What are you reading these days? Do you love/hate/feel neutral about it, and why?

 

I’ve been reading a lot of YA/new adult fantasy titles lately, and I’m loving every second of them. I’d felt disconnected from that genre throughout my graduate programs, but those were the kinds of books that made me love reading in the first place when I was younger, and I wanted to find my way back to that: reading for fun, for pleasure, for joy. For anything but work. And while it certainly started out for fun, it would be silly to pretend there is nothing to learn from those books—I have been thinking about plot and character in ever-expanding ways thanks to all these fantasy titles. But that’s just a bonus. The best part about these books is that they’ve brought me back to the act of reading as a hobby. (In case you’re wondering: My favorite is Sarah J. Maas!)

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Have you read a passage of writing that deeply shifts something inside you, if so, please share it with us?

 

I feel this way about basically the entirety of Life of Pi by Yann Martel, and especially the final interview in the epilogue between Pi and members of the legal department for the ship that sank. That book has shifted my perspective on writing and faith and everything in between (which is everything). My favorite passage is below:

 

Pi says, “I told you two stories that account for the 227 days in between [the sinking of the ship and landing in Mexico]… Neither explains the sinking of the Tsumtsum… Neither makes a factual difference to you… You can’t prove which story is true and which is not. You must take my word for it… In both stories, the ship sinks, my entire family dies, and I suffer… So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story?” The interviewers reply that the story with animals is the better story, and Pi says, “Thank you. And so it goes with God.” (317) 

 

Citation: Martel, Yann. Life of Pi. Harcourt, 2001.

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When you are working on a piece, what inspirations do you draw from?

 

I draw inspiration from everywhere: memory, image, emotion. I think most writers do. I usually begin with image, maybe an object or situation—like the piece that’s in this issue of The Champagne Room, “A Small Ugly Thing,” which began with a dog statue I’ve had sitting outside my front door for nearly ten years.  

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What craft elements are you most interested in/attached to within your writing?

 

I am very attached to the individual lines themselves: In some ways, I approach prose like a poet might, with an emphasis on sound, rhythm, image. Beautiful sentences—the kind that make you stop and reread, that you want to underline and hear again out loud—those are my favorite part of craft.  

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Who/what are some of your writing obsessions, and why? 

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My favorite thing to do is write about my obsessions—for a long time, it was outer space, which is how my collection A Preponderance of Starry Beings and my chapbook The Space Poet came about. Lately, my inspiration has largely come from my obsessions with fantasy and, especially, Dungeons & Dragons…we’ll see what comes from that. (:

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What are some ways in which you remain productive/find time to be a writer? 

 

Oh man, I wish someone would tell me the answer to this question! Ha. It’s hard. And it’s made harder by so many factors: new jobs, new homes, new routines. But through all life’s transitions I’ve found that the best way for me to write is in community. It’s up to you to do the work. But setting appointments with other writers, sharing your work, giving each other support, making deadlines and keeping them—it makes all the difference.

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Tell us what your writing space looks like.

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I have a beautiful home office—my favorite room in the house, full of all my favorite things: bookshelves and trinkets and treasures and art and pictures on the wall. It’s lovely. And still, despite that wonderful space, more often than not, when I really want to write, I end up sitting cross-legged on my dirty patio table outside in the sun and mud and grass.

 

What are some ways in which you get through a block in your creative work?

It helps me to talk it out. That’s always my first move. I ask someone to read my work, or I summarize it for them, and sometimes they have answers and sometimes they don’t, but a lot of times it doesn’t even matter what they say—it just helps me to hear myself talk. I’m a verbal processor. Failing that, I like to handwrite when I’m stuck. There’s often a pressure to get it “right” on a computer, but something about composing in a journal, scratching things out and scribbling in my messy handwriting, makes the writing feel more like low-stakes experimentation.   ​

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How do you navigate the experience of submissions/rejections/acceptances?

 

I’ve been submitting my work since I was an undergraduate, and I think the exposure helps—rejections don’t scare me. It means I’m out there, trying. I don’t have a careful or organized system when it comes to submitting, but I try to send out 1-3 new submissions for every rejection I get, depending on how many unpublished pieces I have in the queue. I try to keep as many active submissions out there as possible because it helps me feel that even when all I’m doing is “just waiting,” that still count as work.  

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Regarding your piece in Issue 04, what does it mean for/to you and/or how did the creation of it come about? 

 

I never meant to write this piece. I was given a prompt in a creative writing class to journal about an object that I could observe at various moments (across multiple days, or least during different times of day). I chose the dog statue for no reason at all—it was something that I had outside my front door for years after my grandmother gave it to me, but I’d never taken the time to really look at it. This piece might have stopped at that assignment, except then my grandmother died—mere weeks after I had first started writing about that damn dog statue. So I went back to that prompt and kept working it, because writing has always been a way for me to say things I otherwise never could. ​

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Do you have a recent publication/project you would like us to highlight?Do you have a recent publication/project you would like us to highlight?

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My debut story collection, A Preponderance of Starry Beings, was released on June 15th with Northwestern University Press! By blending fairy tale and science fiction, this collection explores coming of age on the outskirts of the universe, whether that be a small Midwestern town or a distant galaxy. These stories invite the reader into a world of night islands, alien planets, small towns, and faith lost and found, where a safe landing matters less than taking the leap. 

 

You can learn more and order the book here.  

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What is something you would like to share with other writers out there? 

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There comes this moment, you know, after school and after all the classes and the programs, where no one is waiting on you to turn in your work anymore. You’re only accountable to yourself. It can be scary, but I also think it’s really freeing. It’s the moment when you realize that your writing is only as important as you treat it. So treat it well. It only matters if it matters to you.