Polly Atwell talks with Andrew Porter about how crafting stories is like editing film, what particular advantages peripheral narrators can afford, and why it’s “completely surreal” to hear actors read from your work.
“Whatever you do, stay in the room.” So advises Ron Carlson in his book on the craft of writing, appropriately titled Ron Carlson Writes a Story. He knows what world exists on the other side of the door: a world full of televised sports, dirty dishes, iced mochachinos. A world full of distraction from the task at hand. Writing, he argues, is about staying in the room, pushing beyond the point where your eyes glaze over and your fingers refuse to type. That’s where the magic lies.
As a young girl, Marie Mutsuki Mockett accompanied her father to antiques fairs and art galleries, observing lively debates over Japanese lacquer and porcelain. Her talent for zeroing in on the telling detail, as well as a connoisseur’s appreciation of the aesthetic tradition of Japan, both blossom in her debut novel Picking Bones From Ash. Lee Thomas sits down for a conversation with Mockett that spans child prodigies, the downside of unlimited freedom, the upside of nonprofit publishers, and the nature of travel.
“I’ve always felt personally and emotionally closer to the searchers, rather than to the finders…to those who don’t get answers, as opposed to those who do. For me, the experience of epiclitus is closely related to the experience of the uncanny, but also to the experience of complex and problematic emotions, like yearning, and awe, and psychic unease, which are of particular interest to me. That precipice of endless uncertainty, of the impenetrable—those are the moments that I’ve always loved in literature, as well as the moments that have haunted me in life.”
Hannah Tinti was raised in Salem, Massachusetts, a place she credits with having influenced the darker side of her fiction. Charlotte Boulay talks with the much-admired author and editor about the influence of art in her work, how writers find their subject matter, her editorial approach at One Story, and trusting your gut during the drafting process, among other subjects.
Dana Kletter sits down to talk with famed fiction writer Allan Gurganus. Their conversation ranges from sexuality to southerness, from his affinity for the 19th century to how reading the work of fellow writers can be a shaping force in one’s fiction, from gardening between paragraphs to Halloween political activism, and plenty more about teaching and the craft of writing.
Adam Haslett’s 2002 story collection, You Are Not a Stranger Here, was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. His first novel, Union Atlantic, which focuses in part on unregulated trading, unethical banking, and the prospect of a massive economic collapse, was published this spring by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. Kate Levin talks with the author about fiction meeting reality, the psychology of power, the responsibility of writers to capture the social and political context of an era, and exposing ourselves in our characters.
“I don’t mind that when I’m interviewed I am speaking as a representative of biracial women. I’m heartened that people are interested. I do wonder, though, when the book is critiqued as being not enough about the biracial experience. To that criticism I say, Well, okay, but it’s not a position paper. It’s a story. … I have had a number of people “come out” to me, for lack of a better word, about their blended families, or about their grief, or about simply being a young person struggling against the labels, like geek or nerd, that they’d been assigned by peers. … They’ve connected their own stories to the stories I’ve told and suddenly feel empowered to talk about it.”
Charles Johnson taught creative writing at the University of Washington from 1976 to 2009. He is the author of numerous books, including the National Book Award-winning Middle Passage. Zachary Watterson, one of Johnson’s former students, talks with his mentor about the literary friendships that have influenced the author’s more than forty-year writing career.
Donald Ray Pollock, author of the 2008 collection Knockemstiff, left high school at seventeen to work at a meatpacking plant. A year later, he landed a union job at the Mead Paper Mill in Chillicothe, where he worked for the next thirty-two years. He didn’t start writing until his forties, and even then he kept his day job—writing mornings, nights, and weekends. Lydia Fitzpatrick and Kate Levin talk with the author about coming to writing late, getting an MFA, and making disreputable characters empathetic.
