Digital Interview with Sarah P. Miller Conducted by English Program Faculty, October 2012

1) What year did you graduate and what was your area of emphasis? 

I graduated in spring 2012 in English with an emphasis in Professional Writing.

2) How did you wind up working at UW-Platteville after graduation? 

I wound up working at UW-Platteville after graduation because the fine folks in University Information and Communications decided to keep me. I started working as a student writer when I first transferred to UW-Platteville as a non-traditional student in spring of 2011, and happily, I've never left.

3) Could you tell us a little about the paths you've traveled since you graduated? 

Well, the path I traveled before I graduated was a bit more interesting. I lived in five cities in ten years, traveled a lot, screwed up, had adventures, got married, worked hard, had fun – it was kind of a nomadic existence. When I finally decided to finish my degree here, things settled down for me. By far the best thing that’s happened since I've graduated has been the opportunity to do work I really love. As the director of social community for the university, I’m in charge of all of the official UW-Platteville social media. Not only am I able to engage and build relationships with all sorts of different people connected to the university – prospective students, current students, alumni, donors, the greater community, etc. – I get to tell them about all the amazing people here and all the great work that’s being done. It can be a tough job sometimes, especially when people forget that there’s a real person behind our accounts or when I need to work in the evenings or on the weekends, but it’s so rewarding, and that’s a privilege.  I don’t take that for granted.

4) What are a couple of your favorite student memories of your time at UW-Platteville? 

Because I was a non-traditional student, most of my favorite student memories of my time at UW-Platteville are all about what I learned in the classroom. After several years of working to support myself as a writer, coming back to school was invigorating in a way that changed me – I actually believe learning again in a university setting altered the pathways in my brain. I went to three different schools before landing here (yes, three), so I have enough outside experience to say that the UW-Platteville English Program is just outstanding. Amanda Tucker, Dennis Ciesielski, Kara Candito, Kory Wein, Terry Burns, Kathleen Tigerman – they taught me and guided me and pushed me in a way only the best teachers can. They not only made me a better writer, they made me a better person, and that’s priceless.

5) Was there something you had to do here which you felt was a waste of time, or something that you would do differently? 

I don’t really believe anything’s a waste. Every experience ends up making you into the person you are – especially the experiences that seem pointless or horrible or both. Did I love Math of Finance? No. Did it help my brain become stronger? Absolutely. I don’t regret anything about my time here as a student.

6) Is there a class or classes that you wish now you could have taken, but didn't? If so, why? 

I wish I could have taken history classes here. My focus was on graduating as soon as possible, and I was working almost full-time as well, so I could really only handle my required courses. I love history, so I feel like I missed something I would have really enjoyed.

7) Can you tell us about one or two high points of your life since you've graduated? 

A high point was being hired here as director of social community, definitely. Also having my own time again. Going to school and working was really tough, but it taught me to value and appreciate my free time. I have more to spend now on my family and friends, and on reading, and that’s something I’m really grateful for.

8) (If you are a writer) Do you still write? Can we follow up and interview you for our writing blog later on? 

I do still write, but it’s harder now. I loved the structure of writing classes, and I really miss the feedback and critiques from my classmates and professors. I’d prefer not to be interviewed about my writing.

9) Could you ask yourself another question about something you wished we had asked you about, and answer it? 

“What would you say to people who claim that English degrees are useless?”

I would say they are so incredibly wrong. I've never been good at anything other than writing, so there was really no choice for me, but far more importantly, the study of English – both literature and writing – teaches you how to think. In our modern age more than ever, this is a critical life skill. And the ability to write and to communicate well is immensely valuable in the professional world, whether you’re a librarian or a stockbroker or a biologist. Doomsayers like to talk about the death of the English language (take Dr. C’s “History of the English Language” if you want to build up a treasure chest of arguments against these people), but we are more surrounded than ever by text. It’s everywhere, and the ability to parse it and craft it and use it intelligently will get you far no matter what field you choose to pursue.

10) Where do you see yourself ten years from now? 

If I’m lucky, I’ll still be doing work I love. That’s all I really want – to wake up excited about my day and to be genuinely committed to what I’m doing. One thing being here at UW-Platteville has taught me is that I care very much about doing work that contributes to the world. I may not stay in higher education, but I definitely want to serve. The good news is there are a lot of ways to do that.

Digital Interview with Jens Nestingen Conducted by English Faculty Member, October 2012

1.)    What year did you graduate and what was your area of emphasis?

2005

Professional Writing

2.)    Where are you now, and what are you doing?

I currently live in Woodbury Minnesota. I’ve spent the last 4.5 years selling capital equipment around the world.

3.)    Could you tell us a little about the paths you’ve traveled since you graduated?

My first job post graduation was working as a residential carpenter (I used my degree 0% at that particular job).  I then took a glamorous job mowing lawns and running a landscaping a company (bringing my total usage of my English degree to a whopping 0x0).  After a year of largely manual labor I fell into corporate America.  Full blown, suit and tie, short hair corporate America.  I took a job as a professional recruiter and worked my way into a sales position.  At that point I realized that using my degree in anything more than an implied fashion was going to be difficult.  I decided to see where a job as a sales guy would take me.  I ended up working as a technical sales person for a company that supplied nuclear material handling solutions to companies worldwide.  I was able to go to Europe, and Japan as well as all around the United States and work with some very interesting people on some very interesting projects.

4.)    Was there something you had to do here which you felt was a waste of time?

My time at UWP is probably the only time in my life I will be able to focus 100% on just pursuing academic knowledge.  I can’t really classify the pursuit of knowledge a waste of time.  Had I been asked that question when I graduated, I would have listed off a litany of classes I thought were “useless” or “pointless” (largely any classes focusing on grammar, foreign language, and almost all math courses).  The reality is those classes were classes I was either A) too prideful to take seriously, and therefore classes I did poorly in or B) courses that I felt had no bearing on my future.  My attitude showed  a stunning lack of foresight and maturity, as the classes I felt were outside the scope of what I conceived to be useable knowledge are the classes I rely most heavily on now. 

I do not carry a single second of regret in the major I chose to pursue.  I do however; deeply regret not taking the time and effort necessary to excel in academic areas that were outside my talents.  I was fortunate enough to go to a good university and be exposed to everything a university education is supposed to be about; learning as much as you can, about as much as you can.  Instead I chose to learn as much as I could about the things I was good at, and largely ignore the rest.  Not working hard enough when I had the chance was my only wasted time.

5.)    Is there a class or classes that you wish now you could have taken, but didn’t? If so, why?
       

I would have taken more science courses, specifically physics and chemistry.  My career path has forced me into some very technical situations, situations where I have had to sit down and talk intelligently about physics and chemical reactions with PhD Nuclear Physicists and Doctoral Candidates in Chemistry (please keep in mind these people are not asking me my opinion on their work, that would be like asking the family pet to edit your manuscript, it’s a bad idea).  Any and all of the knowledge I have on those areas of thought have been through my own reading and exposure in industry situations. 

Having an English Degree has helped me communicate with people both orally and in writing in relative ways.  If I had studied more hard sciences I could relate to many different people on a much different level and be more effective. 

One caveat, Physics and Chemistry are incredibly interesting, math for the sake of math, is a deep black depressing hole.

Classes I took that are an absolute must for anyone in the English Program.

Listed in no particular order:

History of the English Language

Advanced Writing

Grammar

Rhetoric

6.)    Can you tell us about one or two high points of your life since you’ve graduated?

My high points are pretty mundane, very satisfying, though largely normal.  I’ve been married since my senior year at Platteville (in layman’s terms, a long time) the fact that my wife still finds any redeeming qualities in my exceedingly bad habit riddled persona is pretty neat.  I have two kids that will no doubt outsmart me by about half way through preschool, and a very nice house in the suburbs of Saint Paul (and an enormous dog). 

7.)    Do you ever write for fun? (If you do, can we follow up and interview you for our writing blog later on?) yes

My wife started a blog, and lets me contribute to it occasionally.  It’s largely about all the work we’ve done to make our house less dated.  I’m typically too busy actually updating the house to write about it.   

8.)    Is an English Degree applicable in areas outside of writing and teaching?

An English Degree is a great foundation for a career.  I have been fortunate enough to develop relationships with Company Presidents, Government Officials, and Scientists, all from divergent backgrounds,  I was only able to do that was because I developed a deep understanding of how people react to words and language while studying English at UWP.  In the world outside of college class rooms there is a dearth of effective communication.  Corporate communication is mired in a dearth of buzzwords, and catch phrases all presented in a hackneyed contrived format.  The biggest advantage people can bring to the table in any career endeavor is the ability to work hard and communicate in a succinct and concise fashion. 

Having an English Degree allows me to distill very complex ideas into easy to understand sentences.  Employers will never put “be able to make complex ideas understandable without losing any pertinent information” on a job requirement, that won’t happen.  Having the ability to accurately synthesize and disseminate ideas is crucially important to any employer.  The key is, demonstrating the ability to write and orate, via face to face contact and written correspondence. People communicate more readily in writing today (text and emails) than ever before, being able to write well is indispensable.       

9.)    Is there alum you think we should contact?

Ben Landsee, James Schrader, and Thom Pitcher those guys were the three smartest most talented guys I met in the English program.

Digital Interview with Seiko Lattison Conducted by English Program Faculty, October 2012

1) What year did you graduate and what was your area of emphasis?

2002. It was education, but switched to Literature (if I remember correctly, hahaha)

2) Where are you now, and what are you doing? 

Lincoln, NE. I am working as an Engineering Administrator at Japanese manufacturing company.

3) Could you tell us a little about the paths you’ve traveled since you graduated?
After I graduated from UW-P in 2002, I went to Portland State University, Portland OR to earn a Master’s Degree in Linguistics. However, classes in Linguistics were very boring, which made me want to change majors. Yes, I did change it to Education because I wanted to be a teacher. I graduated from PSU in 2004 and I got my current job in Lincoln, NE. I have been working at this company for 8 years. Yeah I wish I could have gotten a teaching job… I tried, but I didn’t succeed… too bad.

  

4) What are a couple of your favorite memories of your time at UW-Platteville?
-I lived in a dorm for my first year at UW-P. I didn’t have any friends besides one who came to study abroad from Japan with me. I wanted to make friends, so I decided to make “origami” for everyone in the same floor of my dorm, Hugunin and posted it on their dorm doors on the first day of mid-term exam to wish them “good luck.” I think this was an icebreaker!

-Since English was not my 1^st language, I had to study more than other students to keep up with them in class. I studied after midnight every day. One day, I wrote a message to my roommate if my staying up until late was not bothering her sleep. Since then my roommate and I exchanged letters quite often, and I still keep her notes.

5) Was there something you had to do here which you felt was a waste of time?
Everything was very new and interesting to me, and I don’t think I felt “waste of time.”

6) Is there a class or classes that you wish now you could have taken, but didn’t? If so, why?
Umm, I am not quite sure what kind of classes they are offering now, but if there was I wish I could have taken any classes for pharmacist. (Yes, I wish I could become a pharmacist.)

7) Did you study abroad? (Ha, ha, this is funny in your case... sorry again about the 'form interview.') If so, where and what were the high and low points? Yes. Studying at UW-P was a study abroad for me.

8) Can you tell us about one or two high points of your life since you’ve graduated?
I met a wonderful husband at UW-P and we now have 3 beautiful and adorable daughters. Now my company is supporting me in apprehending a green card and soon enough?! I will be a permanent resident! (Now I am a temporary resident).  

9) Do you ever write for fun? (If you do, can we follow up and interview you for our writing blog later on?)
No…

10) What made you want to go to graduate school? Were there particular courses that helped you to prepare for it?
I wanted to be a professor back in my country. I thought being a professor required at least a Master’s Degree. Language and Culture helped me to prepare for it.  

11) Could you ask yourself another question about something you wished we had asked you about, and answer it?

What made you come to the States? Since I was a kid, I thought speaking English would allow me to communicate with a lot of people from various countries. I have been desiring to be able to speak English. When I was a student at Nagasaki University of Foreign Studies, I had an opportunity to go to the US. For a program, with other 20 Japanese students I took ESL classes for 3 weeks and travelled to the West from Iowa for 1 week. It was a very fascinating experience to me. When I stood on stage and read my essay at commencement for the program, I swore that I would return to this country.   

12) Is there another alum you think we should contact?

Does anyone have to be English major? Otherwise, I know other Japanese alumni, Shima, Yukari, and Noriko.

Seiko

Digital Interview with Samuel Snoek-Brown Conducted by English Faculty Member, October 2012

1) When were you at UW-Platteville, and how did you wind up here? (OK, that was two questions.)

I was at Platteville from 2006 to the end of 2008, so, two and a half years? My wife, Jennifer, moved up there in early 2005. She was a reference librarian in Karrmann, which is why we moved there. (I stayed behind in Texas for in `05 and part of `06 to finish my doctoral coursework.) We both were looking for an opportunity to move north to colder climates -- Texas summers, which last roughly 10 months of every year, really weigh on a person. Ironically, we left Platteville to explore a teaching opportunity in the United Arab Emirates, which is even hotter than Texas, but we always missed Wisconsin.

2) Where are you now, and what are you doing?

After UAE, we decided to return to cooler weather and took a chance on moving to Portland, Oregon, where I'd spent my toddler years and to which I’d always wanted to return. Right now, I'm teaching writing and literature at Chemeketa Community College and Pacific Northwest College of Art, and I'm working as production editor for the literary magazine/small press, Jersey Devil Press.

3) Could you tell us a little about the paths you’ve travelled since you left here?

Oops. Already did.

I will add that one of our favorite things to do is travel. While we lived in Platteville, we mostly travelled the area, including several trips to Chicago (our second favorite city in the US) and out to the Field of Dreams farm in Dyersville, Iowa (we love movies). But we also made our second trip to Prince Edward Island and our first trip to Scotland from Platteville. Once we'd moved to UAE, which is a central travel hub for most of the eastern hemisphere, we took the opportunity to travel more: we spent one fall browsing Christmas markets in Vienna, another fall visiting Buddhist monasteries and lounging on beaches in Thailand, and a spring traveling around the Netherlands, where we got stranded for several days in the wake of the Iceland volcano eruption. We also revisited Chicago on a summer home from UAE, and we had a terrific time reconnecting with some of our Platteville friends who drove down to meet us!

4) Any links to your writing projects that you’d like to share, or other things that we should know and ask you about?

Oh, lots. While we lived overseas, I had the opportunity to take a little time away from the classroom and write full time. I missed teaching terribly and I'm really happy to be back in the classroom here in Oregon, but that time focused on writing was tremendously helpful in honing my craft and getting comfortable with my own writing process. I was immensely productive and finished a book of short fiction and a novel, as well as maybe a dozen other stories. Also, my publications began to skyrocket: I published nearly as many stories in 2010 as I had in all the years previous, and in 2011 -- when I was back in the States and submitting work I'd written overseas -- I published twice as much as 2010. This year, the number is better than last, and I've also finished four chapbooks and a rough draft of another novel. All of the book-length work is still under consideration, but the stories are out there and making good waves. In fact, one of my stories led to my job at Jersey Devil Press, and another was the impetus for an interview I did with EJ Runyon. That interview will be on her blog Oct. 14 (http://ejrunyon.wordpress.com/)

Links to most of my current publications are available through my website: http://snoekbrown.com/biography/publications/

I also want to point out that my first post-graduate writing experiences were at Platteville, and the writers there remain good friends and confidants. I worked closely with Wendy Perkins, for instance, whose enthusiasm for National Novel Writing Month finally got me to sign up for the challenge, which is where the novel I wrote overseas came from. For a while, Russ Brickey and I were working together on an online lit journal based out of Platteville. And I continue to work closely with UWP alum Ryan Werner -- his first book of stories was published by my colleagues at Jersey Devil Press. I also stay in touch with some of the young writers I worked with at the Teen Creative Writing Workshops I established at the Platteville Public Library, and I'm thrilled to say those workshops continue today under Werner's tutelage. I even recently met another UWP alum, the poet Michael Lambert, who was visiting Portland.

5) Where do your ideas come from? (Or any other clichéd yet useful question you’d like to ask yourself?)

No, this is a good question. It sounds lame, but beginning writers keep asking it for a reason. Sometimes they want to find new ways to approach writing; other times they have what feel like weird ways of getting into their work, and it’s nice to feel reassured when other writers are just as strange.

I’ve had a lot of good fortune with writing from music, and it’s still my go-to source of inspiration. All the stories in my story collection are based on lines from one Butthole Surfers song, for example. Probably half my flash fiction, including my run at Werner’s Our Band Could Be Your Lit project, came from songs, too. I don’t always tackle interpretations of the lyrics; sometimes I just get a feel for the mood of a piece, other times I listen to instrumental music and ride the rhythms of it. 

I also sometimes dream a story. It sounds like it’s either easy or just dumb luck, but it’s really neither. The trick is to be open to the absurdity of dreams, to be willing to treat the weirdness that your subconscious coughs up with some seriousness and try to convey that to a reader in a way that might make sense to anyone but you.

But ultimately, writing from dreams is the same as writing from music or from life experiences: you just read a ton and write a ton until you develop this almost muscle-memory reflex for recognizing a good story when you see it. That way, wherever the story comes from – whether it’s from music, from dreams, from newspaper clippings, from a conversation you overhead in a coffeehouse, or wherever – you’ll know not only that the idea contains a story, buy also what to do with it. It’s a bit like sculpting: a sculptor can look at a tree trunk or a chunk of marble or a slab of clay and see a figure hiding inside. Writers are open to the stories that hide inside of everything.

6) What are a couple of your favorite memories of your time at UW-Platteville? (Yes, you can talk about least favorite or why you left if you want.)

I loved sitting in the chairs or couches back in the reading area of Karrmann library. I liked meeting students there and hashing out essay ideas with them. 

I loved the pop culture poster sessions I instituted, especially the time then-state Assemblyman Phil Garthwaite dropped by to see what my students were up to. 

I loved sitting at those blue-wire tables outside the student center and eating lunch with my wife in the late-spring sunshine. 

I loved working with the gentlemen of SigEp (I was their faculty advisor, and I’m proud to still be their Brother).

I loved watching the thumb-sized flakes drift like feathers outside my office window during that first snow of fall. I loved the crunch of my shoes in the snow as I walked to campus each winter day. 

I loved Dairy Days. I loved the Fourth of July. I loved eating strawberry shortcake in the summer and walking through corn mazes in fall. 

I loved playing game show host for the academic trivia contests during Homecoming. I loved the parades and the townspeople lined along the sidewalks.

I loved my students. I loved my colleagues. I loved my neighbors. I loved my friends.

7) What writing inspires you?

I have always been driven by beautiful writing, by which I mean beautiful sentences. Sometimes that means intense language and rhythms like Edgar Allan Poe or Cormac McCarthy; sometimes it means quiet, painful realism like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Alice Munro; sometimes it means experimental, poetic writing like JA Tyler or Helen Phillips. But I am always turned on by sentences, by creative uses for words, by rhythms of language both natural and supernatural.

But lately I’ve been really interested in the only-slightly experimental. That is, fiction that flirts with fantasy or magical realism but which leans heavily on the side of realism, or at least in which the characters seem either unaware of or unconcerned about anything odd occurring. Jorge Luis Borges was always good at this. Sarah Rose Etter does a wonderful job of this in stories like “Koala Tide” and “Husband Feeder.” At Jersey Devil Press, we recently published a beautiful little triptych of fables by Matthew Burnside that plays with reality in these ways.

I’m also fascinated by absences in fiction. The missing spouse in Jac Jemc’s My Only Wife, or all the absent mothers and lovers and siblings and limbs in Ethel Rohan’s Cut Through the Bone. It’s like art that’s defined more by its negative space than by what’s actually in the picture. I’m loving that.

8)  Could you ask yourself another question about something you wished we had asked you about, and answer it?

I got nothing. I think I’ve rambled on enough as it is. 

9) What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

You know, I could try to hammer out something clever or something concise, or I could steal advice from people like Robin McKinley or Truman Capote. But I think the best advice I could give, I already wrote down in my Fourteen Principles for Creative Writers. (http://snoekbrown.com/teaching-philosophy/fourteen-principles/) It feels weird to just refer you to my website like this, but really, that’s the advice I have.

But you want something that doesn’t make you click on some link? Okay, here’s the  shortest, easiest advice I know for aspiring writers: 

Write. 

And to hell with everyone who tells you otherwise.

Digital Interview with Ryan Werner Conducted by English Faculty Member, October 2012

1) What year did you graduate and what was your area of emphasis?

I graduated in the winter of 2008 after eleven semesters, several of which involved me failing German and/or math. I started off as a Music major, but wanted to not be able to find a job in a different way, so I switched to English after someone halfheartedly complimented my writing.

2) Where are you now, and what are you doing?

I live in Hazel Green, about twenty minutes from Platteville and about ten minutes from my hometown. I like it here. The population is about 1100. I'm willing to leave, but someone has to give me a good reason. I pay $270 a month, everything included, to live in a huge room in the nicely furnished basement of my buddy Wilson's house. My parents live on an old, inactive farm and I drive there once a week to eat lunch with mom and check my mail. Paperwork is the worst, so I never officially changed my address; or went to grad school. Have you seen those forms? I'd rather be a janitor.

3) Could you tell us a little about the paths you’ve traveled since you graduated?

I'm a janitor.

4) What are a couple of your favorite memories of your time at UW-Platteville?

Nothing fit to print, either for general salaciousness or standard college experience spiel. I met a lot of interesting people, some of whom I actually liked as people and an even smaller fraction of whom actually were good people.

5) Was there something you had to do here which you felt was a waste of time?

I hyper-focused on creative writing to the point that all the math and science classes I had to take ended up being fairly useless. I understand that the math and science themselves weren't nearly as important as learning how to follow procedures and coming to logical, method-based conclusions, but I would have rather just cut my losses and dealt with the problems that come with being an illogical goof: twenty minutes to make a sandwich, all day to run two errands in close proximity, a lifetime to rid myself of overwhelming dread.

6) Is there a class or classes that you wish now you could have taken, but didn’t? If so, why?

I spent five-and-a-half years as an undergrad. If there was a class I wanted to take and didn't, it was probably because it counted for more than one graduation requirement and it was full by the time I got around to registering for classes the week classes start.

7) Can you tell us about one or two high points of your life since you’ve graduated?

I didn't get married or have kids and it's awesome. I listen to Motörhead as loud as I want, whenever I want. If that sounds like something a fifteen year old kid would say, that's probably because it's all I've ever really wanted since I was fifteen.

8) Do you still write? Can we follow up and interview you for our writing blog later on?

I totally still write. My first book, the short short story collection Shake Away These Constant Days, just came out on Jersey Devil Press. I've had short stories, poems, essays, book reviews, and all sort of odd little one-off things (top ten lists, first lines of aborted stories) show up in print and online at places like SmokeLong Quarterly, The Faster Times, [PANK], Juked, Fractured West and a couple dozen other places of varying popularity and legitimacy. I have a website called Ryan Werner (Writes Stuff) that has links to all of this stuff, plus a really unnecessary amount of information about my writing process and progress.

9) Is there another alum you think we should contact?

Get in touch with former adjunct writer professor Sam Snoek-Brown. He's the smartest guy I've ever met, which is to say he's smarter than guys who play in bands and girls who do cocaine if it's free.

Interview with Colin Lessig Conducted by Antonio Bouxa September 2012

What do you write?

Right now I’m focusing on this project; it’s a young adult novel, because I think my primary goal is to reach an audience that doesn’t read.  I know it sounds counterproductive but I want to create material that will inspire people who are like I was when I was a teenager.  I really didn’t read all that much and a lot of my friends didn’t read that much, but there were these odd books here and there we would pick up and say “this is actually really cool” and it sort of inspired people to want to keep reading and look at other texts, and explore other avenues in the literary world, but you have to start with that first groundbreaking book.

So you’re trying to write something that’s more accessible?

Right, and more so than targeting people who already read writing to the fiction community, the story that I want to tell is a focus for those young adults.  Those mainly, I guess male, audience to try and show them that books are really cool and a story that can appeal to them. 

So how do you make a book more accessible, more transparent and manageable?

Whenever you’re going to write for a particular genre, the best thing you can do is read books that are already out there and published in that genre so you can get a sense of what is being produced, what topics are being investigated, what language is being used.  There’s no gratuitous sex in my book, there’s two fifteen year old boys trying to…you know…along with other major themes, one layer is they are trying to get their rocks off.  So I was wondering, how lewd can I get with my language for a young adult novel because I’m not really sure.  When I read stuff for adults there’s no real boundary other than taste, but I was curious as to what I should do for a fourteen, fifteen, sixteen year old male audience, what I can get away with and still be published.  So I would pick up books that were regarded as testing the waters of decency in terms of young-adult.  There’s one book that I read called “Doing It” by a British author…You’ll read comments about how disgusting filthy and lascivious this is, but at the same time you would read comments about “Finally a book that speaks the language and speaks the way that teenagers thinks.”  So that was a real important step as a writer, you need to understand your audience and what is already out there to be said.  That kind of gave me some guidelines on how to write this.  It’s a story based off of my experiences when I was sixteen and went to England to work for a summer with a buddy of mine.  I already had that story and I knew I wanted to share it to some degree.  It could go one of two ways, either a wiser adult reflecting on the sixteen year old self during this unique opportunity, or I could do it with a sense of urgency and have it in the perspective of the teenage character, and that’s the way I wanted to do it.  Then I thought obviously in literature you have teenage narrators, but for the most part the audience that will gravitate towards that is other teenagers, and I realized that I should stick to the young-adult/teenage audience, and then I decided that I do have some ideas and themes I would like to convey to a younger audience. 

I’m assuming you had it planned out, if it’s from memory, did anything catch you off guard, was the pen smarter than the writer?

Because I’m basing it off of memory, the spine of this probably doesn’t change all that much.  In my pre-writing stages I’ve drafted a pretty straight forward arc of actions.  But what I do find is, when I move from action to action to action, the major plot points, those are where things tend to change, where characters develop more.  As I said I approached this with plot points, with main plot points.  When I leave America, when I return to America and England in between.  It turned out to be quite interesting, because I fictionalized these characters considerably, not to offend my friend…some real shitty stuff happened, and it’s not protecting the innocent but I don’t want to bring stuff up that would be painful for others so I’m taking some very creative leaps and bounds to avoid that.

Do you have to make your characters super-real, almost hyperbolize them, to make them more accessible?

The first thing that I like to do, when I have an idea of a book that I want to write, I think about characters.  That’s when I get detailed with character sketches, I find out: who this person is, how do they react in certain situations, what are their biggest fears? What are their pleasures in life? To give me a basic understanding on who this character is.  I think it’s necessary for authenticity to go and pick up on attitudes and demeanors.  I use my students; they humanize qualities that I see in some of my characters.  I watch and see how they speak and interact and they have these qualities I see in my one character and it helps to develop them.  So I guess I externalize to a degree to come up with these characters, and I think it’s extremely imperative that you sit down and really figure them out.  The more you know your character, the more you know how they’ll react to a situation.  It’s essential that you have a solid understanding of your characters, and that you figure them out, before you write, and as you write get to know them better.

Do you have any final words to help out new writers?

It sounds stupid, but start saying yes.  Your friends invite you to go on an impromptu road trip to West Virginia - say yes.  Your friend wants to go to Target at two in the morning - yes, go.  You can only gain so much experience cooped up in your house reading or watching television.  Some of the coolest and most interesting stories I've heard come from people who don't have advanced creative writing degrees but from folks who go out and experience life.  When you go out and work odd jobs, go to parties, partake in day trips/weekend trips, and so on, you expose yourself to any number of small anecdotes or large ideas you can incorporate into your writing.   Remember when your friends went to visit that dude at University of Iowa while you stayed home?  When they came back Sunday night, they had annoying inside jokes and wild stories - well, they might have something to develop into a piece of short fiction, or something to include in a novel.  You never know unless you get out and say yes to things (unless your friend offers you heroin or something.  Say no to that).  And yes, I should start heeding my own advice a bit more.  I spend too much time grading and sitting in front of a computer.

Interview with DeMisty Bellinger-Delfeld Conducted by Antonio Bouxa September 2012

Why do you write?

Because I like to, because I have to, like any other writer will tell you.

Is there a reason you write short fiction?

I write short fiction because I have twins.  Two very young children, they’re three years old.  That format allows me to work quickly, get things out and revise it in the time that I have.  I teach five classes and I try to give my students as much attention as possible, however much time that affords me.  Stuff I write lately is a lot of prose poems.  Or rather, it could be considered cross genre as prose poems and flash fiction and a lot of times it’s genre-less.  I do write longer short stories and am working on a novel.

Is there a specific audience for your novel?

That is a difficult question for me, and it’s a question that’s very easy when I write non-fiction…there is a very specific audience for my scholarly work although my work is not really scholarly, it’s usually along the lines of the craft, of making fiction or teaching of it through pedagogy.  But as far as my fiction goes, and my creative work, I don’t think that I have an audience in mind.  I wouldn’t say that its young adult, but I wouldn’t not say that it’s young adult.  I don’t think I do, do you have an audience in mind when you write creative work?  It’s something that’s important to think about especially when you’re starting to market your work.  When you are working with short works you just look at the different journals that are out there, online or whatever, but when you start marketing to somebody like an agent, or for a novel,  that agent my want to know in your pre-letter “who is your target audience?”

Is there something your novel is capable of handling that your short fiction isn’t?

This is the first really long work that I’ve done.  One thing that I’ve learned with this is that much more needs to be told to an audience, to a reader, than in short fiction.  Short fiction has a lot of implication, you have only so much space to work with, but with novels you can spend more time on description, with back story, with exposition and stuff like that.  That I’m not used to, and usually when you revise you do a lot of cutting away, but when I’m revising this novel I’m doing a lot of adding too, just to fill it out a little more.  It reads right now, although it’s over two hundred pages, it reads like a two hundred page plus short story in some aspects, so I’m working on that too.  When I first starting writing it, the professor that I started with when I was still in grad school, I asked him “does this sound like a series of short stories or does this sound like a novel?” and he said “this is a novel.”  And he’s a novelist so I respect what he says.

What about content?  What are you trying to achieve with this novel?  Is there a message?

I wish! That sounds really important.  The one thing that I could think of to describe the novel is, very simply, is that there are three protagonists, three women, and all three fall in love with other people.  Those relationships are very taboo, one is set in the thirties and is a homosexual relationship, one is set in the forties and is an interracial relationship, and one is set in the sixties and is a May/December relationship.  The idea is that, even if you were to be in that relationship, even if you’re in love, it’s okay if that relationship ends.  Even if it’s taboo, even if you fought for it, if that relationship ends [it’s okay].  When I explain it right now it sounds very chick-lit-ish.  It sounds really pretentious to call your own work literary but I think it’s more literary than that.  The exterior conflict is class, there are class issues, there’s racism.

Your work seems to deal with race very transparently.

The only time I include things about race is if it’s important.  What I did with “What Plums Would Do” the reason I wrote that…as an exercise that I gave myself…is how do you write about a culture outside of your own without appropriating that culture?  So I thought it would be fun to write about another culture from the perspective of someone outside of it.  I had fun writing that. 

Your writing seems to handle themes like race in very genuine ways, without making it the forefront of the piece. Is there any intent to do that or a way you go about doing that?

No, I wish I was that smart.  Some advice I gave to a fellow student at a writing workshop once, he was writing outside of his race.  He was writing about black people, and I didn’t know why I was not liking it.  To me his work sounded insincere, and he was a very good writer.  This particular piece, I didn’t like it, and I thought about it, and it was constantly thinking about being black.  You said you were Latino, how often do you actually go around thinking about being Latino?  Unless something happens that brings it to the forefront you just don’t think about it.  It’s part of your identity, it exists, but no one goes around constantly thinking “I’m a woman, I’m a woman, I’m a woman.”  So I thought of an analogy, if it leaks in your house and it rains, you think about it, but unless it’s raining, you aren’t thinking about it.

So how do you go about being sincere to someone-else’s race?

That’s a hard question, I don’t know.  I think just in real life, if you’re going to accept others as who they are, you have to first accept them as a person.  If race comes into the picture at all, deal with it as it comes, but you don’t have to deal with race.  It is the same with dialect.  Dropping verbs, certain words, you don’t want to make it look like Mark Twain.  I like Mark Twain, and that was fine in the 1800’s but it’s not fine today.  If you can say someone is from the south and talked with a Louisiana accent, you don’t even have to display the accent, just hearing it is enough for the audience.  If you do it well…I don’t know if I do it well.

You mentioned poetry earlier, is there something your poetry accomplishes that your other work cannot?

No, I wish.  I think it’s just because I can write really short poems, it’s really because of the kids.  I’m not not going to write, you’re a writer, you have to write something down, so what can do you with the time that you have.  I was told this summer by a literary consultant, a woman at Bread Loaf who makes it her business as well as being a writer, telling you about your work, where it would be placed in magazines and which journals you should submit to.  She told me that my fiction is very poetic, more poetic than prose.  So, I started off as a poet, or I thought I was a poet and then when I went to grad school I decided that I didn’t want to write poetry because everyone was doing it. 

So you went to short fiction?

I was already writing short fiction at that point but yeah.

So the novel is really where you want to focus?

Right now, yeah.  As a student you might be interested in this, it’s easier to publish a novel than publishing short fiction.  The reason why, is because people read novels, students and writers read short fiction.  This is going on the internet and that’s going to be bad for me to say but really how many people do you know that read short story collections that aren’t writers are students.  They are starting to become more popular and I don’t understand why they aren’t as popular as they are because you can read them in a single sitting and with our attention spans it seems like short stories would be more popular, even novellas.  But no, novels, people buy novels.  The first time I taught a lit class, I taught a lot of short stories and my students were really annoyed with that.  They thought it was more difficult to access short stories than novels, I guess I understand that too, because if you remember when we first started talking, short stories are implications, you have to do a lot more work to get into the story.  Readers have to be a little more imaginative.  I know that these are generalizations.  One of the things that Dr. Burns told me when I was a student here, she drew it on the board, she said she didn’t like Hemingway and I don’t really like Hemingway either, but she drew like these humps when we read “Hills Like White Elephants” it’s a short piece, mostly dialogue.  One of the characters in the story looks at these hills and says “they look like white elephants” because all you see are the top of the hills.  And Dr. Burns said like in short stories, you’re just seeing the top of the stories, the exposition you don’t see you just kind of assume, and I thought that was a good analogy.

Is there any advice you’d like to give new writers?

Read, and write.  Musicians practice their instrument hours a day, and when they learn songs they listen to variations of them over and over again.  I’m not saying to write for hours every day, but even half an hour, fifteen minutes, practice.  And read, read everything, read the back of a cereal box, learn how language works and learn how other people are using it.