Q&A with Lynn Sloan, author of This Far Isn’t Far Enough

“Right here, I’m laying you down, Momma,” I say, but I don’t feel anything important, just unbearably tired. I start to sing, “Precious Jesus, let me live my life in thee,” and lift the urn up–it’s not heavy, it’s not light–and swing my arm in as wide an arc as I can manage, and there she goes, sifting into the air, drifting full wide between the trees and over the brush, and out across the creek I can’t see, toward the distant houses with the lighted windows, through the night, maybe flying all the way to Egypt.

~ from “The Sweet Collapse of the Feeble” in This Far Isn’t Far Enough


Letting go is never easy. We are rooted in tradition, in promises, in expectations. And yet, we inevitably reach that moment when the old, the familiar, the safe no longer serves, when we must release whatever anchors us in order to survive.

Lynn Sloan’s new collection of stories, This Far Isn’t Far Enough, is full of characters faced with the choice of letting go. For some, the choice is liberating, soothing. For others, the release is pinching, dangerous. In either case, such decisions are never simple, never so clean in consequence.

I’m honored to host Lynn Sloan today to talk about This Far Isn’t Far Enough. Her opening story, “Ollie’s Back,” will be read on NPR’s Selected Shorts in March. Here, gain insight into her work and enter the giveaway for a copy of her book (courtesy of Fomite Press & Caitlin Hamilton Marketing & Publicity). Sign up by Tuesday, February 27th. Now, welcome Lynn Sloan!

Christi Craig (CC): This Far Isn’t Far Enough brings together a myriad of stories about a young woman who wants to be a prizefighter, a widow living under the thumb of her husband even after he’s gone, and about an artist lost between fantasy and reality–just to name a few. Which was the first story you wrote, and how did this collection grow from there?

Lynn Sloan (LS): The earliest story included in this collection is “The Sweet Collapse of the Feeble,” the one about a young woman who wants to become a prizefighter. That story came to be when I had a friend who wanted to become a prizefighter. After serious training, she invited me to her first fight. “What must your mother think?” I wondered as I watched my friend get pummeled, and pummel her opponent. My friend had not invited her mother to that fight or to any that came afterward. As far I know, her mother never found out about my friend’s short, but prize-filled boxing career. I had a little baby at that time, and I must have been grappling with how one adjusts to one’s beloved child getting beat up.

You asked if my collection grew from there. In fact, this collection didn’t grow up, it collected, like filings around a magnet. I like variety. Each time I finish one story, I want to try something different with my next. After I’ve written from a middle-aged mother’s point of view, in first person, as in “The Sweet Collapse of the Feeble,” I want to try something entirely different: a naïve Army grunt, his third person point of view, and I want to try a different time frame, after WWII in Germany, before my own time. This became “The Gold Spoon.” Investigating varied characters and situations is a way of challenging what I do, and is my pleasure. A couple of years ago, I broke my ankle and was told I must keep my cast above my heart-level for a few weeks. Stuck on my couch, without the slightest urge to write, I decided to clean up my computer files. As I re-read these stories, I discovered that certain emotions link them all, even though the circumstances are different. Discovering this was an “ah hah” moment. My characters ache for love, they are compelled by regret and loss, and they can’t escape their pasts. These recurrent emotions and desires were the magnet that drew these stories together into this collection.

CC: In an interview on The Literary Fiction Book Review, you say, “Fiction reveals how we live beneath the surface of the obvious and the visible.” I’ve been ruminating on this sentence for a while now. Do you mean fiction allows us to embrace certain truths that we choose to ignore otherwise? Or do you mean fiction gives us more liberty to explore a character, a situation, a reaction to such depths that we uncover a piece of our core we hadn’t known existed?

LS: What’s below the surface is where the action is. Gestures and words can be deceptive or genuine. And isn’t everything more complicated than it appears? We read news items about a postal worker who leaves a million dollars to a medical school, and we wonder what did he deny himself to save that money? We read about a rancher who lined his driveway with Cadillacs half buried in the dirt, and we wonder if this was an expression of mockery, fury, or delight, or some impulse we haven’t thought of. You ask if writing might allow us writers to examine what we might prefer to ignore in our own lives, to “uncover a piece of our core”? I would say that writing opens us to empathy. By probing our characters’ needs and desires, we become more empathic with those unlike ourselves, and perhaps even those who are unlikeable. What makes this empathy possible is understanding ourselves and the links that connect us to others.

CC: With the last question, I’m thinking of “The Collaborator” and the protagonist, Daveen, who is caught in the politics of tenure and gender and her own version of #MeToo. I imagine this story was written well before the movement, so I wonder, when reality takes on the role of fiction and reveals how we live and think below the surface (which isn’t always pretty), does it change the way you view your work in retrospect? Do you ever think back on a character like Daveen and wonder how her story might shift if it were set in a post-#MeToo time?

LS: You are right. This story was written fifteen years ago, when feminists were regarded as scolds, hopeless bores, and pathetically retrograde. That’s how Daveen is regarded, especially since she broke off a friendship with a male colleague because of his sexual relationships with students. What was true when this story was written, what was true in the world that Daveen inhabits, and what is true today: patriarchy rules. In institutions like colleges, some men with power are attracted to younger, less powerful women, and it’s also true, some young women are attracted to men who possess power. Sex and power are two of the most elemental forces in culture. In “The Collaborator” sex, sexual politics, and power are the forces operating, but the story is about one woman, a thwarted feminist, and her response to a student whose sexual game upends her sense of self.

Each fictional character lives in a particular moment, as we all do. One of the things that interests me is how lives are lived within a historical context, and that context determines choices and possibilities. For Daveen, if she were living in this #MeToo time, she could turn to Human Resources with her complaints about sexual misconduct and she’d be taken seriously. If she were living twenty years earlier, she wouldn’t have a tenured position. Every story is set in a moment.

CC: What are you reading these days?

LS: I’ve just finished reading Joan Silber’s wonderful novel Improvement. Right now, I’m reading Patrick Modiano’s Such Fine Boys, a marvelous, moving novel that follows a group of school friends who are thrown into adult situations for which they were unprepared. Both novels include many characters, many stories braided together. Multiple stories—that’s what I like about story collections, too.

CC: What fuels your writing…coffee, tea, a certain view from the window, or a favorite pen? 

LS: My desk. It’s a small desk in a small room that’s really a hallway, but sitting at my desk focuses me. Sometimes I want to write somewhere else, like in a comfy chair by a window, or in nice weather, I’ll want to write outside, but as soon as my thoughts and words start to flow, I need to get to my desk.

~

Lynn Sloan is a writer and photographer. Her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Shenandoah, and American Literary Review, among other publications, and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is the author of the novel Principles of Navigation (2015 Fomite). Her fine art photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally. For many years she taught photography at Columbia College Chicago, where she founded the journal Occasional Readings in Photography, and contributed to Afterimage, Art Week, and Exposure. She lives in Evanston, Illinois with her husband.


Don’t forget: Enter the book giveaway by Tuesday, February 27th,
for a chance to win a copy of This Far Isn’t Far Enough.

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.

Author Q&A: Carol Wobig, The Collected Stories

“‘Ginny,’ I whispered into the darkness. ‘Ginny.’ I was no longer Mother Adalbert, Addie, superior of a community of two thousand women. Drunks and hordes of mosquitos were my community now. One landed on my arm. I let it pierce my flesh, drink my blood–my contribution to the world for the day.” ~ from “On My Knees” in The Collected Stories


If you’ve been a subscriber to this blog for a while, you know I love to introduce you to new books, spotlight up-and-coming authors, tempt you with good stories. Today’s Author Q&A is no different, except in format.

Carol Wobig is local author who published her full collection of short stories with a local publisher, Lisa Rivero at Hidden Timber Books, and she worked with a local editor: me. The three of us, then, constitute a Wisconsin triad of literary strength, bringing these wonderful stories into the literary light 🙂 Because of that, I’ve invited both Lisa and Carol to talk about Carol’s new book of short fiction entitled, The Collected Stories.

About the Book

Carol Wobig writes with unfailing sensitivity and empathy and in language that rings clear and true. In these seventeen stories and monologues, Wobig introduces us to grieving widows and questioning nuns, daughters intent on saving their mothers and mothers unsure how to save their children, each of whom faces the question we all must ultimately ask: how to save ourselves. Her characters and their experiences will live in the minds and hearts of readers long after the last page is turned.

Sensitivity, empathy, language clear and true. All those things make for easy editing. But it’s the stories themselves that make this project memorable. Running through the pages of the collection is a thread of humility and grace, soothing as much as it is satisfying, with characters whose dialogue and inner thoughts pull at you in familiar ways and whose subtle humor eases any heartache.

Read the Q&A, enjoy an excerpt from the collection below, and–as always–there’s a giveaway (courtesy of Hidden Timber Books). Enter the giveaway HERE (deadline: Tuesday, December 26th).

On Story

Christi Craig (CC): Lisa, what drew you to Carol’s stories?

Lisa Rivero (LR): I first heard Carol read from her stories at a Red Oak Roundtable, and I fell in love immediately with her memorable characters, her authentic voice, her clear-eyed and compassionate perspective on the world. She makes what she does look easy because there is nothing fancy or extra, no misplaced or awkward words to stumble on, but that clarity is the result of many, many drafts and close attention to detail. Her stories are mesmerizing.

CC: Carol, when you wrote these stories, were you inspired first by character, setting, or theme?

Carol Wobig (CW): This was a question that led to some thinking on my part, and in the end I realized that I often start from a person or object I’ve seen in passing. The piano in the snow I saw years ago in my neighborhood on my way to work. At the time thought I would use it in a story one day. And Marge arose from a woman I saw on a Sunday morning in the coffee shop where I write. She was dressed for church, I guessed, in a hat and sensible heels, and was in an intense conversation with a young man I imagined to be her son. Later on, they came together for the story.

My settings are always small-town and rural Wisconsin, the place I love. I grew up here, moved to San Diego for twenty years, but moved back when I was forty-five; I missed the trees and seasons so much.

When I started writing, I read what I think might have been hundreds of how-to books. The advice in one I’ve always followed is start your story with the day your character’s life changes. My themes grow out of that.

On Characters

CC: Lisa, this collection is full of memorable characters. Two of my faves: Sister Beatrix in “What Choice Do We Have” and Marge in “The Piano” and “Shoulder to Shoulder.” I’m curious, which character(s) would you love to read more about?

LR: All of them! I mean it. But if I had to choose, I agree with you on Marge (of course!) and Sister Beatrix (did she stay in the convent?) . And Alice (does she find reciprocated love?). And Kenny (please tell me he turns out alright). And Gwen…

CC: As a writer, Carol, which of the character(s) would you love to explore further?

CW: When I was re-reading the stories, I felt like I wanted to continue on with all of my people, see what happens next. They become like friends for me, eventually.

On Upcoming Works

CC: Lisa, what is next on the publishing front?

LR: I’m going to take a break from new projects for a year or two and am looking forward to getting the word out about Carol’s book and a new poetry chapbook by Yvonne Stephens: The Salt Before It Shakes.

CC: What about you, Carol? What are you writing these days?

CW: Right now, I’m working on Marge. And in the future, maybe something about my caretaking experiences, and about a rare disease I have, acromegaly, that there isn’t much written about.

~

Excerpt from “Shoulder to Shoulder” (Marge)

Looking at herself was a trial. She’d always been large, big-boned her mother had said, and now her skin, rippled and crinkled, hung from those bones. And the teeth. Always the teeth. There never had been the money for braces. Now there was life insurance money, but she should keep that for house repairs, if she didn’t do herself in. No, she wasn’t going to do herself in. Irene needed her, and Freddie was coming to visit. He’d called last night. She turned away from the mirror, switched to her patent-leather purse and dusted off her black flats. Better to be overdressed than under.

She’d thought about asking Melody to take her to the airport to pick up Freddie, but while her daughter was over her snit about not getting the piano, she and her brother didn’t always get along. And Freddie didn’t sound—she couldn’t put her finger on it — just didn’t sound like Freddie. Had he lost his job? Was he homeless?

At the airport — how’d she found it and parked without an accident she wasn’t sure — Marge stood like an island amidst the rush of travelers laden with backpacks and rolling suitcases, all wearing jeans. She read the screen telling her where her son would arrive, but did not realize she couldn’t go through security without a ticket. So she waited where the agent told her to and kept pressing the folds of the skirt close to her thighs to minimize her width. Why had she worn this dress? She felt like a float in a parade.

People hurried towards her up the ramp alone and in bunches, and after a long gap Freddie appeared. Ah, yes. Her son, looking older, tanned, thin, too thin. She waved to him, was surprised by the tears that threatened. He strode toward her and hugged her, a maneuver so unexpected that she stood there, engulfed in his arms like a statue. They weren’t a hugging family.

A younger man stood to Freddie’s left, smiling.

“This is my friend, Jeff,” her son said.

“Nice to meet you,” she said, and shook his extended hand. Did he need a ride, too? She wasn’t running a taxi service.

“Jeff wants to see the Midwest,” Freddie said. “I hope it’s okay that I brought him along.”

“Oh, sure. We have lots of room.” How like her Freddie. To take in a stray, to not tell her. Was the roast in the crock pot enough for dinner?

He had driven home, much to her relief. She sat in the back seat, to give Jeff a better view. As she mentally inventoried the refrigerator for ingredients for side dishes to add to dinner, she worried about Freddie. His ears looked huge, stood out from the tight skin on his neck and jaw.

“Sure smells good,” he said, as they walked up the back steps into the kitchen.

“I’m going upstairs to change,” Marge said. “We’ll eat in a minute.” In the bedroom, she unzipped the dress, hung it up, pinned a note to it that said “Burial Dress.”

~

About the Author

Inspired by the stories of Alice Munro, Carol Wobig started writing when she retired from making sauce in a pizza factory. Her award-winning work has appeared in Rosebud and other literary journals, and her monologues have been performed in community theater.

Learn more at carolwobig.com.


Don’t Forget! Enter the giveaway for a chance
to win a copy of The Collected Stories.