1 - How
did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to
your previous? How does it feel different?
Having
a collection of stories I can hold in my hands is gratifying! It has a weight.
It hasn’t changed my life in any significant way . . . yet.
My recent stories lean more poetic than narrative. I am focused much more on image than I used to be. Some stories start with a clear image in mind, then the narrative flows from and around it. “Tending the Elephant” is one of those stories. Also, when I was writing “Stranger” I kept seeing a coin; originally it was a coin going into a slot machine—meant to represent how we construct our idea of someone else, someone distant. I didn’t end up using the slot machine, but the coin is still in there.
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I started writing stories in my late teens, after I read Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. In all my years of reading at school, I’d never come across anything like it. The emotion I felt from those simple sentences gave me so much pleasure. I didn’t know you could do that. I read and wrote poems, too, but I’ve always felt an outsider to poetry. I am not trained. Non-fiction is something I wrote for school. After finishing my MFA program in fiction, though, I wrote a lot of articles and essays, as a break from stories. I still write essays here and there.
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?
Especially if it’s a flash, I usually write a draft quickly, then edit slowly. But some stories, and I think some of my best ones, first come to me in lines here and there. They percolate. Then when I have enough random lines in my Notes app, I tackle a draft. From there it goes much more quickly.
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?
I wasn’t planning to write a book when I wrote many of the stories in The Clarity of Hunger. But a few were written when I knew what I wanted for the collection. The hybrid manuscript I’m writing now includes a lot of pieces I’m writing for the book. I have a lot more control over what I want to say now, while still pushing the idea of the theme into unexpected places.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love readings! I’ve always loved reading work aloud to people. When I was in college, I’d read my favorite stories and plays (Kafka, Mann, Chekhov) to good friends. The writing comes alive then, and I love sharing them.
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 don’t have a pre-formed philosophy of writing to offer. I like to write the stories I like to read, and those stories often include a strange element nestled against the familiar, everyday things. All with the intention of helping me see better. I do have many questions, about power dynamics, beauty, apocalypse, what drives us, but I’m rather let my work ask them, one by one, rather than articulate them here.
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?
As long as we’re here and alive, writers need to make a space for themselves in the larger culture, especially in times of political trouble. After the 2016 U.S. election, a lot of writers took a break from writing, because they felt their work didn’t matter. I think people were in shock. Thankfully, that didn’t last too long. Even if you’re writing non-political works, you’re still contributing to the whole.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I couldn’t imagine not having an editor. I know from years of proofreading and editing that writers have a blind spot when reviewing their own work. At Word West Press, Joshua Graber was my editor, and it was a fun and extremely helpful process. He has a light touch, and he completely understands my work. We had wonderful conversations in the margins.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Trust the reader. I always go through in revision and cut out any explanations or repetitions where I can.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
I used to see these genres as separate, but the more I write the more I find they’re all cut from the same cloth. I remember being astounded when I picked up Tyrese Coleman’s How to Sit, which is a terrific memoir with stories and essays. I thought, why not? Of course!
It’s a deep pleasure to think about sound and forego sense in a story, to use actual memories in flash fiction, to wildly imagine in an essay. Time is not linear; why should writing be?
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 do not have a writing routine. I do get up early nearly every morning, though, and let the water boil for coffee while I wash my face and brush. Then with my hot coffee and tall glass of water, I sit at my computer. I read and I might write. I might pay bills. It’s my time to do the work before anyone else gets up. It’s precious to me.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I read! That’s honestly all it takes. Workshops help, too. Some of the best workshops I’ve taken have been with Kathy Fish, Sabrina Orah Mark, and Wendy Oleson.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Ooh, the key question here is where is home? I am going to assume you mean my childhood home, and I’d have to say Pledge. Our furniture was lathered in it, and it has a particularly acrid scent. I can never smell a lemon without thinking of it. Amy Barnes recently published a story that mentioned Pledge, and I was immediately brought back to my house in Litchfield, New Hampshire.
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?
Of course! All these things influence my work. Walks in the woods, Barber’s Adagio, paintings, watching a timelapse of a mushroom decaying . . . they’re all in there.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
On a daily level, I read a lot of flash fiction that’s being published now—writers like Kathy Fish, Amy Barnes, Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar, Cathy Mellett, to name just a few. Writers I turn to whose work is on my bookshelf, again and again, are Anne Carson, Joy Williams, James Tate, Kafka, Mann, Woolf, Angela Carter, Annie Dillard. Too many to list. I was reading Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet when I wrote “Tending the Elephant,” and her writing about distance and love helped a lot.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Be a (mostly) full-time writer. I work full-time as an editor, so I write in the early mornings only. I want to write a full-length collection.
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 no idea. I love learning about botany and meteorology, but I do not have the mind for it. I’ve always been drawn to writing, reading, and editing. If I weren’t a writer, I’d probably just keep editing, which has been my profession for decades now.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Impulse. I felt compelled to write, especially after reading a lot, and I listened. Sometimes I tried blocking the impulse out, but it always came back.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I read Richard McGuire’s graphic novel Here last year, in a workshop with Sabrina Orah Mark, and the insights from it are still coming. It’s set in the same living room over the span of centuries, and all the scenes that have taken place in this room—snippets of conversation, parties, lonely, private moments, etc.—overlap each other visually. It’s striking and stunning and makes so much sense.
I haven’t watched a film in a long time. I need to watch a film. The last one I saw was Wild a couple years ago. Nick Hornby had Cheryl Strayed’s amazing material to work with, but his screenwriting is brilliant. I think of moments from it often. I just lost my mother this summer, and I couldn’t watch it again now. But it’s been with me.
20 -
What are you currently working on?
I’m building a full-length manuscript that has poetry, flash, and linked longer
stories. All of it is tied to the theme of confined spaces, and how people
negotiate them—spaces like a kitchen, a 19th-century Victorian dress, a memory,
the warming Earth itself, as well as our longing and desire for freedom within
that space. It’s called The Spaces That Contain Us. I’ve taken a
break to focus on Clarity of Hunger, but I hope to be done by the
end of the year.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
