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#FamilyStories Meet the Author: Ramona M. Payne

This post is part of an interview series featuring the authors of Family Stories from the Attic, an anthology of essays, creative nonfiction, and poetry inspired by family letters, objects, and archives. Monday posts are featured on the Hidden Timber Books website, and Wednesday posts are featured here. Learn more about Family Stories from the Attic at the bottom of this post. Without further ado, let’s meet Ramona Payne, author of “Without Words.”

Ramona M. Payne

Q: Did you write “Without Words” with a particular person/reader in mind?

Ramona: I did not start “Without Words” with a specific person or audience in mind; I wrote it because by writing and researching the silver service that she left behind, I was able to understand more about my mother-in-law and consequently, about what it means to communicate when a conversation is not possible. It helped me to understand a part of her life with her husband and sons that we had not discussed. So many of us can relate to the need to learn more about those who are no longer with us to answer our questions.

Q: How has the publication of your piece influenced the work you are writing today or your writing in general?

Ramona: Since the publication of my essay “Without Words,” I continue to work on other essays, my favorite form of creative nonfiction. Some are intended for other anthologies and journals; many will part of a collection of personal essays that I am writing.

Being part of Family Stories from the Attic has introduced me to a new group of fellow writers, all of whom seek to tell stories that reveal, inform, and enlighten. The anthology affirms that there will always be an audience of readers for these type of stories and I hope it will encourage other writers to continue writing and submitting their work.

Q: What is a fun, interesting, or unusual fact to share with your readers?

Ramona: For several years I was a fundraiser at a major university where I worked with generous benefactors to raise millions of dollars; many of these gifts went to support the visual and performing arts. I met many artists—writers, sculptors, actors, playwrights, producers, singers, and dancers—and I enjoyed talking to them about their work. I learned that an artist needs time and a place to create, and that consistent effort is critical. I decided to leave that job to focus on my own writing, to give it the attention it required to produce work I wanted to share. I have no regrets about this decision; I am finally doing the work I have wanted to do for years.

Connect with Ramona

Website | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn

ABOUT THE BOOK

Family Stories from the Attic features nearly two dozen works of prose and poetry inspired by letters, diaries, photographs, and other family papers and artifacts. Editors Christi Craig and Lisa Rivero bring together both experienced and new writers who share their stories in ways that reflect universal themes of time, history, family, love, and change.

Available now from Boswell Book Company, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online retailers.

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#FamilyStories Meet the Author: Annilee Newton

This post is part of an interview series featuring the authors of Family Stories from the Attic, an anthology of essays, creative nonfiction, and poetry inspired by family letters, objects, and archives. Monday posts are featured on the Hidden Timber Books website, and Wednesday posts are featured here. Learn more about Family Stories from the Attic at the bottom of this post. Without further ado, let’s meet Annilee Newton, author of “Leet.”

Annilee Newton

Q: Did you write “Leet” with a particular person/reader in mind?

Annilee: I used to teach at an inner city middle school in Houston. Most of my students were Hispanic, and many of them had very strong family ties and cultural identities. One day while we were discussing a piece of literature that grappled with the theme of family, I mentioned that I didn’t know my grandparents very well. The eyes of one of my students grew wide with alarm. “You don’t know your grandparents? Are you okay, Miss? I mean, did it hurt you?”

“I don’t know, I mean, I don’t think so,” I said. “After all, I’ve never known anything else.”

Every time I write about my family, I remember this student and this class and this question. And, although he could never be the audience, I thought about Grandpa Leet himself, and all the rest of the dead Newtons in Kentucky. They are my ghost audience. I thought about Grandy. Also, my sister and my dad and my tiniest baby nephew. Together, the four of us represent all of the genetic material that Leet still has kicking around this world.

Q: How has the publication of your piece influenced the work you are writing today or your writing in general?

Annilee: The editing process taught me, or maybe reminded me, how invaluable another set of astute eyes can be to the process of creation. Collaboration of any kind is so rewarding, and now my piece gets to be a part of something bigger than me and my story. I’m am so proud that “Leet” can part of a this collection of voices and memories.

Six years ago, I started writing a multigenre book about food, memory, family, identity, taste, and experience. It’s all a glorious mess, and the different drafts of the separate pieces tell the history of my development as a writer. Something about the publication of Leet has made me see that the unifying thread that ties all the recipes and biology and myth together is me. In all the excitement of the research (which I love), I have choked out the narrative thread. In this summer’s revision, I’ll spend time writing myself back in.

Q: What books are you reading at the moment?

Annilee: During the school year, I’m usually reading two books–one that I’m teaching and one that I’m reading for pleasure. Right now, I’m teaching and rereading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Every year when students experience this memoir, I get to see their understanding of the world deepen and widen. With the power of her own story, Jeannette Walls gives my students an intimate portrait of poverty, and she shows them how sometimes in the messiness of real life, the hero and the villain can be the same person.

I’m also reading A. B. Mitford’s Tales of Old Japan. Mitford was a British diplomat who lived in Japan in the late 1800’s. He watched the country transform as it opened itself up to the world after a long period of enforced isolation. This year for spring break, I took a group of students on an educational tour of Japan, and we all learned so much. My trip also inspired me to rewatch the Sailor Moon anime series from the nineties, to my boyfriend’s horror.

Read more from Annilee

Research Studio | NaNoWriMo-inspired cookies | On food & Family in the Heartland

ABOUT THE BOOK

Family Stories from the Attic features nearly two dozen works of prose and poetry inspired by letters, diaries, photographs, and other family papers and artifacts. Editors Christi Craig and Lisa Rivero bring together both experienced and new writers who share their stories in ways that reflect universal themes of time, history, family, love, and change.

Available now from Boswell Book Company, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online retailers.

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Q&A with Jenny Forrester, author of Narrow River, Wide Sky

Our memories save us, she’d told me when she gave me a diary for my thirteenth Christmas. I started writing my memories to save myself from the grief I’d gathered and given, and to figure out how to live without her, to grow up, and to consider what it means to be of service. ~ from Narrow River, Wide Sky

There’s a theme that keeps appearing in the work I’ve been doing lately, both personal and professional: how writing saves us. Whether I’m writing a letter to a friend or pouring thoughts into a journal, as I’m editing the draft of an essay or reading a memoir, the way we pull at language or push at imagery can weave a story that brings resolution, a desire for redemption, always relief.

This idea holds true with Jenny Forrester’s new memoir, Narrow River, Wide Sky (Hawthorne Books, 2017), a beautiful book that Kirkus calls “finely etched” and one that is encapsulated in the quote above. Forrester digs into the past in order to envision a future. Her book moves from scene to scene with little whitespace but plenty of close detail, offering a wide angle perspective on a society bound in politics and religion. The crux of her memoir is revealed in select critical moments between brother, sister, and sister-in-law to-be: we may grow up together in tight spaces and common struggles, but our journey can split at painful, philosophical divides and leave us hungry for understanding, for acceptance. Forrester writes of her return to such grace.

I’m honored to host Jenny for an interview and thrilled to give away a copy of her new book. Click HERE to sign up for the giveaway (deadline to enter is June 18th).

Now, welcome Jenny!

Christi Craig: You and I met several years ago in one of Ariel Gore’s Literary Kitchen online courses, and I remember mention of you wanting to write a memoir back then. It’s wonderful to see your book finally released into the world–here’s to perseverance, the twists and turns of the process, and success! How has your vision of this book changed from back then to now? Or maybe the vision has always been the same and time played a bigger (necessary) role in massaging the story onto the page?

Jenny Forrester: The desire to write a memoir has always been to pass the stories of my mother to my daughter, but the evolution to something bigger and for a wider audience happened over time. Time was required for this to become what it’s become. For sure, there was no other way than to be patient and keep writing towards the invisible (to me) ultimate form it took. You’re so right.

CC: In the chapter, “Supine,” you write “I got good at spinning in small spaces, careful of the river rocks around me,” and on the opening page of your book, you consider where to bury your mother, saying, “She liked expanses, the wider view. She’d suffered narrowness long enough.” Your memoir speaks on sense of place in relation to self as much as it does other themes (life & society, politics & religion), and it is a moment you experience at the Salt River where place takes you back to your core being:

I started to remember again rivers and where I’d come from after spending so much time and emotion on forgetting what I’d been and learned and forgetting what I’d fought against without knowing why.

Is there relief, then, in putting your story to the page?

JF: Writing helps me cope with the small and massive details of life, and I wish I didn’t have to have this sometimes. It would be so much easier to watch television and numb myself or maybe get involved in some other art form, but I do this because I must. I’m compelled. I would love to write fiction from now on.

CC: You are curator of the Unchaste Reader series, an ongoing literary event in Portland, Oregon. Can you tell us a little more about the series–its roots and its effect on writers, readers, and audience members alike?

JF: The series for women poets, spoken-word artists, and musicians began as a reaction to the male-dominated literary scene and has evolved as my understanding of the gender binary and other social issues and skills and you know, grit or maybe bossiness-used-for-good, and the know-how to create supportive art spaces has evolved. So the main effect of change has been on me, I suppose, and I hope it’s helpful to others. There’s this other effect that is hard to quantify – but it’s joy. There’s this joy that comes from the readers/performers that is so addictive. They’re happy, so I’m happy. Joyful, in fact.

CC: What are you reading these days?

JF: Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Lidia Yuknavitch’s Book of Joan and Sherman Alexie has a memoir coming out. Ijeoma Oluo, too. And Ariel Gore’s got a new book out soon, too. I’m always reading poetry.

CC: Do you have a quote or mantra that stays with you lately? (Because in many ways, life & society, place & politics hasn’t changed.) 

JF: As I drove through Colorado on the book tour, I kept hearing the lines of the book, and that meant so much to me. So, I suppose one of my mantras is to listen – the landscape has much to offer (solitude and sanctuary) and has much that it needs, you know? I navigate wanting more and being of service and seek to do right and believe that that rightness will widen the river, an important metaphor for me. And as a mantra, a repetition – I write myself resilient.

Jenny Forrester has been published in a number of print and online publications including Seattle’s City Arts Magazine, Nailed Magazine, Hip Mama, The Literary Kitchen, Indiana Review, and Columbia Journal. Her work is included in the Listen to Your Mother Anthology, published by Putnam. She curates the Unchaste Readers Series. Visit her website for more information on her writing or the Unchaste Readers website for information on upcoming events.

Don’t forget! Enter the giveaway for a chance to win a copy of Narrow River, Wide Sky (deadline is Sunday, June 18th).