Author: Christine Nessler

Gathondu Mwangi is a Geographer and writer. Born and raised in Kenya, he travels occasionally to the US where he is undertaking his graduate studies. His work has previously appeared in World Literature Today, Worcester Review, The Fourth River and Kwani?

Tell us about yourself.

I am currently a Geography PhD student in Massachusetts, working on my dissertation. My life has been rather nomadic over the past two decades, shifting from one place to another. I am looking forward to returning to Kenya, which is where I’m from, and settling there once I am done with my studies. I am also a cat-dad, and hoping to be a ‘real’ dad soon. 

La Niña addresses guilt behind sorrow. How did writing La Niña help you with the sorrow of losing your grandmother and your guilt over her “aloneness.” 

I don’t know if it did. I still feel the guilt and sadness when I re-read it or think about her. We spoke on the phone the day before she passed away, and I told her that I was going to visit. But the next day when I went, it was too late. I had not really wanted to write La Niña, but felt compelled to, if only to let out that complex mix of emotions that I was feeling, so it helped in that sense. I wish that she were still here. In a spiritual sense, she is still here, in the realm of ancestors who walk among us daily. 

What do you hope readers take away from La Niña?

Hopefully readers will gain some understanding about our inter-connectedness, with each other, with the more-than-human, with those who have gone before us. About the active effort needed to maintain that inter-connectedness. But I don’t want to be prescriptive, I’m grateful for the opportunity to be read and appreciate the people at TGLR for choosing to publish my work.  

As a student of Geography, how did poetry and writing make its way into your life?

My initial encounters with poetry were in school in Kenya, where we read poems almost like puzzles to be deciphered. Later I came across writing by African, Caribbean and African American poets who wrote about their worlds and experiences in forms and registers that I recognized. These writers made poetry a lot more welcoming for someone like me, navigating life in a post-colonial context. I neglected reading and writing poems for a long time though, until the pandemic lockdowns of 2020-21. I was in the US at the time, having started the Geography PhD. Like many other people, I (re)turned to poetry to try make sense of that difficult time. Of course, Geography and poetry or writing in general are closely intertwined. This is obvious when you think about how much has been written on people’s relationships to place. I would say though that I used to compartmentalize the two, treating them as distinct from each other, another carry-over from my schooling. But in the course of my PhD studies, I came across geographers who also dabbled in poetry, and read a lot of writing by geographers that had a poetic sensibility to it. It was liberating to realize their symbiotic potential. 

What are the differences of geography between your home country of Kenya and the state of Massachusetts, where you travel for your graduate studies?

I am currently in Kenya and this question reminded me of my upcoming trip to Massachusetts in December. I am definitely not looking forward to the much colder weather, but you know, sacrifices have to be made. I was talking to a friend recently about how quickly this year has gone by, something that I’d found harder to notice here in Kenya after spending the last few years in Massachusetts where the distinct shift from one season to another made me more conscious about the passage of time. Climate change has only added to the blurring of the seasons here. For instance, it’s supposed to be the rainy season right now, but so far it has been more hot than wet. There’s a lot to be said about the differences in geography between Kenya and Massachusetts, but that unpredictability induced by climate change is something the two places have in common.         

What is your favorite form of written expression and why?

I find writing poems to be deeply satisfying but also very difficult. I wouldn’t really say that it’s enjoyable, but it’s more of a necessity, something that I feel compelled to do. The results have been mixed, a few good poems sprinkled among many that are not. I would really like to be able to write about the intoxicating sensorial excess that is life in Nairobi, I am still feeling my way about that, deciding whether the best genre for that is poetry or prose, we’ll see.

What has writing poetry taught you?

It’s definitely taught me a lot about handling rejection! And about writing to genre. Generally speaking, my academic training has taught me to strive to make my writing as transparent as possible. Meanings should be clear, arguments built up systematically, and the take-aways legible. Writing poetry has taught me to resist that academic impulse to over-explain and to embrace the truths that lie beyond the rational. Also to follow the sound of words, not necessarily their meaning. More broadly, poetry has taught me to approach life with a spirit of openness and generosity which I hope I can live up to. 

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

I’ve associated “The Good Life” with the future, something yet to come. But the events of the past year, with Cũcũ’s passing, have shown me that the good life should be lived in the present. Right now, I am also thinking about the people in Palestine who have been denied the opportunity to make a life for themselves, let alone a good life. Can we claim a good life for ourselves given all the pain in Palestine?

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Gathondu’s poem, La Niña, is available in Issue #13 ~ Autumn 2023.

Thank you, Gathondu. We’re grateful to you for your willingness to spend extra time with us on this Q&A and for trusting us with your poem. We wish you the best!

Born in Busan, South Korea, and adopted by Jewish parents, Cynthia Landesberg grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., where she still resides. She is a mother, lawyer, and writer. You can find her writing in The Washington Post, Witness, and on her website, www.adoptionsquared.com.

Tell us about yourself. 

I am the product of an unknown Korean birth mother and birth father, a legacy that is lost to me, and has left me without roots. I was raised in a Jewish American home in Maryland, and carry their love and their best intentions with me. I am a wife and mother of three children and one dog. I left my career in law to homeschool my children and create a homeschool community that is diverse and intentional. I am a struggling perfectionist, who dreams of spending more time writing, watercoloring, and reading, and less time agonizing over the last conversation I had or re-reading the emails I send. 

What inspired you to write Life Must Go On over other life experiences you’ve had? 

I carry deep regret for not traveling to see my grandfather before he passed and for not attending his funeral. Finding a way to honor his memory and my relationship with him in those last years seemed impossible for a long time. However, after beginning to write and publish, I finally saw a way towards a proper goodbye.

How did corresponding with your grandfather through letters change you and/or your outlook? 

My primary memories of my grandfather prior to our correspondence are his worn leather slippers padding around his condo, and the smell of his aftershave. I only saw him once or twice a year and he mostly talked about sports, stocks, and the good deals he got at a restaurant or store. He was kind and warm, but I did not know him. 

Writing to each other allowed us to say things that were either too important or too trivial to say in person, like feelings and fears and annoyances and the daily triumphs that are often forgotten. Through writing, my grandfather became a fully formed human being, with humor, flaws, and a whole lot of resilience. I learned the power of writing as a unique and irreplaceable form of communication. 

How, as a nonfiction writer, do you filter out a story to share over all of your many life experiences? 

I focus on whatever is emotionally resonant to me, trusting that if I write from there, the piece will carry that feeling to the reader. I look for universal themes and give the most salient examples of it in my life to carry the story. 

How do you hope these stories will help others or perhaps help you? 

I have spent most of my life feeling pretty out of place and lonely. Being Korean in a Jewish family, I never fit in. I can name the first Asian person I saw on TV (Connie Chung) and the first book that featured Asian characters (The Good Earth), and neither of them were Korean or adopted or raised in Jewish families. I try to imagine my life with mirrors of Korean Americans and adoptees, and I believe it would have been so much more full. I hope these stories will give a mirror to someone who needs to feel a little less alone. 

Of all your published pieces, which ones makes you feel the most proud and why? 

This feels like asking “which of your children is your favorite?” I am proud of all my writing, both published and unpublished. It all feels necessary to where I am now. I feel particularly warm towards the op-ed in The Washington Post because I had the guts to press submit, towards “Seven Weeks” in Grace in Love because I did my first reading of that piece in person and it has been nominated for a Pushcart, and towards “Extinction” in the Lumiere Review because it was my first fiction piece published. 

Tell us about Adoption Squared. 

I am much too anxious to have any regular or significant social media presence. When I started publishing, I decided a website and blog would be the best way for me to present my work and interact with readers. I named it Adoption Squared because I write at the intersection of being an adoptee and an adoptive parent. I am not a regular blogger, but I am regularly comforted by its presence as a place where I can experiment, engage with readers, and have a place where no one can say “no” to publishing my work. I find it an empowering and hopeful space. 

How has writing about various aspects of your life as an adopted child benefitted your parenting of adopted children? Or yourself? 

Adoptees use the common phrase of “coming out of the fog” when it comes to facing the difficult aspects about being adopted. It’s the process of challenging the popular adoption narrative of saviorism and gratitude, and digging in deeper as to how adoption affected so much of an adoptee’s life. Writing about my adoption was a huge step in coming out of that fog for me. It forced me to explore, feel, and articulate how adoption affected my life. And the more I can find that honesty, the more I can walk with my kids as they figure out their relationship with adoption. 

What do you think when you hear the term “The Good Life”? 

My dad used to say, “This is the life!” whenever we were enjoying the simple things like a bowl of Breyers vanilla ice cream or a Orioles game at Camden Yards, and so I grew up thinking that a good life was one with ease, leisure, and simplicity. There’s a nostalgia to that definition. It is a cousin to “the good old days.” I spent many years striving for that version of life. To do that, I had to ignore the complexity of my identity, my lost country, culture, and family, and try to fit into this Norman Rockwell version of contentedness. 

The irony of course is that once I let go of that dream, and embraced the messiness and complexity of life, I began enjoying the simple pleasures much more. A good life is not something you can strive for, but instead comes whenever you are at peace with all the complexity of yourself. 

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Cynthia’s nonfiction piece, Life Must Go On, is featured in Issue #13 of The Good Life Review.

Thank you, Cynthia, for trusting us with your story and for the sincere and direct answers to our questions. We wish you the best!

Chelsea Yates is originally from northeast Nebraska. She now lives in the Pacific Northwest and is a writer for the University of Washington. Her essays have appeared in HerStry, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Hear Nebraska, and more.

Tell us about yourself. 

As a teenager in Nebraska in the early 1990s, my dream was to sneak onto Pearl Jam’s tour bus, charm Eddie Vedder, and move with him to the Pacific Northwest, living out our days in a cabin in the woods when we weren’t touring the world. Things didn’t work out that way, but I did end up moving to Seattle 12 years ago, and my husband and I have been here ever since. I have a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Nebraska and a master’s in American Studies from the University of Kansas. By day, I’m a content director at the University of Washington. 

I began writing personal essays shortly after relocating to Seattle. A lot of my writing explores my Nebraska upbringing and my connection to music. I will forever be indebted to Hear Nebraska, a platform celebrating Nebraska’s arts and music, for giving me a chance to share my early essays with readers and get comfortable telling my stories.

Each piece of nonfiction calls to the writer for one reason or another. What made the story Radio feel important to tell? 

My dad died of a stroke in 2008. It was sudden and shocking, and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about him. He often shows up in my storytelling. My dad wasn’t the easiest person to get along with, but he always supported me in my writing. In grade school, he took my sister and me to a statewide Young Authors contest, and he’d help me with writing assignments. He would drive me to his office after dinner so I could type my stories on his computer. Sometimes he’d chime in with suggestions. We co-wrote a Choose Your Own Adventure-type story this way. It’s still in a box at my mom’s house.

Our last conversation was a phone call a few days before his stroke. I was interviewing for a job at a Houston art museum and was waiting at the airport to fly back home. The interview had gone really well, and my dad was so excited for me. He made me feel on top of the world that day. I am grateful to have that memory to hold on to. 

How did your experience with Hurricane Ike change you? 

Looking back, the initial fear and loneliness I felt during the hurricane mirrored the grief I was grappling with. I had relocated to Houston shortly after my dad’s passing, and I didn’t know anyone there. I thought that the change would make the sadness go away, but it didn’t.   

Once the hurricane passed, I witnessed so much generosity in my small circle and across the city. New colleagues checked in with me regularly, I got to know my neighbors, and I started making new friends. In this way, Ike helped alleviate my loneliness at a time when I really needed it. I eventually started talking about my depression with a friend, which led me to seek help from a grief counselor—one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. 

What do you hope your readers take from Radio? 

I hope Radio reminds us of the inevitability of sudden change and life’s fragility, but also of the power of love. And maybe it will inspire a few readers to call their parents to say, “I love you.” That would make me smile.

How do you incorporate writing into your daily life? 

I do a lot of writing and editing for my day job, which is great but can make it difficult to have the energy to write for myself later at home. I try to remind myself that work writing is writing—it allows me to practice writing and build skills pretty much daily. As for personal writing, I used to pressure myself to write daily, but these days I try to give myself grace. Some days even ten minutes of freewriting feels like an achievement. When I’m feeling really burnt out, I’ll try to do “writing-adjacent” activities—reading, exploring new literary magazines, reviewing calls for submissions, organizing drafts, or cleaning up my online portfolio—anything to keep me in orbit if I’m not feeling particularly creative.

What words of advice can you give to anyone interested in writing nonfiction? 

Make time for writing and writing-adjacent activities as much as you are able. If you wait to find time, you never will. There’s something magical in the action of pen on paper, so if you can, practice freewriting by hand. Lynda Barry’s techniques from her book What It Is are my personal favorites for freewriting about memories. The idea for Radio stemmed from one of her creative exercises.

And find a writing partner or group—someone (or people) you trust who also writes, who understands the thrill of rushing from the shower to jot down the perfect opening sentence for a new story, and who knows how humbling it feels to send out submission after submission in the hopes of getting published. Offer feedback on each other’s work. Take walks and talk about writing. Get together to sit at the kitchen table and write. Celebrate each other’s successes. Once a year my writing partner and I rent a cabin (not unlike the one I imagined Eddie Vedder and I would share), and we write. Neither of us can really explain why, but we both know that writing is something we need to do to feel complete. 

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

Pulling over somewhere between Omaha and Norfolk on Highway 275 to watch a Nebraska sunset. They are my favorite sunsets: they remind me of family and home. 

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Chelsea’s creative nonfiction “Radio” is available in Issue #13 ~ Autumn 2023.

Thank you, Chelsea, for allowing us to share your story with our readers and for taking the time to answer our questions. We wish you the best!

With each piece of prose, there is a story beneath the story. For Rock, Shore, Thunder, Maria Picone drew on her own experiences and curiosities to form a story of strength and hope and self-preservation.

As with much of Picone’s creative writing, Rock, Shore, Thunder, grew from an idea or something essential that then needed to be explored. A collection of lines and ideas formed in a state of flow, she creates a narrative mosaic with each piece. In this case, a juxtaposition of the wider world with mini flashbacks in the form of flash fiction.

“The exploration is really my favorite part,” said Picone. “Figuring out how best to communicate the idea to others and how best to express that. It is really a pleasure every single time.” 

Rock, Shore, Thunder’s inspiration came from Picone’s love of the ocean. Growing up in New England, she spent much of her time on the water, whether it was lakes or seashores. But it was more than her love of the culture of the sea that caused this story to surface. Picone was also exploring questions about sustainability, what to do in the face of the climate crisis, and how that intersects with the economy, capitalism, and the corporate and private pressure to make money.

Now living in South Carolina, Picone has also experienced first-hand the dramatic effects of hurricanes.

“There is a huge push/pull between our mental and physical well-being and the state of the planet and the state of the climate,” said Picone.

Picone is no stranger to research and digs in for the benefit of her stories. Having never been a lighthouse keeper like her protagonist, Picone inserted her own experiences in the story as well as the information gleaned from her research.

“I tried to take that research and translate it into physical and sensory experiences,” said Picone. “I think that’s really important because if you just stick your research in there like facts, it doesn’t feel like an integrated part of the narrative.”

Throughout her life, Picone had been to lighthouses on tours and learned about their conservation. Still, with her research, she dug into the portrayal in the media and the significance of lighthouses today.  

“I was really interested in exploring the lighthouse subculture and the stereotypes about lighthouse keepers as commonly portrayed in the media,” said Picone. She thumbed her nose at lighthouse stereotypes by inserting a female protagonist of color. Her character was younger than most lighthouse keepers and was not raised in that culture.

Picone also found out many lighthouses aren’t being kept up and a lot of them are donated to people or non-profits with the hope of keeping them as historic buildings. The upkeep can be overwhelming and expensive. This made her curious about what would happen if a defunct lighthouse was taken on by a well-meaning person. What would have drawn her female protagonist to this mission to save a lighthouse?

“I hope that I was able to portray the feeling of a non-profit or some sort of noble mission as a sinking ship that formed a vehicle for what was going on in her life but also with what is going on on our planet and in our economy today,” said Picone.

In Rock, Shore, Thunder, Picone is masterful at telling a story within a story. We have the surface story of our protagonist fighting a hurricane, but also the story of her fighting a painful past. At one point her protagonist relates her efforts to fight the storm of a vengeful God to her marriage to a “vengeful human who thinks he’s God.”

Picone uses this story to explore toxic masculinity and patriarchy. After an abusive relationship, the protagonist gave up what we think of as normal life to live in survival mode in a lighthouse.

“I think there is a parallel between living inside a relationship where there’s a significant asymmetry and fear of a partner and living inside a situation like we are now where we’re just worried that God or nature or whatever you want to call it is going to come and just blow it all away,” said Picone. “That inevitability matches the inevitability that one might feel when they’re in a relationship where the power is held and everything in their life is controlled by the moods and whims that they can’t predict of the partner.”

During the story, the protagonist’s family reaches out to her through text. For years she was isolated through a violent relationship, cut off from family and friends. She is isolated once again but for an entirely different reason.

“The protagonist chose to isolate herself in the lighthouse and forge her own way that was maybe not understood by her loved ones,” said Picone.  “It was something that she needed to do for herself and something that, unlike the relationship she is escaping from, she has chosen because she wants to be on her own and she wants to not be beholden to what other people think.”

Picone hopes the interaction with the protagonist’s parents is a source of light and warmth in the story, but also a representation that we don’t always make decisions that the people we love agree with. We sometimes need to make those hard decisions for our own mental and physical well-being.

Through Rock, Shore, Thunder Picone’s message to her readers is one of resilience.

“I wanted to end in a moment of ambiguity because I don’t want this to be a piece that is just about experiencing trauma,” said Picone. “I want it to be a piece about resilience through trauma and what we can do after our paradigm shift. In this case, the physical lighthouse and the life the protagonist has built for herself is physically shattered.”

Picone has several projects in the works including three forthcoming chapbooks, Anti Asian Bias, Adoptee Song and This Tenuous Atmosphere. She will also be releasing an echapbook, Water Gwisin Saves the Earth, within the month.

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Maria’s story, Rock, Shore, Thunder, can be found in issue #13 of The Good Life Review.

Thank you, Maria, for the extra time you spent with us for this interview. We appreciate you and wish you the best!

Jason Arias lives in the Pacific Northwest and is the author of the short story collection Momentary Illumination of Objects In Motion (Black Bomb Books, 2018). Arias’ writing has appeared in multiple magazines and anthologies. His debut poetry collection nostraDAMus 2032 is forthcoming from Broadstone Books in the summer of 2024.

Arias’ fiction piece, Clam!, is featured in Issue #13 of The Good Life Review.

Tell me about yourself.

Well, let’s see. I’m in my mid-forties, have two grown sons, and I live on the Oregon coast with my wife of 25 years. I love all kinds of music and prefer listening to it on vinyl. I’ll stop here before people start falling asleep. 

What inspired your short story, Clam!?

I guess a couple things. Most obviously was our recent move to the coast. I’d never really dug for razor clams, at least not successfully, until then. Part of the process of learning how to catch anything is learning how to read the signs they leave behind. Until moving here, I’d never been so consistently close to clams, wild deer, elk, heron, otters, etc. I’m not a hunter or angler. I realized how many subtle signs of other life that I was, and still am, missing all around me. That got me thinking about what kind of lifeforms could be sharing this planet with us that we haven’t discovered.

Around this same time, I was also trying to resolve a lot of grief around my grandfather’s passing. 

Clam! was probably the byproduct of the two.  

Clam! was filled with vivid interiority and backstory. How did you get to know your character before writing this story? Do you outline or use character bios as a part of your writing process?

I’ve never really used outlining or character bios. Though, they’re probably the best paths to a more consistent voice and tighter storyline. I’m just too lazy. And I prefer the process of being led by, instead of leading, the voices on the page. I’d rather let the characters flesh themselves out as the story evolves. A lot of the time there are aspects of the characters that end up being personifications of something my conscious or subconscious has already been tumbling around. And I’m a pretty selfish writer. I like bringing these things to light. I like the process of discovery. If I already knew everything about my characters, I’m not sure there’d be a point in writing the story.

I loved the foreshadowing of Harrison’s father’s viewpoint of the world. “A hungry orb ruled by ghosts and happenstance and creatures waiting for you in the deep.” Was it ghosts, happenstance and creatures that drew Harrison to the deep that day, or was it his strong sense of guilt and grief that caused him to risk his life and his son’s on that fateful March clam dig? How do you hope your readers interpret this passage?

I think that Harrison is afraid of inheriting his father’s paranoia and superstitions. That he feels this kind of thinking made his father oblivious to some of the more practical aspects of life. So, like most people trying to avoid becoming something, Harrison overcorrects. He wants to view the world as concrete, to believe in only what he can see or tactilely sense, in order to protect himself from his fears of the unknown. In this way he can sometimes fool himself into thinking he has control. But by doing this, he also strips away all the magic of the unknown.

In the story there are two months known for having sneaker waves. A sneaker wave took Harrison’s wife’s life. We do have these sneaker waves on the coast. Sometimes they do claim lives. In the story, Harrison still takes his son down to clam on one of the months known for the waves, just not the month that his wife died in. I think this is his way of thumbing his nose at death, but not wanting to push his luck too far. As much as he doesn’t like it there are parts of him that are, like his father, still superstitious.   

“There’s something about getting sand on your hands, under your nails, sometimes all the way up to your armpits. A feeling. A finesse and an understanding of your place in all of this. The clams place in all of this. The vague sense that there is more, somewhere you can’t see, that you are earning.” To me this passage from Clam! felt symbolic of earning your place in the world or your place in the afterlife. Was that your intention? Are there other pieces of symbolism you incorporated or that developed organically in your story? If so, what?

I think that Harrison views self-efficiency as a kind of talisman that protects you from death. I’m not sure he’s sold on the idea of an afterlife. The catharsis of clamming, for Harrison (whether he knows it or not) comes from the idea that anything unknown or unseen (say, a clam under feet of sand) can be acquired and fully explained if you just understand the steps needed to uncover it. 

What do you hope your readers take from Clam!?

Like all my work, I secretly hope the reader will get a similar thing from the story that I get from writing it: a little more clarification or new perspective for whatever’s tumbling around in their heads. 

I think, like a lot of stories I’ve been writing lately, Clam! has this undercurrent asking us to not mistake our perceived omnipotence on this planet for omniscience. To remain humble as humans. That despite all the knowledge we’ve acquired (and our species-centric nature) there’s still so much we don’t understand about ourselves, let alone the rest of the life on this planet, let alone most of the space outside of our planet. I know that’s asking a lot from a story about a giant clam, but it would be cool if readers had that takeaway.    

According to your website you’ve had various careers throughout your life. How have those experiences enriched your writing?

I’d say I’ve had a number of jobs and very few careers. A lot of them make their ways into my writing in small ways. It’s helpful to have specific knowledge about the seemingly uncool minutia of uncool jobs. I learned about driving a forklift, tying a trucker’s knot, and lovingly talking all kinds of shit to coworkers as a form of connection-building from working in a windows factory in my early twenties. If I ever write about a windows distribution center in the late 90s, I’ll nail the authenticity factor. 

For the last twenty years, my main gig has been paramedicine, the last sixteen years of that time I’ve been working for the fire service. Probably because of this career choice themes around the absurdity of life and death tend to make their way into my writing a lot. A couple months ago I helped to deliver a baby in the back of an ambulance for the first time. (To be fair, I didn’t do much. That was all on the mother who, despite the pain, did amazing.) The other day we went on a call where a small plane fell 5,000 feet from the sky and crashed through the roof of a suburban home. A horrible thing. But somehow one of the three passengers of that plane survived. Experiences like this have opened me up to the idea that pain and beauty often occupy the same space. I’m also constantly reminded of the fragility and unbelievable resilience of human beings. There’s no way some of that doesn’t leak into my writing.    

What is your favorite published piece to date?

That’s a hard one. It’s like asking which child is your favorite. I mean, we all internally know, but nobody’s going to say. No, I’m just joking. Some people say.

Honestly, my favorite published piece is an ever-changing thing. Sometimes it’s my newest piece, but not always. I’d say right now, I’m still really proud of an essay that is still up on The Corvalis Advocate website called Majestic, and Unimpressed with Us about current cohabitation issues surrounding the local Roosevelt elk herds.

What are your writing routines? What keeps you motivated to keep writing in your daily life?

I try to write for an hour or two in the afternoon on most days I’m not working. My motivation has always been to stay sane.

How does writing help you make sense of the world?

My wife thinks in pictures. She creates whole homes in her head and remembers the specifics of each. At night she’ll revisit some of those homes or make changes to them as a way to relax and transition from waking life to sleep. I tend to think in words. So, my internal homes look more like stories.   

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

Sitting back, watching the waves while talking with the people I love, interspersed with road trips to places I’ve never been.  

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Jason’s story “Clam!” is available in Issue #13 ~ Autumn 2023.

For more about Jason, links to online stories, and upcoming events please visit JasonAriasAuthor.com.

Thank you, Jason. We’re grateful to you for your willingness to spend extra time with us on this Q&A and for trusting us with your story. We wish you the best!

Pell Williams earned her MFA in Poetry at the College of Charleston, received her BA in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University, and served as the 2019 Artist in Residence for the Dry Tortugas National Park. She is the Creative Writing Editor for Surge: The Lowcountry Climate Magazine. Her work has been published by the Birmingham Poetry Review, Grim & Gilded, The Ekphrastic Review, and Free Verse Press among others.

Her poem, To Brother-Ghost on Halloween, is featured in Issue #12.

Tell us about yourself. 

I come from a line of artists, world-travelers, homesteaders, ex-cons, and hillbillies. None of my family wrote down their stories, so I hope to take up that task starting with my own. Towards that goal I have earned two degrees in writing and have worked every entry-level media or publishing gig in the business (under the guidance of incredible mentors from the Johns Hopkins University Press, the former Crazyhorse Literary Journal, and the American Archive of Public Broadcasting). I remain endlessly astonished and honored to find homes for my work in journals such as this one.

How has your poetry, including To Brother-Ghost on Halloween, helped you to work through the tragic death of your brother Aaron?

Aaron was the first to encourage me to be a writer. He was guiding me through applications to an arts-focused magnet high school where I could major in creative writing, but he died before I turned in my portfolio. I rewrote everything in that portfolio the month that followed, which to this day comes to me in flashes of intense clarity: my family wracked with grief, me trying everything to excise the pain into something I could understand — a pattern, rows of words. It was inadequate for my grief, but it got me into the magnet school where my writing instructors gave me the tools to write through my problems. By now, I’ve written a bit of everything — fiction, creative nonfiction, screen & stage, multi-genre, journalism — sometimes hiding from my own history, sometimes engaging with it. I would always hit a wall. Poetry demands that I breach that wall. It is also very forgiving; I can use any form or style of language, break with correct grammar or punctuation, lean on metaphors when I struggle with the direct approach. It gets me a first draft, and there is relief in having an artifact of my grief externalized on a page, even with its imperfections.

Do you think you’ll ever read the note left to you by your brother? Why or why not? If you could leave your brother a note today, what would it say?

At the time I wrote “To Brother-Ghost on Halloween,” I didn’t know if I would ever have the strength to read Aaron’s note. My mother, father, and sister have all told me that reading it felt like Aaron was already gone, a different voice altogether. It is hard to describe the possessiveness that came with the perceptions I had of Aaron right after his immolation. He was so much more than his death, but I feared that would be all that would live on. It has been almost thirteen years since his death, the same amount of my life as I spent with him. I now plan to read his note before I get married and start a new chapter of my life this October. I write to him every day, in one form or another. I write to the version of him that I remember, the sincere young man so full of questions. Aaron, I still don’t have the answers, but I’ll keep asking those questions for you.

How does To Brother-Ghost on Halloween fit into your MFA thesis? Tell us about the theme of that thesis and what it means to you.

I returned to my hometown and started my MFA in Poetry in part to face down my hang-ups about Aaron’s death and the bell jar that became my community during my formative years. Just as before, my MFA professors recognized my writing process as one of healing. On day one I was asked to give myself “permission to be messy.” And I think I have. I wrote “To Brother-Ghost on Halloween” in my first semester of my MFA for a dear friend’s writer-themed Halloween party, where everyone was encouraged to read their work. I had a back-up poem in case I wasn’t brave enough. “To Brother-Ghost on Halloween” was better, and I knew it. I just had to do it justice. After the reading, I felt better in my own skin. My peers understood me a little more. I used “To Brother-Ghost on Halloween” as the cornerstone of my thesis, which became a series of letters to Aaron and mental excursions into fire, depictions of immolation, the ecology of the deep South, mythology, and my navigations with healing. My fiancé and I called it self-imposed immersion therapy. Now that it is completed, I feel like a new person. Aaron’s voice will always be part of my work, but it feels at last like that voice has been heard.

What would you like readers of To Brother-Ghost on Halloween to take away from the piece?

I’m not sure I have the right to say what readers should take away from this poem. Everything I’ve read has given me some parcel or oddity whether I wanted it or not, whether the writer intended it or not. It is a privilege to have this read at all, rather than carrying it like a knot in my spine for the rest of my life. My readers may have a similar knot. Reader, if you made it this far, I see you. 

Your talents extend past poetry to filmmaking and editing. What is your favorite form of creative expression and why?

As an audience or patron, I will always have a mad amount of respect for film, especially on the independent scale. By virtue of being inherently multi-media, the possibilities are endless and can incorporate the full spectrum of human technology, artistry, and skill. For viewing, horror films are my low-key obsession. I love picking them apart, finding out why and how a directorial choice worked. As a creator, well, I’m a dabbler. That’s what I tell myself every time I pick up a new medium or genre. I’ve always felt most natural with language and storytelling as my primary means of expression, but my mother is a professional painter, and my fiancé is an aspiring material scientist. Thus, our project room is full of art supplies, wood carving and building tools, AV equipment, bookbinding materials, fabric and sewing implements, and so on. All I know is that every medium has the potential to be my favorite, including the ones I have yet to try or discover.

How do you incorporate writing into your everyday life?

As frustratingly simple as it sounds to others wanting to build a writing life — I write. When I’m not strong enough to write, I read. When my eyes ache, I listen. When I fail to listen, I force myself into the world to change my perspective. When I’m too stubborn or self-absorbed to change, I turn to my family (living or dead) and ask for help. If I can’t write for myself, I always seem to be able to write for them.

What are you most proud of as a poet, a filmmaker or as a person?

I’ve exceeded my own expectations as a poet: I’ve fallen head over heels for a medium I feared would always be inscrutable and have learned to simply “say it” despite my instinct to overwrite each poem. I’m pleased with what I learned in film, particularly documentary and lost-and-found film. I have the privilege of learning something concrete about the human experience even as I piece together a narrative with the medium. I’m no longer able to view a film or read anything absentmindedly. I’m always searching for the “puncta” — or points of interest — which show the creator’s hand or provide insight into the world. There are endless applications of this to daily life, particularly in my interactions with new people or landscapes. My curiosity has only grown, and I’m proud of being someone who cultivates that even if what I find isn’t always joyful.

What is the first thing you think of when you hear the phrase, “The Good Life?”

I think of people — moments of togetherness, wherever they occurred. I even think of the darkest times, when the people I loved reached a breaking point, when I didn’t know how to help them. The way we reached through the pain and rediscovered one another, built each other up, made the hard choices and changes. Of course, I think of Aaron. I also think of my infant niece and nephew, my parents forgiving each other as they became grandparents, my own upcoming wedding and the person who seems to see me better than I can see myself. I think of how loss broke me, how life reforged me. I think of what people create, how they weave themselves into the details of every art and science. “The Good Life” is all about accepting imperfections and presenting them as pieces of an odd, beautiful, challenging whole. 

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Pell’s poem “To Brother Ghost on Halloween” was a finalist for this year’s HoneyBee Prize in Poetry and is available in issue #12.

Thank you, Pell, for trusting us with your poem and for taking the time to answer our questions. Congratulations on your wedding and cheers to a long and fulfilling life. We wish you the best!

Nicki Orser, a Nebraska native, completed her MFA at San Francisco State University where she was the recipient of the Joe Brainard Creative Writing Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Dunes Review, The American River Review, and Susurrus. She lives in Northern California with her two sons.

Orser’s nonfiction piece, Coyote, is featured in Issue #12 and was the runner up of the 2023 HoneyBee Prize in Nonfiction.

Tell us about yourself.

I live in Northern California with my two sons, work full-time at a small college, and do my best to maintain a creative life on the side while juggling a lot of non-writing responsibilities. 

One of my proudest writing moments recently was being part of the proof of concept for America’s Next Great Author, a reality television series that is currently in development. One hundred writers were chosen to travel to New Jersey for filming and I was one of 20 finalists who got to pitch my book idea to a panel of judges and be interviewed, Real-World style, by Grant Faulkner, the founder of NaNoWriMo. 

It was a huge departure from my normal life and has helped inspire me to keep writing and trying to get my work published. Coyote is one of the essays in the book I’m currently working on, a multi-generational memoir called Family Nature. 

Coyote is a very touching story about a mother’s love for a child living with addiction. What do you want other parents facing the same challenges to take from your experience?

With addiction, there are a lot of things you can’t control, a lot of fear and frustration. Then, on top of it, there’s a layer of secrecy and guilt. When our child first came out as trans it was kind of a similar experience. I had an expectation that I should be able to instantly accept it but in reality, I felt overwhelmed. I read some books from other parents on the topic and most of them seemed to skip over the messy in-between phase of fear, confusion, and loss, and I felt ashamed for having the feelings I was having.

I think sharing about the invisible things that we all carry, whether addiction, grief, or the confusing search for identity, can help make a difference in other people’s lives, or at the very least, help lighten the pain. Most of all, I would want someone reading about my experience to feel a little less alone.

How did your child respond to this piece?

I was afraid to show him but was relieved when I finally did. After it was published he even shared it with his friends which surprised me. He said it helped him see the experience from a different perspective. 

Because things are going so much better for both of us now, it’s kind of surreal to think we were in that situation not that long ago. If I hadn’t captured our experience in that story, I don’t think I would be able to appreciate how good things are now.

In Coyote, you referenced writing as a part of your recovery from depression. How has writing helped you through the darkest times?

I’ve been in a writing group for the past ten years and I feel like I know these three women better than anyone, even my own family. Sharing writing–whether nonfiction, poetry, or fiction–reveals things about yourself that you wouldn’t necessarily tell people in a normal day-to-day interaction, and it helped create intense bonds between all of us. 

Now, it feels like I can get through almost anything if I can find the humor in the terrible parts (and then write about it with my writing group). I don’t think it’s necessarily the dark times that cause depression but trying to bear those difficult experiences all alone, definitely makes it worse.

How else has writing impacted your life? 

As a shy person, writing has been a great vehicle for expression. Writing an essay about something helps me understand it better and can help me see it from a different perspective. Meeting other writers and growing my writing community has been the most important way that writing has changed my life. 

I was able to be in a workshop with Leslie Jamison over the summer during the Lighthouse Writers Conference in Denver which was phenomenal. In October, I’ll have the chance to work with Toni Jensen, Pam Houston, and Lidia Yuknavitch at the Writing By Writers conference which is super exciting for me. Sometimes I can’t believe this is my life, I feel so lucky.

How are you sharing that gift with others? Tell us about the writing workshops you offer.

I was trained in the Amherst Writers & Artists’ Method so I’ve facilitated writing groups and partnered with other writers to create a local reading series in my area. I’ve taken a little break from leading groups to focus on finishing my memoir and to work on getting some writing published, but I would highly recommend anyone who is looking for a writing group to check out the AWA Method and the book Writing Alone and with Others, written by the AWA founder, Pat Schneider. 

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

Just seeing the words “The Good Life” plunges me back into my childhood in Nebraska. I think of one of the last trips I took back there to visit my sisters. We stopped for gas and across the street there was this giant green meadow with golden flowers and these crazy cartoon clouds in the sky, it was a scene you just don’t see anywhere else. I think it’s one of the most beautiful places, and no matter where I live, I’ll always consider Nebraska my true home.

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Nicki’s Nonfiction piece “Coyote” is available in issue #12 ~ Our Summer Honeybee Prize issue.

Thank you, Nicki, for allowing us to share your story with our readers and for the honest, straightforward, and impactful answers to our questions. We wish you the best!

Kelsey L. Smoot (They/Them/He/Him) is a full-time PhD student in the interdisciplinary social sciences and humanities. They are also a poet, advocate, and frequent writer of critical analysis. Smoot’s poem, “For Kenny“, featured in Issue #12 was the winner of the 2023 HoneyBee Prize in Poetry.

Tell us about yourself.

I’m a Black queer transmasculine poet, writer, and PhD student based in Atlanta Georgia. I study identity formation at the nexus of race, gender, and sexuality.

What inspired you to write your poem For Kenny?

Kenny is my older sister’s best friend. He’s one of the weirdest, funniest, sweetest dudes I’ve ever met. He’s also a poet, and is the person who first encouraged me to write poetry. Fittingly, he gifted me a copy of Letters to a Young Poet after I shared my first poem with him. “For Kenny” is actually the second published poem that I’ve written about him; the other one was my first poem to ever be accepted for publication. Really, he’s a muse of mine. I love writing poems about people as a way to show them that the most granular details of their existence are of note to me. 

The moment in the piece where Kenny “sucks at the grizzle of the meat” truly did happen, exactly as I described it. I remember sitting there with my sister and Kenny, and thinking I’ve got to write something about this moment, and this person. He really evokes a lot of feelings in me.

How has Kenny impacted your life?

Kenny has made me think very critically about the systems we live under (namely, capitalism) and its intersectional impacts on marginalized folks. It’s hard to put our relationship into words because he isn’t someone I see or speak to regularly. But whenever I see him, he ends up sharing some token of wisdom that plays incessantly in my mind for days on end.

What do you hope your readers take away from For Kenny?

I hope the richness of who Kenny is, and what it feels like to be in community with someone who embodies a multitude of tensions shines through the poem. Kenny is constantly vacillating between stoicism, jubilance, pessimism, and optimism. I think his sweetness, his intensity, his privilege, and his oppression are all sites of interesting analysis. I hope it’s also clear how much I admire him.

How do poetry and your studies in social sciences and humanities intertwine?

My favorite topic to write about, in any format, is identity. Poetry, like theory, has helped me to expand the ways in which I both conceive of and articulate embodied human experience. I use poetry to try to marry my creative inner world with my academic analysis. A large portion of my dissertation will feature poems that I’ve written in the vein of scholarly inquiry.

What is your favorite style of poetry or other artistic expression? Why?

I recently wrote a sestina that I’m really proud of. I’m not sure that I would say it’s my *favorite*, but as someone who doesn’t have a formal background in poetics, traditional forms have been historically intimidating to me. Recently, though, I’ve come to find that the science and constraint of forms like the sestina excite me. I feel challenged to select every word with intentionality. I like longer forms that allow me to experiment with rhythm and diction while still providing some structure

In what ways do you consider yourself an advocate?

I use my writing as a space to draw attention to social justice issues that impact me and folks with whom I’m in community. Racial justice, trans rights, and accessibility are concepts that are center to my political praxis.

Does your poetry also serve as a tool of advocacy?

Definitely. I would say when I’m really in my poetry bag, my poems illuminate, advocate, or reimagine. All three, and I know it’s a banger.

How do you keep poetry a part of your life?

I follow poets online whose work I admire, so I’m regularly encountering wonderful new poems. I also like to write down random words and phrases that I think of or come across in a given day. When the moment strikes, I’ll sit down, pull out the list, and see if I can piece together a poem.

What is the first thing you think of when you hear, “The Good Life?”

When I think of “The Good Life,” I think of ease, snacks, laughter, and love.

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Kelsey’s award winning poem, “For Kenny” is available in issue #12.

Thank you, Kelsey. We’re grateful to you for your willingness to spend extra time with us on this Q&A and for your fabulous poem… definitely a “banger!” We wish you the best in all life’s endeavours.

Matt Mason has run poetry workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus for the U.S. State Department and his poetry has appeared in The New York Times. Matt is the Nebraska State Poet and has received a Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council. His work can be found on NPR’s Morning Edition, in American Life in Poetry, and in several hundred other publications. Mason’s fifth book, Rock Stars, was released by Button Poetry, September, 2023. His website is: https://midverse.com/ 

Mason’s poems, Why We Cry and Poem in Celebration of My Death, are featured in Issue #12 of The Good Life Review.

Tell us about yourself.

I’m out here working to make my living as a poet. There’s no good roadmap for this, so wish me luck.

How did you start teaching poetry workshops? What topics do you cover in your international poetry workshops?

I started when I moved back to Omaha after grad school at a time when there didn’t seem to be many people with advanced degrees in poetry. Places like the Bookworm Bookstore and Omaha Public Libraries took notice of what I was doing in open mics and in events I ran and they brought me in for some events and also recommended me to schools.

The Embassy programs dealt with writing poems using a variety of writing prompts and also with working with the poets on performance, as the programs all ended with either a poetry slam or another kind of public reading. It was great to talk with students about their own experiences with poetry in their countries and I learned about how it’s taught as well as what they wanted from poetry. Some of the programs also had a focus on advocacy and community involvement to help start events and support other writers after the program ended.

What has been the most rewarding part of teaching poetry workshops?

I love seeing what people come up with, how a room of 20 people can write such different poems from the same writing prompt. And seeing when someone comes up with something magic, something inspired, is amazing.

Tell us about the inspiration for Poem in Celebration of My Death?

Poem in Celebration of My Death came from a Zoom workshop I taught during the pandemic. The prompt asked everyone to look around them, and I was in my basement with Frank right outside the window and the poem just spilled from there.

Why We Cry hits close to home for parents with adult children. How has being a parent influenced your writing?

Being a parent has been a huge influence on my writing. I write about the things around me and, when you’re a parent, those kids make up a huge part of what’s around you. My second book, The Baby That Ate Cincinnati, is entirely poems about being a parent and I didn’t stop once that book came together.

How does poetry help you face the most challenging aspects of life? Or help you appreciate the most beautiful?

I write poetry to help me figure out the world. Every day, there’s a lot in my head and a lot in my heart but not a lot of communication between the two. What drew me to poetry and keeps me there is that it creates communication between my head and heart, it helps me figure things out in myself and in the world.

How do you incorporate writing into your daily life?

I make myself start at least one new poem each week, with a Monday night deadline (that started with a class I took over 25 years ago where we had to turn in a poem every Monday). That means I am always looking for something to write about, searching for something that might be a poem.

What is your favorite style of poetry and why?

That’s a hard one. I mostly write in free verse but I love sestinas and villanelles, too. So if you force me to pick one, I probably have to say “free verse” since I’m more likely to explore an idea that way, but I love sestinas and I love when a villanelle comes together.

What words of advice do you offer your workshop students?

When a student wants to be a better poet, I tell them the two best things they can do are:

1. Write a lot.

2. Read a lot.

If you do just these two things, you will get better. Even if you spend months writing bad poems, each bad poem you write is an experiment, a lesson, and you’re a better writer afterward. The only way you don’t improve is if you don’t write and you don’t read other people’s poems.

What is the first thing you think of when you hear the phrase, “The Good Life?”

I think of living with peace in your heart, living a life with integrity and value, truth and beauty.

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Thank you, Matt, for participating in this Q&A and for your continued support of our mission and vision. We’re grateful to you for allowing us to share your poems with our readers!

• “The Cicadas of September” (Micro Monday Feature, Sept. 18, 2023)
• Two Poems: “In the Packed Auditorium” & “Flash” (Issue #1 ~ Autumn 2020)
• Two Poems: “Why We Cry” & “Poem in Celebration of My Death” (Issue #12 ~ Summer 2023)

And coming soon!… Another “Amazing” poem in Issue #13!!

Tell us about yourself.

I was born (and raised, if you can believe it) in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, on the Kentucky side of the Tennessee-Kentucky border. I’m now working toward a degree at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. A long way from home. I’m transgender, I’m disabled, some flavor of queer. I’m sorry – I’m not very good at this question. 

What inspired you to write Pretty Women?

My mother has an autoimmune disease, and that inspired some of the symptoms that Avie experiences in the story. During my writing process I was thinking about womanhood – what it means to have access to womanhood, and what it means to be denied womanhood. Access to womanhood, from my perspective, at least, is limited by several factors – race, ability, health, proximity to cisness and straightness, age, to name a few. And I think, too, that no matter what kind of woman you are, eventually, if you live long enough, you will be denied your womanhood, whether that’s because of age or ability or health or any combination thereof. I wanted to write about what it was like to slowly lose access to gender, and, more importantly, what it means to reclaim that gender anyway. In no way does this story explore every aspect of what it means to be a woman, and it wasn’t meant to do that at all. 

Tell us about the contrast between how Avie and Jack of Pretty Women see beauty.

I think Avie sees beauty as a part of her femininity that she feels like she’s losing, and Jack sees beauty as something that she’ll never have access to. And beauty standards are ever changing, even as they revolve around things like whiteness, wealth, and thinness. I remember when I was growing up, I was considered ugly by my classmates because I had larger lips and thick, dark eyebrows. Then when I went to college, everyone was overdrawing their lips and coloring in their brows, and that was the moment where I was like “Oh. This is all some bull piss.” When you’re trans and/or chronically ill/disabled, you sometimes must create your own sense of beauty, because you’ll find yourself very quickly defined out of it in a lot of cases. And I think when it comes to beauty in the story, I was thinking about ways to define your own beauty on your own terms. 

Where do you find beauty in the world around you?

This is going to sound incredibly morbid but hear me out – ancient bodies are beautiful. Really, ancient humans are beautiful, bodies or not. Have you heard of Shanidar 1? He’s a Neanderthal found in Iraq, and he lived to be about thirty-five to forty-five. Our best estimations are, of course, only estimations, but he’s thought to have experienced a blow to the head that might have blinded him in one eye, and his right arm and leg were thought to have been impacted by the blow, too, leading to paralysis. But he lived for a very long time, for a Neanderthal, and these injuries did not kill him. His people took care of him. They loved him. I studied history in undergraduate, and my favorite classes were always with the professor who specialized in ancient history, Dr. Aaron Irvin at Murray State University. We tend to think of the ancient world as being a very brutal time for humans, and in some cases, it was. But it was also a time of incredible compassion and care, across civilizations. And there’s proof of that — in the bones. Isn’t it beautiful that we get to look at the remnants of people who lived thousands upon thousands of years ago and see ourselves looking back? 

What hurdle does each character have to overcome in order to be made new?

I think there’s a level of acceptance you have achieved at some point in your life, whether you’re trans or disabled. I don’t like to say that I ‘became’ disabled so much as I learned about it one day, mostly because I don’t really know how long I lived with it before I was diagnosed. And after I was diagnosed, I went through a period where I was like “not me.” Something like 0.3% of people have my diagnosis, so how could this happen to me? And because I’d been living with it for so long, I had no idea how bad it really was. So that was what I was thinking about when it came to Avie’s character – reaching for the moment where you’re able to accept that this is your life now, and it can still be a beautiful one. I think I was really doing that thing where you try to write it into existence, because I still haven’t entirely reached that place for myself yet. And I think that assuming because the story ends means that Avie has reached that place for herself is probably wishful thinking. It’s been my experience that acceptance and grief are part of the same cycle, and I’ve been moving through that cycle since my own diagnosis in 2019. 

For Jack’s character, I think it’s about faith. Some trans people are afraid of transition because they think they’ll be ugly, or they’re worried they won’t like the results, or they can’t imagine themselves as their desired gender. The latter being most of Jack’s issue. Transition is a leap of faith, and some people take it, and others don’t or aren’t ready, and either way, it’s your journey and it’s beautiful and special. For Jack, I don’t think she was able to take that leap until someone else believed in her – until someone else saw the woman that she was. It is so helpful as a transgender person to have a community, or even just one person, who believes in you, and sees you for who you are. This is especially true if you’re transgender in a rural community, like Jack, and you don’t really have access to a queer or transgender community of your own. 

What message do you hope your readers take away from this piece?

You know, I’m kind of over trauma porn. I know that’s a crass way of phrasing it. It seemed to me that stories about sick and/or disabled people and stories about trans people tend to have one awful thing in common, and that’s the idea that we’re “overcoming” something. Being transgender, being disabled, these aren’t things that you have to overcome, they’re just states of being. And I’m not going to act like we don’t have it rough, especially these days. But I think that means that now more than ever, we need stories of transgender joy. And I especially wanted to challenge the idea that pre-transition is just crying in front of a mirror because “I’ll never be a real man/woman.” There can be joy in discovery. There can be joy in the becoming. 

How does your work in creative writing allow you to positively affect the world around you?

I don’t know. Isn’t that the question that we all have? I think – or would like to hope – that all writers ask themselves this question, and hope that their work puts some good out into the world. For me, personally, I think writing keeps me gentle. My instincts tend toward the vicious. I am a deeply cynical person. My heart is a necrotic, curdled organ, pumping ichor into my veins. And I get worse the longer I go without art. My goal with every piece I write, and the thing I want out of every story or novel I read, is to find a voice that makes me love again. I think it makes me a better, more understanding person. And we could probably do with a few more understanding people in this world.

How does writing keep you inspired?

I like writing that I can dance to, the kind of writing that makes you get up and pace back and forth because the language is so electric that it travels from the page to your brain. I won’t claim to know why other people write, but I think part of the reason I write is to be understood – to scoop out some vital part of myself and present it on the page, hoping that someone else will point at it and say, “Yes, that’s me. I do that too. I am that too.” That connection that you make when you read a book that speaks to you, and hoping to have that connection as a writer writing about things that you hope speaks to other people — I think I would say that inspires me. 

What advice can you give to other aspiring writers?

It’s funny because I still consider myself an aspiring writer – this is my first publication, so I don’t remotely feel qualified to answer this question. I’ll try. Read and write, obviously. I can’t tell you how many writers I know or have known in the past who spend more time talking about reading and writing than they do reading and writing. But aside from that, the best advice I can honestly think of is DON’T TWEET. Never tweet. You see a Bad Art Friend or a Cat Person discourse or any other literary twitter drama, resist that devil. I know that twitter is good for engagement and promoting your work and all, but you’ll be so much happier reading about the drama or discourse than you will be participating in it, and the people who follow you to hear your hot takes about the latest Main Character on Twitter are probably not the audience you want to cultivate – they’re not gonna buy your books. Post your promotional stuff, Retweet other writers’ successes, hype your people up. Don’t discourse. 

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

I was thinking the other day – my cat has no idea where his food comes from. He knows it’s under the sink and he knows that he gets one scoop in the morning and one at night, but he doesn’t know that I have to go to the Russ’s Supermarket down the street and pick out his bag of Tender Selects Blend and haul it back home so he gets his daily and nightly scoops of salmon. He trusts that I will feed him. He has faith that the bag will always be under the sink. I think that kind of security must be a pretty good life. 

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Blake’s Fiction piece “Pretty Women” is available in issue #12 ~ Our Summer Honeybee Prize issue.

Thank you, Blake, for allowing us to share your story with our readers and for the honest, straightforward, and impactful answers to our questions. We wish you the best!