Tag Archives: #Writerslife

Interview with Ellen Birkett Morris

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by Bradley Sides

Memorable characters guide much of the work of Ellen Birkett Morris. Her story collection, Lost Girls, gave us a splendid cast of female protagonists dealing with loss, grief, and acceptance in and around Kentucky. Her new novel, Beware the Tall Grass, goes even further in developing strong characters. It tells the story of the inexplicable connection between Eve Sloan, a modern mother whose young son has past life memories of war, and Thomas Boone, a young soldier in Vietnam. This is a book ripe with the truth of its characters; this is a book that successfully explores the big themes of life such as loss and love and family. As we read page after page, we want to know–have to know–how the stories of Thomas and Eve will end.

It was a pleasure to be able to talk to Morris about her writing.

Bradley Sides: Ellen, you are so good at creating and building characters. I want to start by asking you about them. As you begin a project, whether it’s a story or a longer project like Beware the Tall Grass, how do you find your characters? Do you feel like you know them well as you get started? Or do they develop as the project grows?

Ellen Birkett Morris: Thank you. I built the character Eve with the idea that I needed a character who would have the hardest time with the uncertainty and pain of her young son being traumatized by memories of war. Eve had a rough childhood and dreams of giving her son the perfect childhood, so Charlie’s challenges were a nightmare for her. I have come to believe that my job is to develop a character with specific traits and then put them in situations that test their nature in every way, forcing them to find a new way to look at the world.

One way I get to know them as I start is to give them passions (sculpture for Eve, horse for Thomas), past memories, friendships, family relations. These choices begin to come together to form the characters. The more I populate their world with specific detail the more real they become to me and readers.

Eve developed as I wrote, her emotions got deeper, and her understanding of relationships got more nuanced. It was fun to see her develop on the page. I had to take my time to let that happen. The same was true of Thomas, who went to war as a naive boy and had his values tested at every turn.

BS: With the kind of depth they have, do you ever have trouble letting them go once the story is over?

EBM: The women and girls from Lost Girls have stayed with me. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them come up again in short stories. I think I have told the stories of Eve and Thomas to completion. That said, I think of Thomas a lot. I love his character and commitment to doing the right thing.

BS: Expanding just a bit, but how did your writing process differ from creating stories for Lost Girls to creating a longer narrative with Beware the Tall Grass?

EBM: I really considered myself a short story writer when I started writing the novel. I was so used to drawing characters sharply in a small space and dropping in on their peak moments. So, I wrote Eve’s story as a short story first. I was published in Upstreet under the title “Landing Zone Albany.” I was at the Antioch Writers Workshop in Yellow Springs when my instructor Erin Flanagan suggested the story would make a good novel. I knew I needed a way to make myself comfortable with the process, which for me meant pretending I was writing something much shorter and tackling it short chapter by short chapter. I also knew I needed another POV character, so I came up with the idea of a soldier fighting in the same war that Eve’s son Charlie has disturbing memories of. Adding Thomas’s story allowed me to create a braided narrative that had echoes between each section and held more meaning and significance. I also made sure I had a narrative roadmap for each character, a step-by-step sense of places they would go either in the quest to help Charlie with his disturbing memories in Eve’s case or areas/battles in Vietnam in Thomas’s case. I won’t lie, the writing was hard work. I jokingly compare the creation of this novel to chipping away at a mountain with nail scissors.

BS: To play off construction, I’m always so impressed when I read novels that balance multiple perspectives and timelines as well as yours does. Did you write the book going back and forth with Thomas and Eve? Or did you write the stories separately and later combine them to form a cohesive narrative?

EBM: I wrote the novel alternating between the Thomas and Eve sections. I like an intuitive approach and knew that I could clean things up later if needed. The best thing this did for me was to allow for unconscious (and later, in revision, conscious) echoes in the text, repeated images, tone or mood that helped heighten the bond between the different sections for the reader. One example is a section midway through the book where Eve revels in a peaceful evening at home, while Thomas goes walking in the night and encounters deer. Both characters got a moment of grace before the drama ratcheted back up.

BS: Beware the Tall Grass explores the idea of past lives, which I find to be absolutely fascinating. When did the inspiration come?

EBM:In 2014, I was on a road trip with my husband and heard an NPR story on the University of Virginia Medical Center program that attempted to corroborate the past life stories of young children with the experiences they describe. These children talk about being in war, the Holocaust and being present during terrorism. The researchers would hear the stories and look at news accounts and records to see if they matched the details of the story the children told. A surprising number of times they did match. The idea was so big, so fascinating. The only way I had the courage to try to tell a story based on this phenomenon was to let myself off the hook when it came to explaining the unexplainable. I wrote the story in as straightforward a fashion as I could, deeply exploring each character’s experience of it and letting them draw any eventual conclusions as to what was going on. I was anchored in the telling by my desire to explore a truth we all know: the life we get often isn’t the one we expected to get. We are all tested. What matters is how we rise to the test.

BS: In what ways, if at all, do you see your books as being in conversation with one another?

EBM: I think they are both books about courage in the face of adversity and what we will do for love.

BS: Since we both graduated from the Queens MFA program, I think it’s only fitting that I ask you this question to end our time together: How did earning an MFA impact your writing career?

EBM: It reinforced lessons I had already learned about craft and provided me with a wonderful community. The most important thing it did was help me grow in confidence as a writer. One of my mentors, Steven Rinehart, called me a “prose stylist.” Susan Perabo said she believed the truth of what was happening in a short story I shared with class. David Payne has been a great supporter of my work post-MFA. That has been an enormous gift as I have found my way as a writer.

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Bradley Sides is the author of two short story collections, Those Fantastic Lives and Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood, and the upcoming novella, The Volcano Keeper, which will be out from Regal House in the fall of 2026. His fiction has been featured on LeVar Burton Reads. He lives in Madison, Alabama, with his wife. On most days, he can be found teaching writing and literature at Calhoun Community College. For more, visit www.bradley-sides.com.

Read more about Ellen Birkett Morris: https://www.ellenbirkettmorris.com/

Interview with K.E. Semmel

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This interview is reprinted with permission from Work in Progress (www.workinprogressinprogress.com)

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/

Interview with Maribeth Fischer

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Reprinted with permission from Work in Progress


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

Ten years before A Season of Perfect Happiness begins, Claire had a life she loved:  She lived in a beautiful beach town, was close to her family, had great friends, and was married to her high school sweetheart. When a tragedy upends it all, she understands that her only chance to have “a normal life” is to start over in a new town. Now, after nearly a decade in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, she’s finally ready to find love, even happiness. But what of her past does she owe her new friends or the man with whom she falls in love? This is the question at the heart of the novel: What is our most authentic self? The one we try to hide or the one we strive each day to be?  

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

I loved writing Annabelle, the ex-wife of the man Claire falls in love with, and Claire’s closest friend.  Right there, you have a complicated, tangled relationship. In an early draft, a reader told me she didn’t find it believable that an ex would get so friendly with the new woman. But I’d grown up in a family where my dad and stepfather became close friends, and I knew it was possible. I loved the challenge of making Annabelle and Claire’s friendship believable. Annabelle was fun too because she herself is fun, and funny, smart and generous. But she is also damaged and insecure and so ends up causing enormous damage to the people she loves. So far readers have loved and hated her all at once, which thrills me!

The most difficult character was Claire’s former best friend, Kelly, who didn’t want Claire in her life after the tragedy (which was connected to Kelly). I didn’t always understand why Kelly would be so unforgiving and I had to work hard to figure her out…

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

The highs

·       Getting the first email from my editor at Dutton, which began, “welcome home.” Dutton had published my first book 20 years earlier. It felt like a homecoming.

·       Seeing the cover for the first time,

·       My dad, who was the first one to read the galley, calling in tears to tell me he’d finished it in two days—and couldn’t stop thinking about it.

·       A similar call from my older brother and my mom

·       Seven months before the release date, having the event coordinator at my local library (Lewes Public Library) and the owner of my local independent bookstore (Browseabout Books) telling my publicist that they wanted to host a launch party for me. Arrangements were made and the event was ready for RSVP’s in a less than an hour. I felt so lucky and grateful to live in the community I do.

The lows

·       Redoing a major piece of the plot—and having to do it in ten days. So, basically rewriting the novel in little more than a week. I didn’t, sleep, eat, bathe! But also in this, my husband, when I said, “I can’t do this. It’s not possible,” looked at me and responded, “What do you mean? This is what you do, Maribeth. This is who you are. Of course you can do it.” His saying that, his unequivocable belief in me? That’s another high.  

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

Write big and messy; write way more than you’ll ever need and then edit. Along with this is my favorite quote, by Elie Wisel. “There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages, which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred pages are there. Only you don’t see them.” 

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

Near the end of A Season of Perfect Happiness a minor character suddenly sort of stepped out of the pages and came alive in a way that allowed me to see a whole other aspect of him. I didn’t need him to do this 40 pages from the end of the book, but the novel is so much better because he did.  

How do you approach revision?

I love revision. It’s part of my “write big and messy.” I meet with poet and novelist, Anne Colwell every week to review our writing (and we’ve been doing this for twenty years) and every place she says, “I could stay here awhile,” meaning, “I want more,” I dive in and see how far I can take the scene she’s questioning or the backstory or the thoughts she wants my character to consider. I write into the story as long and as deeply as I can. I have never not discovered something important that I needed to know in doing this.

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

Alas, no…but the book mostly takes place in Wisconsin, so there’s always bratwurst…

****

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://www.maribethfischer.com/

ORDER A COPY OF THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://browseaboutbooks.com/book/9780593474679

Interview with Merrill Oliver Douglas by Mary Beth Hines

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Merrill Oliver Douglas has kept a journal since the 11th grade, and her poetry reflects the careful and compassionate attention she’s paid to the world for decades. In her new collection, Persephone Heads for the Gate, winner of the 2022 Gerald Cable Book Award, Douglas resurrects people and places past, interrogates the present, and peers with both curiosity and apprehension into the future. When I spoke with her by phone recently, she had just come off a day of kayaking with friends. And indeed, kayaking and friends show up in the collection along with trains and planes, God, love, New York City, mortality, marshmallows, and more.

Tell me about your journey as a poet. After reading Persephone Heads for the Gate (Silverfish Review Press, 2024), and your chapbook Parking Meters into Mermaids (Finishing Line Press, 2020), I admire how skillfully you bring a lifetime of experience to bear on your poems. How long you have been writing poetry?

I started writing verses in the second grade. They rhymed and scanned because that kind of thing was in the air back then—popular songs and commercials. I picked up on rhythm and musicality early.

I always figured I would be a writer, though I assumed I’d write novels. At some point, I realized I didn’t have the concentration or maybe the knowledge of life you need to create real characters and full stories, so I focused on poetry.

In high school, a teacher told me to go home and write sonnets because that was good practice. I did, and found it was exciting—the way the form forces you not to accept the first thing you write. You must come up with new words or change how you are saying things. That’s where I started gaining a sense of craft.

I kept at it through college. I went to Sarah Lawrence which had a great creative writing program. I took classes and was convinced I was going to be a poet with a capital P.

However, as happens with many of us, competing events took over. I had a child, and held a job that became more and more demanding, so I didn’t write much during those years. When my son left home, and I had more time, I started again.

You are a master of time travel in this collection. Your speakers and narrators observe places, people, events, and objects with a keen eye to past, present, and future. In a way, Time itself is a character. Is that something you did purposefully?

Thank you for that insight! That never occurred to me. I couldn’t have come up with it myself—Time as an important theme. The past is a rich natural resource for most writers. We all have so many stories. It may be a factor that I have kept a journal since the 11th grade. I have volumes of close observations recorded throughout my life which give me access to memories I might otherwise have lost.

How did you arrive at the book’s structure? Many poets struggle with organizing a collection.

I consulted some of the same books and resources many poets do, though I found much of the advice to be contradictory, sometimes even within the same essay!

I did try one recommended system. First, I weeded out the weakest poems. With the remaining poems, I jotted down major themes and arranged them to speak to each other. I also thought about the physical shapes of the poems, things like putting shorter poems next to longer ones to vary the reading experience.

My poetry workshop group, the Grapevine Poets, with whom I meet twice a month, held a manuscript party once I had a draft. They provided helpful feedback. For instance, they advised that poems about the physical body be spread throughout the collection rather than located together. Still, much of that feedback was also contradictory so I had to go back and figure it out myself.

Ultimately, there’s no magic formula. A lot of it comes down to trusting your gut.

Can you talk about the long poems in Section II? Located in the center of the collection, in some ways they seem its very heart. To start, talk about “Where I Live.” That poem deals with place, place over time, and place from various perspectives— something woven throughout that comes to a crescendo there. What prompted you to write it? Did you write all six parts all around the same time?

That poem began in 2019 in an online Fine Arts Work Center workshop with Ed Skoog. It was a workshop on writing a long poem which is way out of my comfort zone. I discovered in this workshop, that if I was going to write a long poem, I’d have to do it in a series of shorter sections that would speak to each other.

I wrote four of the six sections in the workshop. Ed liked three but advised me to drop one and to write a new one, or to find an old poem on a similar theme and rework it to fit. I ended up taking two preexisting poems that were also on the theme of place, and home, and sense of home shifting, and I fit them in. But I also felt devoted to the section he saw as weak. I improved it, and it’s now the poem’s last section.

 “Body Songs” in Section II deals with a speaker’s body from childhood to young adulthood. That exploration of physicality (expanded to include birth, aging, illness, death) is evident throughout the book. Several poems such as “Prepping for the Colonoscopy,” “It’s Not Like I Need it Anymore,” “Thirst,” and “Another Poem about Menstruation,” speak truth about the body, especially the female body, with a wry sense of humor, all while examining existential concerns. Can you choose a body poem and tell me about writing it, what it means to you, and what you hope readers will take away from it?

I’ll talk about “Prepping for the Colonoscopy.” The “bodyness” of this poem is not about the colonoscopy itself but about the yuckiness of the liquid you have to drink in order to clear out your system. I literally had to put drops on my tongue and fling them back one at a time to get it down.

From there, it became a meditation on living in the moment. I began thinking about how we’re always thinking about the future. All the things we do when we’re counting: How many hours till we get where we’re going? How many more days until vacation? How many steps to the top of the hill? How many years till I can retire? There’s all this concentration on the agony of longing for the future, and I began thinking that one way to not worry about the future thing is to concentrate on the thing you must do this minute, no matter how distasteful. Maybe this is a mind-versus-body poem.

Because Persephone won an award (the 2022 Gerald Cable Book Award), I believe readers would like to learn about its journey from submission to selection to publication. Can you tell us how this worked? And how you chose the gorgeous cover art?

I sent the manuscript to 14 contests or open readings. I received five rejections before I learned of the award. I then withdrew it from the remaining eight places.

I submitted it for the contest in 2022 and got the good news in June 2023. That was a faster submit-to-acceptance timeframe than my chapbook had.

Upon selection, I worked on all the business things associated with publishing such as signing contracts. I am grateful to Rodger Moody who runs Silverfish Review Press as he consulted with me on every aspect of the book. He takes pride in what he publishes. He’s taken an active role in publicizing the book too. He sends it out for review, sends publicity emails and helps me approach people about readings.  I’m still in the midst of that.

He published the manuscript as it was, without any editing, though he said he sometimes does make suggestions. He also sent me the previous four winners’ books. That was generous and it gave me confidence in the final product. I liked the work of the poets Rodger had chosen and the books were beautiful, so I knew I was with a good publisher.

The story of the cover art is a fun and gratifying one. I didn’t have any idea of how to find something appropriate. My son did the artwork for my chapbook but he’s an illustrator and his style didn’t fit this book. Rodger and I went back and forth a bit before finding the right piece. When I saw a childhood friend’s artwork on her Facebook page (Robbyn Zimmerman Tilleman), I thought it might be suitable and Rodger agreed. We chose a piece, and I asked Robbyn, whom I hadn’t seen since the 1970’s, if we could use it. Happily, she said yes.

Some of my favorite poems are:

  • “Thirst” because it includes all you do so well. It travels through time, and deals with the body over time, and place over time. It captures the relationship of women to each other, women to children. It’s filled with color, taste, and texture, which serve as springboards to epiphany. And genuine emotion is at its core.
  • “High” because it’s short, compressed, and highlights the humor that’s an integral part of the collection.
  • “As if We Could Step Through Someone Else’s Dream” because its range and perspective is ambitious. It highlights the speaker’s desire, and ability, to see the world through others’ eyes, to look at herself from outside herself. It also weaves in art and pop culture.

Can you choose one and talk about your impetus and process for writing it?

I’ll talk about “Thirst.” This is another poem that came out of a Fine Arts Work Center workshop. This one was with Erin Adair-Hodges. The prompt was to take a line from a recent draft that hadn’t worked out and use it in something else.

The line I chose appears in the poem’s second part. I formed the rest of the poem around this idea, this awareness that our bodies age and change, yet in our minds we always feel the same age. My aunt, who was failing and in the hospital at that time, became the poem’s focus. I wanted to convey how it’s both tragic and absurd to be a consciousness in a mortal body. You are yourself, yet your body is breaking down.

The poem’s closing section was sparked by childhood home movies of me, my cousins, our families and neighbors at a hotel in the Catskills. There was a little swimming pool, and the parents were all in their twenties and thirties. They are all gone now, though when I wrote this, my mother and aunt were still alive.

As I prepared for this interview, I realized that some of Persephone’s other poems also came out Adair-Hodges’ workshop, including the title poem, “Persephone Heads for the Gate.” That prompt was to put someone from myth or folklore into a modern setting. I chose an airport because when I’m traveling by myself, it’s one of the times I feel most myself, independent in the world.

Do you have any last thoughts to share, or any advice to give poets aspiring to put a collection together?

Read a lot of poetry.  And write good poems!  I think of poems like soup. It’s important to let them simmer. Dashing things down and free associating can be a good start, but you need to revisit the draft later, and try different things. Get it to surprise you and do more work than a first draft does. I also want to thank South 85 for giving us this opportunity to introduce Persephone Heads for the Gate to their readers, and for publishing two of the poems that appear in the collection!

ABOUT

Merrill Oliver Douglas’s first full length collection, Persephone Heads For the Gate, won the 2022 Gerald Cable Book Award from Silverfish Review Press. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook Parking Meters into Mermaids (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Baltimore Review, Barrow Street, South 85 Journal, Tar River Poetry, Stone Canoe, Little Patuxent Review andWhale Road Review,among others. She lives near Binghamton, New York.

Mary Beth Hines is a poet, writer, and reviewer. Kelsay Books published her debut poetry collection, Winter at a Summer House in 2021. Her chapbook, After Making Love, was a finalist in Fool for Poetry’s 2023 International Chapbook Competition. Her work appears, or will soon appear, in Slant, Tar River, The Inflectionist Review, Valparaiso and elsewhere. Visit her at www.marybethhines.com

MORE INFORMATION:

Silverfish Review Press: https://silverfishreviewpress.com

Direct link to order the book: https://silverfishreviewpress.com/2022-gcba-winner-1

Merrill Oliver Douglas: https://www.facebook.com/merrill.o.douglas/  

Robbyn Tilleman (cover artist): https://www.instagram.com/tillemanart/ 

Mary Beth Hines: www.marybethhines.com

Interview with Andrew Bertaina

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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?

It’s a bit of a roundabout memoir in essays. The essays take place over about eight years of my life when I went through a lot of upheaval. Elevator pitch, it’s a mid-life crisis novel about parenting, divorce, identity and faith or lack thereof.

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

I had the most fun writing my essay “On Trains.” [See below for link.]  I think it was the first essay where I hit on the idea of just riffing on a subject matter. Thus, it’s about wedding trains, how Einstein used trains to prove his special theory of relativity, a guide to trying to make love on a train etc, all mixed with intersections with trains from my own life. It felt very freeing. At the same time, it was a kind of challenge to scour my memories for train related content. 

As for the hardest, I’d probably say the essay “On Baths.” I was closing in on the nadir of my mid-life crisis, deeply floundering, and I think that essay deals directly with the beginning of that fallout. I honestly don’t like to say any essay is too hard to write. It feels disingenuous when I’ve written the damn thing. Technically then, I’d say the essay “A Field of White,” because I had to find an internal structure to make it work. Otherwise, it was just too scattered. I like digressions; they mirror thought. However, internal structure is still useful, and I borrowed my structural device from John McPhee’s essay, “The Search for Marvin Gardens.”  In my essay, the mooring point is a tea party I’m having with my three-year-old and her stuffed bear.

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

Risking honesty, I wound up as notable in Best American Essays three out of the last four years. I know notable isn’t in the book, but I thought it might mean people would be clamoring for a collection. As always, my inbox was empty, so I had to figure out how I wanted to proceed.

My editor at Autofocus, Michael Wheaton, is an absolute gem, and he worked with me on finding a cohesive collection of essays. He was generous with his time and editing, and I’m deeply thankful to have worked with him. It ended up all right, but, as always in writing, I discovered the appetite for reading just isn’t that wide. But I have a beautiful book and a great set of essays that I’m proud of. They hold up.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

I don’t own a single craft book volitionally. However, I think consistent writing is useful. Once you have a basic set of skills, it’s getting your butt in the chair. I often don’t, but I tend to feel better when I do. I tell my students who are struggling with it to just set a timer and do thirty minutes a day. That’s it. You can up it to four hours or whatever, but you should start small and build up. My paraphrase is, editing is writing, but you can’t edit nothing.

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

I think I was surprised, mostly on a reread, with how much I was mentally suffering during the writing of these essays. In a way, it’s almost painful to go back and see so much wild energy and confusion without much purpose. I think it certainly captures something, and it’s not as though I have things figured it out now, but I was surprised at the kind of desperation I was giving off during those years, this mad desire to figure out life.

How did you find the title of your book?

The title of my book came to me in a dream. Okay. That’s a lie. But I like that lie. The title just seemed right. I meditate a bit. I don’t think the self is particularly real, and I think it’s even less solid for some of us, myself included. I have a hard time projecting myself into the future or feeling connected to my past. I have an essay that talks about it. Also, I think about death a bit. That life is temporary can be terrifying or beautiful. Choose wisely.

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

I have an essay called “Eating Animals” in the book, but it includes several things that no reader would actually want to cook, including one’s spouse.

*****

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

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:  https://www.autofocuslit.com/store/p/the-body-is-a?fbclid=IwAR0xmIb08R6M7sXuZAAeNVv8P9rOpO5nR4sLpVtUpSZcyUy3v2QyF_KiZQ0_aem_Afb-FrxmnqNxojEQPW9ZOlCiA2xorxK8ktsNmdS3FV4yg7FMRBCbueRuRTeTxq-6oCTAJHaNvutOLKDJk0TjjZYr

LINK TO AN ESSAY FROM THIS BOOK, “On Trains”:  https://greenmountainsreview.com/on-trains/

Interview with poet Frederick Joseph, author of WE ALIVE, BELOVED

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[reprinted with permission from Work-in-Progress, a literary blog: 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 consider myself a storyteller above all else, weaving tales of resilience and hope from the heart of Yonkers to the shelves of the world. My words live across genres, from poetry’s intimate embrace in “We Alive, Beloved” to the calls for justice and understanding in “Patriarchy Blues” and “The Black Friend.” Each sentence I write is meant to help us all become a bit freer, whether that’s in the body, mind, or soul.

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

I most enjoyed writing many of the poems in “We Alive, Beloved” because each one allowed me to explore different facets of the Black experience and celebrate resilience, joy, and love. However, the poem that gave me the most trouble was “The Odyssey.” This poem is very personal, reflecting on a Black life from birth onward. It attempts to be speculative while also playing on some of the prose found in Homer’s “Odyssey” and other epic poems. Balancing these elements and doing justice to such a profound subject made it a challenging piece to write.

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

The journey of bringing “We Alive, Beloved” to life has been filled with highs and lows. One of the lows is that, as I write this, the collection is delayed a week due to printing logistics. Additionally, getting more people to engage with poetry, especially those who are more familiar with my essays and fiction, has been a mountain to climb. Still, the joy of seeing my poetic expressions take shape and the anticipation of sharing these deeply personal pieces with the world.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

As a writer, the advice I can offer is to embrace the power of your authentic voice. Write from the depths of your soul, unfiltered and unapologetic. Authenticity resonates; it has the power to move mountains and touch hearts. Don’t shy away from the raw, the real, and the vulnerable. Let your words reflect the truth of your experiences, the richness of your heritage, and the unique perspective only you can bring.

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

What surprised me, deeply and profoundly, was how much certain moments from my past still sit with me. Writing this book unearthed memories long buried, reminding me that our past is never truly behind us; it sits in the marrow of who we are and what we create.

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

I want readers to know that I cried after finishing most of the poems in the collection. Each verse is a reflection of our shared struggles, our triumphs, and the silent battles fought in the depths of our souls. Those tears weren’t just mine; they belong to the history, the present, and the future of a people who continue to rise.

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

I love that question! This book is so tied to my grandmother that I would have to say the book reads best with a slice of sweet potato pie. Which was her specialty.

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.frederickjoseph.com

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK:  https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/We-Alive-Beloved/Frederick-Joseph/9781955905640

Spring / Summer Issue, 2023

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Fiction

Awful Big, Awful Good by Matt Izzi
Dead Cats by Patrick Strickland
Living with Wolves by Christie Marra
Revisionist History 101 by Mike Herndon
The Loneliness Cure by Mark Brazaitis

Creative Nonficiton

I Remember by Linda Briskin
Marking Time and Place by Alice Lowe
Person. Place. Prey. Anyone. Anywhere. Anytime. by Honey Rand
To the South are Banana Plantations by Harris Walker

Poetry

a different sort of blues by Dana Tenille Weekes
biographies by David Galloway
Charisma came to me like a rubber doll by Susan Michele Coronel
How to Pick a Padlock by Patrick Wilcox
Most people have only one skeleton by Nadine Ellsworth-Moran
Magnolia by Greg Nelson
Mapping by Ellen Roberts Young
Roswell Mills: July 5, 1864 by Ann Malaspina
The Seagull that Melted by Kevin Pilkington
Uncle Bob Told Me by Christina Baumis
Yes, Fallen by Gordon W. Mennenga
Essays
The Dollmaker: Why You Should Have Read This Book Long Before Now by Jody Hobbs Hesler
Book Reviews
Fiction: The Woods of Fannin County by Janisse Ray, Review by John Krieg
Nonficton: Benjamin Banneker and Us by Rachel Webster, Review by Olivia Fishwick
Poetry: Through Our Water Like Fingers, a Review of Millicent Borges Accardi’s Quarantine Highway by Robert Manaster
Summer Issue Featured Image: SkyOceanBirds by Linda Briskin

Linda Briskin is a writer and photographer. She is intrigued by the permeability between the remembered and the imagined, and the ambiguities in what we choose to see. The fluidity between the natural and the constructed fascinates her. Her focus, then, is on inventing images rather than capturing them. Her photographs have been exhibited and published widely. https://www.lindabriskinphotography.com/

South 85 Journal

South 85 is Open for Submissions

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South 85 Journal is excited to announce that we are open for general submissions until April 15, 2023. We consider all quality work and are especially interested in writing that demonstrates a strong voice and sense of place.
As the online literary journal for the Converse University Low-Residency MFA program, we are entering our 11th year of publication. Our editorial staff is comprised of experienced readers, writers, and editors who carefully consider every work of writing they receive.
We publish two issues online each year: the summer issue, which is published June 15th, and the winter “contest” issue–which features each year’s Julia Peterkin Literary Award winner–published December 15th.
We also nominate excellent works for the Pushcart Prize and the annual Best of the Net Anthology.
Past contributors include: Dustin Brookshire, Luanne Castle, Anthony D’Aries, Benjamin Garcia, Caroline Goodwin, Ann Chadwell Humphries, Justin Jannise, Eric Rasmussen, Katherine DiBella Seluja, Chris Stuck, and many more.
We published two stellar issues in 2022: The summer issue celebrating our 10th anniversary and the winter issue highlighting this year’s Julia Peterkin Literary Award winners and finalists in flash fiction and poetry. You can read them here:

Summer 2022: 10th Anniversary Celebration

Winter 2022: The Contest Issue

For more information and to submit your work for consideration, visit our Submittable page

Submit Here

Literary Contest Now Open: $500 Prize

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Submissions are now open for the Julia Peterkin Literary Awards in Flash Fiction and Poetry.

Established in 1998 by the Creative Writing program at Converse College, the Julia Peterkin Award is a national contest honoring both emerging and established  writers. The award is named for Converse graduate Julia Mood Peterkin, whose 1929 novel,  Scarlet Sister Mary, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in literature.

South 85 Journal seeks submissions of unpublished flash fiction of 850 words or fewer and previously unpublished poems of 50 lines or fewer.  We are especially interested in stories and poems that demonstrate a strong voice and/or a sense of place, but consider all quality writing.

The winning selection in each category will be awarded $500 and publication in the December issue of South 85 Journal. Contest finalists will also be selected and published alongside the winning selection.  Submissions are read blind by an outside judge.

Judges for this year’s contest are Cary Holladay for flash fiction and Ashley M. Jones for poetry.

Cary Holladay has published six short story collections, including Horse People, The Quick-Change Artist, and most recently, Brides in the Sky, as well as two novels and over 100 short stories and essays in journals and anthologies, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Arkansas Review, Five Points, The Georgia Review, The Hudson Review, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Sewanee Review, Southern Review, and Tin House. Her awards include an O. Henry Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is Professor Emeritus at the University of Memphis. She lives in Virginia.

Submit Flash Fiction Here

Ashley M. Jones is Poet Laureate of the state of Alabama (2022-2026). She received an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University (FIU), where she was a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellow. She is the author of three poetry collections: REPARATIONS NOW! (Hub City Press, 2021); dark // thing (Pleiades Press, 2019), winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry; and Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press, 2017), winner of the silver medal in poetry in the Independent Publishers Book Awards. Her poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, including CNN, the Academy of American Poets, Poetry magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, Prelude, and The Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, among others.

Submit Poetry Here

SUBMISSIONS CLOSE AUGUST 15, 2022

[Lately when sorrows come]

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by Susan Laughter Meyers

                                                —with a line from Sappho

Spring 2012

Lately when sorrows come—fast, without warning—
whipping their wings down the sky,
I know to let them.
Not inviting them, but allowing each
with a deep breath as if inhaling a wish I can’t undo.

Some days the sky is so full of sorrows
they could be mistaken for shadows of unnamed
gods flapping the air with their loose black sleeves:
the god of head-on collisions,
the god of amputated limbs,
the god of I’ll-dress-you-in-mourning.

Is the buzz in the August trees,
that pulsing husk of repetition, an omen?
I hear it build to a final shaking. I hear it build
louder and louder, then nothing.
Like a long, picaresque novel that’s suddenly over.
Like the last inning of kickball until the rain.

What falls from the sky is not always rain
or any kind of weather. Call it precipitous.
I’m fooling myself, of course. Wearing sorrow
is nothing like skin shedding water.
It’s more like the weight of a cloak of crows.

And yet the sun still shines on the honey locust
arching its fringe over grass. Lit, too,
the pasture and its barbwire strung from post
to leaning post. See how the stump by the road
is rotting and how the small yellow leaves, twirling,
catch light on their way to the ground.

Susan Laughter Meyers, of Givhans, SC, is the author of Keep and Give Away (University of South Carolina Press), winner of the inaugural SC Poetry Book Prize, the SIBA Book Award for Poetry, and the Brockman-Campbell Book Award. Her poetry has also appeared in The Southern Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and other journals, as well as Poetry Daily, and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry column. Her blog is at http://susanmeyers.blogspot.com.