Q&A: Ariel M. Goldenthal

An interview with the author of "The wendy"

by Shannon McDermott
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I would love to hear about your background and you. Where are you from? Where did you go to school? Where do you teach now?
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​So I’ll just give you my life story in a couple of sentences. I’m from outside of Philadelphia… It’s a place where you grow up and you think every place is like this. But then you leave and realize not everyone’s local mall is the second largest in America. Went to college in Boston at Brandeis University… I did not study creative writing or English, I studied Theoretical Linguistics which is a branch of computer science because I wanted to be a double major in biochemistry and English. At Brandeis, where pre-med is a really important thing, they basically said I couldn’t be a double major with a science and not a science. So I basically said to “heck with that” and put them together and was a theoretical linguistics major, which is about as useful as it sounds now… I got my MFA at Mason. I actually received that in May and I transitioned right from my MFA to my current position which is as assistant professor of English Composition – I am a full time required English class teacher now.

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When did you start writing and realizing that this was the thing you enjoyed to do? What was your experience when you decided to get published? How did getting your MFA play a role?

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t writing. My dad has recently been unearthing short stories that I wrote when I was five that I dictated to him on those ancient Apple laptops… that weighed around 20 pounds and had an operating power of a 2007 flip phone. I wrote short stories such as one about an Eskimo girl who was friends with a seal.

I would read that now.

It would make a great short story now… I was always writing stories. By myself, with my friends… I was never not writing. I did not know MFAs were a thing until my senior year at Brandeis. Unless you really dig deep to find that part of the world it’s not publicized. A friend of mine said, “you know you can study writing.” And I was replied, “You can do that?” … So then I went on an internet deep dive and found all these programs… I’m really happy with where I am now because I didn’t know this is a path I could take. Especially one that allows for a sustainable lifestyle not broke and living in New York City. It’s nice to know that you can have a life as an artist.

Is short story mainly your medium?

Before I had applied for my MFA program I had never written a short story. I had only written novels… The short story is such a challenging medium. You have to do everything that you’ve done in the novel but have the ending resonate more and character development happen faster and the plot be tighter and the words matter even more, even though that’s why I became a writer. Because of the words.

Is there anything you want to say about the middle-grade novel you’re working on?

It’s done for now. But you can never really be done with a piece of art.

Does being a professor change the way you write?

Teaching composition uses a different part of my brain than teaching creative writing would, so that part of the brain is still firing on all cylinders when I get a break from grading… My favorite part about teaching writing is the students at Mason… It’s a diverse group and it’s people who have never experienced writing at this level before. Some of them blossom and some of them struggle, but they all try.

If you could pinpoint one thing that inspired "The Wendy"?

When I was younger, my mom said one ridiculous thing that this whole story unfurled from. She really did say that she knew the name of my future husband and she was going to write it in an envelope and seal it until I was engaged. I would say I was 16 or 17. Not dating. Having trouble speaking to boys. And she was dead serious and would remind it to me repeatedly throughout my life. Once she told me he was going to be a set designer… once she told me he was not my soulmate. I just started thinking, what if that’s all a mother said?

You talk a lot about Jewish identity within "The Wendy." Is that influenced by your own life, friends, or culture?

That part is my own life to a certain extent. There is always this tension of family with different levels of observation of what’s right and not right. Even in my own life as someone that sits in the middle of the observance level I always feel this tension. Am I doing enough, am I not doing enough, is this right, is this okay? When I started crafting the identity of this weird mother-daughter relationship I added that wrinkle of my own experience of having different understanding and experience of what it means to be a “good Jew.” In the literature, there are very strict lines. You do this, you don’t do this. But a majority of people in America who are not Orthodox, there is an understanding that that is not hard and fast. That we’ve adapted these things and made them relevant to their lives. That’s how I make it relevant to mine.

There was a lot of dialogue. I felt like I could almost hear them talking to each other. Therewere moments where any daughter might resonate with the text. How did that dialogue develop? Was it this dialogue-heavy with the first draft?

It started in 2010. That’s how long it’s taken me to get it right. It started with three pages. Almost exactly the first three pages, but it ended [differently]. It stayed that way until 2014. That one scene is where it started with all this back and forth. Witty banter with undertones of disappointment and emotional abuse and some straight up craziness. That’s how I imagined the rest of it going: beats in this relationship.​

I was wondering if you want to talk about the ending a bit.

When Melissa read it, she said mentioned some about it being like dull knife prose. She said the ending was “haunting.”

I’m going to leave it at that and leave the rest for you to read. Thanks for taking the time to speak with me!

Thank you — I’ll see you at the reading!

Ariel M. Goldenthal has been writing her whole life. From novels to short stories to mastering the medium of flash fiction (currently!), she has always loved to write. Although this is not the career path she envisioned she is constantly creating, learning, teaching, and growing. Ariel currently resides in Virginia where she is a professor at George Mason University. Goldenthal’s “The Wendy” is featured in Grace in Darkness. The best way to describe it is staggering. The characters can feel like exaggerations but they accurately summarize a familial cycle of abuse – Ariel manages to capture an unhealthy mother-daughter relationship through both ridiculous banter and heart-breaking dialogue. It is painfully possible to see these character’s behavior manifest in our own lives. I was lucky enough to sit down with Ariel to discuss her writing, her short story, and her life.