All posts by Leslie Pietrzyk

Interview with Kasia Jaronczyk

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reprinted with permission from www.workinprogressinprogress.com

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

On April 30, 1982, two women and their families hijack a Polish passenger plane flying from Breslau to Warsaw in a bold attempt to escape Martial Law in Communist Poland and find safety in West Berlin. Inspired by real events, Voices in the Air is told from the point of view of four women hijackers: a cotton spinner, whose husband wants to avoid a long prison sentence, a schoolteacher with a sick daughter, a pregnant fourteen-year-old who has visions of the Virgin Mary, an ambitious young filmmaker, and a stewardess in love with the married pilot. Will they find happiness beyond the Iron Curtain or was the hijacking not worth the risk?

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why?

I had the most fun creating the character of Ania, the flight attendant. I immediately loved her irreverent, provocative voice, especially in her interactions with her inhibited and rural cousin, but underneath that bravado was a woman desperately in love with a married man and willing to do anything to be with him. After the hijacking I felt great sympathy for her stubborn belief, in spite of everyone, that her daughter will one day be able to respond to her and communicate.

And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

I struggled with writing about Julia (the filmmaker) the most. I knew that she would be a witness to the hijacking, and that years later she would interview the women involved, but I didn’t know what her story would be. I felt that I already had all the perspectives I needed in the other female characters, until I realized that Julia would have a daughter Zuza who was, in a way, “hijacked” by her grandmother who acted like she was her mother. Julia would have to decide between Zuza and her chance to stay in the West. Julia’s story also required the most research, as the movie industry in Communist Poland was an involved process, complicated by the many levels of censorship involved. The themes of ambiguous morality,  censorship and self-censorship became very important in the novel.

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

Before I wrote Voices in the Air I had published a short story collection Lemons (Mansfield Press, 2017), edited an anthology of Polish-Canadian short stories, Polish(ed): Poland Rooted in Canadian Fiction (Guernica Editions, 2017), and wrote another novel, which remains unpublished. I spent a long time querying that first novel, and after receiving no offers, I gave up on it. In the meantime, I wrote Voices in the Air, and again, I had a few full requests from agents, but ultimately it was rejected. I was growing very frustrated and depressed because nobody seemed to want my novels. I switched gears and queried small presses in Canada and some in the US, which one can do without an agent, and with which I’ve had good luck before. I eventually received two offers of publication and accepted one. Palimpsest Press publishes great poetry and stylistically innovative novels, and Aimee Parent Dunn is an amazing editor. A big positive of publishing with a small press is that the author has more influence on the book design, cover and interior, which I appreciate very much.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

Write first, edit later – the first draft is a bad draft. This lets you actually finish your work without letting the inner critic sabotage the process.

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

Sometimes during writing your mind spontaneously comes up with an unexpected and yet perfect solution to a problem, or a connection, or something that happens that you know is just right. It is a magical moment and feels amazing. The creative process is hard work; you are consciously inventing characters or a plot, choosing between different possibilities, following different paths that might lead nowhere. And then, all of a sudden, you receive this surprising revelation like a gift from the writing gods.

How did you find the title of your book?

Titles can be so difficult – they need to indicate what the book is about, the tone of the work, the genre, but at the same time they can’t be too obvious, too obscure, or misleading. The choice becomes even more complicated when the novel in question is written about a different time and culture and the title needs to be more explanatory that it would have been if it were published in the same country and language. Certain phrases and words can have different connotations and be less obvious to a different audience.

I had a running list of titles, including Escape to the West; Flight over the Iron Curtain; Escape to Western Paradise; Hijacked to the West, but they all seemed too obvious and too general, plus they implied an action/adventure/thriller genre, which might attract readers who would be disappointed to find out it is a literary novel told from a female perspective.

I then came up with Women Hijackers, (which actually would have worked better in Polish, as a single word Hijackers in the feminine form), and finally, The Wives of Hijackers, which seemed an intriguing, sellable title, but perhaps a too gaudy. Air Partisans was too mysterious.

It was my writer friends who suggested Voices in the Air. I feel like this title indicates a literary novel, it may be too subtle, but it encompasses the female voices, the plot, the themes of the novel, as well as its unconventional structure which includes documentary film-style interviews with the hijackers. It also evokes a feeling of loss, an echo, and regret, which reflect the mood of the novel.

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://kasiajaronczyk.weebly.com

READ MORE ABOUT THIS PUBLISHER: https://palimpsestpress.ca

ORDER A COPY OF THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://palimpsestpress.ca/books/voices-in-the-air-kasia-jaronczyk/

Interview with Eugene Datta

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by Susan Tekulve

The stories in Eugene Datta’s remarkable debut collection, The Color of Noon, are visually striking. With a painter’s eye for detail and a poet’s sensibilities, Datta summons all the senses to create the atmosphere in which his characters exist. In the story, “Rain,” the protagonist sees “scarves of rain wrapping and unwrapping themselves around a streetlamp.” In another story, “Movie Star,” Datta evokes an entire neighborhood market, where “gossip hummed like flies on the piles of mango and papaya.” In the title story, “sunlight on the window ledge is the color of noon.” Synesthetic details abound in these ten stories set in Calcutta, where characters seek relief from unrelenting noon heat in monsoon rains and darkness.

These and other images accumulate in the collection, unifying stories about characters who often live on the fringes of the city. Free of cultural norms and religious traditions, their souls are exiled and conflicted to varying degrees, their humanity exposed so the reader may see more clearly their light and dark urges. In “Hammer and Sickle,” a young female schoolteacher arranges a romantic rendezvous with an elderly Communist insurrectionist in an abandoned mental asylum. In “Movie Star,” a god-like film idol returns home to take over his father’s furniture store, becoming lusterless yet more humane as time passes. In the breathtakingly beautiful and moving story, “A Minute’s Silence,” an ailing filmmaker scripts his own dying so his son won’t be bogged down with the practical details that follow a loved one’s death. Whether they are attempting a great kindness, or suffering the effects of crime, alienation, or betrayal, Eugene Datta’s complex characters, like his images, are quietly developed. These stories seem understated at first, but upon second reading they simmer and burst with color, light, taste, and sound. 

ST: One of the more striking aspects of your writing is your command of atmospheric details. Do your stories typically arise out of place, or do they evolve out of characters and events?

ED: I like looking at things closely. The physical details of a place, for instance. Shapes, colors, the sense of space, the play of light and shadow, and so on. And I try to mentally absorb whatever I can from whatever is available—sound, smell, mood. But I’m also horribly inept and inconsistent, which means that I cannot pick up all the available information equally well. A lot of what I’m exposed to remains out of my attentional focus. And I don’t take notes. So, my mental pictures of particular places or situations largely depend on a handful of the most prominent details, which I try to describe as faithfully as I can when I write about those places/situations, or things similar to them. Now, do my stories arise out of places? Or my memory of them? Maybe they do, who knows! What I’m a bit more certain about, though, is that, when I find a character to write about, or am gripped by an image, a set of images, or an idea, I try to place them in settings concocted from my memory, or imagination, of particular places.     

ST: I noticed you created the cover art for this book.  In what ways does your work as a visual artist influence your stories? Is there any “cross pollination” as you move between the visual arts and the literary arts? 

ED: I take interest in the way things appear, the way they present themselves to the eye. Not because I expect to find meaning there (we know that appearance doesn’t divulge essence, don’t we?), but because of the pleasure of sight, the simple yet richly sensual quality of it. Both as an image maker (artist/photographer) and a writer, part of what I try to do is describe the appearance of things, or, to be more precise, the way I receive the appearance and respond to it, and do it with as much fidelity as I’m capable of. I’m sure some cross pollination between the art forms I dabble in happens on this level, or on a much deeper one, which I cannot even pretend to be aware of. That said, I think of my fiction as being impressionistic in style, and I’m a big fan of impressionistic art.         

ST: Certain images recur and conflict with each other throughout this collection. The characters actively suffer at noon, during the heat of the day.   They find a great amount of relief from rain, and even the monsoons serve as a kind of balm or source of renewal. One of the characters in “Rain” remarks, “An hour of rain and already he’s a new man.” Is there any cultural significance, (specific to India), in the images woven through the collection? 

ED: The images represent particular ways of being—particular ways in which lives are lived within certain sections of society in a certain urban setting. I don’t think they’re representative, except in a very broad sense, even of Calcutta, where all the stories are set. On the other hand, their heterogeneity and the ways in which they often showcase particular pieces of culture, make them unmistakably Indian, or even Calcutta-specific. The image of goddess Kali in ‘Rain’, for instance, and the reverence shown to it by the teashop owner and the men the protagonist is sharing the table with, is one such detail. There’s also this loud-mouthed communist party supporter in the same scene. This, I’d say, is quite specific to Calcutta. Which, of course, is not to suggest that a scene like this couldn’t occur in Bombay or Delhi. It’s just that, it would be more “typical” of Calcutta than of any other Indian city.

Speaking of specificity of this kind, in ‘A Minute’s Silence’, the image “A koel sang in the darkness. Himadri remembered how his wife loved hearing the bird at night. Bonolota, he muttered, his eyes welling up with tears. Only darkness now….” carries a very subtle, very oblique reference to a poem titled ‘Banalata Sen’ by Jibanananda Das, one of Bengal’s greatest modern poets. Roughly translated, the final line of the poem, one of the best love poems I’ve read in any language, would read: “Only darkness remains, and Banalata Sen to sit face to face with.” (I haven’t yet come across an English translation of the poem that does justice to the Bengali original.) Unlike the poet, Himadri doesn’t have his Bonolota (although spelled differently, it’s the same name in Bengali) and is left only with darkness. The reference is almost invisible. And it’s not important at all in the larger scheme of the story. It’s like a single brush stroke in a painting with the faintest suggestion of light. It’s there just to add a subtle layer of poignancy to the image for those who notice it. And not noticing it, of course, won’t take anything away from the mood of the image. Here’s another example that’s also somewhat relevant: Toward the end of ‘Hammer and Sickle’, the insurgent says to his lover, the protagonist, “Whoever discovers the who of me…,” quoting Pablo Neruda. It’s not at all uncharacteristic of a hard-core Naxal like him to quote a foreign (Latin American or Russian) thinker or poet. Again, it doesn’t matter if someone gets it or not, but it’s a detail specific to Calcutta and its sociopolitical life in the 60s and 70s. These characters and their individual worlds are vastly different from those we find in ‘New Life’, for instance, or in ‘Movie Star’, or ‘The Color of Noon’, although all these lives and worlds are contained within a single urban universe.        

ST: How does the repetition of images (heat, rain, crows, lush gardens filled with bougainvillea and mango trees, crumbling/derelict cityscapes) help you to advance your stories, or even help you to advance the entire story collection? 

ED: The images recur because all the stories are set in one city. Although the stories themselves are very different (they’re set in different times, and are about people who’re different from one another), the recurring images run through them as a unifying thread. Also, from story to story, they consolidate (at least I hope they do) the sense of place in the reader’s mind. I didn’t, of course, think about any of this when I wrote them, which I did over several years.     

ST:  In your stories, traditional Indian mythology and religions seem to be missing from the lives of your central characters. Instead of worshipping the “old gods,” one of your characters worships an American pop star. In another story, a community of boys worship a fallen film idol.  When these new gods fail to meet the expectations of your characters, your characters appear to suffer a kind of identity crisis and extreme isolation.  Is this spiritual crisis specific to modern India, or do you believe this crisis transcends the borders of India? 

ED: I suppose it’s because I’ve always been interested in the fringes. Realities on the peripheries of dominant cultures appeal to me in a way their mainstream counterparts don’t. I’m drawn to lives in which different modes of existence blend into one another in unpredictable ways. Cultures in which the contours of behavior are not defined too rigidly, like those of objects in an impressionistic painting, if you will. Where the grip of convention is loose enough to allow a relatively free and open expression of humanity, one that’s not circumscribed by dogma or the dictates of particular traditions. As for traditional mythologies and religions, well, writers far more able than I have addressed them and used their stories more effectively than I ever could. Besides, I’m interested in other kinds of stories.

ST:  I have to admit, I knew very little about the Communist Revolution in India before reading your book. A cynical old “ex-Naxal” who considers himself a failed revolutionary appears in “Epitaph.” A “scrawny and bearded” old Communist insurrectionist hides out in an abandoned mental asylum in “Hammer and Sickle.” What questions are these stories posing about the nature of “extremism” in India? 

ED: The Naxal movement in West Bengal, in the late 60s and 70s, was spearheaded by a group of educated young men and women. They were well-read, highly motivated, and hated the bourgeoisie. Their violent insurrection was put down with equal violence. After capitulation, many of the surviving Naxals left the country and went to universities in North America. I believe the movement is alive in various parts of the country, and perhaps also in West Bengal, but I’m not sure exactly how its current iterations map onto that original movement. I’m also not sure if the book’s references to an insurgency of more than half a century ago can necessarily say anything about extremist movements in India in general. But then I’m not an expert. A historian would be better placed to answer this question. It seems to me, though, that the original Naxals were very different, given their secular education and ideals, from their counterparts elsewhere in the country both then and now.    

ST:  You were writing and publishing poetry before you published this short fiction collection.  Do you have any new projects planned in either genre?

ED: I’ve written a couple of small poems since ‘The Color of Noon’ came out. And I’m tinkering with two longer pieces of fiction. Who knows how long it’ll take me to finish them.

*****

Eugene Datta is the author of the poetry collection Water & Wave (Redhawk, 2024). He has worked as a newspaper journalist, a book reviewer, and an editor, and has had his fiction and poetry appear in publications such as Common Ground Review, The Dalhousie Review, Main Street Rag, Mantis, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Hamilton Stone Review, The Bangalore Review, and elsewhere. A recipient of the Stiftung Laurenz-Haus fellowship, he has held residencies at Ledig House International Writers’ Colony, and Fundación Valparaíso. A native of Calcutta, he lives with his wife and two children in Aachen, Germany. The Color of Noon is his first collection of stories.  

Susan Tekulve’s newest book Bodies of Light is her first full-length poetry collection. She is the author of Second Shift: Essays (Del Sol Press) and In the Garden of Stone (Hub City Press), winner of the South Carolina Novel Prize and a Gold IPPY Award. She’s also published two short story collections: Savage Pilgrims (Serving House Books) and My Mother’s War Stories (Winnow Press). Her photo essay, “White Blossoms,” appeared in Issue 12 of the KYSO Flash Anthology. Her nonfiction, fiction, and poetry has appeared in journals such as Denver Quarterly, The Georgia Review, The Louisville Review, Puerto del Sol, New Letters, and Shenandoah. Her web chapbook, Wash Day, appears in the Web Del Sol International Chapbook Series, and her story collection, My Mother’s War Stories, received the 2004 Winnow Press fiction prize. She has received scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She teaches in the BFA and MFA writing programs at Converse University.

Interview with Paula Whyman

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reprinted with permission from Work-in-Progress, www.workinprogressinprogress.com

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

Bad Naturalist is a memoir about my attempts to restore native meadows on a mountain in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, about the obstacles I encountered, the (many) mistakes I made, the failures—and a few successes—and the discoveries I made along the way.

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this memoir? Where does that sort of courage come from?

Hahaha, courage? Maybe it was foolishness! For me, writing a book-length memoir was something I hadn’t done before, and I was a bit of a reluctant memoirist in that I didn’t feel comfortable focusing on myself. The only way for me to do that was with humor, which is how I like to write anyway. I needed to feel free to make fun of myself. So if there is a “boundary” that I crossed, it’s that apparently it’s somewhat unusual for there to be humor in nature writing. And I wanted to bring nature, um, down to earth…for people like me.

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

Well, for one thing, selling my book on proposal was an incredible high point and so different from the process I was used to, since my first book was fiction. I’ll also say that there has been a lot of interest in this book, which I really appreciate! I think the low point was when I was trying to figure out how to write the book, as if there was some special rule of approach, a key to writing memoir–and not exactly a traditional memoir, but one that tells a story not just about me, but about the natural world–a key that I didn’t possess because I hadn’t done it before. (There is no key, and every book is different. Heavy sigh.) But I guess it worked it out in the end?

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

Write about what you’re curious about — that interest and passion will come through in the writing, and your enthusiasm is contagious. Don’t worry about writing what you “know”—but get to know it, so that your reader can get to know it, too.

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

That I got it done! I was doing the work and the research on the mountain at the same time that I was writing about it. Both the project and the writing involved a lot of uncertainty, a lot of waiting, a lot of trial and error. I never knew what was going to happen on the mountain or if it would happen when I needed it to happen, so I hardly ever knew whether I’d be able to write about the aspect I was hoping to write about, particularly in time for my deadline. The exciting part for me was often the surprise of seeing what did happen—what grew in a place, what new interconnections I found. I took those surprises in the field and brought them to my writing desk, where I teased out further connections when I sat down to write. I was also intent on finding ways to describe plants and insects and birds that I hope are entertaining and accessible, to describe elements of the natural world so that an interested novice like me would be able to envision and connect with them, and I was often surprised by the ideas that occurred to me, like comparing a flower to a weird swim cap my grandmother used to wear. Where did that even come from?

Who is your ideal reader?

People who are curious and interested in reading about encounters with the natural world that are written with a sense of humor; armchair travelers who would enjoy reading about an adventurous endeavor that doesn’t always go right! I think the book will prove inspiring for those who are drawn to take on an ambitious project in an area that’s totally new to them; for those interested in trying something completely new in mid-life; and for readers who like the idea of reading about someone else’s foibles and failures, watching someone else mess up in what is still a hopeful story.

Interview with K.E. Semmel

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This interview is reprinted with permission from Work in Progress (www.workinprogressinprogress.com)

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

THE BOOK OF LOSMAN is about a literary translator in Copenhagen with Tourette Syndrome who becomes involved in a dubious and experimental drug study to retrieve his childhood memories in a tragicomic effort to find a cure for his condition.

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And, which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

Daniel P. Losman—who goes simply by Losman—was very much a fun character to write. I’ve written 7 completed manuscripts over the past 30 years, five novels and two collections of stories (there were more manuscripts I simply abandoned). Nearly all of those manuscripts contain stories and characters that involve background research. This is especially so with one manuscript, a retelling of Beowulf set in the Southern Tier region of New York State. I spent 10 years writing that book, which is called IN THE COUNTRY OF MONSTROUS CREATURES. To do it properly, I had to read and reread Beowulf, I had to research the process of fracking (which plays an outsize role in the novel), and I had to invest a great deal of time learning more about this region of the state. I am from New York State—I love New York!—but I grew up in the Finger Lakes. There are great differences between these regions. Since I was after a certain degree of verisimilitude, research was necessary.

I pitched agents and eventually signed with one who loved the Beowulf retelling. He shopped it around and I got a lot of wonderful responses from major editors and publishers, though all of which were, ultimately, rejections. So I ended up giving up on the novel. Now it’s just a lonely Word doc on my laptop. I mention all this because, with The Book of Losman, I wanted to tell a simpler story, one that didn’t take a decade to finish or force me to spend countless hours doing research. I felt I knew Losman from the start. The two of us share some commonalities. He is a literary translator with Tourette, like me, and because of this his character traits slotted into place rather easily. Also, he lives in Denmark as I once did. Losman is not me, far from it. But because my life experiences are close to his, I didn’t have to do as much research. As a result, I was able to write the first draft in less than two years. 

The hardest character for me to write was Losman’s crush, Caroline Jensen. She’s an artist, and a bit of an odd duckling. I had to figure out a way to create her character without resorting to caricature. I didn’t want to write a story with a traditional romance, either, so there’s this awkward tension between them throughout the novel. Balancing that tension took some effort.

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

One interesting tidbit: this book actually started as a memoir. But the writing felt forced, and I limped along, not certain how to go about putting together a memoir. Besides, I kept asking myself, who wants to read a sad story about a boy with Tourette? I sure didn’t. I wanted to write something that contained both sadness and humor but was still entertaining. I’d been chewing on one particular idea for years—What if there was a pill that could return our childhood memories to us?—and it dawned on me that this was the perfect story for that idea. So I pulled one small scene from the memoir, the “truest” scene, and reimagined the entire book as fiction. Once I did that, the flood gates opened and the writing gushed. Fiction has always been my preferred medium. (Though I will add that I published a personal essay in HuffPost that served as all I wanted to say, or would have said, in a memoir.)

My agent loved this manuscript too, and he gave me some feedback that I incorporated. The book went out on submission but, like with the Beowulf retelling, I ended up getting only rejections. They were nearly all uniformly praiseful of my writing, but such praise often feels hollow when it’s accompanied by the words “it’s not right for us” or “we hope it finds the right home.”

While the book was out on submission, I began writing a middle grade novel. Once it became clear that The Book of Losman was going to suffer the same fate as In the Country of Monstrous Creatures, I made the decision to drop my agent (it was an amicable split; he does not represent middle grade books). I assumed, wrongly, that I would be able land another agent. I still don’t have an agent—and it’s not for lack of trying!

But I never stopped believing in The Book of Losman, so I submitted the manuscript to SFWP’s Literary Awards Program two or three years ago. I’ve known the publisher, Andrew Gifford, for years. SFWP published my translation of Simon Fruelund’s collection of stories, Milk, in 2013, and I even published a number of interviews with translators at SFWP’s online literary journal for a few years (“Translator’s Cut,” I called my interview series). Since I playfully incorporate stories and characters (and themes) from Simon’s work in The Book of Losman—the opening chapter is very much a reimagining of Simon’s story “Kramer” from that collection—the manuscript found fertile soil at SFWP. The manuscript didn’t win the contest, in fact it only made the longlist, but Andrew liked the story and decided to take a chance on publishing it. Around the same time, another indie publisher offered me a contract to publish the book, but I knew SFWP was the right choice. This has absolutely proved true.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

Don’t take rejection personally. Your work can be rejected for many reasons, but you’ve got to keep plugging away, chasing your vision, and getting better. Once you find your stories, good things will happen. It may take 30 years, as it did for me, but if you’re patient and willing to work through all the rejections, you’ll publish your work eventually.

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

I don’t write with an outline. I put a character in a situation and see what happens, building the story as I go along. So in this sense, everything that happens is a surprise. It’s this kind of creativity that excites me enough to wake up at 5:00 a.m. to get back to work. It’s not until after the draft is complete that I go back and make sure things connect properly. Sometimes I have to rewrite or remove scenes, but generally speaking, in the first draft, I want to write as though I’m a reader engaging with this story for the first time. Which I am.

The biggest thing that surprised me in this particular novel is just how much Simon Fruelund’s work influenced the story. Perhaps it shouldn’t be such a surprise, since I’ve known him for more than fifteen years and I’ve translated three of his books. Simon’s ideas on literature and fiction have also proven hugely important to me. And he’s a friend. The Book of Losman is, in a sense, an homage to his work.

Still, even though I deliberately began The Book of Losman with a reimaging from one of his stories, I didn’t quite anticipate that Losman would share certain character affinities with Pelle, say, the main character from Simon’s novel The World and Varvara (published by Spuyten Duyvil in 2023) or that Losman would also be working on a book, like Pelle, with a publisher breathing down his neck. It was only after writing the manuscript that I realized how deep the connection ran. I don’t mind this at all. I love Simon’s books, and I think it’s wonderful that my novel is engaged in a dialogue with them.

How did you find the title of your book?

The Book of Losman has been the title for as long as I can remember, though I did hem and haw a bit once I realized there were already a lot of books that included “The Book of—” in the title. I debated just calling it Losman. But I couldn’t shake one important thematic significance that would justify me calling it simply Losman. There’s a kind of meta-quality to this novel, right from the opening sentence:

“When he moved to Copenhagen with his Danish girlfriend, Kat, fifteen years ago, Losman imagined his life like a Fodor’s guidebook, rich with possibility and adventure.”

Simply put: As a character, Losman is a kind of “book” to be read, translated, and understood. The narrative follows a circular pattern that only becomes clear at the end. So, to me, The Book of Losman always had to be the title. I’m happy with it.

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

My favorite Danish pastry makes an appearance: Tebirkes! They are hunks of buttery deliciousness.

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://kesemmel.com/

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://www.amazon.com/Book-Losman-K-Semmel/dp/1951631374/

Interview with novelist & poet Andrew K. Clark

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Interview by Christine Schott

Andrew K. Clark is a self-described Appalachian Gothic novelist and poet. His book of poetry, Jesus in the Trailer (Main Street Rag Press) and his debut novel, Where Dark Things Grow (Cowboy Jamboree Press) both draw rich inspiration from the world of Appalachia, past and present. I had the opportunity to explore place, inspiration, and more with Andrew in the lead-up to his book launch on September 10, 2024.

Tell us a little about what Appalachia means to you. What do you want people to see of Appalachia through your work?

To me, Appalachia is certainly our beautiful geography which makes us famous, but it’s also about the uniqueness of our people. Appalachia is diverse racially, culturally, and in thought. If I could wave a magic wand, I would use it to let all the old caricatures die. In my work, I hope readers see what they’ve come to expect from great Appalachian literature (sense of place, family bonds, survivalism, dialect tradition, etc.) combined with the fantastical elements of magical realism and horror stories.

Your poetry collection, Jesus in the Trailer, is populated by people we feel we might have met before: struggling people, hard-edged people, generous people. Your novel, Where Dark Things Grow, draws on folklore, horror, and the preternatural. Do you see fundamental connections between these two works?

I think both books are exploring the same themes at their core. The religious traditions & superstitions of the narrative voices in Jesus in the Trailer are present, and perhaps more fleshed out, in Where Dark Things Grow. Family dysfunction and struggle are at the heart of both, along with a love story along the way. Also, my prose leans poetic, at least according to early reviews, so I think fans of one would be natural fans of the other.

What drew you to poetry, and what has since tempted you into the world of fiction? Do you see your future self as moving between these two worlds frequently?

When I was in high school, a friend gave me a collection of Langston Hughes poems. That flipped a switch for me; prior to reading Hughes I had thought of poetry as Shakespeare, and while I’ve grown to love Shakespeare, I didn’t immediately see it as accessible for someone like me. Hughes wrote in his natural vernacular and showed me I could do the same as a Southern Appalachian poet. I think the draw to fiction is a product of that same realization when I discovered southern writers, and the connections I later made to writers using fantastical elements like Murakami and Marquez. At my core, I love stories, and I love language. I cannot imagine not writing both.

Where did you first encounter the folklore you draw on for Where Dark Things Grow? Did you adhere closely to real folklore, or did you make significant changes to suit your novel?

Once I knew I wanted to include fantastical elements in the story, I decided early on to use only folklore I could trace to my family heritage. The idea for wulvers came from Scottish folklore, but I twisted them into something new in the story, giving them some of the elements of the dire wolves from Game of Thrones books. Mr. Wake, one of the novel’s villains is Norwegian, which I can trace to my own heritage. The religious traditions explored in the book are mostly from my own personal experience growing up in a very conservative strain of Christianity. Some characters in the book wear wooden booger masks from Western North Carolina Cherokee tradition, but they’re white men co-opting this tradition; classic cultural appropriation.

In marketing, we talk about “comparable titles.” The best way I’ve heard comps described is as books that belong on the same shelf as yours. What books would you love to see your novel share the shelf with?

Where Dark Things Grow belongs on horror bookshelves alongside books like The Hollow Kind and The Boatkeeper’s Daughter both by Andy Davidson, and The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones. It also belongs on the southern gothic lit bookshelf beside books like The Gods of Howl Mountain by Taylor Brown, Serena by Ron Rash, and Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell.

What was the publication process like for you? You’ve gone the route of publishing with small presses without an agent. What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of that approach?

One thing I am proud of with Where Dark Things Grow – out 9/10/24(Cowboy Jamboree Press) and its sequel Where Dark Things Rise – coming fall of 2025(Quill & Crow Publishing House) is that they bend genre. They contain elements of horror, magical realism, historical fiction, and southern gothic. But this means that the work doesn’t fit neatly into a traditional marketing box understood by the agent querying process. Indie presses are generally bolder and more welcoming of books that defy such easy categorization. So, the positive of traditional indie press publishing, although still quite competitive, is being able to tell a story the way I want as an author. I also have a say in elements such as my cover designs. The negatives would be distribution (your book isn’t automatically in a large number of bookstores) and that I am basically my own marketing department alongside a publicist I hired.

What’s your next project? Do you always have a new project up your sleeve when you finish something, or do you need a creative break between endeavors?

I have started on a third novel and a second poetry collection, both of which are quite different. I don’t think I need creative breaks; I don’t think there’s any such thing for writers. Even when we’re not writing, we’re writing. But I do crave breaks from the marketing involved with book launches and promo; if for no other reason than to get back into the right headspace to create something new.

What do you wish people would ask you about your writing?

I wish more readers would connect or comment on what I am saying about class in my work.

For more information on Andrew and his work, visit the following pages:

ABOUT

Andrew K. Clark is a writer from Western North Carolina where his people settled before the Revolutionary War. His poetry collection, Jesus in the Trailer was published by Main Street Rag Press and shortlisted for the Able Muse Book Award. His debut novel, Where Dark Things Grow, is forthcoming from Cowboy Jamboree Press in September of 2024. A loose sequel, Where Dark Things Rise will be published by Quill and Crow Publishing House in the fall of 2025. His work has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, UCLA’s Out of Anonymity, Appalachian Review, Rappahannock Review, The Wrath Bearing Tree, and many other journals. He received his MFA from Converse College. Connect with him at andrewkclark.com.

Christine Schott, South 85 Fiction Editor, teaches literature and creative writing at Erskine College.  She is Pushcart-nominated author whose work has appeared in the Gettysburg Review, Dappled Things, Casino Literary Magazine, and Wanderlust.  She holds a PhD in medieval literature from the University of Virginia and an MFA in creative writing from Converse University.

Interview with Iheoma Nwachukwu

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reprinted with permission from Work In Progress (www.workinprogressinprogress.com)

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

Japa & Other Stories is about Nigerian immigrants yearning for a self in America, and sometimes in other parts of the world. One character bilocates in the heat of their yearning, another folds himself into a box on a journey to the fulfillment of his deepest desire. Others embark on a treacherous trek across the Sahara Desert trying to find home in foreign cities.

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why?

 Ahamefula (in “Japa Boys & Japa Girls”). A character who shows up in two stories, and in one of the stories he appears in different locations at the same time. He is deeply mutilated and frustrating, constantly making bad, humorous decisions. From the POV of a reader, a fantastic companion on the page.

And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

Rasaki. The protagonist who travels to Russia in “You Illegals” to watch the World Cup. Throwing a Nigerian character into a landscape I had never visited presented obvious problems of believability. Trying to figure out how he might act in his interactions with Russian culture, and the Russian people was difficult to accomplish. Eventually I read hundreds of blogs written by Nigerians living in Russia, and watched Vlogs by Nigerian immigrants in Russia to become comfortable enough to render this character with the kind of easy intimacy I look for in characters when I read fiction.

Which story did you most enjoy writing?

To be honest, I enjoyed writing all the stories, though I might be slightly partial to “Japa Girls” in which a character bilocates.

Why?

I like working out the supernatural in fiction. It’s such an important fabric of my understanding of the world, and also something which I do not fully understand—so it’s always giving. I believe every human being is part-spirit; whether you believe it or not, you’re what you are. The uncanny is a kind of wildness that attacks our sense of order, though we find it infinitely stimulating.

And, which story gave you the most trouble, and why?

Two stories gave me the most trouble. The frame story, “To You Americans,” and “Spain’s Last Colonial Outposts” where I switch perspectives—third person/ first person plural. Frame stories are by their very nature like matryoshka dolls. A story inside a story. Rhythm inside rhythm. The outside story and the inside one have to be expanding at just the right pace so that, in the end, the story doesn’t tilt. That’s usually difficult to do.

Switching narrators in a story can be confusing for the reader. So again, the rhythm has to be weighed right. The switches happening in a way that feels necessary, that makes the reader believe they’ve received a burst of energy and promise.

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

In the three years before I won the Flannery O’Connor, my then-agent tried to sell my collection to several publishers with little success. I entered a few book contests, too. At some point it occurred to me that I needed to rearrange the stories in the collection and write new ones. I had a couple of stories that had been published in stellar journals but didn’t really belong in the book. It took tremendous courage to cut them out. I sought out a unity in the collection. It took about six months to arrange the stories in what I thought was the right order. Then I prayed for success.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

Without conflict fiction is just a boring rendition of details. Which is another way of saying, your character must yearn for something. Every human being wants something. And to seek is to suffer.

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

The incredible amount of research I had to do for each story. For “Urban Gorilla” I had about a hundred pages of research. Images included. I’m a very visual writer.

What’s something about your book that you want readers to know?

This is serious fiction that also makes you laugh. I appreciate humor in fiction. One of my wrting professors, Elizabeth McCracken used to say, “Don’t be afraid to be funny.”

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book?

I drank a mix of hibiscus tea, plus ginger and garlic while writing this book. It improved my eyesight considerably.

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://iheomanwachukwu.com

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:  https://ugapress.org/book/9780820367279/japa-and-other-stories/

READ A STORY FROM THIS BOOK, “Hosanna Japa Town”:  https://oxfordamerican.org/authors/iheoma-nwachukwu

Interview with Johanna Copeland

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[This interview is reprinted with permission from www.workinprogressinprogress.com.]

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

I first described the book as, “It’s about women who do bad things to violent men,” which always got an “Oooh!” My team at Harpers softened it to “A book that asks what it means for a woman to be in control of her own life.”

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

Paula, Paula, Paula! She was, by far, the most difficult character to write because her voice is so particular. With limited formal education and an undiagnosed learning disorder, her voice is less educated, but I needed readers to trust and respect her intelligence. It was a difficult balance, but with each subsequent draft she became my favorite character because Paula functions as the moral center of the book.

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

The road to publishing this book has been ridiculously fun. Like the Anne Hathaway movie about a woman who gets a book published. In brief, this book was pre-empted by my favorite editor of the group who made offers. Since that time, my team has been amazing. However, this experience comes after starring in no less than three horror movies filmed over the previous decade, where a woman questions her life choices after going out on endless rounds of fruitless submission.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

Persevere, but be kind to yourself. I’m good at the first part of that advice and terrible at the second part. I always forget that writing is actually hard work. As though plot, setting and dialogue should just flow, right?!? When they don’t, I assume the problem is me. This is when I have to take a step back and remind myself that writing is actually a difficult job and I shouldn’t be so mean to the writer.

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

So many of the twists in this book revealed themselves as I was writing it. That’s something that always happens, but still catches me by surprise. I wish I wrote from an outline so I could avoid the stress of not knowing how outstanding threads will weave into the plot, but I’m just not that person. In this book, there’s a twist/reveal in the last chapter that didn’t come until the fourth revision. It was hanging out there unresolved, then suddenly it clicked. For me, those moments are the most surprising and satisfying parts of novel writing.

Who is your ideal reader?

Our Kind of Game is marketed as a domestic thriller or women’s fiction, which makes it a little weird that my ideal reader is men in heterosexual relationships. While it’s a cathartic read for women, the men who’ve read it tell me it challenged their perceptions around the way they think about their partner’s domestic labor. I can’t imagine a better outcome for a reader than a book that challenges preconceived notions and entertains.

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book?

Ahahaha, I have a great recipe for canned cherries! I can’t say anything else without it being a spoiler, but after people read this book, they’ll understand why that question made me laugh out loud.

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/our-kind-of-game-johanna-copeland?variant=41141589966882

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://bookshop.org/p/books/our-kind-of-game-johanna-copeland/21024793

2023 Contest Winners

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South 85 Journal is honored to announce the winners of the 2023 Julia Peterkin Flash Fiction and Poetry Literary Award winners:

2023 Flash Fiction Award Winner

Winning story: “As To Your Comment That It Could Have Been Worse” by Caridad Moro-Gronlier.

Moro-Gronlier is the author of Tortillera (TRP 2021), winner of The TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series and the chapbook Visionware (FLP 2009). She is a Contributing Editor for Grabbed: Poets and Writers Respond to Sexual Assault (Beacon Press, 2020) and Associate Editor for SWWIM Every Day an online daily poetry journal.

Judge’s comments: This piece is both technically sophisticated and emotionally resonant. The author creates an inner rhythm with spare, lyric language and the repetition of the word “worse.” Then, as the story progresses, the unfolding events become progressively worse. What begins as a bad date becomes a violent assault. The narrator’s revelation at the end saddens me, but also enlightens me. The narrator feels anger after 30 years, yet she directs that anger at herself. This surprised me at first, but it reinforces the guilt and self-blame that victims of sexual assault never truly get over. The narrator turns the blame and anger inward, as if sparing the reader of her feelings, which makes me feel even more for the narrator. She’s spent her whole adult life sparing others of the feelings she’s kept bottled up, and that is the saddest repercussion of all.

~ Susan Tekulve, Flash Fiction Judge

Flash Fiction Finalists

First Runner Up: “Incident at Shady Acres” by Luanne Castle
Second: “Devil Child” by Sahil Mehta
Third: “Alley Brats” by Kristian O’Hare

2023 Poetry Award Winner

Winning Poem: “A Black Poet Looks Back at his Boyhood” by Oak Morse.

Morse lives in Houston, Texas, where he teaches creative writing and theater and leads a youth poetry troop, the Phoenix Fire-Spitters. He was the winner of the 2017 Magpie Award for Poetry in Pulp Literature, a Finalist for the 2023 Honeybee Poetry Award and a Semi-Finalist for the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. A Warren Wilson MFA graduate, Oak has received Pushcart Prize nominations, fellowships from Brooklyn Poets, Twelve Literary Arts, Cave Canem’s Starshine and Clay as well as a Stars in the Classroom honor from the Houston Texans. His work appears in Black Warrior Review, Obsidian, Tupelo, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Nimrod, Terrain.org, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, among others.

Judge’s Comments: This poem proves the immense power of plain language honed and polished, built for conveying complexity and nuance. This well-sustained narrative of the teacher’s past and students’ present pleases both ear and brain, not to mention the heart. This is a love poem to, somehow, every person in it.”

~ Suzanne Cleary, Poetry Judge

Poetry Finalists

First Runner Up: “The Baby Cure” by Emma Bolden
Second: “Restoration” by J. A. Lagana
Third: “Cleveland School Fire” by Ann Chaldwell Humphries
Honorable Mention: “Peonies in Winter” by Lisa Higgs

The winning selections for this year’s contest will be published in the winter issue of South 85 Journal published in mid-December.

Summer Literary Contest Now Open

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The 2023 Julia Peterkin Literary Award is currently open for submissions.

The winning selection in each category (poetry and flash fiction) will receive $500 and publication in the Fall / Winter issue of South 85 Journal.

Contest finalists will also be published.

This year’s poetry judge is the award-winning poet Suzanne Cleary.

Suzanne Cleary’s Crude Angel, her fourth full-length poetry collection, was published in November 2018 by BkMk Press (U of Missouri-Kansas City). Beauty Mark (BkMk 2013) won the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, and also received the Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize and the Patterson Award for Literary Excellence. Keeping Time (2002) and Trick Pear (2007) were published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. Poets Marilyn Nelson and Robert Cording selected her collection Blue Cloth as winner of the 2004 Sunken Garden Poetry Festival chapbook competition.

Our flash fiction judge for this year is the award-winning prose writer Susan Tekluve.

Susan Tekulve is author of Second Shift: Essays and In the Garden of Stone, winner of the 2012 South Carolina First Novel Prize and a 2014 Gold IPPY Award. She’s also published a short story collection, Savage Pilgrims, and two fiction chapbooks, Washday and My Mother’s War Stories. Her work appears in  Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, The Georgia Review, Connecticut Review, The Louisville Review, Puerto del Sol, New Letters, and Shenandoah.

SUBMIT HERE