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[img_assist|nid=674|title=Elise Juska|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=200|height=301]Elise Juska is in good company. Her writing has been compared to the work of Helen Fielding and Nick Hornby and her newest essay will appear in Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume this summer alongside noted women writers Meg Cabot and Jennifer Connelly.
Her work has also been published in numerous literary journals and her first novel, Getting Over Jack Wagner, was named a "Critic’s Choice" by People. Her second novel, The Hazards of Sleeping Alone, received similar praise. This June, Elise’s third book, One for Sorrow, Two for Joy, will be published by Simon & Schuster.

Along with being a successful writer, Elise is as an assistant professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia She also runs writing workshops for the New School in New York City and has served on the fiction faculty at many writing conferences around the country.

Where did you get your inspiration for your newest book, One for Sorrow, Two for Joy?
When I was in college, I lived in Galway, Ireland, for six months— my mother still refers to those times as "the gem in my life." I’ve wanted to write about the place ever since. When I began working on this book, I wasn’t exactly sure at first where it was going, except that Claire, the narrator, would end up there.

One of the things that struck me in Ireland was the way language was used and how it sounded when people were telling stories. The content of a particular story often seemed less important than how skillfully and colorfully it was told. In the novel, Claire is enamored with language too, but her interest is more academic— she’s a linguist, a crossword puzzle writer— and the attitudes about language that she encounters in Ireland contrast and challenge her own.

In a related story from my own life, when I lived in Galway, I studied with a flutist there. I had been classically trained, though, and when she talked about ancient church modes, encouraging me to play by ear, without notes on a page, I panicked. Gradually— though not very gracefully— I managed to do it. When working on the novel, I had this general shift in mind: that my changed perspective on playing music would be reflected in Claire’s changing relationship with language.

The title — One for Sorrow, Two for Joy — is a line from an Irish nursery rhyme about spotting magpies. If you see one, it’s a bad omen; two, a good omen. In Ireland, I was surprised that my college aged Irish friends believed in this legend so whole-heartedly. The sight of magpies could leave them alternately crushed or elated. It was the completeness of this belief that I found fascinating. The title of the novel speaks to the superstition specifically, as well as Claire’s struggles with faith and belief.

This third novel is fairly different from either of the first two. For one thing, the setting is more palpable and important, not just in the physical details but the sensibility of the place. And structurally, this story relies as much on the past as the present, so writing it required a different, perhaps more difficult, balance. If there’s a common thread among the three books, it would probably be mother-daughter relationships, as viewed through various lenses: in The Hazards of Sleeping Alone, the narrator is the mother of a recent college graduate; in One for Sorrow, Claire’s visit to Ireland forces her to look more closely at her relationship with her mother, a complicated Irish woman with whom Claire was never close.

With your teaching load at the University of the Arts and the New School how do you find time to write? In turn, how does teaching writing influence your own writing life?
For me, the two things— writing and teaching—invigorate each other. As a teacher, you’re forced to organize and articulate what you think about your subject, to reiterate it to your students as you reiterate it to yourself. If I’m feeling frustrated with writing or publishing, stepping into the classroom and talking about short stories with a group of smart, energized, creative students reinforces what I love about writing fiction. It reminds me of what matters.

Like many working writers, you split your time between Philadelphia and Maine. How do these two particular settings influence (or impede) your writing?
I grew up in Philadelphia but have roots in Maine too. Growing up, I spent time in Maine each summer. The two places seem to complement the two parts of my writing self: the part that feeds off the creative energy of a busy city and the part that needs to hole up and work in a cottage in the woods (which, in the summer, is where I disappear to).

Who are you reading now?
"The Emperor’s Children" by Claire Messud and "The Ruins of California" by Martha Sherrill — I just finished and enjoyed both. The most satisfying reading of the past few weeks, though, has been the final fiction portfolios from my students at the University of the Arts; their effort and creativity blew me away.

Aimee LaBrie’s stories have been published in many literary journals. She recently received the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, which will publish her short story collection in December. Aimee serves on the Philadelphia Stories Planning & Development Board.

[img_assist|nid=676|title=Curtis Smith|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=151|height=113]Curtis Smith has the corner on the short story market. His fiction and essays have appeared in over fifty literary journals and anthologies, he has published two collections of short-short stories (Placing Ourselves Among the Living and In the Jukebox Light), and his third collection will feature both a novella and more short stories. He is also a novelist (An Unadorned Life), a special learning teacher, father of a four-year old and a husband.
Somehow, he manages to take on all of these roles and write short stories that Laurel Johnson, editor of The Midwest Book Review has said make his newest book, The Species Crown (June ’07, Press 53) “the latest literary gem.”

Other editors praise his ability to create a complex inner life for the individuals who lurch through his stories:

… Smith’s characters walk a thin line separating light and darkness, and when they stumble—as they invariably do—they fall into the dark side, into a world of hurt and crime—or worse. Men and monsters: we soon come to realize, there’s really little difference between the two. How easily his characters step into the shoes of killers, how perfectly they wear the skin of Godzilla. These are not tales to calm our jackrabbity hearts.

— Jim Clark, editor, The Greensboro Review

Recently, Smith gave Philadelphia Stories an inside peek into what allows him to move among his many roles while still remaining one of the most masterful story tellers of our time.

What is your writing process?
I bookend each day with writing time. I set the alarm early to get forty minutes or so of quiet time in the morning, and I try to squeeze an hour in at night. In between, I snatch what pilfered bits I can. The peripheral me leans toward the ragged – often late, forgetful, shirt untucked and hair uncombed – but the writing side of my life is strangely regimented, a Felix Unger resurrection, my compulsions meshing with notions of efficiency that probably make sense to me alone.

Where do you get your inspiration?
I believe writers are very similar to the types of people who spend long hours in their garages or workshops. We enjoy solitude. We can get lost in daydreams, in the imagining of what could be. The act of tinkering soothes some part of our brains. Through our days, we’re all bombarded by random stimuli, so much so that we can barely process it all, yet for some reason a certain image or notion becomes captured in our heads. Sometimes, I have to jot an idea down on the nearest piece of paper; most times a concept will bounce around my skull much like a hailstone in the clouds, a gradual growing and accumulating until it achieves some sort of critical mass. I’ll then write these bits down in a journal, where they’ll wait until I can find use for them.
Inspiration also comes from reminding myself of the rewards of discovery and immersion that wait in the whole process. When you ask the hard questions of a character you’ve created – what do they believe and why and what are they willing to do to achieve and defend these things – you’re also asking yourself. Being honest with a character, even if it’s a person totally unlike you, often entails being honest with yourself. It’s the whole examined life thing – it’s a wonderful benefit of the creative process.

What is the best writing advice you’ve ever gotten?
I don’t think the best writing advice came to me in terms of words – it was more subtle than that. In the mid-90’s I was enrolled in a MFA program in Vermont. I’d published a few stories in nice journals, and I thought I was on my way. But through the course of my studies, I got to know my fellow students and the faculty, and it dawned on me that there were a lot of extremely smart and creative people doing the same thing I was. And all of us were competing for a very limited number of pages available in literary journals and, even scarcer, book titles.
I think of those folks a lot now when I write. It helps me hold my work to a higher standard. I may create alone, but once my manuscript lands on an editor’s desk, it’s just one of many. This bigger view helps me to keep asking the tough questions of my work, and the manner in which I answer those questions may be just the little bit of difference that might help my piece stand out.

How does place influence your writing?
I grew up in Ardmore. I’ve worked for the past twenty-some years in the Harrisburg area. I lived a number of years in Erie. My whole family is from Scranton. So I feel as though all my work, whether directly stated or implied, is rooted in Pennsylvania. I love our climate, its seasons, its snowstorms and heat waves, its brilliant, crisp autumn mornings. I love the grays of a hike through winter woods. Even my stories that take place in different locations often feature transplanted Pennsylvanians. All the stories we weave need a backdrop, a Point A, a launch pad of details and sensibilities. Pennsylvania is my Point A.

Who are some of your favorite authors?
Of the top of my head, I’ll go with Milan Kundera, Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood, Denis Johnson, Tobias Wolff, Richard Ford, Ellen Gilchrist, and Rick Bass– although sometimes I read their work and then feel both moved and humbled, reminded once again of how much more I need to learn.
Aimee LaBrie’s stories have been published in many literary journals. She recently received the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, which will publish her short story collection in December. Aimee serves on the Philadelphia Stories Planning & Development Board.

[img_assist|nid=661|title=David Wiesner|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=171]David Wiesner

When did you decide to become a children’s book author?
I grew up in suburban New Jersey drawing and painting. I realized pretty early on that I liked to tell stories with pictures. I found the narrative aspect of it very appealing. As a kid, I read countless comic books and watched old movies, and it came into focus when I went to art school. I began to feel books were the form in which I wanted to do my art. I knew I didn’t want to do comic books — that world at the time seemed to stop at 14-year-old boys – and picture books felt like the right place.

How is telling stories with pictures different than with words?
It’s mostly in the reading — the reader is telling the story rather than the author. It’s a different kind of experience. The story has more ambiguity to it, and I like that each reader can bring new things to it.

Where do your ideas come from?
Everything starts in a sketchbook. I draw out all the pages and sketch it out. It’s fun to rough out the story, and I can tell pretty quickly whether text will be one of the tools I use. I almost always begin with a visual image, a recurring thematic idea, something strange and magical that can be around the corner. I do lots of doodles, and try and find out the story behind them. I come up with visual stories: who is the character? They reveal themselves to me. There always comes a point where suddenly I realize, ‘oh, that’s what this is all about.’

With your love of comic books as a child, have you ever thought of getting into the graphic novel market?
I am seriously exploring the possibility. It would be fun to work in a collaborative way with another artist on this. It’s a totally involving thing; but I don’t want to spend seven or eight years on it. It’s hard enough doing a picture book; it was five years between my last two books.

Do you have any advice to others wanting to pursue a career in the highly competitive children’s book market?
Do the work that is really personal, that interests you — not what you think others want, or what the market wants. The truly personal work is what will probably resonate most.

 [img_assist|nid=662|title=Judy Schachner|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=150|height=155]Judy Schachner

When did you decide to become a children’s book author?
I decided when I was in college and aware of all kinds of illustrations. At the time, it was only about the art. I never considered myself a writer and didn’t do well in it in high school.
After college, I went to Houghton Mifflin because it was mainstream illustration, and then took a job in a greeting card factory until I met my husband. It wasn’t until I met him that I could take the time to develop a portfolio, which I started in 1979 – and didn’t finish until 1990.
After reading so many children’s books, I knew I needed to pursue it. I gave myself a year to put the portfolio together, then I called publishing houses. For those that would take an interview, I made a date and visited in one day. I found a publisher, Crown, who encouraged me to write, and I taught myself how to write quickly.
I went to the library, took out a book I liked and listened to the rhythm. I read it fifty times out loud until I had the same kind of rhythm.

How is writing a picture book different than one using all text?
You don’t need a lot of describing words; you have pictures and images. I usually overwrite, and you have to slice and dice and remove so much of it. You have to put your ego away and read it out loud. You see what is necessary. Picture books are much like constructing a poem, trying to be spare and go to the heart of the action. Reading well-constructed children’s books is the best teacher — and having the mind of a child, which I think do.

Skippyjon Jones seems to have really resonated with kids. Why do you think he’s so popular?
Kids identify with his imagination. They love the idea that he goes into his closet to make up characters and they compare themselves with him. They also identify with Skippy’s naughtiness. They identify with Mama Junebug trying to make him do some thinking, and even when he’s naughty, his mother still loves him so much.

Do you have any advice to others wanting to pursue a career in the highly competitive children’s book market?
Make personal connections; go to conferences. As an illustrator, some publishers will see you in person, and that is a really good thing to do. Join The Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI). I’m not a joiner, and that is the one group that inspired me.

Can you offer any advice to the many creative writers who are trying to juggle work and family, yet want to do creative writing?
Try not put stress on yourself. Even if you wrote a sentence a day, just sit down and write. If you promise yourself a little bit, you’ll probably get more. Fill journals if you’re not verbal. Emerson said a journal should be savings bank of the mind. If you deposit something every day (a scene, texture, space, sentence from a magazine) those things add up.

[img_assist|nid=633|title=Camille Paglia|desc=|link=node|align=center|width=200|height=130][img_assist|nid=634|title=Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World’s Best Poems|desc=|link=url|url=http://www.amazon.com/Break-Blow-Burn-Camille-Forty-three/dp/0375420843/sr|align=right|width=150|height=231]

Camille Paglia has never lacked courage. Her breakout work, Sexual Personae (1991) established her reputation as an American intellectual about whom no one is neutral. Her latest book, Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World’s Best Poems, is also an act of courage. It is her selection of 43 poems with literate commentary on each for a general readership, blending literature, psychology, and culture. Her literary roots rest in the soil of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, the eras of Ginsberg, Corso, Kerouac, and Ferlinghetti. Poetry was big and the poets were “street smart” American royalty. That prestige no longer exists today, but Paglia can serve as a guide to a return to the power of language and the magic of words.

Philadelphia Stories talks with Paglia, a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts since 1984, about today’s changing literary world.

What changes have you seen in literature (poetry, fiction, and non-fiction) over the past generation or two?

When I was in college in the 1960s, poetry was booming. Thanks to the Beat movement of the prior decade, poetry was directly engaged with contemporary experience, including political issues. The little black-and-white City Lights Bookstore paperback of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl was everywhere. Sylvia Plath’s Ariel made a sensation—partly because of her suicide.

At Harpur College (the State University of New York at Binghamton), I saw a huge number of major poets read. They were like rock stars. The rooms were packed, and there was electricity in the air. I thought at the time that a renaissance of poetry was dawning, but it turned out not to be true. Pop music supplanted poetry in young people’s attention. By the 1970s, American poets were receding in importance.

Fiction is certainly still thriving. It remains a prestigious form in its many mainstream and niche genres—some of which (like romances, mysteries, and political thrillers) can be enormously lucrative and others not at all. But novelists in the U.S. (as opposed to the U.K. ) no longer enjoy the high cultural status they once did in the prime of Norman Mailer, who emerged at the tail end of the Hemingway era.

In the last 30 years, postgraduate campus writing programs have spread like wildfire. I’m of mixed mind about them. On the one hand, it’s wonderful for aspiring writers to meet and work with fellow devotees of the written word at a time of media infotainment and buzz. On the other hand, an MFA may not be worth the investment of tens of thousands of dollars, unless the applicant intends a teaching career. Writers need more life experience, not more school. I think the money might be better spent on world travel.

Non-fiction has evolved tremendously since the 1960s. It’s really where the cultural spotlight is in the U.S. , mainly because politics are such a national obsession, refracted through every medium from talk radio to cable TV. Cultural criticism has also supplanted literary criticism per se in literature departments. I’m a culture critic in that sense—my M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Yale were in English, but my writing and teaching are interdisciplinary.

Can you tell us about your writing career?

I wrote poetry in high school and early college, but always knew I wanted to be a scholar. Archaeology was my first passion, then literature, but I was also fascinated by popular culture and advertising, which I saw as visual mediums. My interest in pop was a negative in grad school, where professors considered it frivolous.

My harrowing publishing history should be an inspiration to any aspiring writer struggling along amidst a blizzard of rejection slips. The manuscript of Sexual Personae (an expansion of my 1974 dissertation) was completed in 1981 and then made the rounds: it was rejected by seven publishers and five agents. As the years passed, I gave up hope of seeing it in print in my lifetime.

When Sexual Personae was finally released by Yale University Press in 1990, I was 43—pretty late for a first book. I think everyone was surprised, including me, by the impact of that 700-page tome. It kept steadily selling, despite a total absence of publicity. The following year, when the publicity about my dissident ideas exploded, it became a national bestseller in Vintage paperback and was afterward translated around the world, from China and Japan to Croatia . I’ve had three other Vintage bestsellers since then and have also written extensively for newspapers, magazines, and the Web.

In Break, Blow, Burn, you ground yourself in New Criticism and encourage exploration of poetry by “close reading.” Why should people use that technique?

As I say in the introduction, when I was in college, I detested the New Criticism, which was then in its declining phase. I found it boring, rote, and sanitized. The professors who practiced it, like Cleanth Brooks (whom I avoided at Yale), seemed so moralistic and officiously humanitarian. I thought of them as dried-up, repressed WASPs—I was quite unfair, I must say!

However, over my 35 years as a classroom teacher, I found that close reading was in fact the best way by far to introduce poetry to students. What I’ve added to it, significantly, is history and psychology—those elements of social context and biography that the New Critics considered extraneous to understanding a text. The trick is learning how to integrate all these things seamlessly. That’s why it took me five years to write Break, Blow, Burn—all that effort went into smoothing transitions and fine-tuning tone.

Is this a rejection of postmodernism and deconstructionism?

Yes, I despise European post-structuralism and all its progeny, including postmodernism, which is simply a watered-down 1980s version of the revolutionary high modernism of the early- to mid-twentieth century. Post-structuralism destroyed the American humanities departments—it will take a generation to undo the damage. Among other things, it’s the main reason poetry has been pitifully marginalized on campus—demoted from the central status it had in the 1960s. Post-structuralist analysis focuses on narrative, as in the novel and short story. It’s helpless with poetry, which is animated by metaphor and myth and which requires hypersensitivity to etymology and diction. Beyond that, post-structuralism is a French style. Its Anglo-American disciples write bad English—pretentious, clunky, and jargon-choked. My major attack on post-structuralism is my 70-page critique, “Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders,” which was published in Arion in 1991 and reprinted in Sex, Art, and American Culture.

Selecting 43 of “the world’s best poems” was an act of bravery. What criteria did you use?

For this book, I was looking for poems that would be accessible to and rewarding for a general audience. The first half consists of poems by canonical writers that have worked best for me in the classroom—from Shakespeare and John Donne through Emily Dickinson and William Butler Yeats. It’s the last group of contemporary poems that is controversial. Except for Gary Snyder and Joni Mitchell (whose lyric for “ Woodstock” I treat as a poem), there are few recognizable names. I made judgments based solely on the quality of the poem, not the reputation of the author.

In ransacking libraries and bookstores looking for poems for this book, I was appalled at how weak and shoddy so much poetry has become—including the work of tediously over-praised figures like John Ashbery and Jorie Graham, those pets of the academic elite. No wonder the general public has lost interest in reading poetry when these are the figures touted by critics, reviewers, and prize committees.

I value poetry that has sensory and emotional immediacy, and I dislike poetry that pretends to be philosophy. All that phony, conceited word fog! If you want philosophy, go read real philosophers. That’s not what good poetry has ever been. This stuff is a development of late Wallace Stevens, whose language got more and more self-conscious and rarified. I’m an admirer of the early Stevens, who was an aesthete with the vivid sensibility of Matisse.

How do you define “poetry?”

Poetry began in ancient ritual as rhythmic chanting, and its early history was intertwined with music and dance. It belonged to the oral tradition for millennia until the invention of writing. After that, the visual format of the poem on the page became intrinsic to its identity. For the past century, there have been radical experiments in redefining what a poem is and can be—some successful, some not. For the poems in Break, Blow, Burn, I chose a variety of types and physical “looks.” But ultimately a poem lives or dies by how deeply it engages the reader. Too many famous poets today are speaking to each other rather than to humanity at large—which is exactly why their work won’t last.

[img_assist|nid=906|title=Nathalie Anderson|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=249|height=162]

Nathalie Anderson must have a very large shelf in her house for all of her awards. To name a few: the Pew Arts Award, the Washington Prize from The Word Works, the McGovern Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, the Academy of American Poets Awards … the list goes on. When she isn’t racking up awards for her poetry, she serves as Poet in Residence at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, and teaches at Swarthmore College , where she is a professor in the Department of English Literature and directs the Program in Creative Writing. In her spare time, she runs one of the area’s best poetry list servs in the area.

Philadelphia Stories spoke with Nathalie about writing poetry, spotting a good poem, and finding creative inspiration despite a hectic schedule.    

 

  When did you start writing poetry?

[img_assist|nid=907|title=Following Fred Astaire|desc=|link=none|url=http://www.amazon.com/Following-Fred-Astaire-Nathalie-Anderson/dp/0915380412/sr|align=right|width=150|height=228]

I started writing when I was in junior high school — under the complicated influence of my mother’s college poetry textbook — but for a long time my poems inclined either to the jingly or the stultifyingly sententious. Perhaps ironically, I think I began to find my own voice while I was studying Modern Poetry in grad school. Yeats and Eliot were among the first poets I’d encountered as a kid, and ranked high among the poets who most moved me in high school and in college. For me, returning to their intense music with a more mature understanding revealed how sound and image and emotion and intellect can fuse together.

Can you tell us about your writing process?

I tend to draw out the process of composition with free-writing exercises circling through a series of related topics on succeeding days, extensive word searches in dictionaries and thesauruses, strange researches (often in out-dated texts, where the language is likely to be more vivid), and "assignments" designed to get at the physicality of a situation — how ice feels as it melts in your palm, for example. I’ve found that things turn out simplistically if I write less circuitously, and for me the delight in the process comes from bringing to light something I didn’t realize I knew.

 

How do you know when a poem is finished?

Well, probably like most poets, I think being finished is a relative thing: years after bringing something to apparent completion, you can suddenly see ways of making it more effective. But what I work towards is a feeling of rightness, where every image and turn of phrase in a poem feels inevitable, inexorable. As I work, I repeatedly read my drafts aloud: where I stumble, something’s out of place; where I get distracted, something’s inexact.

 

What do you think makes a poem good?

I like a poem that compels me to see things differently. 

 

What do you like to read?

Besides mystery novelists like Sue Grafton or Val McDermid? Or fantasy novelists like Lois McMaster Bujold or Gregory Frost or China Mieville? Or graphic novelists like Charles Burns or Neil Gaiman or Steve Niles or Bill Willingham? I crave the contemporary Irish poets — Eavan Boland, Eamon Grennan, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Adrian Rice, Eamonn Wall — and am perpetually exhilarated by edgy American poets like Quan Barry, Anne Carson, Kate Daniels, Mark Doty, Albert Goldbarth, Kimiko Hahn, Terrance Hayes, Li-Young Lee, Harryette Mullen.  I like a lot of local poets: if I started listing the ones whose work I particularly enjoy, it would be hard to stop.

 

Has the Philadelphia area influenced your writing?

As a community, absolutely. I’m fascinated by the confluences of stylistic currents that meet and merge and sometimes storm against each other here, and I’ve found many compatriots in the area whose insights I value immeasurably. For subject matter, though, I’m more likely to turn towards the South where I grew up: it’s hard to fight that particular destiny!

 

What inspired you to start the poetry list serv?

I’ve always urged my students at Swarthmore to attend readings at other local colleges and universities, and elsewhere in the city: Philadelphia offers so many riches that it’s a shame not to take advantage of its many literary offerings. After a while, when I’d send an e-mail announcement or a semester’s literary calendar to my students, I began to copy the information to colleagues and to friends — why waste that labor, right? — and eventually the list grew into an institution. I love it, myself, because I get to hear about such a variety of events from list members — there are around 450 recipients right now, not counting my Swarthmore students. If any readers don’t yet receive these announcements of literary events in the Philadelphia area, and would like to sign up, my address is nanders1@swarthmore.edu.

 

Can you offer any advice to the many creative writers who are trying to juggle work and family, yet want to write fiction or poetry?

This is a hard question to answer.  I’d like to urge people to write every day, even if only for a few minutes, but certainly in my own life this kind of disciplined immersion often just hasn’t been possible. When I realized how difficult it would be to write while teaching full-time, I tried to step back and analyze the components of my situation: could I *use* the ebb and flow of the academic year to organize my approach to writing?  Now I keep a folder of fragments during the semester, and commit myself to exploring those fragments extensively during the summers. While the compromises I’ve made wouldn’t necessarily work for other people, I think each person can find ways of making the life they’ve chosen more amenable for writing — writing with the children while they keep journals, for example, or trading work with a friend as a way of making deadlines for oneself, or filling just one page in a notebook during a coffee-break. I know it isn’t easy, but I can say I’ve been much happier, myself, since I found ways of working with the rhythms of my wage-earning career.

 

[img_assist|nid=917|title=Ken Kalfus|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=160|height=250]"He’s late for work and she misses her flight, but that morning, with the world shattered by grief, they each think the other’s dead and each is secretly delighted. They’re both soon disappointed, of course…"

At a Philadelphia Stories event in the creepy-cool Parlor on South Broad Street, the audience had[img_assist|nid=918|title=|desc=|link=url|url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060501405/sr|align=right|width=150|height=243] a rare treat: to hear the first words of a new book by critically acclaimed author, Ken Kalfus. “I haven’t even shown this to my editor yet,” Kalfus explained through a quiet smile. The raw words of his novel depicted an eloquent, haunting, funny story that started on that fateful day in September that changed all of our lives. Despite the ubiquitous nature of 9/11, Kalfus managed a fresh interpretation of this world-changing event.

This book, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country: A Novel, will be released in July, and fans and critics expect another success. Kalfus, who was born in New York and has lived in Paris, Dublin, Belgrade, and Moscow, has authored two acclaimed short story collections and the terrific The Commissariat of Enlightenment, a quasi-historical fiction spanning two decades in Russia. Philadelphia Stories spoke with Kalfus about the new book, and the sometimes frustrating writing journey.

A Disorder Peculiar to the Country: A Novel comes out in July. What was the inspiration for your latest book?

I think this is something else we can thank Osama bin Laden for. The novel’s a black comedy about a bitterly divorcing couple living in Brooklyn and increasingly entangled in current events. On the morning of September 11, 2001 he goes to his office at the World Trade Center and she rushes to catch a plane, United 93. He’s late for work and she misses her flight, but that morning, with the world shattered by grief, they each think the other’s dead and each is secretly delighted. They’re both soon disappointed, of course, but my novel takes them through the next several years as they try to complete their divorce. Everything that happened to us as a nation in those years – anthrax, the Afghan war, the stock market crash, the invasion of Iraq, etc. – weirdly and satirically involve them, even as their principal concern is the war against each other.

You published Thirst, your first book of short stories, at age 44. Were you discouraged you didn’t get published sooner? Any words of inspiration for those of us still waiting?

First, I should note that all the stories in Thirst were written in my 20s and 30s, and most were published in small literary magazines before the collection came out. But yes, there were many times that I was discouraged, and frustrated, despairing and morose too, before my first book was published – and certainly afterwards as well.

Getting published is by no means the most difficult part of writing. The struggle lies in composing something fresh, important and true. I still struggle and still get very discouraged, and then there are moments of light.

Perhaps the pains and failures of published writers are inspirational to the unpublished. But it may be more productive to remember that as serious readers and aspiring writers, we’re part of the great world literary enterprise, among the noblest human endeavors, whatever our level of success. Passionate reading, receptiveness to good literature, thoughtfulness about the world, the willingness to take creative risks and rigorous craftsmanship lie at the heart of the enterprise.

Has the Philadelphia area influenced your writing?

It hasn’t been a subject of my fiction, but my first book project, Christopher Morley’s Philadelphia, was a collection of Morley’s columns and articles from the 1920s and ’30s. I collected the pieces and wrote the introduction, work that made me appreciate the city I found myself in. The book was published on Morley’s centenary in 1990 and is still in print.

Can you offer any advice to the many creative writers who are trying to juggle work and family, yet want to write fiction or poetry?

We all have busy lives, and we’re always juggling responsibilities. For those of us who want to write, writing (and serious, committed reading) is work and we have to give it the same respect and effort that we do our more lucrative employments. My practical thought is that if we can’t write every day, we can write at least once or twice a week, even when it’s as inconvenient as, say, going to our jobs. We can give ourselves a minimal weekly word count – say, 250 or 500 words, or 1000 words and pull an occasional late-nighter if we have to. As the weeks pile up, so will the words.

I also suggest that we take the work of other writers seriously, allowing ourselves to be moved and transformed by their words. Reading is the best thing for an aspiring writer, not because it necessarily helps fulfill those aspirations, but because it most fully engages us in the literary occupation.

[img_assist|nid=4287|title=Greg Frost|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=150|height=221]

Gregory Frost cannot be accused of being a one-trick pony. He is the author of fantasy and science fiction novels, short stories and articles, and a graduate of the writing program at the University of Iowa . He is a self-proclaimed survivor of many Sycamore Hill Writers Workshops, which also includes authors Jonathan Lethem, Karen Joy Fowler, and Judith Berman. He even claims he’s acted in some B-horror films. Philadelphia Stories spoke with Greg about writing weird fiction, workshop horrors, and other helpful tips.

What made you choose science fiction?

I don’t consider myself a science fiction writer. I’m a fantasist, which means that almost everything I write has a fantasy element, but only perhaps a quarter of my fiction can be classified as science fiction.  Most of it is just "weird" fiction. My novel, FITCHER’S BRIDES, is a historical dark fantasy novel based on the Grimm’s fairy tale "Fitcher’s Bird" (a variant of Bluebeard); my novel prior to that, THE PURE COLD LIGHT, was a science fiction novel set in an alternate Philadelphia; and the two before that, TAIN and REMSCELA, were retellings of the Irish Cu Chulainn stories and thus categorized loosely as "high fantasy"–which means there were swords and magic.  I’m hard to pin down, which explains my life of abject poverty.

[img_assist|nid=4288|title=|desc=Frosts’s latest published work is ATTACK OF THE JAZZ GIANTS, a short story collection, and the inspiration for that was “a desire to see a publisher produce a short fiction collection of mine.”|link=url|url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1930846347/qid|align=right|width=100|height=150]What inspired your latest work of fiction?

Well, the latest published work is ATTACK OF THE JAZZ GIANTS, a short story collection, and the inspiration for that was a desire to see a publisher produce a short fiction collection of mine. The latest novel, just turned in, is called SHADOWBRIDGE, and I’m not really sure I can elucidate its inspiration.  It is in many ways the product of a lot of time spent reading myths, folk tales and fairy tales. Yet it resembles those only tangentially. It’s the story of a female shadow-puppeteer who lives in a world comprising the tales of our world, one made up of great spiral bridges, where each span of the bridge has a different cultural aesthetic.

Is it true you’re also a B-movie horror actor?

Oh, God. Let’s just say, I’ve been a very very "B" movie actor, twice–once in a horror film where I had an actual supporting role with quite a bit of dialogue and once in a truly grade-Z science fiction film where my part was so small I was ad-libbing my dialogue. Both were entertaining to be in, and the (dare I say "more legitimate"?) horror film allowed me to spend time in Hollywood and Arizona, shooting on sets, working with film crews and enduring hours of makeup, not to mention finding myself glued to a floor when the stage blood spattered all over me, which is corn-syrup based, hardened up after hours of takes. Oh, yes, those were the days….

You’re a self-described "survivor" of various writing workshops. How would you describe the workshop experience? Is it something you recommend to other writers?

I do recommend workshopping, but it depends on the individual writer’s temperament, too. There are writers–and I know a few–who should never workshop their fiction because they don’t want to hear criticism at all.  There are also different kinds of workshops: there are teaching workshops, which include university programs like the Iowa Writers Workshop, the Clarion SF & Fantasy Writing Workshop, the Write By the Lake program in Madison, WI, the Gotham online workshop, the Writer’s Conference at Penn, the Philadelphia Writers Conference, etc., etc.  These are all, one way or another, workshops where writing–fiction, poetry, playwriting, and so forth–is taught by (one hopes) published authors with good teaching skills.  And there are peer workshops, where writers gather to critique each other’s work. Some of those are local and meet monthly or quarterly–there must be dozens of them in the Philadelphia area alone, and you can start your own–some draw from a larger pool and meet maybe once a year.  These are to some extent socializing phenomena, which is often a healthy thing to do, as writing is so solitary that you can wake up one morning and discover that you’ve turned into a large potato named Gregor Samsa.

You also teach many workshops and classes. What advice would you put on your top three list of most important things a writer should know?

The first is the easiest and the most important and comes with an acronym: BIC, which stands for "Butt In Chair." This is the secret of all great writing. And of all incredibly bad writing, too. If you don’t sit down and do it, you aren’t writing. That should be obvious but it isn’t. Pick a time every day to write. Give up watching reruns of "Seinfeld" or, better still, "Friends."  If, after you’ve committed to doing this, three weeks go by and you’re still thinking about getting started real soon now, stop pretending you’re going to be a writer and go find something else to gnaw on, ’cause it ain’t-a-gonna happen. Everybody thinks they want to be a writer. Ann Patchett wrote a great essay about being at a cocktail party and having a neurosurgeon tell her that he was going to start writing fiction, and her reply was to ask if she could borrow his office while he was doing that because she was thinking of practicing neurosurgery.

Second, while you are in the middle of writing, do not turn your critical guns on yourself. You can whine and bitch and tell yourself how awful your work is the rest of the day and night; but when you’re actually doing the writing, you are not allowed to do this. When you are writing, you are a god, a genius, the only person in the solar system who can write this story/book/poem/article. Besides, everybody’s work looks like raw sewage when they’re in the middle of it. Which leads to the third piece of advice.

Understand going in that nobody’s fiction looks good initially. It takes hard work to make something look as if it just sprang fully armored like Athena from your forehead. Don’t worry about it looking lumpy and jumbled up. It’ll get better. And you cannot fix it anyway until you make yourself finish the piece, because you won’t know the correct way to fix it until you do. In the middle of an ungainly, misshapen story, you can’t be certain of its outcome, and so you can’t be going back and repairing it, anymore than you can repair a house when all you’ve done is pour the foundation.

Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process?

Yes, but it won’t help.  Contrary to what I believed when I started writing fiction, no single work I’ve written has made the following work easier to write. I am forever hunting for what Jonathan Raban refers to as the "strategic voice" for the story.

But my process runs sort of like this. I start out writing longhand, with a fountain pen. I started doing this years ago because I typed too fast–faster than I could think–and the pen made me slow down. Sometimes I complete the whole draft in longhand, sometimes I’ll get revved up enough from that beginning to grab my laptop and proceed.  I don’t know that this method would work for anyone else, as no two writers seem to work in exactly the same way.

I will outline a story, sometimes no more than a synopsis. For novels, I’ll often outline scenes and chapters just before I write them, just to have the arc–the distance the story needs to travel–fresh in my mind.  I don’t adhere to the outlines but I need at least to pretend I know where I’m going.

What do you like to read?

Oh, all kinds of things, I’m omnivorous.  Most recently, WILL IN THE WORLD, Stephen Greenblatt’s brilliant hypothetical biography of Shakespeare; before that Donald Westlake’s THE HOT ROCK–Westlake is simply an under-appreciated comic genius; before that Karen Traviss’s CITY OF PEARL, an sf novel, and Judith Berman’s BEAR DAUGHTER, a fantasy novel; before that Ben Yagoda’s SOUND ON THE PAGE, a book all about the critical voice in fiction.

Can you offer any advice to the many creative writers who are trying to juggle work and family, yet want to write fiction or poetry?

Only what I’ve said already–find a time to write.  Diane McKinney-Whetstone in a keynote speech some years ago described getting up in the morning before everyone else in her family and going down to the basement of her house, where she’d set up a writing space, and writing. Every morning.  She produced her first novel, TUMBLING, that way. If you want it–really, truly want it–you’ll give up late night TV or poker with Uncle Ed or whatever has to go, to make it happen. Peter de Vries said "I only write when I’m inspired, and I make a point of being inspired every morning at 9a.m. "  That is pretty much writing in a nutshell.

[img_assist|nid=4318|title=Damian McNicholl|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=175|height=143]Damian McNicholl’s successful novel, A Son Called Gabriel, tells the poignant story of a boy coming to terms with his sexuality within the bosom of a family that’s hiding a dark secret from him in conservative Northern Ireland. Gabriel’s story is beautifully written, full of humor and insight that evolves as Gabriel learns about relationships both intimate and political. Mr. McNicholl spoke with Philadelphia Stories about writing, reading, and enjoying his new home in Bucks County.

Tell us a little bit about your evolution from lawyer to fiction writer.
Since coming to the US, I worked at a law firm and in the legal department of a New York City title insurance corporation, yet always felt unfulfilled being an attorney. During the commute from my home in Bucks County to the city every day, I began to read books about creative writing, did lots of writing exercises, and then wrote a first novel that’s as yet unpublished. A Son Called Gabriel is my second novel.

[img_assist|nid=4319|title=A Son Called Gabriel|desc=|link=url|url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1593150180/qid|align=right|width=175|height=260]A Son Called Gabriel is a semi-autobiographical tale. Can you offer any advice about fictionalizing real events, and finding the necessary distance to create a fictional voice based on real events?
Some of it is semi-autobiographical and those parts are what I call fiction rooted in experience. My advice is to strip truths to their essence and then decide how best to present those core facts given the needs of the story, the characters and the novel’s setting. The passing of a sufficient amount of time is what provides the necessary distance.

A Son Called Gabriel taps into the unique coming of age story of discovering sexual identity in conservative Northern Ireland. How do you think this story has touched your readers?
Many people, particularly mothers, remarked that they felt I examined the matter of Gabriel’s sexual confusion during adolescence very honestly, as well as the issue of school bullying. While the novel deals with more than coming-of-age issues, their remarks make me particularly happy because I believe a lot of fiction has the ability to educate as well as entertain and I thus know my book has struck a chord.

You are working on a second book. Do you find a second novel easier to write than the first? Why or why not?
I’ve found UNUSUAL STEPS just as demanding to write because I opted to use a third person point of view rather than the first person used in ‘Gabriel’, though I’ve had enormous fun because it’s got a London flavor and some of the characters and plot are offbeat and eccentric.

Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process?
After the research ends, it’s a case of sit and write. I don’t outline my novels because I find it too confining, but I do write out a brief history of the main characters. Doing their histories gives me the essential direction I need. I don’t write every day unless you’d consider my blog as writing, which I suppose it is, really. But once I’m in writing mode, it’s 9 am through 5 pm hours.

What do you like to read?
I love novels rich in setting and character, dark comedies, and well-crafted nonfiction.

Has your current home in BucksCounty influenced your writing like Ireland did in A Son Called Gabriel?
Absolutely! I’m working now on my first novel set in the States–no surprise that the location happens to be Bucks County with jaunts to Philly and NYC– and I’m paying great attention to the landscape, flora and fauna, and types of people living here. Living in America has already affected my writing enormously because I write in American English now.

Can you offer any advice to the many creative writers who are trying to juggle work and family, yet want to write fiction or poetry?
I’ll offer this to all aspiring writers whether they’ve got families and work commitments or not: spend some time with yourself on a regular basis, write with passion, write regularly, and always dream of seeing yourself well-published.

[img_assist|nid=4351|title=Green Grass Grace|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=150|height=229]When local author Shawn McBride read at the recent Philadelphia Stories’ silent auction, he did what he does best in writing: merge art and humor in an entertaining way. He called up poet Daniel Abdal Hayy-Moore, who had just read from his vast portfolio of work, and asked him to accompany him on autoharp as he read his “Ode to Breasts.” His debut novel, Green Grass Grace, also combines humor and art – coupling lyrical prose with the comedy of raging hormones. The novel rang true to fans and critics alike, and it was selected by Barnes & Noble for its “Discover Great New Writers” series. McBride spoke with Philadelphia Stories about writing, not writing, and his love for Philadelphia.

[img_assist|nid=4350|title=Shawn McBride and Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore|desc=Photo: Rob Giglio|link=node|align=left|width=200|height=150]How did you evolve from DeSales University graduate to mailman to fiction writer?
Not sure I’d call my career an evolution. That implies an upward arc. I have taken more the pinball route. I ended up working laborer jobs with an English degree because I hated the corporate world, where I worked editor jobs for medical magazines and academic reference texts. Which is a fancy way of saying I fixed grammar in relation to articles with titles like Acid-Peptic Disorders of the Upper Gastrointenstinal Tract. Jobs like that almost turned me into a case study for such articles. I loved the mailman job then. I got to know the ins and outs of different Philly neighborhoods. If it was sunny, I was out in the sunshine. If it was raining, I was getting paid to jump in puddles. I ran from dogs. I got yelled at by old ladies for accidentally tearing the corners of their Harriet Carter catalogs. Women were outside everywhere, looking perfect, working on their gardens or tans. It was in many ways my dream job. It was so simple and stupid and honest and fun. It paid more than editor jobs too. Way more. I would deliver mail in Afghanistan before I went back to a corporate cubicle job.

What is your next project?
My next project is a Christmas book called North Pole To Philly. I am far from done. So very far. Still a day job monkey. But I am working on the thing.

Did you find a second novel easier to write than the first?
For the first book, I had the luxury of being even more clueless about how to do it, so everything I wrote sounded perfect at first, and I kept moving forward. Now when I write something and it blows, I know it, and even though I keep moving forward, I am that much more aware of how far I am from something great. The first book took maybe two years to write, and I think anytime anyone asked how it was going, I would tell them: great, great, I think it will be done in two or three weeks. And I was serious. Now my reply is: don’t ask. I had more energy last time around. I moonlighted writing that one, and a key motivating factor was that, after I finished, if published, I figured I would never have to write another one like that from the money I made. Which was so stupid and naive I almost wish I could travel back in time and pinch my own cheek. Either that or kick my own ass. So it is both. Life is always a trade like that.

Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process?
My writing process is: turn the computer on, make shit up. I keep a copybook and take notes when I am not at the typer, if I get an idea. My handwriting is so bad I usually can’t read what I wrote anyway. So the whole copybook thing is just a waste. I should throw that out. Music is key. I love music and listen to everything. So if I am sitting around near a stereo and start to feel something from the music, I hit the typer. When I write, I listen to weird shit, like sitar soloing, at a low level. Or a shortwave radio if I find something where someone is singing in a different language. Stuff that makes me feel like a speck of dust but also connected to things. I now fear that I am sounding like a hippy. I sure hope not.

What do you like to read?
I want to be entertained when I read, so I am always quicker to reach for a James Ellroy than a James Joyce.

How has the Philadelphia area influenced your writing?
Philadelphia has influenced everything about my writing. I lived my whole life here, not counting four years at college. I love everything about this place. I would hug the whole damn town if my arms were big enough. I love all the different ethnic neighborhoods. I love when ethnicities come together, like Olney, which I live near and like walking through, where an Irish bar sits next to a rib joint, which sits next to a Korean church, which sits next to a Latino community outreach center. I eat all that up. I love the murals everywhere, the tarred rowhome rooftops, sneaks hanging on wires, skyscrapers downtown, the forty thousand funeral homes on Broad Street in South Philly. This place is my home. I probably got DNA shaped like Billy Penn standing on city hall if you looked at it under a microscope.

Can you offer any advice to the many creative writers who are trying to juggle work and family, yet want to write fiction or poetry?
Advice is tough, especially in such broad terms. Just make sure you go get some fresh air and sunshine once in a while. Don’t miss the real world making up your fake ones.

[img_assist|nid=4380|title=Jennifer Weiner|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=200|height=284]Jennifer Weiner has fulfilled the dreams of many an aspiring writer: take an unfortunate situation, write a book about it, and watch it soar up the best-seller list (Good in Bed). Write another book, and have Cameron Diaz star in the movie version (In Her Shoes). Write a third book (Little Earthquakes), and watch it appeal to the challenges faced by thousands of new mothers.

Jennifer began polishing her writing skills as a Philadelphia Inquirer and Mademoiselle columnist. Her ability to capture the essence of human imperfection, and help us see the humor and beauty of those imperfections, is what makes her a successful storyteller. Philadelphia Stories asked Jennifer about her writing journey.

Your background is in journalism. How did you make the transition into fiction?
Long story short, I got my heart broken and, in an effort to get over it, wrote a novel in which the girl was a lot like me, the guy was a lot like Satan, and the girl got the happy ending I wasn’t sure I’d get in real life. I wrote Good in Bed on the nights and weekends over about a year and a half, then spent about three months in the winter of 2000 finding the right agent. We ended up in the very felicitous situation of having three different publishing houses bidding on the rights for Good in Bed, and eventually signed a two-book deal with Pocket Books, a division of Simon and Schuster.

How did you find time to write a novel while juggling another writing job?
Well, remember, I’d been dumped, so I found myself with a lot of free time! I don’t think there’s any secret ability to create more hours in the day, so it’s just a question of carving out time, the same way the experts tell us to do with exercise — make it a routine part of your day, and eventually, you’ll just automatically make time for it.

[img_assist|nid=4381|title=Little Earthquakes|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=150|height=225]Your first book, Good in Bed, clearly strikes a chord with many readers. Why do you think so many readers relate to your character?
Honest to God, when I wrote the book I thought it would strike a chord with me and maybe six other readers, and I’d probably be related to four of them (and know the other two from Weight Watchers). I think so many people related to Cannie because I didn’t sugar-coat her feelings, or minimize the weight issue by turning her into a stateside Bridget Jones, fretting over five extra pounds. I didn’t begin with an organized plot, just the main character’s voice in my head, and some sense of where I wanted to take her.

What was the inspiration for In Her Shoes? Did you find a second novel easier to write than the first?
In Her Shoes was inspired by my real-life relationship with my sister. We’re very close, but as different as two people could be. The second novel was easier, in a way, because I knew what I was doing, and had learned some things about plot and pacing, but it was harder because, unlike Good in Bed, I had an agent, and a publisher, and readers saying, "Hey, where’s the next book already?”

The mothers in Little Earthquakes are varied and sympathetic, and they all seem very real. What was the inspiration for these characters?
There’s a little bit of me in all of the mothers (and probably all of the mothers-in-law!). Some of my real-life story is in there — the birth of my daughter Lucy closely mirrors Becky’s story — and some of my friends’ stories with their births, their babies, their husbands and their families. Some of it, as with all of my books, though, is just plain made up.

Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process?
I write in a Center City coffee shop every afternoon from one to five, on a Dell laptop. I don’t use outlines, but I do have a general sense of where I want to take the story.

How does the Philadelphia area influence your writing?
I love living in Philadelphia and setting my stories here. I think this feels like a very real familiar place, even if you’re not a native, and I know my readers enjoy having their stories set somewhere other than Los Angeles and London.

Can you offer any advice to young writers?
I’ve got about ten pages worth of advice on my website (www.jenniferweiner.com), but the best advice I have is to read everything you can get your hands on, and recognize that every crappy thing that happens in your real life can be material some day!