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Q&A with Julia Stoops, author of Parts Per Million

“How seldom you recognize the start of things.” ~ Fetzer
in Parts Per Million by Julia Stoops

It’s true, hindsight is 20/20, that life moves along a trajectory of cause and effect, and that history often repeats itself. We witness as much when we turn on the TV or scroll through internet feeds and see familiar threads of concern: a loss of rights, a washing of facts, a nation on the brink of war.

We have been here before.

Julia Stoops’ debut novel is a story about that time before. Set in the early 2000s, Parts Per Million (Forest Avenue Press, 2018), tells the story of three activists–Nelson, Jen, and Fetzer, as they work to make known one environmental injustice after another. But their small operation, Omnia Mundi, falls under the eye of bigger watchdog when they uncover a local university in quiet partnership with the government to create military technology.

What unfolds is a complex story of resistance and risk and the constant effort to find balance, an effort that means re-examining the core in order to build a stronger foundation.

I’m honored to host Julia for an interview about her novel. And there’s a giveaway! CLICK HERE (by Tuesday, April 24th, for a chance to win a copy of Parts Per Million.

Now, welcome Julia Stoops!

Christi Craig (CC): I understand your novel has been several years in the making. But even with a stretch in the journey from first draft to publication and the fact that the subject itself centers around events that happened well over 15 years ago, much of this story remains current in themes and in dialogue, and (as Fetzer says) how “fear clings to the status quo.” Writing is magic, and we can’t always know how well a story first conceived in years past will reflect our present day. Are you surprised at how apropos your novel is to today’s political discourse?

Julia Stoops (JS): Writing is magic! And indeed, I am very surprised. By mid-2016, when Forest Avenue Press acquired the manuscript, I naively thought the fascist-leaning Bush administration was an aberration we had put behind us. I pitched Parts per Million as a story about a group of activists during a particularly messed-up time in our history, trying to hold onto their ideals while their world falls apart around them.

It got rejected by a lot of agents in 2011 and 2012 — one even explained they didn’t think the topic was relevant to contemporary readers. That coincided with Occupy, by the way, so the reasoning was absurd, but many liberals assumed the improvements we enjoyed on the domestic front during the Obama years were going to continue. The MS was even shortlisted for the PEN Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, but, as time moved on, the subject matter gradually slipped into a category you could call “recent history we’d collectively rather forget.”

Laura acquired the MS because she loves the characters, and she wanted a realistic novel set in the recent past. I don’t think either of us realized how pertinent the themes and topics would become after the 2016 election.

That day after the election, I was leaving my downtown workplace to head home for the evening, and I recognized a familiar sound. I could hear it from blocks away, the chanting of people taking to the streets. Helicopters thrumming in the sky. The sound of the craziness returning. And it hit me: My novel is relevant again. Unfortunately, disturbingly relevant.

CC: Nancy is a minor character but a powerful voice within the story as a whole when she confronts Nelson, Fetzer, and Jen about the racial disparity within organized protests. ‘Those rallies of yours are all organized by white people,’ she says. ‘They don’t come into the black communities and let us in on what’s going on, or ask us to get involved.’ What might her character say in response to protests of our time–the Women’s March, March for our Lives, or maybe even activism on which mainstream media tends to ignore?

JS: The phenomenon of mostly white people marching together for liberal causes is still going on. But the difference is now more white people are noticing and starting to understand what it means. And there have been occasions where white and black people have come together such as the Black Lives Matter protests. However, systems, including the mainstream media, are slow to evolve.

For instance, Marjory Stoneman Douglas has gotten a terrific amount of coverage, and I’m glad of that. But it’s in Parkland, an affluent suburb. Now don’t get me wrong, I love March for Our Lives, and I deeply admire these young people who have been catapulted by tragedy onto the national stage, and are getting media coverage and their photos on the cover of Time, and adults on social media saying “These kids are gonna save the world when we couldn’t” (or didn’t.) The MSD survivors are saying some very sensible things and god knows we need some sense right now. I, too, want to believe in these kids as our upcoming thinkers, doers, society-shapers. They are amazing people! But they were handed the microphone because they’re light skinned and middle class. The keepers-of-the-microphone can relate to them because they’re like their own kids. When poor black kids are catapulted by gun-violence tragedy – as they are so very, very frequently – they don’t automatically land on the national stage. When they protest, they don’t get handed the microphone. And when they protest louder, they get vilified.

But the conversation is starting to shift. I am heartened to read that the new, post-MSD gun-control movement is expanding the spotlight beyond mass shootings in suburban schools, to include gun violence in urban communities, and is really connecting with those communities. I hope it becomes a strong, multi-racial coalition.

And I hope the mainstream media continues to hand it the microphone, regardless of the color of its spokespeople. Some time after the tragedy, it came out in the media that Marjory Stoneman Douglas High is 25% black, and that those kids’ voices were being pretty much ignored. But the students who are getting the attention seem to be acknowledging their privilege and working to include other voices, and that give me hope. (image above: samrodgers2 on Visual hunt / CC BY-NC)

As Fetzer says in Chapter 60: “you’re the future, young woman. Guys like me, time’s coming when we step aside because you’re the energy and the hope and you grew up with your feet in enough different worlds that it doesn’t occur to you there’s any barriers till some idiot reminds you he still believes in them.”

CC: Later in the book, Nelson tells a group gathered in protest, ‘Democracy is getting together in dialogue. It’s taking turns at the microphone.’ This line not only describes the change that he and Fetzer and Jen desire as they take in Nancy’s words, the line also highlights the structure of your novel. The story is told from the perspectives of Nelson, Fetzer, and Jen individually but the chapters are written in different POVs: 3rd person for Nelson with Fetzer and Jen in 1st person. Can you tell us a little about your decision to write the story in such a way?

JS: Stories told from multiple points of view have always fascinated me. When I learned about writing in voice, a world opened up.

First of all, it’s challenging and liberating to remove yourself as the authorial voice and speak as another character. It forces you to reconsider every single sentence from the perspective of someone who is not you.

Secondly, I love the narrative device of a story told with incomplete and sometimes unreliable or conflicting accounts — as a reader I like to sort it all out and decide what to believe and what to doubt. So it was natural to explore that device in my own writing.

Thirdly, there’s something democratic about telling a story from more than one point of view. It’s a way of working with the idea that there is no single right perspective. No person’s account carries more authority than another’s, and although we share a tremendous amount of experience, our subjectivity is the place where existential questions get interesting.

The characters’ formal POV choices relate to their personality. Jen is impulsive, angry, and quick, so we get her in 1st person present, in “real time,” so to speak. Fetzer is the oldest and wisest, and he has processed the events of the story. Thus his version of the narrative is retrospective, in 1st person past. Nelson’s POV is in the present, but the novel opens with him in a state of simmering crisis about the decisions he’s made and where he’s heading. His voice is in 3rd person, which adds a little bit of distance, or disconnect, to his version of the narrative.

CC: You are an artist as well as an author and even created the image for your book’s cover. How do you see art and literature working together to advocate or educate on the personal or political?

JS: My mind immediately jumps to Rolling Blackouts by Sarah Glidden, which I recently read and loved so very much. I want to read more graphic journalism because I see a real potential there for art and writing working together to communicate complex ideas more powerfully than visuals or words can do alone.

In my own art practice I have done overtly political work, but it’s not on my art website because, well, it confuses people when you do different things, they don’t know how to label you, or what to expect next from you. So I’ve curated my art website to only show the process-driven paintings. Included there is a series I did about 15 years ago that features the Parts per Million character John Nelson, and it’s a piece from that period that’s on the cover of the book. But at the time Nelson was more of an “everyman” symbol I was working through. My paintings are mostly abstract and symbolic. They are like dream imagery, obscure even to me at times. My visual art comes from a different place than the writing.

But, being visually oriented, I wanted Parts per Million to have illustrations! I engaged Portland artist Gabriel Liston, who works realistically, to create illustrations for the novel. Friends asked me why I didn’t illustrate my own novel, but, mine’s a different kind of process, a different kind of art. Parts per Million needed a storytelling realist with a strong sense of history. Gabriel created seven illustrations plus three character portraits that head the chapters they represent. I hope the illustrations add a little extra depth and help readers connect with the story in a richer way.

CC: What are you reading these days?

JS: Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. I moved to the US as an adult, so I didn’t get US history in school. I’m trying to understand the history of power and of dissent in this country I’ve also been reading a lot of Chris Hedges to that end. His view is more global: how do people respond to oppression? What happens when they do? How do states gain so much power (hint: in non-coercive democracies, liberal capitulation is to blame.) And what causes them to fall? Hedges’ perspective, informed by 20 years as a foreign correspondent in conflict zones, is frightening and fascinating. I’m also trying to understand war. Why oh why does it keep happening? Hedges’ War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is eye-opening.

Other excellent books I’ve read in recent months about the Iraq war, specifically, include Eat the Apple, just out from Matt Young, Fives and Twenty-Fives by Michael Pitre, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain, and like I mentioned, Sara Glidden’s Rolling Blackouts, about the role of journalism in the context of war and imperialism – which is a major background theme in Parts per Million.

~

Julia Stoops was born in Samoa to New Zealand parents, and grew up in Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Washington, D.C. She has lived in Portland, Oregon since 1994. She has received Oregon Arts Commission fellowships for visual arts and literature, and was a resident at the Ucross Foundation in 2016.

Don’t forget! CLICK HERE to enter the giveaway for a chance
to win your own copy of Parts Per Million.
Deadline is Tuesday, April 24th, noon.

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Q&A with Paul Košir, poet and author of Perspectives of Nature

A host of bluffs and relict pines, / man’s contour farms, historic mines / are found throughout the Driftless Lands / some made by God, some, human hands. ~ from “Driftless Area” in Perspectives of Nature by Paul Košir

Spring has officially arrived–ahhh. With sunny days and blue skies, this is the perfect time to soak up some much-needed vitamin D as you take a walk or hit the trail. But don’t go alone. Paul Košir, a poet from LaCrosse, Wisconsin, offers you a companion in poetry.

Košir’s chapbook entitled Perspectives of Nature: Scientifically Romantic and Experiential Nature Poetry offers poems–for all seasons, along with space for your own notes and observations.

A former teacher, Košir decided to blend his two loves–science and poetry, so that anyone might be inspired by the beauty around them but also by the ways in which nature builds that beauty. Košir taps into an audience who enjoys the rhythm and cadence of the genre, as well as the reader who wonders about the why and how of science. Perspectives of Nature is a book of lessons in 32 poems from “Sun Dogs” to “Bird Song.”

I’m honored to host Paul today to talk about his chapbook of poems. And as always, there’s a giveaway. CLICK HERE to enter for a chance to win one of two signed copies of Perspectives of Nature.

Now, welcome Paul Košir!

Christi Craig (CC): Tell us about the origins of this chapbook–what inspired you to mix lessons in science with the prose in poetry?

Paul Košir (PK): The origin of the chapbook was a handful of poems I wrote in the late 1980s while I was the naturalist at Wyalusing State Park near Prairie du Chien, WI. As the naturalist, it was my job to interpret the natural world for park visitors, to describe and explain it. That job, that way of life, inspired me to mix science lessons in with my lines of poetry. I found my voice – writing beautiful, instructive verses.

But then I didn’t write another poem for 20 years. When I did write again, I began to add a natural perspective to my poems and was pleased with the result. With a new style emerging, I joined the Wisconsin Writers Association. The WWA published 4 of my poems in an anthology, which introduced me to the anthology’s compiler. He offered to guide me through the publication of a book of my poems with science themes. I began writing poetry in earnest to create enough poems for a book, not only because I wanted to write, but also because I felt I should write.

CC: A few of my favorite poems are: 1) “Warblers” (“They never stop moving, I can’t get a good look; / when they finally sit perched, it’s not like in the book.”), because I’ve lost my focus in the middle of a bird book, wondering if there was a misprint on the number of–what seemed to be–the same image of a black and yellow bird with a million different names; and 2) “Hummingbird Trap,” which is a beautifully written poem about your experience holding such a delicate bird: Through porous bones I felt its heart, its tiny, racing, living part. // With lightest touch, I held the life that on each front found danger rife. I’ve seen hummingbirds up close but never close enough to touch; I can only imagine this–amazing! I would love to hear more about this moment.

PK: One day, the landlady where I stayed while I was the naturalist at Wyalusing State Park ran up to me and said, “Paul, Paul, a hummingbird is trapped and can’t get out!” Seeing the panic in her face, I ran after the excited woman to where the bird was trapped.

I thought it would be easy to coax the bird to perch on a pole and set it free, but after several failed attempts, I realized I’d have to take matters – and the bird – into my own hands. Knowing the hummer would have to eat soon, I quickly climbed up to it with a bag.

I paused just long enough to make a plan. I’d have to grasp it around its body gently enough that it wouldn’t be crushed but firmly enough that it wouldn’t struggle. Then I’d have to place it in the bag and close it enough that the bird wouldn’t escape. Only then could I attempt the climb back down with a bag in one hand that I couldn’t hold too tight near the hummer, but also couldn’t ease up on.

I was so afraid I’d crush the female rubythroat but grabbed her, anyway. Her heart was beating even faster than mine. I had to look at her again because I couldn’t believe I actually had a live hummingbird in my hand. I had never felt anything like it.

I felt… life.

The next thing I knew, I was on the ground, letting her go.

CC: What’s unique about your chapbook is how each poem is paired with a page for reader’s notes and often a few footnotes on terms or concepts found within the poem (like kettle and drift and esker from “Ice-Age Impact”). I love a book that engages a reader in more ways than one: in the words on the page but in the invitation to explore on their own. What’s the best way someone might use your book in a workshop or class on creativity or poetry for young readers?

PK: Earlier this month I used Perspectives of Nature for examples in a workshop on writing about nature I taught to a group of teens and adults. It could be used in the same way to teach workshops on poetry in general or on specific topics in science for many levels of study.

In a classroom setting, the book’s glossary entries could be used to familiarize students with science topics before in-depth study or as review after in-depth study. The book’s sections for notes are ideal for portfolio evaluation and environmental education objectives. For continuing and self-taught students, writing notes in these sections could form a journal that would be its own reward and act as a reference for years to come.

Perspectives of Nature engages and educates readers about scientific content and concepts in ways and that other sources cannot and it educates them by appealing to different intelligences. Using the book can be adapted to any students – old, young, or young-at-heart.

CC: Who are your go-to poets?

PK: Certainly, Robert Frost is a go-to poet for me; I even quoted him in one of my poems. And Emily Dickinson. Those are the two poets whose poems I like the best and with whose work I am most familiar and whose poetry is most like mine. But I’ve read so little poetry, even of theirs that I can’t honestly say that I’ve been influenced by either of them…or any other poet, for that matter.

My scientifically romantic style of poetry is truly singular, I’ve found no poetry to act as a pattern for it nor any poet to act as a model for me. I am the standard-bearer of this new genre.

CC: Where is your favorite place to explore science in nature?

PK: Wyalusing State Park is definitely my favorite place to explore science in nature. It has such unusual geology and plant life and bird life that it is a phenomenal place to do so, either formally or informally. The park was the venue or genesis for many of my poems, especially the canoe trail.

I have found science in nature and subsequently written poems about it in many other places I hold in favor: on our land near Hillsboro, the bluffs of La Crosse, the shores of Lake Mendota, and caves in Kentucky, even looking out from our back yard and driving down the street. Nature is all around us, so I guess any place outside a lab that I am struck by science is, in that moment, my favorite place to explore science in nature.

About the Author

The scientifically romantic nature poetry of Paul Košir has its academic roots in his nine years as a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There he earned bachelor’s degrees in math, natural science, and history. In 2010 he received a master’s degree in natural resources and environmental education from UW-Stevens Point. The experiential poetry was drawn from his twelve years as the naturalist at Wyalusing State Park near Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. He also drew on this background to write articles for Wisconsin Natural Resources and La Crosse Magazine and to publish the book Wyalusing History.

Košir has taught biology, physical science, and math at the high school level and earth science, biology, and environmental issues at the college level. As a naturalist, he taught all ages about nature through hikes, programs, and displays, something he still does occasionally as a volunteer.

Born in Milwaukee, he now lives in La Crosse with his wife and their two sons. He enjoys writing, hiking, bird-watching, gardening, traveling, and working on the family’s 13 acres in the Driftless Area near Hillsboro, Wisconsin.

DON’T FORGET: Enter the giveaway for a chance to win a copy
of Perspectives of Nature. The deadline to sign up
is Thursday, March 29th!

*Hummingbird photo (above) credit: cuatrok77 on Visualhunt.com/ CC BY-SA
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Guest Post: Michael A. Ferro on the Side Effects of Publishing

If you’re a writer, you dream of publishing your work. Maybe an essay, hopefully a collection of stories, definitely a novel. If you’re a writer like me, you figure the putting the words in good order is the hardest part– get the book finished (dammit!) and *then* you’ll be on easy street. Traveling the road to publication though is…well, not necessarily fraught with potholes or full of dead ends; the book will still reach the shelves of readers. But when an author (say, Michael A. Ferro) steps up to the podium at his next reading to share an excerpt, he first may lean in close to the mic and whisper a warning.

Welcome Michael A. Ferro as he talks about the side effects of publishing. Tune in to the end and enter the giveaway for a chance to win a copy of his debut novel, TITLE 13.

My Eye Exploded
Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love (or Cope) with Publishing

It was mid-May of 2017 and I could not have been more excited: I’d signed a contract a few months prior to have my debut novel, TITLE 13, published by the wonderful press, Harvard Square Editions. My dream had come true. (And thankfully it wasn’t that one recurring dream where I turn into a hot dog and get eaten by a kid at a minor league baseball game.) Since I’d signed the contract at the beginning of 2017, I was feverishly working on preparing for the big publication date nearly a year in the future on February 1, 2018. One of the biggest tasks to complete was working with my unbelievably talented editor to get the manuscript finalized for the first printing of advanced reading copies. As someone who also works a full-time job, I thought I’d prepared myself for the amount of work that would go into getting my novel published.

I was stupid, naïve, and wrong.

One day near the end of the editing process and in the midst of other book-related activities, I noticed that I suddenly couldn’t see out of my left eye. It happened without warning. Through my left eye, all I could see was a large black “burn” spot like the kind one gets after they’ve been starting at the sun for a while. I remember thinking: Hmm, this seems not right. I asked myself whether I had been staring at the sun that day like an idiot. No, I hadn’t. Plus, it was dark out and I’d been working at my computer. Had I accidentally poked my eye with a toothpick? I wondered. Nope. The ordeal puzzled me more so at first rather than terrified me. Perhaps I just needed to sleep. As many writers know, long hours in front of a computer screen spent well into the night can often produce some oddball oculary concerns. I went to bed and thought nothing else of it.

When I woke the next morning, I still couldn’t see out of my left eye. Concerned, I did what any rational person in my situation would do: I ran to Google. After a bit of searching I was convinced I had cancer of the eye (as well as a nasty case of Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever), so I finally decided to visit a doctor (but not before I did a quick Google search for affordable, unadorned coffins). After being sent to the emergency room and seeing ophthalmologists for hours of observation and tests, they claimed they had just a few more questions for me.

“So, Michael, tell me: are you under a lot of stress?” asked the doctor.

Being a manly man, I didn’t want to appear weak, so I sort of shrugged off the question.

“Eh, I’m okay. How are you?”

“Michael…” the doctor said, looking impatient as I wasted their valuable time.

“I suppose you could say that I am a complete and total wreck, riddled with uncontrollable anxiety and fear,” I surrendered.

“I see,” the doctor said. “And would you categorize yourself as a ‘worrier,’ or someone who can be obsessive about certain things?”

I was too busy rearranging the tongue depressors, cotton balls, and other medical equipment on the examination table to listen. The doctor seemed satisfied with his assessment and made a note on his paper. He said he’d finally diagnosed my problem: Central Serous Chorioretinopathy.

As I heard the news, I prepared to call my mother and ask that the family bury me in my inflatable Tyrannosaurus Rex costume and that my house and all my belongings be placed in a trust for my faithful dog, Rube. Thankfully, the doctor informed me that I wasn’t going to die. Rather, he stated that CSR was, unfortunately, somewhat common in white males between 30-50 years of age who are not only highly stressed, but tend to be a bit obsessive compulsive and anxious by nature. Unfortunately, I could tick off all those boxes.

While there is no cure for CSR, I was told that my vision might return in time. As the doctor explained, some individuals release higher levels of cortisol (known as “the stress hormone”) than others, and that it can build up on the back of the eye, causing a rupture in the retina that allows fluid to pool under the central macula, effectively blinding the patient. The most important thing, the doctor emphasized, was that I needed to reduce my stress levels. He asked if this would be possible. I replied, “Probably not.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I have a book coming out next year and it’s quite an effort to do everything involved with that and also work a full-time job.”

“Oh, really?” said the doctor, noticeably interested now. “What do you write?”

“Literary fiction. The book is a novel.”

“Ah, what’s it about?” he asked.

I always find it hard to describe my novel to strangers. TITLE 13 is an eclectic mishmash of satire and emotional realism that follows the oft-absurd story of a young alcoholic named Heald Brown who lives in downtown Chicago and works for the federal government. And while there’s plenty of postmodern, Kafkaesque tragicomedy within the pages, much of the novel also centers around the brutal realities of addiction and the divisive nature that has consumed our society and poisoned our culture in a broken modern America.

“It’s a book about a stupid idiot,” I said to the doctor after a long pause. We looked blankly at one another.

“Ah, I see,” he said, his eyes returning to his clipboard. I was discharged shortly after.

Since then, I’ve been seeing an ophthalmologist monthly for regular checkups (not the same ophthalmologist—he’d had enough of me). My vision has improved somewhat and fluctuated from good to bad again, and odds are it will remain this way for the rest of my life I’m told. Still, all things considered, it could be much worse. I could be turned into a hot dog and eaten by a kid at a baseball game.

Plenty of writers, male and female, have similar dispositions: anxious, detail-oriented, and prone to high levels of stress. Whether it’s approaching deadlines, concerns over a career path or level of success, or just the arduous task of sitting down and actually writing something, it’s not an easy life to live. My experience in dealing with CSR while preparing for the publication of my first novel has taught me one important thing, though: if you’re lucky enough to find a publisher for your book, just take it one step at a time and don’t sweat the small stuff. Trust me—your eyes will thank you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born and bred in Detroit, Michael A. Ferro holds a degree in creative writing from Michigan State University. He has received an Honorable Mention from Glimmer Train for their New Writers Award and won the Jim Cash Creative Writing Award for Fiction in 2008. TITLE 13 is his debut novel.

Michael’s fiction and essays have been featured in numerous online and print publications. Michael has lived, worked, and written throughout the Midwest; he currently resides in rural Ann Arbor, Michigan.

For more information on Michael’s writing and TITLE 13, check out his website, find him on Goodreads, explore his Amazon page, and read about him on his Poets & Writers profile. He’s been interviewed on Michigan Quarterly Review and Chicago Tribune Radio with Host Rick Kogan. He’s also keeping up his status on Facebook and Twitter. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

A timely investigation into the heart of a despotic faction within the government, TITLE 13 deftly blends satirical comedy aimed at the hot-button issues of modern culture with the gut-wrenching reality of an intensely personal descent into addiction.

Young Heald Brown might be responsible for the loss of highly classified TITLE 13 government documents—and may have hopelessly lost himself as well. Since leaving his home in Detroit for Chicago during the recession, Heald teeters anxiously between despondency and bombastic sarcasm, striving to understand a country gone mad while clinging to his quixotic roots. Trying to deny the frightening course of his alcoholism, Heald struggles with his mounting paranoia, and his relationships with concerned family and his dying grandmother while juggling a budding office romance at the US government’s Chicago Regional Census Center. Attempting to combat the devastating effects of his addiction, Heald’s reality digresses into farcical absurdity, fevered isolation, and arcane psychological revelation, hilarious though redoubtable in nature. Meanwhile the TITLE 13 secrets remain at large, haunting each character and tangling the interwoven threads of Heald’s life, as the real question looms: Is it the TITLE 13 information that Heald has lost, or his sanity?

ABOUT THE GIVEAWAY

It’s easy to enter. CLICK HERE, watch for an email on Tuesday, March 13th.