12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jennifer May Newhook

Jennifer May Newhook’s first published short story was longlisted for the Writer’s Trust Journey Prize, and most recently her first novel, The Gulch, was longlisted for the NLCU Fresh Fish Award for Best Unpublished First Manuscript. Jennifer published her first poem at seventeen and in the years since has received recognition for her work in this genre by the Atlantic Writing Competition, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Awards, the Gregory J. Power Poetry Award, and the Riddle Fence Poetry Prize. Her poetry and short stories have been anthologized and published nationally and internationally in literary journals and magazines including Riddle Fence, The Newfoundland Quarterly, and The Pottersfield Portfolio. She took an extended hiatus from writing to raise small children and has now risen blinking from the rubble, eager to embrace her status as a debut author. Jennifer’s first full-length poetry collection, Last Hours, was published by Riddle Fence in Spring 2024. Jennifer works as a writer and editor in downtown St. John’s, Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland) where she lives with her partner, three teens, one tween, and two cats. She can be found on social media under the handles @Jennifer May Newhook (Facebook) and @jennymayrunaway (Instagram).

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

Well, Last Hours is only a few days old, so I can’t say that much has changed, yet! I would say that my most recent work, in terms of poetry, is definitely looser than my early stuff.

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

I published my first piece of writing when I was seventeen; it was a poem. That first publication certainly gave me the motivation to pursue poetry. I had a book when I was quite young—a collection of writing by children that contained all kinds of funny and thoughtful verse—that made the idea of writing poetry and having it appear in a book or magazine quite real for me, very early on. I was always a voracious reader of fiction and certainly wrote lots of that as well, but in terms of completing a piece, poetry definitely seemed more realistic and achievable.

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 subscribe to the “clock of the long now” school of creative thought! I need to ruminate and mull on things a great deal before the various strata of whatever I am working on are revealed to me. I do tend to produce rough first drafts quite quickly when I am inspired, but they are messy. I am not a note taker or planner. Part of the joy of writing for me is the element of surprise—I love surprising myself!

4 - Where does a poem or work of 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?

A poem for me almost invariably starts in a flash: a moment where a number of feelings and thoughts and images suddenly coalesce into “a thing.” For the most part, I would have to say that my poetry generally gets whittled into something smaller and more defined from a larger amorphous mass. There are exceptions: one of the longest poems in Last Hours, “Atwood Machine,” came from a very emotional place that I greatly expanded on with some research, and there are a couple of others in there like that as well. My first novel, The Gulch, came from a series of short stories that I just couldn’t seem to stop writing.

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

I love going to public readings but am less a fan of doing them. I read my own work out loud to myself all the time, though!

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?

I have a very dark bent. I see the shadows in everything and in all my work (poetry, short fiction, long-form narrative) I am definitely trying to see into that grey space. What’s in there? How does it affect us? How do we affect it? In terms of technical concerns, I do struggle with the parameters of genre writing, in particular. It is a difficult balance to produce original work that still adheres to the word counts and plot movements that publishers and agents are looking for. Mostly, I want to write what excites me. If I am laughing diabolically at my desk, I feel that is a good sign.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

Oh my gosh. Well, the writer provides the seeds for all kinds of invention and creation. The writer is out there describing things and experiences from a very specific viewpoint that is so personal and therefore always novel, and the hope is (as a reader as well as from a writerly perspective) that a chime of understanding and emotional growth can come from that, that will connect us as a society. I do know that the role of writer should NOT be to simply provide data for machine learning.

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

I love working with an editor! It is so easy to get buried in your own work. A good editor can really help you see what’s going on in there and pull the guts of the work out to examine it. Between the two of you, it should go back together more neatly meshed, greased up, and ready to run smoothly. I work as an editor myself, so it has really been illuminating to see and experience both sides of that process. My skin is pretty thick when it comes to receiving editorial advice, but I am very tender hearted when it comes to delivering that advice to someone else!

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

Well, the first piece of advice that I received at large—and actually attempted to follow—was to write daily. You learn so much about your own process, and it’s good to maximize your productivity once you understand what the best writing times are for you … but it’s not always possible. That’s an ideal situation to aspire to.

The best piece of advice I’ve received recently came from the editor of this collection, poet, and novelist Sue Goyette. When we first met virtually, I was nervous about what was expected of me. She said: “Your orders are to prepare to do the work. Get yourself in the right headspace. Spend some time clearing your mind.” I don’t think anybody had ever given me permission to do that before! To just take some walks, dabble in reading, relax, and ponder. Very helpful advice.

And my own advice is: Keep those scraps! Every bit of writing that actually makes it onto paper or into the screen has some value. You wrote it down for a reason! Last Hours was very much conjured from literal scraps of paper, accumulated during a hectic time of raising young children. I tried so hard to “write,” but the time just wasn’t there. Those scraps and fragments ended up holding so much beauty and meaning, and I feel very proud that I fought to get them recorded, whatever way I could—I think there were even some words written in eyeliner on a band aid wrapper!

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to form narrative fiction to dramatic script)? What do you see as the appeal?

I find artistic genres to be quite fluid and mutually informative. One of my favorite projects I’ve worked on was writing a short film script based solely on an already-composed musical score. I would love to see that script animated some day! For me, poetry is the ultimate doorway to all writing. The way I think when I am writing poetry is simultaneously expansive and extremely focused. It benefits my short fiction and my long-form narrative. Whenever I get stuck, I return to poetry. I feel like if I can’t write poetry, I can’t write anything!

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?

Unless I am lucky enough to having funding for a specific project, my workday is usually spent trying to balance my paid work with my current writing projects, which at the moment are a collection of speculative short fiction and a new novel. I have a twenty-year-old, two teens, and tween who need transporting to school every morning, so by the time all that is done, it’s usually 9:30 or 10 a.m. If I’m really organized, I’ll do a bit of housework, go for my walk, and aim to be sitting at my desk by 11 a.m., where I’ll usually work until 2:30 or so when my youngest gets out of elementary school. If they have after school plans, I might head back to the studio and continue working until supper time. I have had periods of time where I was motivated enough to get up early and get an hour or two in before morning routines start at 7:30 a.m., but that is not the norm for me.

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

Well, during a time when I was fortunate to receive funding to pursue a project as well as a daily writing practice, I learned very quickly that my episodes of writer’s block—which used to frustrate me terribly and scare me away from my desk for weeks—actually only last a few days. If I’m really stuck, I’ll head out to the vegetable garden behind my studio and do some garden work. If my mind drifts in the right way while I’m occupied by a physical task, often the solution will just present itself! A walk will sometimes create the same opportunity. And moving into the headspace to write poems and getting some of that type of writing on the page will often unlock a narrative block for me.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

In the larger sense of “home,” as in my region of the world, I would have to say wild rose, spruce forest, salt water, and wet bog. As in “my own personal home,” I would say wood smoke, cooking, and bath products. I take a lot of baths!

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?

Well, obviously dreams. Dream imagery sneaks its way into almost all of my projects. Research of any type can certainly send me off on different tangents and will inform my work, whether I intend it to or not. My short fiction skews toward the speculative, so science and politics often sneak in there. I’ve also written several ekphrastic poems based on visual art by David Blackwood and John Hartman—one of those, a series called “After Viewing” actually won some component of the Atlantic Poetry Prize a zillion years ago.

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

I am very much an omnivorous consumer of writing—I am intrigued by anything that can sweep me away regardless of genre, subject matter, story structure, or expertise. I am definitely drawn by the dark side, so I do enjoy contemporary horror and ghost stories. I am just finishing up my first novel, The Gulch, which is a ghost story and definitely horror adjacent, so I am always on the look out for the creep factor. I’m not into guts and gore at all, but I live for ideas, images, and experiences that really raise the hairs on the back of my neck. If I’m writing prose, I’ll often gravitate towards short stories and literary fiction. If I’m looking to just tap out and relax, my go to is always historical fiction—I love Tudor-era and medieval settings.

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

I would love to take a family vacation somewhere warm in the dead of winter. For our twentieth anniversary my husband and I took a “honeymoon” in Montreal this past year—it was the first time we had ever been on a plane together! I would love to expand on that sometime with a trip to the Mediterranean with him.

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 have always joked that I didn’t care what I got paid to do and that I’d be happy to get paid to sort colored pieces of string. Then I started working as an editor, and I realized … that kind of is my job now—except with words! Whether or not I pursued writing, I would have ended up somewhere in the literary world for sure. I’ve spent many an hour working in independent bookstores which is a fabulous gig, except the pay is absolute shite.

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

I couldn’t not do it. According to my mother, my first word was “book,” and I’ve been obsessed with writing and reading my entire life.

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

I really enjoyed Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth and Lindsay Wong’s book of short stories, Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality. They were both off the hook in completely different ways, which is something I aspire to!

20 - What are you currently working on?

Many things that I liken to pushing a boulder up a hill are coming to pass—myself and my partner are entering the end stages of a massive home renovation that has taken place over the past decade on a shoestring budget, engineered with blood, sweat, and tears. All four kids are now in the double digits and require less hands-on daily care—one of them even has a driver’s license, which has been great. I’ve just released my first poetry collection, Last Hours. I am finishing the final draft of my first novel, The Gulch and hopefully finding a home for that manuscript, as well. I am gathering the internal fortitude to begin my second novel, Maggot Beach, which I am in the process of researching. It is partially inspired by the journals and writings of my great aunt who was hearing impaired and spent a great deal of time unjustly incarcerated in psychiatric institutions. I am eager to dig into that project, but I think I need to recharge a bit—I should probably take a minute and clean my house!

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