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Q&A: Stevan Allred,
author of The Alehouse at the End of the World

“Pride,” the pelican said, “is at the bottom of all great mistakes.”
~ from The Alehouse at the End of the World

Fiction is often based on reality in one way or another, which is how and why it appeals to us so. But once in a while you come across a story so fantastical, you forget about the real world for a moment; you get lost in the imagination of it all. You read first for entertainment, but later, upon reflection, you return and read it again for insight. Because certain stories–like Stevan Allred’s new novel, The Alehouse at the End of the World (Forest Avenue Press)–strike a familiar chord, hitting on the absurdities of society, the pride of man, the risks we take for love and companionship.

cover image for Stevan Allred's new book, The Alehouse at the End of the WorldPublishers Weekly calls Allred’s book one that is “sparked with risqué humor. . . . underscored with a strong thematic element of hope.” In pages full of devotion, humility, carnal desire and spiritual conquest, Allred gives readers a delightful tale of one man, his lost love, a congregation of birds who welcome the dead into the underworld, and a quest to save man and bird alike from consumption by a crow.

There are bigger monsters, sure, but I won’t reveal too much. Besides, sometimes the most dangerous are those who look the most like us.

Such a story can only be written by a writer full of wit and craft who himself is willing to take risks, who is unafraid of the strange and unexpected that often comes in giving ourselves over to story.

I’m thrilled to host Stevan to talk about his new novel and excited to offer a book giveaway! CLICK HERE to enter by Tuesday, November 20th, for a chance to win a copy of The Alehouse at the End of the World.

Now, welcome Stevan Allred!

Christi Craig (CC): The Alehouse at the End of the World reads like great mythology, with its old gods and new gods, demi-gods and mortals, and a healthy dose of promiscuity in the mix! But what makes this novel unique is that there isn’t only one hero’s journey to save the world. Each character has his or her own trajectory full of risks, mistakes, sacrifice, and love. You have woven all of this—every character’s move—so seamlessly and beautifully together. I’d love to know more about the seed of the idea for this novel. Where—with what?—does such a complex and imaginative story begin?

Stevan AllredStevan Allred (SA): I was between writing projects, stumbling around on the internet, looking for something to write about, when I discovered the story of James Bartley, a man who claimed to have been swallowed by a whale in 1891. So I started with that, the idea of a man swallowed by a whale, and I gave the man a quest, to find his long lost beloved. Where was she? I was looking to write something free of the tethers of ordinary reality, and I already had the whale bit in mind. I figured if readers were still with me after I had my fisherman swallowed by a whale, I could go anywhere from there, so why not to the Isle of the Dead?

The bird gods in Alehouse are all based on birds that I have some fascination with–crows, pelicans, frigate birds, cormorants. I simply elevated them to the physical, emotional, and intellectual stature of humans, and them gave each of them some extraordinary powers. The needs of the story itself dictated, in some cases, what these powers would be. The cormorant is Alehouse’s google–he has all the answers. The frigate bird was my Costco and Home Depot combined–whatever the characters needed on the Isle of the Dead, he could provide.

CC: The pages of your novel are filled with great imaginative detail and exemplifies your skill in world building. Much of the story takes place in the belly of the Kiamah beast with no curve, corner, or niche ignored in your use of landscape. How best do you visualize such a place? Do you draw a map, sketch an outline, build it from your own experience with the outside world?

SA: In the beginning it feels like I’m climbing a rope that I am braiding together as I climb it. That’s a mysterious process, and it requires an act of faith on my part, but as the details accumulate, each imagined detail makes the fictional world a little bit more real to me. Those details often have consequences, and the consequences will lead me to other details.

An example is that I decided early on that the sun rose in the west and set in the east on the Isle of the Dead, and that has consequences for how the rise and set of the sun light up features of the physical landscape. For most of the time I was writing the novel I kept this landscape in my head, but fairly late in the process I had to make a map of the Isle of the Dead, so I could be sure that I had the lighting right.

CC: You’ve said that in writing this novel you learned to step aside and let the story lead you as you wrote it. What’s your secret to letting go of the reins?

SA: I think of the story as a living entity with whom I have a relationship. That’s a bit fanciful, I know, but it works for me. Because I confer a sense of being on the story I can then listen to the story, and pay attention to what the story needs instead of imposing something on it. Sometimes I dance with the story.

All of these things–“living entity”, “listen to the story”, “dance with the story”–these are metaphors for internal processes. I don’t stand up and pretend to dance with my metaphor, but in my psyche, I make room for that playful notion. I have to get quiet for it to work, shutting out distractions. Sometimes that happens because I rise early to write, and move from sleep to desk relatively quickly before the noise of the everyday world kicks in. Other times I get to the quietness I need by walking the dog, or folding laundry, or pulling weeds. Any fairly mechanical task will do as long as it occupies the front of my mind so the back end can go wandering. You invite the solution to appear, and it does. You have to be patient. And grateful–be sure to thank the story for giving you the answer.

CC: What are you reading these days?

SA: I just finished one of the classics of science fiction, Kindred, by Octavia Butler. It’s a terrific time travel novel, and I’ve followed it up with An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones, which I’m really enjoying.

CC: What’s your favorite background noise as you write: music, the rumble of neighborhood traffic, coffeehouse chatter, or…?

SA: I write early in the morning, often before dawn. I like things to be very quiet when I’m writing. Writing in coffeehouses is impossible for me. I love sitting at my desk as the sun rises, feeling the light change around me while I’m burrowed in deep to my own imagination.

Stevan Allred lives halfway between Hav and the Isle of the Dead, which is to say he spends as much time burrowed into his imagination as he possibly can. He is the author of A Simplifed Map of the Real World: The Renata Stories, and a contributor to City of Weird: 30 Otherworldly Portland Tales. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter.

Don’t forget! Enter the giveaway by Tuesday, November 20th,
for a chance to win a copy of Stevan’s new novel.

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Q&A with Lisa Romeo, author of Starting with Goodbye

“When the time comes to eulogize my father, I have only my list and I edit as I go, turning each listed item into an anecdote, realizing this is what my father did when he tried to teach me anything in life: storify it.”

~ from Starting with Goodbye

When I sat down to write this introduction, I wanted to open with those moments after my mother died. Lisa Romeo’s new memoir, Starting with Goodbye, is after all about the death of a parent. But my words came out trite, almost prepared: the air shifted, my world collapsed, I walked around in a fog for months on end. Those things are true, but they do not begin to tap into the complexities of grief. What about the dreams? The tiny altars I created? And the way her furniture filled the new house we had just closed on?

There is so much that must be felt and figured out and reconciled when we lose a mother or a father; it is anything but predictable.

Starting with Goodbye dives into those complexities, as Lisa Romeo takes the reader on a meandering journey exploring a father-daughter relationship from the end back to the beginning. This is not a simple trajectory in reverse, though; the story moves seamlessly through past and present, infused with conversations between her and her father after he has died, interactions that serve as invitations–for Lisa but for the reader as well. You cannot walk away from these pages unchanged; a story about one woman’s grief becomes an invitation to explore your own. Even more, it serves as impetus to reconcile relationships still within physical grasp.

I’m honored to host Lisa and thrilled to offer a book giveaway. CLICK HERE for a chance to win a copy of Starting with Goodbye (deadline to enter is Tuesday, May 22nd, at noon).

Now, welcome Lisa!

Christi Craig (CC): In the Acknowledgments you say, “This entire book is a thank you note to my father.” When you first began writing about your father, did you envision a full memoir? What was the journey like, from creating a list for his eulogy to a 200+ page reflection on your relationship?

Lisa Romeo (LR): A full memoir was definitely not my initial plan! The eulogy led to a few essays. Then I just kept writing (and publishing) essays that were all somehow thematically connected—about grief, my father—for about six years. Each essay seemed to include the seed for the next, and the next. I love writing essays, and I wrote at different lengths, in varying forms and styles, so it always kept feeling fresh.

Then I thought it would be a linked essay collection. Feedback though (from publishers, one book coach, and some very smart author friends) told me it would work better as a memoir. But I was stubborn for a few more years before starting on the memoir manuscript.

Looking back, I can see that I continued to develop as a writer alongside the trajectory of this project. The accumulation of the essays, especially the longer more complex ones, was a key for me to develop the confidence and experience to tackle the more traditional manuscript that became Starting with Goodbye. While I’m not so glad it took as long as it did, I’m grateful for all the steps along the way.

CC: When we lose someone we love, we are usually told to anticipate the 5 traditional stages of grief. But you push through the boundaries of those expectations, writing about a different way in which we may experience such loss. At one point in your memoir you ask yourself, “what…would people say if I told them that my way of grief…is to talk to my dead father, to watch him move through my house, to think that we’re getting better acquainted?” Was there a moment during those visits from your father when you or someone close to you questioned that experience? What do you hope readers will carry with them after finishing your book?

LR: First, I’m a rather serious, pragmatic person, not prone to the mystical or seemingly unexplainable ideas. I would not even say I’m that spiritual and I am not religious. So, this came out of nowhere. So initially I didn’t tell anyone, for a long time. Also, it felt very private and I wanted to hold on to that. For so much of my life I did not feel close to my father, and now here I had a chance.

My husband first found out I was talking to my dead father when he read it in one of my published essays. He was skeptical but stayed silent. When he lost his own father—who he worked beside every day for 40 years—then we were able to talk about it a bit more.

When friends read some of those essays, they began to confide that they too had similar experiences. Finally, I began talking about it and found that many people were relieved to tell me how they too talk to their dead departed loved ones. Other people seem grateful just to talk about their gone loved ones because that’s something we don’t do enough of in this country. We take the idea of “don’t speak ill of the dead” too far – and in many families the dead are just never spoken about, period I hope readers will come away perhaps a bit more willing to talk about those who are gone, and maybe talk to them as well. To know that the point of grief is not to get over someone, but to remember them, to be curious about them. A life ends, but not the relationship does not.

CC: Outside of your work as an author, you teach writing classes, workshops, retreats. In fact, you have one upcoming in New Jersey (through The Cedar Ridge Writers Series), “Creating Memoir from Memory”), teaching alongside Allison K. Williams. If only I lived closer! What do you love most about working with students who are in the thick of the writing and publication process?

LR: Well, first of all, I learn something about myself every single time I teach— either from the general discussion that develops and/or from particular students, so there is a direct, somewhat selfish benefit in that!  When writers are still in the developing stages of projects— whether that’s a full manuscript or a single essay — there are so many options and possibilities, some of which they themselves don’t even see because they are too close to the story. I love being able to help them draw out all the undeveloped parts of a bigger whole, find the nuance and subtext, dig down to the underlying story-beneath-the-story, and see all the different ways a story might go; or maybe it’s two or three stories and not just one. When that lightbulb goes off for the (student) writer, it feeds both of us.

CC: What are you reading these days?

LR: I just started The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hampl, one of my favorite authors. I’d pre-ordered it and found it so ironic that the book arrived at one of the busiest times of my life, and its message is: slow down! I could feel my body loosen during the first chapter when she describes lolling under a shade tree as a young girl—but because it’s Patricia Hampl, it’s not just about lying under that tree!

When I get this busy, my reading slacks off and so I tend to reach for short stuff—I’ll pull a poetry collection from the shelf, or a short story anthology and dip in and out. True Story, from Creative Nonfiction Magazine, is perfect for that—a purse-sized mini-chapbook each month featuring one long essay or narrative nonfiction piece.

CC: What do you claim as your favorite writing space or where is a treasured place for retreat?

LR: The place I spend so much time each day working and writing IS my favorite spot. That was my goal five years ago when I replaced all the second-hand beige office furniture in my home office—yes, an entire room of my own!—with the furnishings and décor I wanted. The walls are bright red with white trim. There are two full walls and one-half wall covered in black wood bookcases. I have a huge black writing table (it’s really a dining room table; I hate desks) floating in the middle of the room. There’s a comfy wing chair in the corner, and I have all the space, light, and comfort I need. I work facing the front window so I see the snow piling up when I’m warm and cozy inside, and in summer I can enjoy the neighbors’ flowers.

~

Lisa Romeo is the author of Starting with Goodbye: A Daughter’s Memoir of Love after Loss, (University of Nevada Press). Her nonfiction is listed in Best American Essays 2016, and published widely, including the New York Times, O The Oprah Magazine, Longreads, Brain Child, Brevity, Hippocampus. Lisa teaches with Bay Path University’s MFA program, and works as a freelance editor and writing coach. She lives in northern New Jersey with her husband and sons.

DON’T FORGET! Click HERE to enter the giveaway
for a chance to win a copy of Starting with Goodbye.

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Q&A with Yvonne Stephens, author of The Salt Before It Shakes

This winter, I will haul out summer / from the chest freezer / tart cherries to suck on, to make pie. // You and I are omnivorous– / even bitter fruit, somehow, / sustains us.”
~ from “Give Me a Bushel of Tomatoes” in The Salt Before It Shakes

I fell in love with the poetry of Yvonne Stephens at first glance. I was skimming through submissions for Family Stories from the Attic, and her piece, “Syl,” stopped me short. A found poem, she turned lines in a letter from a Grandfather she did not know into a piece that stays with you. Her writing is intimate, it’s pure and sweet, heartbreaking and hopeful, all at once.

Her new chapbook, The Salt Before It Shakes, offers the same level of intimacy and strength and more. Poems like “As a Dignity” and “To Build a Sauna” (and “Give Me a Bushel of Tomatoes” quoted above)  center the reader, giving pause in the mix of uproar or discord or simple worry to show what matters in the moment. Other poems take a light-hearted look at coyotes and porcupines and even mops to build on the idea that poetry is for reflection both in earnest and in fun.

Rita Dove says “Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.” The poems in these pages are true to the form; they are good for the soul.

I’m honored to host Yvonne today to talk about her new chapbook, released by Hidden Timber Books last month. After the Q&A, CLICK HERE to enter the book giveaway for a chance to win a copy of The Salt Before It Shakes (courtesy of Hidden Timber Books).

Now, welcome Yvonne!

Christi Craig (CC): The Salt Before It Shakes is a lovely collection of poems, several of which couple the human experience with nature–from the outside looking in or the inside looking out. I’m thinking of “Tomato Hornworm, a Study” and “Imminent Rain” as two examples, the first a poem of relationships in a way; the second, one of mood. Nature and sense of self. I love this pairing. But which serves to inspire the poetry in you first, the introspection or the walk in the woods? 

Yvonne Stephens (YS): Mostly the walk in the woods first, which is a great exercise for getting me out of my head and being present. I think being clear headed and in the moment is an ideal, even idealized way to be ready to write a poem. But, my life is generally chaotic, so I’ve been learning how to write, and write well, in chaos, too. On my walks I am collecting images, fragments of lines that come to mind, or just getting my blood pumping (because I can be so sedentary).

My poems tend to be written late at night, when my family is asleep. If I’m working on something and I’m stuck, I’ll take a walk in the woods to mull it over.

“Tomato Hornworm”originated from a writing prompt, from an online poetry course that I took in 2013 with Holly Wren Spaulding–and also very much my backyard garden. “Imminent Rain” originated in an approaching storm.

CC: I have so many favorites in this collection, one being “Eleven Mops”…the language, the images, the play in lines like this, “As I work a mop around my feet, there it is: a microphone, the urge to sing.” I know this is a formal Q&A, but :D! Tell us a little more about those moments “Eleven Mops” came into form.

YS: “Eleven Mops” was written from an assignment from a class I took in 2009 (again, Holly Wren Spaulding), to emulate “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens. I remember choosing to focus on mops. It was September, and I had just left from helping a friend do some cleaning. A mop is so simple, and just silly. Could I think about it in a multitude of ways? Why, yes! So it started from a place of play, of wanting to have fun. I especially like the last line because it incorporates a blackbird, a final connection to Stevens’ original poem.

CC: Speaking of play, last year you did #100daysofplay and #31daysofsnailmail projects.What did you love most about these projects, and what might be on the docket for 2018?

YS: What I loved most about these projects was the permission to prioritize things I love to do, and the accountability of posting about it in order to keep at it.

Play is essential to a thriving imagination, and letter writing is a way to slow down, reflect, connect with people I care about–all of these things enrich a life. They were so good for me. I was inspired to start this project by my friend, Jeannie Voller, who had done 100 days of dance, and invited others to do their own projects.

With “The Salt Before It Shakes” in print, I’m taking my first-ever book tour. I’m also working on a second book, with the working title, “These Hands Can” due out mid-2019 through Hidden Timber Books.

I enjoy collage work, sewing, and spotlighting the work of others. I might make these into projects I track on my blog in 2018–but no specific plans. Thanks for asking! You may have just started something.

CC: Which poets/books of poetry do you keep close at hand?

YS: Suzanne Buffam, Diane Seuss, Jane Kenyon, Fleda Brown. “Contemporary Greek Women Poets” translated by Eleni Fourtouni, Thelphini Press (1978).

~

Yvonne Stephens lives with her husband and two children in Northwest Lower Michigan. She has worked as an assistant in the fields of mycology, forestry, and neurology research, volunteered for two year in the AmeriCorps, and most recently was an Artist Residency Coordinator for the Crosshatch Center for Art and Ecology. An award-winning poet, Yvonne was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2015, and her poems have appeared in the Dunes Review, the LAND Creative Writing Journal, and Family Stories from the Attic. Visit her blog at poetwith40eyes.com.

Don’t forget! Enter the book giveaway for a chance to win a copy
of The Salt Before It Shakes.