Finnian Burnett

5 Questions with José Pablo Iriarte

Finnian Burnett

April 8, 2024

Welcome to the 5 Questions Series. Each week, I’ll ask five questions of some of my favorite authors, editors, publishers, and other industry professionals. This week, I’m talking with José Pablo Iriarte.

Okay, before we dive into writing, I’ve heard a rumor that you are a wild singing person. Is this true and can you tell me about it? What appeals to you about music and does it affect your writing at all?

Hah! I am a constant singer, pretty much if I’m awake and not teaching or writing, I’m singing. I’ll burst into spontaneous filk any time a random line reminds me of a song, which is constantly–I’ve even got one of my grown daughters doing it now! I’ll be honest with you, when my voice is there, nothing in life feels better to me than the physical sensation of singing.

I’ve sung in choruses and in community theater, but the place where this love of music gets its . . . socially sanctioned outlet is in karaoke. I generally go at least once a week and have a repertoire that’s a mile long. Pop, rock, country, showtunes, oldies, songs in Spanish, songs by men and songs by women. You name it, I’ll try to sing it!

I think a lifetime of singing other people’s words has given me an unconscious sense of rhythm and maybe how to wring emotions from language without dipping into bathos.

Singing has also, like reading, given me a space to explore my sexuality and gender by allowing me to explore identities that, as a young person, I didn’t feel empowered to express or explore in any other way.

I’ve also had story ideas that were basically inspired from . . . well, from the backstories I basically make up for the songs I love. Also, in my forthcoming book (dropping April 30!) I write about a kid who gets to experience playing the trumpet at far above his own skill level, due to ghostly assistance. I can’t play the trumpet myself, but I channeled how it feels to me when I sing, that weird bit of magic in how just making sounds somehow makes me happy.

You are traditionally published, and you also give workshops on finding agents and other aspects of publishing. Can you talk a little about why you went the route of traditional publishing and what the process has been like for you?

The most honest answer is that I defaulted to it, in that I’m older than my publication history would lead one to assume. When I was first trying to break into publishing, in the eighties and nineties, my role models were traditionally published, and it was hard to find anybody with a kind thing to say about self-publishing. So I internalized a lot of their lessons about how the industry works, and a lot of things that are no longer current.

If I had to do it over again, I might make the same choices, but for different reasons. I’m primarily known for short fiction, and this month I have a middle grade novel coming out. Both of those are, I would argue, spaces where it’s still easier to find your audience through traditional publishing.

The process? As I implied, more than anything, it has been long! I’ve written a lot of stories that never got out into the world, and I’ve experienced a lot of rejection. I do feel that I tell stories that are half a step off of the mainstream . . . stories that tend be rooted in emotions more than tangible goals and action.

I think breaking down the barriers and getting past the gatekeepers took me longer than it might have taken somebody with more conventional storytelling beats–but then, those of us who are marginalized in one way or another are typically going to be in that slightly non-conventional space. And that can be an argument in favor of stepping outside of an unfair system, and I certainly do respect that. But on the other hand, I feel like trying to force a system that maybe wasn’t receptive to the kind of stories I wanted to tell to publish me anyway required me to level up my work a lot more than I might have if I hadn’t needed to.

I notice that all of my favorite authors tend to be marginalized. They tend to be queer, or writers of color, or both. And I think it’s because marginalized writers have to be better to break through the system. I wouldn’t change the choices I’ve made because I like the stories I’m telling and the skills I’ve honed, and those choices led me to where I am now.

I get a lot of questions from students who aren’t even sure how to know what agents to approach. What advice would you give someone who wants to start looking for an agent and isn’t sure where to start?

I am hyper-thorough in this sort of thing, and maybe not the best example. I think over-planning helps me get past my own anxiety and brainweasels. That said, a pretty innocuous first step would be to use a resource like querytracker.net to compile a list. I made a list of agents who represented not just the book I was pitching, but also the other genres I could see myself in. For me at the time that was young adult, fantasy, and science fiction. I ranked those agents in terms of a variety of categories, like who represented authors I read and liked, whose name I saw making good deals in Publisher’s Lunch, who was located in or near New York (which I want to emphasize is not necessary in today’s market, but which I still saw as a plus). And then I started at the top. I also followed agents on social media and read their blogs to get a feel for them as human beings. Unfortunately, social media seems to me to be much more fragmented than it was back then, and maybe not as useful for getting to know people.

You also write short fiction. How does that inform your novel-writing?

I’m actually much better known for my short fiction. My stories have been finalists for all of spec-fic’s big awards and reprinted in year-end anthologies like Best American and Transcendent.

It may be that being a reader of short fiction has led me to prize the emotional punch above the intricate plot. I just love a story that can make me feel something in a short space.

As a writer . . . well, it’s important to not entrench the idea that short fiction is an apprenticeship for novel-writing, because plenty of novelists never wrote or sold short stories, and because short fiction writing is a beautiful and worthy art in its own right, not as a path to novel success. But, that said, each story has one beginning and one ending, and you have to learn to stick both of those things to sell your work. And in writing short stories I got to practice those skills many many more times that I would have if I only wrote novels. And of course short fiction forces you to learn economy of words, and it forces you to learn to hone and polish your prose. I do believe that writing short fiction honed my craft.

How important is writing community to you and how do you go about finding it?

My writing community has been massively important to me. I wrote in isolation for literally decades, with nothing but rejections to show for my trouble, but leveled up quickly when the internet came into my life, and when I found spaces like online forums. Later, when I was making those first sales, having a bunch of likeminded mutuals on social media led my work to be discovered by readers more widely than it otherwise might have been. Having an online community has also meant that on the occasions when I can afford to travel to conferences and such, I’ve got a bunch of people there who already know me, so my anxiety doesn’t have a chance to completely obliterate me.

All that said, those spaces are different now. That doesn’t mean I believe it’s impossible to find your community, I just think the process looks different and it may not be as useful to base advice on what worked for me a decade ago.

If I were an outsider in 2024 just looking to find my people–and not yet buried under writing deadlines!–I think there are two main things I would do. First, I would join the discord servers hosted by my favorite authors who have such servers. In particular, I would seek out the ones that are thriving online communities. Second, I would volunteer in the organizations devoted to promoting the kind of work I write. A significant percentage of my published work is sapphic, but for me that would really be SFWA and SCBWI, since all of my work is speculative and all of my novels are for younger readers. Seriously, find committees that need somebody to get stuff done. That’s where you will meet the best people, because you will be finding the people with actual commitment to building something.

And I would, if I were capable of it, travel to conventions and conferences, particularly those where I know my online friends will be present. But I can’t say that without acknowledging that any ability to travel is a massive, massive privilege, not just in terms of the financial challenge but, increasingly, the health challenges of traveling while Covid is not really quite under control.

Bonus question: Have you ever taken a picture of a weird bird?

I . . . have not, but now I’m starting to regret this.

But wait! Here’s a picture I took last week of a hawk on my neighbor’s mailbox. I mean, it could be weird. Maybe it plays D&D and listens to emo folk music when it’s not standing on top of mailboxes! Neither of us knows that it doesn’t.

José Pablo Iriarte’s latest release, Benny Ramírez and the Nearly Departed, can be purchased through Penguin Random House here.

5 Questions with Kathryn L. Pringle

Finnian Burnett

no comments

March 25, 2024

First – sapphic horror. Talk to me about this genre. What appeals to you about it? What’s exciting about it?

Horror tells us more about society and what it means to be human than any other genre except perhaps poetry (Fight me!). But, seriously, both, at their best, require us (readers, writers) to explore our deepest fears and identify what we are most willing to fight for—to live for, love for, die for—you get the idea. It is also an expression of what any given culture is most afraid of or suspicious of at the time—ie all those corporations turning people into zombies the last few decades—so there’s this anthropological documentarian aspect to writing horror and poetry that appeals to me. And the sapphic part—I mean, there’s not enough. And, being homoromantic asexual, I read very few books that I can completely relate to myself. Very few. And I myself didn’t even realize I was asexual until I read Jae’s Perfect Rhythm and saw myself completely in Holly. I had no idea. I thought everyone else was weird or shallow for having sexual feelings for people on sight. I didn’t get it at all. So, having an ace lead in my novel was extremely important to me. There’s nowhere near enough representation in horror where we are the heroes and survivors, and not the bff or sidekick—or worse, villain.

You have a book release coming out. I’m so excited about it. Tell us about Cavendish House, what was your process for writing it and how did you know it was ready to go out into the world?

Cavendish House is a queer modern gothic ghost story with two timelines—now and 1877. It is a supernatural murder mystery featuring an ace protagonist who think she knows everything about the supernatural and love—but she’s very wrong, of course.

Well, it started with an auction. Ha! I won the bid on one of your flash fiction writing critiques/help/coaching sessions and that’s when the ghost of Eliza Cavendish first appeared. She had a different name then, but the basic scene from that failed flash attempt is still in the book. I had just found GCLS that year and learned about the writing academy and decided to apply the following year. The mechanics of prose vs poetry was a lot and I really wanted to learn in a class setting but didn’t want the expense of another MFA, so the writing academy was extremely appealing from a financial standpoint. But that was a year away, so I kept writing. I was supposed to revise the flash piece and resend it to you but it just kept getting longer and it was clear Eliza wanted a novel. Which, once you get to know her makes perfect sense. Anyway, I remember you reaching out to see how I was doing because it had been so long and I was like: This is turning into a novel!

It is a funny story because even as a poet I failed at brevity. Like, three of my books are booklength poems—why did I think I could do flash?

Anyway, the writing academy was a year + out so I kept working on the novel. I’m a pantser so I spent a lot of time figure out the story. I looked at Bywater’s recommended writing books and found Stephen Koch’s The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction which became my teacher and therapist as I tried to get a draft together. So, by the time my Writing Academy class started I had been through the manuscript five times? Then, class started and I got my mentor, Elle E. Ire, and had more work to do.

And now I’m going through it again. Of course, everyone has their own process. I like layers. Each revision adds a new layer to the overall story. Most of my friends are plotters and I admire this skill greatly but cannot bring myself to do it. It isn’t how my brain works.

You recently acquired a publisher? Can you talk about that process?

I like how you phrased this question because usually we hear about publishers acquiring us, not the other way around. I like the agency of your phrasing. I did acquire a publisher, and I’m thrilled—in part because the process was pretty intense and I’m relieved to be done with it. I queried agents for more than a year with a decent response rate—several full requests, a lot of feedback when rejected—which is gold in sea of no responses. But early in the process, I participated in a live pitch event online and ended up pitching to Lauren Davila from Inked in Gray. There was a fairly large list of agents and acquiring editors to choose from for the event, but Lauren stood out for me because she is also a poet—and as you know, I am a poet. I figured if anything, we’d be able to talk well together based on that alone. I also really admired Inked in Gray because of their dedication to social justice which is important to me. So, I pitched to Lauren, and she said she wanted the full so I sent it and waited. Inked in Gray was the only live pitch I’d ever done (it was nerve wracking but Lauren was very kind about it) and they were the only publisher I queried. Months later, because that’s how it is—some agents didn’t get back to me for 8 months after querying—they sent an offer! Then, I went into research mode re: the contract, let the agents with fulls still out know about the offer, and talked to my GCLS mentor—Elle—and friends about the offer and contract to see what they thought. Ultimately, I decided it was an offer I couldn’t and didn’t want to refuse.

Inked in Gray is unique in that they encouraged me to continue in my agent search, and they just have great vibes. Plus, Lauren is my developmental editor and this is hugely appealing to me. Writing prose is such a different animal to poetry and it really felt fated for me to land where I did.

What are you working on now?

I’m focusing on some revisions for Cavendish House and also working on the prequel to it. I also have this cli-fi manuscript mess I’m trying to organize—is it a group of short stories or is it a novel? I’m not sure yet. But it is 45,000 words so I’d love to get it done.

I’m also working on this amazing, all-ace written project from SHEAUXTIME Collective, Inc. called Agent of Lust. It is a sci-fi/speculative mockumentary series featuring asexual characters that will be released with a book. Based on the seven deadly sins, the Agents are beings who facilitate the human experience throughout their life. I’m super excited to be on the core writing team for this project. We are aiming for release this winter.

How important is writing community to you and what advice would you give people looking to establish one?

Like with most things in life, it is hugely important to find your peoples. Since I’m in this liminal overlapping space of poetry-horror-queer writing it has been easiest for me to find my people via the GCLS Writing Academy. Does it mean I’m the only horror writer in my sprint pods? YES. It absolutely does, though I believe they could each write some damn fine horror. Does it mean that I translated the writing sex homework from Karelia Stetz-Waters into murdering a character? Yep. I did that, too. But I found my people. I do writing sprints and talk poetry with Milena McKay. I am critique partners with KC Laine, Claire Donniere, and Alicia Gael. KC and I survived the ups and downs of the querying process together and she is now agented and I have a publisher. And I have befriended some Critters who mean the world to me and who I wouldn’t have met if not for GCLS.

Would I have a novel coming out soon—or at all—without them? I don’t think so. This isn’t the first novel I’ve tried to write. I needed my people to finish one and get it into the world. I couldn’t have done it without them.

So, to generally answer the question—how do you establish one? Research the writing associations in your genre. I’m also a member of the HWA (Horror Writers Association) and they recently established a North Carolina chapter. I intend to go to their events and make some more friends soon. I think, though, GCLS Writing Academy is a really good place for us Sapphic writers to meet as it can be scary and difficult sometimes to find a writing group if you are also worried about your identity being accepted and welcomed.

Bonus question: Have you ever taken a picture of a weird bird?

So, I haven’t taken these photos but I can think of three weird birds from Denver GCLS Con who have very similar photos to my winged photo here…. And I mean weird in the best possible way!

You can learn more about Kathryn L. Pringle and this upcoming release on Inked in Gray’s website here.

5 Questions with Katherine Rupley

Finnian Burnett

1 comment

March 11, 2024

Let’s start with the most important question first. Who is your favourite Star Trek character?

Clearly, Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy)

Tell me about your recent release. What’s it about and what inspired it?

My wife and I took a cruise to Antarctica about three months before the pandemic hit. The cruise featured lectures, nature, and photography. One lecture was from a German doctor who’d been part of a women’s team wintering over at the South Pole. Her lecture was fascinating. There were other lectures that were equally mesmerising. I got into a conversation with one of the science team (yes, I am a nerd too) about Antarctica and the idea for a mission and the characters crystalized in my head.

What was the path to publication like for you?

I sent Antarctica to my publisher, Bella Books, on April Fool’s Day, 2023. I signed the contract about ten days later. Then came the waiting. I didn’t tell Bella about the book in advance, so I had to wait almost twelve months for the book to be published. Lessons learned let them know sooner so you can get into the queue faster. Bella provided some cover art options, and we went back and forth until we were all happy with the result. In December, I received my edits from Ann Roberts and I got to work revising. I sent the final back around Christmas time. Proof copy was received January 30. One of my GCLS WA friends, Sue Still’s wife, Jayne, jumped in and did the main proofread for me (yeah, friends). Now I’m done and Bella gets to finalize everything for publication on March 14, 2024. (Ed. Note. Preorder available here.)

How important is writing community to you and how do you go about finding it?

I don’t know if I would have survived as a writer without my community of writer friends. My editor, Ann Roberts, recommended I do the Golden Crown Literary Society Writing Academy. The GCLS WA was fabulous and I got to meet some of my writing friends for life group and got a wonderful mentor, Susan X Meagher. My WA classmates still meet, text, and talk weekly. The Bella staff and fellow writers have been very welcoming. It’s great to know many of the authors I’ve idolized as fun people to know and hang with. I’m part of Terry Wolverton’s Crafting the Story weekly workshop where I have opportunities to read my work and get real-time feedback. Kay Acker’s QueerConnect Sapphic Hour is a fun time to talk about writing and kibitz about life. The GCLS conference is a great source to meet people and learn. There are so many great groups and opportunities to learn.

Having people to talk craft with, life with, who will read my work, give me feedback, brainstorm with me, let me whine (on occasion), celebrate with me—it’s all part of my process and journey as an author.

Find your community. Don’t be shy. You have something to offer and writers are a great people willing to share knowledge and talk shop. And — you can’t edit what’s not on the page.

What are you working on now?

I’m not very good at coloring in the lines. My first book was a Romance—Calculated Risk. My second Antarctica is suspense/thriller. And now I’m going for a fantasy series about a world-weary general who believes she’s failed her country and her friends, a newly minted Bright Witch who’s never had to live in the real world, and a mysterious dog. (Ed. Note. This sounds incredible!)

Bonus question: Have you ever taken a picture of a weird bird?

I’ve taken a lot of pictures of birds. Is it weird to be told off by a bird? Here’s a picture of a Lilac-breasted Roller who was giving me what for.

Katherine Rupley can be found on the web at www.KatherineRupley.com

Socials:

Instagram: KatherineRupleyAuthor

Bluesky: @Katherinerupley.bsky.social

5 Questions with Catherine Lewis

Finnian Burnett

no comments

February 26, 2024

I’m hearing nothing but raves for Zipless. Can you tell me about it? What inspired it, what was your process for writing and publishing?

First off, Finnian, big thanks for inviting me to contribute to your blog, and thank you for your kind words about Zipless! My debut queer poetry chapbook Zipless was published by 845 Press (the print publishing arm of the London, Ontario-based online journal The /tƐmz/ Review) in November 2021, and is up for two Bisexual Book Awards, including Bi Writer of the Year.

All the poems in Zipless were written in 2019, during my year at Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio creative writing certificate program, where I’d studied within Joanne Arnott’s poetry workshop group. At graduation, I realized I was the only student in our poetry workshop group who hadn’t started submitting my work to journals. In my classwork, I’d been writing about fairly vulnerable topics, including my late-blooming queer sexuality. However, I had not yet been ready to publicly mention my sexuality at all. Still, in 2020, my mentors kept nudging me to start submitting my work to journals, starting with less vulnerable works. Partway through 2020, I finally ran out of hobbies and excuses, and I started sending out work for consideration. Submittable became my pandemic hobby.

At Joanne’s 2020 Zoom Christmas party for her 2019 and 2020 graduates, I listened as all her 2020 graduates discussed a chapbook contest, with a deadline within the upcoming week. That week, I leafed through all the poems written during my 2019 classes, plucked out ten of them (mostly about my explorations of my queer sexuality), cobbled them together in a Word document, and submitted it to the contest. I didn’t win. But still, I kept sending out this manuscript, including edits received from Jim Johnstone on a few of the poems (during his term as Arc Poetry’s Poet-in-Residence), and adding in a poem about my lifelong struggle with beauty standards.

In June 2021, five months after I started sending out my chapbook manuscript, while scrolling through emails on my phone on Friday, the following words jumped out at me from one email: “we would love to publish it.”

Instant elation. This email was from 845 Press, where I’d submitted my manuscript back in April, after spotting a diverse set of writer friends among their chapbook authors and journal contributors.

But all weekend, I wrestled with how to proceed. Terror battled with my elation. Was I ready to publish a queer poetry manuscript, given how closeted I’d been thus far? That weekend, I discussed all this with writer friends and mentors, who insisted everything would be okay.

In the end, the allure of publication won out. With a flute of bubbly in hand, I signed the chapbook contract. Shortly afterwards, I started adding bisexual Pride flags to all my social media profiles.

All summer, I emailed back and forth with 845 Press publisher Aaron Schneider to go over his insightful line edits, and to finalize his beautiful interior and exterior layout and design. The first time I saw the cover design including Síle Englert’s cover art, I was struck by how glamourous it was. And once I saw the PDF proof of the back cover blurbs, I nearly cried.

I’ve been extraordinarily lucky. Over thirty people attended my virtual launch. My first two printings sold out, and my publisher kicked off the subsequent printings immediately. I have been immensely grateful for all the wonderful support from my publisher, from my writing community, and from all the folks who have asked me to read at their events or to write for their blogs ever since.

You are outspoken about LGBTQ causes on social media. How important is it for you to speak out about queerness in general, and in your writing?

It is incredibly important for me personally to speak out about queerness and queer issues in general, and in my writing.

That being said, there was no conscious decision to focus on speaking out about queerness, or to focus on writing about queerness. Moreso, it was that I’ve never been able to stop writing about it.

You see, my writer origin story is that coming into my queer sexuality in midlife is what turned me into a writer. During my multi-year unsuccessful battle with infertility, I hardly journaled a word. But once I subsequently realized that I was queer, I couldn’t stop crying into my journal, and I journalled hard enough that I ended up taking my first Creative Writing classes, and then applying to the Writer’s Studio. In short, my queerness is what turned me into a writer, because I simply could not stop writing about all these new sensations and feelings.

Given that my queer awakening in midlife is what turned me into a writer, my queerness cannot be decoupled from my writer self. Coming into my queer sexuality in midlife also means that I am a newer member of the LGBTQ+ community, and that this is my first time as part of an invisible minority, given that I’m a high-femme bisexual cis woman who often has to come out as queer, but who never has to come out as Asian. As such, I’ve often been drawn to writing about all of these strands in my life.

I am so incredibly honoured to have the platforms and opportunities that I do, and I am unlikely to stop writing or speaking out about queerness anytime soon.

What advice would you give emerging poets on creating an audience and finding a place for their work?

Share your work wherever you can. Stop by and read at every local open mic and poetry slam series a few times to see whether the vibe is a good fit for you. Keep tabs on submissions deadlines for journals whose work resonates with you, and submit batches of poems a few times a month. If a fellow poet’s work resonates with you deeply, let them know. Perhaps your work will resonate with them too.

How important is writing community in your career and where do you find it?

My writing community has meant everything to me. My 2019 Writer’s Studio class served as my first built-in writing community, given that most of our poetry workshop classes on alternating Wednesday nights were followed by gossip sessions and collaborative poetry writing over cocktails and nachos at the restaurant across the street. Once all our literary events moved online the following year, I missed my in-person writing community deeply. Therefore, I chose to befriend many fellow writers on social media, where I love keeping abreast of everyone’s literary successes and struggles, love life-related memes, home renovation updates, and pet photos. (I’m such a sucker for cute dogs.) Though I do have a full-time corporate job, I attend as many in-person or online literary readings and book launches as I can, during my evenings and weekends. When you spot me at an in-person event, I’m typically greeting others with “Oh my goodness, we haven’t met in person before, but I follow you on social media!” Recently, I’ve been voted onto Vancouver Poetry House’s Board of Directors, where I’ve been elected Vice-President, so you’ll often catch me on Monday nights at Vancouver Poetry Slam, where my fellow poets and I gossip and perform spoken word poetry about nearly everything!

What are you working on right now?

I do journal every day, sometimes in poetic form. Soon, I’ll be kicking off reorganizing my piles of writing into a full-length poetic memoir manuscript.

Bonus question: Have you ever taken a picture of a weird bird?

I haven’t taken a picture of a weird bird, but my last bird photos were taken during one of my training runs for a half-marathon last year. Doesn’t everyone need to gawk at some cute goslings for their day to be complete?

5 Questions With Anne Pinkerton

Finnian Burnett

1 comment

February 19, 2024

Welcome and thank you for agreeing to talk with me. You write a lot about grief and the loss of your brother. Besides your book, you have written essays on the topic, including an excellent one I just read called, “Shitty Anniversary.” So, I’m excited to talk with you today and loss and creativity.

Thank you! That’s on my blog, TrueScrawl.com, where I publish when inspiration strikes and I want to say something timely. And I’m always struck on the anniversary of David’s death, which is the topic of the post you reference. Everyone I know who has lost someone remembers vividly the day it happened. And, frankly, even if some comforting or happy memories surface, those anniversaries tend to be overarchingly shitty, because the reality of the death insists on being remembered, too. I guess I want to be honest about that.

I’m wondering about the process of writing a book so close to your own feelings—how long did it take to write the book and what was your self-care process while writing it?

My writing about these subjects began in a bereavement writing group, a safe — and private — space to begin to process my experiences with others who were going through similar stuff. To this day, I’m exceedingly grateful for that group because they helped me sense my work had resonance while offering community, gentleness, and great compassion while I bled on the page, so to speak.
It’s hard to answer how long the book took to finish because it was produced in such a piecemeal way at the beginning, starting in that very group, long before I envisioned publishing any of it. I took the story to grad school a couple of years later, and an early draft became my thesis. I took a year off from the manuscript, and returned to it with fresh eyes at my first week-long writing residency (one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received), where I finally finished the book. So, I tend to say the writing took three or four years if you compiled the actual drafting time, but it truly spanned a ten-year period because of all the breaks.
Which leads me to self-care when writing about the worst things that ever happened to us. Breaks are essential. To go headlong into my extreme grief over the sudden death of one of the most important people in my life without coming up for air a lot would have been impossible. I cried an ocean during the making of the book. I had to exercise, rail at the universe, give up and start again. And I don’t think I could have done it at all without a great therapist, amazing professors and classmates, a supportive partner, and the best friends anyone could hope for.
I’m so glad I pushed through.

So many of my author friends talk about the brutal reality of agent and publisher shopping, especially when a work is so closely tied to their real lives. What was your publishing journey like?

I took a fabulous course on writing book proposals, and left armed with the necessary cover letter, comparative titles, target audience, and on and on. I should note, I am also a marketing professional by trade. But it is brutal. Attempting to commodify my pain and my family’s crisis seemed almost self-exploitative. That was the hardest marketing documentation I ever had to put together.

When I started pitching agents, if I wasn’t ghosted entirely, I often heard how the writing was great, but that they couldn’t sell a grief memoir. I just wanted to yell, But there are hardly any books about sibling loss out there! Brothers and sisters really do die! All the time, it turns out. And they feel so alone. Not giving them books makes them feel even worse — trust me.

(Also, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, anyone? Just a little New York Times bestseller about the agony of grief. But anyway… I know I’m not Didion. Just a mere mortal.)

After about 100 queries for representation, dispirited but unwilling to throw in the proverbial towel, I pivoted in my efforts and started looking at indie publishing houses, and that changed everything. Small presses lack the resources to do some big things, but they make up for so much through their willingness to take a chance on first-time authors writing stories that are far from beach reads. When I found Vine Leaves Press and read their acquisitions editor’s note about my manuscript, I knew I had finally landed in the right place, with people who really got it.

What I say to people interested in doing this is that there is no magic to landing your book somewhere unless you are already famous for something else or have great connections in the publishing world. My mantra and only real advice is: believe in your own work, and persist.

I notice you also write poetry. How does poetry inform your non-fiction work or vice versa?

That’s my original writing identity. (Just ask my mom, who still has my poem about winter drafted at age eight framed on her dining room wall.) Something about poetry can’t be severed from anything else I write — it’s a sensibility I suppose, or an approach to language that feels almost innate at this point. Poets adore description, metaphor, and rhythm in our lines, and that goes for my creative nonfiction work, as well. Nothing makes me happier than when people describe my prose as lyrical because it feels like I’ve hit the best balance of both worlds.
And I have always written about myself and my life regardless of the form it takes. Just the craft element is different. I’ve switched short pieces back and forth between poetry to prose to find the right container to hold the story I’m trying to tell.

What advice would you give to a writer who wants to tell a story about their own life, but is worried about whether the story is really theirs to tell, or what the rest of the family might think?

This is such a tricky question, and there isn’t one answer. It’s personal to each writer, and I’ve seen a variety of approaches play out depending on the writer and situation: some authors fictionalize their personal stories, names and identifying details get changed, releases get signed. There are ethical and, occasionally, legal considerations.

My approach is fairly straightforward and taken from Anne Lamott: “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories.” I sincerely believe this, and clutch it to my bosom.

There’s also the second part of her quote, which gets at the fact that what happens to us often includes others: “If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” While true, that one can get us into trouble if we take it to mean we can be reckless when rendering a real person on the page, if we abuse someone’s privacy, tell lies about them, or use our writing as a tool for revenge.

I do everything I can to ensure the people in my stories are considered with great care, treated as full human beings, that they are not villainized, and are only there to serve the purpose of the story. It can be a slippery slope. People do sue sometimes when they are angry about their portrayal. While they don’t often win, it can be hellish for the writer.

What are you working on right now?

I’m almost always playing with a poem or essay — or twelve (at least in my head), and a second book has been chewing on me for years, which I hope will end up being another memoir. But I’ve stalled on it, as it also circles around very hard, very personal subject matter, and I admit to not having the stomach for it right now. I hope that will change, as I think it’s also an untold story that could be helpful to others.

Bonus question: Have you ever taken a picture of a weird bird?

Do fancy chickens count? If so, yes! I found an alarming quantity of these images on my phone when you asked this question.