Tell us about your poem “Coldwater” in Volume 22. How did it come to be?

Photo Credit: Ana Min

I wrote the first draft of this poem in 2014 during my time in the Loft Mentor Series. We were having a workshop with one of the mentors and were given the prompt to “write a story in 15 minutes.” Many of my poems are narrative, so I wrote this piece as a kind of poetic scene mining my childhood memories. Writing about who and where I come from had been a go-to for me at the time, and still is because, really, we never stop trying to figure out how we got here. I also wanted to write a scene that held some joy.  I generally hand write my first drafts, so I still have it in an old journal. What I wrote initially was not heavily revised, but it wasn’t finished and I came back to it occasionally over the next few years until I figured out what else to say and why. Though the piece is a slice of my memory, it offers the larger narrative of my family, community, and to a certain extent, the Black experience in the U.S. 

What excites you as a writer? What turns you off, makes you turn away or stop reading a piece of writing?

I have a strong fascination with and respect for language, the potency of a word, the power of words to create meaning, feeling, and images or ideas that we’ve never experienced. So, in writing, wasted words are kind of my pet peeve, especially in poetry. Poetry allows us to put so much into a word and the possibility of packing such a great deal of meaning of feeling into one word keeps me excited and interested in the labor of writing. 

What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

This may seem like a predictable answer, but voraciously reading books as a child got me here, and before that, being curious about the world led me to books. As a kid it seemed like adults had all the answers, but they got annoyed with questions after a while, so I figured I’d try books, considering adults wrote them. The older I became, the more I began to keep diaries and journals to express my thoughts about the world, which had been influenced by all the information, stories, and ideas I got from reading. By the time I was a teenager, I knew writing was not only an exercise in freedom of imagination but it was powerful. I want to be powerful and free. 

How does the current political climate influence your art or creative process?

I’ve never lived in a political climate free of crisis and quandary for people like me. The only thing this current climate does for me is add to the already existing myriad of stressors, and because of this, I am beginning to withdraw from directly engaging my art in or with this political climate. I will leave that to those with the energy and those with surprise. So in a way, I guess, this climate has influenced me to seek things like rest and joy.

What are some themes/topics that are important to your writing?

I write a lot about the Black experience in the U.S. which could encompass just about anything with the caveat that the content center Black folks. Some more specific areas within that include womanhood, motherhood, and chronic illness. I love writing about lineage and the ways in which history shapes and influences who we are. I am also interested in using anger as a tool in writing in a way that is healthy and productive.  

What does your creative process look like? How does the environment you are in shape your work or where do you like to write?

Messy. Sometimes I’m inspired to create new work and will turn out multiple pieces in a matter of days. But then there are times where I don’t write anything at all for weeks or even months, but the ideas are always simmering in the back of my mind; it’s almost as if the poem begins inside my body and when it’s time, the poem is born. In terms of environment, I’m not traditional, meaning I don’t necessarily need a room or silence. I can write in the middle of chaos, on trains, especially well on planes, and even in the middle of a work meeting. I’m really inspired by having people around me when I’m writing. I love people-watching and taking in the natural environment around me for inspiration. However, it has always been more difficult to write with my children around. When it comes to revision and editing though, I do need a more calm, focused physical environment. 

 What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

I have completed a poetry manuscript that I am sending out to potential publishers, a work that explores performance, politics, and Black womanhood. The funny part of “finishing” a manuscript is that it is never really finished, though at some point every book has to be done. 

April Gibson is a poet, essayist, and educator. She is the author of the chapbook Automation (Willow Books 2015). Her writing has been published in PANK, pluck!, Literary Mama, Origins, Naugatuck River Review, and elsewhere. She is a fellow of The Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, The Watering Hole, and she is a VONA alum. April teaches at the University of St. Thomas and the Loft Literary Center, and with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.  

Tell us about your fiction piece “Reading Aloud” in Volume 22. How did it come to be?

Just as the character in the story does, I read to my mother when she was in a nursing home for the better part of the last year of her life. She had read to me when I was a child, and as I read to her, it occurred to me that the roles were now reversed. She had always loved literature, but in the last 20 or so years of her life, she turned to reading mysteries and crime fiction. When she died, I was in the middle of reading the first Dexter novel, Dexter Darkly Dreaming, by Jeff Lindsay. (I did find it amusing that there I was in a nursing home reading such a dark and violent novel aloud. Her roommate seemed to enjoy it too!) It was a novel she’d read before. So after she died, I, of course, kept reading, and I realized that I wanted to know the ending that my mother already knew, which seemed like such an apt metaphor for her passing and my life continuing without her. I felt like there was a story in that. 

What excites you as a writer? What turns you off, makes you turn away or stop reading a piece of writing?

What most excites me as a writer is really pretty simple, and that is fiction that clearly has depth and says something honest about human nature. I also love to read fiction with a lyrical voice, but that voice always needs to be in service to the story. It shouldn’t be there only for show. I tend to learn toward traditional, realistic fiction, but I’m open to stories that break with traditional forms if they don’t sacrifice heart and depth. Stories that strike me as written only for the sake of experimentation turn me off. 

What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

Probably my mother reading both Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn to me. I can still hear her voice as she read those books, and I can still recall my deep concern for Huck and Jim as they traveled farther and farther south on the Mississippi River. I knew that was the wrong direction! I also need to mention here that when I was a child I had dyslexia, and my parents learned of a program at the Philadelphia Institutes that could correct dyslexia through a series of “patterning,” where the child actually learns to properly crawl and creep in a coordinated fashion, even when the child has already been walking for years. Eye exercises are also involved. I won’t take the time to explain the theory behind it, but it works. My dyslexia was completely corrected. If it hadn’t been, I’m quite sure I would never have become a writer. But the point I’m trying to get to here is that while I would do my daily crawling and creeping, my mother read book after book to me. I know that words and stories must have crawled into my system and eventually made me want to see if I could write a story. By the way, I finally wrote a story a while back about a twelve-year-old boy with dyslexia called “This Is How Much I Love You,” which I hope will find a good home at some point.    

What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work? Do–or have–you had any mentors in your writing life?

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, which celebrates its centennial this year, had a profound influence on me. I thought the stories were beautiful, and I loved Anderson’s language and the way the stories are connected by place and recurring characters. In fact, when I began writing stories, I discovered I was connecting stories by place and character, which hadn’t been something I’d set out to do intentionally. As for mentors, there were two writing teachers I had in the MFA program at Wichita State who taught me a great deal: Philip H. Schneider and James Lee Burke. I learned so much about craft from them, and they both pointed me toward the right books to read.

Do you practice any other art forms? If so, how do these influence your writing and/or creative process?

I play guitar, though not at a high level. I’ve never played in a band and have rarely played in front of anyone. But when I was in high school something made me want to take lessons, and as my ability grew, my taste in music improved greatly. I began to listen to music and lyrics in a different way, and I think that attention to language helped me move farther along toward becoming a writer.

What craft element challenges you the most in your writing? How do you approach it? What is your quirk as a writer?

I have to be careful with pacing. I can get too bogged down in a scene with too many details. It’s a matter of cutting, and listening to writer friends when they offer a critique. I never send a story out without someone reading it first and responding to it. As for a quirk, I don’t know if this qualifies, but I have a tendency toward writing a formal sounding prose. Maybe sometimes it’s more formal sounding than it should be. But I think I’m trying to capture something that can maybe best be summed by these lines from Emily Dickinson: “After great pain, a formal feeling comes--”  

How does the current political climate influence your art or creative process?

I completed a novel called Children of Dust [forthcoming in 2021 from Regal House], which I’m now fine-tuning a bit, that’s set in the 1880s in rural Alabama. It’s largely about race, and I’ve written it from the point-of-view of two white characters and one who is mixed-race. I’ve tried to be very careful how I’ve dealt with the material because race is, of course, such a volatile topic. But this book is something I felt I had to write, and I’ve drawn from a lot of family history/legend/lore.   

 What are some themes/topics that are important to your writing?

I’ve found over the years that I often write about the nature of guilt, and how characters carry it within them and how they attempt to struggle with it. I’ve also written a great deal about my characters’ capacity for evil. So sometimes my stories use violence, but certainly not always. I’ve never been interested in writing about a completely evil character, what one might call a psychopath, because those characters are, by definition, one-dimensional. I want to write about fully rounded characters who have to struggle with all kinds of human impulses. 

What does your creative process look like? How does the environment you are in shape your work or where do you like to write?

I like to write about three hours a day, and I tend to be slow and methodical. I’m certainly not prolific, but I’ve found if I simply keep at it, the work does get done. I’ve now written three novels, and I’m at work on a fourth collection of short stories. I may be a rarity, but I write first drafts in longhand on yellow legal pads, letter size and college rule, with a blue ink pen. Funny,  but if I didn’t have those materials, I don’t think I could write. It’s just what I’m used to. And on days when the weather is good, I like to write just below the house where my wife Rhonda and I live on the Alabama River. Almost all of my work is set in a fictionalized version of the small community where I grew up in the Black Belt region of West Alabama, in the fork of the Tombigbee and Black Warrior Rivers. So when I sit beside, and look out on the Alabama, it helps transport me to the place in my imagination that I need to reach.     

What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

I’m about nine stories into a fourth collection, of which “Reading Aloud” is a part, and I hope all the stories in the collection will find as fine a first home as “Reading Aloud.” 

Marlin Barton lives in Montgomery, Alabama. He is the author of three story collections Pasture Art, Dancing by the River, and The Dry Well and two novels: The Cross Garden and A Broken Thing. His stories have appeared in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and The Best American Short Stories. He teaches in a program for juvenile offenders called Writing Our Stories, and he also teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Converse College. 

Tell us about your poem “The Weekend” in Volume 22. How did it come to be?

It came, firstly, as a response to SZA’s song “The Weekend,” leaking like syrup into my ear, on repeat, for what felt like a full year. I wrote the poem last fall and still the song is playing right now, SZA’s “My man is my man, is your man. / Heard that’s her man too. / … I just keep him satisfied through the weekend” coming out like cool smoke from my laptop speakers. 

I was fresh into a long distance relationship. My partner was in Minnesota and I was in New York. A whole few states of distance between us, but my desire was large and held me captive as if she were near and within reach. It ransacked me really, so much so that I started desiring everyone, everything—the woman in the auburn jacket sitting across from me on the A train, the man playing the jazz saxophone on the platform at Nostrand Ave. I craved touch and taste, so I craved the juices of the apples at the market right outside my subway stop, and the gold hue of each individual sunflower gathered into a bouquet. They were only seven dollars you know? Those sunflowers I mean. I could fulfill one desire so quickly and conveniently, but my partner, the real want, remained so far away. 

I’d argue SZA was expressing a similar feeling—to be so overcome with your desire for someone that you’d make do with sharing, make do with seeing them only on the weekend. The poem “The Weekend” became an opportunity for me to channel my kinship with SZA. It became a canvas where I could record what desire was doing to me, a place where I can try—and also fail—at answering those desires on the page. 

 What excites you as a writer? What turns you off, makes you turn away or stop reading a piece of writing?

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I’m so easily excited about writing. The sounds of words together! I don’t think I can ever be bored with such a bounty. (Bored and bounty! What a fun pair of words to put together in a sentence.) I really can find pleasure in almost anything I read if I try hard enough, if I squint long enough, which is why I think I’m such a slow reader. And so the pieces I eventually turn away from are the ones where I might be required to try too hard to arrive at that pleasure. I’m perhaps hedonistic in this way. The writing that gets me most giddy—syntax, topic, the audacity of it all—are the ones I turn to face for longer periods of time. 

(I think it’s important to also mention that I am way turned off from harmful pieces—writing that doesn’t take care of the reader. I like writing that traverses difficult, painful or violent landscapes with nuance or at least a fair bit of care for a reader.)

What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

Hanif Abdurraqib used to often tell a particular story while he performed. It’s the story of how he went to see Anis Mojgani in a basement somewhere in his undergrad years, I think, and from watching Anis read and perform poetry, he learned how to write in one night. I went to see Hanif Abdurraqib feature at a Button Poetry slam in 2016, and then, because I loved his work so much, I flew to New York that September for my birthday to see him, Anis Mojgani, Sarah Kay and Clint Smith read poems at The Sheen Center. That night, Hanif told the story, again, of how he learned to write in one night from Anis. I left New York the next day after mulling over all of the poems Hanif read; after writing some of my favorite lines down, riffing off of them in my own way; after, like him, learning how to write in one night.

The fun thing about this story is that it echoes. Since 2016 I’ve spoken to numerous, down right many poets who love Hanif’s work, who say they learned something new, learned something about their own writing from finding his. 

 What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work? Do–or have–you had any mentors in your writing life?

I’ve said it already (in probably too many words I’m sorry), but I’m a writer because of Hanif Abdurraqib. I’m a writer because of Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Ross Gay and Aracelis Girmay. Because of John Murillo. Because B. H. Fairchild, sure, sure. But I’m also a writer because of Nancy Huang, and Peach Neely. Because of Elliott Case, Janelle Tan, xtian, and Kamelya Youssef. Because of Catherine Chen and Sonja Bjelić. I’m definitely a writer because my homies are writers. We nourish each other, I think. And how lucky is that? 

Do you practice any other art forms? If so, how do these influence your writing and/or creative process?

I sing in the shower (haha). I love music, and I really do sing a lot while walking down the street, or while waiting for the cashier at a bodega to ring me up, or loudly while inside my room while my roommates are trying to find rest. 

I think my love of music really translates to my love of music in poetry—that is, my love for the sound of language (see “bored” and “bounty” in the same sentence in question 2). I’m driven heavily by how things sound in my poems. The same reason I sing songs often in my leisure is the same reason I, at random times, repeat lines I love that are stuck in my head from poems I’ve heard at some point. Right now doing the rounds is a poem by Danez Smith. I just remember the words, the “boy after boy after boy….pulling me down … into the dirt.” 

 What craft element challenges you the most in your writing? How do you approach it? What is your quirk as a writer?

Editing can be difficult for me. I’m alright with small edits, with changing a word or a phrase so it’s closer to the thing it’s trying to translate. But substantial edits, re-entering a poem after I’ve written it, after I’ve walked away from it for a bit, can be hard. It’s hard to hear its music again. It’s hard to re-enter the world of a poem after I leave it. Memorizing the poem helps. Rewriting it from memory, as I remember it, helps a ton (thank you for that tool, D. Allen!). Anything I can do to trick my psyche back into the world of the poem helps. 

How does the current political climate influence your art or creative process?

I’ve been coming to terms that the current political climate is the same political climate that has perhaps always hung over this country like a plump, gray cloud. Which is to say: There is maybe no specific time period that has ever been “good” on this planet. And so I’m fascinated by the act of writing poems and how poems can perhaps change that, can perhaps get us closer to the world we thought we had, the one that’s better than this one. I think poems pull us toward a better way of being. I think they tug me out of these decades, these centuries, and pull me toward the bevy of possibility, pull me toward the world that me and all my homies try to imagine, the one where we dismantle “the current political climate,” even the language of it, and start anew.  

 What are some themes/topics that are important to your writing?

I’ve recently learned that wonder twirls at the core of my craft. I’m always in delight with something, or else finding a way into delight by presenting questions to the things that enamour or trouble me. I spend a lot of time wondering about masculinity, about love and desire. I’m wondering today about birds and wondering what kind of bird is on the branch outside my window (fyi it’s a house finch) and wondering  what kind of tree is the branch attached to (fyi I’m not yet sure of it’s name, but I hope I find a way to it soon).

What does your creative process look like? How does the environment you are in shape your work or where do you like to write?

I tend to write any/everywhere. When the moment strikes, I can sometimes get whole poems in one sitting, i.e. sitting on the bus or subway train, or sitting in a diner while a friend laughs over pie. Otherwise I try to write whatever fun language comes to me, and then I figure the rest out later when I’m sitting down at a laptop, trying to jostle a poem free from a wild and rowdy Google Doc of found language.

 What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

I just finished a draft of a poem about how my professor said something like “This year might be an emotional hurricane year” many months before it became a literal hurricane year, a year where Hurricane Dorian ransacked two islands of my country, the Bahamas. I’m beginning the early work on a nonfiction project that aims to unravel the effects of Dorian while trying to educate readers on the status and stakes of the current climate crisis. 

Elsewhere I’m working on a manuscript of poems, June, that is mostly about the sudden death of my two friends while they were traveling in Turin, Italy. 

Bernard Ferguson (he/him) is a Bahamian immigrant poet and  MFA candidate at NYU. He is the winner of the 2019 Hurston/Wright College Writers Award, a winner of the 2019 92Y Discovery Contest, winner of The Cincinnati Review’s 2019 Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, winner of The 2019 Breakwater Peseroff Poetry Prize, winner of the 2019 Nâzım Hikmet Poetry Prize, and an Adroit Journal Gregory Djanikian Scholar. He has served as Assistant Editor at Washington Square Review and has received fellowships from the Atlantic Center for the Arts, NYU’s Global Research Initiative, and New York City’s Writers in the Public Schools. Bernard’s writing is published, featured or forthcoming in The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Narrative, The Southampton Review, Winter Tangerine, and the Best New Poets 2017 anthology, among others. You can learn more about Bernard’s work on his website. 

It’s that time of year again when we all start to prep and plan out the most important thing about AWP—our conference clothes! I’m kidding of course, but it’s no secret that the stakes can feel high about what to wear at the biggest literary conference of the year. Since AWP can feel like one giant imposter syndrome event, take a peek at Sonia Greenfield’s delightful Twitter account AWPFashionFeed. I promise this is a fun and kind-spirited account, and Sonia’s wit might help break down some of those writerly insecurities a lot of us share. But on to the real stuff! 

At Water~Stone Review, we like to promote the tireless work of our many contributors and editors, so I’ve put together a mini list of events worth checking out!

Sheila O’Conner

Our own fiction editor Sheila O’Connor is going to be a busy woman at AWP (in addition to her already-busy life promoting her MBA-finalist book, Evidence of V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, and Fictions). First, you can catch her reading at the South 85 Journal contributor reading on Thursday, March 5 at 5pm at the GrandHyatt. After that, Sheila, along with Hamline CWP faculty member

Angela Pelster-Wiebe

Angela Pelster, will be featured on the panel “The Past is Present: Writing the Legacy of Historical Justice”on Saturday, March 7 from 9-10:15am. Sheila will also be signing copies of her book at the Rose Metal Press (table #1855) on Saturday, March 7 from 10:30-11:15am.

Erica T. Wurth

On Wednesday, March 4 from 7-8:30 pm, you can check out Volume 22 contributor Erika T. Wurth at the ReTox Bar as part of a group of fifteen writers who will read rock-and-roll-inspired work for just two to three minutes each, the length of a song. Free to all, no cover, and you can stay for trivia and games and cheap drinks afterward!

Sun Yung Shin

Speaking of Volume 22 contributors, Purvi Shah and contributing poetry editor

Purvi Shah

Sun Yung Shin, along with Volume 21 contributor Su Hwang, are teaming up for the launch party and reading for The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit. The Cherrity Bar features a delicious menu of dumplings and ramen, it’s a five-minute walk from the convention center, and all proceeds from the event will benefit local charities.

Su Hwang

In 2018, I attended Hamline’s Summer Writing Workshop and I witnessed the aura of Maggie Smith at a karaoke mic on a makeshift stage in a local bar. I can’t remember what

Maggie Smith, credit: Davon

songs she sang, but since she’s slated to sing and swap poems on Friday, March 6 with Jerry David DeCicca at The Lonesome Rose, you can bet she’ll be ready to bust out a little country western at the oldest honky tonk bar on the St. Mary’s strip. Country crooning starts right around 5pm, y’all.

Barrie Jean Borich

Our former creative nonfiction editor Barrie Jean Borich is getting real-ish with a group of writers for a night of readings with Speculative Nonfiction, Sweet: A Literary Confection, and Bellingham Review. Cap off your AWP off-site excursions with a trip to Doŕcol Distilling and Brewing Co., for this event on Saturday, March 7 at 6pm.

John Brandon

And last but not least, come visit us at the bookfair! We’ll be in booths #1157 and #1158, and we have a fun surprise to share! I can’t tell you what it is just yet, but I promise it will make your day! If you’re a fan of the Florida native John Brandon, you can catch him at our booth 1-3 Thursday and 3-5 on Friday. While he signs your copy of Arkansas, ask John if he knows who The Flaming Lips are.

Author:

Tell us about your CNF piece “The Coward” in Volume 22. How did it come to be?

This piece actually began 10 years ago, during the Hamline summer writing workshop. The visiting professor asked us to write about an article of clothing that was special to us, and the only thing I could think of was my hat simply because I love Scooby Doo. I had no idea what I was going to write about, and the piece turned out to be much more serious than I had intended, and I put it away. Last year my brother was in a really solid, healthy place, and I felt good about pulling the piece out again. I made a few minor edits and began submitting it.

What excites you as a writer? What turns you off, makes you turn away or stop reading a piece of writing?

Since I’m a CNF writer, I love finding and capturing symbolism in everyday life. I love how writing helps me understand the world.

What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

I was always writing little stories as a kid. And I absolutely loved how pleased my grandmother’s voice sounded when she described me as a “future journalist,” even though I was too young to even know what a journalist was. I knew it had something to do with writing, though, so I was determined I would become one. (And I did, for awhile.)

What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work? Do–or have–you had any mentors in your writing life?

I’m always intimidated to answer this question because it gives away how uncool I am when it comes to art! I’ll say I’m incredibly inspired by the women in my writing group, both for their beautiful stories and their dedication to craft.

What craft element challenges you the most in your writing? How do you approach it? What is your quirk as a writer?

For some reason, as an MFA student, I could never understand what reflection meant in CNF. I’d write scene, and I’d write summary, and then my professors (every one, every term) would tell me to add reflection. I was in my capstone course when it finally hit me: all “reflection” means is stepping into the story with some variation of, “I didn’t know it then, but now I know …” 

Even with that minor epiphany, it’s still a challenge. Reflection is where the writer becomes vulnerable. 

What are some themes/topics that are important to your writing?

I’ve noticed the theme of independence recurs throughout most of my writing. Actually, I was halfway through writing a memoir that tries to explore the line between dependence and independence when someone pointed out how fitting that is, since I was born on Independence Day.

What does your creative process look like? How does the environment you are in shape your work or where do you like to write?

My creative process has been all over the map since having children. I wish I were one of those super-dedicated writing moms who wake up at 4 a.m. to write, but I haven’t had much luck with that. Mostly I try to squeeze in time to write whenever it’s available, which these days is usually over lunch at work. 

What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

Right now I’m working on a second memoir and trying to wrestle with issues of autism, diet, parenting, and feminism—and where they all intersect.

Laura Theobald Benda has been a reporter, editor, and teacher, currently she is the associate director of stewardship and a campaign writer at Carleton College in Northfield, MN. She earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from Hamline University and has published work in rock, paper, scissors, and The Tishman Review. She lives and writes in Lakeville, MN with her husband, two children, and two dogs.