TBR: The Requirement of Grief by Danielle Ariano

TBR [to be read], a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.  

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

The Requirement of Grief recounts the unique bond between two sisters and offers an unflinching perspective on what remains in the wake of one sibling’s tragic suicide.

 

 

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this memoir?

 

The first chapter is written from my sister Alexis’ imagined perspective and it takes place on the last day of her life. There are several other chapters like this throughout the memoir. While I did my best to adhere to the factual circumstances of my sister’s suicide/life, these chapters are fiction.

 

Some would say that they have no place in a memoir. I might even agree with these people, and yet I felt that Alexis’s perspective needed to be considered. Since this was impossible, I did my best to recreate it in these chapters. Alexis kept journals throughout her life and I drew on these as a way to understand how she saw the world, especially in the deepest throes of her addiction and mental illness. When I gave myself permission to write these chapters, I felt as though the manuscript finally came to life.

 

I had only seen this done once before in one chapter of Marion Winik’s memoir, First Comes Love, and it had a huge impact on me as a reader. She shifted into the imagined point of view of her husband Tony, who died of AIDS. Even 15 years after reading this book, I still remember the emotional impact that chapter of the book had on me. Seeing this technique used effectively in another memoir, gave me the courage to try it.

 

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

When my son was a baby, there was an entire year when he preferred my wife Lindsay to me. I would walk into his room in the morning and he would squeal that he wanted her, not me. Logically, I understood that this was normal and that it would not last forever, but emotionally it was devastating to be rejected by him. There were days that I questioned myself as a mother.

 

Getting rejected over and over as I sent my manuscript out felt eerily similar. Even though I believed in the quality of my writing and believed that there was value in the subject matter, I found myself going into tailspins of self-doubt as the no’s piled up. Logically, I knew this was all part of the process and I had to press on, but unfortunately my emotion didn’t care about logic.

 

Thankfully my writing partner, Judith Krummeck, had an unwavering belief in the manuscript. I have so much respect for Judith and her writing that her words buoyed me at the lowest points.

 

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

You want to be a writer? Write.

 

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

One night I went out to dinner with a writing mentor to talk to her about my manuscript. When I told her about the chapters written from my sister’s perspective, she asked me if I had written one about the day that Alexis ended her life. The moment she asked, I knew that I needed to write this. Even though it wasn’t something I’d planned or wanted to do, I could see that it was essential to the story. Eventually this became the first chapter of the book.

 

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

Titles are usually so difficult for me. Typically, my essay/chapters/books are untitled until the very end, but this one came to me as I was revising a chapter that contained the following text:

 

“As time passes, I learn that grief’s only requirement is that it must be carried. It does not care if you are ready for it or if its weight is too much to bear or if you are in the throes of the deepest joy.

"It cannot be set aside even for the briefest moment while you sit on a park bench and enjoy a beautiful sunset. Even then, it must be carried. Carried even as you watch in wonder on the day your son comes into the world. Carried when you bear witness to your parents holding their only grandchild for the very first time. Carried always.”

I was struck with the realization that The Requirement of Grief was my title.

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR:

www.danielleariano.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: www.bookshop.org

 

 

TBR: Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow: A DIY Kit for the Construction of Stories by Steve Almond

TBR [to be read], a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.  

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

Truth is a book of essays about the whole creative process: the elements of craft, where stories come from, and (most important of all) all the evil voices that haunt us, and hold us back, at the keyboard. I’ve been writing it—in my head, in the classroom, and at various writing conferences—for three decades.

 

Which essay did you most enjoy writing? Why?

 

There’s an essay called “Writer’s Block: A Love Story,” which I loved writing, because I think our ideas about writer’s block is really misguided. We treat it like the black plague, something to be endured in shameful isolation. But the truth is, writer’s block is an inevitable part of the writing process. It describes moments when our doubts and inhibitions overtake our capacities to create. That happens all the time. I’ve re-written sentences and paragraphs a hundred times because I’m blocked. I’ve also been so blocked that I can’t even get myself to the keyboard. It’s very upsetting. But it can also be really clarifying. Because we stop asking the question, “What should I write?” and start asking a much more useful question: “What do I really want to write? What will get me to the keyboard again?”

 

And, which essay gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

The title essay was a bruiser, because I was trying to write into the heart of the anxieties we face when we know we have to write a story, but we’re scared to death about breaking a long held silence. To write that essay, I had to break a few silences myself, so I was going through the kind of anxiety I was writing about.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

The publishing experience itself has been terrific. My editor, Emily Bell, is a genius, and the folks at Zando have been great. The lows came more in my attempts, over the years, to confront the darker truths in the book. I experience a lot of doubt when I write, so it was hard for me to write a book that purports to guide others. I dealt with this by writing mostly about my struggles, and failures, which are sadly abundant but also almost always instructive.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Write about what you can’t get rid of by other means.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

I had a lot of fun. That was a huge surprise. I’m mostly miserable when I write. My family and friends can confirm that. But with this one, I really enjoyed gathering all my thoughts and experiences into one place. I enjoy teaching far more than writing, and this book was endowed, I guess, with some of that joy.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

I know it’s mouthful, but I’m so happy Zando let me use “Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow” as a title. Because it’s really a distillation of what I have to say about writing. You’re only going to travel into the truth as far as mercy gets you. You have to be driven by a desire to understand and forgive. That’s what allows you to go back into all those painful rooms and see clearly what was happening.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

Steve’s Smoked Maple Crunch Chicken Salad

 

Two cups of smoked chicken (diced straight from the grill)

1.5 cups diced McIntosh apples

1 cup thinly sliced celery

1 cup roasted cashew halves

¾ cup of golden raisins

½ cup mayo (more or less to taste)

1 teaspoon curry powder

 

Directions:

1. Dump ingredients in a large bowl

2. Mix

 

Suggested serving:

Straight out of the bowl, with a large wooden spoon.

It also tastes good on a nice, puffy Portuguese roll.

 

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.stevealmondjoy.org

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Arrow-Mercy-Bow-Construction/dp/1638931305

 

 

WATCH STEVE ALMOND TALK ABOUT WRITING & ABOUT THE NOVEL “STONER”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkUa68CUpTU&t=4411s

 

 

TBR: Pop Culture Poetry: The Definitive Collection by Michael B. Tager

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe. 

 

We don’t expect an elevator pitch from a poet, but can you tell us about your work in 2-3 sentences?

 

The poems within Pop Culture Poetry: The Definitive Collection explore our relationship with celebrity. They're about David Attenborough and 90s Hip Hop, Bjork, toxic masculinity, Patrick Swayze, The Golden Girls, nostalgia and vulnerability, Whoopi Goldberg, Justin Bieber, video games and Queen. But they're also about the author, and also about you, and you (and yes, you in the back).

 

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this book? Where does that sort of courage come from?

 

I don’t know if I’d call it a boundary as such, but I started writing these poems specifically because I didn’t see much of the everyday in a lot of the writing I was encountering, in poetry especially, but also in fiction. I didn’t really “get” that, because I figured that anything we spend as much time with as we do tv, or sports, or music, or whatever, should be featured in the poems that we write.

 

Maybe the “boundary” is that writing poems about tv shows or celebrity crushes isn’t very serious. Or maybe there is no boundary at all and I just haven’t read those poems and am unfamiliar with those poets.

 

A couple poets in my circle–Tracy Dimond and Steven Leyva–would occasionally drop some references to their own tastes (I remember poems about OkCupid and Star Trek, respectively), and it got me to thinking about my own writing and the risks I wasn’t taking, the life I wasn’t representing. So I wrote some poems about Patrick Swayze movies after rewatching Point Break and I was off to the races.

 

They’re also funny, which also isn’t a boundary, but does seem to be absent in a lot of serious poetry. And they are serious poems, in that I mean what I say, even if they don’t seem that way upon first read. Do I literally mean that David Attenborough was turned into a vampire via a trip into caverns and quotes Missy Elliott whilst eating people? Well probably not, but it’s a funny image, and I do have thoughts about caves, the mysteries of the planet, and that. 

  

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 I came across a series of poems about trees and kind of rolled my eyes. Don’t get me wrong, I like trees and I like tree poems, but I’ve also read a lot of them, just like I’ve read of bird/moon poetry, and they sometimes run together. I wondered how, if I were to write nature poetry, I’d access that.

 I’m a big fan of nature documentaries and was super into Planet Earth at the time which immediately brought David Attenborough to mind. I started writing a poem and for whatever reason I inserted a Lil Bow Wow lyric into the first one. Normally I’d have deleted that, but because I wanted these to be fun, I left it in. That turned the series of poems into a David Attenborough–90s hip hop mashup, because in this alternate universe, Attenborough loves 2pac.

 Those poems were immediately accepted for publication and have been my most reliable hits when I’m giving a reading. I think they’re the reason I believed in this manuscript enough to call it a manuscript and show it to people. I don’t think it would exist otherwise!

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 Erin Fitzgerald from Barrelhouse told me once that my writing was too controlled and that I needed to let it be messy, because that was where the surprises happened. She was right! Letting it be weird, letting questions be asked that aren’t answered, doing what seems bad at the time is what often leads to the good stuff!

  

How did you find the title of your book?

 The title is the title because subtlety is for chumps and while it’s a totally reasonable practice, I’m not a fan of naming a book after a single poem within a manuscript. It’s just not my bag. I thought about naming it after a central theme and couldn’t come up with anything so just called it what it is and didn’t hate it. Now I love it.

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes you might share?)

The only meal that comes to mind is what I affectionately call “veggie mess,” which might be an apt metaphor for these poems! They’re kind of a mess, but there’s a plan, and a mission, and a flow. And they also taste delightful!

 

Veggie Mess Receipt:

 

Ingredients:

 

Anything leftover in the fridge/pantry

●      onions are helpful

●      beans and/or potatoes are also important

●      If you have it, cheese works well

Garlic, salt, pepper, basil, cayenne

Olive oil

 

Step 1: pull out all the leftover veggies you have

Step 2: cut them up and start sauteing them: cook until al dente

Step 3: throw in any sauce and/or cheese, whatever you have

Step 4: throw in your beans and/or potatoes

Step 5: throw in your seasoning

Step 6: cool and eat

 

 

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.michaelbtager.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://akinogapress.com/books/popculturepoetry

 

READ 3 POEMS FROM THIS BOOK:  https://www.havehashad.com/web_features/three-poems--68

 

 

TBR: The Wet Wound: An Elegy in Essays by Maddie Norris

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe. 

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

The Wet Wound uses a medical lens to examine the grief that took over me after my father died of cancer when I was seventeen. These linked essays examine grief from different angles, resulting in a multi-layered exploration on why, contrary to popular belief, keeping wounds open is the best way to care for them physically and emotionally. 

 

Which essay did you most enjoy writing? Why? And which essay gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

I don’t know that I had an essay I enjoyed writing more than the others. Each essay felt like a discovery, and it was exciting and fun trying to figure out what the material wanted to say.

 

The opening essay, “Hyperbaric, or How to Keep a Wound Alive,” gave me the most trouble. It went through many different drafts until I figured out the structure and backbone of the piece. It’s one of the earliest pieces I wrote for the book, so part of the difficulty was figuring out what to include in it and what belonged in other essays. It also introduces the central wound metaphor, which runs through the collection, so I wanted to get it just right, which takes time. I had to write other pieces and then come back to it to know how I wanted it to open the full collection.

 

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this memoir? Where does that sort of courage come from?

 

A lot of grief memoirs follow a Western narrative arc: someone dies, the narrator is sad, and then they move on with their lives. I wanted to push back against that. That narrative was harmful to my psyche and doesn’t fit the reality of grief. Grief doesn’t end; we don’t move on and let go. So this memoir asks: What happens when, instead of following steps prescribed by those outside loss, we let ourselves dwell in grief?

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

Publishing takes years, which I thought might allow for the emotions to temper over time, but that wasn’t the case. All my emotion knobs have been turned to 11. It’s scary and exciting having people read your innermost thoughts. I get so much joy from sharing my dad with people who didn’t know him, but it’s of course tied to the fact that he died. I’ve never experienced so many heightened emotions all at once, and I don’t know that there’s any way to prepare for it either.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

In my first college workshop, my professor, Pam Durban, said, “We all have our assigned subject matter.” It’s perhaps not direct advice, but it gave me permission to write the thing I needed to write and to continue doing so.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

I think it’s clear how life informs writing in creative nonfiction (everything is material), but I didn’t realize before writing this book how writing can inform your life. I’m not talking about this in terms of my career, although writing has certainly shaped that, but I’m thinking in terms of my deep personal relationships. Writing this book changed the way I interacted with grief, and that changed the way I interacted with others. Since embracing my grief, I’ve felt more love than I knew possible.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

I am notoriously bad at titles, so I’m grateful Ander Monson suggested “The Wet Wound” as the collection title, and together with the subtitle “An Elegy in Essays,” it encapsulates the book’s core in key ways. Let me break it down piece by piece.

 

Wound: My dad was a doctor who specialized in wound healing, and in going through his medical lectures and notes, I reconnected with him. This archival searching was the genesis of the book. The work’s central metaphor is an open wet wound, which facilitates healing, physically and emotionally.

 

Wet: My father studied marine biology, and his body now rests in the ocean. In addition to the wetness of wounds, I explore other literal wet areas in this work, like oceans and rain, but I’m also pulling from Alexander Chee’s more metaphorical understanding, built from Clark Blaise’s class and detailed in his introduction to Best American Essays 2022: “Was the writing wet? Could you feel the rain, the blood, the tears?”

 

Elegy: I interrogate different forms of writing (postcards, letters, eulogies, etc.) in grappling with grief because as a writer, that’s how I make sense of the world. And again, the origin of the book was reading through my dad’s notes, the letters and lectures he left behind. Elegy also, obviously, orients readers towards the subject of grief.

 

In Essays: “In essays” was an important addition in orienting readers. There are many memoiristic elements to the book, but it is not a memoir, and you’ll be disappointed if you come in wanting that. Instead, the book moves through different subjects and lens to explore the concept of grief. The primary mode is attempting to place the mind on the page, not narratizing life.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book?

 

Pair this book with your favorite family comfort recipes. Some of mine would be: blueberry muffins, lasagna, box brownies, key lime pie.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://maddienorris.com/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:  https://ugapress.org/book/9780820366685/the-wet-wound/

 

LISTEN TO AN EXCERPT FROM & PLAYLIST FOR THIS BOOK:  https://itslitwithphdj.wordpress.com/2022/02/04/ep-148-maddie-norris/

 

 

TBR: A Suffragist’s Guide to the Antarctic by Yi Shun Lai

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe. 

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

Clara Ketterling-Dunbar is an American suffragist who decamps for the English suffrage movement, just in time to have it roll over to support the WWI effort. In utter frustration, she signs onto a cockamamie Antarctic expedition (her words, not mine!), thinking that, in a place with no civilization, she can gain equity. But when the crew’s ship sinks, she’s dismayed to see that the men have thought of her as “just a woman” all along. Clara has to prove she can handle just as much as the men can handle, all while trying to survive in the Antarctic. This book is Clara’s diary whilst on expedition, and pegged to Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance expedition.

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

The answer is the same for both of these questions: there’s a clear villain on-board the ship, and he emerged as I was determined to stick to the timeline and historical facts of the original Endurance expedition. But the minute it became obvious that Clara was going to have suffer some serious indignities, including a sexual assault, at the hands of this crew member, I began to realize that I couldn’t stick to the historical events as much as I thought I had to: I couldn’t prescribe the things Clara goes through to any of the men I’d gotten to know through reading crew diaries and their later recollections of life on this expedition.

 

So I was really happy to get to craft this terrible creature from wholecloth, and remind myself that I was writing fiction. This realization gave me so much more freedom. And, at the same time, I struggled to find inspiration for this accursed human. Finally, it occurred to me that this guy was already lurking in my past. So I wrote him. Gleefully, and with no small sense of vengeance.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

No lows, unless you count the waiting. The waiting was damn hard. But I have a great agent, Kate Testerman, and she knew just the right editors to send it to. We had our first offer in two weeks and a competing offer not long after. Then we had to make hard decisions. Then, we had to wait for the contracts. All that was like a three-month process. Then it was another year and a quarter before pub date. So yeah. Waiting was the absolute worst bit.

 

I know. I’m an irrational PollyAnna about this, but I truly loved every bit of it, especially noodling through my editor’s notes and really thinking about them, and puzzling through how to make the revisions that would satisfy my editor’s rightful suggestions. I actually outright loved the revision process. When you’ve been toiling by yourself, crafting a storyline, having someone say, “Do you mean this?” is a godsend.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Write what you’re curious about. I wish to hell I could remember where I read this. I pride myself on taking pretty good notes, but um, apparently not.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

The lateness with which things that should be obvious came together. I was obviously writing a book about inequality all along. About strong women having to prove themselves. The Antarctic was a convenient backdrop, because I love the place and wanted to set a book there. I knew all of this. I sent the query and completed manuscript off to my dream agent February of 2022. It wasn’t until August of 2021 that I stumbled upon the fact that the women’s suffrage movement was happening at the exact same time as the Golden Age of Exploration, when all those men went off and did manly things. I’d been working on the book in some form (it used to be a time-travel book!) since early 2015. People. That is a lot of years to fail at putting some big puzzle pieces together.

 

But, as you can tell from the timeline, when it came together, it came together fast.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

Oh, I am so glad you asked how I got the title of my book, because I can give proper credit to my friend and writerly BFF Roz. She nudged me toward flexing the diary format of the manuscript to do double duty as a guidebook that outlined my hero’s hopes for the future. Then, after dropping that gem, she said, “You could call it ‘A Suffragist’s Guide to Antarctica,’ or something,” That conversation unlocked everything, and I will forever be in Roz’s debt.

 

As I mentioned above, when you’ve been living in your head for so long, outside voices are the best thing that can happen.

 

Well, that’s what works for my brain, anyway. YMMV.  

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

Aiya, yes. All through the Endurance expedition and a great many other cold-weather expeditions of the time, they ate hoosh, a porridge of melted snow, pemmican, which is a kind of dried-meat cake made with tallow or fat, and sledging biscuits. There’s a pretty good recipe here, but I’ve gone vegetarian since I started writing this book, so I can only tell you that the one time I made it, on my would-not-find-in-Antarctica-in-1914-induction stove, it was…disgustingly satisfying. 

 

Here's something I still love, though: Kendal mint cake. Sugar and mint syrup. There’s no record of this having been eaten on-board the Endurance expedition, but I put it in my book anyway, because it is delicious and well known as a food explorers and walkers of a great many hills took with them places.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK: https://thegooddirt.org

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:  https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/A-Suffragists-Guide-to-the-Antarctic/Yi-Shun-Lai/9781665937764

 

 

 

TBR: The Blueprint: A Novel by Rae Giana Rashad

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe. 

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

The Blueprint follows Solenne, who is coming of age in an alternate, oppressive Texas. She becomes entangled with a white government official, and she navigates those experiences using the stories of her ancestor who was an enslaved concubine in 19th century Louisiana. The Blueprint is rooted in history, but it’s literary speculative fiction, in the vein of Atwood.

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why?

 

I truly loved writing Solenne. Inspired by the lives of enslaved girls in the Antebellum South, she emerged fully formed after initial research. Fine tuning her into a living, breathing person took work. In early drafts, I worried that it would be too difficult for readers to root for or identify with a flawed Black girl, which led to a passive, dishonest, shell of a character. Once I honored my vision, Solenne’s voice developed into something I loved.

 

And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

Writing Bastien, my antagonist, posed unique challenges. He’s a recombination of historical figures, men from slave narratives, and real-life narcissists. Striking a balance in creating negative space—embracing the unsaid and untold to leave room for readers to question him—without veering into a redemptive arc was a delicate task.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

I have a bit of a unicorn story in that after writing for five years, I found my agent, revised with her, and sold the manuscript within five months. I made the mistake of thinking things would continue to be smooth sailing. However, a month post-Harper acquisition, the HarperCollins strike hit. After the strike ended, my editor, my champion I hoped to work with for many more books, moved to a different publisher. I was an orphan. Losing the editor who loved and fought for your manuscript is devastating and terrifying.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Write honestly, even when it reveals ugliness.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

I was fully prepared to write this as historical fiction after my initial research. But when Solenne’s character came to me, I was surprised to see her, not in the Antebellum South, but standing on a train platform in a world that looked like our own, desperate for emotional and physical freedom. I went with it. Emotional resonance was my primary goal. Setting the story in a world that looks like our own removes distance between the characters and contemporary readers.  

 

What’s something about your book that you want readers to know?

 

A blueprint is a set of ideas or a set of beliefs. In The Blueprint, two very different characters interact. Like their ancestors, both want things that can’t coexist. Both look to history to inform their actions.  The Blueprint is an acknowledgment that history designs the present.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.raegianarashad.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-blueprint-rae-giana-rashad/20297568?ean=9780063330092

 

 

TBR: Sex Romp Gone Wrong by Julia Ridley Smith

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe. 

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

Sex Romp Gone Wrong is a collection of 12 stories about women and girls trying to navigate relationships, desire, love, responsibility—and making a mess of things.

 

Which story did you most enjoy writing? Why? And which story gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

I most enjoyed writing “The Woman Who Did Things Wrong.” It’s kind of a twisted fairy tale, and it was cathartic and fun to write.

 

“Et tu, Miss Jones?” went through countless drafts, over many years. It was the first time I was consciously using autobiographical material in my fiction in a way that might be recognizable to people who knew me. Now I’ve published a memoir, so when I recall my worry about showing up too transparently in that story, it seems a bit absurd. But then, I’m highly proficient at worrying about absurd things.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

The road was paved with rejection—a pretty common experience for writers. Many of the dozen stories were rejected multiple times before they appeared in literary journals. Once I had enough stories to make a collection, I started sending the book manuscript to contests. It would lose, I’d write a new story, put that into the collection, take out an old story, and send the collection to another contest. That went on for a few years. Then I got connected with my agent, and after my memoir The Sum of Trifles was published, she agreed to send out Sex Romp Gone Wrong. When Blair wanted to publish it, I was over the moon.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Anne Lamott’s “shitty first drafts” and “short assignments” from Bird by Bird.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

The shorter, weirder stories like “Tooth” and “Hot Lesbian Vampire Magic School.” I felt so free writing them—they were such larks—and then the final surprise was that they actually turned out to be viable stories.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

The title is also the title of one of the stories in the book. Google that phrase at your own peril.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

I LOVE to eat, but I don’t cook much. Left to my own devices, I’ll graze on leftovers and snack food, like the mother does in my story “Mrs. DeVry, Hanging out the Wash.” My recipes are pretty much: Put cheese on cracker. Put butter on toast. Put one found food on top of another and hope it tastes good.

 

*****

 

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.juliaridleysmith.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://blairpub.com/shop/p/sex-romp-gone-wrong

 

READ A SHORT STORY FROM THIS BOOK, “The Woman Who Did Things Wrong”:

https://copper-nickel.org/the-woman-who-did-things-wrong/

 

 

TBR: Mom in Space by Lisa Ampleman

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe. 

 

  

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

In poems and a few lyric essays, Mom in Space addresses infertility, parenting, and chronic illness through the perspective of a woman interested in the history and biology of spaceflight. With an eye on both the intergalactic and the terrestrial, these poems take place on an Earth affected by climate change, nuclear waste, and racism: “We don’t have enough rare-earth / metals to build a fleet of starships. // We just have the rare Earth” (“Calamity Days”).

 

Which essay or poem did you most enjoy writing? Why? And, which essay or poem gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

I enjoyed writing a lot of the book—when I tell people about the writing that happened in 2020 and 2021 in particular, I often just say in amazement, “It was so fun!” Of course, some of the poems tapped into emotionally challenging experiences (see below), but “Alpha,” for example, felt like wordplay and spending time with concepts that fascinate me, like the Van Allen belts of radiation and the radio waves that come from pulsar stars.

 

“Lava Tubes on the Moon” gave me the most trouble, in a way. I’d been wanting to write a poem with that title for quite a while, but that’s not usually how my creative process works, so I had a lot of false starts. Then I started writing a poem about my experience of miscarriage with my husband, thinking about what he might have felt, since so much of the book is me processing that and other things. I struggled to have those two concepts live in the same space together for a while, I struggled to revisit that moment in the hospital, and I struggled to figure out the poem’s form until I thought about really long lines (that would still fit on a 6 x 9 page of poetry) alternating with emptiness, gaps—tubes, if you will. Until the speaker brought out sweatpants and spinach dip, the poem felt very inert as well. I’m happy with how it turned out in the end, though I don’t know if it’ll be one I choose for readings because of how it brings me back there to that hospital bed.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

Because I published my second book at LSU Press and they had first right of refusal for my next project, I knew there was a strong chance to work with them again—but that I had to do the work as if I was pitching to them for the first time. I loved working with them and was interested in doing so again. Once I felt like the book was ready, I sent it to James Long, curator of the poetry series. They sent it to a peer reviewer (university press!), who recommended to publish it with a few small suggestions for revision.

 

So, in my case, publication wasn’t as difficult as getting to the book itself—that’s more like the low point. After my son was born in 2015, I didn’t do much new writing. I kept submitting what became Romances, but individual poem drafts often failed. Then in 2019, I got notified by the Hermitage Artist Retreat that I’d been awarded a residency there—the kick is that I had never applied; they choose their residents differently. I was floored and flummoxed. I wasn’t sure at first I could take time away from my family. But I did, in February 2020, and I brought along a book about the Apollo program I’d been wanting to read since we’d visited an Apollo 11 capsule exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center. I got hooked and started writing space poems and reading more about spaceflight. Two weeks after I got home from Florida, the pandemic lockdown began, and the combination of time, fear (about the pandemic as well as a spinal arthritis I’d just developed), and space obsession put the book into motion at last. As I say in “Neil and Me and Work and the Body,” an essay in the book, “A pandemic raged, my body hurt, but I could escape to space.”

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

That a fallow period—which somehow is even listed in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary!—is okay. I’m loosely in such a place now, dabbling with a few things but between focused work. As I mentioned above, I was in a fallow period for years before things kicked into gear in 2020. Just till the soil and fill the well with reading, beauty, contentment, and perhaps other kinds of creative work until it’s time to enter an active time again.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

At times while I worked on this book, I found myself writing down things I wouldn’t say out loud or bring up in conversation. I loved the rhythm of “My mother never taught me / to hover over the / public bathroom toilet” (the opening of “Public Intimacies”), but I was surprised that I’d put it into words, then in a poem, then submitted that poem to magazines, then included the poem in a book I knew might get published. I’m vulnerable in this book in ways that surprise me still. I wonder if part of that vulnerability stems from how much of the writing happened in the first year of the pandemic, when I had more time to be alone and introspective and feel like I wasn’t in the public sphere.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

During the early days of the pandemic, my husband, son, and I spent a lot of time relaxing on couches together. I don’t remember exactly when, but at some point in that era, my son (then four or five), was talking as he is wont to do while he plays games on his tablet. He knows I like space—I was probably reading a book about SkyLab or the shuttle program—and among the other slightly singsong-y things he said was “a mom in space.” I typed it into the notes app on my phone right away. So, I knew fairly early in the process what the title could be, and it probably shaped some of the work that happened after that.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

Well, since I mentioned spinach dip above, here’s a pretty simple version.

 

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://lisaampleman.com/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK~~

PUBLISHER SITE: https://lsupress.org/9780807181256/mom-in-space/

SIGNED COPIES: Downbound Books

 

READ 2 POEMS FROM THIS BOOK: https://therumpus.net/2021/12/21/rumpus-original-poetry-two-poems-by-lisa-ampleman/

 

 

 

AWP24: Survival Guide!

And away we go! AWP24 is about to descend upon Kansas City, and maybe we won’t be as adorable as Taylor Swift cheering on the Chiefs from a toasty luxury box, but I'm pretty sure 10,000 writers can cut a wide swath through a town….

Time to update my AWP survival tips, honed after (yikes!) 20ish years of attending AWP conferences. "Survival guide" takes on a different feel in what is being called a "post-pandemic world," so my main point is to do what you need to feel safe personally and to take actions to protect the safety of others. For me, the risk of eating in a restaurant might feel personally worth it, but then how hard is it to sit quietly in a large room, listening to other people speak and wear a mask? My main tip here is to be thoughtful with regard to mask etiquette. 

Ten thousand writers is a lot of angst, need, and glory to pack into one convention center…here are my tried & true & freshly updated tips for success, based on my experience at past conferences:

 

Wear comfortable shoes, at least most of the day. There’s lots of traipsing around long hallways and the long (sometimes uncarpeted) aisles of the book fair. It’s also inevitable that the one panel you really, really, really want to see will be in a teeny-tiny room and you’ll have to stand in the back…or sit on the floor; see the following tip:

Wear comfortable clothes, preferably taking a layer approach. Wherever you go, you will end up either in A) an incredibly stuffy room that will make you melt, or B) a room with an arctic blast directed at you. Bulk up and strip down as needed. Also, as noted above, despite their best efforts, the AWP conference staff has a knack for consistently misjudging the size of room required for a subject matter/speakers (i.e. Famous Writer in room with 30 chairs; grad student panel on Use of Dashes in Obscure Ancient Greek Poet in room with 300 chairs). I suppose it’s hard to determine who is “famous” and so on…in any event, you don’t want to find yourself scrunched into a 2’x2’ square on the carpet, and so see the following tip:

To avoid being stuck sitting on the floor, arrive early to panels you really, really want to attend. And, in fact, official AWP does not sanction sitting on the floor because it’s a fire hazard and you’ll be creating a barrier to those who have accessibility needs. Not sure how they feel about standing in a herd in the back? The point is, don’t sit on the floor—be mindful of others if there’s a herd of standees, and arrive early.

If a panel is bad, ditch it. Yes, it’s rude. Yes, everyone does it. (Be better than the rest by at least waiting for an appropriate break, but if you must go mid-word, GO.) I can’t tell you the high caliber of presenters that I have walked out on, but think Very High. Remember that there are a thousand other options, and you have choices. The only time you have to stick it out is if A) the dull panel participant is your personal friend or B) the dull panel participant is/was your teacher or C) the dull panel participant is your editor/publisher. Those people will notice (and remember) that you abandoned them mid-drone and punish you accordingly (i.e. your glowing letters of rec will flicker and fade). Undoubtedly this is why I have never been published in Unnamed Very High Caliber Magazine, having walked out on that editor’s panel.

There are zillions of panels. And there's an app. Sadly for me, I dislike apps and I miss the massive tome of information and the smaller printed guide. BUT! Time marches on. If you're not an app person, and maybe even if you are, I suggest taking the time NOW to go to AWP’s website and scroll through the schedule and select EVERY panel that sounds even moderately interesting, and load those into the “my schedule” feature. Keep that stored on your favorite technology (mine is a sheaf of printed paper…which may be smart since I often forget how/where to re-access “my schedule,” which requires logging in and somehow finding “my account”; I assume app people are more adept than I am).  Anyway…no point waking up early on Friday if there’s nothing you want to attend. I checkmark panels I might go to if nothing better is going on and star those that I will make a supreme effort to attend. Give yourself a couple of options at each time slot so that if a room is too crowded, you have an interesting alternative.

 I like to choose a variety of panels: people I know, people I’ve heard of, genres I don’t write but am curious about, topics I want to educate myself on. Stretch yourself. I also like to go to a reading in which I don’t know any of the readers, just to have a lovely sense of discovery! And don’t forget the ninety-trillion off-site events! (I suspect you’ll end up depressed if every single panel you attend is How To Get Published…remember, the way to get published, really, is to be an amazing writer. You’ll be better off going to some panels that will help you in that pursuit.)

Someone will always ask a 20-minute question that is not so much a question but a way of showing off their own (imagined) immense knowledge of the subject and an attempt to erase the (endlessly lingering) sting of bitterness about having their panel on the same topic rejected. Don’t be that person. Keep your question succinct and relevant. Also, everyone is groaning inwardly anytime someone says, “I have a question and a comment” or anytime someone starts out by saying, “Well, in my work-in-progress, the main character is….”

Don’t say anything gossipy on the elevator, unless you want the whole (literary) world to know it. Do listen up to the conversations of others on the elevator, and tell your friends absolutely everything you’ve overheard during your offsite dinner.

Same advice above exactly applies to the overpriced hotel bar.  Also, if you happen to get a chair at the bar, or, goodness, EVEN A REAL LIVE TABLE, hang on to it!!  People will join you if they see you’ve got a spot! Famous people! I mean it: the only reason to ever give up a table in the hotel bar is because the bar has shut down, you’ve consumed every bit of liquid in the clutter of glasses, and a beefy bouncer is headed your way. (Also, here’s a fun fact: AWP alcohol consumption often breaks sales records at hotels.) (Also, related, don’t forget that Sober AWP offers meetings.) 

Speaking of famous people or former teachers or friends…do not say something like this in one long breathless opening sentence right after hugging/fist-bumping hello: “Great-to-see-you-can-you-write-a-blurb-letter-of-rec-piece-for-my-anthology?” Ask for favors AFTER the conference! I mean, unless you enjoy that uncomfortable moment and awkward triumph of trapping someone into saying reluctantly yes in the hopes that then you'll go away.

Support the publications at the bookfair. Set a budget for yourself in advance and spend some money on literary journals and books and subscriptions, being sure to break your budget. Do this, and then you won’t feel bad picking up the stuff that’s been heavily discounted or being given away free on the last day of the conference. But, please, definitely do spend some money! These journals and presses rely on OUR support.

Just because something is free, you don’t have to take it. Unless you drove, you’ll have to find a way to bring home all those heavy books/journals on an airplane. Or you’ll have to wait in line at the hotel’s business center or the UPS store at the convention center to ship them home. So, be as discerning as you can when you see that magic markered “free” sign on top of a pile of sad-looking journals, abandoned by the grad students who didn’t feel like dealing with their university's bookfair table. 

Try not to approach the table of each journal at the bookfair with this question: “How can I get published in your journal?” Also, I recommend avoiding this one: “How come you didn’t publish my poem/story/essay/screed?”  Try instead: “What a beautiful journal. Please tell me more about it.” Even better: “I’m thinking about subscribing.”

It may be too late for some of you, but it’s inevitable that you will see every writer you’ve ever met in the aisle of the bookfair at one AWP or another…so I hope you were nice to all of them and never screwed anyone over. Because, yes, they will remember, and it’s not fun reliving all that drama as the editors of The Georgia Review gaze on.

Pre-arrange some get-togethers with friends/teachers/grad student buddies, but don’t over-schedule. You’ll run into people, or meet people, or be invited to a party, or find an amazing off-the-beaten-track bar.  Save some time for spontaneity! (Yes, I realize that I’m saying “plan” for spontaneity.)

Don’t laugh at this, but bring along Purell and USE IT often. Even before Covid, post-AWP social media updates are filled with writers bemoaning the deathly cold/sore throat/lingering and mysterious illness they picked up at AWP.  We’re a sniffly, sneezy, wheezy, germy bunch, and the thought of 10,000 of us packed together breathing on each other, shaking hands, and giving fake hugs of glee gives what’s left of the CDC nightmares.

 Along the lines of healthcare, don’t forget to drink a lot of water and pop an Advil before going to sleep if (haha…if!) you’ve been drinking a little more than usual. (Also note that AWP offers a daily 12-step meeting open to all in recovery. Please take care of yourself.)

Escape! Whether it’s offsite dinners/drinks/museums/walks through park/mindless shopping or whatever, do leave at some point. You will implode if you don’t. Also, the food on the convention floor is consistently overpriced and icky…you will starve if this is your entire diet. KC is the home of legendary barbecue! An awesome art museum! Baseball's Negro League Hall of Fame! Please leave the convention center!

Bring your cellphone charger and maybe even a portable charger. Or maybe you like huddling around electrical outlets?

 I can’t believe I’m writing this: I miss the Dance Party. It was a good way to work off stress and reenergize after a long, sometimes daunting day after too many snubs, imagined and real. I mean, I’m sure there are all kinds of interesting undercurrents and nuances out there in the depths of that packed dance floor…but also, on the surface, it can just be FUN. I would love to see it return. In the meantime, look for ways to handle YOUR stress that do not include camping at the hotel bar: the quiet room/s, prompt writing, a long walk, yoga.

This is a super-secret tip that I never share, but I’ll share it as a reward for those who have read this far:  there will be a bathroom that’s off the beaten track and therefore is never crowded. Scope out this bathroom early on. Don’t tell anyone except your closest friends the location of this bathroom. Wear your mask in every public bathroom, and if you doubt me, google "toilet plumes."

Finally, take a deep breath.  You’re just as much of a writer as the other 9,999 people around you.  Don’t let them get to you.