Nathan Poole is the author of two books of fiction, Father Brother Keeper a collection of stories selected by Edith Pearlman for the 2013 Mary McCarthy Prize and long listed for the Frank O’Connor Award, and Pathkiller as the Holy Ghost selected by Benjamin Percy as the winner of the 2014 Quarterly West Novella Contest. He is a recipient of the Narrative Prize, a Milton Fellowship at Seattle Pacific University, a Joan Beebe Fellowship at Warren Wilson College, and A Tennessee Williams Scholarship at Sewanee School of Letters. His work has appeared in various journals, including The Kenyon Review, Ecotone, Narrative Magazine, Image, Quarterly West, and The Chattahoochee Review.

Nathan Poole in an interview with The Kenyon Review

Everything I write begins as an image or a scrap of language and nothing more than that. Somewhere in the drafting process, usually before I have a full draft, I begin to discover the thematic drive that will come to reshape the story. With this story, all I had was an image of a young couple walking together at the state fair, and the guy had a bad shiner. That image immediately had the twinkle and extension of metaphor and I liked the language and the little scene around it, so I went with it. I realized, after a few weeks, and after that scene was cut and rewritten, that this story was becoming an important vehicle for me to deal with incidents in my own life that have disturbed my sense of masculinity.

Almost every woman in my life that I’ve spent time with in public, including my wife, has had something hollered at them by a man that was humanity-curdling. It’s wild the things guys will yell from a car, the level of detail included, and the sense of possession and anger in what they yell. And it’s especially strange being a male and being present for these things. It throws you into a crisis, or it should, right? You’re not the victim, but you share in some of the hurt. And besides the anger, which is obvious, you’re also filled with something else, which is perhaps the shame or fear that you’re somehow culpable, that there is something planted deep inside you that is being represented, made acute. It’s hard to explain this feeling, which is why, I guess, I needed to write the story.

In Peter Orner’s “Five Shards,”—a sequence of five stories that I discovered after writing this one, one of which has a similar plot—he uses the phrase “vinegar light.” Other than representing his gift as a writer, those words absolutely describe the atmosphere that appears after something like this has happened. For whatever reason, I needed to linger in the strangeness of that light, the bitterness and absurdity of it, and to see what I could make of it. And so the story.

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Nathan will be offering the following workshops and lectures at the conference this year:

“WHAT CHICKEN?: STUDYING PROCESS IN FLANNERY O’CONNOR’S FIRST DRAFTS”
A few years ago, Nathan Poole had the privilege of spending several days in the archives at Georgia College, sitting in a glass room, furiously reading Flannery O’Connor’s manuscripts, typing up entire early drafts. In this workshop, he will outline some of his findings as participants examine the moves O’Connor made as she worked on one of her last short stories, “Parker’s Back.” (Attendees to this workshop should try to read a copy this story before attending. Download here.)

KEYNOTE: “MARGINALIZED CHARACTERS AND THEIR CORRELATIVES” by Nathan Poole
One could argue that the modern short story was born as an outside form in the same moment it embraced outsiders as its subject. If that’s true, it might also be true that “the marginal” is an encoded, even ancestral force in the imagery of short stories. With this in mind, it might do us good to study a few fiction writers, both historical and contemporary, who make compelling use of imagery and characters on the fringe and to see what techniques are at play in the combination of these elements.

ALINA: Dear Emma, I love talking to you. Speaking of talking—and love—what you love about poetry as a form? What do you hate about it?

EMMA: The thing I love most about poetry is its breathtaking mutability. I used to tell my students that poetry was a container, like a pitcher or a vase. Now, I see that container as something so flexible as to take the shape of what's poured into it, or, perhaps, as glass that becomes more beautiful and useful when it is broken. With poetry, there are thousands of ways to work towards tradition and thousands of ways to work against tradition. Every move you make on the page -- an em dash, a line break, a space between words -- carries a thousand intentions along with it. There's something about this plasticity, coupled with the form's concision and concentration, that allows a writer to access and express experience and emotion in a very pure way. As a person, I struggle continuously with figuring out how to express what I feel, and perhaps even more persistently with figuring out exactly what it is that I feel. When I'm writing poetry, however, I'm able to drill down to the core of meaning and feeling.

The thing I hate most about poetry as a form is exactly that: the form. In my non-writing life, I tend to put up blocks against accessing and expressing my own feelings. I do the very same thing in my writing life. I often find myself focusing obsessively on the form of the poem itself, not the experience the poem needs to contain. I trap myself inside my own tricks and turns of language, which can sometimes make writing feel like I'm running in a hamster wheel, expending energy but never really getting to the places where I need to go.

“I was a revival, an August,
a shattered crescendo of wishing
for wanting, this ragged waiting
inside of. I choked. The blood
I expected. I said that I wanted.
I said that I wanted to be flayed
and carnal, I said that I wanted
to be thrust and shuddered
under any him willing to be violent
as a god. I said that I wanted to
understand the point and the hilt
of the sword, I wanted to know
life gorged and garnet as
the howl inside of every red.
I tasted fang and honey heavy
as hatred, I tasted tongue, I wanted
this ragged with waiting, with shame.”

— excerpted from "Under the Thread of Eden" by Emma Bolden

ALINA: It's no secret that I gobbled up your recent poetry collection, House Is An Enigma. Can you share a few links to any of those poems that have been previously published online? Also I'm so curious about how you stumbled into the house metaphor and how this relates to female sexuality or sexualization (sometimes I can't tell the forest from the trees on this one).

EMMA: That is an excellent question! "Stumbled into" is the exact right term of phrase for this one. When I lived in Georgia, I found myself traveling the back roads from Statesboro to Savannah time and time again, and every time, I passed this house that just looked downtrodden and grumpy, sort of like if Oscar the Grouch were a building. On one trip, I started thinking about how I had essentially turned that house into a metaphor. If I were that house, I thought, I'd be angry at every passerby who glanced my way and made me into a metaphor they needed to illustrate their experience. When I got home, I wrote the poem "House Is an Enigma." A few years later, it was chosen for inclusion in Best American Poetry, which meant that I had to write a brief statement explaining the meaning of the poem. There was just one problem: I had no idea how to explain the meaning of the poem because I wasn't entirely sure what the meaning was.

When I sat down to write the statement, I thought about that house and those back roads, all of those trips to Savannah and back. I'd been driving to doctors' offices for appointments and consultations and second opinions. I was trying to decide if, after a twenty-year-long struggle with endometriosis and fibroids, it was time for me to have a total hysterectomy. I remembered that one phrase popped up in every appointment: "we don't think your body could house a fetus." There I was, facing the most difficult decision of my life, and my doctors could only talk about the hardest parts of that decision -- giving up whatever hope I ever had of having children -- by turning my body into a metaphor.

Unlocking the meaning of this metaphor also meant unlocking the passage to completing the book. I'd been working on a manuscript for about five years, and it never felt complete. When I realized what -- or, rather, who -- the house really was, I found a new way into the work and finished the series of poems that now serves as the backbone of the collection.

As for poems…..

• "the gods have a bullet" and "The First Time After Surgery" (45th Parallel)

• “The Museum of the Body” (American Literary Review)

• "Hysterectomy/Recovery" (Triquarterly)

• "An Unmothered Guide to Grief" and "The Plight Troth" (Nice Cage)

• "Under Threat of Eden" (Sinking City Lit Mag)

ALINA: Okay, now to be trivial--three places you love in Alabama.... and why.

EMMA: This is a surprisingly tough one! Three years ago, I moved back to the Birmingham area after about 18 years away, and it has grown and changed in dizzyingly drastic ways. It's been difficult to find my bearings.

Desert Island Supply Company: DISCO is amazing for so many reasons that I could write about it forever. Just walking in the door makes me happy -- and you can tell that other people, especially young students, feel the same way. I deeply admire their dedication to furthering arts education in the Birmingham area. It also provides a perfect gathering place for writers and artists in the area. Plus, there's something new and beautiful and resonant and true to be discovered in literally every inch of the space.

The U.S. Space and Rocket Center: I'm a huge space nerd, and I could spend actual months wandering around the Space and Rocket Center. When Apollo 13 came out, my father and I went to an exhibit about the Apollo program that was absolutely mind-blowing.

Perdido Beach: Perhaps I'm adding this to the list because I just went on my first real vacation since I was in 8th grade? But also because Alabama's beaches are gorgeous. I highly recommend Sea-N-Suds. Try the fried shrimp and the orange amaretto daiquiri.

“At this point, it feels almost as if my roles as an editor and as a writer are symbiotic. As a writer, I know how tremendously difficult it can be to put the work that carries so much of yourself with it into the world. As an editor, I try to treat every submission as if it were my own and to recognize the amount of trust it takes for a writer to submit.”

— Emma Bolden

ALINA: Any special musicians or albums that have influenced your writing that you'd like to share (include links please, esp. to a song or video)?

EMMA: Music has always been an essential source of inspiration and part of my process, and I have my parents to thank for that. My father raised me on Bob Dylan, the Moody Blues, Leonard Cohen, and The Beatles, all of which led me to love the musicality of language and the act of stretching language's possibilities.

I probably learned more about language and the limits to which on can take it from Tori Amos than anyone or anything else. I still remember the flush of excitement I felt when I heard Boys for Pele for the first time. Admittedly, I often wasn't exactly sure what she meant, but the more I listened, the more I learned and loved. "Little Amsterdam" may be the best example from that album -- and in this video, she plays two pianos at once.

Ravel's "Bolero" taught me most of what I know about structure. It's the key through which I unlocked the way to build lyrics essays.

My current work is fueled by Agnes Obel's music. I'm particularly fascinated by her third album, Citizen of Glass. It's a meditation on mass surveillance and how social media has changed the way we see ourselves and others. I'm obsessed with the way she built this album, too; she layers hundreds of tracks of herself singing (see "Familiar") and uses the Trautonium, a kind of synthesizer that can electrocute you.

I used to be obsessed with musicals (okay, I'm probably still obsessed with musicals), which taught me the power of refrain and echo. Sondheim's A Little Night Music showed me how subtle shifts in form can create dramatically different moods. Almost every song is in waltz time, which is amazing when you consider songs as different as "Send in the Clowns" and "The Miller's Son."

ALINA: You mentioned Sondheim and I melted a little. He’s an old obsession of mine. I was as overwrought as his “Passion” in high school—and thrilled when he won a Tony for it.

In addition to writing, you are also an editor. Can you tell us a little bit about that and share a few poems that you've published at TQ recently that you really love?

EMMA: At this point, it feels almost as if my roles as an editor and as a writer are symbiotic. As a writer, I know how tremendously difficult it can be to put the work that carries so much of yourself with it into the world. As an editor, I try to treat every submission as if it were my own and to recognize the amount of trust it takes for a writer to submit. That's a very humbling thing for me. As a writer, I've gathered an extensive collection of rejection slips, but editing has taught me that rejection doesn't necessarily mean that a piece is bad, as there are numerous reasons why a piece might not be a fit for a particular journal at a particular time. I do, however, find that I tend to revisit rejected poems in my revision mindset more often. Most of all, editing serves as a great source of inspiration and encouragement for me. There's something incredible about opening up Submittable and seeing submissions from so many others who walk the same path as I do and love it.

Speaking of love -- to be honest, I love all of the pieces we've published in Tupelo Quarterly. Lately, I've found myself returning to Emily Carr's crossword poems from The Stork Rides Shotgun, which are breathtakingly innovative and powerful.

ALINA: Finally, ultimately, shamelessly, what's the worst piece of advice you've ever gotten about writing/creativity/art?

EMMA: That you'll do your best work before you turn thirty, and after thirty, it's over. This was drilled into my mind as a high school student, so much so that it almost became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm not sure how conscious the connection was, but I remember feeling a sense of great panic and dread in my late twenties. I remember feeling like my time as a writer was almost over, and when I entered my thirties, I found myself almost paralyzed when I turned to the page. It's as if I was examining myself with every word I wrote, dissecting each sentence to see if I really had lost "it," whatever fueled my creativity. But with my thirties came a series of life events that added up to a sea-change in my life as a whole: an invisible illness, early menopause, a hysterectomy, a change in career followed by another change in career, the loss of a job and my livelihood. In a very short span of time, I faced all of my greatest fears -- and then found myself on the other side, still standing. I was still living, and in order to keep living, I had to let go of all of the things that I thought about living. That included letting go of the idea that at some arbitrary age, my writing life would let go of me. In a lot of ways, I think my life as a writer began in my thirties because that's when I began to live as a writer. My dedication to the work became stronger, like steel forged in fire, and I was no longer afraid to touch the forms and subjects that frightened me the most. If I could go back and tell my young self one thing, it would be this: "Relax. Live for your work and your work will start living, no matter your age."

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ABOUT EMMA BOLDEN

Emma Bolden is the author of three full-length collections of poetry -- House Is An Enigma (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2018), medi(t)ations (Noctuary Press, 2016) and Maleficae (GenPop Books, 2013) – and four chapbooks. She received a 2017 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2019 Literary Arts Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. A Barthelme Prize and Spoon River Poetry Review Editor’s Prize winner, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Norton Introduction to Literature, The Best American Poetry, The Best Small Fictions, and Poetry Daily as well as such journals as the Mississippi Review, The Rumpus, StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, New Madrid, TriQuarterly, Conduit, the Indiana Review, Shenandoah, the Greensboro Review, Feminist Studies, The Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, the Seneca Review, and Crazyhorse. She currently serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief for Tupelo Quarterly.

Poet Lori Lasseter Hamilton after a reading in Birmingham, Alabama.

In this AWC conversation, Young Adult novelist Emma Fox speaks to poet Lori Lasseter Hamilton about life, breast cancer, poetry, and chutzpah. Diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 34, four months before her wedding, Lori underwent a left breast mastectomy, six months of chemotherapy, six weeks of radiation, and a year of Herceptin treatment, from 2004 to 2005. She has been writing poetry since 1992 when she was a college student, and loves to share her poems at open mikes and poetry slams. She earned a bachelor of arts in journalism from UAB in 1998, with a minor in English.

EMMA FOX: Did you already write poetry prior to your diagnosis? If so, what developments or changes in your writing have you seen since then?

LORI LASSETER HAMILTON:I've been writing poetry since 1992 off and on, when I'm not experiencing writer's block. I started writing poetry and sharing it at open mikes when I was in college, prior to my breast cancer diagnosis in 2004. Before, I would use a lot of profanity and anger in my poems just for the sake of shock value. But when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I realized that I needed to write with controlled anger, that controlled anger would be more effective and powerful in getting my point across. To just have one or two fist punches of anger here or there in a poem would hit harder. Not that there's anything wrong with anger or profanity. It's just that I wanted people to feel what I was feeling when I performed a poem onstage. I wanted people to see that breast cancer survivors go through a whole range of emotions -- not just excitement and happiness to wear pink tutus and pink feather boas at Race for the Cure -- but sadness, anger, irritation, depression, defiance and rebellion against society's expectations.

I knew that if I was practically yelling and cursing all the time in my poems, no one in the audience would sympathize or want to listen to me. I wanted my audience to see a breast cancer survivor as a whole person with a range of feelings, and not just a strong "survivor" or a pink clown.

EMMA FOX: Are there ways that poetry is especially suited to dealing with tough situations like you've undergone?

LORI LASSETER HAMILTON: I think slam poetry is the best way, for me anyway, to express what I'm feeling about being a breast cancer survivor. Competing in a poetry slam allows me to express with raw, brutal honesty all the rage, sadness, marred self-image issues, and irritation with society's expectations for breast cancer survivors to be "pretty in pink" overcomers with a pink smile and pink clown makeup and a pink tutu.

In slam poetry, you've got to come to the mic with everything you have and give it all you've got if you want to win -- you've got to be very dramatic, and you've got to be very loud, very honest, like a confessional poet. Slam poetry is raw, gritty, and brutally honest self-expression. You've got to give it all you've got, with all your heart, when you get on that mic at the poetry slam.

Slam poetry encourages you to get really real and write/perform in a confessional style like Sylvia Plath. A lot of slam poetry contains all the emotions -- humor, sadness, anger, and fear -- all in one poem, like a roller coaster. I mean, when you think about the absurdity of wearing a breast prosthesis and a stranger "feeling you up" in a retail mastectomy shop with a variety of bra styles and colors and a variety of prostheses like you're in the lingerie department at Macy's, like you chose this, like you chose to lose a breast, it's really like the "theatre of the absurd", and slam poetry makes you scream in one line, laugh in the next line, and cry in the next. It is theatre. I want to hit people in the audience with all of it.

EMMA FOX: How has poetry helped you through the healing process?

LORI LASSETER HAMILTON: Writing and performing poetry at slams and open mikes frees me to express things I wouldn't normally be able to express. I've worked in corporate office jobs all my life as a secretary/receptionist, so I have to dress, behave, talk, and act a certain way in the office. With poetry, I can express all the raw emotions I'm feeling. I can be brutally honest about my sadness over losing a breast, my sadness over how that's affected my sex life, and I can express in my poetry how angry I am about having to be a good patient and let them just take my breast just so I can live, even though I feel the quality of my life has been diminished.

I can express my rage at society expecting breast cancer survivors to be happy pink clowns who want to walk or run in marathons all the time and love to march in survivor's parades to the song "I hope you dance" by Lee Ann Womack. These types of emotions, you just can't express in a corporate office without your coworkers thinking you're a weirdo. I grew tired of having to be strong and be a survivor and pretending to want to walk in Race for the Cure every October. With biting sarcasm and seething rage, I can express my fatigue and irritation when I perform at a poetry slam.

EMMA FOX: Who are some poets that have inspired you in your writing?

LORI LASSETER HAMILTON: I'd have to say Sylvia Plath is my number one role model, because I consider her a feminist and a confessional poet. She questions society's expectations in "The Applicant":

"First, are you our sort of a person?/Do you wear/A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,/A brace or a hook,/Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,/Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then/How can we give you a thing?"

There's also Nicole Blackman, and the brutally raw way she critiques society. In her book "Blood Sugar", she talks about how even long-term boyfriends expect sex to be like a porno. Her poem "In the movie now" says:

"Dinner is you
and you are nothing like
the dead-eyed blonde women
he's been watching.

You're in the movie now."

She is unafraid to be graphic, raw, and brutally honest in her feminist critique of men's expectations.

I'm also inspired by the defiance of Arthur Rimbaud in his prose poem "A Season in Hell" :

"I called to the executioners that I might gnaw their rifle-butts while dying."

His defiance in the face of death inspires me because so many horrible things have happened to me in life, and I want to show the universe that I will not be defeated, that I am still rebellious and defiant.

And lastly, the words of Charles Baudelaire in his poem, "To the Reader", have always resonated with me:

"If rape and arson, poison and the knife
have not yet stitched their ludicrous designs
onto the banal buckram of our fates,
it is because our souls lack enterprise!"

Another defiant attitude, laughing in the face of danger.

“i’m at the “Touching You” store

with chemo wigs and rubber boobs,
and silky bras outlined at the edges with lace.
she’s showing me the proper way
to put my “girls” into play.”

— excerpt from Lori Lasseter Hamilton's poem, "Touching You"

EMMA FOX: Your poem, “Touching You,” was published in a recent anthology of poems by young adults with cancer. What action or response do you hope your poem will inspire?

LORI LASSETER HAMILTON: I hope that people who read "Touching You" will see that breast cancer survivors and mastectomy patients are still expected to be "sexy" by going into a retail mastectomy prosthesis and chemo wig shop, in order to be fitted with a breast prosthesis that's way too big. I want people to see how ludicrous that is.

I want people to understand that mastectomy patients don't like that kind of pressure, just like all women don't like society's pressures. We don't like the absurdity of the woman in the retail mastectomy shop showing us how to make our "girls" look their best -- even though one of our "girls" is fake. I want people to understand the ridiculousness of that.

Society's expectations -- of even breast cancer survivors with only one breast -- to still try and be sexy like they're wearing a Victoria's Secret bra. It's laughable, and to me as a feminist, it's infuriating. In the poem, I say that I wish I could sling my "over the shoulder boulder holder off", but that I don't have the guts. I also wore a wig when my hair fell out from chemo, because I was so afraid of what society would think. And I ended up losing my self-respect. I wish I had been one of those breast cancer survivors who got a tattoo on her bald head and refused to wear a wig. I wish I could go around without a prosthesis in my bra, but I'm so concerned about being "ugly" and what people would think.

I hope my poem makes people despise society's expectations of breast cancer survivors as much as I do. I hope it makes people see the absurdity of expecting the one-breasted woman to try and still be sexy in an oversized rubber breast and a silky bra with a floral pattern.

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Lori Lassetter Hamilton has three poetry chapbooks: “live, from the emergency room” (New Dawn Unlimited, 2006); “sawdust, soap, soil, & stars” (Penhall Publishing, 2015); and “body parts” (New Dawn Unlimited, 2018). Some of her poems have appeared in Steel Toe Review, Birmingham Weekly, Staplegun Press, Alternative Harmonies, Fester, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry. She has competed at regional and national poetry slam competitions in 2003, 2005, and 2013 with the Montevallo poetry slam team. She is honored to be a member of Sister City Connection, Birmingham’s collective of women poets, storytellers, and musicians. Lori works as a medical records clerk at a local hospital, and has been married to Robert Hamilton for 15 years.

Emma Fox lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her husband, three kids, and an energetic border collie. She's the author of YA fantasy novel The Arrow and the Crown, and blogs about historical fiction and fantasy at EmmaFoxAuthor.com.

You can support young adult poets writing about their experience with cancer by purchasing a copy of This Thing Called Poetry from Finishing Line Press. It should be in every oncologist’s waiting room because poetry helps us live, thrive, and make sense of our short time on this earth.

Poet Linda Pastan says: “Late summer, and the roses in second bloom, know what’s coming. Beauty and death mingle in this fine poem by Anya Krugovoy Silver, as they do in so many of the poems in this moving, accomplished anthology. Pain and anger often coexist with humor here, though not with self -pity.  If language can be redemptive for reader and/or writer, it certainly is in these pages.”

Johnnie Bernhard at her writing desk.

A former teacher and journalist, Johnnie Bernhard is passionate about reading and writing.  Her work(s) have appeared in the following publications: University of Michigan Graduate Studies Publications, Heart of Ann Arbor Magazine, Houston Style Magazine, World Oil Magazine, The Suburban Reporter of Houston, The Mississippi Press, the international Word Among Us, Southern Writers Magazine, The Texas Review, Southern Literary Review, and the Cowbird-NPR production on small town America. Her entry, “The Last Mayberry,” received over 7,500 views, internationally.  

A Good Girl was shortlisted in the 2015 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Writing Competition, as well as featured novel for panel discussion at the 2017 Mississippi and Louisiana Book Festivals. It was represented by Texas Review Press at the 2017 Texas Book Festival.  A Good Girl was shortlisted in the 2017 Kindle Book Award for Literary Fiction, a nominee for the 2018 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, a 2018 nominee for the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Fiction of the Year Award, and shortlisted for the 2017 Lone Star Literary Review, Bloggers’ Choice Award in best Literary Fiction. 

Johnnie’s second novel, How We Came to Be was a finalist in the 2017 Faulkner-Wisdom Competition.  Named a “Must Read” by Southern Writers Magazine, the novel was featured for panel discussion for the 2018 Louisiana Book Festival and Mississippi Book Festival. It was represented by Texas Review Press at the 2018 Texas Book Festival.  It was shortlisted by the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters for 2019 Fiction of the Year, as well as the recipient of the Summerlee Book Prize, HM by the Center for History and Culture at Lamar University. 

How We Came to Be was selected by the international Pulpwood Queens Book Club as a 2019 reading selection.  Both novels were chosen for the Advance Placement English Classes at private high schools in Mississippi.

Her third novel, Sisters of the Undertow debuts February 2020.  It was shortlisted for Novel-in-Progress by the 2018 Faulkner-Wisdom competition.  

Johnnie supports young writers as a judge for the annual Center for the Book of Texas, Letters about Literature Competition.   Learn more about her writing at Johnnie’s website.

“The idea for Sisters of the Undertow comes from viewing the rescue of a little girl who was struggling to keep her head above water when she ventured out into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico in Grand Isle, Louisiana. I witnessed that dramatic rescue over twenty-five years ago and have never forgotten it. ”

— Johnnie Bernhard on her latest novel

At the AWC Annual Conference this year, Johnnie will conduct two workshops for writers, including:

What It Takes to Be an Author will take writers step by step through the acquisition process: finding the right literary agent, writing a query letter and synopsis for a potential publisher, and developing a professional profile as an author.

Developmental Editing and Content Editing will guide writers through the differences in developmental and content editing, using literary elements and plot tips to improve writing.

If you haven’t registered for the Conference, today is a great day to do it.

ALINA: You live in a small Alabama town. Tell us what you love about this town--its special secrets or swimming holes--and then tell us what challenges you've experienced as a writer living in the rural south. 

RACHEL: I live in Double Springs and always have. It’s a strange thing, I guess, to cling to a place known for beliefs so unlike my own but there’s more to my town—or county—than history gives either credit for.

I’m pretty introverted and despise places that have more parking lots than trees. Here, I’m about fifteen minutes from a national forest and the only sounds I’m kept awake by are my dogs’ antics. I don’t have to check the air quality before playing tag with my nephew. With the exception of tractors slowing things up, traffic is non-existent. People are mostly kind and most any stranger would stop and help change a flat.

Those kindnesses are sometimes warped by way of politics and learned hatred. Challenges are always present and do indeed wager a firm fight against comforts. As a writer, and simply as a progressive-minded individual, I’m at least an hour’s drive from any communities I find much relation to in terms of my interests or beliefs. In my own area, I’m often cursed at for the political stickers on my car. This is a town with two traffic lights and roughly a thousand residents. A lot of people here are nervous of bigger cities or find them offensive; in juxtaposition to such notions held here, I’ve never felt unsafe in a place like Birmingham, for example, especially for something as simple as showing my alliances via a bumper sticker. That’s a small example of the larger predicament turned motivation: promoting my own ideas or experiences through writing used to be a wildly frightening thing for me; meeting so many similar people in towns or states outside of my own has given me the bravery to share my thinking, even if my thoughts appear to frown upon the more common perspectives held locally.

Essentially: I love my home but I’d love to see it love better.

ALINA: No truer words of love could be spoken. Love imples a commitment to stick around and improve. On that note, You edited a wonderful anthology and I was hoping you'd share with us how this anthology came together. What did you like most about editing an anthology? 

RACHEL: Thank you and I’m thrilled you enjoyed it. Years ago I was an associate editor for Pankhearst, a writers collective which released several collections before its eventual disbandment. The idea for America Is Not the World was dreamed up by founding editor, Evangeline Jennings, and poetry editor, Kate Garrett. They passed the concept on to me, referencing my intense love for culture while occupying the most conservative [and possibly the whitest] district in the country.

 In editing an anthology that spoke both beautifully and at times aggressively against absurd bigotries, my faith grew in my own country. This was my first effort in editing an anthology and I was overrun with hundreds of brave submissions from all over the world, all proving people are ready to fight and forgive—each in the right measure. The whole process was a healing one. Then getting to pass along a book that offered proof of universal similarities? Getting responses from those who typically didn’t care for reading, saying they found themselves curious about others because of the book? I’ll be forever proud of getting to assist in that. 

ALINA: If you could edit an anthology devoted to southern writing, what would it be titled? What would be its focus? What would it include?

RACHEL: Excellent question and now I’m plotting how to get in the editing seat for such an anthology. I’d have to think on a title but I believe I’d want it to reflect rural life and the contrast within: run-ins with the righteous or the kindness of preachers who won’t charge for delivering your kin to the grave; growing up with well water, the pure taste of it and the root canals we never knew we’d need from it; the effort to provide in a slanted economy or the privilege of having neighbors who grow too many vegetables; the lack of hotels or the way quiet towns fills their streets during strawberry festivals.

ALINA: For me, the South is best tasted by backroads. I get the feeling you have a similar appreciation for the unpopular routes. What fascinates you most about backroads? Do you have a favorite Alabama backroad?

RACHEL: Time fades into the background on backroads. We don’t take those roads to conserve time; we do it to avoid time altogether. Reality is an exhausting experiment but when riding aimlessly with nothing to consider but what music to listen to, breathing is a much simpler act. This will sound a bit odd but my favorite backroad is the one connecting to the graveyard my grandmother was buried in. My sister and I were tired of crying and speaking to people the day of her funeral; when services were over, we took the first road away from the church and proceeded to get lost after turning too many times. We drove long enough for time to disappear and gave ourselves a while to exist in a space our grandmother hadn’t disappeared from. I still take those roads for the same reasons eight years later.

ALINA: As a poet, your voice is lyrical, rooted in place, and yet somehow, also, watching the narrator from a corner. I love reading your poems. Can you share a few recent publications with us and tell us what prompted them or how they came about?

RACHEL: That’s such a kind thing to say and I appreciate it more than I can elaborate.

“Instead” is from The Furious Gazelle’s Spring Writing Contest. It’s a pretty straightforward delivery, showing the dark and light I grew up in—maybe the way finding my own darkness was a form of light. For those who grew up in emotionally abusive situations, spectrum thought is a common theme.

“Blurring” is one I’m so pleased found a home at Pidgeonholes. It was in a weird way for my uncle Earl, who struggled with alcoholism. Despite his problems he was always the one on that side of the family who showed me kindness or valued me as an individual. He and I had a lot of things in common, at least in the notion of getting black-sheeped for failing to align with family themes we didn’t feel kin to. It also pays homage to my mother’s earliest teaching: acknowledgment. Without an awareness of someone’s struggles we tend to misname their motivations. My uncle wasn’t a bad man anymore than those who hurt him and then condemned him for trying to survive it.

“Yellow” is one of those poems that tumbled out on its own in reaction to reality and thankfully found a home at Anti-Heroin Chic. I could ramble on and on about the failures of our government on immigration but above all and simply put: children ought not ever be caged. My nephew, who was three years old at the time, wouldn’t know how to process such cruelty if he were aware of it. I find solace in his good heart, the way he’s always had sweet interactions with playground kids—when they didn’t speak English or before he spoke it clearly.

ALINA: As an editor of three literary magazines, can you tell us a little bit about each and poets you've discovered in your role as an editor?

RACHEL: I’m the poetry editor at cahoodaloodaling, which is best described as a collaborative publication. Our issues are shaped by an eclectic staff, Raquel Thorne swiveling in the front chair, and a revolving guest editor. We also have varying calls for submissions, based on either a theme or a style, and we love to see how our collaborators interpret them. As such, our issues are ever-changing and our style ever-evolving. 

At Hobo Camp Review, I serve as an associate editor alongside James H. Ducan, who does all the heavy lifting. As he decribes it, the camp is a gathering place for the road-weary storyteller. We invite writers to sit a spell by the fire and tell us where they've been. We're interested in travel stories, something with a dark twist, and something that'll make us laugh. Pretty much anything that sounds great read aloud beneath a railroad bridge at night. 

Screen Door Review is a literary magazine authored by individuals belonging to the southern queer community of the United States. The purpose of the magazine, as worded by managing editor, Alesha Dawson, is to provide a platform of expression to those whose identities—at least in part—derive from the complicated relationship between queer person and place. Specifically, queer person and the South. Through publication, we aim to not only express, but also validate and give value to these voices, which are oftentimes overlooked, undermined, condemned, or silenced. 

In working with these journals, I’ve certainly discovered some of my favorite poets. Early on at cahoodaloodaling, we published the ever brilliant Kate Garrett and now I don’t even know how many of her books I have on my shelves; she writes on the wildest topics yet makes everything seem less distant and more capable of understanding. Shahe Mankerian, who was published in the America Is Not the World anthology, cahoodaloodaling, and Hobo Camp Review, is another poet who I can’t rave enough about – find anything he’s written and prepare to be enamored or gutted, maybe at the same time. Through Screen Door Review I discovered Raye Hendrix, who is also an Alabama-bred poet and bravely spans the spectrum on topics and voice.

ALINA: Do you have any submissions calls you'd like to share?

 RACHEL: Both Hobo Camp Review and Screen Door Review are wide open for general submissions. We’ll soon peek out from a much needed hiatus to properly announce the In Cahoots contest at cahoodaloodaling, as well, which will offer a $150 prize for the winning collaborative work!

ALINA: What is your favorite place in Alabama? Tell me about it like it we have good coffee and time. 

RACHEL: I love the Shoals, a collective term for the cities of Florence, Muscle Shoals, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia. The cities all sort of collide with each other in north Alabama and little is thought of borders. The greatest songs in the country were recorded there while the best bands are still learning to play. Progressive ideas are elbowing their ways into popular acceptance via groups like Equality Shoals and Project Say Something. History is at home there from the work of people like Helen Keller, W.C. Handy, and countless others.

The myth of the Tennessee River’s singing has navigated its way to a full-on way of life by the locals or anyone who passes through. Artistry, or maybe motivation, is in the water. It’d honestly take a fool to dismiss the myth when the best parts of the cities are hollering distance from the river.

ALINA: Are you working on any current projects? If so, what?

RACHEL: I’ve been tinkering with a chapbook largely to do with being brought up in the South and making sense of what we’re born into—wondering toward the balm time rubs on rough-edged memories.

ALINA: What poetry craft articles or essays have helped you fine-tune your craft? Why? What did you learn from them?

RACHEL: Reading, in general, is the finest of tuners. Craft articles tend to lose me, though I understand and appreciate their intent. I’ve never been a typical learner, though I did learn to untangle my thoughts and simplify them through Mary Oliver’s Upstream, a collection of essays. Time is a thing I study, possibly too much. My writing exists largely within specific moments but through reading Oliver’s essays, I’ve learned to see moments as instructional notes rather than things to get hung up on too much. Workshopping is also the best of tools. Finding individuals who’ll call me out for my incessant adverbs or remind me of the point I’m trying to make—that’s all pretty priceless.


ALINA: Yes, I love Upstream…. it’s such a riffle-maker. And, finally, five Alabama-related metaphors or similes for the color red. Just because it’s that time of year again.

RACHEL: I want nail polish as red as the clay behind Maw-Maw’s house.

My neighbor looked piss-ant mad when the law showed up.

I heard her husband run off with a woman who had strawberry lips.

His face looked like a southern woman’s stove eye on Sunday. 

Momma’s face was on fire when I got in so late.

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We’re so proud to welcome this beloved Alabama writer to AWC. Rachel Nix is an editor for cahoodaloodaling, Hobo Camp Review and Screen Door Review. Her own work has appeared in Barren, Occulum, and Pidgeonholes. She resides in Northwest Alabama, where pine trees outnumber people rather nicely. You can learn more about Rachel Nix’s writing and freelance editing work at her website, Chasing the Grey or by following her on twitter.

AWC Author-to-Author Interview with Claire Datnow (author of The Sizzling Six series of ecological mysteries) and Emma Fox, author of YA fantasy novel The Arrow and the Crown

Claire Datnow: It is my honor to speak with Emma Fox, author and reviewer of young adult fantasy and historical fiction. In this interview Emma reveals the roots of her inspiration, and the path she travelled to write and publish The Arrow and The Crown, a YA fantasy novel. I’d like to start by asking Emma what influences or inspirations came to bear on this novel.

Emma: I’ve loved fairytales for as long as I can remember. As a child, I read every fairytale collection I could find, from cultures all around the world. Some of my favorites were the old Grimms’ fairytales, which have such a sense of mystery, loss and longing. A year before I began to write The Arrow and the Crown, my husband and I traveled through southern Germany, visiting many old castles and out-of-the-way villages, and walking through quiet forests and medieval towns. Many details from those experiences found their way into my novel.

Claire: You write “historical fantasy.” What does that mean?

Emma: I love fantasy that draws on actual times and places, while opening up the possibility of other realities. There are some great fairytale retellings in this genre, such as Shannon Hale’s Book of a Thousand Days, which recasts a little-known Grimms’ fairytale into the world of medieval Mongolia, or Katherine Arden’s Winternight Trilogy, where historical figures from 14th century Russia combine forces with characters from folklore.

Although The Arrow and the Crown is an original fantasy, I wanted it to have the feel of a classic fairytale, along with a real sense of history and culture. Many of the cultural details are drawn from medieval German accounts and artifacts. I researched everything from medieval cookbook recipes, to herbal lore, to the proper way to thatch a roof…and everything in-between. These are the sort of details that make the book more vivid and “grounded.” But there are also magical elements, which I think help to open up a sense of mystery and wonder to the reader.

Claire: How has the AWC helped in your development as a writer? 

Emma: Back in 2017, I entered the first pages of The Arrow and the Crown (under its working title The Beast of Weissburg) in the AWC Writing Competition. It was the first contest I’d entered since deciding to pursue my writing passion a few years earlier. When my entry won 1st place in Juvenile Fiction, it was a huge encouragement to me to keep pursuing this dream! I’ve also appreciated the warm welcome and support I’ve received from various members of the AWC. And the conference workshops I’ve attended have helped me hone my craft and learn more about the process and business of writing.  

Claire: What are some of the hurdles and surprises you’ve encountered as a debut novelist?

Emma: Well, I think this experience is a common one, but when I first started out as an author, I didn’t realize how huge and complex the publishing industry is. I had to spend a lot of time educating myself on the business side of writing: how the industry works, who the players are, how to write query letters and proposals, and the pros and cons of various publication options. Now that my novel’s out in print, I’ve had to continue learning how to manage and market it, while also carving out time for continued creative work.

As for joys, it has been great fun to see my book spread to unexpected places, and to receive feedback from various readers. So far The Arrow and the Crown has traveled to at least 7 different countries! I’ve also been surprised at the age range of my readership. I conceived this book as a young adult (YA) novel, and I’ve had fantastic responses from teen readers, which I love. But I’ve also heard back from readers all the way from 7- to 70-year-olds. It’s pretty neat, as an author, to see where your words may land!

Claire: What’s coming up next?

Emma: I’m currently working on a fantasy novel set in early-19th century Russia. It’s a fascinating time to research and write about, and there’s such a wealth of mythology in eastern Europe that most American readers are unfamiliar with. I’ve enjoyed this chance to journey farther afield in my writing!

You can learn more about Emma’s work and read her book reviews at her website.

Adam Prince earned his B.A. from Vassar College, his M.F.A. from the University of Arkansas, and his Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee. His award-winning fiction has appeared in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, Narrative Magazine, and Sewanee Review, among others. His debut short story collection The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men was published with Black Lawrence Press in June of 2012. He is currently at work on a novel and several screenplays. He serves as the visiting writer for the Stoke’s Center for Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama.

Fun Facts

A short story that Adam co-wrote with his wife, Charlotte Pence, was listed as “Other Distinguished Stories of 2017” in Best American Short Stories, 2018. You can read “So Far” online.

David Rice said of Adam’s debut fiction collection: “Unable to bear the pressure of wanting everything, they try to convince themselves that happiness means living with less than enough.” Learn why.

“I think inspiration is largely a myth. It’s tied to the myth of talent, which makes writers seem like we’re special people, sage-types who channel the infinite. Of course, I’m flattered when people tell me I’m talented, but I don’t really believe it. When I started writing, my work was terrible: overintellectual, overdramatic, unclear, pompous, abstract . . . And more than anything resembling talent, what I had going for me was a great interest in writing and an even greater fear of failure. I was bad, but I was willing to work really hard to get good. So when my students turn in a story that doesn’t go over too well in workshop, I tell them not to worry—that my own writing was much, much worse.” Learn more about Adam’s thoughts on inspiration.

“THE WRITING PROCESS”, a workshop with Adam Prince
We understand that creative writing is a process, but we’re often not quite sure what that process might look like, and the prescriptive, connect-the-dots approach of many writing how-to books threatens to suck the life out our work. From conception, to prewriting, to outlining, to early drafts, to revision, all the way through to the final draft, this workshop serves as a creative toolbox for making your process more effective, creative, and fun.

Register for the 2019 Conference at Orange Beach.

AWC is thrilled to welcome Becky McLaughlin to Orange Beach as faculty for the 2019 Conference. She will be facilitating the following three workshops at the AWC Conference this November:

Psyche  Character  Plot

Using the concept of the psyche for building character and generating plot, this workshop will show you how psychoanalytic concepts such as the mirror stage, object small a, repression, screen memory, fundamental fantasy, primal scene, desire, and the drive can help you create a psyche, out of which comes character and thus the conflict of plot. Even if a reader is never directly shown a character’s repressed material, a good writer knows that conscious action is the result of the workings of the unconscious, and thus every good writer must know what his or her characters are repressing. You might ponder, for example, how Doris Lessing’s Martha Quest was unconsciously shaped by her mother’s not-good-enough parenting skills or what the unconscious effects of arson were on William Faulkner’s Sarty Snopes or what drives Manley Pointer to steal Hulga’s artificial leg in Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People.”

Nervous Nellies, Pervs, and Psychos

Want to write a twisted love story featuring two tortured neurotics, one a beautiful hysteric and the other a lonely obsessional? Intelligent erotica based on the perverse sexuality of the exhibitionist, the fetishist, or the voyeur? A psychologically informed horror story with a psychotic killer as your central character? In this workshop, you will learn what psychoanalysis has to say about the psychical structure of the neurotic, the pervert, and the psychotic (i.e., what makes them tick) so that your fictional characters will have the ring (not to say the tics!) of psychological authenticity.

The Unconscious, Automatic Writing, and Collage Poetry

The Surrealists and their art, whether literary or visual, were deeply influenced by Sigmund Freud and his attempts to access the unconscious, the concept around which all of psychoanalysis revolves. If you have ever felt that your attachment to the rational, reasonable, and probable is restricting your ability to be creative, then the Surrealists’ techniques for stimulating their writing by tapping into the unconscious might be useful to you. In this workshop, we will explore our dreamscapes, play the game of Exquisite Corpse, and engage in various exercises to produce material from the unconscious for use in making collage poetry.

Becky McLaughlin is an associate professor of English at the University of South Alabama, where she teaches courses in critical theory, drama, early American literature, film, and gender studies. She has published essays on a wide range of topics--amputee wannabes, fetishism, feminine jouissance, sexual fantasy, epistemological trauma, auto-ethnography, the voice, and rock music, to name a few--across a wide range of periods and genres such as medieval literature, Restoration comedy, modern poetry, contemporary film, and the fairy tale. Her continuing interest in psychoanalysis has led to the writing of Hysteria, Perversion, and Paranoia in The Canterbury Tales, to be published in 2020 by Medieval Institute Publications, after which she will begin work on a book about gender and madness in contemporary film.

Because of her interest in pedagogy, she has edited a critical theory textbook and, more recently, a collection of essays on pedagogy and theory entitled Putting Theory Into Practice In the Contemporary Classroom: Theory Lessons. She has also published creative nonfiction based on her childhood in the Belgian Congo, her cousin’s suicide in a Memphis jail cell, her experience as an ESL teacher in China just before the Tiananmen Square massacre, the death of an aerobatic pilot in the Arkansas Delta, her first marriage and its annulment, and the panic attack as hysterical symptom. Although a smaller oeuvre, her fiction and poetry have appeared in journals such as Westview, Transverse, and Intelligent Erotica. She is currently editing a collection of essays on Lacanian and Foucauldian approaches to the body, under contract with McFarland Press, and writing a screenplay based on the puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

It is simply impossible to list all the amazing things that AWC writers have accomplished this year—it would take a paid staff member in order to do the value, breadth, and diversity of these marvels justice. What follows is just a tiny snapshot that we hope you share and celebrate and encourage as part of Alabama’s growing writing community that seeks to both include and represent the diversity of this state.

AWC doesn’t believe that prizes or reviews determine the value of a writer’s work. We believe, instead, that the writing itself seeks to find an audience for whom it is both meaningful and significant. We support Alabama writers at all ages and stages of their development. As a result, we make an attempt to provide space for the writers who aren’t getting covered by local newspapers, the writers who lack publicists, the writers who are truly outside an academic community or a network of gatekeepers. There is no one-size-fits-all here—and most writers would be horrified to live in a world where one size diminished beauty by narrowing it.

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Poet Jacqueline Trimble speaking to Don Noble on Alabama Public Television.

A snapshot of happenings

After growing beneath the wing of AWC, the MAGIC CITY POETRY FESTIVAL stretched into its own and became a 501c3 nonprofit this year. We are thrilled that this celebration of Birmingham poets has become a permanent fixture of Alabama’s literary landscape thanks to the vision and persistence of its Executive Director, Ashley M. Jones.

SUE BRANNAN WALKER’S fascinating poetry collection, Let Us Imagine Her Name, earns a thoughtful review from Frederick W. Bassett.

Two of MYSTI MILWEE’s English poems "Waiting for a Lovely Soul" and "The Path of Life" were translated into Hindi and published in the newspaper News Folder in New Delhi, India.

The first recipient of AWC’s Jane Rascoe Honorary Membership Fellow (sponsored by her spouse Wayne Rascoe) was awarded to Birmingham poet, JESSICA SMITH. Soon after this award, Jessica Smith went on to win the 2019 Betty Jane Abrahams Memorial Prize from the Academy of American Poets for her poem, “Daybooks May 3 2013”. We are so proud of this poet.

BOB MCCOUGH’S “Books, Beards, Booze” podcast is available for free streaming online. A great source for Alabama’s steampunk literature community.

Poet JACQUELINE TRIMBLE is writing for the first South African online soap opera in Afrikaans. Theshow, Die Testament, airs on September 2, and American Happiness, Jackie’s collection of poetry, is as poignant as it is lyrical.

ADAM DAVIS continues to combine faith and hope in his devotionals, this time partnering with the one and only Lt. Colonel David Grossman to make Bulletproof Marriage, a devotional for the times.

In the works

Next week, the newly-formed AWC Committee for Education will be meeting at Claire Datnow’s home in Hoover to begin planning a series of free writing workshops that enable local writers to share their skills with the community.

As for what’s coming….. is it too much to say everything? Not to mention the availability of the Awarded Writers Collection in print and ready for online purchase.

Take a peek at the Calendar or visit the AWC Facebook Page to catch up on what’s coming soon.

AWC Helps Alabama Writers’ Forum Celebrate Its 25 Years of Programming by Partnering to Sponsor Youth Writing Workshop

The AWC board is pleased to announce its support of the Alabama Writers’ Forum’s 25thAnniversary celebration, which will take place at the Alabama School of Fine Arts in downtown Birmingham on Sunday, September 22.

The AWC will be a sponsoring patron of the event, with its financial support ($500) underwriting a youth writing workshop led by the day’s featured guest, bestselling novelist and 2019 Harper Lee Award-winner Daniel Wallace.

Following the workshop, which will benefit students from the Alabama School of Fine Arts and several other schools in Jefferson County and the city of Birmingham, Wallace will give a public reading of his work in the Dorothy Jemison Day Theater on the ASFA campus starting at 2 p.m.

Tickets for the 2 p.m. reading are available to AWC members at the Forum’s member rate of $30; two lucky AWC members will receive VIP tickets by drawing. VIP tickets include premium seating and a signed limited edition print of a Daniel Wallace original drawing.

All proceeds go to supporting the Forum’s much-needed literary arts programming, including its Writing Our Stories program, which brings high-quality, year-long creative writing instruction to Alabama schools and juvenile justice facilities where such creative opportunities would otherwise be unavailable.

To purchase tickets, visit Eventbrite at https://bit.ly/30NSRqZ.

No purchase is necessary to enter the AWC drawing for VIP tickets; simply email AWC board member TJ Beitelman at tjbeitelman@asfa.k12.al.us to enter.