Publisher Profile: Sy Safransky

The following interview was 23 years in the making.

In 1988, while taking a graduate-level journalism course at UNC-Chapel Hill, I interviewed three local small press publishers for (what turned out to be) a never-published story—one of them was Sy Safransky, publisher of The Sun. In retrospect, I’m surprised and honored that Safransky took the time to speak with me, given the fact that he was, at that time, putting in more than 60 hours a week at The Sun’s offices, doing everything from answering the phone, reading the mail, and talking with and giving advice to writers, and I was without press credentials and assured publication.

In case you don’t already know, The Sun is a monthly, ad-free magazine that publishes “thoughtful and authentic” interviews, stories and essays. It publishes some of the best literary work in the country; several of its pieces have been chosen for the Best American Essays and Best American Short Stories collections and the magazine has won the Pushcart Prize. It began life as a self-published magazine that Safransky sold out of his backpack on the streets of Chapel Hill. When I began reading it in the late 1970s, it still had a funky, homegrown feeling (it used line drawings by local artists and stock clip art). Today The Sun reaches more than 70,000 subscribers and is printed on glossy paper, with beautiful black and white photos featured in each issue.

Back in 1988, The Sun had two full-time staff members with additional volunteers helping to get it out. Today it has 13 full-time and seven part-time staff members. It has moved from the small, sun-yellow house on Rosemary Street, where the initial interview took place, to a house around the corner that a staff member in an email said is still “quiet and homey… with creaky hardwood floors, warm colors, photos, and old magazine covers adorning the walls” but which has enough room to accommodate its larger staff.

Note: Unlike other interviews that have appeared on this blog, this is not in a straight Q and A format since the original interview notes are gone, converted to newspaper-style write-up. Instead, it’s a hybrid of (excerpts from) the original write up and years-later follow-up questions.

[May 1988]

The Chapel Hill-based The Sun is so much a part of Sy Safransky's life that it is sometimes hard to separate the man from the magazine.

"I print what seems important to me, what moves me, what honors the human heart,” he said in interview at the magazine office. Safransky, a tall and lanky man, sat crosswise in his chair, speaking in thoughtful sentences, pausing to stroke his beard.

Safransky said he is more concerned about the honesty and feeling a writer is able to convey in a ·piece than he is about writing technique. In the past, that kind of heartfelt sincerity often was expressed in reference to spirituality and mysticism. Safransky said that the magazine is moving away from the self-conscious spirituality that used to characterize it.

"I believe that the less you announce yourself along those lines, the more effective or persuasive you're able to be," he said.

For him, the magazine doesn't fit any particular genre. It is always evolving, always open to new ideas and possibilities, he said. Its identity is made up of its writers and its readers, its time and its place in the culture, he said. Many readers write in to share their opinions on a prescribed topic, such as "Obstacles to Peace" or "Taking Risks."

Safransky was drawn to the idea of publishing his own magazine because he thought that it would allow him the freedom of expression he had missed while working as a journalist for a Long Island newspaper for three years after graduating from Columbia University with an M.S. in Journalism. Quoting Ben Bagdikian, he said drolly, “Trying to be a good writer on the average newspaper is like playing Bach on the ukulele.” Writing for The Sun allows him the time to be the kind of writer and editor he always wanted to be, he said.

"There's nothing I'd rather be doing," he said. "I feel tremendously blessed. I am always challenged and always rewarded."

[Interview by email-May 2011]

When I interviewed you in 1988, you had 5,000 subscribers; you now have 70,000. To what do you attribute the growth? Do you think going ad-free helped?

The magazine’s growth was due largely to our direct mail campaigns. Thanks to a grant from the North Carolina Arts Council, we were able to market the magazine nationally by sending out brochures to potential subscribers. We continue to do this today, always aiming to be conscientious with the mailings by using recycled paper and keeping the materials to a minimum.

The readership has also grown by word of mouth. Many Sun readers are fiercely loyal to the magazine; they share the magazine with friends and family and colleagues, who become readers themselves.

The Sun discontinued carrying ads around the time our readership reached 10,000. This was when we could have raised advertising rates and really started profiting from the revenue. But the possibility of publishing a reader-supported magazine with absolutely no advertising was far more intriguing to me. After all, ads interrupt the emotional current of the magazine and clamor for the reader’s attention, distracting from the heart of the writing. Dropping advertising allowed for an uncommon atmosphere of intimacy in our pages. I think that also helped The Sun’s subscription base grow.


You also said in the prior interview that the magazine was moving away from the “self-conscious spirituality that used to characterize it.” Would you say this has happened and, if so, do you think it has attributed to the growth in readership?

Yes, the magazine has gotten away from the kind of self-conscious spiritual writing that wears God on its sleeve. But we still run philosophical and metaphysical work that’s thoughtful, well tempered, and emotionally evocative, and occasional interviews with spiritual teachers and thinkers. In fact, we now have a section called the “Dog-Eared Page,” which consists of a short but uplifting excerpt from a classic work of literature. Often this section will feature one to two pages of writing that is overtly spiritual – by teachers and preachers and spiritual luminaries – but it’s just as likely to feature a literary excerpt. Our Sunbeams page – the last page of the magazine, featuring quotes arranged on a particular theme – often includes quotes of a transcendent nature. So while the overt spirituality has been toned down, the deeper intention is the same: to honor the mystery at the heart of existence.

I’m not sure how this has affected our readership. We very rarely hear complaints about the content being “too spiritual” or “not spiritual enough,” and the Dog-Eared Page and Sunbeams pages are usually well received.


How do you know when a submission is right for The Sun? Is there anything particular that you expect from a writer/submission, or do you like to be surprised?

I’m drawn to writing about love and loss and betrayal and compassion, writing that honors our fundamental connectedness. I like writers who are brave enough to be honest and vulnerable. A unique, accessible, engaging writing voice can also be important. If a manuscript stays with me long after I’ve read it, that’s a good sign. But I don’t have a list of qualifications or some rubric that I expect writers to stick to. I do like to be surprised.


Is there a common trait that characterizes the pieces that run in The Sun now? Would you say you’re still looking for writing that “honors the human heart”?

Yes, I’m still looking for such writing. Most pieces in the magazine read like a meaningful, heartfelt conversation with an old friend.

Writer Profile: Pam Smallcomb

I met Pam Smallcomb at a SCBWI-sponsored ABC (Author Book Club) event in March and liked her good humor and practical advice so much, I asked her for an interview.

Pam is the author of several middle-grade novels including The Trimoni Twins series. She has recently begun writing picture books—I’m Not was published in January of this year and Earth to Clunk was published this month. Pam was an art major in college who later became a computer programmer (after growing weary of being a starving artist). Later, while raising her children and reading to them at night, her love of children’s books was reawakened. For more on Pam, see her web site.

Why did you decide to write children’s books? Was there an a-ha moment for you or did it come as a slower realization of something you could and wanted to do?

Actually, my initial interest in children’s books came from my art background. I thought I wanted to illustrate children’s books; hopefully my own children’s books. However, over time, the words took simply over, and the illustrating desire fell by the wayside. I love art, and it is big part of my life, as big a part as writing, but for me, the two have not yet blended. So not so much an “a-ha” moment, as it was that I found the words calling my name more than the pictures. For now.


What did you do to prepare? Did you take classes?

Although I took one children’s literature class in college, I think most of my preparation has been slanted toward what I could learn while I was at home with four small kids. I did take a picture book writing class with Deborah Nourse Lattimore through UCLA Extension. It was on Saturdays, and it was bliss. There was a Starbucks next door! Child-free for the morning AND I had coffee!. I have also attended writer workshops and retreats (through the SCBWI) when I could.

I spent a lot of my time reading. While my little ones grabbed their favorites at the library, I loaded up, too. I read books on writing. I read books written for kids, of all genres, but I was initially drawn to middle grade. Before I published my first book, I had read a ton of early readers and middle grade novels. I was also very lucky to have a group of friends that were interested in writing for kids. They were my first critique group.


How did you get the idea for the Trimoni Twins books? Do you think magic is a universal theme in children’s literature?

Yikes. Let me think. Some part of it had to be the triplets that attended my grade school in California. I was fascinated with them, and completely jealous that I didn’t have two identical sisters. For one thing, they never had to worry about who to play with at recess! As for the setting, I have always loved the artwork in old circus posters. I love those black and white photos of traveling circuses. Some part of me has romanticized that life. Later, in college, I actually knew a few magicians. One of them was very good at sleight of hand. I thought it would be fun if sisters that knew how to perform magic were also in possession of some actual magic as well.

I think magic appeals to kids because, for the most part, they are powerless in our world. Magic literally opens up portals. It throws them into adventures, and changes their surroundings. A little magic can make a kid the equal of an adult and then some. The concept of a real magical object appeals to us all. Who wouldn’t want to get their hands on one? I sure would. I think another aspect of magic that appeals to kids (and one that writers need to be careful to respect) is that magic always has rules. A magic spell can’t work one way one time, and then do something completely different the next time. Harry and Hermione know exactly which spells to use under the circumstances.


What have you done to market your books? Of the time you devote to being a writer, how much do you devote to marketing and publicity?

I have to confess that I am not very good about marketing my books. The truth is I would rather be writing than marketing. The majority of my time is spent on writing. I know this is not the popular (or even wise!) view, but there is only so much free time in life, and I would like to spend it creating, and not selling. Of course, the paradox is that if you don’t keep trying to sell your books, then editors might not be that excited to get another one from you, so I do try and get out there and do presentations. I have done SCBWI presentations, geared toward writers. I like talking to writers. I know some of what they are going through, and I like to share my own experiences and thoughts. I do give presentations to schools, although I really prefer to talk to one class at a time. I have more fun if I can ‘get to know’ the kids a little. I have also done book festivals, and presented to students at a local college. I think the trick is to not spend so much time doing all these events that you are no longer writing on a regular basis.


How did you find a publisher for your first book?

I heard that Bloomsbury US was looking for “humorous boy books.” At about the same time, my then-agent heard the same thing, and we decided to send in my manuscript for The Last Burp of Mac McGerp.


What’s a typical day of writing like for you? Do you keep to a schedule every day, or concentrate on writing only when you have a project already defined?

I try very hard to keep to a schedule, but as everyone knows, life sometimes has other plans. I know from experience that writing every day has many benefits. It is easier for me to look someone in the eye when they ask “What do you do?” and I answer “I’m a writer.” If I write every day, I make some progress, however small, toward my writing goal. If I write every day, I don’t lose the thread of my story. More importantly, I don’t lose the passion I have for my story.

I always have more than one project going, with one project taking center stage (being written) and the other one being in the planning/plotting phase. Or maybe I have a novel I am writing, and a picture book idea going at the same time. If something comes up, and I know I won’t be able to work on a project for a few days (or weeks!), I spend some time making notes about what I thought I was going to do next (in the plot, etc.).


Do you keep a writer’s notebook? If so, what do you jot in it?

I have a notebook that I call “The Brain.” I am hoping that this notebook will become an iPhone with all sorts of apps on it that I can use to stay organized. But for now, a spiral notebook is cheaper. The Brain is next to me most of the time, and I jot down all those things that keep you from concentrating. Things like “remember to set up dental appt.” I also write down ideas, or names for characters. Sometimes I write down a title, or a first sentence that pops into my head. It’s a real mish-mash of stuff. I also doodle in it while I am thinking about my story.


You’ve made the switch from writing middle-grade novels to picture books. Was that a difficult transition? What did you do to prepare for it (did use any brainstorming techniques)?

I think all writing is hard, so whether you are writing a picture book, or a novel, be prepared to sweat blood. Or maybe that’s just me. My preparation for writing a picture book was the same as I used to write middle grade. I read lots of picture books. I wrote lots of really bad picture books, and eventually I learned how to spot the bad ones earlier. I wish I could tell you that now I write really good ones all the time, but that hasn’t been the case, darn it.

I always use brainstorming techniques of one kind or another. I was just trying to think of a picture book idea the other day, and I found myself making lists of opposites. I looked up Romanian names. I looked up good luck charms. I think that I brainstorm in a fiddling fashion. I look up stuff, and make notes in The Brain. I sip my tea. I think about what I have written down. A new thought pops into my head and I look up something else. Hopefully, the seed of a story starts to form. It seems to be how I work, not just with picture books, but with novels, and with art, too. The idea is to tickle your imagination into connecting some of these things. Once you’ve connected them, then you can start moving the pieces around, and try and make them more surprising.


You’ve had two picture books come out recently—what are you working on next?

I’m working on a fictional memoir, and I am trying very hard to get one of my picture book manuscripts to behave. I am also plotting some chapter books that have been swirling around in my head for a while.


When/how did you realize that writing picture book text is a lot like writing ad copy (as you discussed at the SCWBI ABC event)?

My husband and I are one of those nerdy couples that loves a good commercial, or a print ad, or a clever viral YouTube. It was pretty easy to draw a parallel between the goals of a good advertisement, and the goals of a good picture book. You are trying to tell a story in a very short format. You want to grab the attention of the reader right away. You are trying to be original, and say something that has been said a million times before in a new and fresh way.

Writer Profile: Amy Bonaccorso

If it hadn’t been for The Sun magazine, I probably would never have met Amy Bonaccorso—Amy and I joined the same Sun discussion group a couple of months ago. When the conversation turned to e-books that first day, I made my usual “E-books, yuk!” refrain. But Amy didn’t agree with me because, she said, e-books can offer higher royalties for authors. She knew, because her book, How to Get to 'I Do': A Dating Guide for Catholic Women, is available in both Kindle and hard copy editions. When I told her that I wanted to know more about her publishing experiences, and how she has been marketing her book, she graciously consented to this email interview.

Amy is a senior communications specialist within the federal government, where she manages an internal newsletter, arranges big events, and works to improve communication. For more information on Amy and her book, see her web site.


How did you get the idea to write your book?

When I dated in my twenties, a lot of the guidance I got was unrealistic and not very helpful. Much of it was written by unmarried people or concerned parents. After I became engaged, I could see what I did wrong, what I did right, what advice was worth taking, and which words should have been ignored. It was something I wanted to capture in writing. I am sure lots of people have great moments of hindsight like I did...they just don't write anything down. I thought I should publish my lessons learned for others, though.

I had a diverse dating portfolio by the time I met my husband on Match.com. And that’s the point I try to get across in my book. Women, even very traditional Catholic women, need to put themselves out there in a variety of ways. A man can’t find you if you aren’t anywhere to be found. I also think some Catholic women need to relax a bit and not be so hyper-pious.


The Amazon.com blurb for your book says, “…plenty of good men are waiting for a woman like you to throw away the checklist of idealized mate material.” What was on your original "list"? What did you find instead?

Here is the list:
- Catholic, like me
- Devout
- Chaste
- Building a good career
- College educated
- Marriage minded
- Physically attractive
- Willing to support a full-time mom/housewife role for me

My husband was not incredibly devout, and although he had a good career plan, he made less than me when I met him... so I couldn't expect a quick 1950s lifestyle. He is a lot more secular and "modern" than the man I thought I was looking for. I couldn't see it then, but I have a rather bohemian background and a sometimes contradictory set of interests, personality traits, goals, and beliefs. I could probably drive a cookie cutter Catholic man crazy. One ex, for example, wanted me to quit going to acupuncture because it weirded him out. I got to talk to an old Andy Warhol protégé in New York City a few months ago, and it was one of the thrills of my life. Discerning religious life at a Carmelite convent was also one of my most memorable life experiences. Not everyone can accept that kind of dichotomy. (We’ve been married nearly three years now.)


Since you work full-time, when/where did you write the book?

I wrote during my lunch breaks, in the evenings, and on weekends. I'd sometimes write on the backs of receipts or little pieces of scrap paper when I was out at lunch. Or, I would eat at my desk and write my thoughts in an email message. The book came very quickly. It only took about six months. I credit my muses for that.


How did you find your publisher?

I didn't have an agent. I looked at books that I was reacting against and saw who published them. They were small Catholic publishers. Since I could easily refer to other books on their list when pitching mine, I targeted them with a book proposal. Within weeks, I had an offer.


Why did you decide to do a Kindle edition?

My husband recommended that I suggest a Kindle edition to the publisher. I also had people around me who were into their Kindles and weren't buying paperbacks anymore. I had a feeling that some women would want the book quickly too if they were having a dating crisis. It's the first e-book for Servant Books.

Writer Profile: Nan K. Chase

I met Nan Chase more than two decades ago, shortly after I’d moved to Boone, N.C., to run one of the Winston-Salem Journal’s Northwest bureaus. Nan, who worked for the local Watauga Democrat, invited me over to her house for lunch, a short walk from my downtown office. I was amazed that she could converse freely with me while she ate and ground food in a hand-cranked gizmo and fed it to her baby, propped contentedly on one knee. She had a big, old house with a garden, and a husband and three kids—comforts I sorely lacked in my tiny rented apartment.  That hour gave me a vision of what my life could be, and perhaps initiated my eventual departure from my lonely life as a solo reporter. We kept in touch over the years, a main point of connection being a very small magazine (which I edited and Nan, for some reason, admired). Nan wrote a short piece about AVSM for the Washington Post Magazine and later started appearing on its pages under the pseudonym “Anita Menendez.”

I’ve always enjoyed reading Nan’s journalistic work, from her opinion pieces in N.C. dailies to travel pieces in the Washington Post and the New York Times, and the ease with which she has tackled a variety of subjects, from furniture to football, gardening to the Jewish Sabbath. Nan has authored two books in recent years: Asheville: A History, and Eat Your Yard! and co-authored another, Bark House Style: Sustainable Designs from Nature. For more on Nan, see her web site for Eat Your Yard! 

We spoke recently at a Chinese restaurant in Maryland, a conversation that continued via email.

Why did you decide to study journalism and/or what led you to be a writer? Did you write as a kid?

It turns out that my father's side of the family has had many writers or storytellers through the years. For instance, I have a second cousin (never met him) who is an entertainment writer at the Orange County Register, and there are several other reporters in the family. My father is a wonderful writer; he provided the "big picture" perspective for my writing, while my mother was the grammarian. Together they provided me a perfect writer's education.

I got a lot of encouragement in high school from teachers who said I was a good writer. They said, “Don't stop writing.” So I didn't. I was very shy in high school and college, but did write for the high school paper. In college I pursued a double major: economics and journalism. I was terrified of the thought of conducting an interview, and somehow got through college without doing that. Then, when I had a newspaper job in Boone, N.C., all that reticence disappeared. I am a voracious reader, and ultimately that is necessary for a writer.

Would you say you’ve experienced a creative Renaissance since your kids left your house? You have published three books since they left!

No. That’s because I really feel I did my most honest and important work very early on, when they were quite young and I was still in my 20s and 30s, with “nothing to lose” in a small Southern town yet. I’m sure it’s true for many writers that their most powerful work comes right out at the beginning (and the rest of the career is workmanship). At the same time, once my children, and my husband and I, were established in the community, I had a natural tendency to pull back into less threatening, ”lighter” topics.

Now, it is true that I have written three books (co-author of one of them) in short order. I had never, ever thought of doing a book, before about 2005. It happened that my youngest child was 20 years old and didn’t need me in any way for transportation, etc. And so I did have the long stretches of time necessary for book research and writing. I did have the time not to cook or do many household chores. Early on, while I was writing essays and articles, and the children were young, I managed to create great quality time a few minutes or hours at a time.

Now time is a pressure in another way: one can only count on so many years of productive work capacity, and it just doesn’t last forever. So I suddenly have a brain full of book ideas and have to decide where to turn next.

Why did Asheville intrigue you as a subject?

My husband, Saul, and I found that we were spending all our weekends in Asheville, having fun, enjoying the architecture, the music and theater, the restaurants, even the shopping. So we bought a small condo as a weekend home (one benefit of cutting one’s children loose economically upon college graduation). After taking a walk in the beautiful Riverside Cemetery we stopped at Malaprops bookstore, where I asked for a book that would tell me why Asheville looks so distinctive, and why the downtown was enjoying a commercial and cultural renaissance after so many years of decay. The clerk said, “There isn’t one.” Shazzam! Instant topic.

Writer Profile: Dustin Beall Smith

Dustin Beall Smith has been many things—a skydiver (in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Smith helped pioneer sport parachuting in the United States); a college dropout; a political campaign worker (he worked as an advance man for Robert Kennedy’s senatorial campaign and for the Norman Mailer-Jimmy Breslin mayoral campaign); and a key grip in the film industry (see Dustin Smith at the Internet Movie Database). He currently teaches writing at Gettysburg College.

Smith’s work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, BackStage, The Gettysburg Review, Hotel Amerika, the Louisville Review, the New York Times Magazine, Quarto, River Teeth, The Sun, Writing on the Edge, and elsewhere. His honors include the Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize in Nonfiction for his book, Key Grip. A Memoir of Endless Consequences; fellowships in 1995 and 1996 at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Knowing his past experience as a skydiver and a member of the film industry, I was expecting someone who was arrogant and overtly masculine when I met him at the Conversations and Connections conference in D.C. last April. Instead, I discovered a gentle, humorous man who was willing to talk to me about writing and life as a writer even though I am not well-published, nor writing all that much these days. (We were introduced by his partner, Kim Dana Kupperman, an old college friend of mine.) He is also a patient man—this interview began by email prior to that in-person meeting, and continued in bits and spurts for a few months after.

For more on Dusty, and to see samples of his work, see his web site: Dustin Beall Smith.

Why are you a writer?

I don’t think I have a choice in the matter. It seems to be in my DNA, even when I’m not honoring the gift—or the proclivity, I should say. There are times I envy people who have no need to write—wrongly, of course, since they have other needs. My own need comes from a basic inability to make sense of the world in any other way than writing about it. If I go for long periods of time without writing, I tend to sink into a curmudgeonly mood. My focus then tends to become negative. When I write, especially about things that disturb me, I often discover a brighter, more optimistic side to myself—one that involves more generosity of spirit. Humor informs me, whereas, without writing, depression is always lurking in the wings.

In your book, Key Grip, you describe yourself as being a writer-wannabe for many years. Now you teach writing, and you have a book in print. Was there a moment when you knew you were writing for real, or was it a gradual transformation? Was earning an MFA part of that transformation?

It was a gradual transformation, actually, beginning with a piece I published in the New York Times magazine over twenty years ago. Appearing in that venue was enormously energizing—it has over a million readers—and I was so taken with my success that I began immediately to write a novel. That project turned out to be a five-year-long detour from autobiographical writing, and because I was still working long hours on movies, I often felt like I was drowning. Not until I entered the MFA program at Columbia did believe I was writing for real—that I somehow “belonged” in the writing community. It helps to believe you have an audience—which is to say that you have an effect as a writer. Breaking into the ranks of published writers has always been a daunting task, but more so today than ever, I think. The world is full. With fewer and fewer high-profile publishing venues, and more and more writers looking to publish, the MFA system—its teachers and its students—has helped absorb the overflow by providing the community—the network—the audience.

Many of the chapters in Key Grip were first published separately as pieces in different publications. When did you start to think about compiling them into a book—and, did it require any rewriting (for transitions, etc.)?

The chapters in Key Grip were first published as discrete personal and autobiographical essays. They are arranged in reverse chronological order, honoring the Native American concept of the heyoka—the sacred clown, who does everything backwards in his performance (a subject discussed in the first essay). I submitted the collection as a “memoir-in-essays,” but Houghton Mifflin published it simply as a memoir, I guess because essays scare away readers. I intended it to be a perverse collection, one that forced the reader to connect some dots, rather than a straight-forward beginning-to-end description of my life. My life has been episodic; the book is episodic. My task in putting the collection together was basically to remove repetitive autobiographical material, and to solve the problems that arose from reverse chronology. The book can be picked up at any point. It can even be read backwards—something a few of my students did, to their apparent satisfaction.

What are you writing now?

I am now chomping at the edges of another memoir, this one having to do with my experience of coming to the profession of teaching, late in life—how I got here, what informs me as a teacher, the pleasures and vagaries of connecting with young people, the bittersweet task of passing the torch—the flame. It probably won’t be composed of discrete essays, and might well turn out to be anecdotal and chatty. I’m still looking for the right format. I like small books, but brevity is vastly harder than long-windedness. So much is being written these days. I just want to fit in edgewise somewhere. I’m just finishing rewrites of a 400-page novel, and hoping to get that out soon—even though the market is terrible. For me, writing fiction is a wonderful balance to writing nonfiction. Summer is a blessing: it’s mine, mine, mine. No student work to read, just my own feeble drafts.

What other types of writing have you done? Do you feel established with memoir, or are you itching to try new genres/types of writing?

I’ve gone through stages where poetry bubbles up in me, but I’ve never been happy with those results. I rework my poetry to death. And I wrote a screenplay that never got produced—about a college professor who gets involved in a terrorist plot to shut down America (in the early 1990s). I still toy with revisiting these genres, perhaps because I also teach them, but I think my real voice emerges when I write directly about my own experience, in relation to some larger theme. I can tell a story. And I have stories to tell.

Do you ever write with a target publication in mind, or do you only start to look for markets after a piece is completed?

I do now, but only if I’ve published there before, or if the editors have asked for more material. Generally, I think it’s a bad idea to put the cart before the horse. You are your own first (and best) audience. Writing specifically for The New Yorker, say, could cause you to pander to an imaginary audience (who is The New Yorker, really?) rather than to write from the heart in a focused, unself-conscious manner.

The piece I published in the NYT Magazine was about drinking and failure and promise. I had to write that piece. Its publication was just the icing. There’s a lesson there: if the voice is right, it will be heard. If I’d had a million magazine readers in mind when writing about failure, I’d have failed, I’m sure. Better just to write what you have to write, making urgent the subject, not the publication—or the exposure, or (rarely) the money.

How did you get that piece published?

I happened to be cutting public trails with a guy who lived in my town, and I got to talking about this little piece I’d written. He asked to see it. The next day, he called me and asked if I’d mind if he passed it along to his boss, the editor of the Magazine. A few days after that, his boss passed it down to another editor, with the dictate: publish this. My exhilaration was entire, I can tell you, but the success also felt appropriate: I’d had to examine my failure before I could achieve any success.

Do you have a schedule for writing (daily, weekly, monthly)? Or, how do you set time aside for writing?

I’m almost afraid to answer this question honestly, for fear of being a bad influence on writers seeking role models. But the truth is that I don’t have a schedule at all. Writing either takes center stage and dictates that I do little else with my day, or it stands smoldering in the corner like some reprimanded child—always nagging at my consciousness. To be fair, I also teach, and my teaching schedule changes every semester, so that dictates my schedule to some degree. In any case, I’m a believer that not writing is often as important as writing (Is it possible to write too much?), in the same way that leaving a productive field fallow for a season produces a greater yield in the long run.

Has working in the film industry affected your writing in any way (other than it being a subject of some of your memoir pieces)? For instance, does that experience help you see things visually, or to pay more attention to detail?

Work in the film industry is episodic; you’re always on to the next project. In that sense, it mimics writing. The old saying that you’re only as good as your last job holds true for writing, too. Some projects work, some work better than others; some fail. You move on. The secret is to move on: to get acquainted with the rhythm of beginnings, middles and ends. I believe we write against a backdrop of cosmic loneliness, perhaps even to relieve that loneliness. The bittersweet feeling that accompanies the wrapping-up of a film mimics the bitter-sweetness that accompanies publication. Success is great, but it isn’t immortality—even for immortal writers. It is impermanent and fleeting. Keep beginning…that’s the answer. That’s why the “beginning” of Key Grip comes at the end.

Does teaching writing help your writing?

Teaching helps to remind a writer that writing is all about process. That’s something we tend to forget, especially after a book is published and the book tour is done, and suddenly you’re staring at a blank page again. We begin with nothing, then suddenly a voice descends and we have an opening—an urgency of some kind—and from there on, it’s all just hard work. What feels good at the end of the day, often feels terrible the next morning. But knowing that it will work is invaluable. When you watch this struggle with creativity in your students, you learn to be more forgiving of yourself, more tolerant of process, less wowed by and concerned about the polished product. Antonio Porchia once wrote that nothing that breathes is complete. That’s the beauty of writing—and the payoff of teaching writing—watching the incomplete self unfold on the page.

If your house was burning down and you had to grab one or two things you’ve written (not a hard disk, but actual things on paper) what would they be?

No question, I’d grab the two large boxes containing my fifty-odd notebooks. Not because they contain special writing or special accounts of what I’ve done and where I’ve been, but because they contain my dreams. I’ve lived a life guided by dreams. Dreams are the ultimate nonfiction—perhaps the ultimate biography.

How are people chosen for Writing Home interviews?

If you’re looking for a theme or commonality among the people I’ve interviewed for this blog so far, it’s pretty simple—they are all people I know or have met at some point in my life. I have been happy to reconnect with writers I’ve known for brief periods in my life, as well as to provide a forum for some of my more creative and prolific friends.

For instance, I was so glad to reconnect with Barry Yeoman again, who was a colleague for a short time when I was a reporter in North Carolina in the mid-1980s. And I’ve known Kim Kupperman nearly continuously since we were the “womyn’s” co-editors at the school newspaper at UC-Santa Cruz.

The other thing about the interviews is that each has provided me with insight into how creative people produce and publish their work. A common thread I’ve noticed among them is that many say that they feel grumpy or blue unless they produce something—that they need to write or paint every day or, at least, on a regular schedule. I feel the same way, which may explain why I’m so crabby during weeks when I’m too busy with paid work or household errands to sit down and write for any significant amount of time.

I have a few more interviewees lined up for the near future. However, it is inevitable that I am going to run out of people I am personally acquainted with who could serve as interview subjects. Of course, I’d like to meet other writers, to widen my circle of writer/artist friends, and hope I will at local writers’ conferences and workshops in the next year or so. But until then, if you’re a writer who reads this blog, or if you’re someone I may have met or corresponded with at some point in the past and you’re up for an interview, free to email me at thebethblevins AT gmail DOT com (do the usual substitutions there).

The other possibility, of course, is that I will simply run out of acquaintances to interview and I’ll just let the interviews fade away—which might be OK, too, since it would be one less thing to keep me from buckling down and writing fiction and non-blog essays (no matter how bad they turn out to be.)

Artist Profile: Chandra Garsson

I knew of only two other people in college who were as low on funds as I was. One was Therese, a dancer/choreographer who was so broke she auditioned for and became the Chicken at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. The other was Chandra Garsson, who wanted to spend her time making art and was always scratching up money to pay the rent. Once she and I were so broke we had six dollars between us and we decided to blow it all on going to the movies—three movies in one evening, skipping from theatre to theatre in a small multiplex, a desperate, extravagant gesture (and the reason why “Gregory’s Girl” somehow loops into “Blade Runner” in my memory).

Chandra and I once spent several evenings designing postcard collages for money, which neither of us knew where to sell once we were done. Not knowing where to sell something I’ve produced has been a theme in my life since that time. Chandra has managed to do better in this regard—she has had exhibits and gallery openings, including Insomnia (Awakening), an exhibit sponsored by Pro Arts Gallery, and the city of Oakland. But her art has not been a constant or stupendous source of income for her.

Chandra is the only artistic person I’ve known since college who can still claim being an artist as her main identity. The rest of us have gone on to work as professors, teachers, editors, librarians, etc. Although she also dedicated much of her life to teaching art, she has consistently continued to produce visual art, and has held an exhibit almost every year since then.

The last time I saw her she was living in a section of an artists’ warehouse, the Dutch boy, in Oakland. Her junkyard chairs had been painted royal blue, with a golden skeleton sitting in each. Her couch was covered in canvas that had been painted beautiful, wild splatters of primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. The walls of her studio were covered with paintings, prints and collages, and corners held mannequins that were painted in keyed-up metallic colors and transformed into assemblaged surreal, other-worldly archetypes. She now lives in a smaller apartment by a lake in Oakland, having lost her battle with her former landlord, who wanted to turn the art studios into luxury apartments and office space. These days, she concentrates on smaller projects, including making jewelry, due to her smaller living space and her art studio being separate from where she lives.

For more on Chandra, see http://www.darksecretlove.com/chandra, a web page devoted to her art or her Facebook Fan page (which I started).

WH: What is the biggest difficulty for an artist starting out, as you did, after college? Did you have any connections with galleries or people who ran galleries? Did art professors you had help in any way?

Chandra Garsson: Poverty has always been my greatest challenge, along with exploitation by an almost wholly unregulated rental industry, both residential and commercial, legal and illegal. (I am fortunate in my landlord at my present art studio. It is an equitable, friendly relationship, with a very kind family.) I formed initial connections to galleries and museums. I did gain some renown, so I was at intervals contacted and recommended for exhibitions. While after graduation from BFA and MFA programs professors helped with letters of glowing recommendation, it was not always apparent from the many rejection letters I received over the years that images were viewed or the letters were read, perhaps because nothing was immediately translating for the recipients into dollar signs.


How did you forge ahead with an art career? Did getting a Master of Fine Arts degree help?

C.G: I’m not sure I did much “forging ahead,” except in the work itself, as must be distinguished from the career. Of course the MFA is helpful to most artists in their creative work, certainly it was to me. Knowledge is the only real power, and the discipline and exposure to voluminous visual and written materials, other artists, a constant tour of galleries, museums, artist’s studios, is beyond measurement.


Have you tried to do other things, or has art always been your main focus? (Did you ever consider being an art teacher? Is it difficult to get that gig?)

C.G: I have been as one-pointed as any, and most artists are. I have devoted much of my life as an artist to teaching, a secondary yet fully compatible calling. The symbiotic relationship for the artist between creating and teaching worked especially well for me. I am a communicator, visually and verbally. Colleges have increasingly cut back what is offered to teachers since I have been in the job market.

What types of jobs/work have you done to supplement your income as an artist?

C.G: Aside from teaching, I have been a telemarketer and fundraiser, a waitress, switchboard operator, home health care-taker, baby-sitter, elder-sitter, day-care teacher, housecleaner, youth hostel cleaner, hospital cleaner, chai walla (in an office building in Amsterdam), dishwasher, kitchen worker at a Yoga Center, seamstress, department store cashier, and more…plus my favorite job, sitting in a campus Art Gallery, a very easy job I did for several years. In those days all that was required of me in this work was to watch and make sure nothing was stolen, greet people in a friendly manner, have conversations when desired by a visitor to the gallery. I conversed with friends, studied, dreamed up art projects, and sneaked the occasional catnap. I think this is the job that spoiled me for all other jobs. Sigh.

Has the economic downturn had any effect on the sales of your art, or is it always about the same?

C.G: Sales of my art have always been very up and down, most often down. The jewelry was doing better until the economic downturn, then sales fell off sharply. It seems to me the downturn has been coming on for longer than a decade, but that could just be me.


How would you describe and summarize your artwork in a few sentences?

C.G: My artwork is largely autobiographical, hugely environmental, and wonderfully humorous in its willingness to address the darker, scarier aspects of the world around me.

How is it environmental?

CG: Largely, most of the components that go into my work would have ended up in a landfill. I estimate that I have saved at least 50 tons of trash, including industrial trash I found around my old studio at the warehouse in East Oakland. I’ve also used items from junk stores and flea markets, and things that people have found and have given to me, including dolls, mannequins, antique glass slides and animal bones. I have been poor in money and rich in materials!

When did you start using mannequins and dolls in your work?

C.G: I have always had an affinity with dolls, and mannequins to me, are large dolls. Dolls are, after all, sculptural representations at various stages of the human being, usually girls and women, which I was and am, respectively. They echo back to a helpless, vulnerable time in my life, when as a child, art and dolls were intricately intertwined as expression of an inner world that only I controlled. I suppose it could be said that this has never changed.

Are you doing more assemblage/collage than anything else, or do you do split your efforts between printmaking, painting and assemblage?

C.G: I’ve been doing all of the above except for printmaking, an art I have not practiced for many years. Lately I have been working with raw minerals and crystals such as Carnelian, Turquoise, Amber, Ruby, Prehnite, Moonstone, Garnet, Amethyst, Emerald and Flourite.

If I could wave a magic wand and affect your career, what would you most want to happen? Sales? Exhibits? Recognition? Something else?

C.G: 1. Recognition. 2. Something else (a greater sense of community between artists, myself included, and various systems of support for the artist). 3. Sales. 4.Exhibits.

What would you like to happen in your life and your art in the next ten years?

CG: I would like to find good homes for all my artwork in the next ten years. They all need to be adopted into good families or to individuals that would take good care of them. A museum or several museums could house them all.

You told me once that you had transformed a public bathroom into a painting studio because it had good light. Are you still there, or how long were you there? Were you ever caught?

C.G: That was at Kala Institute, in Berkeley, where I made etchings and monotypes. It was a bathroom, large and light, custodially cared for. I kept my taboret and supplies in one of the stalls, and crawled under a door to unlock them, brought them into the center of bathroom to paint by the open window facing northwest. The sun filtered in afternoons, it was an idyllic place to paint. Almost no one used it, but one day someone came in, and told the director of Kala, Archana Horsting, about it. She confronted me, I explained, she listened, and reminded me to keep the supplies locked in the stall, out of the way. She reminded me to clean up all the paint each time. She sent me on my merry way. Archana is a fine person. Kala is a wonderful printmaking facility.

Do you feel that the artist is justified in doing anything; taking anything she needs, as long as she produces good art? (Does the artistic end always justify the means?)

C.G: Generally, there is a great deal to the notion of artistic license, as long as no one, including the artist, is hurt. Your use of the word “anything” is more than a bit open-ended. Come to think of it, the word “take” is more than a bit suspect. I have always striven for the quality of harmlessness. I am quite a moral person, one could say didactic, in the messages of my work and life.

Have you known artists who have achieved fame, undeservedly, because of who they knew or who they slept with?

C.G: Goodness gracious, girl! Um, let’s just say that as an artist who has not made it to the top, I do not personally know artists at the top, so I do not know, and let’s leave it at that. If it were to happen, I would view it as unfair exploitation of the artist, by one with far greater power than the artist in our world ever has, unless a jolly good time was had by both parties.

Has doing yoga had any effect on your art?

C.G: Yoga has had a profound effect on my art, and my art has had a profound effect on my yoga practice. They are compatible practices—one informs the other, both are enhanced by the dual focus.

How about being Jewish?

CG: Being culturally, racially and spiritually Jewish is also compatible with yoga and art.

And being feminist?

CG: One of my professors, Sam Richardson, told me several times in grad school that my work is strongly feminine. I have realized since, over the years, that my work is emphatically feminist—which is completely compatible with being Jewish, environmental and doing yoga.

What keeps you going as an artist?

I have important things to say and art is the best way for me to communicate those things to the world.

Writer Profile: Mary Amato

Mary Amato is a Maryland writer who writes children’s books and teaches workshops on writing for children at the Writers Center in Bethesda (her next WC workshop, “What’s So Funny: Finding and Writing Humor in Children’s Books,” starts on January 15). Her books include Please Write in This Book, The Naked Mole-Rat Letters, The Word Eater and The Riot Brothers series of chapter books. She has also adapted “Chicken of the Family” as a musical, which premiered in Virginia in April 2008.

Mary has taught public and private school and also has worked as a dance teacher, a choreographer and a puppeteer. She also loves to write songs, sing and play the guitar and is in the duo, Two-Piece Suit.

I’ve heard Mary give presentations on aspects of creativity and spirituality to both children and adults at a local UU church, and have also heard her sing. To be truthful, I’m a little jealous of her ability to get up and perform and speak with such assuredness and grace, and of her seeming ease with moving between public and private personas as a writer/performer/artist. But that jealousy has provided me with much-needed kick-in-the-pants inspiration. She is a mother who has made time to write and has found a way to make a livelihood from her writing—a worthy goal for any other mother who loves to write.

For a list of Mary’s books, additional biographical information, descriptions of the presentations she offers to schools and libraries, and FAQs, see: http://www.maryamato.com/.

How did you decide to write children’s books? Did you write articles for children’s magazines first, or did you start out with a book-length project?

When I was eleven years old, I read Little Women and Harriet the Spy, and those two books made me want to write books of my own. Since I was reading children’s books, those are what I wanted to write! As I grew older, my love for the genre never dimmed. I didn’t know any writers, though, and didn’t believe it was actually possible. Raised to be practical, I got my undergraduate degree in teaching and gave up my dream for a while.

My desire to write kept popping up, though. I tried my hand at writing lots of short books (picture books) first and tried to get those published. I was rejected, but I often received nice rejections, which kept me going. After my first son was born, I decided that if I was going to spend any time away from him, I should spend it doing something that really mattered. I made an intentional commitment to embrace my dream of writing children’s books. I went back to graduate school in creative writing and chose a novel-length children’s book as my thesis project.

Did you have any kind of contract or interested party before you began writing your first children’s book?

I didn’t have any specific interest from an editor, but I did have those “nice rejections” from previous projects. By that time, I had also published a lot of articles, essays and some poetry in major, national magazines. Writing for newspapers and magazines taught me a lot about working on deadline and about being edited.

You said recently that you went from being a very unfunny writer to being a funny one. Was it an intentional change, since you’ve gone from writing for magazines and now write for children, or is it something that just occurred naturally along the way?

I was in graduate school, writing that thesis project—a very dark young-adult novel—when a fellow student told me that my writing lacked even a glimpse of humor. I took that criticism very seriously and began to study humor. I gave myself the task of trying to write a completely new, FUNNY, short story. I did it. Since that day, I have tried to consciously look for and exploit humor in some way in every book I’ve written. I don’t always read the front-page news, but I generally read the comics analytically—to see what works and what doesn’t.

You’re the only female in your household (two sons and a husband). Has this affected what you’ve chosen to write about? Do you think your children’s books would be different in any way if you were raising two dainty little girls?

I have four books out in a series called The Riot Brothers, which are about two wild and crazy boys named Orville and Wilbur Riot. Because I have two sons, people often ask me if the Riot Brothers are my own boys. They aren’t. I do think that my boys have had a huge influence on me as a writer. I grew up in a family of girls, so I didn’t really ever see things from a boy’s point of view. Being a mother of boys has given me much insight into the experiences and inner lives of boys. I feel my boy characters just as vividly as I feel my girl characters.

As a girl, I was a lover of dolls and making doll clothes and little things for my dollhouse. Sometimes I think that if I had girls of my own, a lot of my creative energy might be going into all those projects. Perhaps I would be writing less. Who knows?

Has being a mom influenced your writing or creativity in any other way?

Fay Weldon, an English fiction writer, once said that she refused to allow motherhood to be an excuse to keep her from writing. If she could only write one sentence before being interrupted, she would at least write that one sentence. I gave myself a little lecture when my kids were young: Don’t use them as an excuse. If I had a spare hour to write, I would write as much as possible in that spare hour. My husband would do something fun with the kids every Saturday—like take them to the park—and I would shut myself in the basement and write. (I’m no longer so tough. Now I can’t write in the basement!) The discipline was great.

Of course, seeing children grow up, experiencing all the incredible highs and lows with them has given me a lot of material for characters, for plot elements, for themes and for dialogue. To some extent, you re-experience your own childhood when you are playing with your children or getting them ready for bed, or nursing them through an illness. You are comparing your experiences with theirs. I can get into the mind of a child easily.

Tell me about how you came up with your new character, Amelia E. Hart. You’ve said she is “a great girl to balance out the Riot Brothers.”

Amelia E. Hart is the adventurous and funny cousin who comes to stay with Orville and Wilbur in book IV. The book will be out this spring, and I’m excited because she is such a strong girl character. Even though the Riot Brothers would seem to attract boy fans, I do have a lot of girl fans out there. I know they’re going to like her. The idea for Amelia actually came from a family who wrote me a fan letter. The letter was so great we ended up corresponding. In a follow-up letter, they suggested the idea of a girl cousin coming to visit. I had such fun developing the character and dreaming up surprising ways she could contribute to the Riot Brother world.

How much do you write every week? Do you have a daily schedule, or is it flexible, depending on what other things you have to do that day?

I write Monday-Friday from about 7:45 or so until 3:00 or so. I get grumpy if I don’t write everyday. I do take breaks to exercise, to cook, to do errands, etc.

What’s the best thing about being a children’s book author?

I love the letters I get from kids. They talk about the characters and the stories as if there is no question that they are all real.

One letter in particular was very touching. A teacher had asked her students to do book reports on a favorite book and to make sure and answer the question: What would you change if you could change one thing in the book? A girl wrote to me that she had chosen my book The Naked Mole-Rat Letters because it was her favorite book. This book is about a girl named Frankie who is struggling with her widowed father’s newfound romantic interest in another woman. My fan wrote that the only thing she would have changed in the book would have been to make sure that Frankie’s mother hadn’t ever died. Of course, if Frankie’s mother had never died, there would be no story. That told me that my reader was responding to Frankie’s life as if it were a real life. What a compliment to me, and a reminder of the wonder and power of story.

Writer Profile: Barry Yeoman

I met Barry Yeoman when we were both reporters in North Carolina. I was running the Winston-Salem Journal’s one-woman bureau office in Boone and he was writing for a local weekly, Mountain Times, and freelancing for the Charlotte Observer and The Independent. The big news that year was whether the city of Boone would allow alcohol sales. Despite being a college town (home of Appalachian State University), it was dry—forcing college students to make a perilous, winding journey to Blowing Rock to get “likkered-up.” It was such a big deal that TV reporters from Charlotte and Winston-Salem joined local reporters at what had been sparsely attended council meetings. Eventually the referendum came to a vote and passed, students got drunk to celebrate, and nothing really changed except that you could buy a beer with your pizza in downtown restaurants.

Barry and I both left Boone after a year—I ran away from my too-solitary office to go to graduate school at UNC, and he went to work for The Independent in Durham. We didn’t communicate with each other again, though I kept up with his career by reading the articles he filed at The Independent, and later for Mother Jones and other national publications.

I renewed contact with him this summer when a friend of mine wanted to write about his medical mission to Iraq and I suggested he query Mother Jones since “I knew someone there.” A bold and somewhat false statement, for sure, since I hadn’t seen Barry for 20 years, but the urgency of the story lent itself to such chutzpah. Happily, Barry remembered me, which led to this interview.

The thing I have learned from Barry, even from afar, is that any writing job, no matter how small and humble, can lead to bigger publications and wider audiences as long as you keep putting yourself out there, and keep looking for a story and for a market. Of course, it helps in his case that he is a wordsmith as well as a terrific investigative reporter.

Barry's work has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine; Discover; The New York Times; AARP The Magazine; Mother Jones; Audubon; Rolling Stone; Reader's Digest; Psychology Today; Glamour; salon.com; The Boston Globe; Ladies' Home Journal and many other publications. He is currently a contributing editor for AARP The Magazine and US Airways Magazine, and a contributing writer for Mother Jones. His work has been reprinted in several books, including The Best American Science Writing 2007, The Best Business Stories of the Year and The World's Best Sex Writing 2005. In addition to his writing, during the summer, he teaches at Duke Young Writers' Camp in Durham. For more information, see http://www.barryyeoman.com.


WH: Why are you a writer?

It’s definitely in my blood. I was creating a neighborhood newspaper when I was 11. I’m not sure where the impulse initially came from. It’s something I always knew I wanted. I was editor of my junior high and high school newspaper. And when I started to think about college, many of the adults around me were trying to talk me out of journalism. One, because it was a bastard profession and, two, because they didn’t think that it was ideally suited for a kid with a stutter. But I was only in college for three days before I went to a journalism department orientation at NYU and I was so excited that I changed my major from psychology.

I think why I write now is different than why I wrote even 10 years ago. As I’ve made my way first through alternative weeklies and now to national magazines, my original impulse was about changing the world. I primarily saw journalism as a way of educating people, so that they could make a difference in addressing social injustice and economic maldistribution and stupidity in politics. That is certainly still one of my missions, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that a great deal of my pleasure comes in two other places. First, the opportunity to pull up a front-row seat to people’s lives, especially people whom I wouldn’t ordinarily cross paths with. And, second, to my great surprise, the craft.

Craft came second to me. I came of age in the inverted-pyramid style of journalism. I wrote so that you could lop it off the bottom. Now I write narrative. I’m writing stories, consciously focusing on narrative structure and character development and the weaving of big-picture issues with very fine, narrative detail. You can no longer cut a story of mine by lopping it from the bottom because every piece of the story is carefully interwoven with every other piece. Many people call this kind of journalism narrative nonfiction, and I think that’s right, because we are telling stories, which happen to be true, and we are using all the techniques of literature in the creation of story.

WH: Do you do any other kinds of writing, for fun or elsewhere?

Not very much. I keep journals when I travel. (But) I tend to write so prolifically professionally that at the end of the day what I’d rather do is read, or cook, or walk, or travel. Most days when I’m done creating words I want to kick back with my friends and have a good meal and hear some music, drink some beer and zone out the mind so it’s fresh the next day.

WH: What prompts a story for you?

With most of the magazines I work for, we have a give and take. About half of the stories I write, they’ve come up with the idea, and half of them, I’ve come up with the idea. A lot of my work includes developing and maintaining relationships with editors so that when I write or call with a story idea they know who I am and they know that they can trust me. And, likewise, when they have an idea, that they think of me.

I hear ideas when I’m reporting other stories. I read a lot. I keep my eyes open as I move around the world and I move through the world a lot. Even in my hometown, I try to move through a big world and have a relationship with people who are different from me, and always have my ears open whether I’m in Bolivia, South America or Bolivia, North Carolina.

WH: What are some of the more memorable pieces or some of the favorite stories you’ve written?

The first thing I think of is a two-part series where I spent ten months at a Hispanic Baptist mission in Siler City, N.C., as a way of understanding the huge wave of Latinos that had immigrated to North Carolina. It was such an amazing experience to be able to see this community of immigrants and believers up close, for so long, to be welcomed into their church, and into their homes, and into their secrets. They trusted me and shared a lot with me. I attended Saturday-night services, Baptisms, birthday parties and weddings. It became a 17,000-word series for The Independent, and the inspiration for an article in Mother Jones.

Many of my favorite stories have let me penetrate cultures that were unfamiliar to me, or have conversations with people having interesting lives. Writing for Mother Jones about Christian missionaries that had gone undercover in the Muslim world; writing about scientists who were under attack for sex research; writing a profile of Jack Abramoff, and having the opportunity to interview him for 12 hours; and, likewise, having tremendous access to Elizabeth Edwards, for a profile I wrote about her for O Magazine.

WH: Have you managed to make a living solely as a writer, or have supplemented your income in other ways?

I teach writing to high school kids (at the Duke Young Writers Camp) in the summer. My teaching is something I do for fun. It actually pays less than my journalism. I make a living full-time as a writer. I’ve been a full-time writer since I graduated from college in 1982 and I’ve been full-time freelancing for the last nine years. Before that, it was half-time freelancing and half-time newspaper work. Freelance writing has been very good to me. Once you reach a certain tier in the magazine world, the pay scale is sufficient—not to get wealthy—but to make a reasonable, middle-class living.

WH: By the way, why did you move to North Carolina in the first place?

Around 1984 I was working for a mainstream alternative weekly in Lafayette, La.—they were leagues above the daily paper in quality, but didn’t really live on the cutting edge. My publisher went to a conference of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies and she came back and said, “We met the founders of a new alternative newspaper in Durham, N.C. (The Independent) whom you would love. They are such idealists. But they’ll never make it.” That was 25 years ago.

I left Louisiana when the oil-industry bottom fell out and I found myself unemployed. I moved to Watauga County because I had a friend who had a house in the woods 18 miles out of Boone. And I started freelancing there. A year later, I was offered a job at The Independent and I moved to Durham and fell in love with the place. I’ve lived in Durham since.

WH: Before this interview, you said you were going into isolation for a week, to write. Do you do this for every article you write, or only when it’s a major assignment or an accumulation of work? And, how do you manage it?

When I’m writing, I turn off the phone, I try not to check email. I make sure I have food in the house and plenty of coffee, and really do quarantine myself for eight to 12 hours a day. Because I need to concentrate, and it’s so easy in this modern world to succumb to a lot of distractions. And that means also not doing other work-related things. I don’t write queries or handle administrative stuff. But, since I live in the real world, I will respond if an editor needs to contact me. Every so often I need a change of scenery and I’ll take my laptop to a coffeeshop, but that’s very rare. I’m much more focused when I’m in my house with coffee on the stove and food in the fridge and the phone turned off.

WH: Is there a subject area you’re most comfortable with, or do you consider yourself to have expertise in any particular subjects?

I do pride myself on being a generalist, in that I can come into a subject I know very little about and totally immerse myself in the issue and come away as a miniature expert. I don’t claim expertise in any one issue, but, rather, I think of myself as an expert in Topic A this month, and Topic B three months from now.

Writer Profile: Kim Dana Kupperman

(An occasional series, in which I'll talk with writers I know—or want to know—about the craft of writing.)

Kim and I met when she and I were both applying to be the Women’s (Womyn’s) Editor at City on a Hill, the college newsweekly at UC-Santa Cruz. (The former women’s editor, Kerry Anna Cobra, I think was departing to join a coven in San Francisco). We ended up sharing the position as co-editors, for a time, coming up with such features as “The Joy of Bundling.” Our section for the April Fool’s issue featured fashion makeovers: from punk to conservative, dyke to earth mother.

Needless to say, we were not universally liked in the university’s and town’s feminist communities. Some wrote the paper complaining of our frivolity in light of such pressing issues as clitorectomy in Africa and the ongoing, chronic subjugation of women in all parts of the world. But we both agreed, without needing to talk about it much, that feminism needed to lighten up sometimes and not always take itself so seriously.

Kim went on to live in Los Angeles, France, NYC (her hometown) and Maine. She taught English by phone to French people, taught English as a Foreign Language, French, and creative writing stateside, worked as a journalist and as a writer and community educator for nonprofit organizations before earning her MFA in creative writing (nonfiction) from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program. She is the founder of Welcome Table Press, a nonprofit independent publisher whose mission is to publish and celebrate the essay, in all its forms. For her day job, she works as managing editor of The Gettysburg Review.

Through the years and our various addresses, we’ve always managed to keep in touch, sometimes reconnecting after a silence of several years. That’s 25 years of correspondence, longer than I have kept up with most people, though in recent years, admittedly, most of it has been by e-mail. I miss our pages-long, handwritten and typed missives, where we used to plan out our futures and analyze our presents. Hard to imagine anymore putting so much intent into something that only one person will read, gone forever into that sealed envelope. When I write a letter now, on my laptop, I can just as easily send it to a thousand as I can send it to one, and I can archive it in a variety of ways, where it might sit silent but searchable for many years.

Kim has published extensively in the last several years. Her essays have appeared in Agni online, Brevity, Hotel Amerika, River Teeth, and elsewhere. Her essay “Relief” (Hotel Amerika, Spring 2005) was chosen for the anthology Best American Essays, 2006. For more, see Kim Dana Kupperman.


WH: Why do you write? And, why did you choose writing instead of some other form of creativity?

About ten years ago, someone told me that writers weren’t listened to as children. While I’m sure this assessment is not universal to all writers, for me it made sense. One of my mother’s favorite admonishments was “children should be seen and not heard,” and while my parents certainly paid attention to me and did listen to me in many ways, in many other ways they didn’t. I’m sure everyone could claim their parents didn’t listen to them in some fashion. The point is that writing is all about finding a voice, not necessarily the one with which you speak to your family, loved ones, friends, co-workers, or acquaintances, but a voice that expresses what is really happening in the interior self. That’s the first part of my answer: I started writing to satisfy the need to speak out and up, to raise my voice with the authority I didn’t necessarily have as a child.

The second part of the answer is that crafting language into art seemed to fit me as a form of creativity (I’m thinking of Rumi’s delightful line, “Wine gets drunk on us, not the other way around”). I did dabble with visual and performing arts as a young person, but writing complemented my sensibility in deeper ways. I have half brothers, but because they had a different mother and were quite a bit older, in essence I grew up as an only child. My mother, when I lived with her, left me alone to the point of neglect. And so I learned to amuse myself, seeking refuge in my imagination, which was a territory of unending possibility and joy. It was also a place where I resolved my fears and this is very much akin to what writing is all about, especially writing personal essays that seek to examine the unexamined life.

The third part of the answer is that I am both a storyteller and a very visual/aural person. Writing allows me to use all those capacities. Plus, when I was in my twenties, I thought it important to learn everything associated with writing, even the act of writing. I became a calligrapher. I tried my hand at translation, journalism, grant writing, and, as you know, I was a great fan of the epistolary tradition. For many years, my best writing happened in letters I wrote. Later, I learned to make books, which satisfies my desire to fashion things with my hands. I still like making books. I like it so much that I founded a press that will incorporate letterpress printing and traditional book arts into many of its projects.

WH: What was the first piece of writing you ever had published?

An article called “Journey out of Silence,” about women artists and the indecent lack of exposure for women who paint or sculpt. It was published in 1980, in Matrix, A Women’s Newsmagazine, a monthly tabloid produced by a collective in Santa Cruz. It was a very exciting experience to publish that article, especially because it combined my love of visual arts with my proficiency as a young writer (not to mention the hope it gave me to be able to voice my opinion in a public forum about inequity in the arts). I even made the collage that was published on the cover.

WH: What are you working on now?

A second collection of essays. I’m hesitant to say what it’s about because I don’t want to jinx the project.

WH: What are you reading now?

Truth in Nonfiction, essays edited by David Lazar; The Unequal Hours, essays by Linda Underhill; Walking the Wrack Line. On Tidal Shifts and What Remains, essays by Barbara Hurd. I also read the New Yorker and the Sun. I just recently finished reading the entire February 2008 issue of the Sun, which has some remarkable essays in it, most notably the one by Derrick Jensen on zoos (he compares zoos to pornography, a brilliant and all-too-true notion).

WH: Are you exclusively writing nonfiction or do you work in other genres as well?

I have been writing nonfiction pretty exclusively for the past four years, but I’ve also written quite a bit of (bad) poetry and some fiction (one piece was published some years ago). I’ve been working on a project for some time that uses all three genres.

WH: What does a managing editor at a literary journal do?

The primary and most pressing task consists of shepherding the journal through production. This involves readying manuscripts for the typesetter; copyediting, proofreading, and communicating and/or negotiating with authors about edits; coordinating and communicating with the designer, typesetter and printer; ensuring that graphics (we run an eight-page art feature and ads from other journals or presses) meet our print-quality specifications; and basically making sure everyone involved in the process meets deadlines in the production schedule (which I also set in advance of each publishing cycle). Other responsibilities include supervising student interns, writing grant proposals and managing grant contracts, processing contributor and vendor payments, overseeing the annual budget, managing single-issue distribution, dealing with distributors, and attending conferences and book fairs. I used to also be in charge of marketing, but because of my responsibilities as coordinator of our summer writing conference, I no longer coordinate marketing activities. Managing editors at other journals have assorted other responsibilities, including setting editorial policy and selecting work. I’m lucky as I get to work with authors once they’re accepted (i.e., I never reject anyone!)

As coordinator of the Review’s summer conference for writers, I make sure everything that needs to be in place—i.e., advertising, publicity, contracts, scheduling, housing, transportation, catering, etc.—is in place. I make sure people will have the information they need to get from one event to another; it’s a details job. Once faculty and students arrive, I spend a great deal of time solving problems and making sure everyone feels welcome and satisfied. It’s a customer-service job more than anything. When the conference ends, I supervise the compilation of evaluations.

WH: What do you hope to write (or accomplish) in the next five years?

I hope to get my first collection of essays published, a scary proposition considering how essay-phobic the publishing world is (the other reason I founded Welcome Table Press was to address the need for a publisher to focus on the essay). I’m working now to get the press up and running, and to bring the idea of the essay to the fore in terms of contemporary letters. And I want to finish more reading! Always more reading, including rereading. In prose, Woolf, Sontag, Pamuk, Didion, Baldwin, Jeff Porter, bell hooks, Winona LaDuke, June Jordan, and that’s just for starters; the list is endless actually. In poetry, everything!

--Interviewed (and introduction written) by Beth Blevins.