A Conversation with Joni Tevis—WSR Contributing Nonfiction Editor
Water~Stone Review is a collaborative project of students, faculty, and staff at Hamline University Creative Writing Programs. In addition to working with our faculty, and to fulfill a larger initiative of providing a place for new/emerging and underrepresented voices at Water~Stone Review, we now have rotating contributing editor
This is a wonderful opportunity for our graduate student assistant editors to collaborate with renown writers in order to expand our reach and further innovation. Past Contributing Editors include Sun Yung Shin, Keith Lesmeister, Sean Hill, Carolyn Holbrook, Mona Power, Kao Kalia Yang, and Ed Bok Lee.
In this post we introduce Vol. 28 Contributing Nonfiction Editor, Joni Tevis.
Welcome! We’re so excited that you are our CNF Contributing Editor for Volume 28. The topics you explore in your work are varied. What is your writing process like when selecting and beginning a new piece?
It always starts with a moment of attraction to something small, but visceral. I know it when I sense it.
As a professor, what do you hope to impart to your students?
Pay attention! Pay attention to your life. Pay attention to the details that life throws at you every single day. Pay attention to what you read and how you react to it; you can always use that to work on your own writing. And be kind to yourself.
What draws you in when reading a nonfiction piece?
A sense of voice. I like to feel that someone is speaking directly to me. And I like to learn something from a piece of nonfiction that I didn’t know.
What are you currently writing or working on?
I’m revising a book of essays about living in epic times. This is a challenging moment, but we can learn from others—Big Mama Thornton and Janis Joplin, Robert Hirohata and Red Adair (the oil rig firefighter who put out blazes so ferocious they could be seen from space). We can do this work together, day by day by day.
