Category: interviews

This week’s Author Q &A is with Rohan Buettel who lives in Canberra, Australia. His haiku appear in various Australian and international journals, including Presence, Cattails and The Heron’s Nest. His longer poetry recently appears in The Elevation Review, Rappahannock Review, Penumbra Literary and Art Journal, Mortal Magazine, Passengers Journal, Reed Magazine, Meniscus and Quadrant. 

Buettel’s poem, Turnings, is featured in Issue #10 of The Good Life Review.

Tell us about yourself.

I live in Canberra, Australia’s capital city, where I worked for more than thirty years as a lawyer and public servant, mainly advising governments on policy issues and developing legislative frameworks governing Australia’s communications industries. After retiring, I stumbled across a MOOC (massive open online course) called “How to make a poem,” and enjoyed it so much I have been writing poetry ever since. I undertook a number of creative writing units at the University of Canberra to improve my skills and this also gave me an introduction to the poetry scene. I convene monthly meetings of Tram Stop Poets, whose members workshop their poems together. I also lead mountain bike rides for cycling groups in the Canberra region, paddle a kayak and sing in a choir.

Turnings transforms a shared night of sleep into a beautiful dance. What inspired you to this poem? 

I participate in another poetry group ‘Majura Cafe Poets’ which meets weekly to share our latest writing and has a period set aside to write each week in response to a prompt. The first draft of this poem was written at one of those meetings in response to the prompt ‘turning.’ The poem was inspired by personal experience with my spouse.

What message do you hope reaches your audience through Turnings?

In the poem, I tried to capture the relaxed comfort that a relationship provides for both of the parties. I consciously chose to avoid references to sex and gender in the poem to make it relatable for as many readers as possible.

What impacted you most when writing it?

I had been thinking over the previous few days about how we sleep together at night, the prompt gave the impetus to express it.

Tell us about the work you have done or do that makes you most proud. 

I have written a lot of ekphrastic poetry, but I am most proud of my nature poetry, with much of the imagery prompted by things I observe, or encounters with wildlife while riding a mountain bike, bushwalking or even in my own yard. If readers are interested in looking at some of these works, examples include:

Semper Augustus — Passengers Journal Volume 3 Issue 2

Japanese Pagoda Tree — Reed Magazine Issue 155

Lorikeets — Meniscus Volume 8 Issue 2

Alpha Male — Fauxmoir Lit Mag Issue 5

Aeolian Geomorphology — Rockvale Review Issue 9

What is your writing process? How do you make it a part of your daily life?

I usually start to write when something attracts my attention, or I am suddenly struck by a good idea (all too rarely). When writing about art or nature, I start by closely observing the subject, taking notes and including any lines that come to me on the spot (including tangents and other associations). At home, I research the subject matter online. I write a first draft by hand taking into account my personal response and the research, usually in free verse, re-reading and revising earlier lines as I write new ones. I think about form as I write. If I think the work will benefit from a particular form I will start to rewrite the poem in that form, even before finishing the first draft. I put the first draft aside for a few days, sometimes I will try rewriting in a different form when returning to revise it. When reasonably comfortable with the work, I will type it into the computer, usually it just requires minor editing while doing this.

I don’t write on a daily basis, but if I haven’t written anything for a while, I start to feel a build up of tension and try and write. If dry, I sometimes resort to random techniques to spark creativity. For example, using a random word generator for a list of nouns which must be then used in the order created in a set number per line. This can lead to some delightfully surreal results.

Turnings is written in such a playful way. Is much of your poetry playful? What is your favorite type of poetry to write? 

Most of the poetry is serious, but playful elements find their way into even the serious poems. I also write deliberately playful poems, but these are often hard to place — perhaps they seem too lightweight.

Apart from nature and ekphrastic poetry, I also enjoy writing persona poetry as a way of trying to understand the perspective of people or things completely different to myself.

How does poetry help you to navigate through life?

Sometimes I do not know what to think about a particular issue. Writing a poem can help me clarify my thinking on the matter. Sometimes it performs a cathartic role. In early 2020, I poured out a series of angry climate change poems in response to the bush fires engulfing the region where I live.

What part of the artistic process do you consider to be the most difficult, as well as most satisfying, and why.

For me, the most difficult part, and the most satisfying, is coming up with a good idea or ideas. I find the writing process reasonably straightforward if I start with a good idea in mind. Some writers work better organically growing each line from the previous line, however I do not usually work like this. I like to know where I’m going when I start.

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

My parents owned an album released by Petula Clark in the sixties which while growing up I found inestimably sad. I loved listening to it when feeling miserable (like listening to The Smiths in the eighties). One of the songs was “The Good Life” and I am reminded of the bittersweet lyrics every time I hear the phrase:

“Oh, the good life, full of fun seems to be the ideal
Yes, the good life lets you hide all the sadness you feel …”

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Rohan.. Thank you for sharing your poem with us and taking extra time to answer our questions. We are grateful for you and your work and wish you the best!

This week’s Author Q & A is with Soon Jones. Jones is a Korean lesbian poet from the rural countryside of the American South, and writes for the same reason they breathe. Their work has been published in Westerly, beestung, Juke Joint, and Moon City Review, among others, and can be found at soonjones.com.

Jones’ poem, This is How the Body Knows, is featured in Issue #10 of The Good Life Review.

Tell us about yourself.

I grew up in the rural countryside in the South where I was often the only non-white person for miles around. There’s been times growing up when I had to run away from people who meant me harm either because I was Asian or gay, probably both. That’s where the hyper-vigilance in the second stanza of the poem comes from.

All that being said, when I think about the things I’ve been through, including cancer, I just have to laugh because what can you do but move forward? Trauma, but laughing about it. That’s me in a nutshell.

This is How the Body Knows provides an intimate look at the devastating effects of cancer. Was this poem inspired by your own experience? How has the experience formed who you are?

Yes, this poem is autobiographical. I was trying to put into words the weird headspace I’ve been in, where all these things were running through my head, the surreal experience of being diagnosed with the same cancer that killed my mother during COVID of all times, how trauma and grief is a never ending cycle.

The cancer diagnosis really made me get off my butt and start writing like a ridiculous amount and send my work out, instead of waiting for my writing to be “perfect.” It’s made me a lot braver and more intentional with my work and my life, ’cause it’s like, “You might die, so better put your writing out there now.”

What message do you hope reaches your audience through This is How the Body Knows?

Listen to your gut instincts when something feels off about your body, even if it’s scary. Especially if it’s scary. Tell your loved ones you love them while they’re still here.

Was writing the poem therapeutic for you? What impacted you most when writing it?

Very much so! The act of taking an ugly experience and transforming it into a poem is incredibly cathartic for me. When I put something into a poem, that’s how I know I’ve reached a place where I can let this thing go. The biggest impact of writing This is How the Body Knows was that it helped me make sense of the last few years and grieve for my body.

Tell us about the work you have done or do that makes you most proud.

It’s completely unrelated to poetry, sorry to say, but I wrote a sci fi novel over the course of my cancer treatment and recovery that is very near and dear to my heart, and I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written to date. Hopefully other people will think that too. Of course, I put a lot of poet sensibilities into it!

What is your writing process? How do you make it a part of your daily life?

I’ll make a list of ideas I want to write poems about and some lines here and there. I always have my Notes app open on my phone to jot down poem snippets or story ideas as they come to me. A lot of first drafts of poems are written on my phone while I’m out walking my dog.

As far as my daily life, at the beginning of the year I make a list of writing goals like: write at least this many words and at least this many poems over the next 12 months. I keep track of all that month to month. But honestly, I’m just addicted to writing. It’s what I think about when I wake up and when I go to sleep.

This is How the Body Knows is written in such an honest way. Is much of your poetry direct? What is your favorite type of poetry to write? 

I’m pretty straight forward in general, so I think my writing just comes out that way, too. I don’t like to beat around the bush if I can help it.

My favorite type of poetry to write is surreal imagery, but I’m also terrible at it – probably because it’s not direct at all. I’m working on it though!

How does poetry help you to navigate through life?

When it comes to writing poetry, it’s basically my therapy. I feel so light and clear after writing something dark. The darker it is, the better I feel when it’s done.

When it comes to reading, I think poems are like magic. Every time I read a poem that just nails a feeling or mood and makes me feel so incredibly seen I’m just like, “How did they do that? How did they know?” I don’t know, poetry just helps me breathe.

What part of the artistic process do you consider to be the most difficult, as well as most satisfying, and why.

Titles! I cannot think of good titles for the life of me and it stresses me out. Sometimes I spend more time agonizing over a title than I do writing the actual dang poem. This is How the Body Knows is a rare exception, but that’s because I cheated and just used the original first line as a title.

Revisions are the most satisfying. That’s when it all really comes together for me, especially after I’ve had my poet friends read and give notes. They always have amazing insight that super motivates and energizes me to be a better writer in general.

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

Sitting in a rocking chair on a front porch on a nice warm day, sipping tea and shootin’ the shit with my friends. It don’t get much better than that.

Scott Sickles has been writing plays since the late 1980s. Like so many artists and other writers, he draws on his personal experiences as inspiration. He writes about what angers him, disturbs him, or makes him fearful. He can use his art as a weapon against or a magnifying glass up to the struggles he’s overcome in his life. But he also appreciates the value of humor in dealing with hard times. 

“I’ve gone as dark as I know that I can in a lot of places and by contrast I’ve been just abjectly silly, just ridiculous,” Sickles said. 

But that’s life. Sometimes it’s dark and ominous and sometimes there is joy rather than evil lurking around the corner. Through his career as a playwright, Sickles has written dozens of plays ranging from dark to silly, one-minute to a trilogy of full-lengths. They might leave an ache in your heart or a buzz of fear in the back of your mind, or they may make you chuckle. As a scriptwriter for the daytime serial General Hospital, he has spent over a decade capturing the hearts of audiences by telling the stories – tragic, comic, and melodramatic – of beloved television characters.

Sickles’ submission to The Good Life Review, “Guten Tag, Baby!”, covers the serious subject of sexual violence, but in an unexpectedly heartwarming way. His play about three generations of women beginning to understand each other in a new and meaningful way leaves the reader or audience moved by the curveballs life can throw at us.

He wrote “Guten Tag, Baby!” as a response to a submission opportunity through a theater that offers three images or pieces of art to inspire writers each year. Sickles chose to write a play based on a painting of an art deco building in Texas that is located en route to the Grand Canyon via Route 66. 

Sickles began imagining tourists going back and forth from the Grand Canyon. He discovered the Grand Canyon is a very popular destination for German tourists, so much so that restaurants around the Grand Canyon have menus in both English and German to accommodate the steady stream of German tourists.

“The phrase, ‘Guten Tag, Baby!’ popped into my head and I thought, what kind of a pickup line is that?” Sickles said. 

As a sexual assault survivor, Sickles also had visions of Thelma and Louise as he imagined this place in Texas. “I wanted to write a story that was predominantly about women and different generations of women.”

The story is about Eleanor, a seventy-five-year-old woman in the early stages of dementia. She has traveled to The U Drop Inn in Shamrock, Texas with her daughter, Vivienne and her fifteen-year-old, gender-neutral grandchild, Des. The Inn is triggering memories of when Eleanor met her husband, Armand, a man who left the family when Vivienne was a child, causing much hurt and confusion for Eleanor’s daughter.  

In this play and many others he has written, Sickles explores how people deal with trauma over time. Eleanor begins to retell the familiar story of meeting Armand but this time, she is revealing secrets never told. She’s sharing details previously left out because they would have been hurtful to her daughter, who was a child of a rape. Vivienne hears this detail for the first time at the diner along Route 66. 

“The thing that we suffer is very acute while we’re suffering it,” Sickles said explaining the effects of trauma, “and then a year later it’s a harsh memory. Three decades later it’s simultaneously lives in your body as something that is happening and it’s also a distant memory, but it’s never not present.”

Vivienne, who never felt a connection with Armand and resented him for leaving the family, now is presented with the information that he took care of her mother after she was assaulted and raised the resulting child as his own. Eleanor encouraged Armand to leave and find his own happiness when Vivienne was old enough that Eleanor thought she could care for her on her own. Eleanor and Armand’s was an unexpected story of love and respect between an asexual woman and a homosexual man.

“There is a lot of misplaced love and misplaced anger and the questions of ‘who the hell am I now?’” Sickles said. 

As a storyteller, Sickles says he doesn’t usually write with an agenda or theme in mind, but in this case, he hopes the reader gleans the message that we don’t really know what another person has been through.

“When your identity and relationship is based on a rock-solid belief that you later discover is not the case, then that is a trauma in itself and there is an adjustment that has to happen. I hope that is what people get from “Guten Tag, Baby!”” Sickles said. “A lot of life is not what we think it is and when we learn the truth about our lives, we still only know so much, and we still just have to roll with it.”

Life hasn’t always been easy for Sickles, but he has learned to roll with it himself. As a son of a Korean woman and a German American man he endured a lot of prejudice for being an Asian kid. He also was bullied for being gay.

“I heard chink and faggot constantly because I was not a masculine child and I did not play sports,” Sickles said. “There was a lot of bullying from the outside and a lot of pressure from my parents.”

When he started writing, he wrote a lot from the gay perspective.

“If I was going to go forth and be happy and live my life, that was an identity I had to dive into,” Sickles said. It wasn’t until a few years ago, he began writing plays and characters through other aspects of his identity.

Through his career, Sickles has been proud of much of his work, but a few projects stood out to him, including a trilogy of plays called The Second World Trilogy, written in response to the 2016 presidential campaign. 

“The 2016 presidential campaign was so filled with hatred for anyone who was not white, male, cis, hetero, pseudo-Christian-Evangelical that I had to get over my own issues and embrace my identity and heritage,” Sickles said. “Everyone’s heritage is a significant part of who they are and it is something they have to do something about.”

In The Second World Trilogy, the protagonist is a half-Asian, gay boy growing up in Pittsburgh.

“Teddy does not represent me,” Sickles said. “He is not the nerd I was; he is the nerd I wish I had been.”

Over the course of the three plays, eleven-year-old pen pals Teddy Passanante and Anzor Khasanov begin a love story that lasts until the end of the world, nearly 50 years later. The United States is divided into the liberal U.S. or Blue States, and a militant right-wing Christian theocracy that has overtaken what was once the Red States. Twenty-six years later the two men find each other and are forced to confront a collapsing nation while the climate reaches a catastrophic tipping point. Fifty years from the time they became pen pals, the couple and their family are forced into the long goodbye of the earth’s second ice age. 

His play Composure was the winner of the 2016 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Original Full-Length Script. The play is about a man who returns to his alma mater to produce the play Romeo and Juliet to commemorate a school shooting. Producing the play and beginning a new relationship aren’t enough to distract him from the memories resurfacing of an emotionally and physically abusive relationship he endured as a young man while living in the town he returned to.

“Gay men specifically came up to me after that play and thanked me for writing it,” Sickles said. According to Sickles there is a lot of advantage taken with gay teenagers by their friends and older men.

Sickles also referenced being proud of Playing on the Periphery: Monologues and Scenes For and About Queer Kids. Each of the seven stand-alone pieces tell the collective story of four gay third graders as they navigate their feelings and the social and family pressures that threaten to keep the friends apart. 

“Your affections are drawn to the people who understand and appreciate you,” Sickles said. “It’s about like-minded souls seeking friendship and comfort from each other and the shit that they put up with while doing that from all areas.”

Through it all, Sickles stays grounded with what he calls his “fortune cookie credo.”  

“My personal philosophy is ‘All of the moments of your life have led to this one.’” Sickles said. 

His credo ties in perfectly to The Good Life.

“The Good Life is when all the moments that have led you to this one, lead you to a good place,” Sickles said. “Where you can look back on all those moments and say whatever they were, they were worth it.”

You can read “Guten Tag, Baby!” in the Issue #10 of The Good Life Review. Check out more about Scott Sickles at scottsickles.com.

This week’s Author Q&A is with Summer Hammond. Summer grew up in rural east Iowa, one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. She earned her MFA from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, where she served as editor on Chautauqua. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Texas Review, Sonora Review, and StoryQuarterly. She is a 2021 Missouri Review Audio Miller Prize Finalist and a 2022 semi-finalist for Nimrod International Journal’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize. Summer and her kindred spirit, Aly, currently live in Wilmington by the sea. Visit her at http://summer-hammond.squarespace.com/

Hammond’s non-fiction piece, iowa blues, and greens, is featured in Issue #10 of The Good Life Review.

Tell us about yourself.

I was raised as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses and remained in the faith for twenty-seven years. I mention this first because of the profound impact this religion had on my life. Because the faith is very academic by nature (Witnesses were first known as International Bible Students) I learned to read, study, write, and speak publicly quite early. However, I celebrated no holidays, did not participate in sports or extracurricular activities, carried a “No Blood” card in my wallet in case of an accident or medical emergency, believed that life should be devoted to the preaching work since Armageddon was on the horizon – and therefore turned down jobs, opportunities, schooling and other possibilities, believing that I was sacrificing for the True God and eternal life in Paradise. This delusion, fused with a dysfunctional family life and chronic illness, created a hobbling set of circumstances to grow up in. I didn’t get my driver’s license until age twenty-seven – the same year I left the faith, and celebrated my first birthday.

Tell us about the work you have done or do that makes you most proud.

In 2015 I started writing a novel called The Impossible Why based on some of the more traumatic experiences growing up that I hadn’t written about before, namely, my mother and my religion, and the very painful journey I had to take to free myself from both. Writing the novel forced me to relive that journey and pause in some terrible moments that had blurred the past while living through them but writing them forced me to reckon with and for the first time, really feel them. It was emotionally and spiritually grueling. I’m proud of the courage and grit it took to write The Impossible Why, and my reason for staying with it – to connect with others who might be experiencing similar struggles (those of us with painful mother relationships are often quiet about it). I thought of the book, the whole time, as a love letter, written to sisters and friends. Also, writing the novel helped me gain acceptance into a Masters of Fine Arts program, a feat I couldn’t have imagined for myself growing up. I never thought I would achieve a college degree, much less a Master’s! Although unpublished, I’m proud of the work my book has done, both inside me, and in the world.

What inspired you to write iowa blues, and greens?

We were assigned to write a list essay in one of my creative nonfiction workshops at the MFA. I had never heard of a list essay. I did some reading and research, and when I began to write, “Iowa Blues, and Greens” is what emerged. I’m still not sure it actually meets the criteria for a list essay! But it took me on a writing journey I had never been on before. For one thing, this was the first time I wrote about my family’s experience with “mobile home sickness” – chronic illness as a result of formaldehyde exposure.

What message do you hope reaches your audience through iowa blues, and greens? What impacted you most when writing it?

You are not alone in the complexity and the brokenness. I often felt, growing up, that I had a bizarre life that made me bizarre, and ultimately, unlovable. I understand now that everyone is dealing with strange and surreal aspects of life – in various manifestations – no one is safe from the cracks in the sidewalk, the grief. What impacted me most when writing was how frightened I was to write about the health impacts of formaldehyde exposure. I realized how much shame had accrued around this story. Sharing it in my MFA workshop was bracing! From past experience, I feared not being believed, or being looked down on. Writing this essay made me braver. After the MFA, I was able to write a more focused essay about my family’s experience with environmental illness called The Poison House, Causeway Lit’s 2021 Winter Nonfiction Winner.

How has your experience of growing up in rural Iowa shaped you as a person?

This is one of my favorite questions to ponder in life. My husband and I drove an 18-wheeler cross-country for a decade and as we trekked across the nation, I wondered constantly who I would be if I had grown up in that scorched, treeless town we passed through in Arizona, or if, as a child, I’d had the view of that mountain rising up, there in Montana. Or coming up amidst the skyscrapers in NYC – who would I be then? The question was endlessly intriguing during our travels because there was no answer. Cornfields and Mississippi, dump trucks and gravel roads, river boats and red barns – this landscape, these sights, knit my imagination in ways I’m not sure I will ever fathom.

What is your writing process? How do you make it a part of your daily life?

My writing process is daily and ongoing – although I do not put words on the page every day. I am in process when I am reading and communing with another writer’s mind. I am in the process when I am engaged in a vigorous conversation and discovering what I really think and struggling to articulate it. I am in process when I am walking, reflecting on, and trying to make meaning from the story of my life. I’m in process when I’m staring out the window, dreaming up absurdities– it is all a steady writing practice that grows, develops, and is refined, largely unseen, in the mind, before the hands ever hit the keyboard.

What is your favorite nonfictional prose genre to write?

Narrative nonfiction. I grew up filling notebooks with short stories and graduated with my MFA in fiction. Storytelling is not merely what I love, it is who I am and how I interact with every single little particle of the world. I can’t help myself, no matter what I’m doing, from making a story of it! 

What part of the artistic process do you consider to be the most difficult, as well as most satisfying, and why?

The most difficult and the most satisfying are separate parts of the process for me these days! This is a recent development. I would have answered previously that cranking out a rough draft was both difficult and satisfying. Only a few years ago, I could write fifteen to twenty pages in a day. However, since entering menopause, my attention span has changed, along with everything else. Now, writing a rough draft is painful, demanding a level of sustained concentration that is almost beyond me. Revision is, at this time in my life, the most satisfying – the work is already there, and the refining, shaping, molding has become an immersive and soothing form of play.

Do you have any fears as a writer?

I am steeped in fear as a writer! The most compelling fear, right now, is being a woman writer about to turn forty-seven. To be older than twenty-five – in any capacity – in our culture is anathema. I was the oldest woman in my MFA cohort. I was asked my age and resisted disclosure. I had a legitimate concern of activating bias, both conscious and unconscious, against me. Each time, during a workshop lecture and discussion, writer was paired with young (and those two words seemed always to arrive together, like a married couple) – I winced. It was like a door slamming in my face. I am not young, and I am a writer, and I still have dreams, and the dreams are beginning to hurt. They are beginning to feel like too late.

What is your favorite thing about writing nonfiction?

Being an excavator of the self and one’s own life story. Digging around in the things that have happened, paying deep attention to them – asking these things to tell a story, one that might be useful and perhaps even necessary to the world. Writing nonfiction invites you to witness your own life with wonder, tell the truth about it, and offer it as an act of love.

How has writing nonfiction helped you to grow as a person?

Nonfiction has asked me to confront hidden parts of my experience and hold these to the light, weak-kneed and trembling. It has asked me to be more honest – more – and the insistence is always there, each time, never dimming. I am always exerting myself to answer the call – more, deeper, truer.

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

This is my first interview, and answering questions about writing is just – bliss!
This.
This is The Good Life. 

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Summer.. We are truly grateful you took the time to answer our questions and were so direct and vulnerable in your responses. Thank you for sharing your work and part of your life story with us and allowing us to share it with others. We wish you the best in life and with all your writing endeavors!

This week’s Author Q & A is with T. M. Thomson. Thomson’s work has most recently appeared in Soundings East and Bluebird Word and will appear in Pink Panther Magazine and Evocations in the upcoming months. Three of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards: Seahorse and Moon in 2005, I Walked Out in January in 2016, and Strum and Lull in 2018. She is the author of Strum and Lull (2019) and The Profusion (2019), which placed in Golden Walkman’s 2017 chapbook competition, and co-author of Frame and Mount the Sky (2017). Her full-length collection Plunge will be out in 2023. She has a writer’s page at https://www.facebook.com/TaunjaThomsonWriter/.

Thomson’s poem, Ascension, is featured in Issue #10 of The Good Life Review.

Tell us about yourself.

I am a former college instructor of English who now focuses on my writing, both the creative process and publishing.  I am an animal lover, especially of cats; an art lover; a nature lover; a reader of mysteries; a devotee of Stevie Nicks; a huge fan of Steve Irwin and all that he stood for; a player in mud; a feeder of wild birds.

What inspired you to write Ascension? Why?

I wrote Ascension because I came across that lovely piece of art Swimming between Clouds by Niels Cortfitzen. The woman rising above this mundane world, combined with those words from Louise Gluck– “I am tired of having hands/she said/I want wings —/But what will you do without your hands/to be human?/I am tired of human/she said/I want to live on the sun” —set me to thinking about freedom and what it really is, especially for women, who have tended historically to be the ones stuck with the more tedious, home-oriented tasks.

What message do you hope reaches your audience through Ascension?

I am hoping to inspire readers to realize that, often, freedom lies in their own hands, their own minds. When we move beyond the normal expectations of this world, the notions of others, the landscape around and below us gets smaller and stranger, but our inner landscape becomes richer.

What impacted you most when writing it?

Writing Ascension became an act of rebellion in and of itself for me and has spurred me to write many more poems about personal empowerment.

Tell us about the work you have done or do that makes you most proud.

I don’t know if there’s really one poem, or even a group of my poems, that I can say makes me the most proud.  I will say that any of my work that takes readers to places they otherwise might not have gone, that makes them think harder about a concept or a reality, that helps them to find a piece of wisdom, is a source of pride for me.

What is your writing process? How do you make it a part of your daily life?

I set aside three or four afternoons each week for poetic activities—by that, I am referring not only to writing but to submitting my work for publication.  If I am not inspired to write, I will look at my cache of art from the Internet to find a springboard for a poem.  I believe it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who was asked, “Are you often inspired to write?” and who replied, “Yes, every morning at 9.”  Contrary to the popular belief that writing only happens when the writer is inspired, to be good at writing, one must write on a regular basis, even if not every resulting word or phrase or poem is amazing.  It’s the doing that makes one a better writer.

Do you have a specific genre you enjoy writing the most?

I write literary fiction. I love poetry, but I’m entirely in awe of people who are able to write it. There are wonderful science fiction writers (Samuel Delaney, Ursala K. LeGuin, Octavia Butler, N. K. Jeminsin), but I find much of this genre formulaic and uninspiring. 

What is your favorite type of poetry to write?

I’m a very visual person, even to the point of having synesthesia (the experiencing of one sense through another)—I see every letter, every word, every name, in color.  So it’s no surprise that I love to write poetry that is imagistic, poems that get to a truth through imagery, usually nature-based.

How does poetry help you to navigate through life??

The process of expressing one’s feelings and truths is cathartic and provocative; sometimes it even helps me to untangle and clarify thoughts and ideas that were muddled. 

What part of the artistic process do you consider to be the most difficult, as well as most satisfying, and why?

The most difficult parts of the writing process for me are those moments when I can’t get a poem to work, even after a few drafts. Any kind of writing requires patience, which is not a strong point for me. And sometimes I have to give up on a poem, admit defeat, which really bothers me.  

As for the most satisfying aspect of writing poetry, that would have to be the moment I complete a poem and know it’s a good one, even if it requires a few improvements, that creative “A-ha” moment.

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

To me “The Good Life” means having space for one’s creative process, whether that’s poetry, painting, terrarium-building, soul searching, making a new dish, pondering the nature of the universe—to have that room in one’s life to enjoy creativity, that’s a wonderful type of freedom, which I guess goes back to the theme of Ascension.

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Wonderful! Thank you, T.M., for taking the time to answer our questions and for sharing your work with us. We wish you the best in life and with all your writing endeavors!

This week’s Author Q&A is with Marc Eichen. Eichen has a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Geography, Clark University. From 2015 through 2022 he was a Visiting Faculty member at the State University of Zanzibar. His fiction focuses on life in Zanzibar and in red-state America. He has had stories published in Still Points Arts Quarterly, The Adirondack Review and West Trade Review and reprinted in Toyon. He is the winner of the Richard Cortez Day Prize in fiction. A book of short stories in Swahili and English will be published in Nairobi Kenya in 2023. He is represented by Kristen Carey at Blue Hen.

Eichen’s fiction short story, Who Takes the Bus in LA is featured in Issue #10 of The Good Life Review.

Tell me about yourself.

Many fiction writers are reluctant to talk about themselves – and I’m no exception. Where I stand out, where I hope to stand out, is on the page.

With that preface, ok, here goes. I grew up in New York and began life thinking I would be a musician. Life intrudes (and I wasn’t good enough) – so I spent much of my working life as an academic administrator, first in New York and then in Massachusetts, where I live with my wife, Deborah Drosnin, most of the year. 

When I’m not in Massachusetts, I live in East Africa, Zanzibar (Tanzania) to be specific where I’ve had the privilege to learn Swahili and teach natural resource management at the State University. 

Some of my fiction focuses on the intersection between the Swahili and foreign communities. This is particularly interesting and challenging for me. How do you make sense of that friction, or lack of friction because the communities don’t “see” each other? China Miéville’s novel, The City & The City is a good example.

I don’t think you need to come to Zanzibar to observe this. And some of my fiction, including Who Takes the Bus in LA?, is about the poor, the ragged, the old and otherwise marginalized and often unseen communities in the United States.

What is your writing process? How do you make it a part of your daily life?

I try to write four days a week and always in the morning. I tend not to write at home because the distractions are endless. So I’m lucky enough to have found The Writers’ Room of Boston and I work there. 

What inspired you to write Who Takes the Bus in LA?

Both Deborah and I grew up in New York City and we lean in toward public transportation. So when we were visiting LA before the pandemic, we took the bus. Taking the bus in LA is a meme. Many Angelinos would ask, who takes the bus in LA if they’re not crazy or unhoused?  

Riding the bus in L.A. is a parallel city. It is the purest expression of L.A.’s one-hundred-year dialogue of urban and antiurban, a bridge to the city’s streetcar past and an epitaph to its car-addled future. Riding enables another mode of looking, seeing, hearing, and smelling that “eludes the discipline” of automobility even as it reproduces it. (Hutchinson, Sikivu. “Waiting for the Bus.” Social Text, vol. 18 no. 2, 2000, p. 107-120. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/31869.)

For all these reasons, I find the stories of people taking the bus and driving the bus to be of interest.

Please tell me some unique details related to Who Takes the Bus in LA and what you learned from it.

I’m always interested in place. How does place influence what we see and who we are? How would the protagonists in this story live in Boyle Heights and yet have never been to Venice Beach? Why would they think Culver City was another world (because for them, it was)? Is it possible to transcend our individual world and tell a story which would resonate with someone from another place? 

What is your favorite book? Or who is your favorite author?

Wow, that’s a hard question. Ten authors in no particular order: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Donna Tartt, Richard Russo, George Saunders, George Eliot, Olga Tokarczuk, Russell Banks, Zadie Smith, Benjamin Lerner, David Foster Wallace. I could go on.

If there’s any common thread, with the exception of Olga Tokarczuk and David Foster Wallace, these writers embed you in the story. They are all wonderful writers, but they’re not self-conscious writers. Their work doesn’t say, “hey – look at this piece of genius.” 

What books did you enjoy reading as a child?

My mom read A Child’s Garden of Verses (Robert Louis Stevenson) to me and then, it was one of the things I wanted to read most, when I was able to read. As a teenager I would never leave the house without stuffing a book into the back pocket of my jeans. I went through jags, reading as much as I could of a particular writer before moving on to someone else: Thomas Wolfe, Henry James, Henry Roth, William Faulkner, Laurence Durrell. Even on the subway in New York, slamming through the tunnels with the windows open, their work would bring me somewhere else.

Do you have a specific genre you enjoy writing the most?

I write literary fiction. I love poetry, but I’m entirely in awe of people who are able to write it. There are wonderful science fiction writers (Samuel Delaney, Ursala K. LeGuin, Octavia Butler, N. K. Jeminsin), but I find much of this genre formulaic and uninspiring. 

What part of the artistic process do you consider to be the most difficult, as well as most satisfying, and why.

Interesting you ask this question. I’ve noticed that each individual in my wonderful writers’ group has a different strength. Mine happens to be drafting – getting an initial draft on paper. What I work on after that is the voice of the story, finding the voice which tells the story in the strongest, most authentic way. Re-drafting at the word level is the most difficult for me. But I try.

Do you have any fears as a writer?

Not having anything to say. Telling the same story over and over. My fabulous agent, Kristen Che at Blue Hen, who reads my first drafts, is able to say, “You’ve done this before – try it another way.”

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

Walking in the mountains in New England or on the beach in Africa with my family, talking about a book or maybe just watching the sunset. Tuko pamoja milele. (We are together, always)

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Thank you, Marc, for sharing your words with us and we appreciate the extra time and consideration you put into answering our questions. It was a pleasure working with you. We wish you the best in life and with all your writing endeavors!

This week’s Author Q&A is with Gargi Mehra. Mehra is a software professional by day, a writer by night and a mother at all times. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines online and in print, including Crannog, The Forge Literary Magazine, The Writer, and others. Her short stories have won prizes and placed in contests. She lives in Pune, India with her husband and two children. You can read more of Mehra’s work on her website or catch her on Twitter: @gargimehra.

Mehra’s collection of flash fiction stories, Mothers and Brothers is featured in Issue #10 of The Good Life Review.

Tell me about yourself.

I’m a software professional who writes in her spare time. My first love was programming but writing came a close second. I write fiction in the time between my work and life, and have been doing it for many years now. I have more than fifty stories (including flash and micro-fiction) and twenty essays published online and in print. I have written a novel or two as well, and hope to get them published in the future.

What is your writing process? How do you make it a part of your daily life?

I write most of my stories on weekends and holidays. I use the little time and energy left over after my day job to hunt down markets for my work or write down story ideas and snippets of sentences.

What inspired you to write Mothers and Brothers?

A writing prompt about domestic drama led me to write Blood Brother first, then I wanted to try different points-of-view and formats. This led to the other stories.

Please tell me some unique details related to Mothers and Brothers and what you learned from it.

Each has a distinct viewpoint and offers a different perspective even though the stories themselves vary. In “Things That Happened on Your Birthday” I intersperse historical moments with life moments. This proved fairly challenging and I felt it did not strike the right note until multiple revisions. I learned the art of writing a hermit crab flash fiction and eventually enjoyed the process.

What is your favorite book? Or who is your favorite author?

Writers are voracious readers and can rarely have one favourite book or author! My favourite remains PG Wodehouse, but I do keep up with the modern bestsellers, whether it’s Less by Andrew Sean Greer, The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins, or The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides.

What books did you enjoy reading as a child?

Like most readers I picked up the love of books from my parents. I read all the classics, like The Great Gatsby and the books of Jane Austen, especially Pride and Prejudice. I also enjoyed Enid Blyton and the mysteries like The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.

Do you have a specific genre you enjoy writing the most?

At the moment I most prefer writing literary fiction, but I have dabbled in speculative and humorous fiction too. 

What part of the artistic process do you consider to be the most difficult, as well as most satisfying, and why.

Writing the first draft is the part I find most difficult, because the superb ideas in my head simply dissolve to mush on the paper. It takes a concerted effort to put one word after another and bring to life what you thought was a winning story.

On the other hand, I love revising my stories. The process of chiseling and imbuing life into the story, transforming it from plain words into something special and unique – that’s something I really enjoy! Even though it can be as challenging as drafting, at times!

Do you have any fears as a writer?

I do sometimes fear that some of my stories will forever remain unpublished. I fear that if I write and publish a novel it may sink to the bottom of the Mariana Trench! But for the most part I remain optimistic about success.

What is your favorite thing about writing flash fiction?

That I can finish drafting a piece in a day, and multiple stories over a weekend! It’s another matter making them publication-worthy. It takes just as long or sometimes even longer than a short story!

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

I think of family and friends, and feel complete gratitude.

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Thank you, Gargi, for sharing your stories with us and for participating in this Q&A. We wish you the best in life and with all your writing endeavors!

Poet Moni Brar shares pieces of her own personal history as a reflection of a collective history in her poem, Migrant Wish. Through her poem she explores numerous challenges she has faced as a Punjabi immigrant who moved to Canada from India during her formative childhood years. The poem, along with much of her writing, has also helped her examine the themes of identity and belonging within the context of the immigrant experience.

Working through personal and collective intergenerational trauma, Brar’s poems can be challenging to write. However, poetry allows her to apply different lenses to those difficult occurrences in her own past and that of generations before her. Migrant Wish allows Brar to rewrite some of these experiences she and others have faced as immigrants, or at least question them.

“In Migrant Wish, I am trying to take the past and envision different futures with it,” said Brar. Although she grew up and lives in Canada, Brar often is asked ‘Where are you from?” an insensitive question based on the color of her skin but also deeply wounding for a woman who continues to struggle to find her place.

Moving between the first and second stanza of Migrant Wish, Brar tries to resolve the division she feels inside herself. 

“I have this desire to belong to an environment, culture and country that I feel like I will never truly belong to because I straddle two worlds,” said Brar. “So, it’s that living in the in-betweenness and this sense of having a splintered self that I try to reconcile.”  

Throughout her childhood and teenage years, Brar vividly remembers shouts of derogatory names and jeers of ‘Go Home!’ when out in the community, both alone and with her family.  In the first stanza, she explores that feeling. As a child she wondered, what is home?

“Is it a house that you go home to each night and sleep in,” asked Brar. “Or is it a place that you belong to, a place that accepts you and invites you to belong to it?” In Migrant Wish, Brar writes, “Don’t they know that such a place no longer exists? That you are firmly wedged between two worlds that continue to reject you? That the notion of home exists only in their minds?”

 The second stanza was inspired by the SS Komagata Maru, both a ship and an example of one of many incidents in the early 1900s where immigrants of Asian origin were denied entry into Canada and the United States. 

“Though that incident happened long ago, the ripple effect is still felt within my community and even within the embodied experience of being a Punjabi-Sikh person today.” said Brar. 

She shared her own experience of being denied entry recently when she was stuck in an airport in India for two days, meaning only to pass through on her travels. The airport officials wouldn’t allow her into the country, or to transit through, so yet again Brar had the sinking feeling she didn’t have a home despite being in the country of her birth.

“If Canada isn’t home and India isn’t home, then where do I belong?” asked Brar.

The third stanza calls out cultural appropriation, something Brar has spent a lot of time butting up against in recent years. Things she was once ridiculed for as a child, like turmeric tea and facemasks, are now seen as trendy for wellness in pop culture. 

“It’s fascinating to me that in my lifetime I have seen this transition,” Brar said. “Who is wellness for?” She points out how traditional ayurvedic remedies once used by diverse populations, including the economically-marginalized, are now being overshadowed by consumerism and capitalism, making these wellness remedies inaccessible for the originators. Turmeric, who knew? Oh yeah, Punjabi women, that’s who.

The final stanza references a poem called A Brief for the Defense by Jack Gilbert. In her poems’ response, she questions what Gilbert really saw in Calcutta, wondering if perhaps he was looking through a lens of white privilege and needed to make the scenes of poverty, greed, and prostitution more palpable for himself rather than the reader. 

As a poet, Brar’s struggle is to stay true to her artistic voice.

“One of the big challenges I have in the artistic process is trying to find a way to honor art making and meaning making in my own cultural way and with my mother tongue,” said Brar. She is caught between trying to make art as a Punjabi woman and making it relevant to people who don’t come from the same worldview or frame of reference.

But oftentimes, the struggle comes back to a sense of belonging.

“My biggest concern mirrors this larger insecurity I have of not belonging,” Brar said.  Identity and belonging are not just themes of Brar’s writing, but rather a constant undercurrent. 

The exploration of the interconnectedness between identity, belonging and land has connected Brar with her Indigenous brothers and sisters in Canada. Upon hearing the name of our online literary journal, The Good Life Review, she was reminded of a concept central to Indigenous value systems, “the good life”—to live a life that is balanced, and in connection with family, community, and the land.

This Good Life is something Brar aims for in her work. 

“I am trying to create a balance through my writing,” Brar said, striving for connection with her family, her Punjabi and Canadian communities, and the land to ground her poetry.

Like Canada’s truth and reconciliation work, Brar is hoping to shed light on and address past wrongs and a dark history. 

“We are starting to face some of those dark moments in our past,” Brar said.  She categorizes her own poetry as ‘dark’ because she explores topics such as religious violence, sexual abuse, intergenerational trauma, and occupying both the role of the colonized and the colonizer. But the way she explores those topics and often the themes of belonging and land become transformed through the medium of poetry. 

“Poetry renders the dark into something beautiful,” said Brar.

You’ll find her beautiful poem, Migrant Wish, in Issue #10 of The Good Life Review.

This week’s Author Q&A is with Jessica Pulver. Jess is a mother, social worker, and aspiring gardener nestled in the woods outside Portland, Maine. She majored in Creative Writing at Swarthmore College over twenty years ago and recently returned to the writing life. Her work is forthcoming in Literary Mama, Waccamaw Journal, and Kaleidoscope Magazine, and her short nonfiction, Explication Of My Guilt, appears in our latest issue. We took this opportunity to ask Jess a few questions about her writing and newly rediscovered writing life. 

We began by asking her to share a little bit more about her latest essay. 

This piece is obviously about something painful and difficult for me to write about. I had written several other essays with scenes of Leo’s birth and my subsequent guilt woven into them but had not isolated them in such a focused way. Readers of my earlier essays responded to the imagery and the strong emotions, but often asked me questions related to the events – it seemed I was never telling enough or doing enough justice to the fullness of the experience. I felt I was being honest and forthcoming in my writing, but realized I was doing so in pieces rather than as a whole. I set out to write this essay to take on the most ambiguous aspects of the birth trauma and address them directly. Doing so forced me to articulate precisely what I was trying to express – not only about what I felt when it happened, but also how those feelings changed over the years of raising Leo, and what I make of it all now. It was a cathartic process and felt deeply releasing to complete. The essay feels like a resting spot on a journey and reminds me that in years to come, my perspective on my guilt will continue to evolve. 

We then asked what the most difficult part of the writing process is for her. 

The most difficult part of the writing process for me is committing to the time it takes to write. I am a mother, a therapist, a wife, a friend, a daughter, and a gardener most of the time before I am a writer. My life at this stage of parenting is bursting with micro-responsibilities for Leo and his two also-somewhat-complicated younger siblings. I am not accustomed to laying aside time in my schedule for writing, and I am always surprised by how long it actually takes to put words on a page that I want to stay there the way they are! I struggle to justify the time I’m spending –  to myself but if I’m honest, more so to others, because once I start writing I love it so much that it seems self-indulgent. It is not earning money, it is not even something that can easily be shared for the benefit or pleasure of others without even more work and time (and luck). 

As I write this response, it occurs to me that I am expressing a sense of guilt about writing; I hadn’t thought of myself as a person necessarily prone to guilt but here it is again. I do believe our dominant culture places entirely too much emphasis on productivity and infuses many people’s hobbies, relaxation, and community-building with a sense of guilty pleasure.

This is all so true and relatable. Not only does it take considerable time and effort to work on ones writing, but it can often be seen as unnecessary and not productive in the eyes of society. These factors make it very difficult to prioritize in our busy lives. If we were to view it as more essential, for the catharsis and human connection, then perhaps it would change the way people think about it. We then asked Jess to share her biggest fear as a writer.

My biggest fear as a writer is to turn out to be not as good at it as I hope to be! Right now, since I’ve only returned to writing in the last twelve months after majoring in creative writing at college over twenty years ago, I am riding a sort of beginner’s luck. I have lots of ideas, at the sentence level and at the concept level, and I feel motivated to find a shape for them all. I feel successful in having published two poems and two essays right out of the gates, especially since I had previously written entirely poetry. But writing essays and even dipping my toes in fiction has me feeling excited and aspirational – so my fear is that this comes crashing down if I get further into the writing experience and receive consistent rejection from the publishing world, mixed with lukewarm support from friends and family.

Again, very relatable fears, and as we are all living that “writing life” here at The Good Life, we know very well about the rejection that comes with sending your work out. With all the time, effort, and possibility of rejection, what fuels your desire to write? 

I’m fueled from multiple angles! Writing is an opportunity, to be honest in a way that isn’t possible when speaking with even the most intimate people in our lives because we’re able to take the time to be more thorough and to get the words right. It’s also a privilege to put that honesty out in the world, in hopes that it empowers others to be honest with their own feelings and to feel encouraged to share. As a therapist, I’m daily in support of people struggling to find words for their feelings. We as a culture are not in the habit of discussing our feelings accurately even privately, and we are taught to carry shame around the prospect of making them public. This distresses me when I see the effects on people’s lives. I think of my writing as a place where I can make some difference in righting this (no pun intended).

In my own relationships, I think of writing as a way of showing love. Capturing scenes with my children in particular – their voices, their surprising responses to the world – is definitely an act of adoration for them. At the same time, I’m driven to give depth and complexity to the relationships with my family and friends on the page. I’m somewhat obsessed with the project of expressing the contradictions and messiness of relationships and showing that this is not only okay, but it is also a source of wonder and gratitude. I want my essays to be sort of mini-love manifestos to the people in them. 

Lastly, I feel a real affection for the particular ways people speak, as well as the sounds of words when they’re beside one another swimming in my own head. Often while I’m doing something mundane, a phrase or sentence cadence will arrive in my imagination or memory in a way that feels randomly compelling. It feels in those moments like I’m a conduit for that splice of language music. I then get the fun of writing around that sentence and trying to give it ground and a larger meaning. 

That’s beautiful! As we always do, we ended our Q&A with the final question of what comes to mind when she hears the phrase “the good life?” 

When I think of The Good Life, I think of being held and surrounded, by arms, by water, by peace. I think of putting my hands in the soil every day and sleeping on the ground. I think of doing nothing else while eating except tasting and smiling at whoever’s there. 

Thanks so much, Jess, for sharing more about your life and your story with us. We’re honored you trusted us with your words and we wish you the best in life and with all your writing endeavors. 

Cheers,
~The Good Life Review Team

This week’s Author Q&A features Lauren Davenport, a writer based in Brooklyn, New York. Lauren writes fiction, nonfiction, and more, and has been a New York Public School Educator of high school students for over twenty years. Her short nonfiction essay, Failure, is all about her profession and teaching experiences. We asked Lauren to share a little more about her writing life including some unique detail related to the writing of the story and what she learned from it.

This piece is seven years old! It haunted me just like the ghosts and I kept fiddling with it.

Time is a magical gift to writers. The simmer and slow cook method seem to work for me anyway.

We then asked what part of the artistic process she considered to be the most difficult, as well as most satisfying, and why.

Starting is the worst part for me, I procrastinate out of paralysis and talk myself into anything except actually writing-–it’s pathetic honestly.

[However], I think when I’m in the thick of it and writing away–time just dissolves and I’m not worrying about anything except trying to have my fingers keep up with my thoughts.

We asked her to describe her biggest fear as a writer.

Reading my work when it is out in the world and wishing I could change this or that. It happens every time and I guess it always will but it is scary to let anything go.

We asked Lauren what fuels her desire to write.

Boiling over with observations about the world that I fear no one wants to hear yet I need to share.

We wrapped the Q&A with the question of what comes to her mind when she hears the phrase, ‘The Good Life’.

I think of pasta. I have no idea why but I truly see spaghetti twirling on a fork.

That’s certainly one we haven’t heard before, but a great answer! Thank you Lauren, for sharing your story with us and for spending a little extra time on this Q&A. We wish you the best with your students and all your writing endeavors!

Cheers,
~The Good Life Review Team