Author: Christine Nessler

Amanda Siri Hill loves to explore inner demons through storytelling. You can find her short fiction on the Creepy Podcast and Utah’s Best Poetry and Prose 2023. Accolades include multiple First, Second, and Third Place awards at Storymaker’s Conference and The Quills Conference.

Siri Hill’s flash fiction piece, The Great Swim Divide, is featured in Issue 17.

Tell us about yourself.

I am an avid reader, hiker, and mountain biker living in South Jordan, Utah with my husband and five children. I’ve always called the mountains my home and I don’t know if I could survive without them. Not only are they my playground and inspiration, they are also my compass. As long as I can see the mountains, I can never get lost. 

What inspired The Great Swim Divide?

A post on a social media site. A man posted a complaint about an old woman taking swim lessons which were meant for kids. Some of the comments were funny and I wondered what it would look like if the drama took place in a local community. 

Your wit shines through every part of The Great Swim Divide. With just email content, character email addresses, and clever subject lines you were able to not only develop clear character personalities, but also tell a poignant tale of age discrimination through humor. What made you decide to write this story as a series of emails? Why do you think that is the most effective way to tell it?

First off—thank you. I wrote the piece as a series of emails because the initial inspiration came from an online post, but the idea I wanted to portray needed to extend longer than the life of the average social media post. Earlier versions included social media posts, texts, and emails, but I found that distracted from the content and made it more confusing. Email addresses have the potential to portray character in less space, and there is a lot more freedom to bring in multiple characters over time.  

Do you often use humor in your writing? How can humor help to punctuate the point of a story?

Oddly enough, I mostly write mystery and suspense, but when I need a break from heavier topics, I turn to humor. Humor gives us the freedom to be blunt—soften the blow of the truth by blanketing it with a joke. It also gives us the freedom to laugh during difficult times. 

What message are you hoping your readers take away from The Great Swim Divide?

I hope my readers take what they need from The Great Swim Divide, but one thing that stuck out for me as I wrote it was that online communities can be a blessing and a curse. As a people pleaser I’ve had to learn who to listen to and who to ignore when it comes to comments made about me and to me. Carol is my inspiration in that regard. 

What can readers learn from Carol about aging with spunk rather than grace? How did Carol inspire you as you wrote her story?

Spunk and grace can be two sides of one coin, and both have their merits. Grace is praised more often, but there is value to spunk that sometimes goes unnoticed. I hope to be like Carol when I’m 84. I want to learn something new every day, say what I want, and ignore the naysayers. I once watched a reporter interviewing a woman on her 110^th birthday, asking if she was excited about her upcoming party. Her response? “Not one bit.” I will forever remember her because she was honest, memorable, and funny. Her spunk brought joy to my life and inspired me.  

What is one thing you hope to achieve or continue to do as you age? Why?

I want to keep learning as I age. There are things we must accept with the passage of time like loss of muscle and a slower recall, but none of those changes take away our humanity or our capacity to do good and improve. We’re better off if we can learn to shrug off the loss of smooth skin and realize it doesn’t change who we are. And the sooner we can accept these changes, the more freedom we have to do what matters.  

In your bio you mentioned a love for exploring inner demons through writing. What do you think The Great Swim Divide says about the inner demons of John? The other neighbors?

John’s inner demons are quite common. Lack of control and fear of the unknown. If John can make sure his kids know how to swim, they will always be safe in the water. It’s a level of control he thinks he can have over hidden dangers. He believes that life should be “fair” as determined by himself, and he will stop at nothing to achieve this fairness. He also suffers from a fixed mindset when it comes to the elderly. They have a certain place, and when any elderly person steps out of that mindset, he perceives it as a threat to the balance of his life. 

What do you think of when you hear, “the good life?”

The Good Life is finding beauty in the everyday, recognizing what you have to be grateful for, and being willing to accept what you can’t change. 

---

Thank you, Amanda, for being a part of our growing community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We’re glad we were able to connect and we wish you the best with life and all your writing endeavors.

Nwodo Divine obtained his Bachelor’s degree in English and Literature from the University of Benin, Nigeria. He is the chief editor of Akpata Magazine and also evaluates submissions for the Word’s Faire. Nwodo’s works have been published or are forthcoming on Poetrycolumn, Heavy Feather Review, Bacopa Literary Review, and others. 

Divine’s poem, Trauma is a Lullaby in Igbo, is featured in Issue 17.

Tell us about yourself.

I am an academic and creative writer. I obtained a Bachelor’s degree in English and Literature from the University of Benin, Nigeria. I hail from the Eastern part of Nigeria. My tribe is called The Igbos. Igbos have been historically marginalized and discriminated against in Nigeria. This led to their quest for self-determination, which led to what’s known as the Civil war or the Biafran war. 

Over three million Igbos were killed by the Nigerian government in the war. Hundreds of thousands were displaced into different obscure parts of the country, and some fled to neighbouring countries. I share this because even though I never experienced the civil war, I was born into a family and world that was shaped by its legacy. My mother always told me about the civil war and how it led to the loss of some of my relatives as well as her permanently relocating from our homeland. I am someone shaped by that inherited trauma.

How do you hope Trauma is a Lullaby in Igbo will honor those who were brutalized by the Nigerian war between 1967 and 1970?

I hope the poem lights a candle for every untold story. The poem is my way of saying, I see you, to those lost generations of Igbos. I hope it breathes life into their memories and helps them gain closure. I also hope it raises awareness on the fact that the consequence of war spans across generations.

How do you think the trauma felt by your mother and her family has affected you? What are your thoughts on generational trauma?

Generational trauma is like an invisible inheritance. Although my mother carried her pain quietly, it left a mark on me too. That’s the thing about generational trauma. It’s a kind of grief that lives inside us even if we weren’t the ones directly wounded. It shapes the way we respond to loss, how we navigate love, and even how we fear or trust. I’m a carrier of that trauma, not by choice but by blood—and by poetry, I hope to make sense of it.

Learning from history is our best defense against repeating past atrocities. How do you think your poem, Trauma is a Lullaby in Igbo, can educate your generation and any that follow?

To me, education doesn’t always mean facts or historical details but the way we learn to feel deeply about the past. My hope is that Trauma is a Lullaby in Igbo creates space for empathy and, through empathy, a lesson. And I want this lesson to be one that is felt more than told. If a reader can step into that emotion and feel that inherited pain even if they’re far removed from it, they might approach both the world and history with a different kind of awareness and a commitment to ensuring the tragedies of the past never happen again.

In Trauma is a Lullaby in Igbo, you mention never having been on your ancestral soil, only knowing the ‘sting of displacement.’ Do you think you’ll ever want to visit your ‘ancestral soil?’ Why or why not?

Visiting my ancestral soil feels like a question that might haunt me forever. I’ve always been reluctant to go there because I do not know how I would react seeing the land in which my grandparents and uncles shed their blood for me. In a way, I don’t think I am ready for that. I don’t know if I’ll ever be. Yet, I still have something in me pushing me to go there, telling me that returning might be a way to finally close a chapter I’ve been writing from afar. I hope one day I can answer that call and find the courage to touch the earth that holds my ancestors.

How does poetry help you process the horrors your family faced?

Poetry is the only language that feels true enough, fluid enough to carry the complexity of grief. It allows me to reshape and re-imagine memory in such a way that loss and survival can sit side by side. Though my family’s pain serves as the backdrop of my poetry, I also juxtapose it with their resilience and courage. Poetry helps me take something that might otherwise be overwhelming and break it down, word by word, until it becomes a story I can live with and share with others.

Do you often turn to writing to understand the world around you? Why or why not?

The world makes little sense to me without the time and space that writing provides. It’s the only place I can ask questions and get answers, even if they’re temporary or fragile. I admit that writing does not always solve the world’s mysteries or answer the burning questions in my soul, but it does help me find a way to live with life’s ambiguity without becoming bogged down by it.

How do you encourage other writers to tell the important stories that can sometimes be hard to hear?

I tell them that the hard stories are often the only ones that matter. If a story aches to be told, that ache is a sign that the world needs to hear it. There’s power in vulnerability, in laying bare the things that frighten or haunt us. I remind writers that these stories, however painful, have the potential to bring us together, to remind us we aren’t alone in our suffering, and that by telling the truth, we can help others survive their own.

What do you think of when you hear, “the good life?”

The good life, to me, is knowing that I’ve told the stories that needed telling and that I’ve left nothing unsaid. The good life isn’t one of ease or plenty, but one of faith, courage, and the willingness to hold space for everything— the beauty and the terror, the laughter and the tears.

---

Thank you, Nwodo, for being a part of our growing literary community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We wish you the best!

Deidre is a retired teacher and recovering Long Islander happily living and writing in the Hudson Valley. Her previous work has appeared in The Bellevue Literary Review, The Avalon Literary Review, Cafe Lit, Literally Stories, and other online and print publications.

Her short fiction piece, Puppy, is featured in Issue 17.

Tell us about yourself.

Over the course of my life, I’ve had many jobs, all of which have influenced the person and the writer I am today. I’ve been a waitress, a cook, a dishwasher, and a bookkeeper. I’ve worked in a cemetery, delivered pizzas, been a career counselor and a paralegal. I was a teacher and a lawyer. Today I am retired but still a wife, mother, and grandmother. And a writer. That last one was, for the longest time, the most difficult to claim, perhaps because it is the one that is hardest to define. 

Is someone a writer because they’ve been published or because they continue to write, maybe in secret, without any acknowledgment of their work? I don’t think I felt comfortable calling myself a writer until my fourth or fifth story was published. Saying aloud “I’m a writer” used to trigger something like imposter syndrome in me. I’m over it now, mostly, because I’ve just become more comfortable within myself. Puppy is my ninth published story, so that helps.

In Puppy, how has Dina’s experience with adoption made her hesitant to bring a puppy home after several attempts?

Dina is a woman whose lived experience has not made her stronger. She is choked by a need to fix her perceived failure as a mother, but without the confidence that she can succeed. In getting a puppy she hopes to prove to herself she can raise a living thing successfully; it’s a do-over for her. Dina blames herself for Erika’s problems. But she can’t see that Erika had and has agency and bears responsibility for her own choices. Dina wants to raise a puppy because that feels like a less daunting challenge than raising a human. But she can’t commit because she doesn’t want to make another mistake. She perseverates and is paralyzed by her perseveration. What would it mean if she did a better job with a puppy than she did with Erika? Dina isn’t sure and she’s afraid to find out.

Adopted or born of your own body, don’t most people go into parenthood blinded by expectations and hope? How has Dina had to adjust her expectations?

I love the phrase “born of your own body.”  I’ve rolled it around in my brain for a few days now and I think it applies, not just to one’s natural child but also to the process we all go through as we mature. Our adult selves are born of our own bodies as well. 

Yes, we are all blinded by our hope and expectation when we become parents. The difference I think is that as the birth parents we feel we can always match up our children’s personality traits, as well as their physical traits, and sometimes faults, tie them to the genetic pool. “Oh, he has grandpa’s eyes!” or “She’s stubborn like her father,” which leads us to have certain sense of familiarity, a level of comfort and confidence. And certain expectations. We think we can anticipate the meaning of those traits and our hopes grow from there. In this situation the genetic connection is absent. 

Of course, as parents we want certain things for our children. The hardest part of parenting, and particularly of being a mother, is learning that the child who came from your body does not belong to you. He or she grows into an adult and an autonomous person; we must love them just as they are and let them go on to live their own lives, even when it may not be what we hoped. Dina never understood that.

Through your story there are several analogies for adopting a child vs. adopting a puppy. Dina’s husband Hal suggests two solutions to their adopted daughter Erika’s behavior, both seeming more appropriate for managing an unruly puppy rather than a young woman. Does Dina also view Erika as an unruly puppy? Is that why she has yearned to raise a four-legged adoptee? So she can have the happy ending she pictured prior to Erika’s adoption?

The analogies were intended in part as commentary on the way our society has been blurring the lines between pets and humans. People talk about their “fur-babies” and “grand-puppy” the same way they talk about their children and grandchildren. They share pictures on FaceBook, they frame photos and put them on the mantel, they buy outfits for them. We no longer purchase pets, we adopt them, and it makes no difference whether they come from a small home breeder, a puppy mill, pet store, or a shelter, the language is always the same. I know someone who was getting a kitten, and her friends held a shower for her as if she were having a baby. I think it’s very interesting.

So, for Hal to use a phrase like “brought to heel”, it might go unnoticed in another context, but here it stands out because of Dina’s fixation on getting a puppy, of having that do-over, as if children and puppies are interchangeable. And for some people they are.

How much of a factor do you think generational trauma plays into a person’s personality or condition?

I think we still don’t appreciate the ways that trauma seeps into a person. Yes, it permeates culture, socio-economic history, and in a host of other ways, but I think the most visceral and least understood is the way trauma gets into our cells. The body holds trauma; and I think that in a pregnant woman that trauma can transcend the placenta and can influence the developing fetus. 

Our bodies hold our experiences and shape us in ways that we not only don’t necessarily understand but also in ways that don’t show up for years and years in some cases. Our adult selves are born of all that our bodies hold. The reader, like Dina and Hal, knows nothing about Erika’s natural parents, we know nothing of the birth mother’s circumstances or how she came to be pregnant. But whatever the circumstances, I think those things are baked into Erika’s cells and have made her who she became, irrespective of any parental failings on Hal and Dina’s part.

How did your years of teaching influence your writing?

It taught me the importance of allowing for the interplay of planning and the factors that disrupt planning. Having a perfect lesson plan and then, without notice, there’s a fire drill in the middle of class—well, it’s not unlike being halfway into a story and realizing the main character is all wrong or the idea you thought was so great is really rather lame. It’s made me appreciate flexibility and the ways it can work to a writer’s advantage. It’s okay to be committed to the story in my head, but I’ve got to be willing and able to roll with it when something doesn’t work the way I expected or anticipated.

What did your students teach you about life?

Everything takes longer than you think!

Our everyday life influences our writing, but how has your writing influenced your everyday life?

This is a great question; I’d not thought much about until you asked, and it’s led me to do some journaling around it. I don’t know if this is the final answer, but I think my writing has made me more conscious of time, how much time I have available to devote to my work in any given week, and how much time my other roles demand. But also, I find that sometimes, when I’m waiting to see what comes up next for a story idea, I start putting my life at arms’ length, examining it to see if there is something there I can use. I don’t know if I like that I do that, but I see myself doing it. 

What do you think when you hear, “the good life”?

As soon as I read the question I heard in my head Frank Sinatra singing “The Good Life”…to the good life, to be free to explore the unknown… This was funny to me because I am not particularly a fan of Frank Sinatra, and I don’t know any other words to the song. And yet, when I started to think about it, the freedom to explore, to discover who we are, to move through as many iterations of ourselves as we wish, to find the place where we thrive and when we’ve had our fill to move on. Yes, that is the good life.

---

Thank you, Deidre, for being a part of our growing community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A and the audio recording. We’re glad we were able to connect and we wish you the best with life and all your writing endeavors.

Andrea Villa Franco is a writer and researcher from Bogotá, Colombia. Her fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in Hypertext Review, Americas Quarterly, and Pie de Página. She holds a B.A. from Stanford University and an International Joint M.A. from the EU’s Erasmus Mundus Program. She enjoys blending genres and experimenting with language(s) in her work and life.

Villa Franco’s flash fiction, Empty Nesting, is featured in Issue 17.

Tell us about yourself.

I like to collect things. Stones from different places I have traveled to, old family pictures, unique books, tickets from museums, postcards. But I also really really dislike clutter. I am drawn to well-placed emptiness, silences. When I imagine an ideal room to sit in, to read a nice book with a cup of tea or chat with a friend, it contains all the emotional richness of that yellowed picture of my childhood home, and all the quietness of a blank canvas. Somewhere in all of that is an analogy to who or how I am as a writer. 

To me Empty Nesting is a story about a parent hoping they have done enough as they prepare their child to leave the nest. Will it be too soon? Will they survive on their own? It’s a cold world out there and all we can do is our best to prepare them so they can succeed on their own. Was this your intention or am I projecting? What do you hope a reader takes from your story?

I like that you bring up intention and projection. Thinking back to this last year of writing, one of my intentions has been to really explore the idea that a text remains incomplete until it interacts with a reader—in other words, until a reader projects their lived experience onto the page. The words are intended to act as catalysts for a projection of sorts. 

With Empty Nesting, there are a lot of omissions. Part of it is a bit of rebellion against writing class mantras about character construction and three-dimensionality, but I have come to realize that one of the reasons I wanted to rebel was to give the reader more room to insert themselves and their own preconceptions into the story. Which is not to say that I didn’t have more details in mind about the characters as I wrote, but I wanted the voice and the gaze to reveal personhood, rather than relying on too many adjectives. 

At the same time, I was very conscious about the type of experiences and emotions that I was trying to evoke with what is present on the page—which is to say, those feelings of taking care of someone (or of being taken care of), the sense of responsibility, the doubt. Love, but also loss. Closeness, but also distance and never being close enough. In Spanish, I think we have a unique word that is well-suited to describe this “taking care of,” which is cariño. 

Ultimately, I’m honored that the story spoke to your experience as a parent—it’s all I could hope for.  

Our memories change with the strengthened lens of experience. How do you feel the narrator may have viewed the memory differently now that his little girl has grown?

This is a question that ties well to the ending of Empty Nesting, as there is a preemptive imagining of how the experience will be remembered someday by the little girl. To me, it provokes a nostalgic feeling, and when I re-read the story, I find nostalgia laced throughout in the sense that time is passing and that it is getting late and the time to make a decision passes, has passed. I go back to the word “preemptive.” Perhaps the opportunity to take care of the nestling or to impart a life lesson has passed. But the narrator’s caretaking of their child has not yet passed, and still the nostalgia of its passing is present. 

I think that nostalgic foretelling is remembered too, later in life. I think it could provoke a sense of vertigo, looking back at the presentiment of a loss that had not yet occurred, but now has. Especially when combined with the present sense of loss and nostalgia. And yet, I think it could also be a happy memory.

Empty Nesting has many poetic qualities. In your bio you say you enjoy blending genres, does that typically mean fiction and poetry or do you have other combinations that you dabble with?

Up to now, the bulk of my creative work has been either fiction or poetry. However, I have always been drawn to a variety of disciplines—from art history and philosophy to astronomy and the environmental sciences. This is how I have ended up as a political science researcher with an undergraduate degree in languages and literature and a MA thesis focused on anthropology and religious studies. 

This curiosity for most things informs both what I write about and how I write, but understanding this is tricky because influence is often unconscious. 

What I am conscious of is that I like to craft ambiance and a sense of place. The writing is often grounded in strong visual elements that I have in mind, and then other sensory experiences are derived from those images. I tie this back to my love for the visual arts. Photography, painting, film. There is a sensory immediacy of an image or a clip, an impression, that writing can’t do. I enjoy trying to translate that experience into writing. 

In our digital age, many of these visual (and acoustic) encounters are mediated through our screens. In the design of documents and webpages, there is suddenly a lot of freedom in how to place and format text. A well-thought-out digital space often tells its story through design. Which also makes me think of video games as a storytelling medium that has shaped my interaction with text. In Empty Nesting, some text is right-aligned, and I feel that my impulse to try that out is linked to the broad possibilities of text placement in software and websites. Graphic novels too, perhaps.  

I’ve gone long enough here, so I’ll wrap up with the thought that once upon a time poetry and narrative were not so strictly severed off from each other. I’m attracted by the oral quality of ancient storytelling; The Odyssey is one of my favorite works. I think sometimes there is a tendency to consider the musicality of language as separate from the meaning it imparts, but I find literature to reveal that musicality and meaning are tightly bound. 

Tell us about how you experiment with language in your writing? What languages do you know? Which language do you think is the most poetic and why?

Poetics, what is poetics? Hard to answer, but what I am sure of is that I do not think there is a language that is more poetic than the rest. Each has its unique rhythms, melodies, what linguists call prosody. 

I really enjoy discovering the special poetics of the different languages that I learn; there’s something about internalizing the musicality and structure of language that reminds me of dance. Like dance, language feels best to me when I can recur to instinct, and even improvisation, in making choices in expression. This tends to require a good foundation of the “boring stuff”—the grammar, the phonetics, syntax.

I think this is what poetics means to me. And just like dance can sometimes mix genres, it’s fun to experiment across languages. I like mixing conventions from different languages to bend language to its limit. It’s fun, it’s challenging, it’s not always successful, and that’s ok. 

My native language is Spanish, but I learned English very early in life. My third language is French, which I have been learning on and off since childhood, but only feel like I’ve “mastered” recently (but not really). I’ve dabbled in German and Japanese before. Lately, it’s been Portuguese. 

What do you think of when you hear, “the good life?”

A life that is lived. 

Listen as Andrea reads a snippet of her story, Empty Nesting:

---

Thank you, Andrea, for being a part of our growing community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A and the audio recording. We’re glad we were able to connect and we wish you the best with life and all your writing endeavors.

Kathryn O’Day is a nonfiction writer and former teacher. She writes about work, friendship, politics, and cities. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and winner of the Northwind Writing Award. Her creative work has appeared in Pangyrus, Another Chicago Magazine, Prose Online, and The Northwind Anthology, and she reads fiction submissions for TriQuarterly Magazine, which also published her interview with Aram Mrjoian. Much of her free time is spent wandering around the Cook County Forest Preserve, composing long, elaborate lists, and dreaming of the day her memoir hits the bestseller list.

O’Day’s creative nonfiction piece, Amongst Women, is featured in Issue 17.

Tell us about yourself.

Up until quite recently, I never would have called myself a writer. I’ve always been a reader, though, and once in a while, when I was young, I’d read about writers and imagine myself as one of them. Sometimes I’d even try my hand at a scene or a poem. My commitment never went much further than that, however.

After graduation, I forgot about writing altogether and focused instead on my new passion, teaching high school English. But then, two decades into my career, I decided to leave the profession. I loved my job, but I could feel myself burning out. 

A few months into my “retirement,” I found myself returning to my old daydream. At first, I simply sat down and wrote, naively thinking dedication to the task of writing would soon produce a best-seller (if only!). It wasn’t long before I realized how little I actually knew about writing, so I set out to learn. I joined writers’ groups and signed up for workshops. Eventually, I decided to pursue an MFA in Prose and Poetry. “Amongst Women” is an essay from that program, actually.

Tell us about your upcoming memoir. What inspired you to write it?

The memoir is a love story about teaching. It begins with my decision to become a teacher and ends with my decision to leave a dysfunctional system. My inspiration to write it arose from my heartbreak and bitterness over the loss of a job I loved. Because I really did love teaching. I just couldn’t balance it with family obligations, and the struggle to do so was taking a toll on my health. 

At first, I saw the book as a straightforward insider’s take on urban education. So many people think they understand what it takes to be a teacher, but all too often, they have no idea. It gets frustrating, particularly when politicians get involved. 

Over time, however, I realized that my book was a memoir, not an expose. This meant I had to rewrite everything, maintaining the arc of the story, but shifting its focus from a series of scenes in classrooms to the world contained in my head. At first, I worried that this introspection would shift attention from the system, but over time I realized that it actually helped me to make connections between my small story and larger narratives around gender, work, race, and economics, all of which influence the discourse around education. 

How did becoming a high school teacher change your life?

Becoming a teacher was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made (yes, despite all the heartache—maybe even because of it!). At first, I was simply trying it on, desperate to make use of my English degree without having to sit in an office all day. I had no idea whether I’d be any good at it. But then I found myself face to face with actual teenagers, and I was almost instantly disarmed by their warmth, their insight, their wisdom. I assumed at first that I’d simply gotten lucky, landing in that particular environment with that particular group of students. Then years passed, and I found the same traits among mixed-gender groups in public schools, as well. This is another thing I really want to get across in my writing—the surprising sweetness of teenagers.

What lessons did educating young minds teach you?

Where to begin? My students taught me to be patient, to be hopeful. They taught me how beautiful and rich literature really is. They taught me to listen. Really, they taught me how to teach!

“Amongst Women,” tells your story of becoming a teacher and how your students impacted your life. Are you still in touch with any of your students? 

I am, mostly through social media. It’s such a joy—following their paths! One of my former students is a news anchor now. Another is a zookeeper. And countless others are teachers, themselves. 

How have those relationships developed over the years?

Most of them have grown somewhat distant, naturally. You go from interacting every day to catching up on Facebook. And people change, of course. That group of girls I taught in the story are almost forty years old now, with daughters of their own. 

Tell us about the reunion that brought you back together with your first students.

It was wonderful, not only because I reconnected with my former students, but because I also reconnected with some of my former colleagues. I don’t write about it in “Amongst Women,” but I worked with a wonderful group of teachers at that school. It wasn’t uncommon for us to chat in the halls for literally hours at the end of the school day.

As a teacher, are your first students the most memorable? Why or why not?

I hesitate to say yes, only because I taught so many incredible kids over the years. Still, I have extremely vivid memories of the Class of 2004. Part of this is because it was my first year. Another part is because I taught students in that class all three years that I taught there. I taught them as freshmen, then as sophomores, and later in electives. 

What are your favorite writers to teach students about? Why?

The best writers for high school students tell stories that resonate with their worlds. This doesn’t mean that kids can’t appreciate other times, places, societies. Kids love Shakespeare (most of the time), though they don’t live in Elizabethan England. Still, it’s crucial for students to feel that the text is speaking to them, not simply at them. 

One book that I remember resonating with a lot of kids was Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich. It’s a tough read—a story about inter-generational trauma written from multiple perspectives. Still, it generated a lot of important discussions around family and the roots of abuse. I got the sense that a lot of students felt seen when they read it, perhaps even comforted.

Another popular book was Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. One student told me it was the first book she had actually read all the way through for a class. I asked her why she liked it. “Because it’s real,” she said.

What do you think of when you hear, “The Good Life?”

I think of that lovely short story written by Willa Cather, an author I admire. And then I think of Nebraska, a place I’ve always liked, though I’ve never been a resident. I’ve spent time there, though. I’ve been photographed in a cornfield and played with kittens in a barn and eaten runzas straight from the oven. It’s been a while since I read Cather’s story, but I get a sense that her Nebraska was not too different from mine. 

Listen as Kathryn reads a snippet of her essay, Amongst Women:

---

Thank you, Kathryn, for allowing us to share your essay with our readers and for taking extra time with us on this Q&A and audio recording. We’re glad we were able to connect and we wish you the best with your book and all your writing endeavors.

Chase Dimock teaches literature and writing in Los Angeles. He is the author of Sentinel Species (Stubborn Mule Press 2020) and the Managing Editor of As It Ought To Be Magazine. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois and his scholarship and reviews in World Literature and LGBT Studies have appeared in College Literature, Western American Literature, Modern American Poetry, The Lambda Literary Review, and several academic anthologies.

Dimock’s poem, “A Convalescent Home for Retired Prophets,” is featured in Issue 17.

Tell us about yourself.

Hello! My name is Chase Dimock and I’m an English Professor at College of the Canyons and a writer living in North Hollywood, California. I received a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois and my scholarship focuses on global queer communities in the age of modernism. I am also the Managing Editor of As It Ought To Be online. Dodger, my faithful Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, is both my teaching assistant and most supportive editor.

Your poem, “A Convalescent Home for Retired Prophets,” feels like a story of both regret and hope. Regret for a true self resigned to secrecy, but also hope for the young people for which his generation paved the way. What do you think the subject of the poem would tell his younger self if he had a chance to go back in time?

As someone who teaches LGBT history at the college level, one of my biggest points of emphasis is to illuminate what the conditions of being a queer individual were like in any given historical and cultural context. That way, we can understand that the LGBT world we have today is the product of historical and cultural forces driven by creative and brave individuals and communities. Not all the luminaries of queer activism like Harvey Milk and Marsha P Johnson lived long enough to enjoy some of the rights and opportunities that we currently have today, and I hope that inspires our present day queer community to continue to fight for the rights of future queer people. 

I see the subject of my poem as both proud of being part of a courageous queer community that made the world safer and more supportive for future generations, but also somewhat melancholic in knowing that he never got to experience this security when he himself was young. While coming of age as a millennial was different (thanks to the internet) than what older generations experienced, I think both he and I would say the same thing to our adolescent selves: You have a place in the future where you can be yourself and be loved. It won’t come right away, but it will happen. If you keep going, other people who know your pain will support you and heal alongside you.

A slower pace of life allows for reflection. Is that the blessing or curse of aging? Why?

I see the process of reflection as we age as a blessing. It can be a reward for a life well lived. Self-reflection is a beautiful process, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be happy, or at least happiness defined as smiles and rainbows. However, it can be happy in an existentialist meaning, like the way Camus says we must imagine Sisyphus as happy as he rolls that boulder up a hill, never to reach the top. I think it depends on if you feel content that you did the best that you could to uphold your values given what you had to work with. Self-reflection can also help us connect back to who we were as we fumbled our way toward maturity and allow us to better understand the younger generations who are doing the same.

It’s important to hear the stories of our elders to understand where we have been and where we are going as a society. What story would he tell to those youth sitting under the “shade of trees he planted?” 

I think my protagonist would tell the story of whatever it was he did to plant that tree to inspire the present day generation to both appreciate that shade and also inspire them to plant new trees for the future generations. As a millennial, I am eternally appreciative of the previous generations of queer people who stood up during the AIDS crisis of the 80s and refused to see the deaths of their loved ones ignored and their communities degraded. The courage and strength it took to come together, persevere, and fight for rights and basic human dignity in such a devastating time is a testament to the power we can muster as a community united in love. My protagonist would use this to encourage the younger generations to resist the present day blowback against the queer community seen today with anti-trans legislation and book bans targeted at the most vulnerable young LGBT people. 

Tell us about your collection of poems in Sentinel Species, your book published in 2020. 

My collection of poems in Sentinel Species all engage with our relationships with animals, plants, and the environment as a whole. A sentinel species refers to how an animal’s behavior can alert us to dangers in the environment that humans cannot directly sense. The most famous of these are the canaries that coal miners used before carbon monoxide detectors were invented. When the canary fainted (and usually died) it was time to get out. The poems in the collection are inspired by this same premise. What can my personal relationships with animals and our society’s relationships with animals tell us about what it means to be human and how we can better understand our place in the environment? So, the poems range from reflections on global history to my guilt over having to deny my dog a piece of chocolate, even though he has the cutest puppy dog eyes and really wants it!

Do you primarily write poetry? What other forms of expression are most meaningful to you? Why?

Poems are my primary artistic medium, though I write book reviews and scholarly articles as well. Because my work as a professor of literature runs parallel to my main creative outlet (also literature). I like creative pursuits that engage other senses and are less about expressing ideas as they are about material engagement with the world. I have an obsession with desert plants, and though I wrote about a few in my book, I am most interested in tending to my cactus and succulent collection and photographing them when I walk through the desert. 

On a completely different note, I am a huge karaoke enthusiast, and although I have no training, I like to think I bring a lot of passion and showmanship. Singing is certainly an art, and while I wouldn’t call myself a great singer, I love how performing popular songs in public brings people together, supporting each other’s 3.5 minutes as a rock star. In the increasingly digitized world we live in, experiencing art together in moments that cannot be streamed on demand is crucial to accessing what art has always been about: humans connecting with humans.

How has teaching literature and writing at College of the Canyons impacted your own writing? 

Teaching at College of the Canyons has made me a better writer. Many of my colleagues are brilliant poets and fiction writers themselves whose work has inspired me. They have been so generous with their time and support, and we’ve collaborated on poetry readings and creative opportunities for our students. I have to give a special shout out to Mary Angelino (an infinitely talented poet herself) who edited Sentinel Species with me over the pandemic and worked with me on a website that features bird poetry written by our students. Teaching what you love can be challenging though because after a full day of talking about literature with colleagues and students, I come home often having exhausted everything I wanted to say with writing. But, that’s a wonderful challenge to have; it means digging even deeper into my creativity to find new ideas to engage in my own poetry.

How have your students inspired you?

My students are a constant source of inspiration. They challenge me to look at writing from fresh and diverse perspectives because they are often reading some of these classics and contemporary pieces for the first time and from backgrounds very different from my own. I’ve been working on a class about food blogging, and the writing they have produced has been outstanding. I was nervous in assigning a few pages of the famous madeleine scene from Proust, but their personal reflections on their own food-related Proustian moments were so sincere and exciting to read. Seeing students connect with a queer French writer from over 100 years ago and being inspired to explore their own food memories was a beautiful confirmation of the valuable work we do as educators.

What do you think of when you hear, “the good life?”

When I think of “the good life,” I think similarly to what I said earlier about being existentially fulfilled. There are no guarantees that your life will have any of the common markers of the good life (wealth, health, social status, etc.) but it is always possible to live a good life when you’ve adhered to your values, spread love and support, and cultivated your talents. The good life is a life well-lived, and that can take infinite shapes and forms. 

Listen as Chase reads his poem, A Convalescent Home for Retired Prophets…

---

Thank you, Chase, for being a part of our growing literary community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A and audio reading. We wish you the best!

Michaela Evanow lives, writes and gardens by the sea in British Columbia with her husband and three small kids. Life makes sense in the garden, so on a spacious day, her fingers are covered in dirt and she’s collecting things to dry and hang in a dark corner. Her work has appeared in Hippocampus Magazine, Five Minutes and elsewhere. You can find her on Instagram at: @michaela.evanow

Her flash CNF piece, “The Crush of Dusk,” is featured in Issue #17.

Tell us about yourself.

I’m a mother of four souls, a little bit haunted in a good way, a deep feeler, avid thrifter, and have been drawn to writing since my first Language Arts creative writing project in grade three when my whole body broke out in goosebumps after the teacher announced what we would be doing. My favourite place to walk is the old cemetery in our neighbourhood. After spending almost a year in India, incense, chai and world music are staples in my home. We lost our first born daughter, when she was three years old. Florence was an old soul, and her story was too short. I couldn’t make sense of it for years. I was completely overwhelmed by the depths of my feelings, and in an effort to keep moving onward, found helpful ways to numb myself. This is a human thing to do. Not until I had some space, and was done birthing children, did my body begin to tell the hidden stories. I am so grateful that I listened, instead of turning away. This has changed my life.

Your story, “The Crush of Dusk,” captures the pain of loss, but also the heartbreak of seeing life go on after that loss. How has writing helped you navigate through your grief?

Writing was a kind of medicine for me, during Florence’s diagnosis and life. I wrote a lot in those early blogging days and amassed a following. However, I didn’t really understand at the time that writing doesn’t actually heal you from that kind of trauma. It’s a beautiful tool in a really big excavation. I deleted my blog many years later as I was diving into healing and processing because I had changed, my brain had changed and life was altogether different. And more private, especially regarding my family. Writing online has changed so much over the years and I’m still not sure it’s helpful to process online, which is what I did. These days, I find the challenge of writing about the tenderness of grief in new, more complex ways a wonderful thing. I really enjoy writing rich, condensed pieces about the human experience of surviving loss, coming back home to ourselves and finding peace. Grief is something we can all relate to, in one way or another. My grief no longer overwhelms me, but it does inform a lot of my writing.

You’ve had other stories about your grief published as well. How do you think your stories have helped other grieving parents?

I think it’s really helpful to feel less alone in a world that labels your particular kind of loss as the worst thing possible, unimaginable or the worst club to belong to. It gives parents the message that integrating their loss will be impossible. It can feel isolating, terrifying and lonely, but there is hope for healing. I hope my words allow not just bereaved parents, but others touched by loss, a deep exhale, comradery and curiosity. We all experience grief differently, because our stories of loss are so nuanced. I find it so extraordinary to bear witness to others grief, and perhaps when folks read my work, they feel the same way.

Tell us about the “heart medicine” of moving your body.

I grew up dancing. It was my thing. When I was 16 I had a major spinal surgery to correct the rapid curvature of my spine from scoliosis. My spine was fused together with rods, I lost a rib and gained a lot of referred pain. I struggled to dance in structured classes, because I couldn’t move or jump the way I used to, and it wasn’t actually recommended. It took me a long time to come back to appreciate my body and all it’s been through. I discovered conscious/ecstatic dance, and it became my preferred embodiment practice. I enjoy the sensuous experience of riding out emotions, with music, in community, without the need to perform or look good. I call it my heart medicine, because it does just that. It can be highly cathartic at times, which can also mean I always want it to feel that way, and the reality is, it doesn’t. Rather, the practice is teaching me to stay with it all: my body, emotions, stuckness, pain, joy and environment.

How are writing and dancing similar in artistic expression? 

I’ll happily tell you how they both tend to the same parts of myself. Both require intention, effort and time. Both offer creative release and expression. I can move robotically to music or under the influence of alcohol on a sticky dancefloor, as I used to do as a 20 something or just shoot off an email. Conscious dancing requires much more meaningful attention and practice, much like a well honed piece of writing.

On your Instagram page you shared your love of “making moving environments & rituals.” How have you shared those loves with your children?

Our house is a hodge podge of vintage treasures, old paintings, secondhand furniture, patterned rugs and dishes, dried garden flowers, I mean, I love all things old and eclectic, because I love an atmosphere that’s rich with story. There’s always something to look at. I’m not sure how much my kids notice now, but I do think they will remember as they get older, what it felt like to be in an ever changing, layered environment. Sometimes I get an idea of what it feels like for them when my son says “the colour of the sky is like grapefruit slices and it smells like a cozy place, it reminds me of something, I think it’s camping, and maybe Christmas. I love autumn, just like you.” Or my daughter picks out flowers from the garden to make fairy soup or an arrangement, boldly creating, asking if we can light some candles, and noting that the music feels “kinda sad but feels like I’m in a movie.” In those moments, I hear my own words and I pause, deeply moved, slightly spooked. What a profound gift and responsibility it is to influence and show this magnificent world to my kids, whether it’s outside or inside our living room.

How has your Instagram community supported you on this healing journey?

I have met hundreds of bereaved mothers through the hashtag I created after Florence’s death, #MamaGrief. It seemed like such a simple form of expression, yet 9 years ago, there wasn’t really a space for this on Instagram. I was desperate to share and in retrospect, I can see where I overshared. Writing, like grief, changes over time, and in those dark depths of searing pain, I needed an outlet. I was a young mother, with a baby at my breast and I didn’t have energy or capacity to explore outside of the comfort of my own home. Writing became something for me to heavily lean on. It turns out there are a lot of others out there like me from all the corners of the globe: big feelers, bereaved mothers, others touched by grief or by Florence. It feels really good to have those connections, knowing people have been around since the early days of my grief journey, cheering me on as I have shared, evolved, healed and explored.

What advice or words of comfort can you share with anyone experiencing grief?

I wish I had a space to be with others, outside of an institution, that invited ritual, remembrance, movement, writing and grief tending. My goal is to create a space like that one day soon, because I believe the need is still so great for these old ways of communal grieving with creativity and purpose. Therapy is incredibly helpful for grief, and it’s also comforting to know there are many other ways to really integrate our experiences. I wish I had known of these things, but I’m thankful I do now. There is nothing like knowing another soul with a similar lived experience can bear witness to your story, pain, tenderness and not leave you, but sit with you until you reach the other side together.

If I could speak to my younger self I’d reach out and share: Grief will stick with you, until one day when you’re ready, you’ll find the time and space to look it in the eye, and know it will not destroy you. And you will emerge changed and still tender, still hopeful.

What do you think of when you hear, “the good life?”

It reminds me of the old song by the Weepies, “Simple Life,” that my husband and I listened to a lot during our early years of marriage.

I suppose the good life is a life lived with intention, paying attention to the tiny details that make up our lives, feeling gratitude for the time we have together, however long it may be. The luxury of homemade food on the table, the ability to communicate our love for each other, to repair and respond and really take it all in. I don’t want to miss any of it anymore. 

---

Thank you, Michaela, for allowing us to share your essay with our readers and for taking extra time on this Q&A. We’re glad we were able to connect and we wish peace and prosperity for you and your family.

Randy Bynum’s work appears in Cirque (contest winner), Arboreal Literary Magazine, Metonym Journal, Atticus Review, New Plains Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, and others. He explores people, places, and social inequity. He’s seeking publication for his collections Tulips Talking Behind My Back and Dragons Who Type: Poems of Whimsy and Wishes. He’s a former speech/theatre teacher, an award-winning playwright, and believes KMHD Jazz Radio can help save the world. He lives in Portland, OR with his wife Dani and rescue dog Cooper.

Tell us about yourself.

I am so grateful that The Good Life Review honored my poem Electric Eclectic Strong. I feel incredibly fortunate to still be here. I just turned 70, still feel 20, and think: how did this happen? I couldn’t do this without my wife’s support, a far better writer and actor than I am, who now works an intense healthcare surgical coordination/support day job. 

I grew up a farm kid in small-town Oregon, went to work very young, and was raised by Great Depression hard-working blue-collar, high school-degreed parents who encouraged my love of music, reading, and writing. Mom was a half-Cherokee/Native American from hard-scrabble Oklahoma. Dad was a WWII front-line Navy vet and a master carpenter artist with wood. In 2006, my folks passed away within 22 hours of each other, giving me one last lesson on courageously facing the final curtain. 

I’ve worked as a farmhand, carpenter’s helper, horse stable cleaner, grocery clerk, audio and music gear salesperson, musician, radio announcer, copywriter/editor, and actor. I studied music and journalism in college for my BA, played in a pro jazz swing band, and eventually got a graduate teaching assistantship and an MA in theatre and speech. I taught college speech and theatre classes and met diverse students from everywhere. I left teaching in 2017 after 28 years and began to write again. I didn’t start submitting work until fall of 2023. 

Most importantly, I’m healthily alive. In my late twenties, I had Hodgkin’s disease lymphoma cancer, major surgeries, and treatments, along with resultant appreciation of mortality, staggering medical bills, and admirable doctors. I am lucky and grateful—still writing, reading, curious, and digging music 24/7. 

“Electric Eclectic Strong” has a strong sense of musicality. How has music influenced your writing? 

As I answer this question, Louis Armstrong is Satchmo-crooning “Your Cheatin’ Heart” on the radio with my wife and I sighing out a collective “aaaahhhhh, soooo good.” 

Music was my first language from the minute I was born. Though my folks weren’t musicians, they always had an old AM radio playing on the kitchen counter or in Dad’s shop. As little kids, my sister and I would constantly beg to hear their records (33, 45, 78 rpm) on the old RCA “Cobra” phono/radio combo as a treat. Want candy? Maybe. Music? YES!  I was a trumpet player by fifth grade. Sang in a choir. Became first chair. The music room and the practice rooms were my second home, a safe place away from bullies, with other like-minded kids. I was the first person in school around 6:30 a.m., from junior high through high school waiting to be let in at the back door of the band room. Played in two jazz bands, one classical orchestra, and in a brass choir. Several of us became either professional or semi-pro musicians. Very thankful for falling in love with and being introduced to so many types of music. I consumed writers and music like food, (sometimes forgoing food for both books and records).

Even as a kid, when I was writing, or working on anything, music was on or I was playing it:  Buddy Rich, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Brubeck, right next to Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Otis Redding, Bach, Dvorak. Same holds true now. Up early, turn music on, write.  Sometimes, I’ll write in silence, buried in a word tangle but music is on nearly all day either on a stereo, or inside my head or in a poem that’s forming in subconscious genesis. The beauty of poetry IS its music, how language works in its varied notes, textures, metaphors, sounds. Music and poetry are like breathing to me. And when Nina Simone comes on, or the radio DJ reads Joy Harjo, well, I’m reminded, breathe it all in deeply.

What poet most influenced your writing? Why?

After I left teaching, it had been over 10 years since my folks had died, so I started capturing memories and it all came out as poetry. I began reading the 100 Essential Poems of William Stafford. I found his work so direct, spare, precise yet layered. My wife, seeing that I was writing, got me Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook and I used it and began to read her work. It was helpful in my daily discipline. At that time, most importantly, my wife also became serendipitously close friends with poet Tess Gallagher who was finishing her Is, Is Not collection. (I read that, too.) My style is not at all like hers, but just hearing the unique way she thinks, imagines and uses language had an impact. The biggest influence: I very distinctly remember reading her deceased husband Raymond Carver’s poems in Fires while waiting for my car at a Kia service center. That’s when I finally felt like I had permission to let my writing voice roll out. He lit me up. I keep his A New Path to The Waterfall on my nightstand. 

Additionally, I’ve been lucky to hear Maya Angelou several times, read lots of Roethke, I liked Miller Williams, (and Lucinda), particularly his poem The Curator, Terrance Hayes Ode to Big Trend, damn near all of Naomi Shihab Nye, Langston Hughes. I like Joy Harjo and N. Scott Momaday and was lucky enough to be invited to a Joy Harjo Zoom reading/talk/Q & A for a class at Peninsula College in Port Angeles, WA sponsored by their Native American students. She’s so authentic. I enjoy the way her stories and images unfold and turn. Listening through the cellular mystery of my mom’s double ethnicity identity, and hearing Harjo speak with the Native American students, I was surprised to find myself holding back tears. 

I read the Poetry Foundation site every day, the list of what I love there is too long, a veritable quandary. I will never forget Stevie Smith’s Not Waving but Drowning and Philip Levine’s During the War. I’m like a big open sponge for everything, with a ton of poets on our shelves (Nikki Giovanni, Billy Collins, Tony Hoagland, Akhmatova, Neruda, Lorca, Yeats, anything Tess says to read) and have over 200 poets bookmarked on my laptop. I’m still just a kid in a big candy store.

What themes do you often explore in your work?

My initial sets of poems loosely formed into a collection titled HomeMade and focus on family, nature, animals, ancestry, childhood, work: capturing and reframing memories, observed moments. I often try to tell a specific story in short, spare form. (I so appreciate Mary Oliver’s eye and voice.)

I tend to be obsessed about mortality, our journey, all its challenges, cruelty residing right beside beauty, the inevitable end, our place in space, this world, and even the mystifying science of it. Probably a result of my life-death wake-up call and all its physical after-effects I guess, after a happy, healthy, though lower-income early life. At my age, I’ve watched quite a few family and friends die. My wife, who is much younger than me, just lost her mom after a two-year battle with cancer, holding her hand as she passed just like she did for both my own parents. Grief is a howling beast. One of my first early poems as a teen was about my deaf and mute single-mom cousin who died of cancer, leaving her three young children to be raised by their grandma and granddad. 

I do write some protest/activist-themed poetry. Just staying angry or upset about unfairness, dogmatism, and discrimination isn’t enough, somehow channeling it into a poem or action feels better. I really like writing quirky wry humor, too. Something that made me absolutely bust up (and try to recapture it) was one day for my wife’s work break I began reading aloud Pablo Neruda’s poem A Dog Has Died. I got partway through, and out of nowhere, her cellphone-Siri suddenly loudly said, “I can provide access to Suicide Hotlines and other mental health services.” We laughed so hard we cried. 

My Dragons Who Type characters overcome obstacles, challenges, and discrimination, turn myths/stereotypes on their heads, and try to take the reader into new magical realism worlds.  

How has your heritage affected your writing and creative expression?

It makes me search inside more deeply and try to look beyond the surface of people and situations, see all things with more complexity, confront my own beliefs and prejudices if I can. I was born a writer and musician, kind of an anomaly in my family. One of the reasons I began writing again was to recapture memories, honor my ancestors on all sides. Both mom and dad came from poor, hard-working labor roots, the 1920’s and the Great Depression. You went to work as a kid or you didn’t survive; even then you might not. Mom was a waitress, also worked at JC Penney’s, and was a remarkable plant whisperer. Dad returned from WW II scarred, fierce, but so thankful to be alive after being on 11-member Pacific Island pre-invasion “suicide squads” where only half came back each time. He built everything we had, became a smiling master carpenter and known as THE guy to hire if you wanted something built to last. I like to think I work on a poem or piece of writing to get it right, just like dad worked with wood and structures. 

They started with nearly nothing except what they scrapped and saved but gave everything they had to us kids. We lived out of our huge gardens and fruit trees, and raised animals. Family meant everything and they had an innate sense of fairness and justice. As conservative as they were, they’d be appalled if they were alive in this new era of grifting hypocrisy, twisted self-serving evangelism, fascism-cult-worshiping, and violent bullying discrimination. When I look at a picture of my mom and specifically, my dad, welcoming Yoichi, my good Oregon State friend from Tokyo, it always chokes me up. He still visits me from Japan. We’re living proof of peace, across generations.

I learned late in life that my mom’s real dad, my biological grandfather, was not the grandpa I’d grown up with. All her siblings were half-siblings, though they all loved each other. Her dad and his family were Cherokee, very dark. She never talked about it and when she did only had a few remaining pictures of him. She was extremely close to her mom, her grandparents and I think even more so after her father left them, mom’s stillborn brother, mom’s two-year old sister who died from diphtheria. My grandmother was a remarkably kind survivor straight out of hard-life Oklahoma. Mom’s Cherokee relatives were kind to her too, aunties and uncles taking her to pow-wows as a kid. However, she was taunted by ignorant people, cut off from friends as “that dirty little Injun kid” and finally just started internalizing all of it, hiding her emotions and scars until later in life. She eventually opened up, then urged my sister and I to get tribally-enrolled and she started taking friends and family to pow wows in Grande Ronde, Oregon. I’m basically a mixed kid who never knew it as I had all the privilege of my white looking skin. 

All this material circulates inside me, changes my perceptions of how I see and appreciate our world (original inhabitants), identity and eventually comes out in my poetry. 

I write to keep mom’s story, and all my ancestors’ stories, alive. 

What helps you sort through the madness of the world? 

That’s always the question. It’s hard at times to stay positive, isn’t it, seeing so much death, destruction, war and hate? Love. And gratitude. Music. My wife. My rescue doggy. Poetry. Humor. The Olympics. Community of any sort, whether actors, writers, musicians, ex-teachers, old radio pals, friends, a few neighbors, fellow tennis/exercise addicts. I bake pies. Give them away. Doing some small thing for someone else can blunt the depression of a world gone crazy. Having chanced upon KMHD 89.1 Jazz Radio about seven years ago, I settled on their morning shows to keep me perked up from 7:00 to 10:00, and 10:00 to noon, accompanying my writing time. The theme of DJ Derek’s show is to help stay strong, start the morning out on “the good foot.” I still stay excited about learning, reading new things. Writing letters to leaders and protesting. When I was teaching, I was energized by the students, it kept me young, made me want to keep learning more and providing better, more fun, effective lessons. I miss being able to stay on my toes and make them laugh. It’s OK to dream but it also takes getting our hands dirty. 

I rediscovered a former teaching colleague who’d gone off to a different job and lived several hours away. She ended up reading and liking all my Dragons Who Type poems and then sent me fantastic illustrations of several of them, unbidden. I also rediscovered a long-lost friend who I’d grown up with, played music together, in our old hometown. One winter I was helping dig out a young woman’s car stuck in snow/ice on a hill two houses up from us, and some guy came out to help me. It was Bill and we hadn’t seen each other for decades. Couldn’t believe we’d moved just a couple houses away from each other. He’d worked as a physicist, and still played piano. We haven’t stopped talking since. Those things: Serendipity. And it can be a lifesaver

I think artists, writers, creatives can feel lonely and isolated as it requires such intense solitary time and focus. Building community helps us get through. That’s why The Good Life Review matters. I’m not sure anything will make sense of human sociopathy, of intense greed, violence, shootings, war, the destruction of our environment—but one thing that does make sense is how much energy we can generate doing positive things rather than negative. It takes exactly the same amount of energy. We just get to choose which. 

---

Randy’s Poem, Electric Eclectic Strong, is the winner of the 2024 HoneyBee Poetry Prize and is featured in Issue #16.

Thank you, Randy, for being a part of our growing community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We appreciate your young spirit and thoughtfulness, and we wish you the best!

Kelsey Ferrell is a multi-medium creative from California. She holds a B.A. from UC Berkeley and is a second-year MFA Candidate at UC Riverside. She has written and released a punk album, Trauma Portfolio, and four singles, under her artist name, Feral. Kelsey directed a tragicomic film about the feral Inland Empire donkey herds titled Donkumentary as a recipient of the 2023 Gluck Fellowship for the Arts. She is the winner of UC Riverside’s 2024 L.M. and Marcia McQuern Endowed Graduate Award in Nonfiction Writing. Kelsey performs stand-up comedy and dreams of owning a cat one day.

Her CNF piece, Eloise, was this year’s first runner-up in the HoneyBee Prize for creative nonfiction. It appears in our summer issue and is her first publication.

Tell us about yourself.

I grew up in Santa Cruz, California, and spent most of my childhood reading. I was always a heavily academic person, so when I started college at UC Berkeley I studied interdisciplinary social sciences and was somewhat surprised by how many of my extracurriculars ended up being creative pursuits. I didn’t really know what I wanted to become, but I loved learning and discovered how fun it was to create. Halfway through college, I released a punk album, and from that point onward, my artistic journey was irreversible. I simply couldn’t do anything else. All I wanted to do was make art and tell stories. I found myself continuing to try new mediums, like stand-up and screenwriting. Wanting to do an MFA was in the back of my head for many years, so I finally sent in an application and now I am lucky enough to be more than halfway through UC Riverside’s MFA. At UCR I have gotten to become a prose writer and filmmaker, which is so fun and exciting! I’m also a cancer sun and cancer moon, a lover of horror movies and cringe comedies, and I teach creative writing classes at UCR to really awesome undergraduates.

As a multimedia creative, you’ve dabbled in various art forms, which art form speaks most to you? Why?

I think at this point, songwriting, as well as performing my music, is the most intuitive art form because I’ve been doing it the longest. It’s become sort of a meditative second nature. Yet, I would say stand-up comedy is the most rewarding art form because getting a room to laugh feels way better than getting a room to applaud. Filmmaking and prose are more recent endeavors to me, so I’m still experiencing a bit of a learning curve in storytelling in those mediums, but their challenges make them interesting and serendipitous in ways that songwriting and stand-up aren’t. It might be a cop-out answer, but what really speaks to me as an artist is getting to tell stories in different mediums. It’s so fun to have a variety of options to explore the human condition. I think it improves my art to take the time to find the right container for every story, instead of forcing every story into one form, regardless of if that’s the best one for it. 

Do you find your various art forms overlapping? Why or why not?

Oh, definitely. I think the core of my work all comes from the same well, regardless of the form it takes. I find myself writing jokes and satire into my lyrics all the time. Songwriting also makes you really focused on delivering devastating lines, finding the most gut-wrenching phrasing to end a verse. I find myself paralleling that when I’m finding the final sentence for a paragraph or the final sentence for a prose piece. A song also repeats the chorus, looping around to the same refrain. I don’t do this exactly in my prose, but I think being accustomed to writing a chorus in music has created an artist’s instinct to use callbacks as much as I can. I did that in Eloise several times, making small references to previous paragraphs as the story progressed so that every cut keeps hurting no matter how far back it is. The piece is pretty meta in that way. With filmmaking (which I’m still quite new to), I think being on stage frequently for stand-up and music makes it easy to switch to being on camera. In my opinion, there’s no reason to overspecialize in one thing, it’s counterproductive. Switching it up between mediums is what takes me deeper as an artist. 

Eloise, like many creative nonfiction pieces, is deeply personal. Was it challenging to put this piece out into the world, or liberating? Why?

I’m not sure what it’s like for other creative nonfiction authors, but personally I don’t find it emotionally challenging to write this kind of piece. If the story is already bleak, barren, and resigned, there’s nothing left to lose. As the story says, I had already lost the partner I wanted, the one other connection I found was a dead end, I couldn’t adopt the cat, and I couldn’t rely on my biology. At that point, the scariest, shittiest things have already happened, so writing them down and people being able to read about them doesn’t intimidate me. So, Eloise was not really challenging to me in that specific way (though a different creative nonfiction piece might feel challenging to divulge; I don’t want to homogenize). I also wouldn’t call putting out Eloise liberating. It’s exciting and cool to be published, and it feels awesome to have written what I wrote. I think I would use the word salvaging over the word liberating. I might not get to be with Theo, or Ben, and so on, but I get to keep them inside this piece. It’s like, what slivers of my dreams can I preserve when I write them down? It’s a very precious thing to write about these losses because in many ways it’s the only way I can keep what’s gone, or what may never be. 

How do you hope Eloise will connect with your readers? What do you want them to take away from this piece?

You know, this is the hardest question to answer for me, because I’ve never really thought about having “readers” before. Thanks for publishing me so that this is something I can think about now! Haha. But let me think through this. First things first, I see Eloise as a very bleak story. It’s about the impossibility of not only the dream but the consolation prize as well. People always joke about how if you can’t find romantic love, you can become a crazy cat lady; or how if you’re single, you can have a bunch of fun casually dating around. In this story, those silver linings are just as out of reach as the original dream. It’s like, okay, I don’t get to be with Theo, but maybe I can adopt a cat and have fun with Ben, right? But no—I can’t afford the cat and Ben never texts back. And there’s something humiliating about not even getting the next best thing, so to speak. I want this piece to find readers who have their own version of this kind of lack, who have a barrenness in their lives regardless of if their body is physically mirroring that barrenness. I want readers to separate hope and desire in their minds, to see this piece as proof that hope isn’t the only way to keep going. The last paragraph doesn’t show it—it’s just me in my room by myself—but readers know that at some point after that night, I got up and wrote it all down. I had no hope that Theo would come back or that Ben would text me again or that I’d get a cat— but that was irrelevant to me continuing to put one foot in front of the other one, living my life despite that. Desire without hope exists. It’s a strong enough force to keep someone on their feet. 

How does writing help you cope with the trials of life?

Not to be dramatic, but writing is lowkey the only way to cope with the trials of life. Well, I would put reading/studying philosophy as runner-up in that race. I’m not saying this is advice for everyone, but if I could go back in time to myself at 18, I’d tell her, “Don’t go to therapy, write everything you’re drawn to write, and sign up for more philosophy classes.” I think humans have been trying to understand the human condition for thousands of years, and we can join that extremely normal experience through engaging in art and philosophy. I feel like I’m a part of the oldest tradition in the world when I’m writing my stories trying to understand the world around me. I always think of the James Baldwin quote: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” 

Do you find yourself writing similar themes for your creative nonfiction pieces? If so, what theme keeps reoccurring? Why do you think that is?

Yes absolutely, I find myself constantly investigating the ways things go wrong. Failure to connect, failure to achieve, that sort of thing. Especially when it’s irreversible. I’m drawn to tragedy and comedy in equal measure, and I’d argue that that is due to the fact that those are equally represented in one’s failures and losses. When things go wrong, that often hurts the most in interpersonal relationships, so I find myself writing about heartbreak and grief. But heartbreak and grief are consequences. Recently I’ve been a bit more interested in what precedes them, uncovering the way things fall apart. As far as why I keep returning to that, I think the easy answer is that things simply go wrong a lot, so there’s a lot to write about. But still, why is that as opposed to something else equally as bountiful in reality? I guess it goes back to what I said about salvaging. If things go wrong, it’s because they once went right. Holding onto those slivers of what was good and beautiful, that’s important to me, and so is honoring the story of how those things were lost. 

How has your MFA program changed you as a writer?

It’s changed me so much as a writer. I’m so grateful to the UCR MFA. I’d never taken a formal creative writing class until my MFA; my undergraduate degree was in the social sciences so I wrote academic papers. I had some solid creative instincts and passion before the MFA, but I didn’t have any skills or even a framework for what makes a story well told. That’s something I learned at UCR. I am deeply indebted to the faculty there and my classmates for teaching me things I would never have figured out on my own. 

Who has influenced your writing the most? Why?

I have to say my professor Reza Aslan. As I said, when I applied to my MFA program, I had some good creative instincts going for me from songwriting and stand-up. But I’d never really taken formal creative writing classes—and I had no experience in prose specifically. My prose submissions were really messy, and Reza knew right away exactly where I was going wrong and taught me how to level up. He’s an excellent teacher. Plenty of people in life are going to put you through something painful, beautiful, and unforgettable to write about. But very few people say, “Okay, stop crying, this is how you’re going to tell the story.” But that’s what I needed to hear as a writer and that’s how Reza influenced me.

What do you think of when you hear, “The Good Life?”

When I hear “the good life,” I think of the life one gets when the dream life is discarded. I remember a quote from Maureen Dowd, which Ariel Levy wrote about in her memoir, The Rules Do Not Apply. Maureen said, “Everybody doesn’t get everything” and I think that’s what the good life is getting at. Okay, you’re going to lose, and you’re going to lose often, but what are you going to do with what’s left? That to me, is the good life: when you discover how to create a life in the ruins. 

---

Thank you, Kelsey, for allowing us to share your essay with our readers and for taking extra time on this Q&A with us! We’re glad we were able to connect and wish you the best with the completion of your MFA, teaching, future writing, and all of your endeavors! <3

Anne Falkowski’s work is upcoming or has been published in Hippocampus, Pithead Chapel, The Rumpus, Solstice Review, Hunger Magazine, The Coachella Review, Change Seven, and others. She has been nominated multiple times for Best of the Net. In 2023, her writing was placed in Solstice Fiction Literary Prize, Frank Demott Literary Prize., and Writers Digest Personal Essay Contest. In 2024, she placed first in the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize. Website AnneFalkowski.net.

Tell us about yourself. 

I started writing later in life, late forties. It took me that long to trust I could say the things I wanted to say, even if it challenged others and wasn’t always beautiful. My partner and kids are all practicing artists. I realized if I didn’t act upon my life-long desire to write, my own fear of rejection and failure could be internalized by my children. 

How to Be Made by Men, 1981 immerses the reader into the feelings of a young girl. How did you transport yourself back to that time to paint such a vivid picture of your experience?

I don’t believe we experience time as linear, especially when telling our stories. In a workshop with Lidia Yuknavitch, she taught portals as a way to drop in to a memory or experience. The Frank Zappa song, Dina Mo Hum, was one of those portals. I remembered exactly how I felt when those lyrics were playing through the van’s speakers. So was the vivid image of the van. Once I had those two portals, I let go into the scene, even though I wasn’t sure what I had to say.

Do you think young women still experience the need to be made by men? Why or why not? 

Today there is so much pressure to be curated or performative on social media, which adds a whole other dimension we didn’t have in the 80’s. The act of Roe V. Wade being overturned activates the power men have over women’s bodies. Also as a writer I’m aware of the blowback of personal narrative. Every time I publish creative nonfiction I run the risk of being deemed too real, too personal or intimate which I don’t believe is the same for men or as dangerous. Being vulnerable and getting harassed on social media is very real.

How do we break free from that conditioning?

We make truthful art. 

There are various forms of nonfiction writing styles. What made you decide on a “how to” model for this story? Did you consider other writing styles when developing this piece?

An undone version had been sitting in my slush file for five years. I knew something about it wasn’t right. In early 2024, a prompt in one of my writing groups was to turn a piece of flash you are struggling with into a set of instructions. A light went off. If I viewed my younger self as following an unspoken set of instructions which she didn’t create, or even have the capacity to fully understand, this story would be closer to the truth. Following a set of instructions feels necessary for her survival but maybe more important, it brought in compassion. Self acceptance was missing in my earlier versions of the story. 

How do you make time for your writing life? 

This is a big question for me because I have ADHD and OCD. I was diagnosed with both only a few years ago. Besides taking meds, I set a timer and work in half hour sprints. I also have writing buddies. We write together on zoom, Having another person to body-double with or be accountable to is super helpful. Last but not least, I meditate before writing, allowing my nervous system to relax and understand that writing is not life or death, success or failure, or my entire identity. 

Where do you draw your inspiration for your fiction and non-fiction pieces?

No matter what I set out to write, I always seem to have the same themes show up-Writing into the space of bodies and lost girlhood. I suppose when I feel finished with this (if ever) I’ll move on. 

Tell us about your memoir, “Ordinary Body.” 

It’s been revised a zillion times. I’m pretty confident it’s done. At some point, I’ll seek agent representation. Basically, it’s about a younger me becoming a yoga teacher and yoga studio owner, hoping to have the perfect life and get the perfect body, which of course never happens. I learn how competitive and under the wraps of male gaze the western yoga industry is. In order to accept my body as is, I go back into my childhood and examine my relationship with my mother and other women in order to find healing and self-acceptance.  

What do you think of when you hear “the good life?” 

Maybe the good life is looking up at the stars and knowing that you have loved at least one being unconditionally, have been loved by at least one being unconditionally, and have experienced gratitude for at least one thing in the path of your life.  

---

Anne’s flash essay “How to Be Made by Men, 1981” was a team favorite in this year’s HoneyBee Prize and appears in our summer 2024 issue.

Thank you, Anne, for taking extra time on this Q&A with us! We wish you the best with writing, and all of your endeavors.