Interview with Nancy Hightower

Last one for Issue 7, folks. We’re working on three days until the submission period closes now, so hurry the hell up or else you’ll have to wait a whole month to submit.

Here’s Nancy, author of the poem “The Forgetting (Bathsheba’s Lament).”

Tell me about your poem “The Forgetting (Bathsheba’s Lament).”

The poem was inspired by the story of King David, when he’s gotten so old that he has trouble keeping warm. His officials bring him a young virgin tend to him, although he’s so old he can’t even have sexual relations with her. But I always wondered what Bathsheba thought of the whole situation. Bathsheba was the “great” love of his life—he broke all the rules for her and her second son was Solomon, who went on to rule. So, it’s all about seeing your body being replaced with a younger model.

What or who inspires you to write?

I’m not sure “inspired” is the best term, since often, one has to write when there is NO inspiration—they have to make it.
But other times, I would say certain stories resonate with me—such as those written by Flannery O’Connor and Franz Kafka. I love their surreal worlds and try to incorporate that strange otherness in my short stories and poetry.

Do you have a blog/website?
Yes, it’s nancyhightower.com

Where can we read you next?
I have a poetry collection coming out with Port Yonder Press later this year, plus some poems coming from Stone Highway Review and Forge Journal.

What are you working on right now?
A short fiction collection, called Kinds of Leaving. In these stories, the landscapes come alive in various ways. I am very much tied to sense of place—I’ve lived in the South, near the Four Corners area in Colorado, and now New York City. Those spaces and places seep into you.

Any advice for other writers?
I’m not one of those writers who write every day, but I would say that writers should always keep what they’re writing on the back burner. Always be jotting down notes or phrases you want to expand on.

Interview with Sarah Ann Winn

Sarah Ann Winn won our 2nd Annual Flash Poetry Contest with her poem “Sargasso Sea,” got published, and pocketed $20. You want twenty whole dollars too, and the dubious honor of publication in Bop Dead City? You’ve got less than a week to submit your best story or poem about the first time you…well, anything.

Hurry up.

Describe your work in 25 words or less.
I think my poems are all a variety of being carried away with an idea, usually in the direction of “what could be.”

Tell me about your poem “Sargasso Sea.”
“Sargasso Sea” is the result of a prompt I was given in a class that required us to write 79 poems in a semester. This prompt gave the title, and suggested it be a certain number of lines. (I’ve since forgotten the full constraint.) I’d been doing a lot of reading about the plant life in the ocean, and that one struck me as full of mythic potential. I wanted to write a poem that used the ocean references in a fresh way, hoping for a sort of image echo between the massive drift of weeds and a field of grazing horses on a cloudless day.

Is this your first time winning a writing contest? How does it feel?
The same day I won this contest, I received notice that I’d won the Virginia Downs Poetry contest, and I’d never won a writing contest before. I was awarded the Completion Fellowship at George Mason for my final year there, but an individual work being recognized feels much more affirming!

What or who inspires you to write?
I’ve always loved to write, and have a daily routine to keep the inspiration close at hand. I also read widely, and when I start to struggle for inspiration, I grab my camera and go for a drive. Something about the somewhat mindless activity of driving combined with the search for something to frame pulls the poems a little closer. I find a lot of inspiration in conversations with my husband, who watches a lot of news stories. He always has something strange to share that gets me scribbling.

What authors have influenced you as a writer?
Elizabeth Bishop, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Federico Garcia Lorca, Marge Piercy, Margaret Atwood, Rebecca Solnit, Natalie Goldberg, E.B. White, Mark Doty – the list is enormous. I have always loved to read, and as a children’s librarian, I return to the ones I loved growing up, so they continue to shape my writing now. Of course the authors who have had the most direct hand in shaping me as a writer are my teachers. Their encouragement and guidance have shaped my poems and my poetics, particularly Jennifer Atkinson, Eric Pankey and Judyth Hill.

Do you have a blog/website?
I do! I post writing prompts and photos about once a month at bluebirdwords.com.

Where can we read you next?
My poem “The Horsehead Nebula” is in the current issue of Stirring. I have a particular fondness for this one, because it was written right after “Sargasso Sea,” and uses the form of a beautiful in-law (which requires every word in the poem to come from the letters in the title). I also have upcoming poems in [d]ecember and the Massachusetts Review.

What are you working on right now?
I’m working on poems which I hope will become my second book. They’re inspired by my love of children’s literature, especially stories I read as a child. My manuscript, entitled “Variable Stars” is submitted all around the web, and I have high hopes that it’ll get picked up.

Any advice for other writers?
Don’t take rejection personally, and read as much as you can! Also, if you don’t already have one, find a group online or offline who will be with you in your submission highs and lows. I’m part of a great group on Facebook, who cheer me on, and boo and hiss at Tuesday (rejection day).

Anything else you’d like to say?
Thank you for the opportunity, and I’m happy to have had the thrill of my first contest winner with Bop Dead City!

Interview with Marie Nunalee

A mere two-ish weeks left in our submission period, people. If you haven’t submitted yet, get it in soon.

Here’s Marie, who let us publish her poem “Women.”

 

Describe your work in 25 words or less.

Exorcism.

Tell me about your poem “Women.”

“Women” to me is about the emotional violence women inflict upon themselves, but also about the external aggressions big and small we experience on a daily basis. The internalizing nature of misogyny.

What or who inspires you to write?

I started out taking fiction writing workshops when I was in college, studying with Joseph Bathanti and Kelly Cherry. Prose is, more or less, my background. Writing poetry can be like delving into black water. I write poetry to make sense of an emotional state I am in and to discover what I know, as Flannery O’. once said. And to fingerpaint, linguistically!

What authors have influenced you as a writer?

Audre Lorde, Annie Dillard, Lydia Davis, Gregory Corso, Laura Kasischke, Amiri Baraka, Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Noam Chomsky, Gertrude Stein, Simone de Beauvoir, Carson McCullers, Octavia Butler, Diane DiPrima, Ray Bradbury, Patti Smith, Anne Carson, bell hooks, Albert Camus, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Frank X. Walker, …

Do you have a blog/website?

swordfishsermons.tumblr.com

Where can we read you next?

For now, I post rough cuts fairly often on Tumblr. Check #alt lit.

What are you working on right now?

Searching within for shiny new ways to be brave and honest. Writing 3-5 poems every spare day I have. One in ten pieces, I estimate, will eventually make their way out into the world. Also, I am reading everything I can get my greasy little hands on.

Any advice for other writers?

Read more than you write. Don’t stop. Read magazines like this one!

Anything else you’d like to say?

I would like to say that I always loathe this question when in job interviews. And yes, it is only tobacco in that pipe.

Interview with Ruben Rodriguez

Time for another interview, if only to prove to readers and issue buyers that I don’t always slack. We’re talking with Ruben Rodriguez, winner of Issue 7’s Flash Fiction Contest, and it wasn’t even close this time around. An unmentioned fact is that in lieu of prize money cash, he wanted to be paid in issues. Such a darling.

Also, full disclosure, we are related. (This joke plays better if you know my last name and can see how pale, pale, pale I am). Well, somewhere down the line we are, but then again, aren’t all of us? Anyway, here he is.

Describe your work in 25 words or less.

Focused. Leaping.

Tell me about your story “Inheritance.”

I wanted to see how much of a relationship I could build over a short stretch of page. The subject matter is a bit gruesome, but I wrote it, so I guess that’s my fault. I was thinking about the extremes of thrift and burning the end of a rope. One thing led to another and I had ended up with a corpse on my hands. The final image is a personal favorite. It’s the only one in the story I can say is in any way autobiographical. I really wanted to give the reader the notion of closure. I don’t know if that comes across, but let’s pretend that it does, and I’ll concede that we are talking about an itty-bitty door.

Is this your first time winning a writing contest? How does it feel?

This is not the first contest I have one, but it is the first time that the prize included publication.

I’m stoked. It’s cool to show people you name in print. It’s the final validation for a story. Someone else in the world has said, Yes, people should read this. And that’s always nice.

What or who inspires you to write?

I do it because I have a good relationship with my subconscious. I like it and its indifferent about me. I’m always curious as to what I’ll write. I try not to give it too much thought. This is not to say I’m driving blindly through a corn maze, but I have been part of a backyard-corn-maze-project and I am a terrible driver with worse vision. I think it is important for people to be in the business of creating, not for any monetary gain, but for the opportunity to increase their humanity.

What authors have influenced you as a writer?

This question makes me sit funny in my chair. No Direction Home turned me on to Ginsberg, who led to Kerouac. The two pushed Burroughs, and though I wouldn’t call my style of writing Beatifik, Burroughs’s epigraph in Cities of the Red Night “Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted” is the basis on which I write my stories. Vonnegut lights up my brain. Ron Arias’s The Road to Tamazunchale stirred something in me recently. Aimee Bender blows my socks off, but I’m extremely jealous of her ability, so let’s not talk about that. There are others with stranger and some what impossible to follow connections, but I’d hate to bore everyone.

Do you have a blog/website?

No.

Where can we read you next?

I have stories coming out in The Sand Canyon Review and Badlands. If you really got a hankering Black Heart Magazine and theNewerYork have a few of my stories in their online archives.

What are you working on right now?

Too much. The heart of it is a collection of short stories. They explore the absurdist/surreal quadrants of my brain. I’m inclined to drive myself to utter madness over the summer and dive into a longer project, but let’s keep that labeled as speculative for the time being. I am also excited to start work on The Great American Literary Magazine, a new online journal. Check it out.

http://www.thegreatamericanlitmag.com/

Any advice for other writers?

It only happens if you do it.

Anything else you’d like to say?

I saw some people hang-gliding today. I saw someone work a cleaver. And I listed to some Nina Simone. I also broke my comb.

Interview with Tom Weller

Our latest interview is with the writer Tom Weller, who contributed the story “Lightning Woman” to our last issue.  To read it and lots of other great, important works that will keep you up with the zeitgeist, buy a copy of Issue 7.

 

 

Describe your work in 25 words or less.

Whimsy, meet despair,   Despair, meet whimsy.  Now dance.

 

Tell me about your story “Lightning Woman.”

Years ago I read interviews with novelist Harry Crews in which he described how while growing up poor in the South the Sears catalogue was one of his greatest sources of entertainment. He would flip through the catalogue creating characters out the models, complete with dark secrets hiding under their shiny veneers, and create stories by imagining these characters interacting.  I now do this with strangers’ Facebook pages.

“Lightning Woman” started when I found pictures of a dog’s birthday cake on Facebook.  The story pretty much took off from there, fueled by a desire to experiment with fabulist and fairy tale elements.

What or who inspires you to write?

Lots of things. Old pictures and advertisements from circuses and sideshows. Dear Abby letters. Peanuts comic strips. Fragments of conversations I hear while eavesdropping. Pro wrestling shows, especially from the late 80s. Extended and surprising metaphors and similes in hip hop lyrics. I also spend a lot of longish runs thinking about and refining drafts of stories.

 

What authors have influenced you as a writer?

Many of the superstars: Flannery O’Connor, Raymod Carver, Tobias Wolfe, Sherman Alexie, Stuart  Dybeck, Gabriel Garcia Márquez.  Lewis Nordan’s Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair was the first short story collection I ever loved.  I reread Junot Diaz’s Drown every couple of years.  Aimee Bender short stories always surprise me in good ways.

 

Do you have a blog/website?

I don’t have a website or blog, but anybody who is really curious can find me on Facebook and we can become weird internet friends. That’s a good way to get updates on my publications and writing projects, and to know every time I’ve gone for a run, and see pictures of my dog.

 

Where can we read you next?

My short story “Mrs. Cinnamon” recently went up at Paper Darts.  My short story “Ponko Returns” is forthcoming in Phantom Drift.

 

What are you working on right now?

A series of stories inspired by entries in old editions of The Guinness Book of World Records.