Q&A with Beth Mayer, author of We Will Tell You Otherwise

“When everyone in the house is finally asleep, I step outside. It is fall in the Midwest and sometimes that means the air is made of silk. My feet bare on the concrete driveway, the night feels good against my skin. Almost like a secret human touch.”

~ from “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know” in We Will Tell You Otherwise.


The gift of stories, fiction or non, is in finding connections: the writer connecting with the reader by creating relatable characters, and the reader rediscovering self as she views the world through the eyes of these characters.

cover image for We Will Tell You Otherwise by Beth Mayer

Beth Mayer’s We Will Tell You Otherwise (just released from Black Lawrence Press), is a collection of short stories about the human spirit and our need for strong connections.

From a father and son brought closer by the death of a stranger, to a mother who takes over the itinerary of a failing family vacation to save her own spirit and that of her kids, to a young wannabe psychic who provides temporary promise in her prediction, Mayer offers readers a close look at the intimacy and ties created in conversations and in correspondence.

Winner of the Hudson Prize (2017), We Will Tell You Otherwise is called “slyly ironic and often sardonic” by David Haynes (A Star in the Face of the Sky), who also says is “these stories kept me smiling all the way through.”

Beth Mayer stopped by during Short Story Month in May, and I’m thrilled to host her again, this time for an author interview. I’m also hosting a giveaway! ENTER HERE by Tuesday, August 27th, for a chance to win a copy of Mayer’s new collection (courtesy of Caitlin Hamilton Marketing & Publicity and Black Lawrence Press).

Now, welcome Beth Mayer!

Christi Craig (CC): In your guest post on my blog during Short Story Month, you talk about the complexity in crafting short stories and say, “I have grown to understand how, when I give myself permission, a short story determines itself.” How did this collection come together? Did you have a plan from the beginning or did the whole of the book fall into place organically?

Beth Mayer: I’ve been writing short stories for a long time. Once I got serious about my first collection, I knew I was getting close when it was a finalist in a few book contests. Looking back, I see now before this book was really done, I was busy getting better, revising, writing new stories, and refining my vision. With a lot of patience and faithful work, this collection determined itself and I love where we ended up.

CC: “Darling, Won’t You Tell Me True?” is a story about Mr. James Harrington, who begins a correspondence with his mother’s caretaker, Miss Christopher, after his mother dies. Through James’ letters only (we never read a word that Miss Christopher writes), we see a relationship unfold, a budding romance, and the pieces of the entire story are present in his responses as he writes such things he might never say aloud face to face. Your story is fiction, sure, but there’s always truth in fiction. What is it about the intimacy of letters that allows us as humans to open up in ways we could not otherwise?

Beth: I am fascinated by old letters, documents, recipes with notes on them. My old postcard collection—ones with writing on them that I found in antique shops—reveals how the stuff of life can be shared through personal correspondence. Think the crops were good; the baby died; I am back from war and still sweet on you, if you’ll have me.

As a reader, and writer, I find fictional epistolary of all kinds quite engaging. Humans, I suppose, think that letters allow us to craft our messages. Perhaps time and distance allow us to feel less vulnerable since we aren’t face-to-face with how our message is received. And isn’t it interesting that in 2019 we are again writing back and forth—albeit digitally and with immediacy—about the most mundane and intimate matters?

CC: On your website, you write about winning the Loft Mentor Series in fiction and the power of working with a mentor. How has that experience affected your work on short stories and continued to inspire you as an author?

Beth: To begin, the chance to be expected and required to regularly show up to the Loft in Minneapolis—which is a beautiful space—felt good. That time was pivotal for me. It had been a while since I had finished my MFA and landed my teaching position, so I made a conscious decision to really use my program year to renew my commitment to my writing and to my life as a writer. Several of the new stories I wrote challenged me in the best possible ways, because I was ready to be challenged. Those same stories informed my collection as a whole and are now part of my first book. From my year in the program, I have lasting friendships and am now even more committed to helping my own students or mentees discover what it is they are aiming to do on the page.

CC: What are you reading these days?

Beth: The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017, Edited by Charles Yu, Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir by Thi Bui, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler.

CC: Being from Minneapolis, I imagine your summers are as short and sweet as those in Wisconsin. What’s your favorite summer activity that not only feeds your need for play for also fuels your creativity?

Beth: The best summer for me comes with time for thinking and dreaming. Time to take in ideas and images makes me happy and helps spark my own imagination. My husband and I like to have coffee out on our patio and walk our spoiled little dog. I love to spend time at the lake place that my extended family shares in Wisconsin. And as a teacher, reading whatever strikes and interests me is one of my greatest summer pleasures.


BETH MAYER’S fiction has appeared in The Threepenny ReviewThe Sun Magazine, and The Midway Review. She was afiction finalist for The Missouri Review’s Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize (2016), her work recognized among “Other Distinguished Stories” by Best American Mystery Stories (2010), and her stories anthologized in both American Fiction (New Rivers) and New Stories from the Midwest (Ohio University). Mayer holds an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University. She currently teaches English at Century College in Minnesota, where she lives with her family and impossibly faithful dog.

DON’T FORGET! Enter the giveaway by Tuesday, August 27th,
for a chance to win a copy of We Will Tell You Otherwise.

Remington Roundup: A few quick clicks to Wisconsin Authors

This month’s roundup includes a few links to get you connected with Wisconsin authors, past and present, and their great books , granting you an endless list of new reads.

Today in the mail I received my newest issue of Wisconsin People & Ideas. Actually, I received two copies, a happy mistake and I’m thrilled. That means I can keep one and share one. This issue is rich in articles about people who honor place, the arts, and community.

Early on in the issue is information on the Wisconsin Literary Map, a website that promotes Wisconsin authors and their work, including links to author websites, interviews, and so much more. Such a cool project, how did I not know about this?

Towards the end of the magazine is an announcement of the Wisconsin Writers Association 2019 Jade Ring Winners. Not only that, but the first place winners’ pieces (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and humor) are right there in the pages for you to read.

In between, you’ll find articles on art and culture and a photo essay that serves as “a kind of ‘love letter’ to Lake Superior.” Congratulations to all the Jade Ring Winners, and thank you to Wisconsin People & Ideas for a wonderful issue!

Click HERE to learn more about Wisconsin People & Ideas and to subscribe!

Q&A with Antonia Malchik, author of A Walking Life

“We walk to find our prophets, our guides, our ancestors, but ourselves most of all, and through ourselves, we find one another.” ~ from A Walking Life

Antonia Malchik's A Walking Life cover image

When I first learned of Antonia Malchik’s new book, A Walking Life (Da Capo Press, 2019), I thought, Good timing! It’s summer, I’ve got a few hikes planned, I’ll be reminded about the health benefits of walking–physical, mental, emotional. I took my time reading, savoring even the contents page with chapter titles of Toddle, March, Stumble. What I found as I moved deeper through the pages, though, was much more than a book on the simple, almost medicinal, act of walking.

Malchik has done her work curating a rich selection of research on history, science, culture, and philosophy and has built an intricate story about humanity–our innate desire to put one foot in front of the other, the disconnect we experience when we ignore that desire, and the joy and healing when we embrace it.

I can’t rave enough about this book. In fact, I’ve been talking it up for weeks, quoting it here and there. I’m thrilled to host Antonia Malchik for an interview and am giving away a copy of her book to one lucky reader. Enter the giveaway by Tuesday, July 30th, noon, for a chance to win A Walking Life.

Now, welcome Antonia!

Christi Craig (CC): Your book, while centered around the simple act of walking, is rich in information on history, culture, philosophy and takes the reader down a winding path of discovery, insight, and new understandings. How did this book unfold for you as an author?

Antonia Malchik, author of A Walking Life

Antonia Malchik (AM): A friend once described the structure of my essays as being as like fish scales. I tend to think of them as mosaics. I love taking stories and research that seem widely disparate, and diving deep to find out what connects them. A Walking Life added an extra level of complexity for me because there is a ton of detailed scientific research about things related to walking, from how we walk, which should be almost physically impossible, to the connections between vestibular impairment in children and their hippocampus development. I had to figure out how to convey that information in ways that were factually correct but narratively interesting.

That was actually really hard. I kept going back to the scientists I’d talked with to make sure that metaphors I used to, for example, describe the process of infants learning to walk or the paleoanthropology of disability weren’t misleading in the way they explained the science.

But at the same time I didn’t want to publish what I think of as a “study dump,” which I ran into a lot while researching: briefly present an idea, then give lengthy descriptions of the study behind it and repeat that process for hundreds of pages. I think that’s the key difficulty of science writing. Humans need metaphor and story to make sense of our world, but science relies on precision. Science communication has to combine those things without either muddying the science or boring the lay reader.  

On a broader level, I spent a lot of time sifting through the articles, books, and scientific papers I’d read, trying to find the threads that connected stories and themes across the arc of the book. I didn’t know where to begin because walking is a massive subject that affects us at every level of our lives, but I had to start somewhere and trust that the story would show me where to go next.

My friend Bethany Bell, who’s a journalist for the BBC, had reported on a situation at the border of Austria and Hungary, where Syrian refugees were waiting to be allowed into Austria on their way to Germany. I remembered that she’d posted photos on Twitter, including one of the Red Cross’s pile of donated shoes and others of abandoned shoes. It kept hitting me that humans have been subjected to war and environmental devastation over and over and over, and no matter what we’ve built as individuals or societies, we’re often free to take only one action, which is to walk away. When Bethany described the situation in more detail to me over Skype, she said something similar, so that’s where I started.

My mentor Alan Weisman told me before I began writing that the number one thing I should do was to constantly question and push against whatever my biggest assumption was about the subject. My biggest assumption was “walking makes us human,” so I tried to push against that from any angle I could think of. It led me in a lot of unexpected directions. Like, I knew that disability would be a central subject in the book — that was important to me because almost no book about walking even mentions disability — but didn’t know I’d write so much about community, loneliness, and the future of digital technology.

CC: A Walking Life covers a range of topics from social capital and the importance of walkable cities and towns in creating stronger communities to the power of healing walks through a labyrinth or organizations like Warrior Expeditions founded by military vets and their Warrior Hike (to “walk off the war”). There’s so much we could discuss in this interview and so little space on this tiny blog. One section that stands out to me as the heart of this book, the power in walking, is your first time in a labyrinth. You write, “As a person who is less spiritual even than she is religious, if that’s possible, I tend to be skeptical of any spiritual or religious practice that claims to put us in touch with the divine, much less with ourselves.” What follows is an amazing moment for you. Would you share a bit of that experience here?

AM: I’m still untangling that moment! I stumbled across a labyrinth at Norwich Cathedral in England, and knew I should walk it, since I’d researched labyrinths but had never been to one. For some reason I had an urge to walk around the outside first, and as I walked I began to form a question — how do we, or I, walk in the world as vocal and visible defenders of justice, say, and cope with the fear that inevitably comes? I think about this a lot because my paternal grandparents in Russia had survived so much under Stalin without giving up their ethics and commitment to honesty. Where did their strength come from?

As I entered the labyrinth, my footsteps slowed down as if compelled, almost like I was for the first time aware of the gravitational pull of the planet dragging me back, making me pay attention. It was eerie. As I walked the labyrinth, an answer came, which was simply, “Be the light.” Not light from above, but light from below, which I’m not sure makes sense to people. It really was a powerful experience. I keep trying to recapture it as I walk around my hometown, or in the woods. I have to slow my steps down a lot to reconnect with that feeling.

CC: I love the walking resources you offer on your website, from local & national walking groups to meditative practice resources. Do you have a favorite resource you refer others to often?

AM: Through a friend, I came across the work of a walking coach and change facilitator in Holland named Donja de Groot. She has a set of walking meditation cards that I ordered from her and love using. They have different prompts for questions to carry with you as you walk, especially walking in nature. She doesn’t advertise them, but I believe still sells them if you email her. I like how versatile they are, how I can just pick one up on my way out the door and have some guidance if I’m struggling with something, or just want to be reminded to slow down. This is her website: http://dao2change.com/Home/.

CC: What are you reading these days?

AM: A clerk at our local bookstore recommended N.K. Jemisin’s science fiction. They’re some of the best things I’ve read in a long time, and led me to finally read Octavia Butler. For nonfiction, I’m just starting Jane Brox’s Silence (her book Brilliant on the history of artificial light was incredible) and am slowly working my way through Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Classics are a go-to when I need some recentering — I just reread Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls, which had a big impact on me when I was 20, and am about to start Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, which I haven’t read since high school. And a local friend recently started a book club. We read Debra Magpie Earling’s Perma Red, which was just as heartbreakingly beautiful as I remember, and we’re now reading The Overstory.

CC: Favorite pair of walking shoes or accoutrement?

AM: I invested in a pair of Frye boots several years ago that I pretty much live and die in. They’re incredibly comfortable and I hope will last me the rest of my life. Good socks are the real key, especially if they’re fun. My sisters have bought me socks every year for holiday and birthday gifts for decades now, and they get increasingly silly. Which is good. Life is too short to wear boring socks.

Antonia Malchik has written essays and articles for AeonThe AtlanticOrionGOODHigh Country News, and a variety of other publications. Her first book, A Walking Life, about the past and future of walking’s role in our shared humanity, is published by Da Capo Press, a division of Hachette. She lives in northwest Montana.​ Read more about Antonia and her work on her website.


Don’t forget! Enter the book giveaway by Tuesday, July 30th (noon)
for a chance to win a copy of A Walking Life.