<![CDATA[Grace and Gravity

<![CDATA[Grace and Gravity - Spotlights]]>Fri, 20 Dec 2024 14:50:03 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[A Conversation with Beth Anderson]]>Fri, 08 May 2020 15:36:43 GMThttp://graceandgravitydc.com/spotlights/a-conversation-with-beth-andersonBy Henri Brink

“We were thirteen. Soon after, we took the cardboard box holding Nana’s ashes to the Highway 50 overpass and opened it, watching her bits and pieces dance in the powerful wake of passing eighteen wheelers. Then, we went home and crafted a plan. And waited.” – Beth Anderson, “Patience”

For her contribution to Furious Gravity, Beth Anderson delivers a gripping story about loss, violence and the ways family protects and harms us. Told in dual first person, “Patience” is an incredible piece of flash fiction that somehow manages to span a moment and a lifetime, and it opens the anthology with a poignant elegance that I, for one, couldn’t get out of my head. Thoroughly starstruck, I recently got the chance to talk with Beth about her stories, her community, and the process of writing "Patience."

Since you’ve spent most of your career in marketing, I was wondering how you realized that you wanted to get more into creative writing, since you didn’t do that as much while you were getting your degrees?

Anderson: Yeah, you know, it was always something that I played around with a little bit. I lived in Chicago for a while, and I worked for a big advertising agency there. And I actually had a friend who wanted to do National Novel Writing Month. And I had taken some writing classes there, and I had a writing group in Chicago. And my friend and I, this was just a total lark, we ended up meeting up in New York one weekend at her sister’s house and kicked off National Novel Writing Month, and we both ended up writing rough drafts of novels in that month. I also had a bunch of people in Chicago that I sort of recruited to do it with me, and this was totally just for fun, but I wrote a novel that was based on the advertising agency where I worked.

So when I moved here to DC and I had a pretty flexible schedule, I took a class on novel writing, met some people there that I had talked with, and we formed a writing group and started meeting, and then from there, I think I just kind of slowly kept going. And when I took more classes, I met more people and started to get a lot more plugged in with what was going on in DC. One of the things that’s really cool about Furious Gravity is that three of the people that are in it are people that I have taken writing classes from. It was really neat to get to be represented along with them. So it was just something that I really wanted to do. And as I took more classes and got better, and then spent more time doing it, it’s kind of gotten more serious.

That’s really interesting, since it seems like you really got into writing partly because of the community you’re a part of in Chicago and then in DC as well.

Anderson: Yeah, I think that’s definitely true, especially in DC with the Writer’s Center and with some of the different conferences and things like Readings on the Pike and all that, it’s definitely helped me, being around a lot of people who take it seriously and want to do it. And a lot of the people who, I mean, they’re really, really good, and I’ve learned a lot from them. Because I’m older and I have a family, I wouldn’t now go and get an MFA, but I think in DC, in particular, there’s a lot of people that are out there, teaching people and working with people and working together. So you can learn a lot just by putting effort into taking part in that.

Absolutely! We’ve met a lot of people from the DC writing community in our class, and it seems really lively. Since you’re currently based out of Austin, though, have you found a similar community there, or have you been keeping up with the writing groups you had in DC or elsewhere?

Anderson: It’s a little bit of both! I still have a writing group in DC that I meet with remotely. And another member of our group now has been spending part of per year in Florida, and of course right now we’re all meeting remotely, but before that, she was in Florida, and I was in Austin. But I find other ways to get involved in some of the authoring stuff as well. Kind of weirdly, one of my really good friends from business school is also a writer and he and I actually formed a writing group here in Austin before I moved away. He’s introduced me to new people, and Austin also has a really strong writing scene as well. So I’ve kind of slowly been involved in that and going to events, and then there’s a group called the Writer’s League of Texas that sponsors a lot of events and classes. But yeah, it’s fun going from one place to another city where writing in both places has a strong community.

Pivoting a little bit, then, I was wondering since you seem to have gotten most of your basis in novel writing, was this piece of flash more of an experimental piece you? Or do you write a lot of other short fiction as well?

Anderson: I have yeah, you’re right. I had mostly just written the novel, the one that I’m finishing up now to send out, and I’ve actually also started another one. I read novels, mostly, I don’t read a ton of short fiction, but I wanted to explore that a little bit. And I thought it would be fun to do something that is shorter and wouldn’t take years to write and finish. I actually wrote Patience in a class that I took from Tara Campbell, who is also in the anthology, and it was fun. I really like writing short flash stuff, it’s so concentrated and you have to zero in on one thing and just get in and get out. So it’s a fun way to write in a different way.

I also noticed that a lot of the other anthologies that you’ve been published in to do with genres like speculative fiction and weird fiction in some way. I definitely got that vibe from your story for this anthology as well, so I was just wondering if those pieces influence either your novel writing, “Patience,” or anything else you’re working on?

Anderson: I think that a lot of the work I’ve done, particularly that’s shorter, has tended to be more in the speculative vein. I read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy growing up, so it’s fun to just go into a totally different world. The writing group that I’m in right now, we do a lot of nonfiction. And when I brought “Patience” to them, I had to go, “Okay, this is totally made up, there is nothing here that is based on reality.” A couple of things I’ve written have been more dark, and then all the Google searches that are involved with that can get kind of interesting.

As a follow-up question, then, is this story significantly darker than the novels you’ve been working on?

Anderson: Yes. The first novel that I wrote in Chicago was very much a kind of genre novel in the sense that it’s more of a coming of age story with a little bit of romance in it, so it really doesn’t have dark elements at all. Another one that I’ve been working on set in DC is darker, but it’s not as dark as “Patience.”

Shifting gears a little here, since you’re from Texas and moved around a lot, I was wondering how your upbringing and your experiences in those different cities have impacted your writing.

Anderson: I think I definitely have a Texan point of view. I’ve lived in a lot of different parts of the country: I’ve lived in Texas, I’ve lived in the south. I was in Chicago, and I lived in DC. So I think, having moved around and lived in all these different places, it helps me see things with a bit of an outsider point of view. Living in DC for ten years and also having lived in DC for a couple of years when I was younger, I feel like I understand DC, but then I can also look at it with that outside view, as well. It’s similar back here in Texas. I understand the Texas point of view, but I’ve been away for a long time, so I can see it from a different point of view, too. And I think as a writer, I’ve been able to come at things from different angles, which can be helpful.

Q: Do you think that coming into the writing community from a marketing and tech background has helped you with that kind of outsider perspective, as well?

Anderson: I think it’s definitely helped me in terms of trying to publish things. I don’t like to write things necessarily in a marketing-y kind of way, I’m not the type of person who’s going to write a book based on what’s hot right now. But, since I did a lot of PR in my marketing career, and because I’ve pitched a lot of people in my career, it took away some of that fear of doing it on the writer side. The people who publish things, whether it’s at a newspaper or journal or anything else, they need content, and they want the content, and they also want you to give them something that makes them stand out, so I think it’s helped me there. One thing is being pretty focused on who I send things to, and I’ve had a pretty decent success rate in sending things out because I learned from my marketing background to do some research on who I’m sending something to and figure out what they like and send them something that I think is right for them. That’s helped, and I know it’s helped some of the people in my group. It’s something that we talk about a lot, so I think I’ve been able to add some expertise there and help people sending work out.

Sort of helping people and giving back to the literary community, in a way, with your strengths.

Anderson: Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that’s nice is that people come in with all these other different skills and backgrounds. And if you can take that and share it with people, that’s definitely helpful. All the teachers that I’ve had have brought all that in as well, so if I can add a little bit to that, I think that’s a good thing.

One more thing then, is there anything else you’d like to tell me about your story before I let you go?

Anderson: I don’t know. It’s a little dark, and as I said, a lot of shorter fiction ends up going in that direction. Which I think is interesting because I don’t think I’m really a dark person. But I am attracted to like those types of stories, so it is fun to create my own. It’s a story about pain and suffering. I’m excited to see it out there in the world.

]]><![CDATA[A Conversation with Colleen Kearney Rich]]>Fri, 08 May 2020 15:28:16 GMThttp://graceandgravitydc.com/spotlights/a-conversation-with-colleen-kearney-richBy Jason Brandon

Colleen Kearney Rich’s “The Other Gorgon Girl” shifts the popular focus from Medusa to her sister Euryale, the god of war. In this short story, mythology is married to a modern scenario. Euryale, fed up with the account manager and his mansplaining, gives him a look that leaves him petrified. But how does one dispose of his petrified body in this surveillance state? Won’t cameras catch her and her boyfriend getting rid of the body?

While this isn’t a bloody murder, the account manager cannot escape his state of petrification and be resucitated. Euryale defeats the evil, but cannot escape the consequences. In this interview, Colleen Kearney Rich and I discuss the origin of this piece, her affinity for the short form, and how she has advised and uplifted other writers.

JB: With “The Other Gorgon Girl,” it takes that saying “man petrified by woman” to the extreme. Do you view it as a story more of revenge or justice?

CKR: It was very much a story of revenge. It does have kind of a goofy story behind it, though. There was a meme going around at one point about a woman standing near a statue, and she had frozen him in stone. I was joking with a colleague about people I would like to freeze. Then I wrote this and sent it to her because I knew she'd think it was funny. Then I tried to change some of the details so that it wasn't really obvious which co-worker of mine met a horrible fate.

JB: This seems to be one of your first works that references mythology.

CKR: This is the very first piece I ever submitted that referenced mythology. I was intrigued by how everybody knows who Medusa is. But nobody knows about her sisters. I started thinking about it more. And originally, I think it could be a series of stories or something bigger because I was intrigued by her. But so far, it's just been that one story.

JB: It felt like I was watching one of those who-done-it murder mystery shows. At first, I thought it was going to be a bloody kind of scene based on the protagonist trying to not leave a trace from the murder. But it was actually quite a twist at the end when the guy turned into granite. There's no blood involved or anything — it was an immaculate revenge.

CKR: I started thinking about all this surveillance we have nowadays and how hard it would be to get away with something like that. To take someone out like that, even if you did it accidentally — what would you do? So then I started thinking it through and I thought, well, it would be hard to hide the body. How would you avoid cameras? People would be looking for this person and it gets a lot more complicated. But I was pleased that I was able to keep the story so short and sweet.

JB: I appreciate that you write short stories, or “flash fiction.” Do you prefer short form to long form?

CKR: I have a lot of trouble with the long form — it can become very overwhelming. My introduction to the short form back when I was a graduate student. We were all trying to write like Pam Houston and people like that, Raymond Carver. From there, I found SmokeLong Quarterly. I started reading that and honestly, it took about 10 years for SmokeLong to pick up one of my stories. With short stories, they can be experimental, so it's never a typical story. Short stories became my thing since they’re more manageable than longer forms.

JB: I recently learned that you’re a fiction editor for Literary Mama. Can you tell us more about what you do in that role?

CKR: At Literary Mama, we often work with other authors. We take the time to nurture writers. We want to make sure we’re helping them fulfill their vision and not make their story something that it isn’t.

JB: It sounds like a balancing act between not being too prescriptive and nudging them in the right direction.

CKR: It’s ultimately their story. So even if you think it would be so cool if the writer started it on page three instead, you have to acknowledge that that’s not what they're doing. You have to step back and remember it's their art.

JB: In grad school, you started So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art. What was your mission with that project?

CKR: When we were in good school, there was this feeling that not enough women were being published. There weren't really enough spaces for them. We decided to create a space for women writers, but we also did publish some men in those early years. And I think that they feel like they're even more open now. But we were really looking for a place where women could talk about their experiences. We had to jump through all kinds of hoops. There was paperwork. We had to show up for a board meeting every week and participate in that. I think we started it with a thousand dollars. We made it ourselves on a Mac. It’s still around, which is amazing. I'm always so impressed when I pick up a new copy. Furious Gravity contributor Jamy Bond was also one of the founders So To Speak. We are excited to be in the same volume together.

JB: How do you start your work?

CKR: If I don't have a prompt, I'll probably never get started. I always feel like sometimes we're writing the same story over and over again and we don't even realize it. It forces you to do something you wouldn’t do naturally.

]]><![CDATA[A Conversation with J.J. Kent]]>Sat, 02 May 2020 18:20:04 GMThttp://graceandgravitydc.com/spotlights/a-conversation-with-jj-kentBy Emily Park

In A January Migration, J.J. Kent narrates a cold night in New York City and a tense dinner conversation with her partner. The story follows them on the walk home, their voices rattling through the winter air over the crunch of slushy sidewalks beneath their shoes. Intertwined in the narrative are moments of relatability and imagery that articulate the subtle, fleeting moments of pain and pleasure that come with human relationships.

Local to Maryland, Kent is seizing the moment to write! She is a writer currently working on her first book, a retelling of her hilarious and adventurous childhood. I had the pleasure of
discussing her journey as a writer and her story A January Migration.

Part of the reason I was drawn to this piece was because I felt that you clearly articulated a lot of moments when you’re fighting with a partner. The little intangibles. What inspired you to write this piece?

I just read the prompt, and it was the first thing that came to my mind. This story is based on an actual story of a fight with my current boyfriend, Andrew. We got into many fights in New York, which is where we first started dating. But it was the first thing that came to my mind, and I felt that it's one of those things that’s universally relatable. Partners and family members are such easy triggers for rage–and a very unique kind of rage. I think that's also why it was partially very easy to write.

Would you say that writing about your personal experiences is easier because you’re able to hone the emotion necessary for writing a story?

Yeah, absolutely. I think tapping into those interpersonal relationships and using those feelings as a springboard for whatever you want to write is very important, and those feelings are all very universally relatable things. Voice and feelings are so accessible, which is probably what I love the most about writing.

I wanted to ask you about the title of your piece. When I first saw A January Migration, I wondered if I would be reading about geese or animals, and they actually appear in your story. What is the idea behind your title?

I actually titled it a week after I wrote it. I love the idea of grace through movement, but specifically in geese. There's this synchronicity that I referenced a lot in this story. In spite of the fact that they're honking and flapping, they're all moving together quite deliberately and then in a formation. And I thought that was a wonderful backdrop for the story about my relationship in which we're having a dumb weekday fight, and we will be fine at the end of the day, so we're moving through this together.

I titled it A January Migration because geese migrate in summer–they don't migrate in January. The idea behind the title is taking this journey together, which is ostensibly more difficult because it's not when something would regularly occur. It's like asymmetry in a symmetrical moment, if that makes sense. We're migrating, we're moving together, but not at the right time. I love the image of a migration, and I liked the setting of winter and the polar vortex and doing it at a time of year that’s austere and dark versus the end of the beautiful, lush summer, when geese normally migrate.

I really loved the last sentence of your story. I think that last sentences can do a lot of work in a story, but at the same time, writing the end of a story is a difficult task in general. I was wondering how you end a story or decide that you're finished with a piece.

I agree–I have a lot of trouble with endings. One of my favorite authors is David Sedaris, and he always says that the worst thing you can do to a story is end it. And I think in a lot of ways, leaving some mystery, or not making everything round and complete to me is very interesting. But I want it to be satisfying. For this ending, I wanted to wrap up with things being okay but not resolving everything for the reader. And I continued with the image of us being angry with each other, but we're ending up at the same apartment together. So there's some sort of satisfaction and a resolution, but not completely; it's not perfect. And that's what I was striving for. When everything wraps up so perfectly, it almost feels saccharine or disingenuous. And I think that's partially why I enjoy narrative nonfiction because you can sort of add a touch of non-reality and tweak the details, but reality doesn’t wrap itself perfectly. I love the imperfection of that. You’re sort of left, thinking or imagining how that might end, while still knowing that it's okay,

How did you come into writing? What is the path that led you to becoming a writer?

I've always loved writing and been interested in writing. The reason why I decided to pursue this piece and why currently I am aggressively pursuing writing is because I was working in finance. I was working for an investment firm while I was finishing my master's degree, which is in real estate, so not at all related to anything creative. I had an epiphany that this was my moment to wholeheartedly pursue something creative. And if I go into a job in banking at this point in my life, I will never get the opportunity to pursue writing like I want to now. So I just did it. I've been doing it for five months. I just finished my manuscript, so it's been a very exciting, terrifying journey. I've been writing most of my life for one form or another, but nothing like this until now.

What is some of the best writing advice you've received?

That’s a good question. I would say two things. The first is David Sedaris’s quote that I mentioned. Another piece of advice that I like is from Matthew Klam, who also writes creative nonfiction. He said you have to remember that characters are not people; characters are two dimensional. When you write creative nonfiction, there's no way you can capture a full person in a story–just like a painting can't capture the wholeness of a person either. I found that very helpful and encouraging, especially since right now, I'm writing about my family, which can be tough to navigate. At the end of the day, I'm capturing a vignette, and it’s all my perspective so it doesn't mean that I've captured the entire person–it's my own truth. That was really helpful for me in figuring out how to navigate the waters of writing something that's based on real life.

Are you reading anything right now or have you read anything recently that's really stuck with you?

Right now, I'm reading a combination of things. I'm rereading Robin, the biography of Robin Williams by Dave Itzkoff. It's phenomenal; I highly recommend it. And then I've been rereading, just for the purposes of my book, Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs.

What is a goal that you hope to achieve through your writing?

I care less about the plot and more about the voice and the tone in my own narrative. You know, the story, A January Migration, is funny. But at the end of the day, my character is not necessarily likable, and I don't think likeability is something that's tremendously important or integral to my writing. I think a lot of interesting characters and a lot of what makes good writing is not likeability, but interesting characters and deep characters and colorful characters–that makes good writing.

You mentioned that you just finished your manuscript for a book you're writing. What is it about?

It’s a series of 22 short stories about my family from when I was born to when I went to college, narrating the mischievous chaotic experience that was growing up in our six person household. I would relate it to Augusten Burroughs’s Running with Scissors or anything related to David Sedaris. The book is imbued with humor and a little tinge of sadness and reality. The plan is to edit it and send it off to an agent this summer.

]]><![CDATA[An Interview with Shelby Settles Harper, author of “An Open Letter to a Dead Man”]]>Fri, 01 May 2020 16:55:19 GMThttp://graceandgravitydc.com/spotlights/an-interview-with-shelby-settles-harper-author-of-an-open-letter-to-a-dead-manby Kalin Lamme

Why is writing important to you?

I’ve always written to process life and to make sense of things, like the death of loved ones, experiences I’ve had, and choices I haven’t made. I get to create characters who are messier than me and learn about myself and the human condition from them. It’s a creative outlet that makes me feel alive.

Where are you in your writing career?

I have been writing seriously for about ten years. During that time, I earned a Masters in Writing from Johns Hopkins University. I enjoyed that program so much and learned a lot. I’ve published a number of stories and a few non-fiction pieces, all of which are accessible from my website. I’ve been working on a novel for a number of years, and I’m playing with experimental flash fiction. My first love is the novel, but I find experimental flash fiction so much fun. I’m also writing the story for a ballet that I would describe as Native and two-spirit and intend to produce when we are post-pandemic.

“An Open Letter to a Dead Man” is set in a law firm. How does the law world translate into the literary world? Is there a connection or parallel?

This story is the result of me grappling with a friend’s suicide. I wrote the first draft in 2013 and rewrote it a few times, never able to find the right form. In late 2019, I took a flash fiction course with Tara Campbell and experimented with writing it as a letter. This is the only time I’ve used the law as a setting or backdrop, and I did it to stay true to the location of my friend’s suicide, and all that it brought up in me. In general, I’m not interested in telling stories that center around the legal world.

You have done a lot of work advocating for and representing Native American rights. Can you tell me more about this? How has this background shaped you and your writing?

I started my professional life doing legal services on reservations in Washington State and eventually worked on federal law and policy in Washington, DC. As a citizen of the Caddo Nation, I feel like one role I’m meant to play is to remind others that Native people are still here. We’re not figments of American history. We exist today, working in law, architecture, fashion, and art. A lot of my writing centers Native people, but even when it doesn’t overtly identify a character as Indian, I like to include some aspect of indigenous people into the story, such as I did with “An Open Letter to a Dead Man.”

How has your background in Law influenced your writing?

Working as a lawyer taught me to write even when I wasn’t feeling inspired. It taught me to organize ideas and convey them to an audience. It taught me the value of hard work. It gives me a way to make a living doing interesting and good work and buy more books that I can ever probably read.

Melissa Scholes Young has told me you have a novel in progress, can you tell me about that? What is it about? What are you hoping to accomplish with it?

My novel is about a woman who doesn’t know if she’s Indian or not. Unlike her father and grandmother, she passes as white. She is also an artist; her visions of the world haunt her and she struggles to make them real. When she returns home to Oklahoma to find her missing father, she embarks on a search for her own identity through the uncovering of family secrets, myths, and unrealized potential. It’s a story of a woman reconciling the past: her own family’s and her culture’s. It’s the story of an artist who learns that before she can fulfill her calling, she must wrestle with who she is. I want to write a beautiful novel that moves people and is well-received, and that adds to the canon of literary work by Native authors.

Furious Gravity is the ninth volume of the “Grace and Gravity” series, a literary journal devoted to women writers in the DC region. What does this community mean to you? Have there been any powerful teaching/learning moments you’ve experienced as a member of the literary community?

Washington, DC is rich in creative people, and I love the way women writers here support each other. There are so many places to take classes, see readings, and buy books. The most powerful teaching moment actually came from something Melissa Scholes Young said. She said when she first moved to the area, she went to everything. Readings and book events, most nights of the week. There is a rich literary environment available to anyone who wants it.

What question have you not been asked before in an interview that you wish you would be?

The question would be “What is something surprising about you?” My answer would be: I have a deep woo woo side! I charge my crystals on the full moon, believe in angels and energy, and am open to the idea of past lives.

Check out Shelby's website here!

]]><![CDATA[A Q & A with Vonetta Young]]>Thu, 30 Apr 2020 18:13:21 GMThttp://graceandgravitydc.com/spotlights/a-q-a-with-vonetta-youngBy Kira Bunkholt

“I grew up saying, even if you're an actor, your role ends at some point, like, the play or the show or the movie is going to end, and you have to take your costume off. But why would you bother walking around in a costume? So I try to use this thinking in fiction and nonfiction, you know, the sense of not being afraid of these differences, but really just embracing and accepting yourself and others.” - Vonetta Young

As a memoirist, essayist, and short storyist, Vonetta Young creates space for herself by leaning into contradictions instead of masking them, or putting on a costume. In her work, she explores complex family dynamics, Millennial perspectives on Christianity, the relationship between wealth and blackness, or what she calls “the messy intersection of race and class in upwardly mobile Black families.” And, most importantly, she looks at how all of these matters relate to identity and belonging. Adding to Young’s long list of publications, this issue of Grace & Gravity features Young’s short story, “Sand and Salt” in which her main character, Selma, struggles to maintain close connections with her family after achieving a wealthier status, illustrating the alienation many low-income black people face as they gain education and, in turn, more financial resources.

After reading her short story, I had the wonderful opportunity to interview her about her writing journey, the contradictory aspects of identity, deconstructing the view of blackness as a monolith, and her newer role as an editor for both the Rumpus and The Offing.

Q: I really enjoyed your piece, “Sand and Salt,” especially the presence of themes like identity and belonging, particularly when looking at race and class. And I understand that much of your work has addressed and complicated those issues. For that reason, I wanted to ask, how did you get into writing? What kind of journey led you there? I also understand you have your MBA?

VONETTA: Yeah. So, I have been a writer since seventh grade. And the story is, we had free writing day, and I kind of just never stopped. It was the one day that our teacher was like, it's Tuesday, free writing day. And I just completely and totally just didn't stop writing since then. I found it emotionally therapeutic for me as I was going through a lot of family turmoil at the time, my parents were separated, and it was just a lot of drama. And so for me writing was a way to kind of feel like I was in control of some aspect of my life. I couldn't control what my parents or my siblings were doing, but I could make up a story. It just gave me a sense of security. And, I guess, it's kind of been the same story for even in my adult life, especially in the context of belonging and identity and still feeling at times like an outsider in my own family and in society. If there's nowhere else I belong, it's in my own head and in my own body.

I did veer off to get an MBA. And that is very much my personality. I knew I was going to get an MBA when I was in eighth grade. [laughter] I became a writer in seventh grade, in eighth grade, I was like, Well, I'm going to major in English in undergrad then I'm going to get an MBA. In high school, I became really interested in investing. I kind of think of it as another way of creating, creating wealth rather than, I don't know, making up the story. So, I went to business school and finished in 2013. But I really struggled to write after that, and even during school I was very much afraid of losing that part of myself. I realized it was all there to begin with, but I was just taking in this other type of information. I worked in finance for a few years, in private equity, and then my father passed away. Then, I turned 30 two weeks after that. Then I was like, something about my life doesn't make sense right now. That's how I ran back into writing. It's been quite a journey, but a good one.

Q: Speaking of creating wealth, you write on your website that your work tends to “explore the messy intersection of race and class and upper or upwardly mobile black families.” How would you describe this intersection, and what has inspired this exploration?

VONETTA: Yeah, so it is something that, in my own family, is contentious and not even intentionally. My family is really deeply religious in Christianity, which influenced my understanding of money and wealth. There was always this sense of like, ‘you know, rich people don't go to heaven, and rich people have what they have on earth because in eternity they will be burning in hell and separated from God.’ And then I went to Georgetown for undergrad and I met a lot of rich people, and some of them happened to be black, some of them happened to be Christian. It really sort of challenged me. It was like, ‘So what does this mean? You can actually have a sense of financial security and your soul won’t be rotted out? So I began asking so what does having wealth mean and how can you have this?

Personally, I realized in the education that I was getting, I was setting myself up for a more financially comfortable life—by virtue of getting an MBA and my husband being an attorney (he's a partner at a corporate law firm). Not that I set out to marry someone who would be wealthy. We just happened to really hit it off, and we met 11 years ago today, actually. And so it became this thing that as my husband and I were doing better, at times, I felt a certain distance from my family, who still struggles in a way. There becomes this tension between ‘what is my obligation to help and do I have an obligation to help?’ And being black, you're like, ‘of course you have an obligation to help.’ But then, if you fulfill that obligation, there's not always an appreciation that comes after that.

So, in my fiction I wanted to explore what happens as people get more successful and experience economic mobility. I don't think my family is the only one that thinks if you have that one family member who winds up going off and making more money, then there's that sense that that family member has forgotten where they came from, or they now somehow think that they're better than everybody else. I wanted to look at how that distance winds up happening and how people come up with these perceptions of wealth. Though I haven't gotten to the place in my real life, in my fiction I can think about joining these things together and kind of reconciling them. I think as I mature, my real life will probably get there. But it’s like: “I've done everything everyone told me to do. I got educated. I married a good person. I tried to make good decisions with my money, and it's all worked out. And yet there are certain people who don't seem to be all that happy about it. So what am I supposed to do when I did all the things? So my story, “Sand and Salt” really came out of my wanting to explore that.

Q: It seems as if once you achieve some sort of economic mobility as a black person, it’s as if you're now alienated from the people, experiences, and the places that make up where you came from. How do you deal with that alienation? How do you write about that alienation?

VONETTA: You know, I always kind of felt like a bit of an outsider. I was super nerdy growing up, always in a book while also simultaneously trying to watch television. There was always this understanding that Vonetta is a little bit different. But going to college was really the big thing that exploded that difference, particularly when I studied abroad in the UK. That made my mother really nervous. She's never left the country before, so she was really, really scared. I wasn't very far away from London, and she actually said, “Well, what if they don't speak English?” I was like, “Mother, I'm going to England. It really is gonna be alright.” All that being said, it took me a while to notice that there was this sort of distancing happening. At first, I was kind of like, “why aren't you proud of me for doing all of these things?” And, as I've gotten older, it's morphed into just wanting them to participate in these new things with me. I think that was part of the catalyst for “Sand and Salt.” Selma is like, “Well, why don't you guys come to my house and hang out with me?” I think that was my subconscious being like, can I bring my family into these experiences with me? I haven’t experienced anything near what happened in the story, but I could have my family come to visit and it might not be as fun as I thought it was going to be because they’re not necessarily interested in what I’d like to do. Now, I'm starting to realize that this is going to have to be okay. I'm going to have to just accept myself, and be proud of myself and be excited for all of the things I'm doing while having some measure of acceptance and excitement for my family and for who they are—without making the judgment of either one of us. I’m still aspiring to that.

Q: As I was reading your story, it seemed very much like you were really intentional with the way that you used language to convey these class differences. Is there a certain way that you find that you create these distinctions in the very language and imagery of your piece?

VONETTA: Yeah, I think for me, going to college, specifically going to Georgetown, really informed my understanding of signifiers of wealth. For example, Eric Trump sat behind me, literally in the desk behind me, in Childhood Psychology class. At the time it was just that he was just a rich kid, and I realized I'm passing papers back to one of the wealthiest people in the country, and these are the signifiers of American wealth. And I began asking, What are these expressions of wealth around me that are just actually a foreign language to me? I actually wrote an essay about it recently in which I found I had never seen a polo shirt, a signifier of wealth, before I went to college. I’d seen collared shirts before, but I had never seen one with a horse thing on it. There are these elements of, like, boat shoes, and I was like, well I’ve never been on a boat. I didn’t know you had to wear a certain kind of shoes to go on a boat.

For me the language of home is this combination of Southern and Jersey elements because I grew up in North Carolina but I'm originally from New Jersey. It’s like ‘hood meets the South. That's the language of home for me, and the clothing of home is also very comfortable and kind of slouchy. And if the circumstances around you aren't great, your language is probably going to be comfortable and your clothes are going to be really comfortable because those are the things that you can control. So, in “Sand and Salt,” I wanted Selma’s language to be a little bit more elevated and clipped to set her apart, and for her family, I wanted their dialogue and their dialect to be comfortable but not stereotypical. And in terms of place, the way Selma has designed her house is not her vision, it's a vision that she saw elsewhere that she applied to her own home. So yeah, there was some intentionality that I took from observing the sort of super weird things I saw in college and in my career in finance as well as meeting these super hoity toity people who spend ridiculous sums of money on really stupid things while also comparing that with home, where people are like, ‘Well, you know, none of these things matter to me. I'm just trying to get by and getting by means being as comfortable as possible.’

Q: While you explore the intersection of race and class, I found that you have included very prevalent black cultural traditions throughout. Understanding that there is often a fraught relationship between wealth and blackness, how do you maintain blackness and its cultural tradition in this upward economic mobility, especially when wealth is associated with whiteness?

VONETTA: That's a really good question. So, I wanted Selma to not be a sell out but something like it. I actually wrote another essay about this and I was thinking about the signifiers of wealth, and particularly when you overlaid them on blackness. There is a very pervasive like black prep culture, or wealthy black culture, where people only go to HBCUs, they’re in Jack and Jill, they're going to Oak Bluffs, not Martha’s Vineyard, even though Oak Bluffs is in Martha’s Vineyard….So there is, within blackness, an entire subculture of black wealth that not that many people know about. I felt that I could have introduced that in “Sand and Salt,” but it would have been a little bit too much. However, I wanted someone to have the sense that, for Selma, she's not thinking about being a black woman who wants to be wealthy; she's just thinking about the wealthy part, and to her, wealthy looks like whiteness. And so she winds up having all of these signifiers of whiteness. And yes, her husband is in fact Lester Holt, who in real life is married to a white woman. I just wanted to play with that. There were certain things that Selma could have experienced [the policing of blackness]. But I always hate that because then we're measuring each other in terms of how black you are. And I think that's really unfair because who's creating the measuring stick to begin with? I do think, in this case, I wanted to make her not as focused on that because she's so focused on these signifiers of wealth that she automatically thinks are whiteness. Yeah, it's tricky, and it's messy, and it's uncomfortable. I think for Selma, at the end of the day, that perhaps what her family is most upset about is not so much that she is rich--I think they probably don't care about that--but I think there is distancing that does come from the fact that she appears to want to be white, while she's thinking she just wants to be rich.

Q: Another thing I noticed in your piece was this sort of nostalgia for simplicity. Selma is continuously commenting on how things used to be before her life changed or she became distant from her family. How does this nostalgia work as a tool, whether or effective or not, for mediating or reconciling the alienation that comes with economic and social mobility?

VONETTA: I'll be honest, it serves to make you feel really bad. And I want that's why I wanted to have that backwards looking element, because it just makes the feelings of guilt and separation so much worse. Then you can dive into wallowing in it even more, which is not healthy. But I think it is a very human thing. I think somewhat Selma does have this desire to be close to her family, but she also wants them to be who she wants them to be. And I don't know if it was the sense that when she was younger, they had more in common, or she felt a little bit more connection to them as well as a certain measure of control. But as she aged, and you know I obviously found myself doing it too, she’s now able to take the step back and realize that the nostalgia, in this sense, just serves to make you feel really bad. And if she uses that as her only tool, saying ‘oh, look at how things used to be,’ she’s going to continue to feel bad—rather than saying, ‘this is how things used to be and that was so awesome, but things are different now, and I need to have a measure of appreciation for what they are now.’ Nostalgia, for me, was a tool for her to just, you know, feel worse and to attempt to gain more control that she just cannot have.

Q: In comparison to the rest of her family, it seemed like the nephew was just happy to have some sort of entrance into Selma’s life and a different world. What kind of role, if any, did the nephew play as mediator between Selma and her family? Or, rather, what was his purpose in the story?

VONETTA: Well, I had thought about this initially as a novel, and I thought of Mark as sort of like next generation Selma. While people may think he's a slacker, I imagined him as sly, maybe creating some sort of app, and eventually he was going to get ludicrously rich and wind up having the exact same problem that Selma had. And so for me it was the sense that she feels alone but there is at least that one person in her line of heredity who ultimately will understand her. Because she doesn’t have children herself, she wouldn't be able to create that line. But I think there is a sense that Mark will probably wind up in a very similar situation to her, and I think he is trying to envision that life for himself. I think he sees, maybe more than Selma, what that life would entail and that's why he's kind of like distant from the family already.

Q: Also, I was reading some of your other pieces and the intersections and contradictions you explore there are very interesting. You're talking about infidelity and religion, drawing specifically on the relationship between your father who was a preacher and your mother. Are these experiences what inspired you to write about family dynamics and their connection to race, class, and religion?

So, I've recently been told this is not a good thing, but it's my way of doing things for now: my protagonists are some aspect of myself, they just make choices that I wouldn't make. So, that's kind of how I decide if I want to explore a topic. I'll write it as an essay if I want to explore a choice that I did make, but if it's a choice I would never make, like inviting my whole family to spend a weekend with me...I would not do that...I would write it as fiction. So much of what I write comes from some element of personal experience, or some element of my familial life. I am coming from a quote unquote broken home. I'm very interested in how it happens for other people. And I'm very curious about what it looks like to have a full family and be from a full home, and I'm still working to get my brain to construct a story of what that looks like. I'm finding a recurring theme in my stories is that my protagonists tend to not have fathers, and that's a bit of a flaw in me as an artist, because going off on my own life with my father not being very active in my life, I kind of just don't know what the character of a father does. I feel, as an artist, I need to challenge myself to figure out what that would look like. I think the next story I work on I think I'm going to try it.

But, in terms of race, I’ll say in the past three years, I've gotten comfortable with writing about black people, exclusively. And it wasn't that I didn't write about black characters before, it was just that I was kind of ambiguous about it. And I don't know why. Honestly, I guess it's just a training thing and how many black authors’ work you were exposed to. ZZ Packer is literally the only contemporary black author writing about black people I can remember reading in undergrad. So I was always asking, what does it look like to write a black person in a short story look like? So I just only recently wrapped my brain around what this looks like for me and was like, I can do this. The class thing, I just find anytime that you throw money at a situation, shit just gets really messy. I find it so funny now, and I say that from a sort of very privileged position that I just realized that looking at some people, as soon as they get money, they just go super nuts. And for me, I love a good story. I've never really been one to spread gossip, but I've always been one to like to listen to it because I love a good, messy story. It's totally my jam. As an artist, I get to mix all of these things together with the messiness of my past and finally having a sense of what it looks like to write black characters, and then to throw in this thing that just inherently, for some reason, makes shit messy. I finally get to play with all of that now. And so, I find writing fiction, much more fun than writing nonfiction, just because I get to play with all of these elements. And I'm not beholden to the truth in any of them.

Q: I forget which essay I read, but you were writing about being more conservative as a black woman and those two things as being viewed as very contradictory. How do you navigate these contradictions not only as a black woman, but also as a writer who identifies as more conservative and religious, considering that you are bringing a different perspective to people? How do you navigate the stakes of sharing that perspective?

VONETTA: So, I think I had a lot of fear about, you know, being who I am. But, at a certain point, I just had to be like, you know what, there's only one me and there will only ever be one me, so why not just be who I am. I think it has allowed me to look at people and certain elements of the culture from a unique point of view and without being like ‘Okay, well you should be this, that, and the other.’ And it's giving me an appreciation for just how different we are from each other. Black people are not a monolith, and it's given me much more appreciation to be like, we are all so individually unique, and so like individually beautiful. I know we claim the collective and I, too, in some ways cling to the collective, but I’ve also gained much greater appreciation for the individual. My role as an artist has allowed me to encourage people to not be afraid to be who they are. I know it sounds super ‘after school special,’ but you have no reason to not be yourself or being someone you are not. You actually are lying to yourself and everyone else, and that's just not an interesting way to live. Or, as I grew up saying, even if you're an actor, your role ends at some point, like the play or the show or the movie is going to end, and you have to take your costume off. But why would you bother walking around in a costume? So I try to use this thinking in fiction and nonfiction, you know, the sense of not being afraid of these differences, but really just embracing and accepting yourself and others.

Q: Lastly, I do think it is so important to point out that you are both an editor at The Offing and The Rumpus. How does your role as an editor relate or differ from your role as an artist? How does it help or inform your writing?

I am assistant editor of the Insight section, which is nonfiction for the Offing, and then I'm one of the fiction editors for the Rumpus. So, yeah, I was like, Am I doing too much? But it's fun so why not. The biggest impact that being an editor has had on my writing is that I now know that editors have very little time and they have a lot of slush to get through. So, I have to get to the point or what I call ‘the thing,’ the inciting incident, or that point of resonance that comes up in a story or an essay, I have to get to it sooner than later because if it's a twelve-page piece, no one is going to read until page six to get to ‘the thing,’ because you just don't have that much time on your hands. So for me, I think it's made me a much better writer, and I think my work is a lot more concise and gets to the point way sooner. I now know the importance of the impact that a story has to make and how quickly it has to make it. In terms of impact, there's a certain depth and richness that I like reading in submissions that I'm only just now able to understand and integrate into my own writing. And so I don't know if it comes down to a sense of sensory details or viscerality, but there’s a certain level of impact that is difficult to articulate that I'm now able to put in my writing that I wasn't aware of before, before being an editor. So it's been hugely helpful for me as a writer. I was a reader for these journals for about a year. After just reading hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stories and essays, my brain finally cut the pathway of like, ‘Oh, okay well that's what that should look like.” But yeah, I do have to turn the editor off in the early stages—otherwise nothing will come out because the perfectionism wouldn't allow it to.

Q: During this really tumultuous time of COVID-19 and Quarantining, how, if at all, have any of your editing responsibilities been impacted by the state of the world right now?

VONETTA: So it's been—I'm just gonna say it—please don't judge me, but it's been
kind of a godsend. People are like, ‘Please give me something to do,’ and I'm like, ‘Oh, good. We have literally hundreds of submissions for you to read! How many do you want?’ I do have a couple of friends who are like ‘Well, my job is on hold right now and I won't be working for like two weeks, so I really do want something to do other than watching Netflix.’ So, on a practical note, that has been actually really, really helpful. And on the other end, I’ve gotten a couple of essay submissions about the time that we're in now, and I've decided that I'm not interested in getting anything related to COVID right now, nonfiction or fiction, because we're in the middle of it, and I think good art requires a certain measure of distance that allows for reflection. We cannot reflect on what's happening because we're still in the middle of it. Or I guess we’re in the middle of it? God only knows what part of the process we're in. So, I've actually not rejected any pieces, because, at The Offing we've decided to hold off on rejection in an attempt to not add to anxiety. But yeah, I've gotten a couple of things where people, you know, want to talk about what's happening, and I do think people should be talking about it and I do think people should be writing about it. However, I think it might be, at this point, for the sake of making good art, safer to journal or something that's going to be personal and held to yourself. If you just need to feel really anxious or some kind of way and you just need to get it out, definitely write it, but I would tell people to not submit anything until we've all had a chance to be reflect on exactly what did happen and who are we now collectively, and who we are as individuals, now this is over. And that can't happen until it's over.

Q: Considering that you are both an editor and a published writer, what kind of advice would you give to those looking to submit? What do you find to be the best tricks of the trade as you submit to other online and in print, magazines and journals?

VONETTA: I'll say what other editors have said, and I know I've read this and rolled my eyes. But I do find that people don't always read the publication before they submit. And I know that can be difficult, especially with print journals and feeling like you have to buy like 8,000 journals. But for something that's online, at least taking a peek at what's been published before, is helpful. For example, at The Offing, I sometimes get poetry submissions, but I very clearly state in the submission description for Insight that it is a hybrid of personal essay and cultural criticism. That’s not to say that that can't be done in poetry, but if I say it is a hybrid personal essay and cultural criticism, I’m probably looking for prose. And so for things like that I'm just like, ‘Okay, make sure that you're submitting to the right section.’

I also get submissions that are just not quite there yet, so they could go for a couple more rounds of revisions. We do often accept pieces that, if it's a one round of revision away from being super good, then we'll accept that and work with the author on it. But other times, some people just submit a little too early. And having been a writer I know I've also committed that crime. Just out of the excitement of being like, ‘I've been working on this forever I don't want to look at this anymore.’ But just have the peace of mind to know that this is a good piece of writing that can get better. And just taking the time for that is very much appreciated. The last thing I will say is rejection is not something to take personally, but it's just information. And a lot of times, the information is “This wasn't a good fit for us.” People are always wondering, ‘Well, what does that mean?” It is exactly what it means: it wasn't a good fit for us. So, to summarize: make sure you're submitting to the right section, make sure that it's at the point of being submittable, and sometimes you just have to find the right person at the right place. And if it is ready to go, you will find the right person at the right place.

]]><![CDATA[A CONVERSATION WITH HEATHER DAVIS]]>Wed, 29 Apr 2020 18:33:10 GMThttp://graceandgravitydc.com/spotlights/a-conversation-with-heather-davisby demory hobbs

Heather Davis balances writing poetry, fiction, and non-fiction with working full-time, being a wife, being a mother, and being a person who needs some sleep occasionally. Her book of poems The Lost Tribe of Us won the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. She has poems forthcoming in Gargoyle, Northern Virginia Review, and Fledgling Rag.

For Furious Gravity, Heather has written a non-fiction essay “Be the Ocean: Everyday Lessons in Rage.” The piece explores parenting a neurodiverse child and how much parents can learn from their children. It’s a must-read for anyone who, like me, admires a writer who can bring the reader into her world in a way that is authentic and empathetic. I had the opportunity to interview Heather about the piece, her writing practice, and all of the sweet surprises life brings.

Your piece here is a nonfiction piece, but I see you write fiction and poetry, too. Did you ever feel pressure to stick with one genre?

“No, not at all. But poetry always felt natural to me--it was the first thing I tried and I stuck with it for a long time, getting an MA in poetry from Syracuse. I tried to write fiction here and there in college and grad school, but didn't really feel it until later. Now I really like the all-encompassing quality of writing a novel--it demands a different kind of attention. You have to craft sentences well but also build plot and character. And it takes so long to do that it becomes a constant companion. That kind of immersion is fun. Writing creative nonfiction is newer to me. There is so much I want to write about as witness and documentation, so much I want to say as part of the world at this moment, as a mom and artist and worker, as someone in a mixed-race marriage with mixed-race kids, trying to do it all and living in the time of Trump. I am working on several new essays and it feels great.”

Do ideas come to you differently for the different genres? If you have a topic or theme you want to write about, how do you decide which form it should be?

“There is a lot of overlap in themes, of course, because the different works are being written by the same person. Which genre to use comes from a gut feeling. Sometimes, I need the intense emotional experience of writing a poem. Right now. I really want and need to write about COVID-19 and how it is affecting my family and the world--that is primal urge in a way to make some noise, to say something, anything. The fiction is more expansive. In the young adult novel I have been working on, I touch on race and class and environmental issues. One of the two main characters has OCD and Tourette Syndrome, so the neurodiversity is there again in a big way.”

Part of what I loved about this piece is how well you weave in explanations of the neurodiversity of your loved ones. I can also sense clear and understandable frustration towards a public that does not understand and is not patient with your son. Was the purpose of this piece to educate readers? If not, was there something else you hoped to accomplish with it?

“Like a lot of writing, I wrote this primarily because I needed to--writing it helped me name and understand emotions and challenges I struggle with as the mom of a neurodiverse kid. So that is a selfish goal in a way but what makes it work for others is bringing the feelings and characters and situations to life so that readers can share in the struggle. Making a situation come to life like that so you can share it is incredibly cathartic. But educating people is definitely a goal as well because so many people don't understand "invisible" chronic medical conditions like ADHD, especially one that is brain-based.”

Sometimes when writing non-fiction, I am hesitant to write about my family. Do you ever struggle with writing about people you are close to? Do you let your loved ones read writing about them?

“This is always tough. I do try to be careful and I would not want to be critical in an obvious way without letting a family member know about it. But I don't think anyone should shy away from writing difficult things that involve friends and family. We have to. Sometimes you can obscure the identity of the person or even write anonymously, if it is really sensitive. I have cut some things out or altered them at times to protect people I know. But never in a dishonest way. I hope my son will read anything I write about him once he is old enough to understand it.”

I always tell myself I’ll have more time for my own writing projects when I’m out of school, but looking at your bio you must be so busy! With a full-time job and children, is it difficult to find time to write? Does it help that your husband writes, too?

“Yes, I thought I was busy in college and grad school but I actually wasted so much time. Once you are a parent, the demands on your time multiply exponentially. Ironically though, back then, I did not know all that I wanted to say or how to say it. I had been laser-focused in college and grad school on writing about the family I had grown up in, which is maybe pretty typical. But after that, before I had kids, I was more focused on surviving and finding my place in the world. Now that I have less time, I feel like I know exactly what I want to say. Or maybe having less time, sharpens the focus. So yes, it is very hard to find time to write. I get up at 5:30 in the morning to write before the routine of getting the kids ready for school and then getting myself to work. I also try to steal hours at lunch and on the weekends. My husband writes late at night because he sleeps in spurts anyway, but I can't do that. By the end of the day, my brain is mush. It does help that he is a writer too because he gets it and he works very consistently--his work is inspiring and very different from mine, which is good I think.”

You mention in your piece that you didn’t necessarily expect to “live in a world defined by explosive rage.” What parts of your life are as you expected growing up, and what else has been a surprise to you? What aspect of your life now do you think your younger self would be most proud of?

“Wow, this is such a fun question. I actually think about this a lot--maybe most people do because as you get older, it's hard not to look back and compare your expectations of the future to your current reality. One thing I ended up with that I always felt I wanted is a marriage that is not completely conventional. Even as a little kid, I questioned gender roles and felt like a feminist. I did not want to get married and have kids and be taken care of in a suburban house with a white picket fence. I am the oldest of eight kids and wanted to escape the trap of domesticity. In the end, I have not done that really since I have two kids and a very close-knit family, but I waited until I was 30 to get married and didn't have a child until 35. The man I married is a poet and also neurodiverse and a first-generation immigrant--all those things place him and us on the margins to some degree and that is fine with me. I am the primary breadwinner and he works at home part-time and shuttles the kids around. Art and music and writing are woven into our family life in a very real way. When I was 5 or 6 years old, I had this vision of being a lone artist working in a mountaintop studio on my art all day--I think that was because I had so many siblings and wanted to be alone--ha ha! In reality, I have my family and my writing to keep me company. I'm also not surprised that I ended up living in a city--I always gravitated toward that kind of life with a diversity of cultures and people around me. Having kids has been the surprise--how rewarding and grounding it is, how much it opens up and teaches you. I think this experience has not been written about enough by women and by men. My young self would probably be proud that I write and publish while being a very involved mom and working full-time as a content manager for a company that helps people all over the world--not an easy combo but a good one!”

And you’re at work on a novel! Can you tell us anything about that? In the meantime, where should readers go for more of your work?

I mentioned my young adult novel earlier. I've revised it a number of times and have had some interest from agents but am still messing with it. It's set in the near future at a time when climate change has forced the poorest Americans into refugee camps around major cities. When a girl with OCD and Tourette Syndrome who lives in a rural Virginia commune meets a Filipino-American boy from the refugee camp around Washington, DC, her OCD leads them to uncover a dark truth that will change them and their worlds profoundly. I have poems coming out in Northern Virginia Review and Gargoyle Magazine and a recent short story in the anthology Us Against Alzheimers: Stories of Family, Love, and Faith. More of my work can be found here.

]]><![CDATA[A conversation with Wendy Goodman]]>Tue, 28 Apr 2020 22:26:23 GMThttp://graceandgravitydc.com/spotlights/a-conversation-with-wendy-goodmanBy Narendra Desirazu

Wendy Goodman is a writer, and a trademark attorney by day. While she has been writing through her legal career spanning over 20 years, all that writing was mostly for her professional work—legal briefs, legal arguments and so on; it wasn’t writing “from the soul.” Over the last couple of years, she started writing personal essays. She felt that she wanted to write about things emotionally: write how she felt.

Wendy signed up for a writing workshop at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda. Although she had started writing creatively even before joining the workshop group, her workshop cohort helped her improve her writing by critiquing her work and offering extensive feedback. Getting feedback from professional writers helped her gain confidence in her work and she started sending out her writing to journals. Initially, she had many rejects, which we will talk about this later in her interview, but slowly she also has had some successes. Wendy had a non-fiction piece, “How A Meeting With Philip Roth Brought Me Closer To My Father,” published in the online journal Hevria.com, a second non-fiction piece “The Reynolds Pamphlet” published in the print journal, Ocotilla Review, and a fiction piece, “Chevy Chase Club,” was selected as a runner up in a contest held by Two Sisters Writing & Publishing. She is going to have her non-fiction work “The Toupee” published in the DC Women’s Anthology, Furious Gravity.

Adhering to the social distancing conventions of these times of coronavirus, I interviewed Wendy over the phone. Here is the interview.

ND: Are you still working as an attorney?

WG: Yes, I have two kids to put through college, so I have to keep earning. Writing is a passion and I am glad that I finally found the time to be able to write. Creative writing was always the big dream. As a freshman in college, I was also writing a lot and wanted to learn to write creatively or maybe learn journalism. Then I took some courses in history, and government and that transitioned into law school later. Even when I went into law school, I wasn’t sure what career I wanted to pursue after law school. I was interested in history, government, and political science, and I thought I would probably choose a career that involved writing about government and politics. I thought that a law degree might be a stepping-stone towards this career, but slowly my focus shifted, and I became an attorney.

ND: How long have you been writing creatively?

WG: While I have been writing all through my career I wasn’t “mining my soul”. Like I said, I did some creative writing during my college years but not much after that and I wanted to get back to that again. I started writing creatively about two or three years back. Initially, I was writing on FB but I was not very consistent and wrote only when the mood struck, or when I felt that I had something to say. Then I decided that I wanted to find a writing class and I googled for writing classes near me and The Writer’s Center came up. I signed up with a workshop group and since then have been writing regularly.

ND: Have your twenty plus years as an attorney had any influence on your writing?

WG: As an attorney, my writing isn’t descriptive in nature. I tend to make lists, lists of evidence, lists of arguments and so on. I have been trained to categorize things in my mind. This habit of lists has crept into my creative writing and I tend to make lists here too. So, when I am articulating an emotion, I don’t want to say it in just one way, I want to say it in three ways. I have been warned by my workshop cohort to stick to three items per list and only one list for every so many words (laughs), but it is difficult, sometimes I go over these limits.

The other trait, that I am thankful for from my years as an attorney, is that I love grammar and punctuation. It has served me well all these years as a lawyer. I learned early in my career that a legal brief has to be perfect in terms of language, grammar and punctuation, and that packaging really matters. If I receive a brief or document from other lawyers which contains bad punctuation or grammar or messy formatting, it makes an immediate impression. My training has been to ensure that my writing is never messy in that way. And I for sure bring that to my creative writing. It is automatic. By the way, I thought that all writers would automatically be good at all this grammar and stuff, but I have now met brilliant writers who struggle with punctuation and grammar and just hate worrying about it. So I am thankful that I have this skill, which I feel is extremely useful for a writer.

ND: Your two published non-fiction works that I read, “How A Meeting With Philip Roth Brought Me Closer To My Father” published in Hevria, and “The Toupee” soon to be published in Furious Gravity, are both very personal, and in fact, both are about your father. Do you think you will write non-personal non-fiction like about politics, the environment, etc. or will you continue to write personal memoir style pieces?

WG: The short answer is no. I like writing about personal experiences, and I will continue to write only personal non-fiction. As a lawyer I have written a lot of non-personal stuff, and I mean a lot. So, when I write creatively, I want to write about personal experience. I am not going to say never to non-personal stuff like politics or gender, etc. but even that writing will be based on my personal experience, on my journey through life. I feel that I will always write from a personal point of view. My goal right now is to write more about personal experiences, memoirs and maybe I’ll dabble in some fiction. So far, I have written only one flash fiction piece called “Chevy Chase Club”, published by the Two Sisters Writing & Publishing.

ND: You started writing about 18 months ago and already have four pieces accepted. This must feel real good. Can you tell me how you went about this? I am an MFA student and am looking to get published. Any words of advice for someone like me?

WG: Initially, I was scared of rejections and so was reluctant to send out my work. The writing workshop helped build my confidence and I started sending out my work to various journals, and as expected got a lot of rejections. But slowly I also started to get accepted, probably because I did not let the first few rejections discourage me. So, what I can say is that you have to keep sending out and eventually you will start seeing some success.

Another lesson that I can share is that a lot of the journals want to showcase their coolest, hippest, best face, and to attract writing like this they put out descriptions of what they are looking for, which is sometimes intimidating and off-putting. I don’t pay undue attention to their descriptions, of what they are looking for but send them my stories anyway. Let me give you one example of where this worked out for me.

I had this story about my mom which I had been sending out for a year and had been rejected at a ‘million’ places. In “Submittable,” I came across this print journal out of Austin, Texas, The Ocotillo Review. They loved my story based in 1970s NYC. It is about American History, Broadway musical pop culture, the crazy collectibles market, and my mother. After the journal came out and I realized how much of their work is from Austin based authors and the content Texas themed, I realized that the journal appreciated a great story, it didn't matter where it came from or where it took place. So, don’t pay too much attention to the vague groovy vibe-y descriptions of who they claim to be on the website. If you think you have a good story you should send it anyway. A couple of caveats, are they looking for prose or poetry, are they looking for fiction or nonfiction? And is there a specific theme. Also adhere strictly to word length that they specify because if your piece doesn’t match their word length requirement then they will reject your story on a simple technicality.

Finally, as an author just starting on this journey, I send my work to a lot of new journals, including online and also lots of lesser known journals. Of course, it is important to read the journals first to see what they publish to get an idea of the tone and the style that they publish, but my point is that I am not picky.

ND: And finally, do you have a role model or a hero, or maybe someone you admire?

WG: Cokie Roberts. In college when I was asked what I wanted to do with my life, I always said “Be Cokie Roberts.”. I watched her on ABC, listened to her on NPR. I have remained a big fan of hers. She died this past September, and in the sadness and grief I started writing about that time in my life when I used to say I wanted to be her.

]]><![CDATA[A Conversation with Tara Campbell]]>Mon, 27 Apr 2020 17:20:53 GMThttp://graceandgravitydc.com/spotlights/a-conversation-with-tara-campbellBy Esteban Bachelet

Tara Campbell grew up in a unique household with a mix of TV, laughter, and good humor. This wacky childhood would go on to spark an imaginative career as writer interested in cross-genre and speculative fiction. Appearing in various journals, the stories remain fresh and imaginative. I spoke to Tara not only to gain deeper insight into “Barry Knows Best” but also to talk about how she makes the speculative magic in her work come to life.

How did the piece, “Barry Knows Best,” take shape?

No matter how much you publish, you never really stop learning. I was taking this flash fiction class, and the assignment was to write the beginning of the story and not even think about how it would continue. So when I started the story, I didn’t have any kind of plot in mind, and as the story developed, the point was about the relationship between this woman and her pet pig. I didn’t start out thinking about a theme but thought more about character development and how this character interacts with this non-human entity.

Why do you use animals and non-human entities in your work?

I think that extends from my interest in science-fiction and speculative fiction in general. But for me, I have always been interested in not just people, but also other planets and cultures.

In that vein, how do you teach the reader to read your work? Are there any tricks that you employ in your writing to make it believable?

I think the trick is to not emphasize how strange the situation is but how normal it is. So rather than having the characters react to how odd something is, always try to make the situation as completely normal as any regular interaction. I know that it can create difficulties in a non-speculative workshop where people expect an every-day personal reaction to a non-ordinary situation, but in speculative fiction sometimes the abnormal is presented as normal, and that’s basically world-building: that this is not strange but a regular every-day situation.

How does realism influence your work?

Realism starts once I put the strange characters in the real world. So you establish a sort of wacky baseline and you have people react in a human way from that perspective. The wacky baseline in “Barry Knows Best” was that the narrator and this pig had this non-verbal communication. That’s the baseline. Well, once you have a baseline that’s unusual, then how would you go about your daily life? What do you normally do in an abnormal situation?

Your work is often in Flash. “Barry Knows Best” is very short. What does flash fiction need to do in order to be effective?

This piece started as a flash fiction prompt that got longer than a flash (a complete, satisfying story in 1,000 words or less). When I set out to write a story, I don’t set out with a specific length in mind. I just write. Often the story turns out to be flash, but I don’t stop if the story turns out to be longer. A way that writers who write longer fiction can approach writing shorter fiction is to really focus on the “why now” moment. Flash tends to focus on that flash point. That pivot between a before and an after. But if there’s more to tell, I would rather work with the piece to get it to whatever length it needs to be to feel complete.

Where do your ideas come from?

Probably my somewhat goofy, creative childhood. I grew up in a household with a sense of humor, and have always been open to unusual nonhuman characters. A lot of my stories start on the light side. But then as you write—and as life happens, for that matter—the more serious topics seep in. They have a way of taking over your mind. So that probably accounts for why my stories start with a goofy premise but then adulthood creeps in, getting to the darker issue underneath.

Are you working on anything currently?

During my MFA (at American University), I wanted to try my hand at historical fiction. It was a new genre for me and I had this story that I wanted to tell about human zoos, which started from the time of colonialism and ran through the 20th century.

I heard about this through work I was doing for my master’s thesis in German. I started to do more research and I wanted to try to write about it from the other perspective. We hear a lot about human zoos from the European perspective but we don’t hear a whole lot from the people in the zoos, so I wanted to see if I could write that other point of view.

I’ve been looking at different ways to tell that story. One of my professors (Dolen Perkins Valdez) suggested making it my own by adding a speculative element to it. Even if I’m not necessarily focusing on historical fiction, the thematic is showing up in some of my other work. And the real underlying question is: how do you define a culture; and as a mixed race writer, which culture is mine; and what rights do certain people have to certain stories? So even if I don’t wind up producing a historical fiction book in the end, that thematic has continued to find its way into my work.

]]><![CDATA[Q&A: Daien Guo: An Interview with the author of “The China Expert”]]>Sun, 26 Apr 2020 19:06:26 GMThttp://graceandgravitydc.com/spotlights/qa-daien-guo-an-interview-with-the-author-of-the-china-expertBy Mae Zhang McCauley

From movies, to politics, literature, pop culture, philosophy and more, the West has always been fascinated with “the East” and more specifically—China. It’s a form of Orientalism in itself that is able to co-opt people’s lived experiences and own histories.

In Daien Guo’s nonfiction essay, “The China Expert,” readers are introduced to Guo’s China: “My China is the world of a young child; it exists only in my memories and in the memories of those who were with me, who cared for me.”

Daien immigrated from China to the United States when she was seven years old and in the past, she has written both “China” themed pieces and “non-China” pieces. However, it is her China pieces that seem to gain more traction, because as Daien notes, “America, and the West, has always been fascinated by China.” Daien stresses that she is self-conscious about “not pandering to the West’s ‘China fascination’ in her pieces.” Whenever she writes about something that is China-related, Daien tries to ensure that “it’s authentic to me and my voice—that it’s not sentimental or cloying, or playing up to something that people expect.”

“The China Expert” illustrates Daien’s vivid childhood memories in 1980s southwest China and how they reclaim what China means to her in the present. I had the opportunity to discuss the important role of memory in this process, parenting, pen names (and more!) with Daien.

A young Daien on the balcony in Duyun. Photo courtesy of Daien Guo.

A young Daien with a cat in Duyun. Photo courtesy of Daien Guo.

Three cats in the Duyun apartment.Photo courtesy of Daien Guo.

1. I love how this story reframes and reclaims the concept of a “China Expert.” For me personally as a Chinese American woman, I have my own lineage of histories that are very different from those who normatively can claim being a “China Expert”—especially in this very policy-oriented city. Can you talk to me a little bit about what this story means to you—why share it and why now?

For a long time, I didn’t think my childhood was very unique or worth writing about. Most Chinese kids of my generation (born in the early 1980s) went through something similar, living with their grandparents or other relatives on the Mainland while their parents emigrated to America, and then coming over when they were 8 or 10. But as I got older, I began to think there was something worth sharing. Guizhou is a relatively undeveloped province of China, and people are always a little surprised that’s where I’m from, as opposed to Shanghai or Beijing or another major city.

As you say, DC is a government and policy town. My essay alludes to the fact that, in a time when U.S.-China relations are very politicized, I’m sometimes on the periphery of some of these policy discussions. In policy, there is not a lot of room for nuance. I was scared that with the passage of time even I was beginning to equate “China” with the policies of the Chinese government. I wanted to step back and examine what China means to me. For me, China is these very formative years of my childhood and these vivid memories that I have. When I think about my early childhood in 1980s China, in Guizhou, I have very happy memories with a diverse cast of relatives who did a wonderful job taking care of me. Duyun was actually a lovely town, with two main streets, right next to the mountains and this river where my uncle went to swim every day. I was also worried that if I didn’t write some of these memories down for myself, I would start to lose them.

2. Reclaiming what China means to you allows you to reclaim the concept of “The China Expert.” Why this title?

I came up with the title pretty early on, because I knew that was how I wanted to frame the piece: using my current life as a jumping in point for these old memories. You know, I said ‘Oh I don’t want to pander to people’s fascination about China’ but in a way, this title kinda does! I liked the title because it would suck people in…because everyone wants to read about China policy— [laughs] I don’t know why! But it takes a very quick detour into something that’s unexpected.

3. This detour into the unexpected is one of my favorite techniques of this essay. Can you speak more on the framing of this piece? What journey do you want your reader to experience—from beginning in the present as a China expert, to describing your childhood in China with your aunt uncle and cousins, and to ending it back in the present. What meaning do you hope to elicit with this framing?

The framing of this piece came pretty naturally to me because it captures how my memories also work in my real life. Sometimes, I’ll be sitting in a work meeting where they’re talking about China, and all of the sudden I will have a random memory about China that is completely different from what they are talking about.

The truth is, I have not gone back to China to visit my relatives for seven years, and I’m not sure when I will go again. But my early years in China were very formative for me, and I wanted to reclaim the nuances and meaning of those memories. Literature and people’s stories are one of the best ways to emphasize the humanity of everyone—no matter where they live, what country they’re in, or what government they live under. Literature allows you to step back from the policy and the government, and just focus on a person’s story.

China is a country full of people just like us who are living with their lives, trying to deal with their families, trying to make a living, watching TV, trying to get the best education for their kids. I used to be one of those people. I wanted to be reminded of that.

4. I love the scenes where you describe your family dynamic through various scenarios with animals. Your grandmother throwing the defeathered chicken against your wall…Or the scene in which you would tie a rope around your rooster and take it for a walk—suddenly having it disappear from your lives. Or when your cats would fall from the balcony of your fifth-floor apartment to the ground below. These scenes were so vivid for me, and were really memorable as well. Can you talk to me more about your intention—if there was any— in writing these scenes?

Here, I want to give a shout out to the Writer’s Center in Bethesda. I took an online writing workshop on memoir writing taught by Nicole Miller. Most portions of this piece were written as writing exercises for that class. Each week, we had assignments where we would look at a photograph or a memento and write something short about what it evoked. I would try to work on these during my lunch hour, or sometimes in the middle of the night. The way this workshop was structured allowed me to focus on very specific vivid memories that enhanced the piece. From there, the challenge was to tie the memories together and give them a framework.

I have a five-year-old son now, and it’s crazy to me that he’s now the age that I was writing memories from. All of his children’s books and TV shows are about animals—he’s fascinated by them. So by seeing this, it doesn’t surprise me that as a young child, most of my vivid memories are centered around animals.

5. I want to talk about your ending, especially the last two sentences: “My parents are still around, cooking and cleaning, watching our toddlers for us. The only difference is, now they don’t earn any salary and must work for free. The cycle of the American dream is complete.” Why end on “the American Dream” and what is this “complete cycle”? And are you ending on a positive note, negative, satirical, or something else?

I do intend the ending of the piece to be ironic. My parents, in a way, are worse off than they were before: they worked so hard to achieve the American dream, and now that they’ve completed it, they work just as hard or even harder.

At that Chevy Chase house where my parents lived and worked, it was actually a pretty good gig. As my mother explained to me, they had free room and board in the basement and received their $800 salary. The “DC power couple” didn’t have any kids, so it wasn’t that much work. This couple worked all the time, so the house wasn’t that dirty. My parents had time to work on their degrees part-time. I got to go to first grade in a really good school district. I do want to explain, this couple – I did interact with them and they were extraordinarily kind. I mean, it was pretty nice of them to let this whole family live in their house! They gave permission for my parents to bring me over and live there.

I also think it’s ironic that I really used to feel sorry for this couple – that they owned this really cool house with a swimming pool and large yard, and the only people to enjoy it every day were me and my parents. They worked so much, or so it seemed to me at the time. It almost felt like we were taking advantage of them! Now both my husband and I are lawyers and we also work a lot of long hours, just like that couple. So in our success, we have also become the objects of pity in this cycle of the American dream.

6. I think that labor is really a central part of your piece—especially “invisible” forms of labor. You address this on page 8 when you discuss the significance of your aunt and uncle taking you in as a child. What is the role of labor in this writing piece and how does that tie into your own story of your childhood, migration, reuniting with your parents, and the “American Dream”?

When I had my own kids, I was really shocked about how much work it is to take care of young kids, which made me think about my own childhood very differently. One of my motivations writing this piece was also to give credit to the people who took care of me as a young child. Even when I was away from my parents, living with my grandmother or my aunt and uncle, I never felt unwanted or unloved. I was never hungry. I actually remember eating well in China because all the adults saved the best food for the kids. Like all people with happy childhoods, I really took all of this for granted.

Now I have two kids, a 5 year old and a 1 year old. If someone, even someone I loved dearly, like my best friend, said hey – can you take care of my kid for a day or a week, it would be considered a huge ask. Of course, the culture is different. But still, it’s hard to believe my aunt and uncle, who already had 2 kids of their own, took me in and treated me like their own daughter for 3 years. I definitely have a new appreciation for what my relatives did for me.

7. You mention that you are a lawyer. Do you have a writing persona versus a professional persona? Why use a pen name?

As the essay notes at the end, I’m a lawyer in my day job. Nowadays, it is common to Google everyone who you interact with, either professionally or socially. I do it to other lawyers I work with – so when I started doing creative writing and publishing a few years ago, I was conscious that I did not want my work colleagues to read my personal writing when they Google me. I’m not ashamed of any of my writing, but it’s another side of myself that I want to keep separate from my professional work. This separation also gives me freedom in my creative writing.

Also, my pen name is very meaningful to me. Guo is my mother’s maiden name, and Guo Daien is actually the name of her younger brother who passed away at a young age in the mid-70s. My mom doesn’t talk about him very often, but she told me that he was an incredibly talented writer and very thoughtful and intelligent. Before he died, he burned all of his writings and notebooks. This name reminds me how lucky I am to live the life I do today and be able to write and share my writing with the community.

]]><![CDATA[A Conversation with Jessie Rothwell]]>Sat, 25 Apr 2020 20:15:44 GMThttp://graceandgravitydc.com/spotlights/a-conversation-with-jessie-rothwellby Matt Leistra

Jessie Rothwell is many things. She’s a former resident of Los Angeles, and a former and current resident of Washington DC.

She’s currently a teacher, and it’s one the few jobs she’s had that pays her to do something she cares about. For that reason, she doesn’t let how she makes money define her.

“It’s such a big thing in DC and LA,” she says. “The first thing out of someone’s mouth is ‘what you do you do?’ and I’ve tried to start flipping it on its head by saying that I do yard work, I do crossword puzzles, I do art and crafts.

Two of the artistic mediums she’s most drawn to are music and writing. Her piece “Salvation” by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club blends both into an immersive experience that transports the reader to a Hollywood hilltop just before dawn.

Salvation is one of nearly 20 pieces Rothwell has written that draw their inspiration from songs. Rather than writing about the songs themselves, however, she describes what was happening in her life when she listened to them: “It’s a way for me to take these songs that have been important to me and helped me in some moments and turn them into a different kind of art.”

In Salvation, an energizing, second-person narrative invites the reader to spend the night crammed in the back of Rothwell’s car, yearning for sleep as they seek refuge from a bedbug-infested hotel on the streets of her old neighborhood.

The raw, stream-of-consciousness-style piece ends with the chorus of the song Salvation and a command to the reader, one that weighs far heavier than a few drops of ink in the era of Coronavirus: “Do you feel alive? Can you feel alive? And you wonder.”

I spoke to Rothwell about her love of music, BRMC (as true fans of the band refer to them) and the current Coronavirus pandemic. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation:

Matt Leistra: What introduced you to BRMC?

Jessie Rothwell: Two friends of mine in LA were huge fans of the band. Both were musicians, and one of them ended up dating one of the BRMC members. She was the first one to tell me about them, and then the other friend told me they were also listening to BRMC.

ML: What did the last line of the song Salvation mean to you when you wrote your piece: “Do you feel alive? / Can you feel alive?” It almost seemed like a challenge to me.

JR: It seemed to encapsulate my whole universe at that moment. In 2011–2013, I was in LA trying to do music and make a living. Things weren’t lining up, and it messed with my head and confidence and self-esteem in ways that I’m still processing.
It was very surreal, leaving that bedbug infested hotel and late at night and realizing what I had to do to be sane or okay. For me, it meant that I wasn’t going to call anybody. I just had to cope with it.

I had to become numb and remove from myself to survive in that moment, but I was actually very alive. In a fucked-up way, it was beautiful. Even though the world was falling down around me, watching the sunrise was its own separate moment. And with the song playing – it just heightened it and made it spiritual.

Music puts me back in moments. That’s how this series of song pieces came about — I was listening to these songs and writing as though I was back in those moments.

ML: You have an essay on TheRumpus.net entitled The Kickback which focuses on the aftermath of an assault you were the victim of. What role did music play in that time in your life?

JR: Music has been a huge part of my life for most of my life, which is the same as writing. I started doing music around the same time I started being a writer in early grade school. They have both always been there for me.

When I decided I was going to try and make music a career, it became this much more complicated thing. I had to figure out the ins and outs of the business side, and there were ways it became tainted – less pure, fun, healing, inspiring. Around the time of that assault, I had been working in the music world and recently spent long chunks of time unemployed. I didn’t know if I had the wherewithal to put everything into it.

ML: And what about now? Where are you with music?

I wasn’t doing much music for a while, but then I moved back to DC. I’m not writing as much music but I’m performing with various groups, and it’s been great. It’s like meeting up with an old friend.

It’s much more about the community and the joy and simplicity of doing it, not trying to make it the thing that defines me. I’m still wrapping my head around who I am if I’m not “the person doing music,” but I’ve found that I’m so much else. That’s the saving grace.

I’ve always been somebody who’s been interested in other things. And writing is a big, big part of that. Writing has saved me in ways that music couldn’t when I was trying to prove my monetary worth through music.

ML: What music are you listening to currently?

JR: The truth is, in this moment, I haven’t really found the Thing yet. I’m listening to different things all the time, but I haven’t found something to encapsulate this moment. It’s still pretty new.

I did find out that one of my musical heroes, John Prine, has coronavirus. He's one of the best living songwriters in my opinion, and it’s crazy to think he may not survive Corona. In any case, it’s made me listen to him more in the past few days, and I realized I actually wrote one of these song pieces using one of his songs.

ML: In The Kickback, you say “I want everyone else to feel the mistrust in the world that I feel.” How does that line strike you in this time when so many people are experiencing that?

JR: That was about a specific mistrust of other people and feeling like I was walking down a street of dangers. Maybe not everyone can understand this — and I don’t mean to stereotype — but maybe men can’t entirely get the feeling of walking down the street being scared of every man who walks by. Everyone understands the idea of being on edge and mistrustful, though.

I remember being at parties or out with friends, and people acting like the world was fine and normal and I’m thinking: “No, it’s not. It’s really fucked up, and I want you to know that and understand that.” I couldn’t just be cool, relaxed, calm. I wanted to yell about it every moment. Now, everyone is starting to understand some of the unsureness and fear, anxiety, and transition I’ve experienced for a long time.

Between the events of the Rumpus piece and the events of Salvation, I became homeless and jobless and was dealing with trauma. Life was unraveling and the world was upside down. It’s horrible what’s going on now, yet also reassuring to realize that people get it. Even though the situations are very different, people understand more now about what I was going through then.

ML: Do you have any advice for people who are realizing this now?

JR: Right after Salvation, a friend told me that everyone is scared to be in the position I was in: knowing that everything can change on a dime. We’re inundated with a message that says that, if you’re struggling or showing that you’re struggling, then you’re not okay. But in fact, I was much closer to real reality then.

Jessie Rothwell is a writer, musician, and teacher who grew up in the D.C. area. Her work has been published at The Rumpus and by Minnesota Public Radio's Classical Blog. Her music has been performed around the U.S. and she is currently a performer with Orfeia, a traditional Balkan women's vocal ensemble. "Salvation" is one of a group of essays about songs to be included in a book about identity, family, trauma, mental illness and music.

You can listen to Salvation by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club here.

]]>