t thought about when you were writing it?  I’m asking partly because, as a person who has never breastfed a child, I could still really relate to Lilli’s struggle over having to make a decision about caring for her child or entrusting it to someone else. I think many caregivers in our society find themselves faced with similar questions.

JB: Readers who have adopted children told me they felt really moved to consider the situations of mothers who give up a child. And some people who have never had children have written to say that they were grateful to be plunged so viscerally into the experiences of pregnancy and early motherhood. Men have said the same thing, that they were glad to be put in close contact with those physical and emotional experiences. And as you point out, so many of us are giving ongoing care to people we love, in so many circumstances. This work is crucial and irreplaceable, yet it’s the most undervalued work in our society.

CD: The book examines a woman’s experience in great detail. What has been the response from male readers? Do you have a large male audience reading the book as well?

JB: It’s a disturbing, well-known fact that, in general, men read few books written by women, whereas women—particularly while growing up, in English classes—rarely read books not written by male writers. If you look at the books that win prizes, too, there is some sad data showing that books written by men with male protagonists win the majority of prizes every year. I’m a woman, and I wrote a book with a female protagonist. Most of my readers have been women. Yet the men who have read it have been quite affected by it…. and others buy it for women in their lives.

CD: On the heels of your achievement, you were asked to interview the celebrated author Isabel Allende. How did that come about?

JB: I was invited to be a part of the Author Series at the Free Library [of Philadelphia]. After that interview, I was in correspondence with Andy Kahan, who runs the series. I told him that I love interviewing people, and if there was ever an author he needed an interviewer for, I’d be available. He wrote back immediately, asking, “How about Isabel Allende?” I was thrilled.

CD: Wow, impressive! Did any of her observations have special resonance for you?

Janet Benton

JB: Yes.  She described her writing process in ways I thought were useful and interesting. Once she has an initial, rough idea, she does a lot of research. Then, she said, “I try to tell the story from the belly, not from the brain. Let it be. Let it come. And then the editing, the correcting time comes, and that’s very cerebral . . . .I think that my mind works in circles and spirals, never in a straight line.  I just go around and around, and sometimes the circle starts getting smaller and smaller, until finally I sort of get the story.” I love knowing that, after thirty-five years of writing and twenty-three published books, she understands the phases of her process as both linear—research, writing, revising—and nonlinear—a gradual tightening of a circle of ideas.

When I did bring it to the market and tried to find an agent and a publisher, it all happened very quickly, because I had worked extraordinarily hard. I estimate it took about eight thousand hours to research and write the novel.

CD: Could you talk a little bit about your “overnight success” with Lilli de Jong and how long that process took?

JB: I’ve been writing ever since I was able to write. I went to graduate school for fiction writing, and I’ve been writing and editing for others for my entire career. I’d started several novels and never finished one. I was never obsessed enough to spend that many hours, in addition to working and having a family. But this story just meant so much to me that I was willing to give up a lot of other things over the course of many years in order to finish it. When I did bring it to the market and tried to find an agent and a publisher, it all happened very quickly, because I had worked extraordinarily hard. I estimate it took about eight thousand hours to research and write the novel.

CD: Roughly how many years passed between inception and publication of the book?

JB: The very first glimmer of the idea came to me in the summer of 2003. The book was sold in July 2015, and it was published in hardcover twenty-two months later, in May 2017. It’s also out in audio, e-book, and large-print editions.

CD: During that twelve-year period, you went through different phases of story development, including research, drafting, and editing. Can you talk about those phases and which of those was the hardest for you?

JB: The hardest thing for me was getting the whole story out from start to finish. After having the initial idea and writing a pile of paragraphs, I began to research.  I started reading about unwed mothers and wet nurses in general. I’m very grateful to the historians who’ve gathered that information and shared their understandings. I read contemporary books about women who had given away children, too. I re-read some of my Victorian favorites, like Tess of the d’Urbervilles and The Scarlet Letter. I read Samuel Richardson’s novels Pamela and Clarissa.

I also read as many historical documents as I could. I tried to read diaries from the time, but often people’s handwriting was difficult to decipher. I went to a historical society to read some diaries, but I could hardly read the handwriting. Luckily many printed books from the late nineteenth century have been scanned and are available as PDFs, so I was able to download an array of books . . . housekeeping advice, the laws and regulations for the city of Philadelphia, memoirs, lists of charitable institutions, guides for working with the poor, and much more.

CD: What was difficult about drafting the first chapters? Was it creating the plot itself?

JB: No, it was making sure everything was historically accurate: What babies wore, where the characters might be living, how servants might behave, how they would dress, how a charity for unwed mothers might be run and by whom, and on and on. You can’t take anything for granted. Take something as simple as the word backyard: Did they even have backyards? Did that term mean then what it does now? I subscribed to the online Oxford English Dictionary and used it a great deal. For example, if I said that something gave Lilli a jolt, I’d need to check—was that word used prior to the invention of electricity? You have to interrogate every single word, every metaphor. Not to mention every physical object in the book. What foods did they cook? I found recipes and menus. I found a book from the 1880s on hackney carriage fares. All of those things are, as far as I could tell, accurate to the time. I created entirely made-up characters, but I put them in a container that was as accurate as I could make it.

 CD: Lilli is a great character. She’s smart and plucky and very persistent. Even when she’s afraid, she plunges forward. Would she have been the same kind of person if she had been born Episcopalian or Catholic? Did her Quaker upbringing make a difference?

JB: Yes, I meant it to. She had been educated equally to boys. She grew up with a strong mother who had high expectations for her. She was given a foundation for finding her own truth, which is the Quaker method of silent waiting. She had faith in herself. The Quakers suffered greatly at the beginning because they were considered highly radical to believe that a human could have direct contact with God. My feeling was that someone raised like that could have great faith in her inner wisdom. She would know she could still be making the right choice even if others felt she was making the wrong choice.

CD: How did you manage being a parent at the same time you were writing a book and working?

JB: I would love it if women’s magazines would stop pretending that there is a way to have a so-called balanced life. I think you’re always failing at one thing or another, if you’re working and trying to raise a family—and add in writing a novel! I tried to ensure that my daughter would not suffer as a result of my writing the book—so I lost a lot of income. I wanted to write the book so badly, and I wanted to finish it. I made many sacrifices.

…when my daughter was about seven or eight years old, I started to go away for a weekend here and there, and I would write for sixteen hours each day. I would write and get up to eat and write more and sleep, do that for one more day, then go home.

CD: Did you set up a rigorous writing schedule every day?

JB: There were times when I could set aside a certain number of hours to write. I’d block them out on my calendar. And when my daughter was about seven or eight years old, I started to go away for a weekend here and there, and I would write for sixteen hours each day. I would write and get up to eat and write more and sleep, do that for one more day, then go home. I would motivate myself with deadlines, and I was in a writing group for a few years, so I had to produce something every month. For one year, I was lucky to have a woman who was a student and a friend with whom I traded five pages a week. I was only able to do that because my great Aunt Ruth died and left me a small inheritance, and my mother also helped us that year. That was the only way I was able to finish a full draft while running my business and raising a family. But even after that year, I still had years of work to do, and I had to make up for the loss of income. Talk about pressure. By several years later, I really wanted to finish it, so I went back into the very low-income phase for about six months. And then it sold.

Once the novel had been sold, I felt like the mirrors in the changing room had become two-way. I got even more self-conscious about every little sentence. Every time I got a set of page proofs, I revised more. Ultimately I felt that my book needed protection from me. It was a relief when it reached the phase when I could do nothing more to it. 

CD: All the detail work definitely paid off. Although I’m rarely able to read a book fast, I read yours very quickly because I really wanted to know what would happen to the main character.

JB: That’s gratifying to hear! People often tell me they read it in a white heat.

CD: You’re running a household and you’re working. You’re a mom, a wife, a daughter. What do you do when you get a tremendous blast of inspiration and you suddenly have to solve a really mundane problem?

JB: I have all these piles of scraps, and they go back many years, and they weigh on me heavily. I have all these bursts of things I want to write, and I am horribly behind. I got even more behind by taking so long to write this book. At least I’ve finished a few things over the past years, but I have so much more to do. It’s quite painful. I wish I could write full time. 

CD: The book would make a wonderful film. Has anyone expressed interest in film rights?

JB: I would love for there to be a film. Yes, there has been interest in the film rights, but no one has bought them yet.

CD: What are the most special things to emerge from the publishing experience so far?

JB: It’s been very special to see that the book is important to a lot of mothers. It affirms the value of their experience, their work and struggles. A lot of people buy the book for themselves and then buy more copies for women they love. The paperback is coming out this summer, on July 10. I hope lots of book clubs will continue reading it. It’s a good book for discussion. People tell me they talk about women’s opportunities and lives in the nineteenth century and now, the challenges of caring for infants, the choices Lilli had to make and what they might have done in such circumstances. They have very lively evenings. One group dressed in period costumes and invented a special drink they called mother’s milk.

CD: Do you have advice for other writers?

A lot of people will say, “I’ve had this book idea for twenty years. And I’m just waiting until the right time in my life.” And I’m thinking, No, no, no! You just have to start.

JB: My advice for any writer who hasn’t yet given the priority to their work is just to start. Start now. You’ll never have enough time; you’ll never have the right circumstances. Be satisfied with any little scrap you can create in a day or a week. One or two sentences a day or a week adds up to something over time. Once you have something, it’s a lot easier to create more. A lot of people will say, “I’ve had this book idea for twenty years. And I’m just waiting until the right time in my life.” And I’m thinking, No, no, no! You just have to start. My mother, who’s an artist, used to tell me that you have to do what you love “in spite of.”

CD: Your mother is an artist, and you are a writer. Does your daughter show signs of the restless creative impulse?

JB: Yes. She used to like to do tons of writing and reading, but now that she has a phone, she’s showing interest in photography, too. My mom definitely gave me the understanding of what it meant to be a creative person. What I see from her and what I know from my own life is that having a creative pursuit is a way of continually healing yourself. Whatever comes into your life, you can heal yourself if you have a vehicle for letting it out and exploring it in a creative way. Having a creative outlet is good for your emotional health. So I’m very glad my daughter is learning this, too.


Colleen-Davis

Colleen Davis is a Pennsylvania writer and author of the website Between the Pond and the Woods, which provides information and a Facebook forum for dementia caregivers. Her writing has been featured in Making Sense of Alzheimer’s, Elephant Journal, and on episodes of the television documentary  Philadelphia: The Great Experiment

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Published on May 9, 2018 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

A Conversation with Ayelet Waldman, author of A REALLY GOOD DAY. Interview by Chaya Bhuvaneswar

Cleaver Magazine Posted on April 26, 2018 by thwackApril 26, 2018

A Conversation with Ayelet Waldman
author of A REALLY GOOD DAY
Interview by Chaya Bhuvaneswar

Over the past five years, rigorously-designed clinical research trials of the drug psilocybin, published in top tier journals such as Neuropsychopharmacology and elsewhere, have steadily pointed the way to the therapeutic potential of hallucinogens in psychiatry—along with National Institute for Mental Health-funded ketamine trials leading to standard outpatient clinics now offering “ketamine infusion” for patients whose depression has not responded to multiple other drugs, and in many cases, not responded to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) or even deep brain stimulation (DBS) where electrodes are placed into brain regions in an awake subject resulting in relief from crippling, often suicidal depression.

What could compel someone to be desperate enough to try such treatments? The alternative: the urge to commit suicide. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention estimates that nearly 45,000 Americans die from suicide each year; suicide is ranked as the tenth most common cause of death in the U.S. Yet relatively few popular and critically acclaimed novelists have been generous and brave enough to write about their personal struggles with suicidal ideation and ongoing contemplation of the act. Ayelet Waldman, a prolific and visible author whose novel Love and Other Impossible Pursuits was made into a searing film directed by Don Roos and starring Natalie Portman, and whose memoir Bad Mother was a New York Times bestseller, is one of these few. Notably, more male novelists (e.g., William Styron, Augusten Burroughs) have ventured into the territory, though Alice Sebold’s stark narrative of her psychological symptoms following her rape also made a significant step forward for disclosure and destigmatization. The particular courage of Waldman’s admission of intense suicidality, however, reflects the profound stigma attached to women with children disclosing any form of mental health issues. In support of the courage of her disclosure, I interviewed her one evening in January over the phone, with follow-ups by email. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.—CB

 


Chaya Bhuvaneswar: In many essays, as well as the recent memoir, A Really Good Day, in which you describe the symptoms that led to your exploration of micro-doses of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), you are so frank and raw in your discussion of your bipolar II diagnosis. I’m interested in the connection between bipolarity and confidence in one’s own judgment—can you speak about having that confidence, any processes involved in building it? What can you say to people with mental health diagnoses who are seeking to build that confidence in themselves that is durable through episodes of being told their “judgment is off,” that they shouldn’t trust themselves?

Ayelet Waldman: That’s really, really—this applies to so many things. If you suffer from a mental illness, there are times when your judgment can be wrong, times when you are acting from a place of emotion mind rather than a place of wise mind, and you’re so emotionally dysregulating, that you’re not making choices that even you yourself would make under different circumstances. But it’s also true that nobody knows the inside of your head as well as you do. So, there are other times you are the best judge of what works for you. It’s all of life being dialectic. Balancing back and forth on that’s bipolarity. Somewhere in the middle between trusting your own intuition and the feeling that you are acting in wise mind and balancing emotional truth vs. hyperrational truth.

If you suffer from a mental illness, there are times when your judgment can be wrong, times when you are acting from a place of emotion mind rather than a place of wise mind, and you’re so emotionally dysregulating, that you’re not making choices that even you yourself would make under different circumstances. But it’s also true that nobody knows the inside of your head as well as you do. So, there are other times you are the best judge of what works for you. It’s all of life being dialectic. 

CB: What was it like incorporating a kind of ‘mood diary’ into the book, where you had to in large part be judging whether the micro-dosing was helping you stay stable or not?

AW: What every single patient does—you have to have self-respect— everybody’s medication changes all the time. So it’s good to have a tool that you could use to evaluate the utility of the medication beyond the kind of retrospective necessity that doesn’t take into account all the things you forgot over the course of the month, i.e. there was an earthquake and I woke up, and I had a really shitty night, and understand and evaluate your reactions in a way you can’t if you’re not tracking. One of the ways I assessed whether [the micro-dosing] was working was how many words did I write—how productive was I. How many words I wrote every day. And that was a really effective tool for me. My feeling of mastery of my work life, productivity, sense of usefulness in the word. Was it 96 or 96,000? Flow—if I hadn’t been paying attention to one of the tools I wouldn’t have appreciated that I was in a place of flow so often, astonishing and wonderful place in there. The place of flow is the positive part of bipolarity.

Flow—if I hadn’t been paying attention to one of the tools I wouldn’t have appreciated that I was in a place of flow so often, astonishing and wonderful place in there. The place of flow is the positive part of bipolarity.

CB: Can you also speak to how Love and Other Impossible Pursuits addressed the stigma of postpartum depression, like the character of Emilia, a character I really loved, was suffering from?

AW: I really wrote it to give myself a search for a kind of community. [It illustrated how writing can be put to work] to find your friend, confessor, therapist, to work through issues.

CB: I also thought the character of William, Emilia’s foster son, is an equally important, incredible character. William’s precociousness and vulnerability really come through. When you were writing the book, how did you feel about William? Can you talk about how the character evolved?

AW: I kind of—I saw the book as a love story. Always. Always seemed to me to be a love story. A love story about maternal love. Think Katherine Hepburn—Spencer Tracy. They hate each other and love each other in the end. And I really saw the book in that way. About these two people, stepmother, and stepson and ultimately made for each other, beshert. I always knew that was happening.

CB: You synthesize scientific information so beautifully. Had you read and done that for postpartum depression scientific literature before writing the book? Did you do research for Emilia’s character?

AW: I think it was mostly from just myself and in my dead baby group, a support group for people who had terminated a pregnancy for genetic reasons like I did. It was terrific.

CB: The character of Carolyn is a revelation.

AW: It’s always you and not you. She was way more than an imaginary me. That was how I would react if my husband left me, but then I’m not like a caricature. I based her on a real person. That scene in the classroom where she tore up the picture? That really happened to a friend of mine with the mother of her stepson. But that isn’t the complete story. She is ultimately is a human being. She is also a physician has skills and the sense of a vocation.

CB: Did you worry about Emilia being likable vs. unlikable?

AW:  They always say that. People say that she’s an unlikeable character. There was a narrative that she was an unlikable character but that was sort of the point. But I was sort of disappointed by it, it wasn’t that I was surprised by that reaction to her. Women’s characters are expected to be likable.

CB: Can you speak more about the concept of “destined”—beshert as this certainty.

AW: The only thing that matters is the work you do. It’s nice to have a narrative of beshert. It’s useful to have as a model in a long marriage. That kind of can float you through difficult times. Times when you could give in. It is irrelevant to the strengths of your marriage. The only thing that matters is how much you’re willing to prioritize your partner. That is what marriage—all the wonderful ties. Even when you don’t feel like it. The only thing that matters is the work.

The only thing that matters is the work you do. It’s nice to have a narrative of beshert. It’s useful to have as a model in a long marriage. That kind of can float you through difficult times.

CB: What are you working on next??

AW: I have another novel that I’m struggling with. And other television and film projects that haven’t been announced yet.

 


Ayelet Waldman is the author of A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life, the novels Love and Treasure, Red Hook Road, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, and Daughter’s Keeper, as well as of the essay collection Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace and the Mommy-Track Mystery series. She is the editor of Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons and of the forthcoming Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation. She was a Federal public defender and an adjunct professor at the UC Berkeley law school where she developed and taught a course on the legal implications of the War on Drugs. She lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband, Michael Chabon, and their four children.


Chaya Bhuvaneswar’s work is forthcoming or has appeared in Narrative Magazine, The Awl, Narrative Northeast, aaduna, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Asian American Literary Review, Compose, Redux, The Write Launch, Del Sol Review, Bangalore Review, Blue Lake Review, Nimrod, jellyfish review, and Santa Fe Writers Project. Her fiction has been anthologized in Her Mother’s Ashes 2: Stories by South Asian Women in the US and Canada, and she is a blog contributor to aaduna, as well as Michigan Quarterly Review. Follow her on Twitter @chayab77.

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Published on April 26, 2018 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers, Interviews with Nonfiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

A Conversation with Kim Magowan, author of UNDOING from Moon City Press, Interview by Yasmina Din Madden

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 30, 2018 by thwackApril 2, 2018

A Conversation with Kim Magowan
author of UNDOING from Moon City Press
Winner of the Moon City Short Fiction Award
Interview by Yasmina Din Madden

If you’re a fan of short fiction, it’s likely you’ve come across Kim Magowan’s witty and layered stories in one of the many venues her work has appeared in. I met Kim a few years ago, and since then she’s become a go-to writer for feedback on my own work. Additionally, Kim’s innovative flash stories, particularly those that experiment with form and structure, have been an invaluable resource in the flash workshops that I teach. Last month, Kim’s collection, Undoing, winner of the Moon City Short Fiction Award, was published by Moon City Press, and next spring her novel, The Light Source, will be published by 7.13 Books. Magowan’s female characters, who often engage in what many might consider taboo behavior, are complex, intelligent, difficult, and compelling women. Recently we bonded over our mutual admiration of writer Ottessa Moshfegh, whose work often centers on the lives of unconventional female protagonists. At the AWP conference a few weeks ago, between panels and a drink or two, we had the chance to discuss flash fiction, novel writing, and our love of strange, smart, rule-breaking women in literature. —YDM

Yasmina Din Madden: You have a collection of stories and a novel coming out within a year of each other. Could you talk a bit about how your writing approach or writing practice changes depending on the form?

Kim Magowan: It took me forever to realize The Light Source was a novel—for the longest time I thought of it as a set of linked stories, like Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge. I wrote first drafts of the second and third chapters when I was in graduate school. The germ was a story a friend told me about a bride canceling her wedding because she had caught her groom in bed with her maid of honor. That intrigued me: why on earth would someone have sex with their best friend’s fiancé? The explanation I arrived at was the seed for the whole book. So, I wrote what I saw at the time as two “stories” back in the 1990s (when the novel is first set). When I seriously returned to writing, back in 2010, I dusted those stories off, revised them substantially, and wrote two more linked stories. Then in 2012, an agent who had read my story “Version” in the Gettysburg Review got in touch and asked if I was working on a novel. He was not interested in a story collection, which is a common procedure with agents. That was the incentive I needed to realize (duh), my increasingly entangled “stories” were a novel. My family was in New Orleans for five weeks while my partner was researching a project, and I spent that time in a writing fever. Bryan dropped the kids off at camp while I sat in the kitchen, typing madly. By the end of those weeks I had finished a complete draft. That agent ended up passing on it, but I will always be grateful to him for making me realize that this unwieldy monster was a novel, and I had simply been too terrified to see it as such (because who has time to write a novel!?). I continued adding to The Light Source, particularly the Julie chapter, over the next couple of years, and sent a bunch of queries to agents. A few were interested, but they all wanted me to turn it into a more conventional book than the one I had in mind.

During the same time, I was writing short stories. I wrote drafts of several of the stories in my collection when I was in my twenties and thirties. But the vast majority of them are from 2010 on, when I seriously buckled down to writing and turned it into a passion, instead of a sidelined hobby. Especially after I had my novel in satisfactory shape, by 2015, my attention was on short stories, both reading them—I have read well over 100 story collections in the last five years—and writing them. I also became increasingly interested in flash fiction, paring stories down to the bone. Novels permit a lot more leeway than short fiction. You can be digressive, you can plummet into rabbit holes of flashbacks. Short fiction has to be disciplined and crystalline.

YDM: What drew you to the flash fiction form? You’ve written and published a lot of flash in the last few years and I’m wondering what you think the form allows for or allows you to explore in your writing that a conventional short story doesn’t.

KM:  There is a practical response to that question and an aesthetic response, and I’ll give you both. The practical response is that I have a full-time job and two kids, and flash fiction is the only writing I can reliably get done when the semester is in progress. I can write a draft of a flash story in a sitting, and revise when I have time. I have to be very efficient as a writer. I reserve my summer and Christmas breaks for writing longer stories (though of course it isn’t always clear to me at inception whether a story will end up being long). When the semester is on, I write flash, or collaborate with Michelle Ross, or revise and edit. So that’s my nuts-and-bolts pragmatic answer.

But I also truly believe that writing flash has made me a better writer. It’s so disciplined. I think of novels as soup and flash fiction as a bouillon cube. There is no waste. Of course, this is generally true of short stories: you have to be compact and precise. You have to work out, if your character is a collector, for instance, exactly what she collects—what item will reveal that essential quality you need to expose about her. But flash is that efficiency, times ten. I could never write poetry—my poems always sounded like bad Eric Clapton lyrics—but flash is as close as prose comes to poetry. The skills that writing it has made me hone are portable. I carry them into my longer work.

I also truly believe that writing flash has made me a better writer. It’s so disciplined. I think of novels as soup and flash fiction as a bouillon cube. There is no waste.

YDM: Your story “Squirrel Beach” was published in this magazine and is part of your collection. The narrator’s detached critical tone, as she contemplates her sister-in-law and her brother, is both funny and brutal. In fact, a lot of your fiction is brutally funny—I’m thinking of “Be Good” for instance, a story written in list- and second-command form that chronicles a husband’s cheating. How do you see humor informing your work?

KM: Thank you! I like “Squirrel Beach” a lot too—that was one of what I think of as my “angry drinking stories” I wrote in 2016. “Brutally funny” is a lovely compliment. I gravitate to funny writers. Amy Hempel and Lorrie Moore were revelations for me, that you could be a “serious” writer who was also funny, and that jokes did not have to be one-note. One of my all-time favorite novelists is Jane Austen, who is cruelly hilarious. A recent story collection that makes me laugh out loud is Katherine Heiny’s Single, Carefree, Mellow—it’s full of these perfectly turned zingers. The writers I love best are adept at shuttling between funny and sad, even combining the two emotions, like Kazuo Ishiguro does in The Remains of the Day. So I admire humor, and I often wish my stories were funnier: it’s one of my 2018 ambitions, to lighten my writing up. Some of my stories I like best are ones where the humor works (I hope, anyway) to illuminate characters. For instance, the protagonist in “Family Games” connects with people, both her estranged husband Phil and her new friend Angie, through jokes. She and her husband hand each other set-up lines. Their mutual, twisted humor is one of the reasons Phil is hard for Mel to leave, despite all his flaws.

YDM: Is there a story in the collection that came particularly quickly or easily? And what about its evil twin? Was there a story that seemed impossible from beginning to end?

KM: I’m not going to count the flash, because I always write flash quickly, but the story in the collection that was most an unanticipated gift from the sky was “Family Games.” I had to write that story under the gun. I had submitted a story to Sixfold for their contest that got accepted elsewhere, and I had three days to come up with something new—all of my other stories were published or forthcoming. I stayed up all night cranking out “Family Games,” sent it in the morning to my first reader Michelle Ross, revised it the next day, and submitted it. It’s one of my favorites in the collection, and I have never written a story that long so painlessly. Its evil twin, strangely enough, is a story that it shares many affinities with, “Version,” another story about a writer couple who play word games. “Version” was a headache and a half to write!

YDM: Could you talk a bit about the title of your collection? There’s clearly the tension, in many of these stories, of relationships or families unraveling, but undoing is different. I’m curious about how you came to this title, which I love by the way.

KM: Right—undoing is not the same as unraveling. It can be—certainly “undoing” has negative connotations that I wanted to draw from (“he was my undoing”)—but I like the ambiguity of the word. It also can connote undoing a problem, undoing a knot. When we play Four Square with our daughters, they’re always calling “Re-do-sies!” I intend that facet of undoing: the longed-for second chance. So, “Undoing” was the original title for the opening story in the collection, “When in Rome,” and comes from two uses of the word that occur at the end of that story: undoing a memory through a fantasy, and undoing someone’s buttons. I had a hell of a time coming up with a title for the collection. I’m terrible at titles, and I also didn’t want to spotlight any single story by titling the collection after it. Michelle Ross, title queen, suggested I use Undoing, and it immediately clicked. It encapsulated, for me, the self-sabotage thread, but also the nostalgia. So many of the stories feature characters who long to move backward, to recapture some since lost moment of connection and peace: sitting on a stoop licking ice cream cones, the future unmarred.

YDM: You’ve co-authored several stories with writer Michelle Ross. Could you talk about how this process works and what you see as the advantages of co-writing stories?

KM: Michelle and I have been collaborating on stories since July; it’s a blast. One of us will start a story—say, write the opening paragraph—and then lob it at the other person, who writes some more, tosses it back. We decide when it’s done and revise together. There are so many things I love about the process. It’s very freeing for me, to have to incorporate some left turn, some unforeseen element. I used to act, and collaboration reminds me of improvisation. All of a sudden your Improv partner has hands that are melting, or is blind, or has grown antlers, or thinks you are a sandwich, and you just need to adapt and go with it. I can get very finicky and prissy with writing. Collaboration pushes me to be speedy, raw, messy. Plus, Michelle is so damn good, partnering with her is like rallying with an excellent tennis player. She ups my game.

Michelle Ross, Kim Magowan, and Yasmina Din Madden at AWP 2018

YDM: Talk to me about “Version,” a story in the collection that includes elements of metafiction, plays with structure, and centers on writers who are often talking about writing. It’s one of my favorites in the book.

KM: Ha, that is my evil twin story! So, the backstory of that story is that originally it stopped at the end of the first section, once Kate has her reading at the bookstore and David confronts her. I was in a writing workshop with three other writers, including my very talented sister Margot, and Margot asked, “So, what happens next?” And my initial thought was, But Kate’s story is over, and then I realized that the story was over from her POV, but not if I picked up another perspective, David’s. But as soon as I started working on David’s, I realized, well, his story is contingent on what decision he makes, whether he contacts Kate or wimps out, and then that following trajectory depends on whether Kate responds or ignores him, and… and…. Well, suffice to say, that story got very “Choose your own adventure” on me.

“Version” tends to elicit extreme responses. Several people have told me it’s their favorite story in the collection (indeed, one of the collection titles I was kicking around before settling on Undoing was a line from that story, This Version Doesn’t Belong to You). Others don’t like it. It’s very metafictional, as you say, plus many people are ideologically opposed to writing about writing. One of my most well-read friends said, “Make the characters something besides writers. Make them construction workers.” Which, of course, logically made no sense! But I get the bias against writing about writing. I received the same flak from Sixfold readers about “Family Games.” Personally, I think “Version” is one of my best. It’s a little chilly and cerebral, but I like all the games Kate and David play. My favorite bit is the box of staples David slips in Kate’s grocery bag of “staples.” Both of them get a kick out of wordplay.

YDM: I’ve just mentioned one of my favorite stories in the collection, so now it’s your turn. Is there a story or two in your collection that you feel a particular affinity for and why?

KM: Aside from the stories we’ve already mentioned, I like “Chin Chin Chin” a lot. I find it, for all its sharp edges, sweet and romantic—well, romantic for me; that’s as romantic as my writing gets! I also like the linked stories about Laurel (“Eleanor of Aquitaine,” “Warmer, Colder,” “On Air,” and “Pop Goes the Weasel”) and the linked ones about Ben and Miriam (“Brining,” “This Much”). Both of those sets of stories could easily have turned into novels—I know so much more about those characters than made it onto the page. They dug their hooks into my imagination. Except who, as I said before, has time to write a novel?

YDM: Who are the writers who have influenced or inspired you most and is there anyone new you’ve discovered recently whose work you find exciting?

KM: So many! I am a ranker, so you’re asking me a question that I could go on and on about. I’m going to be disciplined and just mention a few recent books that have blown me away. I love Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, how she plays with perspective and time. No current writer is as funny, original, and humane as George Saunders: Tenth of December is an all-time favorite collection, and Lincoln in the Bardo exploded my brain. Jenny Offill’s Dept of Speculation is the novel I wish I’d written. Reading it was an epiphany: there is an audience for smart books. I love how that novel toggles between the micro (a floundering marriage, molecules, floating passages of text) and the macro (outer space). Edward P. Jones’s The Known World may be the most important American novel of the twenty-first century—every writer needs to read that book. It’s astonishing. Finally, I’m obsessed with a writer you turned me onto: Ottessa Moshfegh. Her story collection Homesick for Another World is even better, I think, than her celebrated novel Eileen. It’s all thorns and prickles; it’s like holding a barbed fruit.

YDM: What are you working on these days?

KM: Two things: a second story collection, which so far is mostly very short fiction—I have about 16,000 words of that; and a collaborative collection I’m working on with Michelle Ross, that is twelve stories and growing. Also, there’s a novel I would love to write about my great-grandmother, who was an amazing character—a total scandal. Her father was a prominent rabbi in Vienna, a member of Parliament. Liza ran off with a Gentile musician when she was seventeen, had two children, returned to Vienna when she was twenty. Her humiliated father married her off to a much older rabbi (my great-grandfather) and packed them out of Austria. She wrote these wonderful, wild, feminist fairytales that were published in The Atlantic and Harper’s. She had two children with the rabbi, a longstanding lesbian relationship, and an affair with another Christian who likely fathered her youngest son. She used to make her husband the rabbi pork stew and tell her kids, “Watch him eat it.” She deserves a novel, if I can figure out a plot worthy of her.


Kim Magowan’s short story collection Undoing won the 2017 Moon City Press Fiction Award. Her novel The Light Source is forthcoming in 2019 from 7.13 Books. Her fiction has been published in Atticus Review, Bird’s Thumb, Cleaver, The Gettysburg Review, Hobart, New World Writing, Sixfold, and many other journals.  She lives in San Francisco and teaches in the Department of Literatures and Languages at Mills College. www.kimmagowan.com

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Yasmina Din Madden lives in Iowa. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in PANK, The Idaho Review, The Masters Review: New Voices, Word Riot, Hobart, CARVE, and other journals. She teaches creative writing and literature at Drake University.

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Published on March 30, 2018 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

A Conversation with Peter France, translator of Gennady Aygi’s TIME OF GRATITUDE by Ryan K. Strader

Cleaver Magazine Posted on March 15, 2018 by thwackMarch 30, 2018

Peter France, Photograph by Robin Gillanders

A Conversation with Peter France
translator of Gennady Aygi’s TIME OF GRATITUDE
Interview by Ryan K. Strader

In 1974, Peter France visited Russia to do research for a new translation of Boris Pasternak. He was invited to meet Gennady Aygi, a Chuvash poet who, as a student in Moscow, had been friends with the much-older Pasternak. France describes that meeting with Aygi as having altered the trajectory of his life, both professionally and personally. For the next forty years, France would translate Aygi’s work, bringing him to a Western audience, a task that has been criticized by those who argue that Aygi’s poetics do not conform to Russian tradition.

France’s most recent publication of Aygi’s work is Time of Gratitude, published by New Directions in December 2017. Based in Edinburgh where he was a professor of French until 2000, France has written widely on French and Russian literature and has published an Anthology of Chuvash Poetry, and translations of Blok, Mayakovsky, and Mandelstam, among others.

I came into contact with France while researching Aygi for Cleaver’s review of Time of Gratitude, and was taken with his warmth and willingness to discuss all things connected with Russian literature, share his photos from his travels to Shaymurzino, Aygi’s native village, and answer questions about the work of translation.

Here I follow up with him regarding Time of Gratitude, his approach to translation, and his decades-long friendship with Aygi, who died in 2006. Images by courtesy of Peter France. —RKS


RKS: You first met Aygi in 1974, when visiting Russia to do some work on a translation of Pasternak. I’m intrigued with the way you describe that meeting as having “changed your life.” Could you expand a little bit on your first meeting with Aygi, and what your first impressions were of each other?

PF: So, it sounds a bit over-dramatic to say that my meeting with Aygi changed my life, but it certainly opened up new worlds for me. For a start, I began to translate his poems, a great challenge, confronting me with a tragic and exciting life experience and a corresponding spiritual vision. This, in turn, led me to translate several other Russian poets, some of them Gennady’s favorites (Lermontov, Annenkov)—I was already translating Pasternak (with Jon Stallworthy) and this was why I went to see Aygi in the first place. Then there was the plunging into Chuvash culture, ancient and modern, translating the Chuvash anthology, and later other poems from folklore and 20th-century literature, and getting to visit and love Chuvashia and to understand something of the many problems of a quite distinct ‘autonomous region’ within the Russian Federation. From our first meeting, he became a point of reference for me, distant but present—as he still is.

When we first met, in September 1974, in a flat on the southwestern edge of Moscow, we seemed to hit it off immediately, talking all day as we wandered in the woods. He talked very eloquently (and I mainly listened and learnt). You couldn’t help being struck by the intensity of his devotion to poetry, culture, and spiritual values. But there was also his simplicity, his humour—he had a great gift for friendship (which shines through his poems too). For him, I must have been a visitor from another world (not the first such visitor by any means), but by the end of a day, we were on familiar terms (Ty, not Vy). We shared a love of poetry of course (though he lived for poetry, and had far more to tell me than I had to tell him). But there was also our love and awareness of the natural world. Trees were a constant theme—and the tree is a sacred being in Chuvash culture.

RKS: In 2013, you did a wonderful interview with Alex Cigale. At the time you stated that, while there was much of Aygi’s work still untranslated, you particularly wanted to gather together his tributes to other writers for publication. The new book, Time of Gratitude, is a collection of these tributes. Out of the material you had, why did you choose to translate these tributes instead of more poetry, or his letters? How do you think Time of Gratitude fits in with Aygi’s other translated work?

PF: I’d already translated some of Aygi’s notes on poetry (see Child-and-Rose and Field-Russia, both with New Directions), but I was keen to publish a volume of his tributes to other writers and artists—and he himself was keen that such a book should appear in English. They belong to a genre characteristic of this poet, called elsewhere “Conversations at a Distance.” It is indeed conversation rather than criticism; as Gennady’s friend, the Chuvash scholar Atner Khuzangay, recently wrote to me in a letter: “In the book/conversation everything flows together in a single stream, poems, essays, memories, impressions… In these conversations there are specific interlocutors, his spiritual companions, he speaks to them, asks them questions, receives from them moral support, advice, an answering word.” That’s what I wanted to present, allowing new readers to enter a conversation that includes prose as well as poems.

Gennady Aygi, 1975. Photo by Igor Makarevich

Thinking of other possible publications, there are many poems by Aygi that have not yet appeared in English. Indeed I have quite a lot of translations that have not been published, or only published in obscure journals. But this seemed to me less urgent than the book/conversation. In the future I think the best way of publishing more translations would be to translate particular books—he grouped his poems like this, though often they haven’t been published this way. Maybe some of the early books, such as Fields-Doubles (1961-3) or Consolation 3/24 (1965-7).

There’s also a great body of Chuvash poetry, virtually unknown outside Chuvashia. It would probably have to be translated via Russian, with help from Chuvash speakers, as was done recently when Aygi’s sister Eva worked with Mikael Nydahl (Sweden), Gunnar Wærness (Norway), and myself.

Then there are the letters. It’s quite true that there is a vast treasure of letters written by Aygi to friends scattered all over the world—so far I don’t think they’ve been gathered up. I included some translated excerpts from letters to me in Field-Russia, but generally, I’d rather wait until there’s been a proper publication of the correspondence in Russian. Will this happen? I don’t know.

RKS: You’ve translated poets like Mandelstam and Pasternak, poets who are “household” names and recognized as “famous Russian writers” even by people who don’t read non-Western literature. How does your commitment to translating Aygi over the years fit into your oeuvre? Was that greatly influenced by your personal relationship with him, or did something else encourage you to keep coming back to his poems?

PF: I began translating Aygi as a result of meeting him. When I first met him it was to talk about Pasternak—I knew nothing of his own poetry and found it pretty hard at first, but discovered it mainly by translating, which I did as a way of continuing our “conversation at a distance.” For much of the time, this was very different from other things I was doing—mostly academic writing about French and comparative literature. But I had begun (in the 1960s) by translating Blok and Pasternak, working together with my great friend, the poet Jon Stallworthy. It was no doubt the experiencing of translating Aygi that give me the impetus, when I retired in 2000, to try translating many other Russian poets. Some were close to Aygi (Mayakovsky, Annensky, Lermontov, perhaps Batyushkov), others less so. And, of course, I’ve gone on translating Aygi, though less intensively than in the early days. I’ve also gone on from the Chuvash Anthology to translate the great poem by Kenstenttin Ivanov, “Narspi,” due to appear (in Chuvashia) later this year (as with the Anthology, I’ve worked from a Russian literal).

Peter France in Chuvashia, in front of a school named for Gennady Aygi

RKS: When I first read Time of Gratitude, I had to “catch on” to how Aygi writes. It certainly is its own genre, and not just stylistically. In an interview with him that is included in Field-Russia, he mentions how he addresses other writers: that he is not addressing their work necessarily, as one would in a critical response, but instead he is attempting “conversation” with the writers themselves “as genuinely living images,” as he put it. It seems to me that part of what makes his work distinct is the spiritual orientation of the writer toward the addressee, where he (the writer) has adopted the addressee as a “spiritual companion” as you described it. To me, this is a profound value of Aygi ’s work—a more mystical connection to writers and poetry. You mention that Aygi wanted to see some of these book/conversations translated into English. What did he want English readers to understand from this genre that was unique to him?

PF: Yes, there’s something special about Aygi’s attitude to many other writers and artists—a kind of mix of friendship/love and reverence. In relation to, say, Pasternak, the two are fairly evenly balanced, but for others whom he didn’t know personally (e.g. Kafka or Malevich) it’s reverence that predominates. His feeling of closeness led him to seek out the places of these figures, notably burial places. I shared this with him for Malevich, the Chuvash poet Mitta, Baudelaire, Nerval, and Robert Burns. When we went, with three Scottish poet-friends, to Burns’ mausoleum, we performed a ceremony—pouring of whisky, laying of roses and Chuvash earth, song and a speech addressed to his ‘brother’ Robert—which reminded me a bit of our visit to the grave of his grandfather, a pagan priest. And I guess it’s this sort of bonding he wanted readers of his tributes to feel, including now the English speakers.

The English-speaking world was more foreign to him than France (he knew French quite well, but no English). But he did visit Britain four times, liked London, felt great affection for Scotland (I remember travelling through the Scottish borders with him, and he dreamed of coming to live here), and loved (in translation) the writing of Burns, Hopkins, and above all Dickens (at the age of six he had read Great Expectations under the title Pip, but only discovered later who wrote it). And for his lovely collection, Veronica’s Book, he wrote a “Foreword to the English-speaking Reader,” which you may have seen. Towards the end of his life we visited America (the land of Emily Dickinson), and again he felt at home, especially traveling through the country between Chicago and Wisconsin. So, yes, he wanted English speakers, too, to be part of this world-wide circle of friends.

RKS: I’m intrigued with your trip to Chuvashia. The pictures that you’ve shared of the countryside there are beautiful. I can see that you went to great pains to become better acquainted with Aygi’s village and his native countryside. You’ve also mentioned other travels to Russia when working on other translations. I’m curious about how critical geographic familiarity is to you in your work. How important was that trip to understanding Aygi, and how important is geographic familiarity to you in general, in a translation project?

PF: It’s good to be able to visit the places of the texts you’re translating, but not essential. I’ve recently been translating some 16th-century French poetry, and while I know France well, I can’t visit the 16th century. Similarly, when I did most of my translation of Aygi and other Chuvash writers, I was able to visit Russia but Chuvashia was still closed to foreigners. I went there for the first time in 1989, by which time my English version of the Anthology of Chuvash Poetry was pretty well complete. Of course, when I went there I understood certain things better. A good example is an ancient text entitled “Parents’ Valediction to the Bride and Bridegroom”; I had translated this and admired it, but during a visit to Chuvashia I participated in a village wedding, and was amazed to see the young couple, having driven round the nearby villages hooting motor horns, returning to the wife’s house, passing through the courtyard where a disco was in full swing, and going in to kneel in front of the elders while the traditional ‘valediction’ I had translated was spoken. Obviously it meant more to me when I’d seen this, but I don’t think the translation was affected.

I guess the essential thing, if you don’t have direct access to the place and the culture, is to have a good source of knowledge. This can be books or pictures, but for me, it was ideal to work with Gennady who helped me understand so much about his own poems and about his native culture (of which I knew nothing before meeting him). While he was alive my translations of Chuvash texts were done from his beautiful literals with comments, reading aloud, etc. Later I got help from other Chuvash friends.

All in all, it was a great piece of luck for me that this great Russian poet was also a Chuvash village boy.

RKS: It seems that for some time Aygi was rejected by Chuvashians for having “switched” to Russian, but then later he was embraced by them. Can you talk a little bit about what the Chuvashian perception of Aygi might have been, and how Aygi felt about being “disowned” by Chuvashia?

PF: I don’t think it’s quite right to think of him as being disowned by the Chuvash for writing in Russian—his Russian poetry, together with his work on the Chuvash Anthology, helped to put Chuvashia on the international literary map. And in any case, he continued to write and translate in Chuvash.

In the Soviet period, he was harassed in Chuvashia for a variety of reasons, all to do with literature rather than politics. At first, he was regarded as a ‘hostile element’ mainly because of his friendship with Boris Pasternak, though his expulsion from the Moscow Literary Institute was also a factor. Together with his poetic credo, it was totally at odds with Socialist Realism. He was arrested in Cheboksary in 1960, accused of ‘vagrancy,’ but managed to escape to Moscow and didn’t return to Chuvashia for fifteen years or so. And then in 1976, he was attacked by the Chuvash authorities for having poems published in the emigre journal Kontinent (in Paris, associated with Sinyavsky). All this was very painful for him. Even when I first went to Chuvashia in 1989, in the dying years of the old regime, there were voices accusing him of “cosmopolitanism.” It took a few years for him to be fully accepted and proclaimed the national poet.

RKS: It’s interesting that you separate literature from politics here, a separation which works a little differently in the American imagination than in the Russian imagination. Can you clarify the distinction as it relates to Aygi?

PF: Clearly the two are not easily distinguished, especially in a Soviet context, when a certain style of writing could be construed as a hostile act. In particular, openness to foreign influences such as Kafka or Kierkegaard could be seen as a kind of treason. What I meant was that Aygi was not a dissident in the normal sense of the word—he didn’t take public stances on such questions as the expulsion of Solzhenitsyn. Of course, his poems were often, a response, direct or indirect, to the evils of the regime (from the invasion of Czechoslovakia to the misuse of psychiatric hospitals), but they weren’t public statements.

RKS: When I was trying to track down critics who had some experience with Aygi, one writer explained to me that Aygi was sometimes seen as a “fraudulent” presence in the Russian canon. Could you comment a little bit on this critical perception of Aygi and his work?

PF: Aygi was not ‘fraudulent’ in the sense of deliberately setting out to pull the wool over people’s eyes; it is quite wrong to see him as trying to bamboozle readers so as to achieve fame. He was totally committed to his poetic work. Undoubtedly some readers and critics and fellow poets didn’t (and don’t) accept what he was doing (not just free verse, but his use of language and his poetic aims). For some readers, his writing was not truly Russian and not poetry as they understood it. At one point, a critic in a London-based Russian-language newspaper stirred up a storm in a tea-cup by arguing that his reputation had been manufactured by foreign Slavists (for their own ends, no doubt). Against this, you could quote many Russians, from Roman Jakobsen to the major contemporary poet Olga Sedakova, for whom he had become “the first Russian-language poet to become a world poet in his lifetime.”

RKS: One of the pictures you shared with us is of Aygi’s funeral in 2006. Can you share how you came to have this picture, and what thoughts it brings to mind?

PF: This is one of a group of black-and-white photos sent me by a Chuvash friend and showing Gennady’s funeral in the wintry spaces of Shaymurzino—extremely moving for someone who knew the poet and his village. He had a state funeral in the Cheboksary, attended by the President of the Republic, then the body was taken to be interred in the village graveyard. One or two of the color photos I sent you show the place in summer. Gennady is much remembered. The village school bears his name, as does a street in Cheboksary, and every year there are gatherings, large and small (often with associated publications), to celebrate his memory.

Funeral of Gennady Aygi, Shaymurzino, in the Chuvash Republic, 2006

RKS: You have commented elsewhere that, because of Kierkegaard, Aygi “came back to his own form of Christianity.” The idea that he had his “own form” of belief is intriguing to me. You mention that he felt a bond with the old pagan beliefs of Chuvashia, but also kinship with more contemporary Christian theologians. Could you comment further on this blended spiritual identity that Aygi seems to have, and how that might help readers to understand Aygi’s poetry?

PF: It’s difficult to speak in a few words of Aygi’s religious views. He was certainly a religious poet, seeing poetry as a kind of “sacred action” which could create communication between people, and also communication of people with the natural world. The old Chuvash ‘pagan’ religion with its rituals and ethical values meant a lot to him (for a description see the Anthology of Chuvash Poetry, now available online via Duration Press), but he didn’t agree with those who want to revive this religion today. Chuvashia had been Christianized over the centuries, and this was often oppressive, but he also saw it as a great enrichment. His own return to Christianity (from an earlier Nietzschean phase) he attributed largely to Kierkegaard, discovered in 1969. Before this he had read Pascal, later he read a lot of the early Orthodox Church Fathers, and of modern theology (when in Daghestan, which he loved, he had a sympathetic interest in Islam too). All of this came together in a religious synthesis. I don’t think he went to church much, but he regarded himself as Orthodox and was buried as such. Let me quote a letter he wrote me which gives an idea of his spiritual vision, sent from a Russian village in 1980: “I write—and with my shoulders I feel-and-know that the hawthorn is flowering now in the mist (the human soul cannot know such tranquil solitude: I am reading here the writings of Russian holy men; behind their sayings there stands their silence…).”

RKS: In Aygi’s obituary that you wrote for The Guardian, you make a comment about Aygi that is very moving, that he “wrote from a deep awareness of the losses and destructions of the 20th century.” Sometimes it seems that we are dangerously removed from understanding men like Aygi and their historical context. What do you hope that readers today learn from Aygi, either from his poetry or from the story of his lived experience? What is the most important takeaway for us, as English readers in 2018?

PF: Although Aygi writes a great deal about flowers, snow, fields—nature, as we say—his poems are full of the awareness of the often terrible things that happened in his lifetime, both personally (hardship, political harassment, the sufferings of friends) and more publicly (the Holocaust and war, the oppressions of the Soviet regime). He’s a tragic poet for the tragic 20th century. But at the same time, he insists on the positive nature of poetry, bringing warmth to a cold world, as he puts it somewhere. He said in an interview (printed in the volume Field-Russia, published by New Directions) that his impression of much contemporary poetry was that it was written as if its vocation was to “curse the world.” He wanted to do the opposite, to search out and celebrate life in the face of death. I think this was what he so loved in Pasternak. In the same interview, he remembers a starling in a Moscow suburb on a dank spring day with wet snow falling. “The world was like a curse,” he says, but the starling was whistling and bubbling, “it must be bursting with gratitude—even for a day like this.”


Ryan Strader earned a B.A. in Russian Literature from George Mason University and an M.A.T. from Clayton State University. She is currently an instructional designer and researcher. Her most recent instructional design project is the development of a class in writing and qualitative research methods at Georgia State University, where she is also a doctoral student. Her most recent publication is an upcoming book chapter on populism in young adult novels. She lives and works in the Atlanta area.

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Published on March 15, 2018 in Interviews, Interviews with Translators. (Click for permalink.)

Brian Burmeister Interviews David J. Peterson, author of THE ART OF LANGUAGE INVENTION

Cleaver Magazine Posted on February 23, 2018 by thwackFebruary 23, 2018

A Conversation with David J. Peterson
author of THE ART OF LANGUAGE INVENTION
Penguin Random House

Interview by Brian Burmeister

If you love fantasy and science fiction films and television programs, chances are you’re familiar with the work of David J. Peterson, the masterful conlanger, inventor of languages. While best known for inventing the Dothraki and  Valyrian languages for HBO’s popular series Game of Thrones, the University of California San Diego graduate has created more than forty languages in his film and television career. You can find Peterson’s original languages in such Marvel Studios films as Thor: The Dark World and Doctor Strange, as well as over half-a-dozen television shows, including the critically acclaimed Penny Dreadful.

Peterson is one of the co-founders of the Language Creation Society, and he is the author of two books, Living Language Dothraki and The Art of Language Invention.

In this interview, Brian Burmeister asks David J. Peterson about what led him to language creation, what his process looks like, and what advice he has for novice language creators.—Nathaniel Popkin, ed.


BB: Your degrees are centered in linguistics, but what led you from the study of language to choosing to create new ones?

David J. Peterson

DP: Ultimately, it was the study of languages in general. Learning as many languages as I could—just for fun. I was doing that at the university. I had taken Arabic and Russian, and it was advertised in my dorm for a student-taught class on Esperanto. So I took that, and that was the first time I had ever heard of a person inventing a language. The semester after that I took my first linguistics course, and it was in that class I really put everything together, and I thought it would be really interesting if there was a language that combined certain morphological systems and marking systems. That was when I thought I could make a language—and I did. But rather than having it be for international communication because I thought Esperanto had pretty much won the day for that, I thought, what if I just created it for myself? Just for fun. So as soon as I had that idea, I was off. I thought I was the first person ever to do so. When I met other language creators online, finally, I discovered there were many others who had done so. Not only that, but they had been doing it for longer. And they were better. At that point there was a lot of learning. And I kept at it, just because I loved it.

BB: That first language you created, was that something you would speak with your friends?

DP: I think, in the beginning, I had the idea that my girlfriend and I would speak it. I think that was more of an excuse, something to justify the exercise. I did show it to her eventually, but she wasn’t interested in speaking it. But I kept with it just because I enjoyed doing it.

BB: In terms of language creation in general, what are some of the most difficult issues that you face?

DP: Definitely creating a verbal system. Especially if you’re creating a naturalistic language. It’s very, very challenging. The naturalistic languages I create, they evolve over time—the evolution is simulated. With nominal systems, it’s fairly easy. They’re fairly static. Honestly, verbal systems change with every single generation. People thirty years apart don’t use verbs exactly the same way. Consequently, on a macro level, the systems change radically every hundred or so years—which is nuts compared to nouns that are kind of like trees compared to rivers. To create something like a verbal system when you know it’s not going to stick around for a long time, everything you’re creating is going to be the product of something new, so it’s hard to get it just right, and create the entire full system, to have all these changes embedded with them, and not to get lost—that’s the hardest thing for a language creator. It’s like, all right, you created a system and this is your time X, and now you have time X minus 100, X minus 200 and so on. With the verbs, it’s like, wait a minute, are they still doing that? Or has this progressive suddenly become the regular present? Has this future become a subjunctive? That’s the hardest part.

BB: Of the dozens of languages you’ve created for TV, movies, and video games, do you have a personal favorite?

DP: Definitely the Irathient language I created for Defiance. I love everything about it. I love the grammar I set up for it, even though it’s a bear to use. I love the writing system. I love the sound of it—I absolutely love the sound of it. And I also like how words are created. It’s one of my favorite methods of word creation, the use of really large noun classes. It just hit so many notes that I really respond well to. It’s my absolute favorite.

BB: What does the process of creating your languages look like? Are your time and efforts consumed by a particular language for several weeks? Or is it a longer process than that? 

DP: It’s kind of like thirty-five percent of the work happens in a very short amount of time. After that, the rest of the work takes place over the course of your entire life. The most intensive part is setting up the grammar. Making sure that it works. Making sure that it sounds good, and that everything tests right. And that takes a lot of work in the beginning. After that, it’s just vocabulary creation. That’s the type of thing that’s very occasional, either whenever you need it or whenever you want to. And literally, it’s going to take the rest of your entire life because you’ll never create as many words in a created language as there are in the natural languages of our world. 

BB: You have fans who are very passionate about the languages that you create. What are some of the most creative or memorable uses of those languages that you’ve seen or heard about? 

DP: I love when fans get tattoos. I’m a big fan of tattoos, but I would never get one myself, so it means a lot to me when they get a tattoo of something I created—you know, permanently etched on their body. I find it to be absolutely extraordinary. Just extraordinary. And there have been some really good ones. 

BB: For those looking to learn more about language creation, can you give us a preview of what awaits your future readers in your book The Art of Language Invention?

DP: In The Art of Language Invention, I initially set out to teach everything you would need to know about language creation. Then my editor told me how long they wanted the book to be—or how short, in my opinion. (Laughs.) It’s not that. But at the very least, it will give you the basics. Assuming a spoken, naturalistic language. Although it does have some information if you’re doing something for aliens or if you’re doing a sign language, for example. It’s a very good place to start out, to figure out what the rules are, to get something that has a naturalistic result, that looks like the languages we have here on Earth. Also, in the beginning, it gives you a short history of the modern conlanging community, which was important to me, because that’s where I came out of. The conlanging community that was born, really, on the Internet in the 90s. Especially at that time, there was nobody who was famous, there were no books on this subject. And it was just an email listserv where anybody could send email messages, so everybody was pretty much equal on there. It was a wonderful way to learn, and I made a lot of friends along the way. That’s where I learned to do everything that I’m doing now, and why I am the language creator that I am today. Joining that community changed my life entirely.

BB: What would you recommend to the person who might not have very much experience, but has the enthusiasm to give language creation a try themselves?

DP: First of all, that listserv is still there, and I’m still on it. It’s been there since 1991—so 2021, coming up, it’s going to be 30 years, it’s crazy. I was a newcomer when I joined. So you can always do that. That was the first conlang community, but there’s tons of conlang communities now. There’s tons everywhere. On every different platform. A nice place to go is the Language Creation Society’s website, conglang.org, because that’s going to point you in a bunch of different directions. You can collect all information about anything you need to know about conlanging, so if you start there you can get to a bunch of different places. 


Brian Burmeister teaches communication at Iowa State University. His writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He can be followed on Twitter: @bdburmeister.

 

 

 

David J. Peterson’s author photo by Jake Reinig

 

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Published on February 23, 2018 in Interviews, Interviews with Fiction Writers. (Click for permalink.)

Rachel R. Taube interviews Ros Schwartz, translator of TRANSLATION AS TRANHUMANCE

Cleaver Magazine Posted on February 6, 2018 by thwackFebruary 9, 2018

A Conversation with Ros Schwartz
translator of TRANSLATION AS TRANHUMANCE
by Mireille Gansel
from Feminist Press at CUNY 

Interview by Rachel R. Taube

Ros Schwartz has been a literary translator for 36 years and has been an active participant in the evolution of the profession. She has translated over 70 books from French to English by writers as diverse as Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun and French crime writer Dominique Manotti, as well as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. She has presided as vice-chair of the Translators Association, as chair of the European Council of Literary Translators Association and as chair of English PEN’s Writers in Translation program. Most recently Schwartz translated Translation as Transhumance, which was reviewed by Cleaver.

In this interview, Ros Schwartz discusses the process of translating a book about translation, including her work with Gansel, her theory of translation, and translation as activism.


Rachel R. Taube: In another interview, you said Translation as Transhumance is a unique project for you because you championed the book and found a publisher for it. What about the original made you decide that you needed to translate this book?

Ros Schwartz: My response to reading the French original was visceral, like falling in love. I was awed, first of all by Gansel’s exquisite style, which combines simplicity, lyricism and elegance, and then by the integrity and coherence in the way she has lived her life, making her translation work the concrete expression of her profound humanity. She has devoted herself to translating the voices of the persecuted, the poets who have been silenced, even to the extent of learning Vietnamese during the Vietnam War so as to translate the work of the poets.  She gives herself body and soul, literally, to all that she does, and my admiration for her is boundless.

I also experienced a sense of recognition: my background has some similarities with hers. I too am Jewish—second generation born in Britain—and my grandparents spoke only Yiddish, so although different from Gansel’s experience, I share that multilingual background common to families descended from exiles. Gansel interweaves her memoir with reflections on the art of translation, constantly interrogating and refining her practice. Her ethos chimes with mine and her approach to translation helped me better articulate my own. Translation is the deepest form of reading. By translating the book and being inhabited by it for many months, I was able to engage with Gansel’s ideas in a way that you just don’t as a casual reader.

RRT: Mireille Gansel, as much as possible, attempts to immerse herself in the world of the poet she is translating. I was especially struck by the image of her visiting Reiner Kunze in East Germany to listen to him read his work aloud in his “tiny blue kitchen.” How do you prepare yourself to translate a new author? If the author you’re translating is living, do you interact with them? To what extent did you get to know Gansel and her life?

RS: I work in the same way as Gansel when translating a living author. Capturing the author’s voice is the key that is the essence of translation. It’s not about translating individual words, or phrases or even paragraphs, but conveying the voice beneath them, the spirit of the work. At an early stage of the translation, I invited Gansel to join me at a translation workshop in Cambridge where we worked on an excerpt from the book. There, I heard her read, and spent time getting to know her a little. Six months later, I then visited her home, in Lyon, where we discussed some of the thornier passages and I gained a sense of her world. I also met her friend, Jean-Claude Duclos, director of the Musée Dauphinois, alongside whom she campaigns to protect the culture of the Camargue shepherds, which is fundamental to her book and to her concept of translation as transhumance. All this helped me grasp her voice, her spirit.

I was very nervous about translating Gansel and had planned to send her my translation and spend a couple of weeks going over it with her, to ensure she was happy with it. But after attending my workshop and seeing my approach, she generously told me that she trusted me absolutely and that the book was now ‘mine’ so to speak. She relinquished all control, which is the hardest thing for an author to do and the greatest gift for a translator. Of course, I was able to ask her for clarification and discuss any issues that arose, but she was adamant that she did not need to go over the translation with a fine-tooth comb. When my translation was published, she said: ‘I can feel that you’ve translated this with your Jewish soul.’ Which is a wonderful way of describing empathy. And empathy is the pre-condition for any translation. There needs to be a particular chemistry for a translation to gel and capture the author’s voice.

RRT: I’m curious about the particular challenges of translating a book about translation. This book is full of poems that Gansel translated from German or Vietnamese into French, which now appear in English. She spends pages describing the process of translating a single word. How did you translate these poems and the conversation around them?

RS: For the poems that exist in an English translation, I cited these (with appropriate credits). This was the case for most of the Nelly Sachs poems. For the Vietnamese and other poems that don’t exist in English, I translated from Gansel’s French and worked with her to ensure that my translations accurately reflected the originals. It is made clear in the notes which poems are my translations from Gansel’s French, and which are existing translations.

RRT: Gansel’s focus, in her translation work, is on the meaning or effect of the language, rather than its literal fidelity. She says she risks “going beyond the literal meanings of the words, in order to access their deeper meanings,” and refers to an interior or soul language, which she hears in “the silences between the lines.” How closely does this idea align with your own theory of translation, and how did you apply that theory to translating this book in particular? Did you ever find yourself swayed by Gansel’s theory as you worked with her words?

RS: Gansel eloquently articulates everything that I believe, which is one of the reasons the book resonated so powerfully for me. Translation is a holistic process, it’s not about the words on the page. It’s a complex balance between meaning and music. There are translations that are accurate yet clunky. That happens when a translator focuses solely on meaning but forgets that language is also music and rhythm. So sometimes you need to move away from the literal meaning to privilege music. With every translation, I weigh up where that balance lies. Gansel’s French is exquisite, precise, elegant and poetic. After drafting the translation with the focus on sense, I then reworked it many times concentrating on style and musicality. If I had to sum up the aim of a translation, it is to create the same response in the reader of the translation as that elicited by the source text in its readers. But to do that, you need to work within your own language and draw fully on the rich range of linguistic resources it offers, and those will be different from those of the original language. You may need to play with punctuation, or on the opposition between Latinate and Anglo-Saxon root words, the use (or not) of contractions. All these elements contribute to the texture of the writing. In a way, translation’s like ventriloquism: you try to find the voice you feel the writer would have had if they’d written in English. But that doesn’t mean making them sound English – you need to preserve their individuality and otherness. An almost impossible paradox.

RRT: One theme of this book is the colonization of language, and in particular the way in which German is colonized. Are there ways in which French is a colonized language? English?

RS: I would turn that question around and say rather that French and English are the colonizers. Gansel writes about how the German language was tainted by Nazism, and how writers have had to salvage it. Whereas English and French are dominant languages. The challenge for translators is to not allow our translations to be colonized by copy editors. For example, I translate a lot of Francophone North African writers who often keep Arabic words in the French. Because of France’s colonial history, the French reader will be more familiar with these terms than the English reader. I always fight to keep those words and cultural references in my translation and provide a glossary at the back of the book, since footnotes are not used in fiction. Salman Rushdie put it succinctly when he wrote: “To unlock a culture you need to understand its untranslatable words.” He keeps many Urdu words in his writing, at the same time making them perfectly understandable to the English-speaking reader within the context. That has been my guiding principle in my approach to translation.

Many African authors write in French or English rather than in any of the African languages because it’s the only way they can get published. The Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiongo, having previously written in English, chose to write Matigari ma Njiruungi in his native Gikuyu (1986) as well as his later Mũrogi wa Kagogo (2004) precisely to emphasize this point. The same is true of Indian authors. Little work is translated from the many languages of the subcontinent.

RT: You’ve described Gansel’s work as “translation as activism.” Gansel translated East German writers during the Cold War, and during the Vietnam War, she worked on a book of poetry to protest threats of American intervention. What is the role of the translator as activist? Do you see yourself as an activist, or particular projects you’ve done as activism?

RS: The translator has a huge role to play in challenging the gatekeepers. We can bring writers to the attention of publishers by championing their works, as Gansel has done, as I and other translators do. This is especially important when it comes to languages that publishers don’t generally read. One exemplary translator-activist is Deborah Smith, who translates from Korean and won the first Man Booker International prize for her translation of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. Shocked that no one was publishing books from languages such as Bangladeshi, Thai, Uzbek or Korean, Smith set out to redress this single-handedly by establishing a publishing house, Tilted Axis, which is ‘on a mission to shake up contemporary international literature’. (See the Cleaver review of Han Kang’s Human Acts, in Deborah Smith’s translation, and the New Yorker interview with Kang about the act of translation.)

The very first book I translated, I Didn’t Say Goodbye by Claudine Vegh, was an activist project for me. Comprising interviews with Holocaust survivors whose parents managed to save their children but not themselves, I knew the minute I read it that I had to translate it and see it published in English. Translation as Transhumance too is an activist mission for me. I took on this book as a personal passion project and actively worked to place it with a publisher in the UK and the USA, and have been tirelessly promoting it since.

More generally, I’ve been involved in English PEN’s Writers in Translation program (of which I am currently co-chair) since its beginnings. This programme is designed to support outstanding works in translation and help them reach readers and build new audiences. It is vital for translators to actively seek out works in the languages they translate from and champion them. It is also important for translators to work with organizations supporting exiled writers, take part in book festivals and public events and be part of the conversation.

It was translators who instigated the Women in Translation month, which a number of us from around the world took part in, to draw attention to the disproportionately few works by women writers that are translated. Similarly, it was translators who were the movers and shakers behind the first Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, launched earlier this year.

I also consider myself an activist in translator training (I co-founded a literary translation summer school in London and give regular workshops), and in campaigning for improved working conditions and rates for translators. These things are all interconnected: better training means better quality translations, and better translations means that more publishers will be prepared to take on international titles. Good conditions for translators foster better quality translations because translators are then able to devote the necessary time to each project.


Rachel-TaubeRachel R. Taube is pursuing her MFA in Fiction at UNC Wilmington. She has been an Electric Literature-Catapult Scholarship recipient and a Tent Creative Writing Fellow, and she holds a masters in Creative Writing and Gender Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. You can find her fiction in Storychord and Apiary Magazine. Follow her on Twitter at @racheltaube.

 

Ros Schwartz’s author photo by Anita Staff

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Published on February 6, 2018 in Interviews, Interviews with Translators. (Click for permalink.)

Michelle Fost Interviews Marc Labriola

Cleaver Magazine Posted on December 20, 2017 by thwackDecember 20, 2017

A Conversation with Marc Labriola, Author of DYING BEHAVIOUR OF CATS, from Quattro Books (Winner of the 2017 Ken Klonsky Award), 124 Pages

Interview by Michelle Fost

Congratulations to Marc Labriola on winning the 2017 Ken Klonsky Award for Dying Behaviour of Cats, along with publication of the novella by Quattro Books. You can read Marc’s first two published short stories, “Cutman” and “Self-Portrait with Broken Nose,” in Issues 7 and 9 of Cleaver Magazine. In Marc’s latest work, we follow Theo, a man shut inside the home of his father after a hurricane. There is a leopard perched above him, on the roof. Theo watches the news reporting his story on television, where they split the screen: on one side, Theo, and on the other, the leopard; as the crowd across the street looks on, Theo views himself as half man, half beast.


Michelle Fost: The leopard on the roof! In Dying Behaviour of Cats, Theo’s rich inner life seems to have become externalized. I wondered if there are writers who were models for you for what you set out to do here. Writers you admire? Can you talk a little about influences?

Marc Labriola: Yes, let’s begin with influences. A lot of my writing begins under it. Writing Dying Behaviour of Cats, it wasn’t “writers” who were influential so much as “books.” I’ll tell you what I mean by that. Theo’s a shut-in, so he becomes an expert on killing time. In one chapter he re-imagines the objects in his house for the purposes of entertainment. He figures out that if he blows into a baritone mouthpiece it sounds like starting a car. Or if he opens the latch of his sax case, he hears a gun cocking. Killing time, he realizes that everything doubles for something else. The most important thing he has though, are books, in particular, abandoned books; books left by his wife Catalina when she ran out on him. The Poetic Edda. Solomon and Saturn. Oedipus Rex. Odi et Amo, and others.

When I was writing the novella, I started reading the books that Theo would be reading, so they end up bleeding into the narrative. I read a lot of Catullus, this ancient Roman poet, who is Catalina’s favorite. Catullus is crazy. He goes from erotic love poem to obscene rant. That’s kind of a good way to describe Dying Behaviour of Cats. This happened to me with music too. I wrote most of this book under the influence of John Coltrane’s Interstellar Space album.

But if you’re looking to place this book in terms of writing style, it’s kind of like Gabriel Garcia Marquez trying to out drink Charles Bukowski.

MF: Cleaver published two of your stories, “Cutman” and “Self-Portrait with Broken Nose.” I wondered how you would compare writing the novella with writing short stories.

ML: Writing a novella is different from writing short stories because it ruins your life for longer. It’s as if everything in your real life has to answer to the fictional world you’ve created. Sometimes I’m chasing a word or an idea and I’m waiting for the city to somehow leave it in a place for me to trip over. On a street corner or subway car or back alley. It’s like I’m waiting for things to remind me of myself. And then when the city answers back, it’s like finding a man on the street that looks like you. You recognize yourself in strange things. Even simple things you encounter— a cat climbing the fire escape to the roof, a wedding ring beside the tub, a house key lying on the street, an open bathroom mirror, makes you aware that you are touching these amulets of everyday life. When I’m writing, everything has this symbolic weight.

Writing a novella is different from writing short stories because it ruins your life for longer. It’s as if everything in your real life has to answer to the fictional world you’ve created.

MF: Anything that stands out for you about the process of writing or revising the novella?

ML: I didn’t really start the book until I thought I was done. That’s when the real writing happened. The first time I read the manuscript from start to finish was in the middle of the night. And intersections between characters and ideas, that I’d never originally intended, started to emerge. And I cultivated those moments. So you will see strange symbols that unite the book—the colour red, eggs, the crab constellation, Saturn, the saxophone, and of course, cats. The test for truth is the collision of ideas, as if every moment in a story is just a return to what’s true. If that doesn’t happen, you can keep pounding on its chest, but the story won’t come to life.

MF: Are there things you accomplished in the novella that you’re especially pleased with? Any surprises during the writing?

ML: I made a discovery when I decided to eliminate dialogue. Don’t get me wrong, many characters speak throughout the book. But when they speak, their lines are embedded inside the words of the narrator. But then I took it a step further. When the story takes you towards the innermost thoughts of Theo, for example, the narrator too, becomes bewitched by the character and takes on the language of that character. Then when we are exposed to the thoughts of Catalina, the narrator adopts the “language” of Catalina. When you read the book, it forces you to read in this way, constantly moving in and out of the lexis of each character. The best way I can describe my narrative voice in Dying Behaviour of Cats is “demonic possession.”

MF: Reading and thinking about your stories and now Dying Behaviour of Cats, I was struck by a continued fascination with a cluster of themes—violence, masculinity, awareness of the body—and with a surprising lyricism that can develop out of a gritty, often crude surface. Theo from the novella and Andrea and Ben from the stories in Cleaver might be neighbors. Is their world one we can expect you to continue to write about in your next work? What’s next?

ML: It’s very interesting that you say that Andrea, Ben, and Theo, these three ruined men, could be neighbours, because my original conception was for a short story collection where all the characters lived in the same run-down apartment building. But, like a lot of conception, there are happy accidents. Dying Behaviour of Cats is one of those. This small story of a leopard on a man’s roof ended up uncoiling into a novella.

But, let’s talk about violence. You’re right about this cluster of themes. You know the first day I met my editor, he asked me to meet him in a café on the bottom floor of the building where the publishing house is. I knew what he looked like from the photos of him on the backs of his books, but he didn’t know me from Adam. So, I walk in to our first meeting, shoes polished, wearing this light grey Italian suit. And I see him right away. I go up to him and say, “Hi, Luciano?” He turns to me and says, “Holy shit, Marc? Are you Marc Labriola?” From reading my work, he thought I would show up with a split lip. Maybe a black eye. Or with a bottle of bourbon in a brown paper bag. Anyway, I’m telling you this because, yes, the novel focuses on the body, but it doesn’t end with the body.

The first day I met my editor… he turns to me and says, “Holy shit, Marc? Are you Marc Labriola?” From reading my work, he thought I would show up with a split lip. Maybe a black eye. Or with a bottle of bourbon in a brown paper bag. Anyway, I’m telling you this because, yes, the novel focuses on the body, but it doesn’t end with the body.

At one point, Theo tries to see how long he can go without eating, without sleeping, then without speaking. He is trying to break through the boundaries of his own body. The parts of the book that are most focused on the body are all about attempts to transcend it. At one point, after Theo has tried to hurt himself, he realizes that through trying to die, he feels as though he is slowly becoming immortal. That he has been building up a tolerance to death. And I think that’s very true of suffering. The same is true with your comment about masculinity. When you think it is most about the “masculine,” you find Theo searching for the mother who abandoned him, the wife who ran off. Hunting femininity and divinity.

In terms of what’s next, I’m currently writing a novel. It begins when an internationally renowned author dies at 90 years old, and surprises his family by requesting in his will that his body be buried in the little town in Mexico that was the setting for his most famous book. When his body is sent, and the world realizes the true location of his famous novel, journalists descend on the town, intent on discovering if the now cult characters actually exist in real life.

MF: Thanks so much for taking the time to answer these questions, and congratulations on the Ken Klonsky Prize and the publication. Best way to order a copy of Dying Behaviour of Cats?

ML: In Canada the book is available at Indigo, Chapters, Book City, and online retailers. In the US, the book is available online through Barnes and Noble and Amazon.


Michelle Fost is a writer living in Toronto. Her writing has appeared in Geist Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and elsewhere. She is a book review and fiction editor at Cleaver.

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