Tag: interview

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. 

---

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.

---

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)

---

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.

---

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

This week’s Author Q&A features Noelle Nori. Noelle holds an MFA in Writing from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University. Her fiction has appeared in Crack the Spine and The Write Launch and she was longlisted for The Masters Review 2021 Novel Excerpt contest.

Her short fiction, “Let it Burn,” appears in our autumn issue and invites the reader into the intimate space of an exercise studio where one participant works through an intense class that conjures thoughts of loss and longing–heavy lifting that is as much mental as it is physical.

As we do with all authors, we took the opportunity to ask Noelle a few questions about her writing and writing life. She elected to share what the most difficult part of the artistic process is for her.

Letting myself sit with the discomfort and ambiguity of not knowing what comes next and trusting that I will eventually figure it out. This usually happens somewhere in the middle of a piece and is actually something I’ve been experiencing more and more lately, but I’m trying to take it as a good sign that I’m pushing myself to improve. If I knew exactly where a piece was going and how to get there, then I would know exactly how to write it, and where is the challenge or growth in that? Part of the magic of writing is figuring things out as you go along. You have to pull that rabbit out of the hat for yourself before you can do it for your reader!

In contrast, she also shared the part of the process is the most satisfying.

When I write the ending or last line of a piece and have a sense of ‘Yes, that’s it.’ It’s kind of like slotting the last puzzle piece into place – so satisfying! It doesn’t necessarily mean the piece is totally done (I likely still have editing to do), but it’s exciting to see that north star that I’ve been writing towards finally shining on the page.

That is a satisfying moment indeed! And we love the analogy of the North Star, as a navigation point that is leading the story (or writer) to its destination.

Of course, we always want to know what people think of when they hear the phrase “The Good Life.” Here’s how Noelle responded to the question…

The following words come to mind: comfort, meaning, ease, expansiveness, abundance, joy, family, friends, flow, purpose, fun, creativity, and love. The tangible representation or fulfillment of those words might look different at any given time. (‘Comfort’ can mean a hug when I’m feeling down or lounge pants after a long day!) But they all add up to that ‘good life’ feeling.

Thank you, Noelle, for being open to a little Q&A and for allowing us to publish your story. We wish you the best!

Cheers,
~The Good Life Review Team

This week’s Author Q&A is with Briana Wipf. Briana is at work on her doctoral degree with a focus on medieval literature and digital humanities. By her own account, she’s currently “neck-deep” in writing a dissertation that she wouldn’t recommend anyone read. What we would recommend, instead, is her fiction and nonfiction available in The Blood Pudding, Montana Mouthful, Change Seven, Drunk Monkeys, and of course her short fiction, Take Your Shot, appearing in our autumn issue.

Before going to graduate school, Briana worked as a journalist in Montana–a setting which comes through loud and clear in this latest story. We asked Briana for some other unique or surprising detail about the piece.

I sometimes try to tuck references to books, movies, or music that I like in my writing. I was listening to a lot of Queen when I drafted this story. They’re one of my favorite bands. The reference to them is kind of a nod to that.

We then asked her to share what the most difficult part of the artistic process is for her.

I often find it difficult to tap into personal experiences or emotions long enough and deeply enough to work through the entire writing process. I don’t usually write autobiographical stories, probably because all my attempts are still in some state of revision somewhere. Sometimes it’s really hard to return to something very personal.

And on the flipside, what is the most satisfying?

There are times, both when writing creatively and back in my days as a newspaper reporter, that you just feel like you’ve captured the story. I can’t really explain what that looks like, but you know it when it happens. And of course getting published – I had my first story published at the end of 2019 after a decade of writing and submitting. The fact that I can say I’m a published fiction writer is still surreal to me.

But real indeed!! And ten years can bring a lot of ups and downs, what is your biggest fear as a writer?

My creative writing professor in college once told us to be absolutely sure a story is ready to be published before you start submitting because you don’t want something floating out there you later realize you don’t want your name on. I worry about looking back at something and hating it.

A very rational fear, that feels a little like a tricky predicament because, as writers, we’re often also plagued with knowing when the story is finished.. when it’s finally ready. If we always waited for that “absolutely sure” moment, we might be waiting for a very long time. But it’s pretty common too, to have early work out in the world that you grow to like a little less.

We then asked Briana what advice she might give to her younger self.

Don’t worry about having some sort of message or bigger meaning in what you write. I was paralyzed for years because of this – I didn’t have some great philosophical meaning to my writing and I thought that prevented me from writing anything worth reading. Somewhere along the line, I realized I can just write a story, and if someone enjoys reading it, that makes it successful.

We then asked her to share what fuels her desire to write.

I honestly don’t know. I’ve always written stories, for as long as I’ve been able to write. I think writing is a way for me to work through experiences or questions. A literary scholar named Peter L. Caracciolo observed in an essay called “The House of Fiction and Le Jardin Anglo-Chinois” that early English novels and The Thousand and One Nights share a characteristic: “the sense that the world is full of stories, and that the common and appropriate destiny of experience is to be rendered into tales.” I think that’s how I feel about human experience generally – that it can and should be written down or told as stories to best understand it.

We totally agree with that, and it marries well with what was said about not worrying if there’s some deeper meaning in the writing. We are all, in a way, connected through our shared experiences and if just one person is engaged in a story and gets something out of it, then it’s worthwhile. And on that note, we asked what else she would like to share with potential readers.

Her response: “I hope you like the story!”

And of course, at last we asked what she thinks of when she hears the phrase “The Good Life.”

Finding your people and finding your place.

That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? Thank you, Briana, for taking the time away from your partner, pup, and that pesky dissertation, to answer our questions. We’re grateful for you willingness to share one of your stories with us and allowing us share it with our readers. We wish you the best!

Cheers,
~The Good Life Review Team

When we, TGLR, set out on a mission to publish stories and poems that “reveal the complexities hidden in the heartland and beyond” what we were talking about are pieces like the one from Ernie Sadashige. His story, Ersatz Coffee, shines a light on a part of Nebraska (and US) history that is not widely known: During World War II, thousands of Axis prisoners of war were held throughout Nebraska in base camps that included Fort Robinson, Camp Scottsbluff and Camp Atlanta. In this week’s Q&A we had the opportunity to do a deeper dive with Ernie about this topic, his story, and his writing life.

We began by asking him to share a little more about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of his story.

Many people are unaware the U.S. hosted World War 2 prison camps. The prisoners eased the labor shortage caused by Americans fighting overseas. Apparently, the German POWs were quite happy. In some ways they lived better than U.S. citizens who endured food and fuel rationing.

Sadly, POWs were treated better than Black soldiers. In Robert McLaughlin’s short story “A Short Wait Between Trains,” published in 1944 by the New Yorker, prisoners and guards dine together while segregated Black soldiers went to the back kitchen to get food.

We asked Ernie what else he learned through writing this piece.

The honor of the Greatest Generation. German prisoners lived under minimal security. One prisoner even walked back to camp after being left on a farm. Many POWs befriended Americans even as both sides fought gruesome battles in Europe. Some Germans returned after the war and married local women. It’s an attitude lost these days in our politically divisive society and amid the war crimes in Ukraine.

We then asked Ernie a few questions about his writing life, beginning with what the most difficult part of the writing process is for him.

Recently it’s finding something worth writing about. Sometimes it’s finding the right way to tell a story. I’m working on a prose poem now that’s already lived seven story lives in the first, second and third persons.

And what is the most satisfying? What fuels the desire to write?

That rush when a story finally feels “right” after weeks or months of revision and editing. It means I’ve given my characters my best.

I love telling stories. It’s so much fun watching my experiences or those of people I know become the characters I love. When that happens, I want to share those stories, like a proud parent or friend, even when my characters mess up. 

We then asked Ernie to share his biggest fear as a writer and his one word answer sums up what most of us probably fear on some level:

Failure.

We asked him to share what advice he would give to his younger writing self.

Live your life to the fullest. Any experiences that become source material are a bonus.

We asked Ernie what author(s) or other persons have been the biggest influence on his writing?

I am so grateful to my first writing teacher, Michael Deagler, who introduced many marvellous authors, including Gillian Flynn, whose dense prose I admire. Meg Files and Natalie Serber are both wonderful authors and excellent, supportive teachers. “Ersatz Coffee” came from an assignment in Natalie’s class.

Finally, as we always do, we asked what he thinks of when he hears the phrase “The Good Life.”

A life well lived for yourself and others. In the 1998 movie “Saving Private Ryan,” Matt Damon’s character asks whether he lived a life worthy of the sacrifices others made on his behalf. That’s “The Good Life.”

This is wonderful, Ernie! Thank you for sharing your work with us and taking extra time to participate in this Q&A. We hope you continue to find things worth writing about and we wish you the best!!

Cheers,
~The Good Life Review Team