Emprise Review

Interviewed by Patrick McAllaster

1. Eyeshot recently closed down, which to a certain extent is an occupational hazard for websites of any kind, particularly literary sites, when this happens do you feel somehow cheated? That at some point they might not have the archives up or because they have stopped creating new content that traffic will wane and fewer people will read your story?

Good question. A few months ago I had a story accepted by an online publication that announced they were accepting my story for the last issue. Ugh. And it was a story I really, really liked and would have wanted it to have gotten more exposure. Then I thought, “Oh well,” and got on with the business of just writing more stories. And that’s how I think I tend to be: write the stories, put them out there and then (kind of) forget them. I think the stories I haven’t found a home for yet are more of a concern of mine. Getting into Eyeshot was a thrill! Lee Klein, could not have been nicer. Hopefully, he will resurface with something similar, or revive Eyeshot again.

2. Your stories are often intimate and feel lived in, how much of your writing is from personal experience, and how much is your imagination?

This is going to sound really cliché (because I’ve heard other writers say this, but it’s true) , but I will take a grain, a fragment, an impression, an aura, a memory , false or otherwise, that I embellish and build on. I will often make a mountain out of a mole hill. I am good at that. Everyone who knows me knows that I have to embellish everything! I was a very impressionable child, pathologically shy and so always on the outside looking in. I still am. So nothing, really, ever escapes my eye. I feel a bit squeamish writing about my own experiences, not to mention the fact that it would undermine my own imagination, which is usually in overdrive as it is!

3. I’ve noticed that you allude to the importance of place in past comments and this bears out in many of your stories as quite often they are set in very specific locations and tend to stay there, what do you hope to achieve in doing this?

You are my ideal reader! Thanks for noticing “place” in my stories. It informs everything I write. I have a chapbook coming out with Burning River Press in the Spring of 2010 called Natural Habitat. The title story turns the idea of place and where we belong on its head. I am not sure what I want to achieve by doing that, except if there is a strength to my fiction (and , God, I hope there is) it is that place is so evocative that it becomes a character.

4. Does your pursuit of an MSLS inform your writing in any way, or vice versa?

I got my MSLS in December 2008. Whew! That was no small feat while working full time, but I have to say, working as an academic librarian is fairly blissful for me. I love my job and love my career—so all day, it is library work. When I go home it is fiction. There are two blessings here: I love both my professions: librarianship and writing AND the fact that I have a good job and so am not seeking to make my living by writing, which I realize is an extremely hard thing to do and , at least for me, would be the death knell to my creativity.

5. Readers and writers nowadays have almost unfettered access to publishing tools and just about any writer or text they wish to read, how do you feel about this evolution in the literary field? Is there strength in the plurality of voices and the leveling of the playing field or is there a diluting effect?

This is the half-full type of my personality coming out here, but you know what? There is room for everyone, and why not. There just may be a diluting effect, but why worry, because who can stop it, anyway? The point is to just focus on your own work. Sit down and write. Not everything is golden. You wouldn’t believe the people who show me what they write. Most, if not all of it would be considered “good” by many people, but that’s not the point. Everyone has the right to it. And I always try to be supportive.

6. On a similar note, does it bother you that there are so many literary journals out there, hundreds of them? Do you ever think why bother? How many people will actually read my work? Or does that even factor into it?

I have to admit, it does factor in sometimes. But I don’t allow myself the luxury of that particular thought too many times. The thing is, its all about the writing, isn’t it? I’ve been writing long before anyone was even remotely interested in it. I did it for the joy of expressing myself. If three people read it, or 30, I’d say I’m happy. If only the editor who accepted it has any interest, as well, I’m happy. The fact that the number of literary journals has proliferated tells me that people are more and more interested in creativity as a way of making sense of a society that is highly materialistic.

7. Is there a book or writer out there our readers should go track down?

As far as flash fiction is concerned, the work of Meg Pokrass and Roxane Gay are writing some really wonderful and amazing things—and both have been INCREDIBLY kind and supportive of my work. Meg has been a friend, supporter and mentor extraordinaire to me. I like anything published by the small presses these days—and I am a huge supporter. I buy nearly everything that comes out. Elizabeth Ellen, Claudia Smith, Vanessa Gebbie, Jessica Treat, Jen Michalski, Randall Brown, Stephanie Johnson, and many more all have books out that are must reads. I have , for the most part (perhaps temporarily) turned away from books being published by the big publishing houses. I find so much of the writing derivative. I just read a new novel by a big , well know, often praised writer. I felt like it was a story I’d either read or seen in a movie 100x before. Huge disappointment.

8. Thanks for taking the time for this interview.

Believe me, the pleasure was all mine!

Michelle Reale’s Snow Blind is featured in Volume 10 of Emprise Review.

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Patrick McAllaster is the Editor in Chief of Emprise Review

Other Interviews from Patrick McAllaster
Kevin Fenton
Dan Holloway
Ken Wohlrob