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Interview with Andrew Cotto, Author of Outerborough Blues

“…[M]en were restless souls chased by the past after something that couldn’t be found. He said the key to salvation was in our hearts and not in our feet.”
~ from Outerborough Blues, A Brooklyn Mystery

We are tied to our past, no matter how hard we try to pull away, until we find reconciliation — within ourselves or with others. This is true in life and in fiction. When I was younger, my moves to a new house or apartment often were inspired by an effort to separate myself from some person, place, or event. But memories of what, or who, I left behind resurfaced again and again, refusing to be ignored, until I dug deeper to understand them, and myself.

Andrew Cotto’s novel, Outerborough Blues, A Brooklyn Mystery, tells the story of Caesar Stiles, who is on his own mission to escape his past, albeit a much more complicated one than mine ever was. By setting down roots in Brooklyn, Caesar hopes he will break a family curse. But, a mysterious woman pushes him to search for her missing brother and, in turn, sets Caesar off on a journey of unexpected discoveries that eventually forces him to face what he left behind.

Brooklyn comes alive in Cotto’s novel, in the imagery and details, as Caesar and the story move in and out of neighborhoods, brushing against the lives of characters in the mix.

I’m pleased to host Andrew Cotto today to talk about his novel and about writing. Also, he’s offering an autographed copy of his book to one lucky reader, so be sure to leave your name in the comments; the winner will be chosen on Friday, June 29th.

Now, welcome Andrew!

CC: The prologue in Outerborough Blues introduces readers to Caesar and his family’s dark past. It also hints that this novel, while a mystery, is also a story of self-discovery, one that takes Caesar through the winding complexity of a city at large. What inspired you most to write this novel, your character, Caesar, or the diversity of the place where he lives?

AC: I’m always inspired by how characters have to reconcile their past and subvert their own self-image in order to achieve acceptance or transformation. The character of Caesar Stiles certainly falls into this category, both from his family history and, as a result, his own identity. I was inspired by some of the mythological characters of literature reconfigured into a noir archetype of the outsider. Caesar’s family history and transient existence helped shape a character, when immersed in a mystery, who works within these contexts.

CC: In this article on The Good Men Project, you say how much you love storytelling for “the images and language and devices that make the narrative art form so compelling.” Outerborough Blues, set in Brooklyn, is filled with vivid and intimate images of the urban landscape. Were you born and raised in Brooklyn, or what did you do to familiarize yourself so well with the setting?

AC: I grew up in numerous places around America. I’ve always been inspired by urban settings, and I’ve been particularly inspired by the people, cultures, architecture, and general atmosphere of Brooklyn since moving here in 1997. One of the reasons so much Brooklyn ambiance is on display in the novel is that the imagery, as described by Caesar, is a way to reveal his character. This is not a narrator who favors emotional exposition, so I tried to use his descriptive prowess to reveal his nature and aesthetic. This was also done through his cooking.

CC: You write nonfiction (for the The Good Men Project and for the New York Times) as well as fiction, and common themes, like relationships and a strong sense of place, run through both genres of your work. How is writing fiction similar, or different, for you from writing nonfiction?

AC: In both genres I’m trying to tell a story, and those themes you mention (along with a few others) tend to find their way into my narratives, in both fiction and non-fiction. The biggest difference to me is just the scope of the story, and, of course, the component of imagination in fiction. In both cases, though, I’m always trying to create something insightful and descriptive and reflective of our times.

CC: What are you reading these days?

AC: I just got done teaching a literature class where the novels were all pre-selected by the department chair, which dominated most of my reading time for the past three months, so I’m pretty excited to have the summer to choose my own books. I’ve started with the two widely-acclaimed novels of my fellow writers published this year by Ig Publishing. Both Ghosting by Kirby Gann (reviewed recently by the New York Times Book Review) and Jonah Man by Chris Narozny have met the high expectations. I have a “Beat Generation” class to teach in the fall, so I’ll probably spend the rest of the summer preparing for that by reading On the Road, Howl, and some maybe some lesser known “Beat” titles. I’ll also delve into some James Lee Burke and re-read Mystic River.

CC: What piece of advice do you share often with other writers?

AC: Figure out how to self-promote. Almost every writer these days is obliged, if they want to succeed, to connect with their audience. I know a lot of writers, by their introverted natures, don’t dig this idea, but it’s part of the job description these days for any of us who are not household names. There’s ways to do this that are not as painful and time consuming as they seem, and I strongly suggest getting started sooner as opposed to later with having a routine of social media promotion alongside that routine of writing.

~

Andrew Cotto is a writer and teacher who lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is the author of two novels: The Domino Effect is a coming-of-age story about a kid from Queens with a damaged past and a complicated present at a boarding school in rural New Jersey; Outerborough Blues: A Brooklyn Mystery is an unconventional noir about a drifter seeking a missing person and a remedy to his family’s curse in the dawn of urban gentrification. Andrew’s articles have appeared in many national journals, including the New York Times, Men’s Journal, Salon, the Good Men Project and Teachers & Writers Magazine.

Find out more about Andrew and his writing on his website, follow him on Twitter, or like his page on Facebook. And, don’t forget to leave your name in the comments for a chance to win his book.

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An Interview with Erika Dreifus, Author of Quiet Americans

“Always, there had been so much about him she hadn’t understood. Always, something about her heart had remained unyielding, beyond his comprehension. But that was the point. So much remained beyond his comprehension.”
~ from “For Services Rendered” in Quiet Americans

What is writing if not an exercise in understanding?
Whether we write fiction or non, we are on a journey to make sense of the incomprehensible, to follow the thread of a story until something is revealed, something of meaning to us or the reader or the character in question.

Erika Dreifus has written a collection of stories about characters searching for that meaning, searching to unravel a mixture of complexities in their histories or to reconcile an agony traced to their past. Nelly Freiburg in “Homecoming” grapples with the decision whether or not to return to places of her youth, knowing that everything, including herself, has been permanently altered by war. In “Mishpocha,” David Kaufmann pursues the mysteries behind his identity and uncovers the unexpected. All of the stories in Quiet Americans reveal a deeper understanding of what it means to be Jewish and an American and a survivor.

I’m honored to host Erika today as she answers questions about Quiet Americans and about writing. I am also offering a book giveaway, so, at the end of the interview, be sure to leave your name in the comments. The winning name will be drawn on Tuesday, May 29th.

Now, welcome Erika Dreifus!

CC: One of the short stories in your collection, “The Quiet American, or How to be a Good Guest,” touches not only on the internal conflicts a young Jewish woman faces when returning to Germany but on the larger issue we sometimes all face: speaking up or speaking out. I love this story and the powerful moment at the end. Did this story draw from your own personal experiences in any way?

Photo credit: Lisa Hancock

ED: First, Christi, I want to thank you for hosting me on your wonderful blog. And thank you so much for the kind words about this story. Yes, the story definitely drew from some of my personal experiences (and traits). For example, like the narrator, I did visit Stuttgart in the summer of 2004. I, too, have a terrible sense of direction. And I did, indeed, sign up for a bus tour of the city. But I invented many other elements of the story, and I borrowed (sounds better than “stole”!) one major piece of it, adapting a travel experience in Germany that a dear friend shared with me in a conversation not long after my trip.

This is part of what is so alluring to me about fiction-writing: the opportunity to combine fragments of personal experience, research, what we learn from others, and what we imagine, and create something new and whole in its own right. Sometimes, it’s difficult for me to remember which elements of a story I’ve created entirely and which do, indeed, have roots in my own lived experience. Which is why those stories begin and remain as fiction. I’m pretty meticulous about making sure that anything I label “nonfiction” is, in fact, not fictionalized.

CC: The Jewish Journal calls your book “…a deeply affecting collection of short stories that contemplate how the long shadow of the Holocaust falls across the lives of men and women who come alive in her work.” While the book focuses on the Jewish experience, the stories within appeal to those who appreciate stories of history and culture as well. What do you hope readers take away from Quiet Americans?

ED: What a great question. Well, I suppose I hope that that readers take away a good reading experience, in that they don’t regret having spent their valuable time with the book. I do also hope to capture aspects of history that will soon be *only* history, in that there will no longer be witnesses to share their experiences. And I hope that we all try to think larger, for lack of a better term, that we try to acknowledge nuance and the challenges of moral dilemma and complexity.

CC: On your website, you mention that partial proceeds from your book will go to an organization called The Blue Card. Can you tell us a little more about that organization and whom it serves?

ED: Thank you so much for asking. I think I’ll quote directly from the organization’s website:

“The Blue Card was founded in 1934 in Germany to help Jews fleeing Nazi oppression. The organization got its name from the original blue cards that were issued. Each time a donation was made, a stamp was put on the card to keep a record. Today, when many Jewish community funds support memorials for the Holocaust, education programs, and other causes, The Blue Card has only one mission; that mission, is to get much-needed funds either on an emergency basis or as an ongoing stipend to indigent needy Holocaust survivors. To date, The Blue Card has provided over 20 million dollars to thousands upon thousands of survivors and their families.”

My family has supported The Blue Card for years. And I have indeed explained more about my decision to share some of the profits with The Blue Card on my own site.

CC: Along with being a published author, you are also contributing editor for The Writer magazine and Fiction Writers Review, as well as editor and publisher for the newsletter, The Practicing Writer. What’s your strategy for balancing several writing projects?

ED: I wish I had a real strategy! I have to confess that I’ve begun setting more limits. For instance, I’ve recently had to decline some requests, even from The Writer and Fiction Writers Review, both of which I love.

The newsletter (and my blogs) I see as a way to provide some sustained literary service to the literary community, and that’s important to me. Sticking to a pretty structured publishing structure and schedule seems to help. I’m always so happy when someone lets me know that something from my blogs or newsletters helped them with their writing and/or publishing path. That makes it all worth the effort.

But, like everyone else, I’m always wishing for more time to write (not to mention for all of the reading and ruminating that good writing requires).

CC: What are you reading these days?

ED: One of the great joys of attending the Virginia Festival of the Book in March was the opportunity I had to meet and speak with Thomas Mallon–and to have him sign my copy of his new novel, Watergate. I’m reading Watergate right now. And on the side, I’m savoring the first issue of my new subscription to The Cincinnati Review and the latest issue of Ecotone.

Christi, thank you again for your enthusiasm for Quiet Americans. I am so grateful!

Erika Dreifus is the author of Quiet Americans: Stories, a collection inspired largely by the histories of her paternal grandparents, German Jews who immigrated to the U.S. in the late 1930s. Quiet Americans has been named a 2012 ALA Sophie Brody Medal Honor Title for outstanding Jewish literature; it was also cited as a Jewish Journal “Notable Book” and a Shelf Unbound “Top Small-Press Book” for 2011. Erika writes fiction, essays, poetry, and book reviews from her home base in New York City. Web: www.erikadreifus.com.

~

Thank you, Erika. And remember, readers, to leave your name in the comments for a chance to win a copy of Quiet Americans.

 

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Author Interview with Shann Ray, and Book Giveaway

“A man will be physical, he thinks, forsake things he should never have forsaken, his kin, himself, the ground that gave him life. Death will be the arms to hold him, the final word to give him rest.”
~ from “The Great Divide” in American Masculine

I love this book. As I prepared the post for this interview, I flipped back through the pages of American Masculine, skimmed the stories, and realized again what powerful literature lies between the covers of Shann Ray’s book. In the introduction to American Masculine, Robert Boswell uses words like “grace” and “muscularity” to describe Shann Ray’s writing, and says that images in the stories “carry the visceral weight of memory” as well:

You finish each story with the understanding that…you have lived through something powerful and significant.

It’s true. You can’t walk away from this book unaffected, after reading stories that show the tender underbelly of a violent man and that reveal the pain of an absent father. I am thrilled and honored to share with you this book, and this interview. After you read the interview, drop your name in the comment section for a chance to win a copy of the book (courtesy of Graywolf Press). And now, welcome Shann Ray.

CC: In American Masculine, your characters are tied beautifully to the setting, so much so that asking a question about which inspired your stories first, setting or character, seems moot. Would you share with us, though, how your collection unfolded?

SR: The collection unfolded over the years with a lot of failed attempts and then quite a bit of patience and listening. Especially to my wife Jennifer, an amazing mind with passion for lit, dance, art, and music.  I’ve always been in love with the Montana landscape and spent a ton of time embedded in that landscape, the rivers and mountains, the plains.  I think of the wildlife and the splendor, and I think how is this possible, such grand intimacy in a package capable of great violence.  This reminds me of people. Consider a Wolverine can cross 9 mountain ranges in around 30 days.  Now consider how a person can ask forgiveness and make atonement even in the face of the most desolate human conditions, and further, that man can be welcomed back into the community: this occurence, across people and cultures, America, South Africa, the Philippines, Colombia… people and the wilderness inside people comes to me in the night when I’m writing.  I hope I can listen enough to speak of our humanity, our desolation, our consolation.

CC: The story in your collection that struck me most is “Rodin’s The Hand of God”. The prose reveals the relationship between a father and a daughter with such power, and when I finished reading it, I couldn’t go on to the next one right away. I felt compelled to sit, quiet, with the last few lines. Do you have a favorite from your book or one from which you didn’t want to walk away?

SR: “Rodin’s The Hand of God” is a favorite for me too because I’ve been in that place with a loved one who is ready to be loved into a better condition but is fighting the voice that speaks to them. “How We Fall” and “The Way Home” have a certain love as well, for how they bring me to a better sense of my faults and the nature of atonement.  I think we’ve all been there on both sides of that pathway that acknowledges and is in need of  something very graceful having to with heart, soul, and breath.  Sometimes we are then given the gift to hear more clearly.  Sometimes we fall.  So painful when a loved one falls all the way down.  Vaclav Havel, the artist and former president of the Czech Republic, referred to suicides as the “gaurdians of meaning.”  I agree.  In his own country, which is also my country of heritage, Jan Palach gave his life 20 years before the Velvet Revolution, through self-immolation.  He burned himself to death in order to awaken the country from its slumber.  Our deepest harms have that latent capacity, to awaken us and heal us and make us whole again.

CC: Your bio states that you teach leadership and forgiveness studies, and in this touching post on the website, The Nervous Breakdown, you talk about a friend who’s story illustrates the power of forgiveness in our lives. You say, “In coming to a better understanding of our own existence, we must pass through the history of our mothers and fathers, and our choices in this regard are of paramount importance.” I love this, and the idea behind this quote surfaces throughout your book.Though the stories in American Masculine are fiction, what do you hope readers will take away from your collection?

SR: I love the transport great lit gives us. A sense of something true touching our face and drawing us to look into the eyes of that immeasurable power of which we still know so very little, a power I see as love, kindness, and strength in the wake of human degradation.  From that gaze we understand there is mystery involved at the deepest levels of our humanity and at the foundation of that mystery there is love. I think we experience love in all true art, for example in the work of the profound contemporary philosophers, theologians, scientists, and poets that range from bell hooks to Weil to Gadamer to Bakhtin, from Lonergan to Bonhoeffer to Martin Luther King, Jr., from Worthington to Enright to Ornish to Gottman, and from Alexander to Alexie to Oliver to Williams.

CC: What are you reading these days?

SR: The Divine Milieu by Jesuit mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, two gorgeous and fiercely imagined books of poems:A Thousand Vessels by Tania Runyan, and The Man I Was Supposed to Be by John Strulhoeff, and my friend Jess Walter’s evocative and multi-layered jewel of a novel Beautiful Ruinsdue out on Harper in June.  This year I also loved You Know When the Menare Gone by the infallible Siobhan Fallon; Beautiful Unbroken, a book of tremendous grief, loss, and recovery by Mary Jane Nealon; and the sheer torque and drive ofVolt by Alan Heathcock.

CC: What advice would you offer for writers on the rise?

SR: There is a discipline that is formed of hours and days and years. That discipline, if approached through love and beauty, will carry you and those around you for the rest of your lives.

Shann Ray’s collection of stories American Masculine (Graywolf Press), named by Esquire as one of Three Books Every Man Should Read and selected by Kirkus Reviews as a Best Book of 2011, won the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Prize.  Sherman Alexie called it “tough, poetic, and beautiful” and Dave Eggers said Ray’s work is “lyrical, prophetic, and brutal, yet ultimately hopeful.”  Ray is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and has served as a panlist for the National Endowment for the Humanities, Research Division.  Ray’s book of creative nonfiction and political theoryForgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity (Rowman & Littlefield), was named an Amazon Hot New Release in War and Peace in Current Events, and engages the question of ultimate forgiveness in the context of ultimate violence.  The winner of theSubterrain Poetry Prize, the Crab Creek Review Fiction Award, and the Ruminate Short Story Prize, his work has appeared in some of the nation’s leading literary venues includingMcSweeney‘s, Narrative, Story Quarterly, and Poetry International.  Shann grew up in Montana and spent part of his childhood on the Northern Cheyenne reservation.  He lives with his wife and three daughters in Washington where he teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University.
For more information on Shann Ray and his works, visit his website: http://www.shannray.com/blog/. And, don’t forget to leave a comment for a chance to win a copy of American Masculine.