My author interview series is on hiatus until January 2025. Keep an eye out for my annual list of "Best Books (I Read) in 2024."
Tuesday, December 3, 2024
Monday, October 28, 2024
TBR: The Mary Years by Julie Marie Wade
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 Mary Years is a nonfiction novella that chronicles one young woman’s quarter-century love affair with The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Part bildungsroman and part televisual ekphrasis, this is the story of Mary Richards re-seen through the eyes of Julie Marie Wade.
Which essay did you most enjoy writing? Why? And which essay gave you the most trouble, and why?
My students tell me about writing fan fiction, how
satisfying it is for them to take characters that exist in books and films and
video games and create additional stories, even alternative stories, for their
lives. Mistakenly, for years, I’ve thought I didn’t know anything at all about
fan fiction, but the truth is, The Mary Years is a work of fan nonfiction,
and I think I felt compelled to write it for similar reasons to those that
inspire fan fiction: I wanted to explore how a fictional character (many, actually—a
cast of fictional characters) can have as much influence over our lives
as the real people who live and breathe alongside us.
Maybe we all live between real and fictional realms anyway,
so this memoir, arranged in chapters that were individually published as
“essays in episodes,” is my attempt at showing the ongoing straddle between my
personal history and the television show that has been a touchstone for it
since The Mary Tyler Moore Show first premiered on Nick at Nite in 1992.
I’m not sure if the writing of this collection exemplifies any kind of courage,
but I knew I had to write the book after Mary Tyler Moore, the real person who
embodied the fictional character who deeply informed my real coming-of-age,
passed away in early 2017. The Mary Years is nothing if not an elegy to
her and for her as well.
I loved writing each essay in episodes, considering my own
childhood in an insular Seattle suburb called Fauntlee Hills as an analog to
Mary Richards’s Roseburg, the fictional Minnesota town where the character was
from (“Fauntlee Hills Was My Roseburg: An Essay in Episodes, Prairie
Schooner, 2020); exploring my first residence as an autonomous adult in
Pittsburgh, the early years of wondering whether my partner Angie and I would
“make it after all” in a place neither of us had ever visited before moving across
the country together and starting a new life there (“Pittsburgh Was My Minneapolis:
An Essay in Episodes, Tupelo Quarterly, 2018); and of course these more
recent years in Miami, my life as a professor and mentor, taking on a kind of
work where I might become a role model for others in the way Mary—both the
person and the character—became a role model for me (“Miami is My Tipperary: An
Essay in Episodes,” The Normal School, 2020). Let’s hope!
I might have had the most conspicuous fun writing “Lamonts Might Be My WJM” (Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, 2019) which explored my first real job—the one that wasn’t babysitting or teaching piano lessons or walking neighbors’ dogs—the first job where I earned a proper paycheck on a grainy blue background with those little perforated tabs you have to tear along the sides. The Mary Tyler Moore Show kindled in me a desire not only to work as part of a professional team but a desire for the friendships and camaraderie that might be forged because of working together. At seventeen, just before graduating from high school, I was hired by the (sadly now-defunct) department store Lamonts as a sales associate. Even the title sounded fancy to me! And I started meeting all these people—mostly middle-aged and older women—who had so much life experience in addition to their decades of retail experience, and most of whom were more than willing to share that experience with me. I wanted to bring my initiation into that workplace—but also into that new realm of womanhood—onto the page. I still think so often about my colleagues at Lamonts, who were really mentors, and all that I learned from them. They didn’t seem like Mary Richards, not one of them, but they shaped my life in significant ways, too. And when I finally left that job and moved onto a commissioned position selling shoes for JCPenney, I remember one of my mentors hugged me good-bye in the break room and said, knowing my deep love of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (everyone knew about that!), “We’re going to miss you, our sweet Mary girl.”
Probably the hardest part of this book to write was near the
end of the essay-chapter “Miami Is My Tipperary,” the night I learned Mary
Tyler Moore had died. I was teaching when it happened, which seemed fitting—I
was doing the thing I love most—and my phone was filling up with voicemails and
texts offering condolences from people across my life. But I didn’t see these
messages until hours later. Usually, as a writer with strong commitments to
memoir, I’m writing at a distance from my memories, not trying to document
events so close to when they actually happened. As I was writing that part of
the essay, splicing the messages I hadn’t seen yet with what we were talking
about in class—ekphrasis, of all things—writing in response to various kinds of
art, including television—I realized I was crying. Tears were pouring down my
face as I typed. It may be the first time I have ever experienced such an
immediate and intense catharsis while shaping memory into scene on the page.
Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s
road to publication.
I’m actually astonished—and so grateful, beyond
grateful—that Michael Martone chose this book for the Clay Reynolds Novella
Prize in 2023. I don’t remember offhand how many times I circulated the book to
various possible publishers—mostly memoir and nonfiction book prizes—or even
what possessed me to send The Mary Years to a novella prize. It’s about
40,000 words, so it qualifies as a novella length-wise, but I wasn’t sure if
novellas were restricted implicitly to fictional works. Then again, Mary
Richards is a fictional character, and WJM is a fictional workplace, so
certainly this is a nonfiction work that interacts in a sustained way with
fiction—just the fiction of someone else’s creation!
I was astonished every time one of the individual
essay-chapters found a home in a literary journal (and ultimately, they all
did), but I wasn’t sure if the idiosyncratic nature of my project would set it
apart from other manuscripts in an enticing way or a limiting way. As writers,
we never really know, do we?
I circulated this book as a book for far less time
than many of my other collections, and I’m used to waiting a long time for a
project to find the right home. So I think it was all highs really, the biggest
high being the fact that I wrote it, the homage I needed to write, and in the
process, I discovered so much about my own history that I would never have
learned without my eye poised to the lens of the MTM kaleidoscope.
Sometimes people ask memoirists, or those who work broadly
in the self-referential arts, how we don’t “run out” of material. I think it’s
not about the quantity of material at all but about finding new ways of looking
at our lives and considering all the lenses we have available to facilitate
that looking.
An ekphrastic lens is so exciting and revelatory to me that
I’m actually building a multi-genre graduate seminar around this expansive
concept. In “The New Ekphrasis,” I want to consider with my students some recent
innovative works of contemporary ekphrasis including—but not limited to!—Ander
Monson’s Predator: a Memoir, a Movie, an Obsession, Hilary Plum’s Hole
Studies (literary ekphrasis), Patricia Smith’s Unshuttered, Hanif
Abdurraqib’s They Can’t Kill Us Till They Kill Us (aural ekphrasis), Sibbie
O’Sullivan’s My Private Lennon: Explorations from a Fan Who Never Screamed.
What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?
I’m not sure it was intended specifically as writing
advice—maybe as life and writing advice—but when I was graduating from college
and preparing to head to my first graduate program, one of the great mentors of
my life, Tom Campbell, said this: “Let nothing be wasted on you.” Tom was my
undergraduate English professor and advisor, an exemplary teacher who I still
channel in my own classrooms.
I take his words to mean, simply put, use everything; learn
from everything; value everything. If you love a particular television
show, write about it. If you have a strange or surprising hobby you think no
one would else appreciate, write about it. Whatever is important to you in your
life can be shaped for a reading audience. Your reader will care if you care
enough and are artful enough in translating your own experience to the page.
And in another sense, don’t let rejections and
disappointments (which every person and every artist experience) stop you from
pursuing what you love. I am thousands of rejections deep in my 21 years of
submitting work for publication. I have lost far more contests than I have won
or could ever hope to win—as is inevitable—but I work hard to learn from those
rejections, to let them spur me forward rather than hold me back.
My favorite writing advice is “write until something
surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?
Oh, that’s wonderful advice! I’m always surprised
when writing. I look forward to being surprised. In The Mary Years, I
was surprised by the small things I discovered through sustained attention. For
instance, I discovered that WJM, the newsroom where Mary Richards works for all
seven seasons on the show, mirrors my own name’s initials, each time I am asked
to print my last name first, followed by first and middle. Also, after all
those years watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show and reading biographies
(and autobiographies!) about her life, I had realized the framed picture
on Mary Richards’s table, the one just outside her balcony doors, was a picture
of her real-life son, Richie Meeker, but it did not dawn on me until writing
this book that her character’s last name Richards was most likely an homage to
her son, whose given name was Richard.
How did you find the title of your book?
My book’s title—The Mary Years—comes from an
idiosyncratic reference that I have used since I first became a devotee of the
series as a twelve-year-old. On The Mary Tyler Moore Show, we meet Mary
Richards when the character is 30 years old, and the series ends, seven seasons
later, when she is 37. So all those years as I was moving through my
adolescence and then through my 20s, I was anticipating my own “Mary years,”
wondering what my 30s would be like—and how they would differ from Mary’s. I
always talked about people, specifically women, in that age range as being “in
their Mary years.”
Here’s a sweet story that also appears in the book: when I
entered my own Mary years, I was a PhD student living with my long-time partner
in Louisville, Kentucky, and some of our friends from my academic program
conspired with Angie to surprise me with a Mary-themed birthday party. Our
friend Carol hosted, and she served Brandy Alexanders as the signature cocktail—which
all you MTM fans will recall is the drink Mary asks for on her job interview
with Lou Grant when he insists she have a drink with him. Our friend Elijah
listened to the Mary Tyler Moore theme song “Love is All Around” so many times
that he learned the song by heart and then brought his band to Carol’s house to
play that song as I walked through the door.
Then, when I reached the end of my own Mary years, Mary
Tyler Moore passed away, and I knew it was time to write—from the other side of
that milestone era—what my own journey toward and through “the Mary years” had
meant to me.
Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any
food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)
https://www.liquor.com/recipes/brandy-alexander/
*****
READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.juliemariewade.com
READ MORE ABOUT THIS PUBLISHER: https://texasreviewpress.org/submissions/
ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781680033885/the-mary-years/
READ A SELECTION FROM THIS BOOK, “PITTSBURGH WAS MY
MINNEAPOLIS: An Essay in Episodes”: https://www.tupeloquarterly.com/prose/pittsburgh-was-my-minneapolis-an-essay-in-episodes-by-julie-marie-wade/
Monday, October 14, 2024
TBR: The Decade of Letting Things Go (A Post Menopause Memoir) by Cris Mazza
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?
It’s about loss… the growing load of losses we carry, some
without even realizing, both the expected (parents, pets, relationships, keepsakes,
homes) as well as losses we don’t realize are being lost, such as identities (daughter,
sibling, even author). And it’s about continuing the search for meaning and
contentment through what seems like the loss of hope.
Which essay did you most enjoy writing? Why? And which
essay gave you the most trouble, and why?
Perhaps “Northwoods Nap” was the easiest … so did I enjoy it
most? It was easiest because there was a particular mini event to supply shape
and movement: my dog continually waking me during a nap until I realized what
was bothering him. But the writing journey of discovery just in unpacking this
small event was both satisfying and comforting -- because it made me feel even
closer to my dog.
The most difficult could be the last one, “Day of
Reckoning,” because while I was exploring how a childhood perception that I was
decidedly not the “preferred” child in my family had created unhealthy and even
ugly adult tendencies, behavior, and sensibility … something happened in my
personal relationship that was so germane that I had to include it, but was
something deeply personal to my partner. So I wrestled with it, knowing I did
have to include it, but how? … and I ended up putting it into a text box,
almost an aside, and said that it might be the biggest day of reckoning of all.
Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s
road to publication.
The high was definitely being taken by the University of
Georgia Press CRUX CNF series. What a powerful list of names came before me!
The lows were being outright ignored by agents and some
larger independent publishers, even when I was personally recommended.
What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?
Yours! (Below.) Because it’s how I’ve learned to work. I was
probably surprised by something in every essay, then surprised all over again
when the essays made a whole story, with repeating characters, threads of
continuing story, repeated motifs, etc.
Many times, while writing, the surprise discovery or thought did signal
“this is the ending” and I knew to just stop there. Other times the surprise(s)
helped me. So I’ll just say your advice in a different way: don’t have a
hard-and-fast ending planned before you start to write.
My favorite writing advice is “write until something
surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?
As alluded to above, the biggest surprise was that separate
essays written over a 10+ year span – never thinking they would be in a book
let alone make a book – were actually a woven-together story. I like to
think this is represented in the cover art. I told the designer to look for an
image that was a “single line,” where the artist never lifts the pencil until
completely finished. It represents the “unbroken-line” threads that can be
tugged in one essay to reel-in other parts of the same story in other essays,
but also the designer tripled the line, so it represents multiple pull-through
threads.
What’s something about your book that you want readers to
know?
I want readers to know that there’s drama, tension,
discovery and relief to be found in stories that are not victim-to-victory
narratives. Searching for complicity is a foundation of the kind of exploration
I do in nonfiction writing. In fact, sometimes realizing one’s own complicity
is itself a personal gut punch to stagger away from and then try to stand up
again.
Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any
food/s associated with your book?
In “The Summer of Letting Things Go” there’s a vignette that
was originally published in Brevity, titled “Feeding Time.” It describes
my family’s custom of family dinner, and ends with a description of having
fresh coconut for dessert, starting with the hard brown fruit, progressing
through the drilling, cracking it with a hammer, then prying the white meat
from the shell.
*****
READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://cris-mazza.com/
ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://ugapress.org/book/9780820367545/the-decade-of-letting-things-go/
READ AN ESSAY FROM THIS BOOK, “Oneiric (another word I’ve
never said)”:
https://therumpus.net/2014/03/23/the-sunday-rumpus-essay-oneiric-another-word-ive-never-said/
Monday, October 7, 2024
TBR: In the Sky Lord by Mary Troy
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?
A restaurant worker steals from a donation jar meant to collect
money for a dying boy; a young woman held up at gunpoint is asked to choose
which of her coworkers should be shot; a woman in her fifties suffers near
debilitating guilt over all the small things she should have done, the times
she looked away; a woman who believes herself to be mean operates a kennel for stray and dumped dogs against a city
ordinance; a newlywed hides her dying husband from his mother; a woman takes
her father to the Kalaupapa leper colony for what they both know is a
non-existent award; a former Archangel from the Pearly Gates Men’s Cub tries
turn her life around as she operates a marina in a poverty stricken area of
Missouri. These stories and more are in IN THE SKY LORD. All ten stories are about
inventiveness, resilience, survival, yearnings, strength, and hope, but mostly
they are about the strong need to connect to another.
Which story did you most enjoy writing? Why? And which
story gave you the most trouble, and why?
The title story, “In The Sky Lord,” gave me the most trouble
because the character, Belinda, became more complex with each draft, never
stopping to become someone I could grasp. Not for years. And though she is the second
oldest woman in here, she changes in unanticipated ways, maybe changes more
than others. Because “In The Sky Lord,” was the hardest, it was also the most
enjoyable, that is if enjoyable means frustrating and haunting. Also
“Rent-to-Kill,” the first story in the book, is about Millie Kick, formerly
Millie Holmes who was the protagonist in “Do You Believe In the Chicken
Hanger?” a story I wrote 20 something years ago that was one of the runners up
for the Nelson Algren Award. It was fun to do a sequel.
Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s
road to publication.
Oh, IN THE SKY LORD has a great story. In 2018 it was
accepted as a collection, nine stories I had published over the previous 6
years as I was working on the novel, Swimming on Hwy N. The publisher,
though, soon decided he would prefer to use the new work in a larger book of
New and Selected, highlight it as part of the press’s 50th
anniversary celebration. I was excited,
humbled but excited. But the press was connected to a university, and as COVID lingered,
the press lost funding. The publisher told me not to worry, at first, as they
were getting endowments and would continue to publish as an independent. But
alas, that never quite worked. In the meantime, partly because I had just
retired and partly because COVID kept me isolated, I decided to take each of
the nine stories apart and make them even better. So I did, eventually dropping
two of them but writing two new ones. I saw a chance—with lots of changes—to
connect the stories, and I enjoyed that, too. So sometime in ’21 I sent the new
collection to Braddock Avenue Books. Why
Braddock? I had just read Kerry Neville’s collection, and discovered not only
her but also Braddock, a press I’d not heard of yet, but one that does great
stuff. Nine months after I sent the manuscript, it was accepted, but set for
publication two years away. I continued to refine the stories in those two
years, and even at the very last minute added a very new one set in the town of
Wolf Pass, Illinois, a town I created for the book.
What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?
True characters are flawed and frightened and weird and
absurd and confused and much more, just like us. If they are squinted at just
right, though, seen from different perspectives, their stories told “slant,” as
Emily Dickinson advised, their uniqueness can come through. Not one of us, not
one character, is what they seem.
My favorite writing advice is “write until something
surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?
That the endings changed so from the way they were
originally published, that they all now end in a sort of hope. I don’t normally
consider myself a hopeful sort, but I believe in the inventiveness and inner
strength of all these women.
How did you get the title?
“Will the Circle Be Unbroken” is a hymn from 1907 or so, yet
more than a hundred years later still recorded by Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, The
Neville Brothers, the Staple Singers and many others. The lyrics tell us there
is a better world a’waitin’, “in the
sky, Lord, in the sky.” That line always
made me laugh. A world in the sky! A better one! I said long ago, someday I
will write a book titled IN THE SKY LORD. This was long before I wrote the
short story with that title, and decades before the book was even an idea.
Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any
food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)
Many of my previous books, most especially Beauties, about
two women running a café, are about food and recipes. In fact, my cousin makes
my meatball recipe from Beauties every year over the holidays, and his
children call it Mary’s meatballs. But this book is full of diner fried fish
and chips, waffles and home fries, pulled pork and macaroni salad, delivered
pizzas, fast foods, canned chili and cheap hot dogs, etc.. I had not realized
that until you asked. Maybe because these are all foods I no longer eat but did
like at times. Well, “Butter Cakes” is about a man who makes butter cakes for
last meals in prisons, but he has not revealed the recipe except to say each
contains a pound of butter.
*****
Monday, September 23, 2024
TBR: The Book of Losman by K.E. Semmel
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 BOOK OF
LOSMAN is about a literary translator in Copenhagen with Tourette Syndrome who
becomes involved in a dubious and experimental drug study to retrieve his
childhood memories in a tragicomic effort to find a cure for his condition.
Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And,
which character gave you the most trouble, and why?
Daniel P. Losman—who goes simply by Losman—was very much a
fun character to write. I’ve written 7 completed manuscripts over the past 30
years, five novels and two collections of stories (there were more manuscripts
I simply abandoned). Nearly all of those manuscripts contain stories and
characters that involve background research. This is especially so with one
manuscript, a retelling of Beowulf set in the Southern Tier region of
New York State. I spent 10 years writing that book, which is called IN THE COUNTRY
OF MONSTROUS CREATURES. To do it properly, I had to read and reread Beowulf,
I had to research the process of fracking (which plays an outsize role in the
novel), and I had to invest a great deal of time learning more about this
region of the state. I am from New York State—I love New York!—but I grew up in
the Finger Lakes. There are great differences between these regions. Since I
was after a certain degree of verisimilitude, research was necessary.
I pitched agents and eventually signed with one who loved
the Beowulf retelling. He shopped it around and I got a lot of wonderful
responses from major editors and publishers, though all of which were,
ultimately, rejections. So I ended up giving up on the novel. Now it’s just a
lonely Word doc on my laptop. I mention all this because, with The Book of
Losman, I wanted to tell a simpler story, one that didn’t take a decade to
finish or force me to spend countless hours doing research. I felt I knew
Losman from the start. The two of us share some commonalities. He is a literary
translator with Tourette, like me, and because of this his character traits
slotted into place rather easily. Also, he lives in Denmark as I once did.
Losman is not me, far from it. But because my life experiences are close
to his, I didn’t have to do as much research. As a result, I was able to write
the first draft in less than two years.
The hardest character for me to write was Losman’s crush,
Caroline Jensen. She’s an artist, and a bit of an odd duckling. I had to figure
out a way to create her character without resorting to caricature. I didn’t
want to write a story with a traditional romance, either, so there’s this
awkward tension between them throughout the novel. Balancing that tension took
some effort.
Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s
road to publication.
One interesting tidbit: this book actually started as a
memoir. But the writing felt forced, and I limped along, not certain how to go
about putting together a memoir. Besides, I kept asking myself, who wants to
read a sad story about a boy with Tourette? I sure didn’t. I wanted to write
something that contained both sadness and humor but was still
entertaining. I’d been chewing on one particular idea for years—What if there
was a pill that could return our childhood memories to us?—and it dawned on me
that this was the perfect story for that idea. So I pulled one small scene from
the memoir, the “truest” scene, and reimagined the entire book as fiction. Once
I did that, the flood gates opened and the writing gushed. Fiction has always
been my preferred medium. (Though I will add that I published a
personal essay in HuffPost that served as all I wanted to say, or would
have said, in a memoir.)
My agent loved this manuscript too, and he gave me some
feedback that I incorporated. The book went out on submission but, like with
the Beowulf retelling, I ended up getting only rejections. They were nearly all
uniformly praiseful of my writing, but such praise often feels hollow when it’s
accompanied by the words “it’s not right for us” or “we hope it finds the right
home.”
While the book was out on submission, I began writing a
middle grade novel. Once it became clear that The Book of Losman was
going to suffer the same fate as In the Country of Monstrous Creatures, I made
the decision to drop my agent (it was an amicable split; he does not represent
middle grade books). I assumed, wrongly, that I would be able land another
agent. I still don’t have an agent—and it’s not for lack of trying!
But I never stopped believing in The Book of Losman,
so I submitted the manuscript to SFWP’s Literary Awards Program two or three
years ago. I’ve known the publisher, Andrew Gifford, for years. SFWP published
my translation of Simon Fruelund’s collection of stories, Milk, in 2013,
and I
even published a number of interviews with translators at SFWP’s online
literary journal for a few years (“Translator’s Cut,” I called my interview series).
Since I playfully incorporate stories and characters (and themes) from Simon’s
work in The Book of Losman—the opening chapter is very much a
reimagining of Simon’s story “Kramer” from that collection—the manuscript found
fertile soil at SFWP. The manuscript didn’t win the contest, in fact it only
made the longlist, but Andrew liked the story and decided to take a chance on
publishing it. Around the same time, another indie publisher offered me a
contract to publish the book, but I knew SFWP was the right choice. This has
absolutely proved true.
What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?
Don’t take rejection personally. Your work can be rejected
for many reasons, but you’ve got to keep plugging away, chasing your vision,
and getting better. Once you find your stories, good things will happen. It may
take 30 years, as it did for me, but if you’re patient and willing to work
through all the rejections, you’ll publish your work eventually.
My favorite writing advice is “write until something
surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?
I don’t write with an outline. I put a character in a
situation and see what happens, building the story as I go along. So in this
sense, everything that happens is a surprise. It’s this kind of creativity that
excites me enough to wake up at 5:00 a.m. to get back to work. It’s not until
after the draft is complete that I go back and make sure things connect
properly. Sometimes I have to rewrite or remove scenes, but generally speaking,
in the first draft, I want to write as though I’m a reader engaging with this
story for the first time. Which I am.
The biggest thing that surprised me in this particular novel
is just how much Simon Fruelund’s work influenced the story. Perhaps it
shouldn’t be such a surprise, since I’ve known him for more than fifteen years
and I’ve translated three of his books. Simon’s ideas on literature and fiction
have also proven hugely important to me. And he’s a friend. The Book of
Losman is, in a sense, an homage to his work.
Still, even though I deliberately began The Book of
Losman with a reimaging from one of his stories, I didn’t quite anticipate
that Losman would share certain character affinities with Pelle, say, the main
character from Simon’s novel The World and Varvara (published by Spuyten
Duyvil in 2023) or that Losman would also be working on a book, like Pelle,
with a publisher breathing down his neck. It was only after writing the
manuscript that I realized how deep the connection ran. I don’t mind this at
all. I love Simon’s books, and I think it’s wonderful that my novel is engaged
in a dialogue with them.
How did you find the title of your book?
The Book of Losman has been the title for as long as
I can remember, though I did hem and haw a bit once I realized there were
already a lot of books that included “The Book of—” in the title. I debated
just calling it Losman. But I couldn’t shake one important thematic significance
that would justify me calling it simply Losman. There’s a kind of meta-quality
to this novel, right from the opening sentence:
“When he moved to Copenhagen with his Danish girlfriend, Kat, fifteen years ago, Losman imagined his life like a Fodor’s guidebook, rich with possibility and adventure.”
Simply put: As a character, Losman is a kind of “book” to be
read, translated, and understood. The narrative follows a circular pattern that
only becomes clear at the end. So, to me, The Book of Losman always had
to be the title. I’m happy with it.
Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any
food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)
My favorite Danish pastry makes an appearance: Tebirkes!
They are hunks of buttery deliciousness.
*****
READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://kesemmel.com/
ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://www.amazon.com/Book-Losman-K-Semmel/dp/1951631374/
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
TBR: Blood on the Brain by Esinam Bediako
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?
Akosua,
a young Ghanaian American woman, struggles to confront the challenges in her
life, including a head injury, a breakup, and the reappearance of her absentee
father. She deals with her problems the best way she knows how—by rushing
headlong into new ones—until the accumulation of unresolved trauma finally
catches up to her.
Which
character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And, which character gave you the
most trouble, and why?
Akosua
and I have demographics in common—Ghanaian heritage, Detroit origins, suburban
upbringing, coming of age in New York City. But most of the decisions Akosua
makes are the opposite of what I’d do, for better or worse. She’s outspoken and
impulsive; I’m shy and make way too many lists. It was fun to create an alter
ego.
Akosua's
mother challenged me (just as she did Akosua). For a while, all I had was her
laugh, "a spooked flock of birds, a flutter of wings escaping to the
sky." I had a sense of who she was, but it was hard to translate that onto
the page.
Tell
us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.
The
novel had been my MFA thesis, and after graduation, I got some encouraging
responses from agents but didn't land one. Imposter syndrome plus anxiety about
getting a "real" job and paying back my student loans led me away
from writing. I gained a truly rewarding career as a teacher and educational
writer, but I lost my confidence as a writer.
But
then (~15 years post-MFA) the pandemic happened. Of course it was terrible and
scary and felt like the end of the world; at the same time, during that period,
I found my way back to writing. My husband convinced me to revise Blood on the Brain and submit it to Red
Hen's Ann Petry Prize, and shockingly, I won the prize, which included
publication.
What’s
your favorite piece of writing advice?
To
help me combat my anxiety about whether my writing was “good enough” for
publication, my therapist said, “Remember the little girl inside you who just
loves a good story? Write for her.'"
My
favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What
surprised you in the writing of this book?
This
is a story about identity, but initially, I also saw it as a story about a
broken father/daughter relationship. As I wrote, I realized that it’s less
about Akosua’s father and more about her dynamic with her mother. The final
pages surprised me, too—but once I realized what the story is and isn’t about,
the end made perfect sense.
How
do you approach revision?
Teaching high school English helped me appreciate revision as an opportunity to
re-see my work through fresh eyes. When students came for one-on-one help, I’d
guide them to really dismantle their drafts and put them back together. Then I
realized, “Ahh, I don’t take my own advice!” The new novel I'm working on has
undergone radical transformations, which is a good thing.
Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)
*****
READ
MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.esinambediako.com
ORDER
THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: Bookshop
Tuesday, September 3, 2024
TBR: Japa & Other Stories by Iheoma Nwachukwu
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?
Japa & Other Stories is about Nigerian immigrants
yearning for a self in America, and sometimes in other parts of the world. One
character bilocates in the heat of their yearning, another folds himself into a
box on a journey to the fulfillment of his deepest desire. Others embark on a
treacherous trek across the Sahara Desert trying to find home in foreign
cities.
Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why?
Ahamefula (in “Japa
Boys & Japa Girls”). A character who shows up in two stories, and in one of
the stories he appears in different locations at the same time. He is deeply mutilated
and frustrating, constantly making bad, humorous decisions. From the POV of a
reader, a fantastic companion on the page.
And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?
Rasaki. The protagonist who travels to Russia in “You
Illegals” to watch the World Cup. Throwing a Nigerian character into a
landscape I had never visited presented obvious problems of believability.
Trying to figure out how he might act in his interactions with Russian culture,
and the Russian people was difficult to accomplish. Eventually I read hundreds
of blogs written by Nigerians living in Russia, and watched Vlogs by Nigerian
immigrants in Russia to become comfortable enough to render this character with
the kind of easy intimacy I look for in characters when I read fiction.
Which story did you most enjoy writing?
To be honest, I enjoyed writing all the stories, though I
might be slightly partial to “Japa Girls” in which a character bilocates.
Why?
I like working out the supernatural in fiction. It’s such an
important fabric of my understanding of the world, and also something which I
do not fully understand—so it’s always giving. I believe every human being is
part-spirit; whether you believe it or not, you’re what you are. The uncanny is
a kind of wildness that attacks our sense of order, though we find it
infinitely stimulating.
And, which story gave you the most trouble, and why?
Two stories gave me the most trouble. The frame story, “To
You Americans,” and “Spain’s Last Colonial Outposts” where I switch
perspectives—third person/ first person plural. Frame stories are by their very
nature like matryoshka dolls. A story inside a story. Rhythm inside rhythm. The
outside story and the inside one have to be expanding at just the right pace so
that, in the end, the story doesn’t tilt. That’s usually difficult to do.
Switching narrators in a story can be confusing for the
reader. So again, the rhythm has to be weighed right. The switches happening in
a way that feels necessary, that makes the reader believe they’ve received a
burst of energy and promise.
Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s
road to publication.
In the three years before I won the Flannery O’Connor, my
then-agent tried to sell my collection to several publishers with little
success. I entered a few book contests, too. At some point it occurred to me
that I needed to rearrange the stories in the collection and write new ones. I
had a couple of stories that had been published in stellar journals but didn’t
really belong in the book. It took tremendous courage to cut them out. I sought
out a unity in the collection. It took about six months to arrange the stories
in what I thought was the right order. Then I prayed for success.
What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?
Without conflict fiction is just a boring rendition of
details. Which is another way of saying, your character must yearn for
something. Every human being wants something. And to seek is to suffer.
My favorite writing advice is “write until something
surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?
The incredible amount of research I had to do for each
story. For “Urban Gorilla” I had about a hundred pages of research. Images
included. I’m a very visual writer.
What’s something about your book that you want readers to
know?
This is serious fiction that also makes you laugh. I
appreciate humor in fiction. One of my wrting professors, Elizabeth McCracken
used to say, “Don’t be afraid to be funny.”
Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any
food/s associated with your book?
I drank a mix of hibiscus tea, plus ginger and garlic while
writing this book. It improved my eyesight considerably.
*****
READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://iheomanwachukwu.com
ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://ugapress.org/book/9780820367279/japa-and-other-stories/
READ A STORY FROM THIS BOOK, “Hosanna Japa Town”: https://oxfordamerican.org/authors/iheoma-nwachukwu
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