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Q&A with Erika Dreifus, author of BIRTHRIGHT: Poems

“You say that the Bible is just an old book, / But when I consider the story of a Levite’s concubine, / I wonder what has changed since those ancient times.”

~ “On Reading Chapter 19 in the Book of Judges” in Birthright

Give me a box of old letters, a shelf full of ancient books, or a roll of microfilm and I will spend all day thumbing through pages, scanning old newspapers, studying the text, digging for connections between words of the past and my understanding of the present. Rarely, though, do I pick up my old King James version of the Bible, except to fan the pages for a bookmark or note I may have left behind when I was thirteen or to look back on what I was dreaming about in 1981 (“Christi + Kyle”) hoping God was listening.

Birthright (Kelsay Books), a new book of poems by Erika Dreifus, gives one pause to reconsider the ancient texts we grew up with, if only to gain new insight into the ways they influence who we have become. From there, her poems reflect on the Jewish experience of her grandparents as well as herself, on the work of past poets, on life and death, celebration and sorrow.

Birthright as a collection is, as author Matthew Lippman says, “the spellbound silence of history that helps to bind you with the people right next to you and to the ‘ancestral spirits that mingle above.'” A perfect example of the reasons why we write, and why we read.

I’m thrilled to host Erika, who talks more about Birthright, and to offer a giveaway. Enter by Tuesday, November 12th for a chance to win a copy of her new book!

Now, welcome Erika!

Christi Craig (CC): In Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s Inaugural reading she says, “[poetry] emerges from the soul of a community, from a community’s history, mythological structures, the heart of the people….” Your collection speaks to this with poems that build on your own history, Jewish culture and experience, and historical texts. Writing from a close study of our past can provide unique insight into our current understanding of, well, everything around us. What insights have you gained from writing these poems and putting them together in this book?

Erika Dreifus

Erika Dreifus (ED): I’ve always been pretty self-aware, and attuned to time, place, and environment. But for lack of a better term, I think that I’m even more “anchored,” more in conversation with my past and present thanks to these poems and the book. I feel enriched by newer discoveries, approaches, and experiences.

CC: Several of your poems like “The Book of Vashti” and “Complicity” were inspired by biblical texts. Some poems give voice to women who were silenced (these poems in particular reveal ancient “Me Too” stories). Many, in the way they are written, connect narratives from a far-distant past with affairs of the immediate present (here I am thinking of “On Reading Chapter 19 in the Book of Judges”). For some who might not be familiar with religious texts, what do you hope readers gain from these poems?

ED: I’m not sure that I set out to do this, but I suppose that one hope is that some readers may be moved to revisit or explore the religious texts themselves. I grew up with a working knowledge of only some of the texts—I arrived at the texts and commentaries grounding “Complicity” and “On Reading Chapter 19,” for example, only through adult study in the past few years. Even the understanding I carried from childhood of Vashti—who plays a role in a major Jewish holiday that I grew up observing—was vastly simplified from the version I’ve explored more recently in the company of other grown-ups. And perhaps that message may be extrapolated to other texts and traditions—all of this material has been handed down to us, and it’s never too late to (re)consider it.

CC: Outside of Birthright, you also have a collection of short stories (Quiet Americans, 2011) and a long list of essays and articles. For you, are there certain stories or experiences better suited for one genre versus another? Or, another question might be, are there certain topics easier to approach in a poem versus an essay?

ED: I love this question (even as I doubt my ability to answer it!). In my early days as a fiction writer, I thought often about what makes a fiction writer realize that something is “meant” for a novel instead of, say, a short story. So pondering these questions is not new to me, even if I don’t have much more confidence in the answers.

I do think that brief observations or vignettes—I think here of a poem in the collection about my mother’s typewriter, and one about walking through fresh snow in the city—are so impressionistic that they’re better suited to the poetic form than to the essay. On the other hand, I’ve found that sometimes, compressing what readers may consider more weighty narrative (and sometimes political material) into poetic form can make the work different from—and perhaps more compelling than—a more conventional “think-piece.”

CC: What are you reading these days?

ED: I almost feel as though a better question is “what are you not reading these days—which books are stacked in your home waiting for you to get to?” As I receive your question, I’ve just cracked open a fascinating history that I’ve been meaning to read for some months: Peter Schrag’s The World of Aufbau: Hitler’s Refugees in America. It’s a book grounded in the history of a German-language newspaper that I can remember seeing in my own grandparents’ home.

I’m also (re)reading everything that I’ve assigned to the undergraduates in my “21st-Century Jewish Literature” course. At the moment, that means that I’m returning to Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, which is even more stunning to me now than it was when I first read it 15 years ago.

CC: This season, you are teaching, your book has just been published, you continue editing a free newsletter for writers once a month with resources and information on submission opportunities, and you post weekly blogs with news of jobs for writers and curated lists of other writerly links (phew!). To keep up your creativity and energy, what’s a favorite activity you find both restful and inspiring?

ED: Naps. And exercise. I’m lucky enough to live fairly close to New York’s famed Central Park, and I try to work in a jog (or a walk) there several times each week.

Sometimes it’s difficult to get myself out of my chair (or to rouse myself from a nap!). But invariably, I feel refreshed after that time moving outside. And I find that ideas both come to me and sort themselves out during the time away from the desk, too.

~

Erika Dreifus is the author of Birthright: Poems (Kelsay Books, November 2019). She is also the author of Quiet Americans: Stories, a short-story collection that is largely inspired by the histories and experiences of her paternal grandparents, German Jews who escaped Nazi persecution and immigrated to the United States in the late 1930s. Erika earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University, where she taught history, literature, and writing for several years.

Currently, she lives in New York City, where she is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Baruch College of The City University of New York. Since 2004, Erika has published The Practicing Writer, a free (and popular) e-newsletter for writers of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

DON’T FORGET: Enter the giveaway by Tuesday, November 12th,
for a chance to win a copy of Birthright: Poems

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Q&A with Jackie Shannon Hollis, author of This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story

“This is what I did. This is what my girlfriends did. With dolls, with little sisters and brothers, with children we babysat. We pretended. We practiced. We prepared. Our mothers said to us, ‘When you grow up.’ ‘When you have your own children.’ No question. We would grow up. We would have children of our own.”

~ from This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story

From the title and from the quote above, you might think Jackie Shannon Hollis’ new memoir, This Particular Happiness (Forest Avenue Press) is simply about one woman’s decision not to have children. But this book is so much more.

As women, we revolve around expectations passed down through generations: we will get married; we will have children; we will live happily ever after watching those children grow into adults, marry, have babies of their own. Those expectations may serve one woman well but may cloud the journey of another woman walking the same road.

Jackie Shannon Hollis’ new book digs into beliefs taken on so easily and grapples with the weight of them. When she meets and marries a man who does not want to have children, she must take a closer look at the vision of her life as she had planned it and redefine who she is outside of those expectations.

Written in a structure that mirrors the way we often reason things out, we walk alongside Hollis through past and present, as she studies one moment in relation to another, beginning to see how everything she has experienced is connected, not by the thread of desire to have children but by something much deeper and more vital to the core of her being: the desire to be happy, to love, and to be loved.

I’m thrilled to host Jackie today for an interview about her book, community, and the gift of travel. There’s also a book giveaway! Enter your name HERE by Tuesday, October 8th, for a chance to win a copy of This Particular Happiness.

And now, welcome Jackie Shannon Hollis!

Christi Craig (CC): Your memoir unfolds in a fluid way, moving back and forth in time, and several chapters work as stand-alone essays. Where did you begin in writing This Particular Happiness and when did you know it would become a memoir?

Happiness: Jackie Shannon Hollis

Jackie Shannon Hollis (JSH): I remember the exact moment. I was with my writing group. I brought in what I thought would be  an essay about being childless. I was in my mid-fifties and the essay was intended to explore what it was like to be at that point in my life when the possibility of pregnancy was long past, but the experience of being childless kept unfolding.

As often happens when I am writing these nonfiction pieces, I struggle with the awarenesses that context and personal history are such an important part of our current story. It’s hard to contain a story just in the present because I feel the need to understand how the present experience is informed by the past. As the group was critiquing my piece, they asked questions. “But why didn’t you have children.” “Why was it so important to you to stay with your husband when he didn’t want children and you did.” Well here was the whole entangled story to unravel and explore. I knew right then I wanted to write this longer story. 

CC: One of my favorite passages is in the chapter “A Path to Somewhere New,”where you write, “A friend said, ‘I look at your beautiful garden, your house, even the way you dress. It seems like something is trying to rise up in you.'”

She gently points you toward your creative self and writing, but really, what she says is indicative of how life works. As we go in search of who we are or what we are capable of, the pieces of the puzzle often lay right in front of us, if we are only willing to see them. Your book is testament to discovering those pieces and putting them together. It’s a book that will leave an impression on any woman struggling to move beyond the expectations society places on her. What impression has writing your memoir left on you? Or maybe a better question is, How has writing your memoir changed you?

JSH: Christi, I am so pleased that you were drawn to this chapter because, for me, this was a turning point in my life, for exactly the reason you express here. And it can get lost in the idea that this book is solely about childlessness. I see This Particular Happiness as being about the discovery of self and an exploration of meaning. I think most women go through this at some point, whether they have children or not, a turning point where we look at what we are doing and ask the questions: Is this what I want, or is it someone else’s want? How do I carry the expectations of others? How do I move forward when I know I am turning away from what is expected of me?

Writing this memoir deepened the sense that this path I am on is where all the various threads of my life were leading me. I feel a sense of confidence in myself that comes of no longer being secretive about the fact that I longed for a child, and the times where that longing still rises up. And I feel a confidence that comes from having chosen this different path, one I am happy about and likely would not have found had I followed the expected.

CC: Several years ago you wrote a beautiful guest post for my blog, “Writers as Witness,” where you talk about being in community and the rhythm of writing. What has been the greatest gift in sharing with other writers this journey to self, story, and publication?

JSH: The community of writers IS the gift of this whole experience for me (and I must say my community of non-writers had been delightfully excited about my writing all along and especially about this book).  

Happiness: Writing group gathered at table with pen and paper

I am part of a writing group that meets weekly. We call ourselves The Dreamies. We’ve been together for many years. We know each other and know and respect the unique angle each of us take in critiquing a piece of work that one of us brings in. My memoir was shaped in this group. I cannot thank them enough for their ears and eyes on my pages, and for listening to revision after revision of chapters I was struggling with.

Three of the five other writers in the group have previously published books and their guidance has been so important to me, both in the querying and submitting to publishers, and now in bringing the book out for publication. This is a long and vulnerable process and it helps to have people who have had similar ups and downs offer support, encouragement, advice, and reality checks.

I’ve wanted to have a book out there for a long time. For a while, I’d made peace with the possibility that this might not happen. Now that it is happening, I don’t feel like I am more or less for having a book published. I still feel like me. And yet, I do feel a new kind of confidence that goes with having made it to this point. And there is a certain external validation that comes of having a solid book to hold in my hands.

But most joyous to me is being part of the literary community, being celebrated for showing up, for writing, for continuing to write through difficult times, for risking on the page. This is what the writers I know and honor do for each other. 

CC: What are you reading these days?

JSH: Over the summer I read three ARC’s. Two debut memoirs which captivated me. Codependence: Essays, by Amy L. Long, is an exploration of chronic pain and opiate addiction told from the perspective of someone who understands her addiction and sees it as vital to management of her pain. This Is My Body: A Memoir of Religious and Romantic Obsession, by Cameron Dezen Hammon, is a very personal exploration of her faith and of love. And I read The Royal Abduls, by Ramiza Koya, which is the next book coming out from Forest Avenue Press. I’m really excited about this book. 

I am just now finishing Sion Dayson’s debut novel, As a River.  She writes beautifully and with a sureness I admire, and the story is powerful.

I also listened to two very brutal and deeply researched and beautifully reported non-fiction books on audio. Missoula, by Jon Krakauer. I’m a bit late coming to this book, which came out in 2016. It’s about the sexual assault cases at the university there and the minimal response by the University and law enforcement. And Columbine, by Dave Cullen. Wow is this a powerful book.

CC: In your memoir, you touch on some of your travels. Where is one favorite place to visit?

JSH: I’ve had the good fortune to travel many places. I’m drawn to any place that offers me a view of other ways of living, new perspectives, different foods and landscapes and languages. But also, Bill and I now travel to the same places more than we go to new places. We go to London and Switzerland, to see friends whom we met on our travels. They have become family, which is something I write about in This Particular Happiness.

Happiness: desert land, The Wave Trail in Utah.

Of the places I’ve been, if we’re speaking of landscape alone, I am still most captivated by the southwest desert of the US — Southern Utah, Arizona. I also write about this in my memoir. In the desert you can see, so vividly, how the land was formed — under water, through earthquake and upheavals. The layers of time are painted into the landscape. The colors, the sense of unmarred history consistently draws me back. It’s a beautiful area to hike and to experience solitude.

Jackie Shannon Hollis, a lifelong Oregonian, resides with her husband in a home her friends call the treehouse. Her education and work as a counselor also pushed her to hold up the mirror to her own self. In addition to thinking she would be a mother, she once dreamed of being a June Taylor dancer or a racecar driver. Her short stories and essays have been published in The Sun, Slice, Inkwell, High Desert Journal, Rosebud, and other publications. Read more about Jackie and her writing on her website.

*Photo of group above by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash
*Photo of desert: The Wave Trail, Utah by Gert Boers on Unsplash

Don’t forget: enter the giveaway by Tuesday, October 8th, for a chance to win a copy of This Particular Happiness.

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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 Review, The 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.