Tag Archives: #authorinterview

Interview with Wendy J. Fox

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reprinted with permission from www.workinprogressinprogress.com

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.

Interview with Elizabeth Hazen

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reprinted with permission from www.workinprogressinprogress.com

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

I tend to write my way through challenges – both internal ones and external ones – so a lot of my poems have to do with questions of identity and purpose as well as with navigating complicated relationships. My recent work also concerns parenting a young adult son, helping him find meaning in the world when I struggle to do so myself. I like to play with form, so a lot of my poems adhere to formal constraints of some kind.

Which poem/s did you most enjoy writing? Why?

I had a lot of fun writing the gloses. This is an obscure Spanish form that takes four lines – a “cabeza” – from an existing poem. Those lines then each become the final lines of four 10-line stanzas. Lines 6, 9, and 10 rhyme. In general, I enjoy working in form – it takes me out of my emotional brain and puts me in that logical, puzzle-solving brain. I think this is good for creating some distance from the subject, allowing me more objectivity. The form also encourages a dialogue with the poem from which the cabeza is taken, and I loved spending time with those works.

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

The publication process for The Sky Will Hold took longer than expected. Initially, Alan Squire Publishing was going to release this collection in March 2025. They published my first two collections and we were excited to work together on this one, but for various reasons in the spring of 2024, ASP decided to go on hiatus. I was disappointed and discouraged and spent a few months convinced that I would never find a publisher, but ultimately Riot in Your Throat took the book. The delay allowed me to add a few poems to the manuscript that I think make the collection stronger, so it all worked out in the end.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

The older I get, the more I appreciate the advice that many of my teachers have given over the years – and that is simply to have fun with it. I’ve been writing for long enough that I see little reason to continue unless it brings me joy, so I have been trying to get back to that original sense of discovery and wonder that made writing appeal to me in the first place.

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

I don’t think of myself as a very optimistic person, but I increasingly believe that my purpose in writing is to highlight the beauty and connection I see in the world. When I read through the collection, I am surprised and pleased to see that many of the poems are actually pretty hopeful.

How did you find the title of your book?

Rose Solari, a fabulous poet and teacher and the publisher of my first two books, came up with the title. She was helping me with the order of the poems, and we were chatting about title options, and she suggested The Sky Will Hold. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that it was the right title.

Interview with Jamey Gallagher

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reprinted with permission from www.workinprogressinprogress.com


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

 Bodies in Bags is a grit lit/crime collection so visceral you can smell it. A bad cop in New Hampshire dealing with the consequences of shooting an intruder, a drifter who wakes up next to her dead companion in Atlantic City, a veteran fleeing to South Jersey after an impulsive crime: these are stories of desperation and recompense, told in tough and sometimes tender voices. The stories deal with issues of masculinity, consequences, violence, and uncontrollable impulses.

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

Of all the stories in Bodies in Bags, I think “Night Moves” might have been the most enjoyable to write. The setting takes me back to a volunteer position at a hospital I had when I was a teenager. The world feels familiar, and the main character is someone I like a lot, a woman like some of the women I worked with at the hospital: tough but kind. The story “Dream a Little Dream” probably gave me the most trouble. It took me so long to finish. I had the character and the opening scene for years, and I must have started three or four novels based on that opening before finally coming up with a shape and a voice that I’m proud of.

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

This is the second book of short stories I’ve published in two years. For both books, many of the stories go back a ways. Once I had found the shape for my first collection, I realized that I had a bunch of noir/grit lit pieces that all seemed to hang together. After years of facing rejection, this book was pretty easy to get out there, thanks to the support and faith of Ross Tangedal at Cornerstone Press.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

I tend to think all writing advice is pointless, unless it works. As a young writer, I was lucky enough to be in a writing group run by Andre Dubus III. Many things Andre said stuck with me, but I particularly remember him talking about perseverance. “If you put it under a magnifying glass long enough, eventually it’s going to catch fire.”

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

The best stories are almost entirely surprises. As a writer, especially when I’m between stories, I’m always listening for voices and waiting to hear one that works. This collection features a lot of voices that surprised me. I have no idea why they feel real to me or where they came from.

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

I think readers should know what they’re getting into. This book is definitely not for everyone, but, for people who like things dark, I think it will provide exactly what you’re looking for. It doesn’t flinch.

Interview with Tommy Hays

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reprinted with permission from www.workinprogressinprogress.com

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.

On Meeting Fear with Trust: An Interview with Kristine Langley Mahler

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by Anna Petty

Kristine Langley Mahler is more than a writer of creative nonfiction. She is a memoirist, an archaeologist, a researcher, an essayist, and a poet. I compiled seven questions that delve into aspects explored within Kristine’s work. Her newest collection of hybrid essays, Teen Queen Training: Essays after The Seventeen Book of Etiquette and Entertaining, 1963, was recently released on February 17, 2026, with Autofocus Books.

AP: You wrote an article titled “Erasure: It’s For Nonfiction Writers Too!”, about your new book, Teen Queen Training, debuting on February 17th. This line caught my eye, “Flipping through the book, I got caught up on a chapter titled ‘Boys, Boys, Boys.’ So many lines mildly offended my sensibilities—it opened with the promise that ‘any girl can get a date,’ which was a flat-out lie in my experience…” Shortly afterward, you began “blacking out lines” of the original text and creating your own version. Your essay, “Boys, Boss” is the erasure of that chapter. It’s my favorite essay in the book and it’s also the longest essay in the collection. Can you tell us why this chapter in particular set the entire project in motion and how the idea that male relationships determine a woman’s worth affected and shaped you growing up and how you view that idea now?

KLM.: That original chapter from the Seventeen book, “Boys, Boys, Boys,” really set me off—like a tinderbox just waiting for a match—because one of my primary frustrations during my teenhood, which I return to over and over in Teen Queen Training, was how I never felt desirable to boys, regardless of what I did (or didn’t do). I don’t think that’s a particularly novel feeling—it’s deeply teenage—but my self-consciousness ate me alive.

Because I’d moved three times before arriving in the city where I spent my high school years, I didn’t have any familiarity with childhood friends who could turn into something more. I would say that—and this is very specific to my conceptualization of valueat the time—my reaction was less about relationships with men as defining a woman’s worth, and more about wanting to be found desirable by the people you want to find you desirable.

If I had been a queer teen, I would have been obsessed with wanting other queer teens to want me—my reaction was less gendered/weighted toward the power of men, specifically, as much as it was that I was attracted to boys as a teen and I wanted boys to be attracted to me. That being said, the Seventeen Book of Entertaining and Etiquette, as a product of the 1960s, was quite heteronormative, so their instruction fit my yearnings as well.

I still think that we all want the people we find desirable to desire us back!

AP: Your hard work and dedication to your craft have been widely recognized with several Fellowships. You also won a Research Grant in 2017 for a researched creative nonfiction project on immigration and inhabitation on native land. One of the many things you accomplished was transcribing eighteen years of your grandfather’s diaries into more than five hundred pages. With your expertise in research and as a nonfiction writer, how do you channel your efforts into a cohesive finished product? Can you give writers who may be new to researching for a large project pointers for sifting through storehouses of information and how they can keep their finished product in mind? Can you briefly describe your research process?

KLM: I love being in the archives, I love gathering information and letting it sit in my brain before shaking the sifter and seeing what filters through. I’m very much a packrat in that way, I have a shelf full of books from that project you referred to—the researched project on immigration/inhabitation on native land—and I’ve got several giant Word docs filled with my responses to those books, with questions I found myself wondering, with attempts and gestures toward making sense of them. And I wrote a handful of essays with some of the material that I was able to digest a little quicker. But—and this has come with practice and learning to trust my own processes/processing—I’m less concerned, now, with needing to turn that research into a product as soon as possible.

As a memoirist, I know that some material is sitting on the top of my consciousness, ready to be processed, and I know that other material is still composting down in my subconscious. I’ve been doing this long enough to trust myself and to know that, when I’m ready to see that material, it will surface. So, I’m not the best example of someone who can suggest ways to keep your finished product in mind when researching, as much as I might suggest relaxing your grip on your INTENTIONS for your finished product and letting the research itself, and the material you find interesting during the process, guide what you keep.

AP: In one of your previous interviews, you spoke about spending time not writing while quietly accessing your subconscious. This idea of the subconscious brings to mind a quote from your book, A Calendar is a Snakeskin, “Fear needs to be met with trust because the universe will bring us into the places we need to face.” Can you talk more about the role chance, mysticism, going with your gut, and listening to your subconscious has in your work? What other practices do you employ to ensure you are going where you need to go with your writing?

KLM: This is definitely related to my answer to the previous question about letting my subconscious do the work! That quote you mention about meeting fear with trust is perhaps at the center of what I think many of us writing memoir have to do—to encounter the self (and often others) we’ve averted our eyes from, and to see ourselves and others with a kinder, gentler, more considerate gaze. No one needs to be excoriated from the pain they’ve caused, but I find, over and over, that when I return to my most harrowing experiences with enough distance, I’m brought to my knees when I’m finally able to recognize the humanity in everyone involved—including myself.

AP: In your book, A Calendar is a Snakeskin, there is an essay titled “Wound watch” where you count down from twelve to one, with each number representing a different memory, a precious moment in time. Where do you find inspiration for your many, varied essay forms? Many of your essays have a poetic bend, can you explain what role poetry plays in your work and creative process?

KLM: That’s the contrarian in me that insists on bringing poetry into my essays, honestly. I like seeing boundaries and then I like walking up to the fence and leaning my elbows on it, looking across at the other side, my feet grounded in one form and my eyes taking in another. I would argue that poetry itself lives inside every form, anyway. Lineation is the only distinction, and even that is suspect! The language, the movement of sentences, the implied metaphor and surprising juxtaposition—that belongs to us all.

AP: For many writers, part of realizing you want to be a writer comes from falling in love with the work of others. Can you tell us who some of your favorite writers are and who most heavily influenced you as you grew into the writer you are today?

KLM: Jo Ann Beard was absolutely pivotal. I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about this before, but I went to high school in Terre Haute, Indiana in the late ‘90s, and we had a Waldenbooks in the mall and a Books-a-Million, which is another way of saying I had access to pop fiction and that’s about it. I was taking a creative writing elective as a high school senior in 1999 and I had written a piece, which I was calling a short story, that my advisor read and said, “This sounds a lot more like nonfiction.” I was like What is nonfiction??? So, I went to our public library and followed the Dewey Decimal System call code, and The Boys of My Youth was sitting there, and I took it off the shelf because I liked the cover, and I took it home, and I was never the same person again. I’d never in my life read anything like that before. IT WAS LIKE SHORT STORIES BUT THEY WERE TRUE!

Later—and I mean MUCH later—I would read interview after interview with other writers who came of writing age at the same time as me, and they talked about how formative Jo Ann Beard’s book was to them, and I was so, so surprised that other people KNEW ABOUT IT. For me, The Boys of My Youth was that book that we’ve all read, at some point, where we thought it was only ours. Kind of hilarious to remember now, how insular I thought it was. I see now how much that book shaped nearly all of us!

Other writers whose work continues to inspire me: Jenny Boully, Elissa Washuta, Annie Ernaux, Kate Zambreno, and Jeannie Vanasco.

AP: Are there cohesive threads that run throughout your work that you hope readers are able to recognize and apply to their own experience? Can you elaborate on those threads and what they mean to you?

KLM: Reconsidering the things from our past that we thought we knew. Gosh, that is at the core of everything I write and everything I ever expect to write. When you can return to formative experiences with more practiced eyes, or a softer heart, or with new information, it provides illumination, but—and this is very true for me—it provides empathy and the reminder that we are all flawed, fallible humans, trying to do the best we can most of the time with the tools we have.

AP: What advice can you give to writers that would like to experiment with different forms of writing in the nonfiction realm: such as essays and hybrid forms that you orchestrate so beautifully?

KLM: Be willing to consign work to the folder! Truly, so often writers are afraid to take formal risks with a project because if it doesn’t work out, it feels like a waste of time. Or material. Or whatever. But the folders on my hard drive with all of the essays I’ve attempted—or edited—or published—are full of drafts where I tried something, wasn’t sure if it was working, so I clicked Save As and gave the document a _3 or _4 or _12 before trying again. You never know when you’ll hit your stride with a form.

~~~

Kristine Langley Mahler is the author of three nonfiction books, Teen Queen Training, A Calendar is a Snakeskin and Curing Season: Artifacts. Her work has been supported by the Nebraska Arts Council and Art at Cedar Point and thrice named Notable in Best American Essays. A memoirist experimenting with the truth on the suburban prairie, Kristine makes her home outside Omaha, Nebraska. She is the director of Split/Lip Press.

Anna Petty is an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at Converse University, where she also received a Bachelor of Arts in Music. She is a mother and teacher by day, and writer by night. Currently, she is working on her first novel, a work that blurs the lines between memoir and fiction. She is a reader for South 85: An Online Literary Journal, as well as a South Carolina native.

You can find Kristine @kristinelangleymahler on Instagram, @suburbanprairie on Bluesky, and on her website: https://kristinelangleymahler.com.

You can find Anna @annapettypens on Instagram.

Interview with Anne Marie Macari

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reprinted with permission from www.workinprogressinprogress.com

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

Amerigun brings together the tragedy of my brother’s death and the cult of gun worship in this country, where even children are gunned down in schools. Grief, disbelief, discovery, gratitude and love, are what underpin these poems, as I try to hear my brother’s voice again and make sense of his death.

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

I broke my own personal boundaries in writing about my brother’s death. Over the years I have written a few poems that never really captured the grief and shock surrounding his death. I never planned on writing about him, he was buried inside me and I rarely thought of him. But then the title poem “Amerigun” came to me in such a flood that although I was in the middle of doing something, I had to sit down to try to get down what I was hearing, feeling. That first poem began with anger. How could he have done this to our parents? How could he have been so careless? Was there any kind of death wish that led to this tragedy? Suddenly I had so many questions. Over the course of two years I learned what most of my family already knew about his death. As I wrote that first poem, the fact of him shooting himself and the whole horror of our country’s love affair with guns, came together. One seemed inseparable from the other. Tragedy after sickening tragedy and we continue to protect guns over the lives of children, over all Americans. My personal connection to our national shame gave me a way into the subject of guns and helped me tell my brother’s story, helped me find a way of translating, or bringing back, his voice after forty years of keeping him at bay, of not really acknowledging my own grief. The word Amerigun just came to me. I continue to be shocked by how relevant this subject is, now more than ever.

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

I finished writing Amerigun literally a few days before Trump’s 2024 election. At that moment the poems felt not only personal, but timely. I didn’t expect what was coming, I thought we would finally have a woman president. Once he was elected the poems felt even more pressing and my publisher, Persea Books, agreed to bring out the book rather swiftly. In all, the book, from writing it to its publication, happened rather quickly, especially for me since I can be a slow writer.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

My advice for writing is also for living. It’s a practice that writing encourages in me, though maybe it’s harder in everyday life—and that is to rest in the unknown, to let work arise out of mystery, out of questions, and not out of certainty or control. Certainty is a killer of art and it’s not much good in life either, it cuts us off from learning and possibility. It might create a sense of safety, but it is illusory and even joyless.

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

I was surprised that I had any of these poems in me and then surprised that they kept coming. But especially feeling that in some strange way my brother and I were speaking to each other after forty years.

How did you find the title of your book?

The title of my book, Amerigun, simply came to me. I heard the word when writing the title poem, which is also the first poem I wrote. It brought together in one word the personal and communal tragedy.

Interview with Jill Christman

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reprinted with permission from www.workinprogressinprogress.com

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

 What I say if someone asks:

The Heart Folds Early is a memoir about what it means to make a choice.

 My third-person pitch:

River Teeth editor Jill Christman’s fourth book of nonfiction, The Heart Folds Early, is about what it means to make a choice. Loving, rageful, and often funny, Christman’s new memoir centers her decision to end a half-term pregnancy when a routine ultrasound reveals her baby has just half a heart—and asks: As mothers, how do we carry life and death in our bodies and survive with our hearts intact?

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

As a writer, I am a contrarian. In grad school, they told me No dead grandmothers. But I couldn’t help it. In my first memoir, Darkroom: A Family Exposure, I wrote the hell out of my dying grandmother (Beatrice Coe Ingraham, school librarian and ace poker player, may she rest in peace). Later, I learned that using multiple points of view in a memoir is bad form, but again, sometimes I feel as if I’m looking at my younger self from somewhere near the ceiling or perhaps I need to issue instructions or establish myself as  part of a community. Third person, first person direct address, second person (sparingly), first person plural. . . I use them all. Why have tools if we’re going to leave them in the box? And now you’re telling me there’s a fourth wall between the narrator and the reader? Crash through that wall like the Kool Aid Man. (I mean, when it suits you. Or you’re thirsty for some Red Dye 40.) So, yeah, both in terms of subject and craft, the breaking of rules is so much a part of my daily practice that it doesn’t even feel rebellious anymore—which is kind of too bad, you know?

Now, this book had to break that Big Boundary—the boundary that tells us we’re not supposed to talk about a thing. The boundary that shames and scares and shushes us into silence. This book is about my choice to have a second-trimester medical abortion.

This is my third memoir, written through a nearly twenty-year gestation, a time that ran parallel to me both raising a couple of kids with my poet husband (and, therefore, working in short, frequently interrupted bursts) and falling in love with the essay. So  

The Heart Folds Early started as a memoir (called Mothercraft), split off into essays, spawned a whole separate e-book (Borrowed Babies: Apprenticing for Motherhood) and several essays that ran away from the book and eventually got together with other essays to form a collection (If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays)—all the while growing and shrinking and changing not only outfits but whole forms, shapeshifting between nonfiction classifications and structures like a love child of Proteus and Methis (I’m making this up: they didn’t hook up, even in myth, but just imagine!).

After an initial agent pitch to publishers came back with the news that the subject of dying babies is too depressing, and thus, hard to sell, I read my by that point teenage manuscript a story and put her to bed (or maybe it was the other way around, but in any case, I was done). Maybe, I thought, this was not a book I needed to write. Maybe, I thought, this was a book I had written for myself, and honestly, that’s a pretty good way to live, no writing is ever wasted, and I would move on and write other essays and books and let this one rest in a giant file that was, back then, named Blue Baby Blue.

But then something big happened. Something terrible. Something world rattling. In June of 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, and now, now, I had a new urgent question, didn’t I? What the actual fuck? And so I rewrote the whole book, beginning with a prologue (in which it’s quite possible I curse too much), the moment in an Airbnb in Colorado when I heard the news we’d all known was coming, but now, now, here it was—the news that the right to an abortion in the United States was no longer protected. Spewing from the rageful volcano that was by then a perimenopausal me, The Heart Folds Early took on her final shape.

The book coming out this March from Nebraska is now quite solidly memoir, and even more or less chronological—except for that starting at the end to go back to the beginning bit, and some detours into my youth. One early reader called it a romance. Sexy. Another said she laughed in every chapter, even though she wasn’t sure she should be laughing. Writer and activist Sonya Huber said I had “steel nerves”—so that was something. Steel nerves! Me!

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

I cheated and started answering this question above. (Do you see what I mean about me? I can’t even follow the clear rules of a good interview question.) So you know there was the low of being told that my story was too depressing and wouldn’t sell well as a baby-shower gift (that was an actual thing a marketing department shared by way of telling my then-agent they were taking a pass). And because the book is coming out with the amazing people at the University of Nebraska Press, in the American Lives series, an extraordinary team I’ve worked with before and knew I could trust with this book, well, that’s the actual publication high.

But if I could point to one thing that scared me enough to become a low until I really faced the scariness was how much I worried about the story being received, specifically by other parents who had faced the same diagnosis (or one like it), mid-term, and made a different choice. I deeply and truly respect these many choices. All of them. With love. So one thing that was really different for me—and hard—in making The Heart Folds Early was how conscious I needed to be of my audience in that final two-year rewrite. I was no longer writing the book for me. I was writing about my choice because I understood it was my responsibility to tell the story of my second-trimester abortion. I had the skills to tell my story and the resources to get that story out into the world. (Speaking of boundaries, we cannot let the parameters of the conversation around reproductive rights be defined by those who would—and have—stripped us of those rights. We cannot let these conversations—or any of the big things we’re wrestling with right now in this country—be over-simplified because they’re hard.)

So I was hyper-aware of my many audiences—both actual people I knew or knew of, and whole categories of people—like young people in the United States coming of age in a time when their right to an abortion is not protected. I am always aware that I am writing to my children—perhaps in a time when I will no longer be here. And, as I said, I was aware that I was writing to other parents, mothers and fathers, who had faced the same diagnosis we faced and made a different choice. I wanted to write a book that respected all choices—except, I suppose, the choice to take away somebody else’s choice. As I write this, I realize that another high of this book’s path to publication was figuring out how to tell this story out of love—and not from a place of fear.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

Shew! Great question. I edit two magazines—River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative—and our (free!) weekly online magazine of micro-essays, Beautiful Things—and I’ve been teaching and writing nonfiction for thirty years, so let me tell you, I’m full of advice, most of which I footnote with—Or maybe not. Maybe you have a reason to do something else here. So let me try to offer some advice that doesn’t need that footnote. I’ll choose three:

  • Remember that you are not the only one. Not even today. Not even this minute.
  • When you’re working on something difficult? Stay. Don’t leave. Linger in the uncertainty. Slow down when it gets hard.
  • But keep going. You’re doing it. Keep going.

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

Ah! Yes. There’s more advice that doesn’t need a footnote. I’m here for the surprises. On a macro-level, I was surprised by how a book could grow from such hot rage and deep love—at the same time, on the same pages. On a micro-level, so many, but one I sometimes point to is on page 23 of The Heart Folds Early, in a moment where the writing-me returns on Google maps to look down on the intersection where, many, many years earlier, my then-fiancé was killed in a horrible crash along with two of his buddies on the way to get a pizza after work—the jolt of surprise and sadness I felt in my heart from my couch in Indiana, a lifetime away: “Before I was a mother, I never thought about this detail of the tragedy, but now? It makes me so sad to know they died hungry.”

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

As a serial memoirist and someone who’s been teaching creative nonfiction writing for over half my life, there’s a question I hear a lot: How long do I have to wait before I write about [insert hard thing here]. And my answer is always some version of the advice I give for all writing-advice questions: Only you know how long you need to wait. What do you think? But for this one, I usually add that the standard advice that we need to fully process a difficult experience before we write about it has never made sense to me. Isn’t writing how we come to understand the hard things in the world that don’t make sense? We can write the hard thing right away and then three months later and then a decade after that—and each time we put pen to paper from a different perspective, something new will emerge. Last spring, the wise and wonderful essayist Steven Harvey (aka, The Humble Essayist) visited my graduate writing class and when we asked him why he writes, why he’s still writing, he answered: “I write to compensate for losses.”

And the losses keep coming, don’t they? But when we write them, when we write into and through them, we can find something like hope—for ourselves, for our children, for each other, and maybe, you know, for the world.

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

I love this question—because I love food. Oh gosh. I’m trying to think. I ate a lot of clementines during my first pregnancy—and consumed many avocados during the writing of the book. They’re in there, along with a fair amount of kid food. And cookies. In life, I’m a baker—sourdough baguettes and (vegan) banana bread (my daughter is deathly allergic to eggs)—even before the pandemic made us do it—so those are foods that supported The Heart Folds Early. My go-to easy, food-processor (gasp!)baguette recipe is Mark Bittman’s “Easiest and Best French Bread” and the queen of all banana bread recipes was developed by those vegan geniuses, Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, in Veganomicon: I always double the recipe, add Penzey’s double-strength vanilla and half again the amount of spice, and bake one standard loaf pan and one pan of those cute mini-loaves for my kids’ dorm freezers. Sometimes it’s hard to make it to breakfast before class! (I can’t find the version from the cookbook online, and it’s always good to point folks towards Post Punk Kitchen, so here’s a recipe for Isa’s Marbled Banana Bread—which is basically the same except, you know, for the chocolate; if you’re not in the mood for marbling, just make this one, but omit the boiling water and chocolate, and add 1/3 c molasses and a 1/3 cup-ish applesauce: moist, fruity perfection.)

Interview with Megan A. Schikora

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reprinted with permission from www.workinprogressinprogress.com

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

When the unnamed protagonist meets Dutch, she believes that he is her Johnny Cash, that she is his June Carter, and that theirs is a great love story. As the novel progresses, it tells a different story, one swirling with the chaos of addiction. It raises questions about our devotion to people who are terrible for us and at what personal cost.  

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

I really enjoyed writing Dutch’s mom, June. She’s a powerhouse. At the same time, beneath all that strength and polish, she’s as vulnerable as the protagonist. I saw and heard her so clearly. I’d like to grab drinks with her. I’d like to be friends.   

I struggled with Tim, one of the protagonist’s romantic partners. Some find him endearing, the obvious “good guy” opposite of Dutch. But even as Tim pledged himself to the protagonist, I’m not sure he ever fully saw her. I’m not sure he was capable.       

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

This road has been a long one. I’m such an impatient person, and before A Woman in Pink, I had only ever written short stories and essays. To give this book the best possible shot, I had to slow down and hone my discipline. Books take time. Thoughtful editing and querying take time.  

I also had to toughen up. This process comes with so much rejection. It’s like drinking from a firehose.

One of the best moments was my first conversation with Jaynie Royal, Editor-in-Chief at Regal House Publishing. She had read my manuscript, and she wanted to talk.  

For context, I had struggled with a recurring comment from early readers: “You have to name your protagonist.” I didn’t want to withhold something readers felt they needed, but I also knew that the omission of the name was critical to the story. Jaynie Royal was the first person who not only understood but appreciated my decision. I felt like my book was finally being seen, and that I was, too, as an author. I signed with Regal House Publishing shortly after that conversation.             

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

Those lovely people in your life who tell you how great you are? Don’t share your early drafts with them. Share your work with critical readers who will point out the weaknesses and tell you the truth.

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

The ambiguity of the book’s conclusion surprised me. I didn’t know the protagonist’s precise fate, and I decided that I was okay with not knowing. I didn’t need or want a tidy ending. I wanted to leave some room for interpretation and hope.  

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

I want readers to know that A Woman in Pink is not a romance. It’s not cynical, either. It’s a messy story, one that veers away from “happily ever after” toward lived experience, one I hope will resonate with anyone who’s ever loved an addict.

Interview with Agata Maslowska

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reprinted with permission from www.workinprogressinprogress.com

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

The poems in the collection explore my main areas of interest which include ecopoetry, migrant literatures, translation, and experimental writing, among others. I think through the parallels between botany and migration and look at migrant experience through the lenses of the natural world and ecology. I like to interrogate language(s) to see what is possible and how words can point beyond their ascribed meanings to create multi-dimensional, polyphonic connections.

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

I most enjoy writing poems when I am guided by language, when I give myself into the music of language without control or an agenda. I feel that this is how I come up with my freest poems. An example of such a poem is a sequence “Sounding Soil” where I give up using words altogether and focus on sounds to create a soundscape which hopefully resonates beyond the sounds themselves. I also enjoy writing poems in conversation with other poets, artists, and writers. There is a sense of dialogue and being connected to something larger than myself. An example of such a poem is “A Bird in Flight” written after Jane Hirshfield’s poem “A Chair in Snow.” The poems that gave me most trouble are the poems where I attempt to tackle specific topics that are difficult and emotional for me, for example, the poem “Women’s Hell” where I look at the total abortion ban in Poland. I wrote six or seven versions of this poem before I was somewhat satisfied with it. It still feels like it only scratches the surface.

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

Most of the poems in the collection have been written in the last five years. I started immersing myself in poetry during the Covid pandemic as I could only read and write poetry at the time. I got hooked and have been obsessively writing poems since then. A few years ago, I saw that one of my favourite poets was judging a poetry manuscript competition. While I didn’t expect to win it, I really wanted him to read my poems. I put the manuscript together and sent it. I didn’t win of course, but I had a manuscript ready to submit for publication. I submitted it to Bad Betty Press who accepted it. It was totally unexpected and the opposite experience to submitting my novel manuscript for publication which was rejected so many times I lost count. Working with Amy Acre, my editor, has been one of the most nourishing experiences. I feel Amy understands my poems even better than I do and has helped me make the poems stronger. I’ve been very lucky to have been selected by Bad Betty Press.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

Read, read, read. Read as much as you can, particularly writers and poets from other countries.

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

What surprised me about writing these poems is how indispensable writing poetry has become in my life. My perception and sensitivity to the world around me has changed completely since I started writing poems regularly. I have fallen in love with it. I still occasionally write prose, but it is influenced by my poetry writing practice.

How did you find the title of your book?

I was initially trying to find a phrase in any of the poems, but nothing seemed suitable. I then thought of distilling the main themes of my book and this is how I came up with Woman : Plant : Language. The colons represent the interconnectedness of these themes in my collection. I also like to view the title as an image rather than a string or a sequence of words.

Interview with Katrina Denza

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reprinted with permission from www.workinprogressinprogress.com

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.