Tag: conversations

Conversation with Tony Taddei

Denton LovingLeave a comment

For many years before Tony Taddei was creating characters on the page, he was creating them on the stage as a trained actor.  Born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, Tony now lives in New Jersey. I first met Tony in 2014 when we both attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. A few years later, we reconnected through the Bennington College Writing Seminars. Though all of my interactions with Tony had been related to writing, I hadn’t had the pleasure to read his work for myself until the recent publication of his collection of linked short stories, The Sons of the Santorelli. What a joy it was to discover the craftsmanship and poignancy in these twelve stories about an immigrant family, particularly the men in the family who struggle with their desires and ambitions. Yes, this is a narrative about an immigrant family, but as David Gates said about the book, this is not “the conventional immigrant family saga.” Tony was kind enough to answer some of my questions about putting these stories together, about how he avoided convention, and how he infused a political slant into such personal, character-driven writing.

DL: How long did it take you to write these stories, and do you recall when you knew how individual stories would work together? Can you talk about your reasons for writing multiple, linked stories rather than a novel?

TT: I took my time writing these stories, so that the process from drafting the initial stories to finalizing the collection probably took five or six years.  The collection wasn’t the only thing I was working on during the time, and, in any case, I didn’t want to rush the process of writing the collection.  First, because I wanted to get the premise of each story right as well as to spend time considering what stories might need to be added, and second, because I was having a lot of fun writing about these people and I kind of wanted to savor it. 

During the process of working on the stories I don’t think I really had a master plan for how they would all work together.  That said, once I decided to write one story for each of the Santorelli sons and grandsons as well as at least one story about the patriarch, the linkages between stories started to become evident, and I was able to find ways in rewriting the stories and adding new ones to get them to work together as a piece.  My goal was to have each story stand on its own but also for a reader to be able to sit back and think about them in their entirety after finishing the collection to realize that the parts of the book made up a whole.

As to why I wrote the saga of this family as linked stories rather than a novel, I did it because it gave me the ability to tell multiple, smaller stories that I would not have been able to tell in a novel (while still trying to make the novel a cohesive whole).  It was also a lot easier for me to write about the individuals in this very complex and human family in separate stories than it would have been in a novel.  By telling the story of the Santorellis a character at a time, I think I did more justice to each individual while still creating the personality and a legacy of a whole family.

DL: One of the recurring themes throughout these stories is the idea of the immigrant experience, often depicted here in connection with “immigrant shame” and the idea that America “breaks” the spirit of immigrants. This is the antithetical American story. How conscious were you of making this kind of political statement during the writing? Do you have advice for other writers about incorporating political ideas into fiction?

TT: As the work progressed, I was very conscious of it.  Having come from an immigrant family and seen them fail more than succeed at the things they most wanted I can be somewhat cynical about the idea of an American Dream to begin with. I knew that cynicism would likely play a role in the situations I put my characters in.

That said, I didn’t I initially set out to tell stories that torpedoed the idea of what can be achieved in America.  I set out to write human stories that were compelling to read as well as funny and tragic with as many twists and surprises as I could manage.  In order tell the truth about the characters in this family as I saw them, I had to show the forces that were working upon them. The largest of those forces being that for most immigrants and, especially for the poor, this country very often only lets them get so far before it pushes them back down again.  This comes in the form of economic imprisonment, and it comes in the form of racial imprisonment where one wave of immigrants who’d faced bigotry visits their own xenophobia and bigotry on the next wave of immigrants to reach America’s shores.   

My advice for writers who want to incorporate political ideas into fiction is to first find an honest story that is personal and then begin writing it without focusing on the political or cultural connotations. If the story is honest and tracks with the world we live in, they won’t be able to help themselves from writing about the political forces that are acting upon their characters. Those forces come into play in our lives most of the time without us even realizing they are there.  After that, when the writer looks back on what they’ve written, they can draw out the more political aspects of the story to any degree they choose. To put the above more succinctly, all politics are personal. I think any political writing should follow that guideline.

DL: Many of these stories are told through the male point of view which makes sense given the title of the collection. But that’s not to say that you don’t give voice to women within the Santorelli family. How did you settle on the balance between male and female characters and points-of-view? Were there any challenges in allowing the women to have their say in this male-dominated cast?

TT:  Not at all, because I think if you look closely at each of the stories, you’ll see that the women in the backgrounds of these men’s lives are the real truth-tellers.  The stories would not have found the ballast they needed for their conflict and reasoning if it weren’t for the women characters. A reader will likely see this most clearly in a story like “Commedia Dell’Arte” which has the matriarch of the family as the protagonist trying to make sense of and tell the truth about male dominance in her life.  But it’s just below the surface of most of the other stories as well. From “Songs for Swingin’ Lovers” where a prostitute early on dominates a group of highly dysfunctional and misogynist men, to “Valiant” where the sisters and especially the mother in the family turn out to be stronger and more insightful then either the father or the son.

So, no, I did not find many challenges in allowing the women to have their say in my largely male-dominated cast.  In fact, I’d say that the challenge was being able to hold off in letting the women have their say long enough so that the men could act out in the wrong-headed and solipsistic ways that I think make the stories interesting and recognizable to readers.  Especially female readers.

DL: In an effort to demystify the process, I always ask writers about the process of submitting their manuscripts for publication. Can you describe the time between writing and publishing these stories? How did you connect with Bordighera Press?

TT:  The time between writing and publishing was, to some extent, concurrent.  I started to send the manuscript to publishers when I had most of the stories finished but was still revising the last two or three.  At that point it was rejection, rejection, rejection until I found Bordighera Press.

Bordighera is a small independent press that is partially privately funded with a mission to publish writing about the culture of Italy and Italian Americans—essays, fiction, poetry, what have you.  They publish a semiannual review of shorter work as well as a twice yearly run of new full-length work and are always looking for good writing that fits the themes of Italian life.   About 2 years ago, I submitted the title story of my collection to Bordighera for consideration in their semiannual review, and it was accepted.  Once I realized that they also published full length work, I sent the full and, by then, nearly completed manuscript, and I was thrilled when they said they wanted to publish it. 

I’ve been telling people who ask how you find a publisher for your work that you have to persevere until you find a publisher that is the right fit.  Most of the time that’s easier said than done.  In my case I believe it was a bit easier because the work was a more-or-less exact match with the kind of work Bordighera is looking for.

DL: What are you working on now?

TT: I’m finishing up another collection of short stories that revolve around the melancholy, indignities, and occasional pleasures that men face as they age.  Each of these stories also weaves in animals and their ability to live instinctually and unquestioningly as a humorous and (I think) affecting counterpoint to the men in the stories who are creating their own problems and then struggling to accept the circumstances they find themselves in.  These two themes may not at first glance seem to go together, but I think the stories work better because of their juxtaposition. I’m hoping to have these stories published as a collection sometime soon and readers can judge for themselves. For now, if any of your readers want to take a look a couple of these stories, they a can go to Animal Literary Magazine and The Florida Review online.  I’m also beginning a novel but it’s too early to say much about it, so I’ll have to get back to you on that.

DL: Are there any opportunities coming up for readers to hear you read from The Sons of the Santorelli either via Zoom or in person?

TT: Yes, I recently read an excerpt from a story in the collection – “We Now Conclude Our Broadcast Day” – online for the Prospect Street Reading series and readers can view that on Facebook Events at  https://www.facebook.com/events/413658933932101/?ref=newsfeed (no Facebook account required to view).

Folks can also go to the Selected Audio section of my website and listen to me read the first two stories from the collection.

Other readings are in the works, and I’ll post the particulars to my social media feeds when they’re set.  (@tony_taddei / Twitter; Tony Taddei / Facebook; tonytaddei / Instagram)

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Huge thanks to Tony for speaking to me about his new book. Don’t forget to order The Sons of the Santorelli now from Bordighera Press. Make sure you never miss a post by subscribing here:

Conversation with Julia Wendell

Denton Loving1 Comment

Julia Wendell is a poet currently living in Aiken, South Carolina. She is also a three-day event rider, the experience of which considerably informs her newest collection of poetry, The Art of Falling, published by FutureCycle Press. Amanda Moore said this about The Art of Falling: “…knowing how to fall allows Wendell’s open-eyed work to acknowledge pain but not be weighed down by it, moving instead to consider what blossoms and grows each passing season. Love here is represented by and extended to plants and animals—reluctant gladiolas, bursting peonies, a menagerie of dogs and birds—but nothing so beloved as horses, an anchoring and comforting presence throughout.”

I found The Art of Falling to be a powerful book encompassing decades of Julia’s life, moving from childhood traumas to complexities of adulthood. In one poem, Julia describes the art of falling as a practice perfected through pain and intense self-awareness, visible in “the coat hook / of my separated shoulder, / my spine’s bumpy lane, / sunspots littering my back— / the parts of me / I can’t see without mirrors.” In other poems, the art of falling is also made known in far less visible ways. Julia was kind enough to speak to me about her new book, her writing process, ekphrastic poetry and what it’s like to be married to another poet.

DL: Many of the poems in “The Art of Falling” touch on a fall you suffered from a horse that caused significant physical pain. But these poems reveal other traumas as well. What’s your process like for transforming writing about trauma into a well-crafted poem?

JW: It wasn’t one fall from a horse, but many: actually, a lifetime of falls. The old directive is true for me—you fall off a horse, you get back on. You fall off a poem, you get back on. Some falls are worse than others. And the older you get, the worse they tend to be, and the harder it is to get back on. Several years ago, I broke my hip as well as my leg falling from one of my horses, and that fall transformed my life for a year, as well as the writing of The Art of Falling. I found ways to live through the pain and to see through it. I had to change my life pretty drastically during that time, and my poems became both a respite and a way to work through the ordeal. I couldn’t get on a horse, but I could go to my desk with the help of a cane or just steadying myself on furniture as I went across the room.

DL: I was thrilled to read your poem, “Horse in the Landscape” which is an ekphrastic work related to Franz Marc’s painting with the same name. This is also the image used for the book’s cover. I recently taught a workshop on ekphrastic writing. Can you talk about the relationship that can exist between visual art and written work? Are you also a visual artist?

JW: No, I’m not a visual artist, but the piano is my brush; has been all my life, and music often finds its way into my poems. In reference to the above question about writing through pain: while writing the poems in The Art of Falling, I re-visited Frida Kahlo’s life and work. Her example taught me how to keep making art while in terrible pain. I read everything I could get my hands on about her life and artistic process, and studied her strange, surreal self-portraits. I even went to Mexico City after I had partially healed and visited her house, Casa Azul. I was drawn to her for the obvious parallel between her life and mine at the time. Both of us had our hips gored by rods, except that hers was put there by a bus and mine was put there by a surgeon. Here was an artist who experienced a lifetime of pain, and yet she kept getting back on the horse of her art to create her organic, visceral, paintings. The poem “Portrait Chinois” came directly from my re-experience with Frida’s work.

Similarly, the figure of the broken girl in Wyeth’s Christina’s World reminded me of my own plight; and through her semi-reclined pull and yearning for the gray house on the hill, despite her infirmities and inability to walk, drew me to ponder what it would be like for her to crawl to the house, to go inside, to open up her world and reach her dream destination.

I have always loved Franz Marc’s work for its ebullience and movement, and of course for its subject matter. But what pulled me to Horse in the Landscape is also what struck me about Christina’s World—we see a still landscape through the girl’s and horse’s perspectives, as they turn their backs to us. It is a world of no movement, only thought and perspective, possibility and possible movement, which is what my life had become during the time I was so badly injured. I had to contemplate my life through quiet and stillness, and find my poems there.

I chose the cover for The Art of Falling before I had written Horse in the Landscape. The pdf’s of the interior of the book were almost ready for the printer. Suddenly, I had the urge to write the poem and spent last Christmas season writing and re-writing it, thinking I would save it for some other project. Then Diane Kistner, the editor at FutureCycle Press, contacted me. Did I have another poem that might fit into the book? The way the pages were laying out, she needed one. Uncanny coincidence.

DL: I always ask writers about the process of compiling, submitting and publishing their books, and I’m especially interested in asking you because this is, I believe, your eleventh book. How long did it take you to write and shape the poems in this collection? How did you find and form a relationship with FutureCycle Press?

JW: The poems in The Art of Falling span at least a decade. The last book, Take This Spoon, had a very specific theme of poems about family, and the relationship to food and eating and anorexia, and even incorporated old family recipes. I was already working on the poems in The Art of Falling when Take This Spoon came out in 2016. The manuscript has seen many, many revisions: different title, different order, new poems. It’s actually my sixth, full-length collection, having published a number of chapbooks in addition to the longer books. I submitted to FutureCycle at the suggestion of April Ossmann, with whom I worked on an earlier draft of The Art of Falling. Diane Kistner, editor at FutureCycle, was very good at managing the publication details of the book, though not so much involved with line edits or broader editorial suggestions. For those I relied on April, Jack Stephens, D.W. Fenza, and most especially my husband, Barrett Warner.

DL: I have to ask you about Barrett Warner who is also a writer. To what extent do you and he read and comment on each other’s work?

JW: Barrett reads and helps edit everything I write, as well as a tone of what other people are writing. When he likes reading something his hand twists up his hair, and if he comes back to me with really messy hair, I know he liked it. I am dependent upon him as my first reader. He is a bit more independent of me, perhaps because as an editor he has such rich connections with other writers. I am more of an artistic recluse, and I like it that way. But everyone needs a first reader, and Barrett’s mine. In sickness and in first drafts, as they say.

DL: In addition to being a writer, you’re a three-day event rider. It’s also clear in your poetry how much you love and respect horses. Are there lessons from the equestrian world that also apply to writing?

JW: Ride the rhythm, create the energy from behind, send it forward, don’t let the poem go against your hand. Talk to your poem. Give it confidence by having clear intentions. Give it treats. There must be a daily devotion to the art of riding, as there must be to writing. The development of a poem, as well as a horse, comes in the smallest of increments, and must be addressed day after day after day. Writing is re-writing; riding is re-riding. The daily devotional is how you get there.

DL: What are you working on now?

JW: The next poem. Then, the one after that.

Seriously, though: recently I’ve collected poems I’ve written about my daughter in her lifetime (and even before that), and have compiled a collection called “Daughter Days.”  I have plans to get back to that manuscript to revise it and see if I still like it before I send it out into the world. Writing is re-writing, and submitting is re-submitting.

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Find out more about Julia on her website, and don’t forget to order her newest publication, The Art of Falling. My next post will feature a writing exercise inspired by one of Julia Wendell’s poems. Make sure you never miss a post by subscribing here:

Conversation with Christopher Linforth

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I first met Christopher Linforth in 2014 at Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Our paths crossed again in 2019 at Writers in Paradise – Eckerd College Writers Conference. Christopher is a graduate of Virginia Tech’s MFA program, and recently, he was appointed Editor-in-Chief of Atticus Review. Christopher’s first two books are When You Find Us We Will Be Gone (Lamar University Press, 2014) and Directory (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2020).

His third collection of short fiction, The Distortions, was named winner of the 2020 Orison Books Fiction Prize and has just been released by Orison Press. The Distortions is a beautiful collection of stories, thematically linked by the Croatian-Serbian War, particularly its aftermath. In each story, the weight of the past continues to press against the present. For many of these characters, historical events have had generational effects. These are not war stories although the war is a villainous character, always looming in the background. More than war stories, these stories are often about love–all kinds of love including the kinds that are sadly insufficient as well as the kinds that keep trying.

Christopher is a gifted writer. His own experience living in Zagreb was surely useful in writing these stories, but each story is subtly elevated by detailed knowledge that must have required significant research. In the same way that these are not war stories, this is also not a book about Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, etc. as much as it’s a book about displacement and identity and the universal ways we humans struggle to put the past behind us. Christopher agreed to answer some questions about The Distortions as well as about his writing and publishing.

DL: Your new collection of short stories, The Distortions, centers on the aftermath of the Yugoslav Wars, mostly focusing though on the Croatian-Serbian conflict. Although you lived in Zagreb for some time, you come from a very different background. Did you find your outside perspective to be helpful or more challenging as you wrote these stories? Can you talk about how the kinds of research that were required for these stories?

CL: In some ways, my position as an outsider helped me to broach the aftermath of the war in new and different ways. Josip Novakovich talks in the afterword to Infidelities about the reluctance of people in the former Yugoslavia to talk or write about the war. Though this has changed in recent years and has led many writers from those countries to write compelling novels about the war, I still felt I had something to say. Over the years, to aid my poor memory, I read dozens of history books on the subject and watched documentaries, and delved into tranches of original documents and news reports, and I talked with people from that area. Much of that information, though, never appears in the book. Instead, I focused more on the characters and the stories while hewing—as much as one can—to the historical, political, and cultural realities of the time.

DL: So much of the tension in your stories comes from the weight of the past pressing into a character’s present. Moving back and forth through time can be tricky, but it can also enrich a narrative as it clearly does in your stories.

CL: Whenever possible, I try to eschew as much backstory as possible and instead focus the story on the present action. With the stories being set in former Yugoslavia and revolving around a major but little-known war, I tried to strike a balance of including information (in non-expository ways) that would help an American audience understand the ramifications of the war for the characters while also keeping the pacing tight and the stories interesting.

DL: Two of my favorite stories in The Distortions are epistolary. I’m thinking about “brb” (seemingly told through a long Instant Message) and “Sojourn” (told through a more traditional letter). What I appreciate about both stories are their gestures toward the confessional. Do you have advice for writers who want to explore the epistolary form? Does a story told through a letter have special considerations?

CL: It’s funny. For me, “Sojourn,” is an imagined letter, not an actual one. The story reads and feels like a letter and perhaps contains a vestigial element of that form. The story, to me at least, has an uncertain form: part letter, part monological confession, part a story being told. The hybrid nature perhaps also reflects the vacillating nature and identity of the narrator. Similarly, “brb” uses misdirection about the narrator’s identity to say something about the stylized IM form. The intersection of the confession and the letter form, or variants thereof, often work well together. They allow a “natural” unfolding of thought on the page addressed to someone off it. For me, that is where the intimacy and magic of the epistolary form lie.

DL: I’ve been working on a collection of short stories for several years, and through that time, the manuscript keeps shifting. How long did it take you to write and shape these stories? What was the submission and publication process like for The Distortions?

CL: The earliest stories were drafted around 2014 and the latest around 2019. It was a long process of revision and then discarding the lesser stories (perhaps another six or seven). Some stories, like “brb,” emerged fully formed, with only minor edits later. Others, like “The Little Girls,” I rewrote several times over the years. I entered the manuscript into a handful of contests in late 2019 and early 2020, perhaps only five or six altogether, while constantly fine-tuning it the whole time. The collection won the Orison Fiction Book Prize in July 2020 and then underwent another year of refinement.

DL: What are you working on now?

CL: I’m working on two books. One is a sister project to The Distortions. Tentatively titled The Homeland War, it’s centered on two young men in Zagreb just before the outbreak of war. The novel explores toxic masculinity and social class and the football hooliganism endemic in the 1990s. The other book, currently untitled, examines the intersections of internet culture and the New York art scene. Stories from this collection are forthcoming in Cutleaf and in the Irish magazine, Banshee.

DL: Are there any opportunities coming up for readers to meet you or study with you via Zoom or in person?

CL: Yes, I teach online creative writing classes for The Writer’s Center in DC, and I take on private editing clients now and again. I’m also available for workshops and readings and so forth. I also have some more on the origins of the book over at Necessary Fiction.

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Conversation with Walter M. Robinson

Denton Loving2 Comments

Walter M. Robinson is a writer and physician. Originally from Nashville, Tennessee, Walter now lives in Massachusetts. His collection of essays, What Cannot Be Undone—True Stories of a Life in Medicine, won the River Teeth Book Prize for 2020 and was published by University of New Mexico Press. Walter has been a fellow at MacDowell and Yaddo and was a PEN-New England “New Discovery in Non-Fiction.”

What Cannot Be Undone relates stories from a lifetime of professional experience, primarily working with cystic fibrosis patients. That experience expertly shows the complexity of cystic fibrosis, of the body in general, and of the inner workings of the mind and soul of a medical professional. Among the many aspects of Walter’s work, I admire how he is able to break down complicated medical information so that I, as a lay person, am able to understand it. Walter also served as a medical/hospital ethicist, and the ethical questions—about why and how a person is treated—are some of my favorite parts of these essays.

Walter and I first met as students in the Bennington Writing Seminars, and now we work together as editors at EastOver Press and Cutleaf. Walter agreed to answer some questions about What Cannot Be Undone as well as about the writing and publishing process. Come back tomorrow for a writing exercise inspired by Walter’s work in non-fiction.

DL: The full title of your book is What Cannot Be Undone: True Stories of a Life in Medicine, and yet, you explain in the book’s foreword that you’ve relied on an imperfect memory to write these essays. Can you talk about the challenge of relying on memory in nonfiction, some of the workarounds, and what added measures you took to protect the privacy of patients?

WR: Everything in the book is just as I remember it, but I acknowledge in the foreword that others might remember these events differently than I do. Everyone’s memory is imperfect because we only notice fragments of any event while it is happening, and as time passes, the act of remembering brings some things into sharper focus while others fade away. This is the fallible nature of human memory.

I chose the term “true stories” because these essays are not case reports or journalistic accounts, but nor are they fiction. I wrote them in a style that tries to give life to my experience as a doctor rather than simply recounting a clinical case. Medical case reports never use the first person, but I use it in some of these essays to accentuate that the story is about my perspective. In other essays I use the third person to remove myself somewhat as a character, while in still others I use third person to emphasize how I see myself in the past as a very different person. None of these approaches are typical in medical reports, so it seemed like the term “true stories” was the best fit.

I changed the identifying details of patients and families because I didn’t want my version of events to crowd out the families’ or patients’ versions. I was just one doctor among many, and I was often present at a very difficult part of their lives. I hope the story they live with now is not about me but about their loved one.

One way a nonfiction writer can address natural flaws of memory is to acknowledge in the essay that his version of events is not necessarily the only accurate account, as I did in “Nurse Clappy Gets His.” Another way is to take care not to re-configure the story to make himself look smarter, wiser, or kinder than he was in the moment. I hope I succeeded in that. As I wrote in the foreword, I am “no hero, no wizard, no saint.”  

DL: At the time we met, your goal was to find a way to write about your experiences as a doctor, particularly one who worked with cystic fibrosis patients. So it seems like What Cannot Be Undone is the successful answer to that pursuit. Is this book exactly as you imagined it?

WR: I didn’t call myself a writer when I started at Bennington, though I had written scores of academic papers. I had finished about 60% of what I called a “social history” of cystic fibrosis. It was overly academic and unbearably dull. I knew it, and anyone who tried to read it knew it. Thank goodness my teacher at Bennington, Susan Cheever, told me at our very first meeting, “Walter, this is terrible, just start over.” I will forever be grateful to her for that advice because it saved me from trying to rescue something that wasn’t worth the effort.

And while I started over, I followed the Bennington method: Read one hundred books to write one. Pay close attention to the work of others. Read the work of the past in order to make the work of the present. Gather up the tools of art to see if they fit your own work. What a gift those reading lists have been to me!

By the time I finished I had some idea of what I was doing, and I’ve just kept at it. So I’d say this book is the descendent of that early draft, but they have very little in common. Or at least I hope so.

DL: The essays in What Cannot Be Undone describe traumatic events, particularly for the patients whose lives you write about. But what has always been clear to me in reading your work is that you as a medical professional have carried much of that traumatic history with you. Do you have advice for writers writing about their own trauma?

WR: I think of my work as a doctor as meaningful, moving, difficult, exhausting, and completely absorbing. Yes, it was sometimes heartbreaking, but sometimes it was joyful. I loved being a doctor most of the time, even though I worked mostly with patients with life-limiting illnesses. I admit that I am a person who concentrates more than most on the tragic aspects of human life, and many of the stories in this book end with the death of a patient because being at the bedside of these patients may be the most meaningful work I have ever done.

In the most personal essays in the book, “The Necessary Monster” and “White Coat, Black Habit,” I write about my work in a way that most doctors keep private. I try to bear witness to my uncertainty about my value as a doctor and a human.

I think anyone trying to write about difficult experiences should be as honest as they can but also hold things in reserve. Not every part of a life should be open to public view.

DL: In my recent conversation with Lauren Davis, she said that it took her about five years and 48 rejections before she found a publisher for her first full-length collection of poems. How long did it take you to write and shape these essays? What was the submission and publication process like for What Cannot Be Undone?

WR: I worked on these essays much longer than I work on essays now because I was learning how to write while I was writing this book. I revised all of them over and over and started over with a blank page many times. I’ve gotten much faster over the years, especially in knowing what is not working and starting over.

Once I had enough essays for a book, I submitted the manuscript to an agent and was floored when she said “yes.” I thought it would be smooth sailing from then on, but eighteen months later most of the publishers had not replied. I thanked the agent for her time, and I gave up.

But then two friends from Bennington—one of them you––told me about contests for manuscripts run by journals, and so I submitted it to as many contests as I could find.  A year later, I had gotten form rejections from every single contest. I thanked my two friends, and I gave up, again.

I told myself, “This is no tragedy. You learned so much by writing these essays. This is your second career, and you started in your late fifties. What did you expect? Time to move on to something else.”

As is so often the case, I was wrong again. I thought I had gotten rejections from every contest, but one day I got a call from an unknown number. I didn’t pick up; surely it was those people who are so worried about my warranty expiring, right? But no, the voicemail was from the very kind editor at River Teeth, telling me I had won their Literary Nonfiction Prize. I smiled so hard the rest of that day my face hurt.

After winning the Prize, the publication process was a breeze. The folks at University of New Mexico Press have been delightful and kind to a first-time author. I didn’t count the number of rejections, but I wrote the first very rough draft of one of the essays, “Nurse Clappy Gets His,” in July 2012, and the book came out in February 2022. So it took about ten years.

DL: What are you working on now?

WR: I have been working on two projects. One is another essay collection about medicine and medical ethics tentatively titled “Deciding the Fate of Others.” The other is a more speculative book about the lives my ancestors did not lead so that I might be here to write a book. 

DL: Are there any opportunities coming up for readers to meet you or study with you via zoom or in person? (workshops, readings, interviews, AWP?)

WR: I’ll be at AWP with EastOver Press and Cutleaf, so please stop by our booth and say hello if you’d like to talk about the book. And I am happy to try to arrange readings or other interviews or talks about the book, over Zoom or in person. Contact me at words (at) wmrobinson (dot) com.

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My next post will feature a writing exercise inspired by one of Walter M. Robinson’s essays in What Cannot Be Undone—True Stories of a Life in Medicine.

Conversation with Lauren Davis

Denton Loving5 Comments

Lauren Davis is a writer who lives on the Olympic Peninsula. I first met Lauren when we were both MFA students at Bennington College. Since that time, Lauren has published two chapbooks of poetry, and, most recently, a full-length collection, Home Beneath the Church. “Lauren Davis is the poet you need to be reading,” says Kelli Russell Agodon, and I couldn’t agree more.

Home Beneath the Church includes deeply personal poems about the body and then moves into writing about religious spaces. Clearly, the body is one such religious space, perhaps even the holiest. But there are also churches, French basilicas, grottoes reserved for anchoresses and saints. And there is also the outside world: the forest, the bay, the moon, and everything that lives and endures in that outside world. Davis finds the holiness in it all.

Lauren agreed to answer some questions about Home Beneath the Church as well as about the writing and publishing process. Come back tomorrow for a writing exercise inspired by Lauren’s new collection.

DL: So many of the poems in Home Beneath the Church explore deeply personal material about your body and particularly your health. I often feel that we poets are inherently confessional, but can you talk about the process of writing these poems?

LD: I sometimes wept while putting pen to paper. One thing that kept me going was my absolute rage at the shame that surrounds women’s bodies. There was nothing for me to be ashamed of in these poems, and yet, I struggled. I found this struggle infuriating, so I pressed forward.

DL: Do you have advice for writers who are attempting to write about the body? Were there other poets or specific poems you referred to for guidance?

LD: Read, read, read. That’s my advice. Somewhere someone has taken the plunge, or they’ve taken a similar risk. I turned many times to Sharon Olds and Jason Shinder. I also made use of therapy. There’s so much to unravel when we talk about bodies.

DL: One of the questions I’m asked the most, especially by poets early in their career, is how to not sound overly prosaic. What kind of craft elements do you employ to identify and modify those prosaic turns of phrase?

LD: We’re not supposed to be overly prosaic? That’s news to me! I often find the opposite situation in new writers. They’re writing in such a complicated or elevated manner that the music, imagery, and meaning gets lost. But my advice, whether the new writer is dealing with either side of the spectrum, is to read, read, read. There is no substitute. And read living poets. Give the Greats a rest for a moment. Come back to them in a couple of years. For now, find those writers that are winning awards and branch out from there.

DL: In my conversation with Rosemary Royston last month, she said that it took her about six years of reorganizing, resending, and hoping before she found a publisher for her most recent collection of poems. How long did it take you to write and shape this collection? What was the submission and publication process like for Home Beneath the Church?

LD: Oh, Lord. Who really knows how long this took? Five years? And forty-eight rejections, I think. Each rejection helped shape the book in its own way. The publication process was a little rocky. We entered the pandemic shutdown, and I just took my hands off of it. Full surrender. And I could not be happier with the final product that Fernwood Press delivered.

DL: I know you have another collection of poems already in the works. If it’s not too early, can you tell us when that will be available? And what are you working on now?

LD: When I Drowned will be available in Winter 2023 through Aldrich Press. At the moment, I’m working on a novel titled The Sleeping Cure, and I’m seeking a publisher for my short-story collection The Milk of Dead Mothers.

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My next post will feature a writing exercise inspired by one of Lauren Davis’s poems in Home Beneath the Church, as well as more information about where you can hear Lauren read this spring.