TBR: The Last Supper by Wendy J. Fox

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is 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 Last Supper follows three months in the chaotic life of Amanda, who has just turned 40, has two young children, and is searching for something more in her life. She's failed at being a momfluencer, she's failed at MLM entrepreneurship, and she’s living in terror of what to make for dinner. Desperate for something more than the isolated world of her suburban home, but consumed by parenting, her illusory stability collapses when the cracks in her marriage finally split open so wide she sees a way out, and a pathway to reclaim her own creative and economic agency.

 

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

 

The character I most enjoyed creating was the mother in the novel—Camille is a successful attorney who specializes in family law and clawed her way into financial stability after being a single parent. The reason I felt energized when I was in her perspective is because she’s a successful woman who is not defined by caregiving relationships. She’s just who she is and doesn’t really care what other people think about her.

 

The character who gave me the most trouble—and I think this will track for other writers—was the protagonist, Amanda. She is the hinge the door of the novel hangs on, and it is from her perspective the plot unfolds.

 

With the most space and time with a protagonist, there’s also more chance for narrative discontinuity or character motivation issues to arise. She goes through a period of awaking in the novel, and while I think it is fair to say all writers of literary fiction or character-driven fiction want to represent the change that occurs, sometimes I have to work on not being didactic or too interior.

 

Still, from a process perspective, I enjoy the building of a character, inclusive of the hard parts. (This is why I don’t understand would-be creatives leaning on generative AI.)

 

If you can’t sit with your characters and really think about them, what’s the point?

 

While sure, it can be difficult, there’s also so much joy in figuring out a tricky sentence, so much satisfaction in revising a critical scene.

 

How I have come to think about AI chatbots (which you didn’t ask about but is on my mind all the time) is that chatbots are all output, in contrast to creative writing being largely about input.

 

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

 

This is my fifth book, so at this point I can mostly roll with anything. That said, for me there is always the high of getting to contract with a manuscript, and the low of worrying about it.

 

The thing that has not changed at all—the thing I roll less well with is worrying how the book will be received.

 

I often say to people that I have this conundrum of: What if nobody reads it? And then: Oh crap, what if they do?!

 

Writing and publishing are just two different animals.

 

However, I do want to say to anyone out there shopping a manuscript: you might (will probably) at some point have a weird interaction with an agent, an editor, a publisher that will shake you. You might wake up in the middle of the night wondering if you wasted the last five years or more of your life.

 

It’s fine. Not every editor will get you. Lots of agents won’t. Do your work.

 

When you find the right publishing partner/model, you will know.

 

The lows are getting through the doubt. The highs are knowing you honored your work—whether it is published or not.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Over a decade ago, before I had a single book in print, I went to a panel where Andre Dubus III talked about the need for tension in every narrative.

 

That idea has crystallized over the years into really thinking about stakes.

 

On the panel, Dubus III said something like “If there’s no tension, who cares?” I think about that a lot.

 

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

 

I love your writing advice.

 

What surprised me in writing The Last Supper was the way the manuscript changed over time. At first, I was writing from a character sketch, then I was developing in earnest. The beginning versions were very different, both in tone and plot.

 

But! That’s part of the whole point of the process. Which is also, again, why I can’t get down with AI, as there’s no process there.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

I am notoriously bad at titles.

 

Once, I turned in a book to my publisher called “Office Stories” – and talk about a snooze in the title department (thank goodness I was already under contract). And definitely no tension there, à la Dubus III. With some help, the title of the book became What If We Were Somewhere Else, which does have tension and also is appropriately descriptive of what it feels like to work in an office.

 

The title for The Last Supper came from a highly trusted reader.

 

I’m pretty transparent as a person and a writer, but my beta titles for what became The Last Supper are too embarrassingly bad for even me to share publicly.

 

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

 

There is a lot of food in this book. The protagonist is trying to organize dinner every night to feed her children and husband. Sometimes it works, but mostly it does not: think mistaking vanilla yogurt for sour cream for a taco topper, burned meat of every variety, backup meals of microwaved nuggets.

 

I have feelings about food, and when I worked a tech job, absolutely hating to cook was a massive understatement. Now that I have more time, I’m into it. I cook every day.

 

I’m not including recipe from the book, because I like foodies and book clubs.

 

Instead, here is a recipe that my protagonist, Amanda, would love if she had the damn time or brain space to do it. The ingredients are from the back of a Bob’s Red Mill flour bag. The instructions are mine.

 

Still, this emblematic of certain type of thinking about cooking: basic pantry items can really yield deliciousness, but again, that’s all predicated on time.

 

Overnight No Knead Bread

 

Ingredients:

 

3 cups bread flour

¼  teaspoon active dry yeast

½ teaspoon salt

1 ½ cup warm water

 

Directions:

 

Before you go to bed, mix up all the ingredients in a bowl to form a shaggy dough. Cover it with a clean kitchen towel and stash in the warmest part of your abode.

 

Then go to bed!

 

In the morning, after you have slept for hopefully 6 – 8 hours (if you slept longer, even better)*, generously flour your hands and form the dough into something loaf-like. Don’t overthink the shape! It’s not a competition. Return your dough to the bowl and cover with the same towel.

 

Put your baking vessel in the oven and pre-heat to 450F. A Dutch oven works well, but anything that is oven-safe is fine.

 

Wait 30 minutes so the dough can proof again after you just handled it, and to ensure the oven is properly hot.

 

Use more flour on your hands to retrieve your loaf or loaf-adjacent dough-shape from the bowl and plop it onto the hot baking vessel.

 

Cover and cook for 30 minutes.

 

Uncover and cook for 10- 12 minutes to crisp up the outsides.

 

*Don’t even worry if you forget about this dough for over a day. It is very forgiving.

  

*****

 READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.wendyjfox.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://www.sfwp.com/books/lastsupper

 

READ AN EXCERPT FROM THIS NOVEL: https://writerschronicle.awpwriter.org/TWC/2026-february/preview/20-The-Last-Supper.aspx

 

 

 

TBR: The Marriage Bed by Tommy Hays

stablished in 2018, TBR [to be read] is 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?

 

A poetry professor at a small college in Asheville, NC, Asa Flowers comes home one stormy evening to find his wife Betsy, inexplicably distraught. As the evening goes on, the couple end up in a heated argument that sends him to sleep out in their garage apartment for the first time in twenty-five years of marriage. The next morning, he wakes to blue sky and an altered world. 

 

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

 

They’re one in the same for me. Wendy is the college girlfriend of Mitchell, the son of Asa, who is the main character. She was one of the most difficult to write because she and I come from very different backgrounds and have dramatically different beliefs.  She’s conservative and very religious, the daughter of a minister of a small Pentecostal church. However as I spent time with her I discovered how sensitive and compassionate and wise she was. She surprised me a lot over the course of writing and the more time I spent with her and the more I got to know her, the more fond I became of her.

 

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

 

I worked on The Marriage Bed off and on for over a decade, writing several drafts between working on two YA novels. My agent at the time never felt my revisions were good enough to send out to publishers.  Finally, much to my hesitation, I had to tell my agent that I had no choice but to look for another agent. That was a hard decision, but it was a very amicable parting. I was grateful to her for all she’d done for me over the years, including selling two novels.  And we’re still friends.  I found another agent who believed in the novel and after a few months she found a wonderful home for The Marriage Bed at Blair, a small but mighty publisher out of North Carolina. I could not be happier. As long and as hard as I had to work on The Marriage Bed, I’m so glad I didn’t give up.   

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Lower your standards.

 

Thirty years ago, I was in a fiction workshop taught by the writer Allan Gurganus.  Another student in the workshop had asked what to do about writer’s block and Allan said, “Lower your standards.” As a writer, I was critical of my writing, hard on myself often to the point of paralysis. So the idea of lowering my standards, of settling for something less (for the moment anyway), of escorting the editor out of the room and leaving the writer to his own devices, was liberating. 

 

What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

That I finished it. 

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

I asked a trusted writer friend if she might think of one.  She went to bed thinking about it.  The next morning it came to her.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.tommyhays.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: www.malaprops.com

 

 

 

 

TBR: Burner and Other Stories by Katrina Denza

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is 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 stories in BURNER explore technology’s influence on the way we communicate with each other for better or worse. Some also touch on the ways in which women are compelled to inhabit their own power in a patriarchal society.

  

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

 

Burner was so fun to write. Having worked in restaurants in my twenties, I know the environment and the family-like relationships that can develop. I had a great time imagining how my character might try to seduce a man who’s clearly not interested in her, and especially not intellectually. There’s No Danger Here was probably revised the most drastically. In its earliest drafts the story was over six thousand words. I chipped away at it until the narrator’s understanding of what she really wanted revealed itself.

 

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

 

I sent the manuscript out to about six or seven agents and received some positive responses, but the prevailing message was that story collections are difficult to sell. At the same time, I entered the collection into contests and submitted directly to a few smaller presses. Burner was a semi-finalist in a 2023 Autumn House Press contest for fiction and longlisted for Dzanc’s 2023 contest for short story collections. A few months later, Cornerstone Press accepted it for publication. 

  

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

My favorite piece of advice is from Richard Bausch, and I’m paraphrasing here, but essentially to ground the reader in the story with details. And I also like the more general advice: write the things you’d want to read.

  

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

 

My surprises show up in revision. The way I revise is probably the least efficient, which is to rewrite the story from start to finish every time, but this method tends to yield the most surprises.

  

How did you find the title of your book?

 

Burner seemed to capture the disposable nature of communication that technology encourages or allows.

 

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

 

The chef in Burner makes a delicious coq au vin, but unfortunately, he’s as tightlipped about how he makes it as he is about himself.

 

***

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://www.katrinadenza.com/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://bookshop.org/p/books/burner-and-other-stories/c1fe6bc8563b1165?ean=9781968148126&next=t

  

READ A STORY FROM THIS BOOK, “In These Dark Woods”:  https://newworldwriting.net/katrina-denza-in-these-dark-woods/

 

 

TBR: Peacocks on the Streets by Michele Wolf

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

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

 

Peacocks on the Streets explores what is wild and unpredictable in our lives — both what slams us and what uplifts us — and how we find the resolve to triumph after trauma. The poems’ subjects range from pandemic bereavement, hate crimes, and terrorism, to falling in love at midlife, adopting a child, and caring for a parent stolen by dementia. With grit and compassion, Peacocks on the Streets offers an acute sense of the privilege of being alive.

 

 

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

 

I broke personal boundaries in that I began to write about some previously self-censored subjects, such as the emotional pain of my infertility and my often fraught relationship with my mother, a tension that peaked in my teens and 20s but always lingered under the surface. This loss got magnified once my mother plunged into dementia. The courage came from the grief I experienced even before my mother’s passing, as I watched her deteriorate cognitively and physically. My mother’s death released me to claim my truths and to see situations, whether real or conjured, with more clarity and a fuller appreciation of multiple points of view. This has led to an even deeper authenticity, strength, and warmth in my work, which I find people relate to.

 

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

 

I spent a bunch of years sending a version of Peacocks to competitions offering a book-publication prize, and I received several finalist or semifinalist notifications. I steadily continued to publish pieces in literary journals and anthologies, and I didn’t give up trying to place the manuscript. I had previously published two full-length books and a chapbook, and I had confidence in the work. My breakthrough came when I began investigating and submitting to independent presses that offered book publication and royalties but not a prize. First I was offered a yes from an independent press whose seven-page contract did not seem author-friendly. Like the vast majority of poets, I don’t work with an agent — there’s not enough of a financial return on most poetry books to be of interest to an agent. So, I joined the Authors Guild and had my contract reviewed by an attorney on the staff. After that consultation, I sent an email to the publisher, requesting several changes to the contract. Via email, they withdrew their publishing offer, saying we were too far apart. That was not my happiest day.

 

But soon Broadstone Books offered me another yes. That was a hallelujah day. I’ve had a great experience with Broadstone.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

My favorite writing advice comes from a one-day master class I had with the late U.S. poet laureate W.S. Merwin. “We don’t write poems,” he maintained. “We listen for them.” Wow. I found that approach to be powerful — that the writing process is not so much that we will a poem into being, but instead that we get ourselves to a quiet place and listen for the words.

 

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

 

This is something that surprised me after I had written the book. It didn’t occur to me until two people mentioned it that Peacocks on the Streets is rife with animals — five kinds of birds, a coyote, mountain goats, pandas, a hamster, manatees, deer, tadpoles, zebras, a beagle, fish, corals, seals, dolphins, whales, a ladybug, and more — and that I was making a statement about the wisdom and supremacy of animals. Okay, I suppose that makes sense. But it was never my conscious intent to suggest this! 

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

The book’s title, which is also the title of the poem “Peacocks on the Streets,” comes from that time during the pandemic when we were in quarantine and the streets were so empty that, worldwide, wildlife ventured out to residential and commercial areas. “Peacocks on the Streets” was always the title of the poem, and I knew, even before the poem was complete, that it would be the unifying, flagship piece and title that spoke for the entire book.

 

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

 

In the poem “Peacocks on the Streets,” my persona buys a rotisserie chicken. Here is my completely subjective ranking — from “Bleh” to “Meh” to “Scrumptious” — of supermarket rotisserie chickens available in the D.C. area.

5. Costco

4. Whole Foods

3. A tie: Safeway and Harris Teeter

2. Giant

1. Wegman’s—the best!

 

*****

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://michelewolf.com/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK (THE 20% OFF DISCOUNT CODE IS POETS24): https://www.broadstonebooks.com/shop/p/peacocks-on-the-streets-poetry-by-michele-wolf

 

READ SEVERAL POEMS FROM THIS BOOK: https://michelewolf.com/poems.html

 

 

 

 

TBR: Outside the Lines: A Memoir by Helen Fremont

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is 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?

 

Outside the Lines is a queer love story between a young public defender and a married mother of two, who meet in a writing workshop in Boston in the 1980s. Drawn together by surprisingly similar family secrets, hidden identities, and a deep connection to the Holocaust, they fall in love. Subsequently, a terminal illness changes and intensifies their relationship with each other and with their families.

 

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

 

By the time I got around to writing this memoir (my third), I’d inadvertantly become something of an expert at family demolition. After my first memoir (which I thought was pretty tame) was published, my family disowned me and declared me dead.

 

It took twenty years for me to get up the ovarian fortitude to write a second memoir, in which I told the rest of the story, including many of the gory details I’d tactfully left out of the first book. (My parents had died in the meantime.)

 

I think the need to write these stories as memoir stems from the need to claim one’s own voice and one’s own truth, when the writer’s reality has consistently been denied or disavowed. Family secrets manipulate and mess with one’s sense of self, which is why they are so potent.

 

In my new memoir, Outside the Lines, the two main characters died many years ago, so I feel a little less anxious about writing my story as it relates to them. Once again, I’ve changed names and details, and omitted scenes in order to protect the privacy of surviving family members. But of course, I worry a great deal about how family and friends will feel. I don’t think it’s particularly “courageous” to write memoir; I think it’s compelled by a need to speak your truth when it has been consistently denied.

 

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

 

I’ve wanted to write this book for a long time, but apparently I wasn’t ready to dive into the material until a few years ago. Writing the scenes set loose a flood of memories, both exhilarating and agonizing. So as with all writing, the highs and lows are always built right into the daily work. I write something one day and think it’s brilliant; I look at it in the morning, and it’s turned to garbage.

 

Perhaps my greatest high with this book came from my writer buddies, who never cease to amaze and inspire me with their own poetry and prose, and who never pretend something is working when it’s not. Every time we’d get together to talk about our work, I came away on fire to fix the things they’d suggested, and excited about the whole impossible project of bringing a bunch of words on the page into a completed book for publication.

 

It was also thrilling when my agent (whom I adore and revere) read the manuscript and liked it. Her belief in this little book was so powerful, it made the first slew of rejections from publishing houses less painful. Of course, when the next slew of rejections came in, and the ones after that, my mood descended  in direct proportion to the rise in rejections. Needless to say, it was wonderful to find a publisher I admired who liked this book enough to want to publish it. Working with her and her team has been a blast.  

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

“It’s all draft until you die.” The poet Ellen Bryant Voigt said that. Just conjuring her name makes me happy. She is the founder and mastermind of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, my alma mater. Ellen is all about process, all about doing the work, without letting yourself get distracted by anything else—the market or the critics, or your own inner judge. She reminds us that we can keep fiddling with a draft as long as we like, long after it’s been published, or long after we’ve given up on it. Writing is not just our work; it’s our play, it's what reminds us we’re alive.

 

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

 

I was surprised when I wrote a sentence I liked for more than twenty-four hours. And I was surprised—well, more like embarrassed—to discover how incredibly immature and clueless I was at the age of thirty. It’s sort of amazing to see the effect that thirty-plus years of perspective had on my memories and feelings—even sensory perceptions—that came back to me when I was writing. So as you see, self-absorption really does have its own rewards.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

I am terrible at titles. Prolifically terrible. I must have scribbled down hundreds of titles, one worse than the other. For a while, I was convinced that if I just found the right Leonard Cohen lyric, I’d have my title.

 

Fortunately, my wife pretty quickly came up with the title, Outside the Lines. I liked it immediately, and then went on to brainstorm another couple hundred awful titles. But I kept coming back to this one, because it’s about coming out, and it’s about the complications of navigating a life outside the norm. The title lasted through all my mood changes, so it’s a keeper. (So is she.)

 

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

 

I am a low-brow baking fiend. I usually need to bake cookies and brownies and other easy-to-handle platforms for the delivery of chocolate, sugar and fat. I baked my way through a lot of this book. There are way too many recipes for me to list here, but they all basically boil down to butter + sugar + flour. Usually 72% bittersweet chocolate is involved.

 

Here's an easy one:

 

Chocolate Chip Rye Caraway Cookies

            (Credit: Sycamore Kitchen)

 

¾ c (1 ½ sticks) butter, room temp

½ c brown sugar

½ c sugar

1 c all-purpose flour

1 + c dark rye flour

½ tsp + baking soda

¾ tsp baking powder

¾ tsp kosher salt + for sprinkling

½ + tsp caraway seeds, some ground

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla extract

8 oz. dark (70%) chocolate, chopped into chunks smaller than ¼ inch

 

Pre-heat oven 350 degrees.

Beat butter & sugars till light and fluffy – 3 – 5 min

In a separate bowl: whisk flours, soda, powder, salt & caraway seeds.

Add egg & vanilla to butter and beat till fully combined.

Add dry ingredients, beat till almost incorporated. Add chopped chocolate.

Scoop dough onto parchment lined cookie sheets. Sprinkle with salt. Bake till crisp edges, soft in middle ~ 15 min.

 

***

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.helenfremont.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:

https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=outside+the+lines+helen+fremont

 

SUBSTACK: https://helenfremont.substack.com/

 

TBR: Angels at the Gate by Sheri Joseph

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is 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?

 

At a remote Southern university in the late 1980s, student Leah Gavin becomes obsessed with a classmate’s unexplained fall from the bell tower, then begins to realize the mystery might implicate people close to her. It’s a literary thriller and heartfelt coming-of-age story with a kick-ass mixtape soundtrack.

 

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

 

My most enjoyable character, a frat boy named Quinn Cooper, was intended to have only a minor role in the story: a sort-of friend Leah doesn’t trust who has some information to deliver. But he showed up with this outsized personality and rapacious desires and a vestigial conscience, and he just kept demanding more space, until he became my Iago—which, in John Updike’s terminology, is less the villain than the character who pushes all the other characters around. He completely took over the book, in large part because he was so much fun to write. I had the most difficulty with Leah, who is not me but is very often standing in my place, within my emotional experience. So it was hard to keep her vividly and precisely herself.

 

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

 

The less said about that, the better! My agent sent it out to editors for years, but what happens to most writers who have published a few books without selling any great numbers is that no one not already attached to the writer will read the book. Editors just let the manuscript sit on their desk until they have the pressure of another offer to compel them to pick it up. Even if they do read it and love it, “the numbers” don’t support taking the risk. So I took the book to a wonderful small press, Regal House, which has more freedom to avoid the really destructive business model of bigger publishers and can just publish good books.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

As a teacher of writing, I have a few hundred go-to favorites! Most of them require a whiteboard and a weird approximate drawing of what a story looks like inside my head, just as a starting point. Maybe that’s more instruction than advice. The best advice I’ve ever received about my own work was “Be more forthcoming.” That’s one I’m often repeating to students who overvalue mystery. And my evergreen, bedrock advice is read. Reading is the best teacher. Read widely at the level of quality you hope to achieve in your own work.

 

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

 

I’m with you on that advice! Almost everything I write surprises me because I start from a compelling situation I don’t fully understand, then I write to discover what’s going on. In this book, that included about 80% of the central mystery. Also, most of Leah’s love life and several key friendships got pulled in directions I did not expect. And some of my favorite scenes came from just asking myself a question mid-draft like “What’s Leah’s most intense relationship with a professor?” then writing toward that.

 

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

 

The campus setting, Rockhaven, is very closely based on my alma mater, as will be obvious to anyone who knows and loves Sewanee. I renamed everything only to give myself the smallest room for fiction. My goal was to write a memoir of emotion and place, a novel in which everything is true except all of the characters and all of the events. Rockhaven as a place is so very Sewanee in the 80s that I worry it’s going to be hard for some alums to avoid thinking it’s a code pointing to real people and events. So I’m here to declare that 1) none of this happened and 2) (almost) no one I know is in this book! The exceptions are my late, great professor Douglas Paschall, who is dropped into the book as I remember him with only a name change, and two of our presumably late horses, Jojo and Matchless, who are playing themselves.

 

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

 

Leah is a poor college student and thus fairly obsessed with food. There’s a scene in which she attends a dinner at a professor’s house and eats a whole menu of food that’s new to her (lettuce from a garden! cheese from a goat!). But her true love is the greasy pub food she generally has to watch others eat, like the local delicacy known as the Granger (I kept the Sewanee name for this as well as for our go-to cheap beer, which was literally and meaningfully Falstaff).

 

The Granger

Plain bagel, toasted

½ inch of cream cheese

Bacon, cooked

2 slices of Swiss cheese

Nuke it

 

***

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.sherijoseph.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:  https://bookshop.org/p/books/angels-at-the-gate-sheri-joseph/22326772?ean=9781646036530&next=t

 

 

 

 

 

TBR: The Place That Is Coming to Us by J.D. Smith

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

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

 

This collection addresses our troubled relationship with the non-human world, from which we cannot separate ourselves; as others have noted, “Nature bats last.” While this book can be seen as a twenty-first century addendum to the work of Robinson Jeffers, it also records an attempt to view nature—Creation, if you will—through lenses other than those of appetite and ambition.

 

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

 

Besides breaking through the usual writerly boundaries of self-doubt and procrastination, I claimed new intellectual territory for myself and began to find ways to describe it. In short, I have moved beyond the fraying narrative of endless technological progress fueled by cheap energy. As others have noted, we’re not getting our jetpacks, and that’s just the beginning. We’re in for a bumpy ride, and denial can only make things worse, especially for the vulnerable.

 

Expressing these concerns and publicly grieving for the human and natural world may entail a degree of courage, but I will leave that to others to decide. At any rate, people who share or come to share those concerns should know that they are not alone in having them, and that we are finding a language to address these issues.    

 

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

 

One version or another of this collection has been circulating for about ten years, so there have been a great many lows—many undoubtedly deserved when the book hadn’t yet taken the right form. There were plenty of flat-out rejections, and the manuscript never placed as a finalist or semi-finalist in a competition. Along the way, though, I did get a couple of rejections with encouraging words, and I kept revising the manuscript.

 

In June of 2024, I finally got the “yes” I was looking for. I had ordered a couple of collections from Broadstone Books and liked their editorial judgment and their attention to the physical quality of their books, so on a whim I sent them the collection. To my surprise and delight editor Larry Moore accepted the manuscript, which roughly fits in the category of ecopoetry and probably nowhere else. For most of that summer, and occasionally since then, I’ve been reminded of the Iron & Wine-Fiona Apple track “All in Good Time.”

 

Since I’m retiring from my day job at the end of September, there will be time to give this book the support I think it deserves.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

At the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 1992, William Matthews told me, “You’re still finding out what you can do. Go home and write your ass off.” I can’t improve on that.

 

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

 

The poems in this book were written over a span of more than twenty years, so I probably can’t remember all the times I’ve been surprised. A poem’s coming to mind is always unexpected, as are the moments of arriving at a final version after years of being stuck on one or another detail.

 

Compiling and arranging the poems had further unexpected results. The persistence of various themes and perspectives reminded me of how the collection could only have come about after decades of education and experience, with a few major shifts along the way. I was also taken aback by seeing how much I’d been thinking about salamanders.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

The title comes from the last line of “Introit,” the collection’s first poem. The line sets up the collection’s concerns with a strange and troubling world that we do not have to go on great voyages to discover. It is finding us, whether we like it or not, even if our lives take place within a tiny radius. In a changing climate, weather is more unpredictable, and extreme events are occurring more frequently. The ranges of wild plants and animals, and the hardiness zones for agriculture and gardening, are changing accordingly. Whether I look at the Chicago area, where I was born and raised, or Washington, DC, where I went to college and have lived as a working adult since 2000, I no longer see the places I once knew.

 

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

 

Food appears at several points in the book, though most of it is of the kinds consumed by other species and not very appealing to homo sapiens. Scavenging is important, but I can’t do it. The book does, however, include ingredients: sugar, fish, coffee, sea jellies (for the somewhat adventurous), and blue crab, to which I am apparently allergic. My previous books have touched on more appetizing choices, and books to follow will probably do so as well. Even if I can’t provide the rapturous passages of Thomas Wolfe or Jim Harrison, there will be nibbles.

 

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READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR:  www.jdsmithwriter.com

 

ORDER A COPY OF THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://www.broadstonebooks.com/shop/p/the-place-that-is-coming-to-us-poetry-by-j-d-smith

~~~~Note: Use discount code POETS24 for 20% off!~~~~

 

READ A POEM FROM THIS BOOK, “Dream with Policy”: https://www.harvardreview.org/content/dream-with-policy/

 

SUBSTACK: https://jdsmith3.substack.com/