Yanara Friedland is a German-American
writer, translator and teacher. Her first book Uncountry: A Mythology was
the 2015 winner of the Noemi Fiction Prize. Abraq ad Habra: I will create as I speak, a digital chapbook, is available from Essay Press. She is
the recipient of a DAAD and an Arizona Commission of the Arts research grant in
support of a collection of essays written collaboratively in the German-Polish
and US-Mexican borderlands.
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most
recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I am not sure when I started writing Uncountry. I sometimes think I've
been writing it my whole life. There were so many narratives and characters
that I wanted to tend to and investigate that have been with me for a long
time. Writing the book felt like understanding the many geographies that
impacted my own becoming. From literary lineages to blood ancestors, historical
events and mythic lore, I was able to bring various threads into one place and
let them be in conversation with each other.
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or
non-fiction?
I really don't think in those terms. I have always written across and
within forms, and each work requires a different gesture. I remain open to what
that can look like. In terms of beginnings, I think I started with dreams, with
the fragment that obstinately courses the system and can never be fully captured.
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?
It depends on the project. Uncountry took many years and many drafts.
I have several folders of drafts, several books that are called Uncountry. It
took me a long time to really find
cohesion and attunement between the various narratives that the book is holding.
It was initially very unwieldy and for a long time rather unreadable. My second
book, mostly poems, came out of three long walks across European border
regions. I wrote this fairly quickly, though that evaluation may be relative. I
do keep notebooks, usually recording moments, observations, dreams and ideas.
They are often illegible, but keep me on track. There is often a logic in the
illegible note taking practices that I cherish that I often only understand
after some time.
4 - Where does a work of fiction 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?
Again, it depends. Uncountry began from many divergent and often short
prose pieces. Sometimes I would write between these shorter pieces and they
became a longer story, but I prefer in many ways juxtaposition to one large
cohesive sweep.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?
Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I am the sort of writer who likes being read, and so I like readings
as a way to make the work visible, and to also hear it in a collective space in
encounter with others. I read as a way to listen to the work, and as a way to
make let language travel and haunt.
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?
How can I approach you with care?
What is hiding behind our disastrous present?
What are the invisible worlds communicating?
What is the root of this country's sorrow?
How will we live here now?
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?
I think the moment we stop believing that the writer, or for that
matter any artist, maker has a role in culture we are in dangerous territory. Writers
often sit between spaces, at the margins, inquire and gather what is not always
seen. I believe in the writer as seer and augur, as someone who can constellate
the complexities of the worlds and offer throughways or at least space of
recognition. A writer is someone who listens, who is connected to the messages
of place, mystery, suffering. A culture without poets, writers artists is a
culture that wants to forget itself and has forgotten others.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor
difficult or essential (or both)?
I usually feel very honored by the hard work an editor does, tending
someone else's lines and concerns. I think this relationship is essential, not
necessarily to make the work better, but to begin to usher it out of my own
room towards the world. That being said, here are a lot of average editors out
there. I think it takes a very particular skill set and giftedness to be a good
editor.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily
given to you directly)?
The antidote to fear is a baby step.—Mark Baumer
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to
non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
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?
It begins with the lighting of a candle, with a notebook, half open
eyes. I usually don't write whole days at my desk, but a lot of writing also
happens when I am not writing; that is when I teach, take a train, stare at
people, when I sleep.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for
(for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Dreams, poetry, Clarice Lispector
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
baked apple cake, snow, a struck match
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 am always impacted by where I live, the landscapes that surround me,
right now the desert. I write frequently in the great companionship of music (Lauri
Anderson and Meredith Monk, Keith Jarret, Leonard Cohen among others) and in
collaboration with art. For Uncountry I worked with an amazing visual artist,
Mollie Hosmer Dillard, who created the images inside the book, for each History,
and also painted the book cover. Walking is important to me, or perhaps,
movement in general. I write well in trains, in transit, crossing the Atlantic.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or
simply your life outside of your work?
There are some core writers that carry me through most years: Unica Zürn's
work, Christa Wolf, Clarice Lispector, Ana Mendieta, oral histories and life
writing. More recently Svetlana Alexievich, Else Lasker Schüler, Daniel Borzutzky. Right now, I am reading a
lot of books on Berlin pre- WWI and the Sturm movement.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
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?
astrologer, rabbi, social worker
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
It stayed and persisted, grew and traveled, but I do other things too.
I find myself moving between a lot of different kind of action in the world. I
teach, I research, I work in communities. I am not completely identified with
"the writer" and yet it has been the one thing signaling continuity.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great
film?
20 - What are you currently working on?
A book of
essays (or maps) titled Groundswell, built from first hand accounts, interviews
and archival material speaking from the German-Polish border and the Sonoran borderlands.
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