Sandra Doller, Not Now Now

My review of Sandra Doller's Not Now Now (Rescue Press, 2025) is now online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. Catch my review of her collaborative (with Ben Doller) The Yesterday Project (Sidebrow Books, 2016) here, my review of her Chora (Ahsahta Press, 2010) here, and my review of her Leave Your Body Behind (Les Figues, 2015) here.

new from above/ground press: Doller, Myles, Crosby, Davies, Moseman, Polukoshko, Unsworth + The Peter F Yacht Club, VERSeFest 2025 special,

Sandra Doller, I’ll try this hour $5 ; Eileen Myles, Teenage Whales $5 ; Gregory Crosby, Parallax Days: poems ; Kevin Davies, Market Discipline $5 ; Lori Anderson Moseman, whittle gristle $5 ; Thor Polukoshko, Passing Through: A Traveler’s Log(s): Movements 1-23 $5 ; Lydia Unsworth, GAG $5 ; The Peter F Yacht Club #35: 2025 VERSeFest Special $6 ;

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2025
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With forthcoming chapbooks by: J-T Kelly, R. Kelowe, Tom Jenks, Mandy Sandhu, Jon Cone, Yaxkin Melchy (trans. by Ryan Greene, Mrityunjay Mohan, Laynie Browne, Meredith Quartermain, Nada Gordon, Andrew Brenza, Brook Houglum, Orchid Tierney, Noah Berlatsky, Terri Witek, David Phillips and probably others! (yes: others,

Touch the Donkey : new interviews with Gould, Dean, Jenks, Doller + Inniss,

Anticipating the release next week of the forty-fourth issue of Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], why not check out the interviews that have appeared over the past few weeks with contributors to the forty-third issue: Henry Gould, Leesa Dean, Tom Jenks, Sandra Doller and Scott Inniss.

Interviews with contributors to the first forty-two issues (more than two hundred and seventy interviews to date) remain online, including: John Levy, Taylor Brown, Grant Wilkins, Lori Anderson Moseman, russell carisse, Ariana Nadia Nash, Wanda Praamsma, Michael Harman, Terri Witek, Laynie Browne, Noah Berlatsky, Robyn Schelenz, Andy Weaver, Dessa Bayrock, Anselm Berrigan, Alana Solin, Michael Betancourt, Monty Reid, Heather Cadsby, R Kolewe, Samuel Amadon, Meghan Kemp-Gee, Miranda Mellis, kevin mcpherson eckhoff and Kimberley Dyck, Junie Désil, Micah Ballard, Devon Rae, Barbara Tomash, Ben Meyerson, Pam Brown, Shane Kowalski, Kathy Lou Schultz, Hilary Clark, Ted Byrne, Garrett Caples, Brenda Coultas, Sheila Murphy, Chris Turnbull and Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Stuart Ross, Leah Sandals, Tamara Best, Nathan Austin, Jade Wallace, Monica Mody, Barry McKinnon, Katie Naughton, Cecilia Stuart, Benjamin Niespodziany, Jérôme Melançon, Margo LaPierre, Sarah Pinder, Genevieve Kaplan, Maw Shein Win, Carrie Hunter, Lillian Nećakov, Nate Logan, Hugh Thomas, Emily Brandt, David Buuck, Jessi MacEachern, Sue Bracken, Melissa Eleftherion, Valerie Witte, Brandon Brown, Yoyo Comay, Stephen Brockwell, Jack Jung, Amanda Auerbach, IAN MARTIN, Paige Carabello, Emma Tilley, Dana Teen Lomax, Cat Tyc, Michael Turner, Sarah Alcaide-Escue, Colby Clair Stolson, Tom Prime, Bill Carty, Christina Vega-Westhoff, Robert Hogg, Simina Banu, MLA Chernoff, Geoffrey Olsen, Douglas Barbour, Hamish Ballantyne, JoAnna Novak, Allyson Paty, Lisa Fishman, Kate Feld, Isabel Sobral Campos, Jay MillAr, Lisa Samuels, Prathna Lor, George Bowering, natalie hanna, Jill Magi, Amelia Does, Orchid Tierney, katie o’brien, Lily Brown, Tessa Bolsover, émilie kneifel, Hasan Namir, Khashayar Mohammadi, Naomi Cohn, Tom Snarsky, Guy Birchard, Mark Cunningham, Lydia Unsworth, Zane Koss, Nicole Raziya Fong, Ben Robinson, Asher Ghaffar, Clara Daneri, Ava Hofmann, Robert R. Thurman, Alyse Knorr, Denise Newman, Shelly Harder, Franco Cortese, Dale Tracy, Biswamit Dwibedy, Emily Izsak, Aja Couchois Duncan, José Felipe Alvergue, Conyer Clayton, Roxanna Bennett, Julia Drescher, Michael Cavuto, Michael Sikkema, Bronwen Tate, Emilia Nielsen, Hailey Higdon, Trish Salah, Adam Strauss, Katy Lederer, Taryn Hubbard, Michael Boughn, David Dowker, Marie Larson, Lauren Haldeman, Kate Siklosi, robert majzels, Michael Robins, Rae Armantrout, Stephanie Strickland, Ken Hunt, Rob Manery, Ryan Eckes, Stephen Cain, Dani Spinosa, Samuel Ace, Howie Good, Rusty Morrison, Allison Cardon, Jon Boisvert, Laura Theobald, Suzanne Wise, Sean Braune, Dale Smith, Valerie Coulton, Phil Hall, Sarah MacDonell, Janet Kaplan, Kyle Flemmer, Julia Polyck-O’Neill, A.M. O’Malley, Catriona Strang, Anthony Etherin, Claire Lacey, Sacha Archer, Michael e. Casteels, Harold Abramowitz, Cindy Savett, Tessy Ward, Christine Stewart, David James Miller, Jonathan Ball, Cody-Rose Clevidence, mwpm, Andrew McEwan, Brynne Rebele-Henry, Joseph Mosconi, Douglas Barbour and Sheila Murphy, Oliver Cusimano, Sue Landers, Marthe Reed, Colin Smith, Nathaniel G. Moore, David Buuck, Kate Greenstreet, Kate Hargreaves, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Erín Moure, Sarah Swan, Buck Downs, Kemeny Babineau, Ryan Murphy, Norma Cole, Lea Graham, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Oana Avasilichioaei, Meredith Quartermain, Amanda Earl, Luke Kennard, Shane Rhodes, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Sarah Cook, François Turcot, Gregory Betts, Eric Schmaltz, Paul Zits, Laura Sims, Stephen Collis, Mary Kasimor, Billy Mavreas, damian lopes, Pete Smith, Sonnet L’Abbé, Katie L. Price, a rawlings, Suzanne Zelazo, Helen Hajnoczky, Kathryn MacLeod, Shannon Maguire, Sarah Mangold, Amish Trivedi, Lola Lemire Tostevin, Aaron Tucker, Kayla Czaga, Jason Christie, Jennifer Kronovet, Jordan Abel, Deborah Poe, Edward Smallfield, ryan fitzpatrick, Elizabeth Robinson, nathan dueck, Paige Taggart, Christine McNair, Stan Rogal, Jessica Smith, Nikki Sheppy, Kirsten Kaschock, Lise Downe, Lisa Jarnot, Chris Turnbull, Gary Barwin, Susan Briante, derek beaulieu, Megan Kaminski, Roland Prevost, Emily Ursuliak, j/j hastain, Catherine Wagner, Susanne Dyckman, Susan Holbrook, Julie Carr, David Peter Clark, Pearl Pirie, Eric Baus, Pattie McCarthy, Camille Martin and Gil McElroy.

The forthcoming forty-fourth issue features new writing by: Miles Austin, J-T Kelly, Naomi Cohn, Alice Burdick, Melissa Eleftherion, Jennifer Firestone + Catriona Strang.

And of course, copies of the first forty-two issues are still very much available. Why not subscribe?

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Sandra Doller and Ben Doller, The Yesterday Project

Yesterday yesterday started. Movement in the bed, chronological. Fast morning and warm tea, getting colder in the carafe. A new project, a reality show. Each day, a performance of living. Each record, a matter. This is what it’s like to be here.

In collage there was a younger girl with attention problems who made a photography art project called “This is what it’s like in here” showing how sad it was to be her, sad little negligee and fake blood and sorry eyes. I always hated that line, that direction, that girl. Pity the animal.

This is what. Westerns with Joseph Cotton and Gary Cooper and the Preston Sturges actor who survived. No popcorn. Raw goji berry chocolate pieces. Cauliflower steak and tofu steak and wild rice and spinach salad. Lentil soup. Egg frittata with red peppers. Flavor tray. Gertrude Stein and Maria Damon. Bob Kauffman. Fanny Howe at the end of it all, her wild childhood now in pieces.

I emailed the doctor who didn’t get the slides of your original lesion, no word on the real diagnosis, no word on. (“July 18, 2014”)

As the press release to Sandra Doller and Ben Doller’s collaborative prose-work The Yesterday Project (Sidebrow Books, 2016) informs: “The Yesterday Project finds Ben Doller and Sandra Doller undertaking a seemingly simple, stripped-down, though thoroughly brave and highly personal blind collaboration. Each separately wrote a document recording the previous day, every day, for 32 days, without sharing their work over the summer of 2014 in the shadow of a diagnosis of life-threatening illness: Melanoma cancer, Stage 3. The resulting work is a declaration of dependence—a relentlessly honest chronicle of shared identity and the risks inherent in deep connection.”

I’ve long been fascinated by response projects (or as theirs is, a “parallel project”) such as these, produced by couples who also write individually: Sandra Dollar’s books include Oriflamme (Ahsahta Press, 2005), Chora (Ahsahta Press, 2010) [see my review of such here], Man Years (Subito Press, 2011) and Leave Your Body Behind (Les Figues, 2015) [see my review of such here], and Ben Doller’s books include Dead Ahead (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), FAQ (Ahsahta Press, 2009), Radio, Radio (Fence Books, 2010) and FAUXHAWK (Wesleyan University Press, 2015) [see my review of such here]. As far as other poet-couples working on conjoined projects, one could point to Robert Kroetsch and Smaro Kamboureli, as she composed her travel journal, in the second person (Longspoon, 1985), and he composed his Letters to Salonika (Grand Union Press, 1983) as epistolary in direct response to her absence, or even Daphne Marlatt and Betsy Warland’s Two Women in a Birth (Guernica Editions, 1994), Patrick Lane and Lorna Crozier’s No Longer Two People (Turnstone Press, 1979) and Roo Borson and Kim Maltman’s The Transparence of November/Snow (Quarry Press, 1985) (Christine and I have been slowly working on our own, which we discussed here). In an interview posted at The Rumpus in November,2015, the Dollers talk about their collaborative project, and their crafting of an “androgynous shared identity”:

The Rumpus: How did the idea for this project come about?

Ben Doller: We were in a rough patch, as the book makes clear. I had been diagnosed with cancer (stage III melanoma), and our world suddenly looked very different. It was difficult to see the significance of writing amidst the shock and despair, and I think Sandra decided at some point that perhaps a collaborative, ritualized project could benefit us both in different ways. We had significantly and rapidly changed our lifestyle, and there was a desire to buy into homeopathic remedies and cures. I’ve never been a meditative sort—most of my writing is anxiety driven. I think that Sandra thought this project could be a sort of Trojan Horse to trick me into a more meditative approach to creative practice and, in turn, life.

Sandra Doller: The answer above is interesting to me. The way this project is. I like to hear the secret thoughts of my constant companion. Even if we think we’re communicating everything, we’re not. There’s always some surprise in the revelation, the articulation. I don’t remember it that way. Not exactly. I suppose factually—I did decide we had to do this. It’s a way of being alive.

Rumpus: There must be something fascinating about reading the secrets of the person you know best, even if those secrets are perceptions of your shared days together. Ben, your last name used to be Doyle, and Sandra, yours was Miller, right? How did you get the idea to meld your last names? Why was this important for you?

Sandra: We’d been together/married (same thing) for two years and when we moved to California we made a new name. We like to practice androgynous shared identity. This is ongoing. Although when Ben got sick, I had to realize we don’t share a body. And now, pregnant as I am, that is apparent in every way. We share a body and we don’t. We share a name yet people still assume I took his. My father addresses my mail to Mrs. John Benjamin Doller, which makes me lethal.

The Yesterday Project is actually their second collaboration, after The Sonneteers (Editions Eclipse, 2014), and where that earlier work (composed a decade or so prior to this current work) was a far more direct collaboration, this new project was composed as two distinct threads composed side-by-side, without either reading what the other had written. What makes the combination of the two threads curious is in seeing the parallels that float through such, as they both respond to their shared previous days, one after another, including their unspoken moments, shared outings and day to day tasks, and shared and individual responses and anxieties around Ben’s threatened health. Given there are two in a shared space writing concurrently, the project becomes an intriguing memory project, articulating the different perspectives, what either recall, and how, and what either might choose to highlight from the immediate day prior. The book also includes a series of wonderfully mundane details, from cooking, reading and simply being, some of which reveal the most astounding insight, and at other times, become almost self-conscious (“There are so many things I forgot to put in the yesterdays that would probably make better news.”).

I find it curious, also, that their prose styles match so closely, with only the occasional note or detail reminding which authored which piece (although Ben appears to compose his pieces with far fewer paragraph breaks, and both wrote their date/titles in different formats), which, according to the interview, was entirely deliberate on their part, stripping away their own individual styles. As they collaboratively respond: “And we did shoot for no tone. We talked a few times about writing in a not-trying-to-write kind of way. Not being clever, cute, sound-based, punny, poetic, or engaging any of our familiar writing habits or tics. This was difficult, but I think it changed writing for both of us in a permanent way. Just documenting. Just the facts. Though there is no such thing.”

Yesterday was the day that we met a person. She had a hot tub that her grandmother had handed down to her at her wedding, and it sat on her back porch for three years and now she had a baby and she wanted it cleared out. She was selling it real cheap, 175 dollars, and we found her on Craigslist. I think it was around noon or one o’clock. Previously we had eaten a smoothie and, I believe, some leftover rice and beans. I almost wrote rhythm and blues. Do I only know two songs that repeat yesterday predominantly, The Beatles and The Cure? The woman lived in Yukka Valley and her puppy had chewed on the side of the hot tub. It was enormous. It takes 20 minutes to get from Yukka from our place. Each corner was missing wooden slats that covered the tub guts. But the rest looked clean, very clean, except for the dusty top, which was very nice actually, under the grime, and underneath, which was filled with detritus. I could tell you wanted it. The woman was young, but she had a baby, and her husband had told her they couldn’t afford the $400 to hook the tub up. I could tell I wanted it. Too good of a deal, too great for our place in the desert, under the deep skies, soaking in warm water, listening to the coyotes cry. (“08.12.2014”)

Given their looming health crisis, there is an obvious anxiety that threads itself through their collaboration (the largest, admittedly, of a number of anxieties that run through the book, including: “I am trying to be better. I am trying to see people.”), one that most likely opens up the possibility for a deeper level of intimacy in composing the two sides of their conversation (and, despite the fact that pieces weren’t read by the other, these are pieces directed at each other, which make them very much a conversation; simply because the texts weren’t read doesn’t mean they weren’t communicating). This book might not have been originally intended for publication, but make for an incredibly deep and rich conversation between their private and public selves, both individually and together.

Yesterday we spoke a bit about this project, but later in the day, about who it could possibly be for, about the obligation, the vacancy, the things that are left out. Everything is left out. We do have sex. We do get mad. The project is not a project in complete transparency, rather, one in willful obfuscation. But we haven’t decided this. The first rule of yesterday is no talking about the yesterday. We shied away from it. I was pissed to have to go over it again, a day with family, a day with so many banal frustrations, none that I wanted to elucidate. But that was later in the day. Earlier we woke, and started getting ready to see my parents off. First plan was breakfast at Great Maple. My dad starting texting a bit early, I think they were worried about making it to the airport in time. I texted back, be there in half an hour. They had already pulled their car out when we got there, there was some anxiety. There was plenty of time. (“08.05.2014”)

Sandra Doller, Leave Your Body Behind

So there he sits, condensing away. Condensating. Every vowel so purpose, so dirty hole. Who are the ones that shake it loose my way. Shake some action, my feet. Like a radio stop. Here we are at at the bridge again. I had nothing specific in mind. When I asked you to hold the bag. Nothing in particular when I put it in the park and walked up the see saw under the armpit border in another country in an orphan train. I’m getting loose away from it like all those slut shamey bypass pills. You should be paying me not to procreate. If I popped you’d be sorry then. I believe so much in shame. It’s just sluts that don’t exist.

I’m stunned by San Diego writer Sandra Doller’s remarkable Leave Your Body Behind (Los Angeles CA: Les Figues, 2015), a book described as a mix between novel, memoir, exploratory essay and prose poem that, through the combination, manages to become both none and all of the above. Powerful, unrelenting and entirely physical, Leave Your Body Behind pushes and thrashes through an accumulation of short sections in which she “actively relives, revives and revamps her own memories.” Through the space of the book she explores memory, space and accountability, utilizing the structures of fiction, non-fiction and poetry to blend into something fluid, that exists impossibly easy and wonderfully complex. As she writes: “That Amy Tan really knows how to stay on track. If I could whip up something like a room, and a mother, and some situations, I’d really have something to share. As it is, I only have this little observation to offer, petty as it is. I hope you will accept it in the true and conflicted heart wrenching manner it is offered. Proffered.” Part of what has appealed for some time about Les Figues is its ability to refuse what many consider “bookstore designations” for its titles, including “literature” on the back cover instead of, say, “fiction” or “memoir,” either of which would have been an incomplete designation. Remember when Vancouver writer Michael Turner’s Hard Core Logo first appeared as “poetry,” and later, once the film adaptation was released, was reprinted as “fiction”? For certain works, the declaration can appear to be rather arbitrary.

Does work equal energy? Apart from physics. Work is demand. Energy is forgive. Energy is something you want and want to keep. Work is something you trade. Take my work, leave me my energy. College is made of people. People require energy which is work. You have to get rid of some things. Give up things. Spend your money. College gets a negative w-rap. Things that are similar are not things. There you could say stop asking me taking me. Now: you say, please ask me take me. Now you are lucky to get suck work. You are lucky to get work. You are lucky to give away your energy to people or things. You give it almost for free. Now. There is nothing similar. Not anymore. It’s a dirty word. Get burned. Stay bad.

Editrice of 1913 Press and 1913: A Journal of Forms, Doller is the author of four previous works—Oriflamme (Ahsahta Press, 2005), Chora (Ahsahta Press, 2010), Man Years (Subito Press, 2011) and Sonneteers (Editions Eclipse, 2014)—all of which display an engagement with a blending of forms and shapes and movement. In an interview posted in 2014 at Entropy, she writes:

Lately, I’ve been using this Lyn Hejinian quote for almost everything—from thinking about poetry & dance, to answering this question—so I’ll pop that in here. It’s from The Language of Inquiry...which bears reading/re-reading, yes/wow:

“The language of poetry is a language of inquiry, not the language of a genre. It is that language in which a writer (or a reader) both perceives and is conscious of the perception. Poetry, therefore, takes as its premise that language is a medium for experiencing experience.”

Poetry is so many things—political speech, resistance, music, comedy—and has different roles in different contexts. In Slovenia and Russia and Mexico and Canada, in my limited experience, poets seem to be treated differently than in the US, where to say you are a “poet” to a non-poet listener is like saying you’re an anarchist who lives in the desert in a tent made of decomposing trash, by choice.

Sandra Doller, Chora

Like i’m about to get on

a really long train

the train that i’m talking about

go open

through oakland

a train over the ocean

i don’t mean a lake

a train over the sea (“Like I’m About to Get On”)

Composed on a train is Sandra Doller’s Chora (2010), her second trade collection, and first with her new name, since publishing her maiden-named Oriflamme (Ahsahta, 2005). Point by point and clack by clack, these pieces extend themselves across a singular line of track, furthering, as some points have little to do with others, simply another point on the line. Wasn’t it bpNichol who wrote, sometimes the poems connect, even if only composed by the same hand? Chora is a poem on landscapes, of watching; as she writes in her Author’s Statement:

Chora is a locomotive text. It was conceived on a train. A 50-plus hour train trip from Iowa to Oakland. And back. Over 100 hours on a train. Plus an 8-hour delay at Donner’s Pass, with a less cannibalist outcome. I was en route to a wedding. And back. I missed my man. I read books. I filled three notebooks with scribbling. A year later, after my own wedding, I re-opened them. And Chora came out moving, locomoting, pulling.

The poem opens a door, and the poet writes on through, writing “what great open door through / the ocean spat strands of this” (p 77), writing “i’ll talk to you / tomorrow / when she opens / a door” (p 48). A poem that points towards openings, and fragments its unbroken line, unbroken poem, down that long length of track, and subsequent purpose, writing how “narrative bruise repeats people” (p 30) or “be sure / where does this take us.” (p 57). A good question: where does this take us? Not the destination that matters (that can be for a subsequent volume) but the journey, itself. Or the last part of the poem “Please Review.” that writes:

the phone in me says

go

with tambour hair

here is a case

for you

may you simple

viral

perfection

under microscope cope

could you get to me

red gross hills

children rack

everything

is from a can

one tin

12 or 20 questions: with Sandra Doller

Sandra Doller's new name is Sandra Doller. Her first book Oriflamme (Ahsahta Press 2005, published under her former name, Sandra Miller) was a word featured in the 2009 National Spelling Bee, yet was written 6 years before that bee. Coincidence? Her second book, Chora, is hot off the roller, also from Ahsahta. Doller is the founder & editrice of the serendipitously named 1913 a journal of forms/1913 Press. She lives all over with her man and their pups.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My life had already changed. & I hope my work keeps changing with my life, not vice versa. I would be plum sorry if my art impacted my life as opposed to the other way around…

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I come to poetry at last, if I come to poetry at all. No seriously, I tried everything seriously everything else first: drugs, performance art, travel, hitchhiking, the banjo, water-sculpting…

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

I don’t start writing projects. I apologize that all my answers are negations. No they’re not. Yes they are. My writing is notes, a rehearsal.

4 - Where does a poem or prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

I’m pretty sure I’ve only ever written one poem.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I like to do readings, but I hate to do them as myself. Most poetry readings make me want to run to another art form, one that involves knives. There are exceptions.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

Theoretical concerns are in front of my writing. The Wubba to my dog. I think the current questions are impossible to answer, which is what makes them fascinating in the first place.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

The current writer competes with TV. Poorly. Something needs to compete poorly with TV. I think the writer should make people want to do something other than write.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Nothing could be more difficult or essential than working with the inside editor.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Buckle up. I am newly afraid of highways after moving to California. In terms of writing, I guess the opposite advice would ring true: Unbuckle. Down. People are usually sorry when they give me advice. See?

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to prose, or even, translation)? What do you see as the appeal?

I don’t believe in genres. Honestly, I don’t even teach genres as separate, which makes my teaching impossible.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I write emails. Otherwise, I get a summer.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

Outside myself.

13 - What do you really want?

A chocolate ice cream on a sugar cone with chocolate sprinkles that’s perfectly melted and no more. Either that or Time. Time not wasted on the computer. It’s a tie there.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I don’t know who David W. McFadden is, but I’d like to read his book. My work is influenced, I hope, by other forms first and then books. And lots of things that don’t translate into books—like Bob Dylan and Joan Fontaine.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I once dreamt that I was hosting the Oscars, but I’d forgotten to prepare. It was around the time I was newly married to my man Ben, and his mom Connie, my mother-in-law, she thought it was really funny that I thought I was hosting the Oscars. But I didn’t think it was funny, I thought it was stressful, really a lot of pressure.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Where do I sign up?

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I don’t really think I am a writer. I have a job as a professor. That’s what I spend my time doing. Is writing an occupation anymore? I ask that earnestly. I’d like to sing Fado. Or be integrally involved in a revolution.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

Actually, it’s a fight to write, as opposed to doing everything else. All those other things have to get done. Or do they? Seriously I think I might have loggorhea…is that what it’s called? Yes, I think writing is a disease.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

I’m reading Clarice Lispector’s biography, Why This World by Benjamin Moser. I’ll probably never finish it at the rate I’m going. She would make a great film, so I’d like to see that.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Man Years.

12 or 20 questions (second series);