Bhuwan Thapaliya. Photo by Rehal Kharel.

An introduction to Nepalese writer Bhuwan Thapaliya, who works as an economist, and is the author of four poetry collections. Thapaliya’s books include the recently released Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected (Nirala Publication, New Delhi), and Our Nepal, Our Pride (Cyberwit.net). Poetry by Thapaliya has been included in The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry and Tonight: An Anthology of World Love Poetry, as well as in literary journals such as Urhalpool, MahMag, Kritya, FOLLY, The Vallance Review, Nuvein Magazine, Foundling Review, Poetry Life and Times, Poets Against the War, Voices in Wartime, Taj Mahal Review, and more. When asked if there is a quote that motivates him, Thapaliya shared these lines: “Luck lies in bed and wishes somebody to bring him his tea every morning when he wakes up after a long sleep. Labor wakes up from his bed and heads towards the kitchen to make his own cup of tea every day after a brief slumber in peace.”

Quick Facts on Bhuwan Thapaliya

• Bhuwan Thapaliya’s website
• Home: In the lap of the Himalayas. Kathmandu, Nepal.
• Comfort food: Most Nepalese food followed by pizza, burgers, chicken sizzler, and pasta.
• Top reads: A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, Annapurna Poems by Yuyutsu RD Sharma, The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen, Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
• Current reads: Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan, Grand Pursuit by Sylvia Nasar

What are you working on at the moment?

I am currently working on my debut Novel, Nepal Dreams, based on the positive power of thought and its practical implementation in the contemporary world. The book will hit the market in 2013. In the book, I aim to strengthen some of the economic responsibilities of the individual as an important service to mankind in a nation trodden by massive unemployment and psychological poverty. I am trying to practically prove that the chain of negative thought cannot be allowed to go astray, as I believe that positive thoughts are needed if we are ever to build up a healthy global society. To sum it up, I argue in the book that for many people the future of Nepal looks dismal, and they tag Nepal as an underdeveloped nation, but in the contemporary world the word “underdeveloped” doesn’t only denote the poor nations; it also implies that economic growth is promising in these nations too. Nepal has potential, however, Nepalese people must refresh, unlock, and stretch themselves against all odds to explore new avenues of thought so that more ideas can pop in to make Nepal prosperous in the future.

What do you hope readers will take away from your work?

“There is an urge toward social progress,

toward peace and solidarity,

toward global love and understanding.”

Anyone who reads my work may notice that there is an urge toward social progress, toward peace and solidarity, toward global love and understanding. I believe that the globalization of love is the cry of this century. You may well exclaim in astonishment: can the globalization of love ever be realized? My answer is, yes.

What does poetry mean to you?

Poetry is, to me, the blood that circulates in my veins. It is the very foundation of my survival. Writing poetry is not only a mere hobby for me, it is my way of life. It is not merely a transient desire of my mind. It is the eternal desire of my heart. Writing takes me into a different world, and I share my visions and my opinions with all in order to boost the morale of the Earth. I have a unique love for poetry, and my works are symbolic of my utmost devotion to poetry.

Poetry is not the product of my solitude. I write poetry to liven up my spirits. It inspires me to sing, laugh, hope, and dream. I believe in poetry, and poetry is an important part of my personal belief system—to me, this is what a poet’s life is all about. Furthermore, I think poetry is the medium of the emotional cooperation from one heart to another, from one soul to another, from one truth to another, from one dream to another, from one race to another, from one religion to another, from one generation to another, from one language to another, from one nation to another.

Where and when do you prefer to write?

“I get off my comfy couch,

get out of my room,

and go out into the real world.”

I don’t belong to the brood of poets who write regularly while sitting in a drawing room. I write in different places and locations. I believe in reaching out for something larger rather than waiting for it to come to me, and considering so I get off my comfy couch, get out of my room, and go out into the real world. Hence my poems are an examination of the world around me, and my poems evoke characters, events, and landscape with rich use of visual details. I write most of the time because I have a one-track mind and the only vehicle that runs on it is poetry.

It’s been said writers can do their work from any place, where would you most want to live and write?

I agree with you here. But most writers don’t live life the stereotypical way. A true writer lives beyond the confines of mystery, remote from the womb of destiny, above the landmines of race, caste, religion, history, and nationality, in the salubrious garden of humanity, and they breathe through the medium of writing.

I live in Kathmandu, Nepal, and I feel quite lucky to have been born here. I would love to live and write here forever if my job as an economist permits me to do so. I don’t loathe villages; the glimpses of everyday city life fascinate me. Children going to school, a smile on the face of a woman tempo driver, an elderly man having tea at a roadside tea stall, a dog basking in the sun—I could continue on and on. Fortunately for a person like me, Nepal has it all—from urban bustle to a rural retreat. Nepal is a historical adventure, an ancient nation with a big, friendly heart. It’s very vibrant and full of life. It’s always on the move. It twists and turns. It surprises. No matter where you look out the window, there is some attraction. People are everywhere, and so are the dogs.

Do you listen to anything while you write?

I am a diehard music fan, and most of the time I listen to songs from Iron Maiden and Megadeth while I write at home.

When you’re having trouble getting started on a poem, where do you look for inspiration?

My struggles in life are my biggest inspiration. This gives me the determination to work harder in life, and fortunately I don’t have to look further than myself to start a poem or two. Furthermore, I mingle with common people a lot, and from them I also draw inspiration. Sometimes I stroll alone in the narrow lanes of Kathmandu, and find inspiration from lonely hearts, jagged and crestfallen, which vibrate with humanity’s offbeat vigor, defining it in constrained demeanors.

How do you balance content with form in your poems?

Poetry is not only about meter and rhyme; to me it is more about people and their lives, their tears and smiles. I look more at the content than the form, but I do attempt to justify the substance in the content through the form of my poems. A conflict arises at times between content and form; there exists between the two a strong reciprocal relationship with dependencies.

Do you write poetry only in English, or do you write in another language first and then translate your poems?

I generally write in English.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

“Don’t be intimidated by darkness.”

Don’t be intimidated by darkness. Darkness has some light of its own. Doesn’t a dragonfly use the cover of the darkness to emerge from its larval skin and dry its wings to fly by morning?

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a writer?

“Paint the canvas of your dreams with the blood of your sweat, for you are the Picasso of your own life.” My dad gave me this advice a long time ago, and it’s my mantra for success.

What do you find most challenging about writing?

For me, one of the biggest challenges is finding a balance between a full-time job and writing. Most of the time I am busy with my economics work, and I am not at all an organized person, so finding time to write in the midst of a hectic schedule has been a challenge all these years. Gathering enthusiasm to write between the constant demands of work isn’t easy to do.

When you’re not writing, what do you like to do?

Most of the time I am writing, but I spend my rare free time watching sports, listening to music, and being with my small core circle of friends and family.

About Bhuwan Thapaliya

Bhuwan Thapaliya was born in Kathmandu, Nepal and is one of the most widely read Nepali poets writing in English today. Thapaliya, who works as an economist, is the author of four poetry collections. His books include the recently released Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected (Nirala Publication, New Delhi), and Our Nepal, Our Pride (Cyberwit.net) narrative verses of love, peace, and human understanding. Poetry by Thapaliya has been included in The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry and Tonight: An Anthology of World Love Poetry, as well as in literary journals such as Urhalpool, MahMag, Kritya, FOLLY, The Vallance Review, Nuvein Magazine, Foundling Review, Poetry Life and Times, Poets Against the War, Voices in Wartime, Taj Mahal Review, and more. Thapaliya has read his poetry and attended seminars in venues around the world, including South Korea, the United States, Thailand, Cambodia, and Nepal.

[Toffoli, Marissa B. "Interview With Writer Bhuwan Thapaliya." Words With Writers (February 17, 2012), http://wordswithwriters.com/2012/02/17/bhuwan-thapaliya/.]

Lowry Pei. Photo by Vaughn Sills.

An introduction to Lowry Pei, author of the novel Over the Fence (TheWriteDeal.org). Pei’s first book, Family Resemblances, was published by Random House in 1986. His stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories 1984, The American Story: The Best of StoryQuarterly, and his book reviews have been published in the New York Times Book Review. Pei’s unique point of view owes much to his unlikely origins as the son of an engineer from Suzhou, China, and a schoolteacher from a small town in Kansas. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, and teaches writing at Simmons College.

Quick Facts on Lowry Pei

• Lowry Pei’s website
• Home: Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Comfort food: linguine with clam sauce
• Top reads: Eudora Welty, The Golden Apples; Walker Percy, The Moviegoer; Charles Dickens, Bleak House; Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own; Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men.
• Current reads: Queen of America by Luis Alberto Urrea

What are you working on at the moment?

Since the beginning of the school year, I’ve mostly been writing comments on my students’ work. I taught two creative nonfiction classes in the fall, and I’m teaching a fiction class, and a writing pedagogy class, this spring. I wrote about 55,000 words of comments last semester, which is not unusual for me. I was trying to write an essay on the difference between encountering a text on paper and reading it on a screen, but nearly everything I said about this turned out, on second reading, to be obvious. Still, there’s something that needs to be said about the thingness of a text, now that it can no longer be taken for granted.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, a story I wrote about a year ago is thinking about becoming a novel.

Where did the idea for your novel Over the Fence come from?   

Over the Fence came from an image that stuck in my mind and wouldn’t stop recurring. In it, I seemed to be standing in the backyard of the house in St. Louis where I grew up, looking at the back fence with weedy vines on it, an ornamental plum tree that grew there, and the brick-paved alley that ran behind the fence. Nothing special was happening in this scene; it was daytime, quiet, no one around. It was the most ordinary image in the world, but it kept occurring to me. A story often starts for me as an image that won’t go away; it seems to me that the image is alive, is an awareness. While I am looking at it, it is looking back at me. The story, somehow, is in the image. As Joan Didion said, “N.B.: You don’t tell it, it tells you.”

“A story often starts for me

as an image that won’t go away.”

A transformed version of the image occurs at the end of chapter 5 of the novel, but in a larger sense the novel literally involves digging into this image, as Lucas digs a giant hole in his backyard and stumbles upon a way to get into a spirit world.

What do you hope readers will take away from your work?

I was thinking about that pretty hard when I was revising this novel, and in the end I came to this: I want readers to take seriously their duty to their secret self.

I think about a novel thematically at the end of the process, not at the beginning. When I thought about Over the Fence this way, I realized I was saying that there are two very different things that go by the name of love: desire plus power, and desire plus trust. It matters a great deal not to mistake one for the other.

Who do you picture as the ideal reader of your work?

One thing I’m sure of is that my books are not written for a moralistic reader, or for one who is constantly passing judgment. In this novel in particular, I’m writing for readers who are willing to let the unexpected and unrealistic coexist in their imagination with the most everyday kind of reality, readers who like to take the risk of believing something that’s hard to believe. From early on in Over the Fence, I wrote knowing that to some people it would look like the silliest damn thing they ever read. But I couldn’t let myself be stopped by that. I could only write for readers who are willing to climb downward into the deeper layers of the self.

My ideal reader is at home with loss, and remembers what it’s like to have a hope that admits of no compromise.

My ideal reader deeply loves ordinary day-to-day life, is not bored with it, is not blasé.

I think for the ideal reader, reading is a secret assignation with the self.

Where and when do you prefer to write?

In my writing shed in Prince Edward Island, Canada, in the summer. In my shed there’s no internet and no phone, and outside is a meadow that ends at the shore. It can’t be beat.

I need to know that I can look forward to a large block of time with few interruptions or obligations, a time when I can live inside the world of my creation for hours every day. Once I get going, I can write for most of the day, with breaks for naps and lunch, day after day. I can’t write a novel by working an hour a day; the writing is no good and I just end up frustrated.

Where would you most want to live and write?

I couldn’t live in Prince Edward Island year-round, even if we had a place that was winterized; the winter would be too long and too isolating. I think I would stay right where I am, in Cambridge.

Do you listen to anything while you work?

Nothing except the ambient sounds of the outside world. I need quiet so I can hear what the voice in my head is saying.

Do you have a philosophy for how and why you write?

I think writing is something you do because, for some reason, you have to. Writing is self-causing.

Mario Vargas Llosa, in Letters to a Young Novelist, says “dissent from real life, from the world as it is  . . . is the root of the novelist’s vocation.” And this: “Authenticity or sincerity is for the novelist: the acceptance of his own demons and the decision to serve them as well as possible.” I think that’s what I have done.

I do my best to follow Ray Bradbury’s two-word piece of advice: “Don’t think.” For me, the imagination always does something other, never what it is told. There is no point in trying to tell it what to do. My job when I’m writing a first draft—and I have to remind myself of this every day that I write—is to listen to the little voice in my head and write down what it says. The thinking, and there’s a great deal of it, should come later, during revision.

“The imagination always

does something other,

never what it is told.”

For me, planning what I’m going to write only works when the plan is provisional, conjectural, and I am ready at any moment to see that the plan was wrong and chuck it in the trash. All plans are proved wrong by the writing itself. As soon as I begin to write, what I actually write diverges from what I meant to write, what I dimly envisioned.

How do you balance content with form?

For me, the crucial formal element of fiction on which everything else hinges is the way that it’s narrated. If I can get the narrating voice of a story right in my mind’s ear, if I can be the source of that voice and write through it, the story can get told. All my novels are in first person (some with multiple narrators), so the narrating voice is coming from a character. I am writing from within this character, being the narrator-protagonist as I tell the story, and the story is the narrator’s story; in this way content and form merge.

Of course there are many other aspects of the shape of a novel that come under the heading of form, and for many people, content means theme. For me, all of that is subordinate to, or subsequent to, the reality of the story-world. I don’t think “I will write a book of a certain shape,” nor do I think, “I will write a book with a certain theme.” I believe a story starts from four essentials: a character, a place, a situation, and a narrating voice. When those are known, when those have attained rightness, then the story unfolds from within itself. Shape and theme are things that follow, that emerge; they do not determine the story.

How have your goals as a writer changed over time?

I think it has gradually come home to me how hard it is to say neither too much nor too little. I know it’s usually impossible to say what one means by hitting it head-on, but at the same time, I realize more and more that subtlety is not an end in itself, not necessarily a virtue.

Is there a quote about writing that motivates or inspires you?

There are many, but here’s something that has been posted on the bulletin board in my study for years. These are notes from a workshop given by the late poet Deborah Digges:

Art lives in: the bumbler, the unfit, the shadow.

The “I” must be violated, shattered, the distance must be broken—you are both the dreamer and the dreamed—you are acted upon by the world.  The insistence that you must stay in control must be broken—the hope is that you will get lost.

You write from the unsocial, the anti-social, the sub-social—you write NOT for the culture’s approval—you leave even the reader behind, or risk leaving the reader behind, for the art.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Don’t aspire to “be a writer”; if you’re a person who has to write, you will. When you’re about to fall asleep and a sentence comes to you that feels exactly right and you absolutely don’t want to get out of bed and write it down—get out of bed and write it down. Make a final decision that you’ll do that. That is the kind of commitment you need to make to your work at all other hours, as well. Do it, because you love it.

“Lose yourself in the work.”

Forget yourself in the work, lose yourself in the work. Be ruthless on behalf of the work, learn to say no to things that matter less than the writing. Find readers who will tell you what they really think—you can’t learn to write without readers. Don’t let your writing stand or fall on the question of whether you get published; don’t outsource your legitimacy as an artist to publishers. Learn to legitimize yourself in your own eyes, do whatever it takes, because you’ll need that to sustain you over the long term.

Learn some kind of meditation. Writing and meditation are very similar mind-disciplines.

Constantly ask, “Why not? Who says I can’t?” The limitations you place on yourself are the most constricting of all. You must create yourself creative. The first thing the imagination must create is itself.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a writer?

I think it might have been the advice, which I got from Kathryn Marshall, the author of My Sister Gone, that I should try writing my first attempted novel in the first person. Doing that taught me that I had to write from inside the character, made me learn how to do that, so that for the first time I was truly writing fiction.

Is there a question you find surprising that people ask you about your work?

What surprises me is that sometimes readers understand or react to a character in a way I never imagined when I was writing. The character I thought I knew inside and out becomes, in a reader’s mind, someone I don’t recognize—now that’s surprising.

What do you find most challenging about writing?

The hardest thing is being between projects, feeling like I have nothing to write, nothing to say that I haven’t heard myself say before, waiting for something to come and not knowing if it ever will.

When you’re not writing, what do you like to do?

Teach, cook, ride my bike, watch baseball, build carpentry projects. And read, of course.

About Lowry Pei

Lowry Pei’s first novel Family Resemblances was published in 1986 by Random House (Vintage Contemporary, 1988). His story “The Cold Room” appeared in Best American Short Stories 1984, and “Naked Women” appeared in The American Story: The Best of StoryQuarterly. He has published short stories, essays, memoirs, and criticism, and his book reviews have appeared in New York Times Book Review. His unique point of view owes much to his unlikely origins as the son of an engineer from Suzhou, China, and a schoolteacher from a small town in Kansas. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, and teaches writing at Simmons College.

Buy Over the Fence.

[Toffoli, Marissa B. "Interview With Writer Lowry Pei." Words With Writers (January 25, 2012), http://wordswithwriters.com/2012/01/25/lowry-pei/.]

Over the Fence by Lowry Pei (TheWriteDeal.org, 2011).

Patrick Duggan. Photo by Marissa Bell Toffoli (2011).

An introduction to poet and writer Patrick Duggan. Originally from New Hampshire, Duggan has studied writing and literature at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts and California College of the Arts in San Francisco. He is also a National Poetry Series finalist, and Duggan’s poems have appeared in Shampoo, Beeswax Magazine, 26 Magazine, Oranges and Sardines, Mirage: A Periodical, Monday Night, Noö Journal, Parthenon West Review, and The Inman Review.

Quick Facts on Patrick Duggan

• Home: San Francisco, California
• Comfort food: pizza
• Top reads: Frank O’Hara made me realize I could write in my own voice. Federico Garcia Lorca—he’s the poet who got me into poetry, and he showed me the beauty in the world that I could create in poetry. Garcia Lorca showed me that I could write things that were personal and in my own voice, but also absurd and beautiful at the same time. Ted Berrigan taught me how to give form to poetry, and also taught me that performing a poem can give it a life. George R R Martin, who wrote the book series A Game of Thrones; I have a lifelong love for fantasy novels. Robert Fisk is one of the most powerful journalists and political writers I’ve ever read.
• Current reads: Louis Zukofsky’s A, a monster of a book. I tend to write long poems so I’ve been interested in reading other poets who write long manuscripts to see how they handle it. Also, a fantasy book called The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

What are you working on at the moment?  

I am working on very small things. I’ve spent about eight years writing long poems, series poems, poems 60 pages long, poems linked by refrains. I hit a wall about two and a half years ago. I couldn’t think of anything to write. I couldn’t write in long form; I was having horrible writer’s block. So, I started writing small postcard poems. I did like 120 of them and mailed them to friends. After the second year of this, I was still feeling like I hadn’t written anything, but I had—they were just small poems, a form I had never worked in before. I feel like I’m coming out on the other side of something and that I’m able to write new things.

“I feel like I’m coming out on

the other side of something

and that I’m able to write new things.”

Over the last few years I’ve had to completely rewire how I think about poetry from an editorial sense. I used to write pages and pages of poems, and pick out longer things that I could continue to riff off of. Lately, I’ve been using my editorial eye to just pare things down to really get to the bare bones of the poem, the most essential things. It’s been so hard to do that. I’ve had to retrain myself, but it’s now feeling like something I’m getting my head around. I always have one eye toward how things will look in a manuscript, and I’ve been thinking about a book of small poems. There’s a really great book by Trane DeVore called Dust Habit, and that’s a book that sort of inspired me to start the postcard poems.

When you’re struggling with a poem, where do you look for inspiration?

Usually, I sit down at a coffee shop or a bar and I just kind of stare off into space until inspiration hits me. Other times, I will go to my bookshelf, pick a random book of poetry, and just start reading through it. And other times, I will listen to music. Some of the best lines I think I’ve written over the last several years are actually misheard song lyrics. I either have to sit and force myself to continue working on something or grab other books of poems to jog my creative process.

I don’t have any firm writing habits, aside from trying to write often, which I don’t do enough of at the moment. But I know a lot of people who have these great writing habits. When they’re working on a poem and they’re stuck, they have ways of writing out of that bog. I’ve always been one of those poets who, when I’m writing in my notebooks I could just write whatever comes into my head without thinking through it. Then I go back and edit from that. When I’m actively working on something, after I finish that first random editorial process, when I have to create with something specific in mind I always hit walls. It’s frustrating, and I don’t always have the tools to write my way out. 

What do you hope readers will take away from your work?

I hope people read my work and they can relate to it. Not all of it, but I hope that almost anyone could read my writing and find one thing in it that they can relate to, like one human experience, one bit of nostalgia, one bit of forward thinking hope, one image, one experience. I don’t think that there’s anyone who could read my writing and really get and love every single word because I don’t get and love every single word. But I hope that people can find moments of joy, sadness, beauty, and ugliness, and all that.

Who do you picture as the ideal reader of your work?

I don’t know if I have an ideal reader for my work. Okay, when I say that, I feel that’s not exactly true. Thinking back on my writing, I reference a lot of my own life—the music I listen to, art I’ve seen, cultural moments from my own life, things related to politics—and so I don’t really think of having an ideal reader, but I think that probably someone who has had a similar life experience to mine would get more of the references. And even if that’s the ideal reader, they might not appreciate it, or they might have a different opinion of the things that I reference and talk about.

Where and when do you prefer to write?

I prefer to write at coffee shops or café bars. I do my best writing in the late afternoon or early evening, like between 4pm and 7pm. It’s kind of funny to think that way, but it’s true. Whenever I write at different times during the day, I’m less productive. Normally, I like to sit and drink coffee or have a glass of beer or wine and spend like an hour and a half journaling, and then edit from there.

Where would you most want to live and write?

There isn’t one place. I’d like to have a comfortable home with a fireplace and an enormous selection of good bourbon for my home base. If money were no object, I would spend two months each in different parts of the world traveling and living. But really, I’ve lived in different parts of the country and I’ve traveled to a few different parts of Europe now, and there are different things I see everywhere I go that I love, but I’ve never found a place that’s ever felt like home to me.

What do you listen to when you work?

There’s two answers. When I’m writing, I’m usually out somewhere since I have a hard time writing in my own home, so I don’t have control over what I’m listening to. It could be anything depending on where I am. If I’m editing at home, I usually listen to alt-country, alt-folk, a lot of alt; I need music that won’t distract me. I like quiet indie music to edit to. When I’m at work, or I have headphones, I listen to punk and metal sometimes. When I’m writing I need things that can fall into the background but that I like.

Do you have a philosophy for how and why you write?

 ”I can’t not write.”

I write because I have to. When I was a little kid, I wrote and illustrated my own stories. Through growing up to the present, I’ve always written. I can’t not write. Even if my manuscripts are never published I’ll still keep writing because I have to. I write whatever comes to mind in my notebook. Sometimes it’s thoughts and feelings about the day, sometimes it’s quotes or bits of poems, or just song lyrics I’ve heard. I just write whatever I feel like in my journals and then I cull poems out of that. I’ve always written, but editing my work into poems is something that I’ve had to learn to do.

How do you balance content with form?

That’s something that has changed for me over time. I went through one phase where I was writing almost entirely prose poems, and in that case I wasn’t balancing form. I went through another phase of journaling, writing everything in prose, and then pulling out lines for poems and breaking them where my natural cadence fell. The way that I speak, I tend to stammer and stutter with my words. When I was little, I spoke incredibly fast and I also stuttered sometimes, and I still have some of that in my voice.  When I was writing to create poems in my own voice, often the lines broke where my train of thought paused or my cadence broke. Sometimes that made for really long lines, and occasionally two words on a line. Balancing form with content is something that has been a lifelong learning process for me.

Form is something that I didn’t think was important when I first started writing, and now I really enjoy form. I enjoy seeing how the form that words take on the page can inform your reading of it. Form is my friend now, especially since I’m working on smaller, more sparse writing. But what got me into writing was really more prose or prose poems. I learned form, but I couldn’t really execute it in my own writing. I still write in long lines and in prose blocks, and then I pull out the form from there.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

I would say two things. Read a lot, and don’t just read things that resonate with your own writing. Ask your friends for recommendations, go online and get ideas—just read everything. The more you read, the better writer you will be. I have yet to meet anyone for whom that was not true. The other piece of advice I would give is to not be dissuaded, especially if you’re a poet. Poetry is a niche art; it’s never going to be appreciated by a lot of people; it’s never going to be financially rewarding. It’s an art that a lot of people do for themselves.

I write poetry because I love it and I always will. Whatever accolades I get from it is from the community of poets that I know. I’ll probably never see a dime from it. I can’t think of any positive adjectives that go along with doing something for yourself, but it’s self-affirming; it’s also kind of vain in some ways, and selfish. If you want to write poetry, it’s not going to be your job unless you’re very lucky. Don’t be dissuaded. You can be a poet and be true to yourself, and you can make it doing other things.

“You can be a poet and be true to yourself,

and you can make it doing other things.”

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a writer?

Read a lot. The best advice that I’ve gotten from a bunch of different sources is when you’re editing your own work, put it down and come back to it later. Give yourself time away from your writing. The more distance you have from your writing, the better your editorial eye will be. That’s certainly true for me.

What do you find most challenging about writing?

Honestly, the thing I find most challenging is getting my work published. I send out a lot of writing to poetry book contests, small presses, and journals and stuff. The most challenging things about writing is keeping that up diligently. I have work in maybe a dozen journals, and I don’t have a book published but I was a finalist in the National Poetry Series, which is awesome. Those are all great accolades, but I literally have more than a hundred rejection slips. For that one amazing finalist thing, I have been rejected from some 30 book contests. The most challenging thing is keeping faith. If I send my work to a poetry press, they’re also getting thousands of other submissions a year. Having confidence that my work might not be published, not because it’s not good but because of other circumstances—that’s challenging. It’s challenging to be able to say to yourself, I might go the next 60 years without seeing a book published, but that doesn’t mean that I should stop writing.

When you’re not writing, what do you like to do?

When I’m not writing, I love to read. I like to go out to new and awesome meals, and make new and awesome meals with my girlfriend. I like going on long walks and bike rides, and stuff like that. I like museums and galleries. It also seems like the older I get, the less time I have to do those things. I don’t do enough of all the things that I just listed. A lot of my off-work, off-writing time is spent reading. I escape into books to relax.

About Patrick Duggan

Patrick Duggan is originally from New Hampshire, and has studied writing and literature at Emerson College in Boston, MA and California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA. He is also a National Poetry Series finalist, and his poems have appeared in Shampoo, Beeswax Magazine, 26 Magazine, Oranges and Sardines, Mirage: A Periodical, Monday Night, Noö Journal, Parthenon West Review, and The Inman Review.

[Toffoli, Marissa B. "Interview With Writer Patrick Duggan." Words With Writers (January 16, 2012), http://wordswithwriters.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/patrick-duggan/.]

Yon Walls. Photo by W A Moody.

An introduction to writer Yon Walls, who recently published an ebook called The Sultan’s Cook (Smashwords). The ebook includes three sudden fiction stories written after Walls returned from Istanbul, Turkey. Walls is a poet, diarist, and novelist originally from Kentucky. She’s lived in California since 1972. Walls holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College where she received the Zora Neale Hurston Writing Award twice. From 2000-2008, she taught college-level English and literature in the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley areas. In 2002 and 2007, she was a teacher and writer-in-residence in Hiroshima and Kofu, Japan. Since that time, she completed Island of Swallows, a collection of poems about Japan. Walls is currently a contributing editor for Tertuliamagazine.com.

Quick Facts on Yon Walls

• Walls’ ebook The Sultan’s Cook
• Home: Sacramento, California
• Comfort food: Moist cake with lots of real buttercream icing.
• Top reads: Well, classics—Strait is the Gate by Andre Gide, Quicksand by Nella Larsen, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Not so recent, Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto; and very recently, Orhan Pamuk’s, The Museum of Innocence. And the just recently list goes on—I’m always discovering new regional writers. One surely to remember is Sholeh Wolpé, a poet and translator.
• Current reads: The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson, and the wonderful Harry Belafonte memoir entitled My Song. Some amazing essays by Toni Morrison, some lovely short, short stories, edited by Irving and Ilana Wiener Howe. I will soon reread some poems by Sonia Sanchez, and during the summer I discovered Tablet & Pen, an important and amazing anthology of work by Middle Eastern writers edited by Reza Aslan. Oh, and a wonderful collection of poems, Life on Mars by Tracy K Smith.

What are you working on right now?

I’ve just finished my first novel. Nearly two years of work. Lots of research. I think it’s solid. A well-respected editor with Simon & Schuster really likes the book, but what publishing home will finally sign the work, I’m unsure. It will be published and of course it’ll probably morph in the future. It’s the hardest writing work perhaps I’ve ever done, but proving to be the most satisfactory. Also, I’m generally having to get smarter about the business end of things—the bones of getting published and by comparison, the writing seems tame. I’m also re-editing a collection of poems written a few years back about Japan (it’s just weeping to be published), and keeping my personal journal updated. I have years and years of journals. Just mostly trying to keep interested in work already written that needs to be reviewed and met all over again.

I have recently been testing the water as a self-promoter of my work through the ebook medium. It’s exciting and I’m also learning much about the new frontier of publishing for committed writers who don’t always fit the traditional publishing mode, and who are really motivated to get their work out to readers. The Sultan’s Cook is one such little book. It’s just three stories in the sudden fiction genre that I think will resonate with some fiction readers, especially readers who also like traveling to physical places in books, or who like traveling in general. The stories are set in Turkey and are about the nature of desire as dictated by historical forces, about dreams and the human need for beauty. If readers like them enough, I’ll write more of them.

What do you hope readers will take away from your work?

That the planet and humans are complex, and although our brains are magnificent organs for calculating and measuring things that need to be measured, much of our relationship to the environment is through feeling—the emotional body sensor that can give us great meaning. Poems and stories are sensory and can give us meaning. I think my work is often ethereal, but it’s concrete, too. I would love to have my poems translated from English into another language someday. Also, many of my poems are best spoken aloud. A prism created through another language can be something very different. Recently, I was thrilled by and for a writer I respect much who has been published in Turkish—a lovely new perspective.

Who do you picture as the ideal reader of your work?

A generous one, and a reader who wants to discover something—something far away or very close or something that makes them ask questions. A reader who reads as if their life depended on it.

“A reader who reads as if

their life depended on it.”

Where and when do you prefer to write?

I write at home, usually in the little hours of the mornings, early, after or before I’ve been struck by something—an atmosphere or incident that speaks to me. And, sometimes lately, I write because there’s something to be finished, something that needs to be carved out and completed.

Where would you most want to live and write?

Today I’d like to be writing in Istanbul again, just being in that little coffee shop I remember with the wide-mouth white cups. And yesterday it was London; weeks before, I had the thought I’d want to return to Kyoto on a summer night and write. Maybe one day I’d like to live for a few months in a small ancient African village, a peaceful one and beautiful, and write. But, today I’m here and it’s the best.

What do you listen to when you work?

Nothing. Just silence. Silence is beautiful.

When you’re having trouble getting started on a poem, where do you look for inspiration?

Poems are usually always difficult, not difficult like writing a novel, just different. For example, I like playing with punctuation. It sometimes gets me going until the poem invites me to be inspired by something. Or maybe it’s just a single vivid word. And no matter how small or long the poem, it has to carry a truth of  meaning. I’m inspired by this fact. Sometimes it’s just so hard to believe in what you’re creating because of the artist’s need and fascination with the new. I always want to create something I haven’t encountered before.

“I always want to create something

I haven’t encountered before.”

How do you balance content with form?

For me, first content consumes all. Once I’ve got the pulp of the content of a poem or fiction work, I consider form. Content without form—some understanding of an architecture—is a loss for the writer.

Is there a quote about writing that motivates or inspires you?

For the last year or so it’s been: What If? It’s actually two words of a title of a book about the writing craft.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

“Find your voice and learn to love it,

and learn to wait.”

Find your voice and learn to love it, and learn to wait. I’d also say, perhaps there are more good writers than ever before, and more than ever before places to find a home for your work. And finally, the challenge and elusiveness of it all never ends. It’s just who you are—what it becomes.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a writer?

Well, the first advice wasn’t advice but something my grandfather did. He would recite Poe’s “Annabel Lee” to my mother as a child. She told me the story and it rubbed off—my love of drama in writing—my expectation of it. In the adult world of writing, I was advised to keep doing it and give more. The work is the writing. And, I remember when my third grade elementary school teacher introduced me to Emily Dickinson and I walked a very long way home that day reciting a poem she wrote because it was mysterious. I think writers have to accept that part of what they do comes from that mysterious place or simply is mysterious. Maybe in this day and time, nothing is mysterious, but it has to be. Nature is mysterious, even in light of the fact that now Einstein’s theory of relativity is being challenged by quantum physics.

What do you find most challenging about writing?

Really getting to the core of what you’ve trying to say and to say it well, even when no one’s reading it, when you’re obscure.

When you’re not writing, what do you like to do?

Since returning from Japan almost a decade ago, I’ve studied chanoyu, the art of the Japanese tea ceremony (that simply translates, hot water for tea), and I practice it. I love good American and International film, watching the garden grow, and spending quality time with the people I love and the other writer I live with.

About Yon Walls

Yon Walls is a poet, diarist, and recent novelist native of Kentucky. She’s lived in California since 1972. Her most recent work, The Sultan’s Cook, a little ebook collection of sudden fiction, was published with Smashwords.com in 2011. Her poems have appeared in Syllogism, Parkway Journal of Hiroshima, Japan, Niedergasse and numerous other journals. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. While at Mills she received the Zora Neale Hurston Writing Award twice, and in 2002 adapted Two Ways To Count to Ten and The Magic Bones for children. In 2004, she was selected as a writing participant of the Voices of Our Nation Foundation at the University of San Francisco.

From 2000-2008, she taught College English and Literature in the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley areas. In 2002 and 2007, she was a teacher and writer-in-residence in Hiroshima, and Kofu, Japan. In 2009, she completed Island of Swallows, a collection of poems about Japan. Walls is currently a contributing editor for Tertuliamagazine.com and working to publish her first novel.

[Toffoli, Marissa B. "Interview With Writer Yon Walls." Words With Writers (December 30, 2011), http://wordswithwriters.com/2011/12/30/yon-walls/.]

Sarah Schulman. Photo by Marissa Bell Toffoli (2011).

An introduction to Sarah Schulman, author of The Mere Future (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2009). Schulman’s numerous books include the novels Rat Bohemia, Empathy, and The Child, and the nonfiction book The Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences. She is co-director of the ACT UP Oral History Project, and she is currently organizing the first US LGBT delegation to Palestine for Winter 2012. Sarah is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at CUNY, College of Staten Island, and was awarded a Brown Foundation Fellowship from The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her other awards include a Guggenheim, Fulbright, and the 2009 Kessler Award for her “Sustained Contribution to LGBT Studies.”

Quick Facts on Sarah Schulman

• Sarah Schulman’s ACT UP Oral History Project
• Home: Manhattan, New York
• Comfort food: Well, I’m in San Francisco. I like the burritos with salsa verde at Alabama and 24^th Street. That would be my San Francisco comfort food.
• Top reads: Carson McCullers, Rabih Alameddine, Caryl Phillips, Vivian Gornick, and Claudia Rankine. I like Funeral Rites by Jean Genet.
• Current reads: Lady Painter, the Joan Mitchell biography by Patricia Albers; Open City by Teju Cole

What are you working on at the moment?  

Well, I’m working on a lot of things. I have a book coming out in the fall of 2012 from Duke University Press called Israel/Palestine and the Queer International. It’s a political memoir that’s basically about how the rise of the gay movement in Palestine is going to transform secular politics in Palestine, and that’s going to transform Arab politics and therefore global politics. I am predicting and feeling that it’s a key movement to emerge at a very key time. I’m anticipating a lot of great consequences as a result.

I just finished a new novel. It’s called The Cosmopolitans. I wanted it to sound like a Henry James novel. It’s a remake of Balzac’s Cousin Bette. Cousin Bette is about a spinster who is wronged by her family and wants to get revenge. She destroys everybody and everything, and in the end, she wins. That was the plot I started with but I set it in Greenwich Village in 1958. I was born that year, and it’s set in the building I was born in, and in fact it ends on the day of my birth.

In the process of writing, it also became an answer book to a second novel, which is James Baldwin’s Another Country. Because of the milieu and the time, The Cosmopolitans is about interraciality, bohemianism; it’s about straight people and gay people interacting with each other. Suddenly I ended up in the same territory as Baldwin’s Another Country, only the difference was that my female characters are real and his aren’t. I thought, wow, this is a book that’s speaking to both Balzac and Baldwin at the same time. I’m really happy with it. I’ve been working on it since 2003.

Where did the idea for The Mere Future come from?

I had this sentence: “Passion escapes me on the hot sun porch.” I just had that and I didn’t know what to do with it. I believe it became the words of the article that the main character writes about Glick. She’s only allowed eight words for the article. That’s what I started with, and I just started justifying it. I was feeling very free.

I’ve written 17 books and each book is in a different style. But, I’ve written another book that has a similar impulse to this one, which is called Empathy and came out in 1992. It was also highly formally inventive. I think form really has to come organically from the emotions at the core of the piece. Sometimes you’re just in a territory where nothing that’s known is appropriate for that content, or that emotional impulse, so you have to invent it.

“Sometimes you’re just in a territory

where nothing that’s known is appropriate

for that content, so you have to invent it.”

In this case, since the subject is the future, you can’t really write a novel about the future using language of the past. It doesn’t make any sense. I guess Anthony Burgess proved that in A Clockwork Orange. But what is the language of our future? And it’s the mere future, not the far future. I wanted it to be like something that we’re on the precipice of linguistically. There’s texting fragments and email, and all that. Then, there’s the incredible speed with which slogans and marketing and advertising creep into conversation, and people internalize that. And then, there’s like channel surfing, where you can completely understand what’s happening in two or three words. So many of the paradigms in entertainment are repetitive and you can trigger them with very few words; they don’t have to be full sentences. All of that is the language of the future. It’s a language of reduction. But, I didn’t want to just do that because it’s boring—it’s flat. I took that kind of minimal, associative, reductive language but I made it sort of funny and interesting, and a little smarter than it normally would be. I stylized it up. That’s how the language part came to be.

You know, it was written in 1999. It took 10 years to find a publisher. It looks like it’s about Obama, but it actually had nothing to do with that. I was writing about the future, and there were certain trends that I could see were coming, and people who were reading the manuscript couldn’t see that those trends were coming. It was only when the trends had actually already come that those people could then understand the book. It sort of defeated the purpose of it, but I’ve had that experience before. Sometimes I write with a 10-year gap.

What do you hope readers will take away from The Mere Future?

Of course, I want them to enjoy it. I would like them to feel okay about reading slowly. It’s not a long book, but some of the sentences require thought. You can’t glide over it; it’s not a skimming kind of book. You know, I once read Colette’s autobiography and it took me three years. And I think that’s okay. It’s like the slow food movement, but it’s the slow read movement. 

Who do you picture as the ideal reader of your work?

I think there are all different kinds of readers, but two in particular that I notice. One really wants to be told things that they already know. They find that very comforting. They want familiarity, which they’ve confused with quality. If it’s not already known, they become angry and frustrated, and they think it’s bad or wrong or they reject it.

Then there are readers who, if you offer them something they’ve never seen before, they’re ecstatic; they live for that. And that is my ideal reader, just in general. They want the experience of being expanded. I kind of think that’s the difference between art and entertainment. People come home from work and they turn on the TV to not expand, to live in a state of repetition, familiarity, and comfort. But art is something that changes you, it doesn’t just repeat.

“Art is something that changes you,

it doesn’t just repeat.”

Where and when do you prefer to write?

I can really write anywhere. Given the quantity of how much I write, I’d better be able to. I don’t have a set time or anything like that. It’s always been that way. 

Where would you most want to live and write?

Well, I love New York City. I was born there and I’m a second-generation New Yorker. My expectation is that I’ll die there. I really don’t want to live anywhere else. I live in a six-floor walk-up, and one of my dreams is to live in an apartment with an elevator.

What do you listen to when you work?

It depends on what phase of writing I’m doing. I rewrite a lot; I’ll do like 10 to 12 drafts of something. For rewriting, definitely NPR. For composing, either NPR or nothing. It’s like white noise.

Do you have a philosophy for how and why you write?

How I write? I think I’m a natural. I experience it entirely as biology, some kind of a neuron thing. I don’t attribute it to any kind of will or character discipline, or anything like that.

Why? I don’t know. It’s my natural state. It’s like I’m an animal and that’s just how I do things. I’ve written so much, and I started writing when I was six. I spent my whole life writing, and that’s how I live. It’s not like I don’t do anything else, but it’s easy for me. I just do it a lot and, I don’t know, it’s a way of life. It’s like people who know how to sing—they just sing. I don’t have that. I’ll never have it.

How do you balance content with form?

It’s always been an organic relationship, even before I knew that was the case. With my first book, I remember I was interviewed in 1984, and someone said, “I see you used pastiche,” and I said, “What is pastiche?” Somehow I had a post-modern impulse, but I always thought it was because I was uneven. I kept trying to make it even, and I couldn’t. Then I found out that was post-modern and that it was okay.

“The more I’ve learned about form,

the more I understand the choices I have.”

The more I’ve learned about form, the more I understand the choices I have. There have been times when I’ve said, all right, I’m going to try to write a bestseller. I go to the store, and I try to pick out the least obnoxious bestseller, and then I can’t read it. I’ll think, I’ll just write something that’s even, but I’ve never been able to.

Is there a quote about writing that inspires you?

Audre Lorde was my college professor. She told my class to write this down: “That you can’t fight City Hall is a rumor being spread by City Hall.” That’s one of my mottos. You might think it’s not about writing, but it is. The only reason you think you have to do things a certain way is because the people who are invested in it being that way are telling you that. It doesn’t mean it’s true.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Well, it really depends on the person. It’s so hard. Do you mean professionally or artistically? I mean, I hate MFA programs; I think they’re terrible for the culture and that they hurt people’s writing. On the other hand, if you are a working-class person or an unconnected person, you have to get an MFA. Even if you do, there’s no guarantee. I teach in a City University of New York, and my students are mostly working class, and I’ve sent like three students to MFA programs in 12 years. Very few have gone. Those students have been ultra gifted, but then when they get there, they’re so fish-out-of-water because they’re the wrong class, and the teachers don’t mentor them. So even though they get the MFA, they still can’t get the goodies from it. But if they don’t get that, forget it. I think in class terms, you have to have it. If you come from the upper middle class, or upper classes, if you have connections and relationships in the social apparatus, perhaps you don’t need it.

“The best way to be an artist

is to make art, see art, and talk about art 

with other artists.”

In terms of artistically, the best way to be an artist is to make art, see art, and talk about art with other artists. If you’re a writer, I’d say read, go to readings, write a lot, meet other people and talk to them about what they’re doing. That way, you accrue eclectic influences, and that’s the most important thing. The problem with an MFA program is that it homogenizes people’s influences. If you accrue eclectic influences, you have a much better chance of crafting something that’s organic to you. The groupthink is antithetical to what our practice is as writers; that’s the problem—homogenization and the branding.

I was very lucky that I met many wonderful, fantastic writers and talked to them, and have had conversations with them all my life. I pulled it together that way, and that’s been very special.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a writer?

I was a waitress for 10 years, and I had published two books. Not only did I not go get an MFA, I had never even heard of an MFA. It’s an age thing. The MFA just wasn’t the thing at that time. I was a waitress in the first coffee shop in Tribeca. So Tribeca was gentrifying, and certain artists were coming in for breakfast because it was the only coffee shop. I waited on Yvonne Rainer, and Meredith Monk, and Isabella Rossellini, and all these people, for their eggs. A lot of these artists would talk to me, and I told them that I’d published two novels, and they told me that I needed to get an MFA.

I enrolled in this city college program, which actually was an MA, but I didn’t know the difference. I go the first day, and the teacher was Grace Paley. She has everybody go around the room and read something that they’re writing. I was writing my third novel and it was a first person lesbian narrator. The other students thought that the narrator was a man, and I thought, oh no, this is going to be two years of hell. I got really scared. After class, Grace was like, “Sarah, come to my office.” So I go to her office and she goes, “Look, you’re really a writer. You’re really doing it. You don’t need this class. Go home.” I went home; I never went back. Well, she completely saved me, because I would have been destroyed by that. It was the best thing anyone ever, ever said to me. I’m so grateful, my whole life, for that.

What do you find most challenging about writing?

I have too many ideas. I’m behind, like, years behind. I want to hurry up. Now I’m 53, I can see the clock is ticking. I’ve ramped it up a lot. This year, I had two new paperbacks, and two new hardcovers come out. But, I really have a lot of things I want to do.

When you’re not writing, what do you like to do?

I like to consume art. I live in a world where I have a lot of friends who are artists. So, I like to see work that my friends have made or that they’re in, or talk to them about what they’re making, or read what they’re doing, go to their studios and rehearsals. I do a lot of that, and look at cuts of their movies and talk to them about it. I just love being involved in all of that.

One of my favorite things about New York City is that it’s one of the places where ideas originate. You hear the idea and you engage in it with the person who is originating it. It may be years before that idea is a product that somebody else can buy on a bookshelf or see in a movie theater.

And I’m a teacher, so I have a full-time job. I’m very invested in some of my kids. I care a lot about what happens to them, and a lot of my kids are in a lot of trouble, and they have all kinds of problems, so I have to really care. This is at a city university.

About Sarah Schulman

Sarah Schulman’s books include the novels Rat Bohemia, Empathy, and The Child, and the nonfiction book The Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences. She is co-director of the ACT UP Oral History Project, and she is currently organizing the first US LGBT delegation to Palestine for Winter 2012. Sarah is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at CUNY, College of Staten Island, and was awarded a Brown Foundation Fellowship from The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her other awards include a Guggenheim, Fulbright, and the 2009 Kessler Award for her “Sustained Contribution to LGBT Studies.”

Buy The Mere Future, preferably at your local independent bookstore.

[Toffoli, Marissa B. "Interview With Writer Sarah Schulman." Words With Writers (December 27, 2011), http://wordswithwriters.com/2011/12/27/sarah-schulman/.]

The Mere Future by Sarah Schulman (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2009).

Mehrdad Balali. Photo by Marissa Bell Toffoli (2011).

An introduction to Mehrdad Balali, author of the debut novel Houri (The Permanent Press). Originally from Iran, Balali spent 17 years living in the US before returning to his homeland to work as a journalist in 1991. A decade later, Balali’s press pass was revoked and he was banned from working as a journalist in Iran. He continued to cover events in the Middle East for international news agencies, including writing about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and ultimately returned to the US in 2005 to write fiction.

In Houri, Balali relays a coming of age story about Shahed, an Iranian boy raised in poverty, who finds himself constantly torn between his devoted mother and his larger-than-life, exciting, but often thoughtless, father. Despite all odds, Shahed is able to move to the US for college, where he struggles to make his way as a young man. When Shahed returns to Iran for his father’s funeral, the story unfolds as Shahed confronts childhood memories and a drastically changed Iran. Stark scenes informed by the journalist’s experiences underpin Balali’s engaging and moving novel. Shahed’s tale is rooted in Iran’s history, full of life and heartache.

Quick Facts on Mehrdad Balali

• Mehrdad Balali’s website
• Home: Central Coast of California
• Comfort food: sushi
• Top reads: Henry Miller is the only person I can think of at this point that I really like and who influenced me in a lot of different ways. I like a lot of different writers. I don’t have any particular all-time favorites. I like Lawrence Durrell and Bernard Malamud.
• Current reads: Eileen Goudge’s Garden of Lies

What is your history as a journalist?

In 1991, after the first Gulf War in the Persian Gulf, I went back to Iran after 17 years of living in Los Angeles, California. I started working for an English language newspaper called Tehran Times. I learned about media in Iran, and the inner-workings of a newspaper office. Then I got a job with AFP (Agence France Presse) and worked with them for six years. While working for AFP, I was also a contributor to The Economist. In 1999, I moved to Reuters.

After I had worked at Reuters for one year, the Iranian government banned me from working and revoked my press card. Reuters had to move me out of Iran because they thought I was in danger. They moved me to Dubai to cover Iran from afar. After September 11, 2001 when US–led forces attacked Afghanistan, they sent me to Afghanistan. I made two trips to Afghanistan and stayed for about a month each time. When Iraq was attacked, then I was sent to Kuwait. I was there for four months covering the invasion of Iraq. After that, I was in Bahrain for two years, and then I left Reuters and returned to the US, where I’ve been living and working as a writer since.

What was the reason given for why Iran revoked your press pass and banned you from working as a journalist?

The government wanted information from me that I didn’t have. It seemed like having a press card was a privilege, not a right, that was given to people who were willing to cooperate. They said I was not cooperating with the authorities and that’s the reason why they took it away. 

How was life on the road as a journalist?

“You never know when you are

 going to land in hot water.”

It was very exciting, but at the same time very scary. You never know when you are going to land in hot water. I got a lot of enjoyment and excitement out of it, even though at the same time it was stressful. I wanted to make it as a good journalist, so I was willing to risk it. But in the end, I paid for it with my health because it really gave me anxiety.

How long did it take to leave behind the anxiety?

Well, once in a while it still happens if I’m under stress or something. Luckily, I have a personality where I can put things behind me and look toward the future. At this point, I’m kind of severed from that part of my life.

What languages do you speak?

Farsi and English fluently. I also studied Arabic for three years when I was in the Middle East.

When you were reporting, what language were you writing in?

Always English; it’s actually like my native language. That’s what I’ve been reading since I was 20. It’s the language I’ve always written in. I’ve never written in Farsi—I’m not good in it.

How has your background in journalism influenced your work in fiction?

It influenced it a lot. In the beginning, when I was writing the first chapters of Houri, and I showed it to friends, they told me that there was a lot of journalistic style in my writing and I should change it because it didn’t work in a novel. I had to be very conscious of that, and keep working on it to be able to change it.

“Journalism taught me to think clearly,

to be terse, be to the point,

and sensitive to what makes a good story.”

Journalism, especially the news agencies’ styles, taught me a lot of things: to think clearly, to be terse, be to the point, and sensitive to what makes a good story. In that sense, it really helped me. I just had to change the language that I used in the novel to be less journalistic prose.

Do you miss your work as a journalist?

Yes. At this point, I have a son and I want to be close to him while he is still in high school. Once he is finished with school, I’ll be free to go back to that profession. But yes, I miss it and I want to go back to it someday.

What are you working on at the moment?  

I’m working on a fictionalized true story. It’s about a young man, 22 or 23, of Iranian descent who thinks he’s a woman. The story is about a transgendered person, and that’s all I can say about it at this point. Right now, I’m trying to clarify what I want to do with this book. I’m getting ready to rewrite the first draft and start from another point in the story.

Where did the idea for your first novel, Houri, come from?

My father. He died in 1978, about a year or several months, before the revolution in Iran, My father was a womanizer, a happy-go-lucky person who loved to go out, and was a bit of a reckless debaucher. The characters in the book are exaggerated, of course, but the idea came from the way I saw my father when I was a child. I combined memories and reminiscences with some fantasies to create the character of Baba, the father in the book. The boy in the book, Shahed, is kind of myself as a child; but he’s also fictionalized. There’s a lot about him that was not really me. Many other characters are also driven from characters I’ve known in my life, and I fictionalized and stylized them.

So, the idea for the book comes from the question, if my father had been alive after the revolution when all the fun was being ditched, what would have happened? How would he have taken all of these things? It was this thought that drove me to write about Baba and a kid.

Are there scenes in the book that you also drew from what you witnessed as a journalist?

Definitely. The events that take place in the 1980s, when Shahed is an adult, are almost all driven from my own experiences, and some were based on stories that I’d heard from people I trusted. These were real events, but I stylized them to fit the fictional narrative. Also, the name Shahed means witness. He’s supposed to be a witness to life. It’s really more common as an Arabic name than a Persian name, but I liked the meaning.

What do you hope readers will take away from Houri?

I just hope that readers will enjoy the story. It’s a human story about a little boy, and the way he sees his life. Sometimes we don’t pay attention to children and their world; we think that because of the way they behave, they’re not aware and conscious of things, or that they’re just on the margins of life. But it happens a lot that children are keenly aware of their circumstances, and so keenly observant that they see things deeper than we do. When I was writing about the child, I was putting myself in the skin of a twelve-year-old boy, and the way I saw and perceived the world at that age. At that age you might not draw sophisticated conclusions from the chaos around you, but you feel and are affected by it intensely. You may feel sad, or happy, but you just can’t analyze the situation the way an adult would.

I think Houri is a universal father-son story, a child torn between the values of his devoted mother and the charm of his charismatic albeit selfish father. Baba’s world is filled with fun color and beautiful women, but he has no sense of family responsibility. Mama, on the other hand, is totally committed to her children, but her world lacks sparkle. The boy finds himself caught between the two worlds. Where does his allegiance go? Definitely to the mother, it turns out, because he understands it is the mother who makes the sacrifices, who is the victim in the relationship.

What I witnessed as a child really shaped my view of the injustice and gender inequality, at least in that part of the world, when I was growing up. I looked around myself and there were people like my uncle, who was a very good man, very good husband, and very loving. But at the same time, I could see a lot of women who were victims of their male-dominated society, tradition and laws. Many of these women were forced to get married, like my mother, at the age of 14, because they had no other opportunities in that society. And she would end up in the hands of a man, with no free will of her own, even though she’s very intelligent, beautiful, and resourceful. I became very sensitive to this issue of gender inequality. 

Who do you picture as the ideal reader of Houri?

I think women tend to feel more affinity with the book than men. Some readers might find it a little culturally remote, but I think as they read on they get brought into the world of the book.

I have read lots of reviews, and I’ve seen some conflicting comments, but most of them are positive. The people who didn’t like the story said it was too sad. And everybody hated Baba, but I didn’t mean to make him hateful. He was a man of his passions; he had appetite, he had a passion for life. It was just that he was too spoiled, and had little cultural education. He had no sense of his responsibilities. I wanted to show the vibrancy in him, the life in his warped personality to make up for his callousness.

Where and when do you prefer to write?

Because I have a full-time job, I usually write on weekends, and sometimes after I get home from work. In other words, whenever I can.

Where would you most want to live and write?

I really like where I live. I don’t think it really matters where you live. You have to find a way to be content. I used to be a very restless person, but a measure of contentment comes with age, I guess. You learn to make your peace with your surroundings.

“You learn to make your peace

with your surroundings.”

What do you listen to when you work?

I love music. I have a collection of about a thousand songs from all different genres. I love jazz, and listen to a lot of that, but my taste is not limited to that. It depends on my mood and the song.

Do you have a philosophy for how and why you write?

When I write, I’m completely involved in the act of writing and I don’t feel time pass. It’s the ultimate relaxation for me. If I have any worries, I forget them when I’m writing. I’m most entertained when I’m writing. I don’t necessarily enjoy my time at a party or crowded places. I enjoy hiking or just spending my free time reading and writing.

“If I have any worries,

I forget them when I’m writing.”

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Discipline is very important. You should also immunize yourself against rejection, because every writer is likely to face that at some point. Write for yourself, for you own pleasure.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a writer?

The best advice came from an agent that I approached. She told me not to rush it, to wait on publication until the book is really ready.

What do you find most challenging about writing?

The most challenging aspect of writing for me is the command of the English language. I wish I could express myself better. I wish I could write with more flair, but it is not my native language, and I have to really think about every line I write.

When you’re not writing, what do you like to do?

I like to spend time with my friends.

About Mehrdad Balali

Mehrdad Balali is an Iranian-born American who returned to his homeland as a career journalist in 1991. He worked for the next 15 years for international news agencies, covering social and political upheavals in the Middle East. After being banned from working in Iran, he covered events in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf States, and eventually returned to the US to spend his time writing fiction.

Buy Houri, preferably at your local independent bookstore.

[Toffoli, Marissa B. "Interview With Writer Mehrdad Balali." Words With Writers (December 12, 2011; updated February 6, 2012), http://wordswithwriters.com/2011/12/12/mehrdad-balali/.]

Houri by Mehrdad Balali (The Permanent Press).

Jane Hirshfield. Photo by Robert Hatch.

An introduction to poet Jane Hirshfield, author of the new collection Come, Thief (Alfred A Knopf). When asked whether the poems of Come, Thief reflect any particular concerns of hers, Hirshfield begins with, “One lifelong theme for me has been saying yes to what’s difficult.”  Hirshfield is the author of six previous collections of poetry, a book of essays called Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, and four books collecting the work of poets from the past. Her accolades include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the Academy of American Poets, and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as three Pushcart Prizes, the California Book Award, The Poetry Center Book Award, and more. Her poems appear regularly in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Poetry, and have been included in six editions of The Best American Poetry. 

Quick Facts on Jane Hirshfield

• Jane Hirshfield’s website
• Home: Mill Valley, California
• Comfort food: Pasta with garden tomatoes and basil in summer. Oven-roasted cauliflower in winter.
• Top 5 reads: I’m a bit allergic to ranking—I need different books and different writers at different times in my life. So I will answer this first with this moment’s answer, by saying that I am enormously looking forward to John Berger’s new book Bento’s Sketchbook, which I just saw advertised but have not yet read, and also to delving the new Last Poems by Czeslaw Milosz, also not yet read. On the opposite end of a this-moment answer, I’ll say that for me the two great American novels are Moby-Dick and Invisible Man. OK, I have room for one more here… but who? Emily Dickinson, Izumi Shikibu, Elizabeth Bishop, Wislawa Szymborska? How can you rank such ranges of genius?
• Current reads: A year’s worth of literary magazine back issues, having fallen behind on everything after travelling in 2011 to China, Japan, Poland, Canada, Lithuania, and all over the US from Florida to Vermont, Washington State to Virginia. (I do think it important that working writers and working readers support not only books, but also the many extraordinary journals in which so much literature appears first, from the major publications—The New Yorker, The Altantic, Harpers—to Orion, Threepenny Review, Poetry, The Georgia Review, and American Poetry Review, to the smaller, superb journals like Five Points, the New England Review, Agni, Alaska Quarterly Review, and a myriad others.)

What are you working on?

After a year of travelling for the new book and also for other events, which involved giving several keynote talks—which meant writing extended essays on such subjects as “What is American About Modern American Poetry” and “Writing and the Contemplative Mind”—I am at last returning to writing, very simply and with the shyness of a gone-wild creature coming back inside the fenceline, one new poem at a time. Eventually, I’ll need to look at assembling the accumulating essays into what will probably be a follow-up book to Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. I have something like 10 of them now, and people keep asking when the next book of prose will come out. But for now, I want to be simply a poet again, writing poems.

What do you hope readers will take away from your work?

Mostly, I work without any kind of hope—my intentions in writing a new poem have nothing to do with thoughts of its effects upon others. But afterward, if my work is going to be read by others at all, I might wish my poems to bring some sense of enlargement to their readers, of feeling and thinking, and also some sense of a deepened saturation in their own lives and the lives of others: people, creatures, plants, rocks, mitochondria, images, ideas, owl calls, the sound fish make when they swim, the muscularity of a flea or of a planet in its orbit. Poems want to awaken intimacy, connection, expansion, and wildness. Other poets’ poems bring this to me, so it is what I’d like my poems to bring others.

“Poems want to awaken intimacy,

connection, expansion, and wildness.”

Who would you picture as the ideal reader of your work?

Again, running already true to form here, I wouldn’t want to limit even my imagination of my readers by holding any conception of who they might be. I myself read the work of people so very unlike me—people who lived with charcoal braziers for heat and blackened their teeth for beauty; people who have found themselves imprisoned; people who speak languages I cannot begin to pronounce; people who have participated in or borne the brunt of violence; people who—it can be this simple and vast—have borne a child.

The sympathy of a reader to a poem is not circumstantial, is not identity-based, is not any kind of simple allegiance. The sympathy that makes a reader feel “ideal” is the sign, perhaps, of a shared hunger: for what can be tasted by certain words and their rhythms, and for some of the things words can carry. I am a vegetarian, and have been for over 40 years—yet John Berger’s description of the killing of a pig in a French village is for me transformative, real, and needed. Would he think of me when imagining his ideal reader? I suspect not.

Does your new book, Come, Thief, reflect any abiding concerns for you, or for that matter any new ones?

One lifelong theme for me has been saying yes to what’s difficult. That is very much a part of Come, Thief. There is also love in this book—as there has been in every book before this one; but what’s particular here I suppose is that many of the poems are explicitly about a late love, the kind you don’t necessarily count on. That feeling of surprise and boundlessness spills over into other of its poems as well. There’s a fair bit of science, as has been increasingly true in my work: biology, geology, physics…. Time haunts this book as well. Time is the “thief” of the title—it brings us everything we have and are, then comes with a back-loader and starts taking it all away. Awareness of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in particular the awareness of Abu Ghraib and of torture, are a thread running through these pages—the current manifestation of a long-running theme. But on the other side, there are more poems in this book that are lighter, that raise laughter at readings. “A day is vast./ Until noon./ Then it’s over.” Those lines always startle a recognizing response from the audience, I’ve been finding.

Where and when do you prefer to write?

In whatever hour and place is quiet and undisturbed. I am thin of barrier between self and world, but the self who writes requires a sense of protection from outer event, before feeling able to look with enough porousness of being to find something possibly new, possibly real.

Where would you most want to live and write?

I don’t have a fantasy alternative life, no desire to slip into some phone booth and emerge in another costume of the self. If I did, though, it would be a rather greedy fantasy, less of place than of a world with the possibility of eight or nine selves, each leading fully its own life of reading, writing, gardening, hiking a mountain or desert, pure contemplation, long conversation, long dancing, long passion, long silence. One of these lives must be spent entirely in love, another in friendship. One might do what is sometimes called “honest labor”—build something useful, feed others. And then why not ask for a few spare selves with which to learn something new, to do something wildly unexpected?

I am perennially grateful that from time to time I have had the chance to go on writer’s retreat for a month—and for me, those months in artist colonies have made a set of paradise-interludes in my life. Paradise means, literally, a walled garden. To live in one all the time would be to cut yourself off from the world. But to go into one periodically, to be immersed in silence and freed of ordinary tasks—this for me is perfect writerly happiness.

Do you listen to anything while you write?

No. I did when I was young, but after a three-year period in my twenties living without electricity or any manufactured sounds, my relationship to silence and sound, as well as to foreground/background in general, changed completely. I prefer my whole attention pointed one direction.

When you’re having trouble getting started on a poem, where do you look for inspiration?

Outside. Literally—out the window, out the door—or else outside figuratively, to the inspiration of others. The creative is always an act of recombination, with something added by new juxtaposition—as making a spark requires two things struck together.

“Making a spark requires

two things struck together.”

Do you have a philosophy for how and why you write?

The great Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz famously began his poem “Ars Poetica?” with the line: “I have always hungered for a more spacious form.” That, coupled with the poem’s title question mark, resonates deeply for me. I want, as a writing poet, to not have any philosophy, not know what I am doing, or how I will do it. A writer will be herself, himself. We cannot help that. Our fingerprints will be on everything we touch. But within that living self, my hope is to set aside all known perimeters of style and idea, and to let what comes to me come. If I were to think I know why I write, that might preclude another reason coming along…. To enter a poem dressed only in a question mark seems to me just about right.

I did, let me add, answer this question of “why do you write” quite recently, for an educational website, The National Writing Project:  

Why do I write?

I write because to write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery. A thought was not there, then it is. An image, a story, an idea about what it is to be human, did not exist, then it does. With every new poem, an emotion new to the heart, to the world, speaks itself into being. Any new metaphor is a telescope, a canoe in rapids, an MRI machine. And like that MRI machine, sometimes its looking is accompanied by an awful banging. To write can be frightening as well as magnetic. You don’t know what will happen when you throw open your windows and doors.

To write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery. Why write? You might as well ask a fish, why swim, ask an apple tree, why make apples? The eye wants to look, the ear wants to hear, the heart wants to feel more than it thought it could bear…

The writer, when she or he cannot write, is a person outside the gates of her own being. Not long ago, I stood like that for months, disbarred from myself. Then, one sentence arrived; another. And I? I was a woman in love. For that also is what writing is. Every sentence that comes for a writer when actually writing—however imperfect, however inadequate—every sentence is a love poem to this world and to our good luck at being here, alive, in it.

How do you balance content with form in your poems?

Content and form arrive for me in the same bucket—as water needs to be water, not fog, before we can drink it. I hear my poems when I write them—not as hallucination, but as an inner speaking. They arrive with a voice and a tone and a music, with rhythms, pauses. What is written down is a kind of musical notation for that first life, inside the self and inside the ear.

I have, in the new book, Come, Thief, one atypical poem, a villanelle. (Well, a stretched villanelle—but it still is one.) There is an example of what might seem to have been form first, content second—but it was the opposite—the poem arrived in me needing exactly that form of recurrences and variations to work itself deeply through. I didn’t think about this, it simply arrived as a villanelle. But when I look back later at this poem about a long relationship, one that has changed over time but not vanished, what better form could there have been? Villanelles are, by their structure, about exactly that unfolding.

How did the collection of poems in Come, Thief become a book? Were you consciously working toward a specific idea for a book?

Some poets write books, I know. I write poems. When there are enough of them, enough I feel I want to preserve, then I start looking at the book that might emerge. Yet, my books do have a coherence, I think, and that is the coherence of a life. In any five or six year period, a person is having a set of experiences that are probably not the same as that person might have thirty years earlier, thirty years later. You think about a certain set of concerns, both because of what may emerge in your personal life and because of what may emerge for your community, your country, the planet. If we were not visibly entering a time of environmental crisis, there would not be poems in my book with that awareness in them. If we had not been at war the whole time I was writing the poems of Come, Thief, I would not have written the poem that draws on Beowulf and Gilgamesh to look at our species’ long history of mutual violence. If I had not fallen in love newly as I entered my sixth decade, other poems would similarly be missing. The summer of 2008, when all of California was struck by wildfires, lies behind two of the poems. So some things are perhaps unavoidable in any given book, others accidental. Yet those poems, too, will magnetize whatever larger issues are being pondered.

To arrange poems that were individually conceived into an order is to construct an arc, a story. That is as much a part of a book’s creative making as any individual poem is. It alters the poems, just as, for an individual poem, giving it a title makes a difference, turning its feet one direction or another.

Come, Thief begins with a poem about love and art, and the “sumptuous disturbance” brought into our lives by these things. It ends with a poem about a deer passing impossibly through a fence. Both poems are about permeability and agreement, about letting the large pass through and undo us. Between them, many other things are looked at—because I do look at many things in my life, and poetry is one way I can do that with my own tongue and mind and heart. But I wanted to turn this book’s feet toward what the Greek poet Cavafy wrote of as “the Great Yes.” The title does that, and the arc of its organizing principle does that as well. There are some “Great No’s” also inside its pages—but I see no way to navigate a life fully without letting in what comes. That what comes must be mixed, as the idea of a welcome thief is mixed, that is just, for me, the truth of being human.

How has poetry made a difference in your life? What does poetry mean to you?

For me, poems are a conduit into a deepened existence. They allow me to feel and to question feeling, they allow me to think and to question thinking. To write a poem, and then to revise it—which for me is part of the writing—is in no small way a kind of Socratic dialogue you can have with yourself. I am more myself, writing, than I am when not writing, and I am also more than myself, writing, than when I am not writing. Does that make sense? All language, all the long history of human culture, comes to your hand along with the lifted pen. Of course, this enlarges who you are and what you can know.

“I am more myself, writing,

than I am when not writing,

and I am also more than myself, writing,

than when I am not writing.”

Is there a quote about writing that motivates or inspires you?

R P Blackmur: “Poetry expands the available stock of reality.”

Goethe: “Never let what matters most be at the mercy of what matters least.”

Tolstoy: “Make it strange.”

Galway Kinnell: “The title of every good poem could be ‘Tenderness’.”

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Learn how to pay attention with every one of your senses, inner and outer. Read. Live. Love. Write. Then do these things more. And last, keep the window open some inches more than is comfortable.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a writer?

Do something every day that is connected to being a poet—but remember that this does not necessarily mean writing.

What do you find most challenging about writing?

Beginnings. Finding myself in the condition where something might need and be able to speak itself through me.

Is there a question that you’re surprised people ask about your writing?

I’m always surprised the times I’ve been asked about the source of my affirmation or radiance as a writer—I think, “Do they not see also how hard-won it is, all the grief and wrestling?” Many do see that, or include it in what they say. But sometimes it doesn’t seem to be recognized, and then I wonder, have I been too subtle? Yet, I love subtle poems, I love what pushes into comprehension signaled but not outrightly said. The huge passion of Elizabeth Bishop, almost entirely under the restraint of the surface; Larkin’s hidden terror and pity.

“I love what pushes into comprehension

signaled but not outrightly said.”

Is there something you wish people would ask you more often about your poetry?

It’s rare for people to comment on the social justice foundations in many of my poems…. I suppose I’d like my own—and others’—poems to be taken more deeply into account as actual investigations of human issues, investigations for which things like music, image, metaphor, bound, hesitation, angle of view, unpredictable inclusion are the telescopic instruments of sight… But as soon as I say this, I feel that answer leans altogether too far in one direction. I am chastised by Archibald MacLeish’s old line, “A poem should not mean, but be.” That is equally essential: mystery and the play of language’s own joy are as important to a poem as its concerns. Poems are like reality in this way: they always have more than one side.

About Jane Hirshfield

Jane Hirshfield is the author of seven books of poetry, a collection of essays, and four books co-translating and collecting the work of poets of the past. Her 2006 book, After was named a best book of the year by The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the United Kingdom’s Financial Times, and was a finalist for England’s  T S Eliot Prize. Given Sugar, Given Salt was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other honors include the California Book Award, the Poetry Center Book Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets. Hirshfield’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Nation, Orion, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, McSweeney’s, and six editions of The Best New American Poetry. A resident of Northern California since 1974, Hirshfield has taught at the University of California, Berkeley; Bennington College; and elsewhere, and presents her poems widely in universities, literary centers, and festivals throughout the US and abroad.

Buy Come, Thief, preferably at your local independent bookstore.

[Toffoli, Marissa B. "Interview With Writer Jane Hirshfield." Words With Writers (December 5, 2011), http://wordswithwriters.com/2011/12/05/jane-hirshfield/.]

Come, Thief by Jane Hirshfield (Alfred A Knopf).

Todd Shimoda. Photo by Linda Shimoda.

An introduction to Todd Shimoda, author of the novel Oh! A Mystery of ‘Mono no Aware’. Shimoda’s other books include The Fourth Treasure and 365 Views of Mt. Fuji. This latest book, Oh!, was selected as an NPR Summer Read, and Todd Shimoda won the Elliot Cades Award for Literature, the highest literary honor in Hawaii. Besides writing novels, Shimoda is Vice President of Chin Music Press, and Director of Product Design and Development at SF Design Associates.

Quick Facts on Todd Shimoda

• Todd Shimoda’s websites: www.shimodaworks.com and www.chinmusicpress.com
• Home: Upland, California
• Comfort food: tofu with rice, mac’n’cheese with tomato soup
• Top reads: Kobo Abe’s The Ruined Map, Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase, Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, the “big three” authors of the American hard-boiled detective novel: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald
• Current reads: Levy Hideo’s A Room Where the Star Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard

What are you working on at the moment?

My next novel, Subduction, will be published in May 2012. I just finished it at the end of October; well, there will be galley reviews and final proofing and promotion—all of that is work too. I call Subduction a literary thriller set on a tiny, earthquake-plagued Japanese island. Endo, a young physician unjustly charged with a patient’s death, is banished to the island to care for the few remaining elderly residents. Determined to remain on their crumbling island and resuscitate their defunct fishing industry, the aging islanders plot against all outsiders. The aftershocks of the islanders’ past, as well as Endo’s own troubled history, replay in the present through paranoia, seismology, and dark humor. Inserted in the book, there is also a very cool, illustrated retelling of the Japanese myth of the giant catfish that causes earthquakes.

I’m now writing a new novel titled The Royal Book of Monsters. It’s a break from what I’ve been publishing in that it has no direct connection with Japan. Monsters is a postmodern, philosophical horror novel that explores how and why humans have created all of our monsters like vampires, werewolves, ghosts, witches. It’s a fun, page-turning, thought-provoking write, so I hope it’s a fun, page-turning, thought-provoking read.

What do you hope readers will take away from your work?

“I like the idea of ‘satisfaction’

as an explanation of

how people experience literature.”

I like the idea of “satisfaction” as an explanation of how people experience literature in general, and what I hope readers take away from my novels. Satisfaction is different from, but intertwined with, pleasure. When we are satisfied, we may feel pleasure. Satisfaction is an emotion after a completed action, whereas pleasure refers to a current emotional state. Satisfaction is also different from happiness, which is a more complex bundle of emotions and refers to a positive general state of being. The important dimensions or factors of satisfactions are:

• satisfaction is an emotion
• satisfaction is achieved when expectations are met or exceeded
• satisfaction is changeable and temporal
• satisfaction varies greatly from person to person
• satisfaction is relatively short-lived
• satisfaction is addictive

So in other words, readers come to my novels with differing expectations—some want to be entertained, some want to get lost in another world, some want to learn something or be inspired, some want to be surprised. I try to create something that is satisfying as a whole, complete work, and meets the expectations I have set up with my characters, plot, and other aspects of the novel.

Who do you picture as the ideal reader of your work?

Someone I’d like to share a drink or dinner with, and have a great conversation. She would be well-read, but not snobby about what she reads. If she isn’t familiar with my work, she would be willing to give my somewhat experimental style a chance. That said, I really don’t have a very specific reader or person in mind, because I’m writing to the characters and story more than to the reader. On the other hand, I appreciate my readers immensely, and I’m amazed and gratified when some go out of their way to contact me, especially if they liked the book. Well, only if they liked the book [laughs].

Where and when do you prefer to write?

I have a home office space and do some writing there, but I do the bulk of my writing at coffee shops, bookstores, or libraries. I find that outside the house there is the right level of quiet and stimulation, and I have to sit there. I tend to pace at home, and usually find something else to do, like wash the windows, pay bills, anything but write. I do most writing in the morning, but also do some evening writing. The afternoons are tough going for me, writing-wise.

It’s been said writers can do their work from any place, where would you most want to live and write?

I’m not sure it’s true writers can work from any place, at least not for me. I lived in Hawaii (Kauai) for several years and thought the relaxed pace would be conducive to writing. But, I need a little more stimulation to write well. Plus, all the bookstores closed on Kauai except a small one that was too far away for me to go to regularly. I also find it’s easier for me to write about a place where I’m not living, perhaps because I don’t have to dwell on the details of the place. I have to write from memory, which is better for the creative process in writing a novel. An ideal place? That’s hard to say, but I’m finding Southern California very stimulating.

What do you listen to when you work?

Usually jazz by Bill Evans, Miles Davis, Chet Baker. Sometimes electronica or art rock works too.

Do you have a philosophy for how and why you write?

Much of my philosophy for and approach to how I write comes from the books I like to read. A book that really affects me, satisfies me, creates a response not unlike what a friend provides. There is a long-term bond established, a change in my way of viewing the world, and a sounding board to bounce ideas off. The good book also sets a bar for me to shoot for, so I’m asking myself: Is the book I’m writing going to be as satisfying as the ones that satisfy me?

“I’m asking myself: Is the book

I’m writing going to be as satisfying

as the ones that satisfy me? “

I think it’s largely the same answer for why I write, although it’s much more of a subconscious, visceral need. When I go for more than a couple of days not writing I get very antsy, and even cranky. Even though the writing process can be very aggravating, when it works well, I get that writer’s high, not unlike a long distance runner gets a runner’s high.

How do you balance content with form?

For me, content mostly defines form, assuming content means the story, which is made up of many factors like character, plot, voice, style. Content is not limited or constrained. Form is how the content is placed on the page, which has limitations. But I like to experiment with form, moving text around, using different fonts, adding art and even formulas. Of course, the book designer is responsible for the ultimate form. I like working with a great book designer, and have been lucky to do that.

In Oh! A Mystery of ‘Mono No Aware’, how did you choose the images and artwork that are included throughout the novel?

I collaborate with my wife Linda, a contemporary abstract artist who also uses classical Japanese brush techniques. When we collaborate, I discuss the story idea with her, then we go to our separate spaces—me to write, she to create art based on the story idea. So, she is not illustrating the story, but rather creating her interpretation of the story. When we are finished, she reads the story and selects the art, placing the pieces where she feels it is most closely interpretive of that point in the story. This works well, and it adds much to the written word.

Is there a quote about writing that motivates or inspires you?

I can’t recall a single quote that motivated me, but John Gardner’s book On Becoming a Novelist rings true and useful to me. On a personal note, the wonderful Nan Talese, of Nan Talese/Doubleday, described my writing as “fresh” and I often think of that simple yet powerful assessment.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

I’m mostly a self-taught, trial-and-error writer. Lots of trial, many errors. I didn’t go the MFA route, not to say that I couldn’t have benefited from it. I think writers have to find their own route to publication; there is no royal road. Of course, I do believe becoming a writer means writing a lot, learning what works and what doesn’t, and understanding what “story” means.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a writer?

I tend not to take advice, so I haven’t sought out advice, although perhaps I should! But the Gardner book I mentioned contains a chapter titled “Faith” and I think that says it all.

What do you find most challenging about writing?

The writing part of being a novelist has many challenges, as anyone who writes can attest. But those challenges are a necessary part of the creative process. Overcoming them makes a writer an author. However, for me, the most difficult part is not the writing process but making a living while I’d rather be writing.

“Challenges are a necessary part

of the creative process.

Overcoming them makes a writer an author.”

When you’re not writing, what do you like to do?

Read, watch television (too much), enjoy good food and drink, golf, hang out with cool people. Believe it or not, I’m enjoying driving on the LA freeways.

About Todd Shimoda
Todd Shimoda recently won the Elliot Cades Award for Literature, the highest literary honor in Hawaii. He has published three novels that deal with Japan and Japanese themes: Oh! A Mystery of ‘Mono no Aware’ (Chin Music Press), The Fourth Treasure (Nan Talese/Doubleday), and 365 Views of Mt. Fuji (Stone Bridge Press). The books have been translated into six languages and The Fourth Treasure was listed as a 2002 Notable Book by the Kiriyama Prize, and won first prize for fiction at the New York Festival of Books. Oh! was selected as an NPR Summer Read among other honors. His fourth novel Subduction will be published in spring 2012.

Besides writing novels, he is Vice President of Chin Music Press, and Director of Product Design and Development at SF Design Associates. He has also been a professor in the Journalism and Technical Communication Department at Colorado State University, a visiting professor at the University of California-Berkeley, and an engineer and technical writer. Born in Fort Collins, Colorado on April 30, 1955, he has also lived in California, Hawaii, Texas, and Japan. He is married to the artist LJC (Linda) Shimoda. He blogs about writing at www.shimodaworks.com. His reviews for the Asian Review of Books are at www.asianreviewofbooks.com.

Buy Oh! A Mystery of ‘Mono no Aware’, preferably at your local independent bookstore.

[Toffoli, Marissa B. "Interview With Writer Todd Shimoda." Words With Writers (December 1, 2011), http://wordswithwriters.com/2011/12/01/todd-shimoda/.]

Oh! A Mystery of 'Mono no Aware' by Todd Shimoda (Chin Music Press).

J L Powers. Photo by Marissa Bell Toffoli (2011).

An introduction to J L Powers, author of the new novel This Thing Called The Future (Cinco Puntos Press, 2011). The book is about 14-year-old Khosi, who lives in a shantytown on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg, South Africa with her sister, grandmother, and mother. Khosi struggles to be a big sister, a good daughter and granddaughter, to get through school, and figure out what she wants for her own future. As Khosi navigates the turbulent world of being a teenager and having crushes on boys her own age, she is also confronted with the dangers of being noticed and pursued by older men, and with the epidemic of AIDS in her community. Powers is also the author of the novel The Confessional, and the editor of the forthcoming nonfiction collection That Mad Game: Growing Up in a Warzone. Currently she calls Northern California home, but Powers grew up in El Paso, Texas, and has also spent time living and traveling in South Africa.

Quick Facts on J L Powers

• J L Powers online
• Home: Livermore, California
• Comfort food: Mexican food, tortilla chips and salsa
• Top reads: Benjamin Alire Sáenz—I love his novel Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood; Laura Ingalls Wilder; I love Jon Krakauer, and especially Under The Banner of Heaven; JC Hallman’s book The Devil is a Gentleman; L M Montgomery
• Current reads: One Day The Soldiers Came by Charles London

What are you working on at the moment?  

A few things. Next May, this book called That Mad Game: Growing Up in a Warzone is coming out and I’m editing it. The book features writers from around the world talking about coming of age in a warzone.

As far as novels, I’m working on two right now. One, I just dug out of the closet after a three-year hiatus. It’s a strange story about a kid who gets kicked out of his home for drug abuse. He ends up on the streets in San Francisco where he meets this strange girl from a fundamentalist household. She has it in her head that God has told her to do this very dangerous thing, that’s not dangerous to her but dangerous to the people around her. They become friends and enter into this weird relationship because of her religion.

I’m also working on a psycho-thriller that’s set in a small Northern California town. It’s about a girl who gets sucked into this sexy game of danger with her brother’s best friend, who does things to her like kidnap her and put her in the back of a truck and then afterwards things get romantic. Then her brother disappears. 

Are the novels you’re working on all aimed at young adult readers?  

I write things with young adult protagonists primarily, and so they usually get sold as YA books, but I think they’re really crossover books. They’re appropriate for adult audiences as well.

Where did the idea for This Thing Called the Future come from?

“It came in a lot of layers.”

It came in a lot of layers, but the initial spark was when I was in South Africa in 2006. I was doing a Fulbright-Hays language study program in Zulu. Part of the program was living with a Zulu family in a township. My little Zulu sisters, who were 13 and 14, would come into my room at night and they would tell me stories about their lives, their secrets. They were very good girls.

Many South African households are female-headed. If the mother is lucky enough to have a job, it’s often not where the family is living. A lot of these households are headed by grandmothers, actually, while the mother works in another city during the week. These are families living in houses they’ve had since the days of apartheid, when that was where they could live. And so, these girls, my Zulu sisters, were responsible for everything—they’d come home from school and they’d cook and clean, yet they’d have their secret little lives. I can remember my Zulu sisters telling me that they loved to sneak out and go to parties.

The 13-year-old told me one day when we were home alone that she wasn’t allowed to go to church anymore because her grandmother, Gogo, caught her kissing her boyfriend. I asked her to tell me about her boyfriend, and I really expected this sweet story. But, no, her boyfriend was in his thirties and drove one of the khumbis, the African taxis, around town. So, that’s when I was introduced to the sugar daddy phenomenon.

I learned that this was the major mode of HIV transmission in Africa—older men with these young girls. I thought what would it be like to grow up and have all the normal urges, and normal crushes, but to A) be prayed upon by these older men, and B) to have people all around you dying of AIDS, a sexually transmitted disease. What does this change for you? Does it change anything? Does it make you more cautious, less cautious, fatalistic?

What do you hope readers will take away from your work?

I actually was a little worried about the fact that my books are set everywhere, and seem really disparate. When I met up with my agent and asked if I should be worried about this, she told me no. I very clearly write about young people who are put in situations where they are forced to ask really important questions about the world that they see in front of them. It doesn’t matter where the novels are set.

So, I think that whatever book people read that I’ve written or edited, that would be the thing that I’d want them to take away: What are these important questions? Why are they important to face? I know, that sounds very teacherly. First and foremost, I want people to have fun and enjoy my book, but secondly, I do want them to be confronted with these questions themselves, whether they have answers or not. I want to have the world be tilted a little, to have it look a little bit different to people than before they came into the book.

“I want to have the world

be tilted a little.”

Who do you picture as the ideal reader of your work?

My ideal reader is probably someone who is willing to consider alternatives to the status quo.

Where and when do you prefer to write?

I used to write first thing in the morning—get up, make coffee, and write while I was still in my pajamas. But, I had a baby a year ago, and he gets me up anywhere between 4:30am and 5:30am, and I can’t write then. I’m hoping to get into more of a rhythm now that I have a babysitter. But, I feel like I’m in this constant chasing to catch up mode. I’ve also been doing a lot of book promotion since this last book came out.

Where would you most want to live and write?

Well, I really love South Africa. It would be really great to live in Durban or Cape Town. It would be nice to have a couple places. I also love my hometown of El Paso; the people are wonderful. I also love the Bay Area.

Do you listen to music when you work?

Yes, I do. Music really helps me enter into the character and the setting. For example, for my first novel, The Confessional, I listened to a lot of Mars Volta, Sparta, and At The Drive In, which are homegrown El Paso bands. For This Thing Called The Future, I listened to a lot of South African Kwaito music and Afropop, also Zola, Freshlyground, and Hugh Masekela. It’s always very different, depending on the book.

Do you have a philosophy for how and why you write?

I want to write stuff that does cause people to think. I’d like it to be something lasting. I feel like lasting literature asks important questions about the human experience, and tries to answer them even when those answers are complicated and gray.

“Lasting literature asks

important questions about

the human experience.”

How do you balance content with form?

I create the content and pretty much ignore form until I figure out what’s happened. I feel like I am moving through things like I’m blind; I have a vague idea where my novel will end up. Once I figure out what’s happened, I shape the book. I revise a lot. This Thing Called The Future probably went through seven or eight versions, all substantially different.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

The best way to become a better writer is to read a lot. How can you get good at the craft if you don’t see what other people are doing, too? Read what you like, but read a lot. The second thing is to write a lot.  

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a writer?

Do a little bit every day.

“Do a little bit every day.”

What do you find most challenging about writing?

I find that first draft really challenging. I have this vague idea, but I don’t know how to get there. I enjoy the process, but that first draft is really hard. I like revising a lot more.

When you’re not writing, what do you like to do?

I love live music, especially reggae. And travel, I love to travel. Now that the baby is here, I’m doing a lot of fun things with my son—exploring the world.

About J L Powers

J L Powers is an author, editor, small press publisher, and historian of Africa. Powers explores social issues involving violence, sexuality, and race in her books. Novels by J L Powers include The Confessional (Knopf, 2007) and This Thing Called The Future (Cinco Puntos Press, 2011). Powers lives in Northern California with her husband, son, and two weimaraners.

Buy This Thing Called the Future, preferably at your local independent bookstore.

[Toffoli, Marissa B. "Interview With Writer J L Powers." Words With Writers (November 12, 2011), http://wordswithwriters.com/2011/11/12/jl-powers/.]

This Thing Called the Future by J L Powers (Cinco Puntos Press, 2011).

Sholeh Wolpé. Photo by Ken Pivak.

An introduction to Sholeh Wolpé, an award-winning poet, literary translator, and writer. Born in Iran, she has lived in England, Trinidad, and the United States. She is the author of Rooftops of Tehran, The Scar Saloon, and Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad—for which she was awarded the Lois Roth Translation Prize in 2010. Wolpé is a regional editor of Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East edited by Reza Aslan (WW Norton, 2010), and the editor of an upcoming anthology of poems from Iran, The Forbidden: Poems From Iran and Its Exiles (Michigan State University Press, 2012). Wolpé is also the contributing editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books, and poetry editor of the Levantine Review.

Quick Facts on Sholeh Wolpé

• Sholeh Wolpé’s website
• Home: Los Angeles, California
• Comfort food: watermelon, dark chocolate
• Top reads: The Tin Drum by Günter Grass, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, Women Without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur, and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. As for poetry, I have too many favorites to name. Poetry is like music, favorites change. However, I strongly suggest buying anthologies. And translations, of course.
• Current reads: I read several books at the same time. Presently I’m reading: Kill The Messenger: The Media’s Role in the Fate of the World by Maria Armoudian, re-reading Arundahti Roy’s The God of Small Things, and Mary Karr’s book of poems, Sinners Welcome.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m working on a music project with Iranian singer Mamak Khadem and musician Hamid Saeedi. It’s a marriage of my poems and translations, all in English, with traditional Persian music. We just had our first performance at the Shannon Center for the Performing Arts in Whittier, California, and the audience was very enthusiastic about it. We hope to take this program to festivals and universities not only in this country, but around the world.

I’m also working on my next collection of poems. The manuscript is just about finished—or at least, I hope it is.

How do you define poetry?

In my view, poetry is condensed language with an internal music. A good poem evokes emotions, knowledge, and memories already inside of us; it affirms truths that are buried within us.

“It affirms truths

that are buried within us.”

What do you hope readers will take away from your work?

Each person connects in his or her own way with a poem, a story or a piece of art. We  take away what we need or are capable of absorbing at various moments in our lives, moments that turn and shift. It’s important to go back to poems again and again because we don’t stay the same, and how we see life and literature shifts with our internal evolution. As for my own poems, I do hope that the humanity that is at the core of most of my poems comes across and helps the reader to shift position to look at a truth or situation or human emotion from a different perspective. We sometimes forget that we have that freedom, the freedom to move and look at things from other perspectives.

Who do you picture as the ideal reader of your work?

Ralph Waldo Emerson speaks of poetry as “the perpetual endeavor to express the spirit of things.” Therefore the ideal reader, at least for me, is everybody. I think my writings are quite accessible, though multi-layered.

A lot of your work has been translated into multiple languages, what language do you usually write your poems in first?

I write only in English. And I do not translate my own poems. I do, however, translate Persian poetry into English.

How did you begin to work on translating poetry?

I was at a literary conference where Galway Kinnell spoke of Forugh Farrokhzad, an Iranian poet I greatly admired in my youth. Forugh was a rebel poet, and is arguably the most significant female poet of twentieth century Iran. She died in 1967, at the age of 32, in a tragic car accident. She left behind a body of rich and revolutionary work that propelled her into stardom. After Galway’s talk, I questioned him further about his relationship with Forugh. He told me about his encounter with this charismatic woman, then looked at me and said, “You are a poet fluent in both languages and cultures, why don’t you translate her work?”

So I did, and couldn’t stop for two years, at the end of which I had translated 41 of her poems. I didn’t even try to find a publisher. They came knocking on my door. The book is titled Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad. To my great surprise and delight, it won the 2010 Lois Roth Persian Translation Prize.

Since then, I have been translating many other great contemporary poems by poets dead or alive, in Iran or in exile. Translation doesn’t make you rich, nor does it bring glory. I believe that literature can help bridge the chasm between cultures and people, so translation of literature is an important service that, if one has the talent for it, must be rendered. When it comes to translation of poetry, generally poets are the best candidates to be trusted with the task. I am very excited about my upcoming anthology, The Forbidden: Poems From Iran and Its Exiles, scheduled to be out February 2012.

“I believe that literature can help

bridge the chasm between

cultures and people.”

What do you enjoy most about the translation process?

Translation helps me to be a better poet. It is also, for me, a kind of meditation. It absorbs me, engulfs all my senses. But it’s also hard, and truly a labor of love.

Where and when do you prefer to write?

For me writing is like going into a trance. I become unaware of my surroundings.

I enter an internal world free of time, and I’m able to connect to something that is not entirely me. I know it sounds a bit wacky, but that’s my experience. I’m a meticulous note keeper and write in numerous notebooks. When I finally sit down to write, I am at my desk at least four to five hours. Some writers work well at night. I can’t do that. Generally I do my readings and research in the evening hours.

“I’m able to connect to something

that is not entirely me.”

Where would you most want to live and write?

So long as I have my laptop and notebooks, I can work from anywhere that is comfortable, clean, and without distractions. Having said that, the energy of a place is very important to me. There are places that agitate me for no apparent reason.

Presently, I work mostly in a large room full of books and artwork which opens to a small but beautiful garden where a two-trunked ash tree holds court with squirrels and mocking birds. I keep a Persian samovar on low boil, and a package of dark chocolate and a bowl of dates within comfortable reach. However, I am planning to get out and try some of the residencies around the country and the world. It will be good for me.

What do you listen to while you work?

I’m going to tell you a secret. When I work I listen to a CD I have listened to for years: Evening Adagios, a collection of music by the usual suspects…Debussy, Barber, Dvorák, Shubert, etc. It’s the only collection of music that my brain has so deeply absorbed that it can enjoy but ignore while writing.

Do you have a philosophy for how and why you write?

Whether an addiction like cocaine, or a must, like air, I write because I have no choice. If I didn’t, I’d be miserable.

How do you balance content with form?

When I was a child, I didn’t speak a lick of English, but was fascinated with the music of the English language. I used to listen to an American radio station, then an English one, and compare the music of their speech. Now when I write poems, the music is perhaps more present for me than it is for a native speaker. To me, music is what gives form to my poetry. As for content, it’s all about how I see and absorb the world. Isn’t that so for most writers?

“Music is what gives form to my poetry.”

Is there a quote about writing that inspires you?

André Gide: “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has courage to lose sight of the shore.”

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Read widely and extensively. Read translated literature. Read at bedtime; fall asleep with poetry swirling inside your head. A poem is not a soup, it is a sauce. You have to let it simmer and boil down to the essence. What you put out there should be your best.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a writer?

Have faith in yourself and write what you must without fear, but don’t be afraid of criticism. It’s the only way to get better at one’s craft.

When you’re not writing, what do you like to do?

Live some more.

About Sholeh Wolpé

Sholeh Wolpé is an award-winning poet, literary translator and writer. Born in Iran, she has lived in England, Trinidad, and the United States. Her publications include two collections of poetry Rooftops of Tehran (Red Hen Press, 2008), and The Scar Saloon (Red Hen Press, 2004), a CD of poetry and music, an anthology, The Forbidden: Poems from Iran and its exiles (University of Michigan State Press, 2012), and a book of translations, Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad (University of Arkansas Press, 2007)—for which she was awarded the Lois Roth Translation Prize in 2010.

She is a regional editor of Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East edited by Reza Aslan (W.W. Norton, 2010), the contributing editor of Los Angeles Review of Books, poetry editor of the Levantine Review. Her 2010 Iran issue of the Atlanta Review became the journal’s bestselling edition.

Sholeh’s poems, translations, essays and reviews have appeared in scores of literary journals, periodicals and anthologies worldwide, and been translated into several languages. She has been thrice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and been featured on NPR, Voice of America, and Dodge Poetry Festival. Sholeh holds Masters degrees in Radio-TV-Film (Northwestern University) and Public Health (Johns Hopkins University). She lives in Los Angeles, California.

[Toffoli, Marissa B. "Interview With Writer Sholeh Wolpé." Words With Writers (October 31, 2011), http://wordswithwriters.com/2011/10/31/sholeh-wolpe/.]