A conversation with Nate House
What books and/or authors have had the most influence on your writing?
I was really fortunate to have great professors, both as an undergraduate and graduate student at Temple University. They had the most influence because they looked at my writing and then told me what to read. They suggested people like John Hawkes, Patricia Highsmith, and J.M. Coetzee. I also got to know some visiting writers who were really instrumental: R.M. Berry and Carole Maso.
How do you decide when a piece you’ve written is “finished” enough to publish?
Research Notes: Why We Never Talk About Sugar
Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their research for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Aubrey Hirsch writes about Why We Never Talk About Sugar (Braddock Street Books).
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A Brief Guide to Research in Why We Never Talk About Sugar: Four Stories
“Hydrogen Event in a Bubble Chamber”
A conversation with Olivia Chadha
What books and/or authors have had the most influence on your writing?
I enjoy heroic journeys and narratives that somehow get to a character’s bones rather than simply skimming their skin. Most great writers have this uncanny ability, but I always return to three genres for this reading experience since I was a child: Greek Classics and mythology, literary fiction, and graphic fiction. I enjoy reading texts that explore a character on the brink, a character about to learn what they are made of, viscera to toes. Authors whose work is inspiring to me include people like Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Rohinton Mistry, Gish Jen, Neil Gaiman, Homer, and Dante. We can follow a tragic character along their path toward potential heroism in, obviously, Homer’s work and, not so obviously, in Jen’s Typical American, Mistry’s A Fine Balance and Gaiman’s Sandman. I enjoy reading stories that explore the essential parts of human motivation (i.e. survival, protecting one’s family, identity, and honor) but also ones that explore elements in society that push us to our limits. It is in those small but precious moments that we truly understand ourselves just a little more.
How do you decide when a piece you’ve written is “finished” enough to publish?
Research Notes: Flashes of War
Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their research for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Katey Schultz writes about Flashes of War (Apprentice House).
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In my experience, the best stories always begin with unanswered questions. Writing through the unknown toward the known has a great, humbling power over the writer. When I write short stories that require research, this simple fact keeps me honest. It also motivates me to imagine something so precisely, that, in the end, it reads as true as “real life.” In order to write Flashes of War, which features military and civilian characters in and around the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I had to constantly keep my imagination balanced with the hard facts of 21st Century warfare and Middle Eastern culture.
A conversation with Heather Fowler
What books and/or authors have had the most influence on your writing?
I feel I have a variety of influences behind my work. Flannery O’Connor and her collected stories have been very formative, as have the collected stories of Vladimir Nabokov, which I used to carry around constantly. I select Flannery for her density, bold characterization, and brave pursuits of moments of violent grace—and Nabokov for his elaborate and detailed combinations of image and meaning that spark the most fascinating alchemies with his words. I’ve also been quite absorbed and entertained by authors like Kurt Vonnegut and George Orwell, Sylvia Plath and Anne Carson, Margaret Atwood and Federico García Lorca, Shakespeare and Kafka, Shirley Jackson and T.C. Boyle—this could go on and on. I should stop here. Basically, I’m a ravenous beast.
I feel each one of the authors named above has been formative for my work. I have stolen the glimmering bits I love from their efforts and incorporated them in my own writer’s toolbox. But there are several types of influences that can be discussed—influence of stylistics, of politics, of topical treatments, etcetera. What I love is when I read a book and it lights my eyes on fire, when the idea or story looms up like a living thing from the page and sweeps me into its fabric. I also enjoy every time I have a moment when I read something and feel intense jealousy pangs, coupled with delighted awe.
Research Notes: Submergence
Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their research for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, J.M. Ledgard writes about Submergence, a novel out now from Coffee House Press.
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Literature in a time of species survival
What if I tell you there is another world in our world? Not only sprites, angels, inner structures; I am talking about the ocean. No great revelation, I suppose, since you have a map on your wall which is greatly more blue than green. But consider the mismatch: 98% of the living space on earth is in the ocean, chemosynthetic life on the sea floor outweighs photosynthetic life on land and some of these organisms have been stable in evolutionary terms for a billion years; the most common form of communication on the planet is the bioluminescence of fish and jellies, shivering lights with subtlety of expression to match that of bird song.
Research Notes: Beasts & Men
Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their research for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Curtis Smith writes about Beasts & Men, out now from Press 53.
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I trend toward the packrat-ish. It’s one of my more benign character flaws. I assign inflated emotional values to rather mundane objects. I opt not to throw out a knickknack that has been doing nothing more than collecting dust for years, my mind reeling with images of its future use. Unfortunately, my house is old and small, lacking the proper storage capacity for a man who holds onto his past. Boxes pile up, the basement reduced to narrow passageways. I ignore the mess until some sort of critical mass is achieved — and then I’ll clean, a haphazard, anxious, and often chaotic purging.
Research Notes: Glamorous Freak and Beyond This Point Are Monsters
Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their research for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Roxanne Carter writes about her recent books Glamorous Freak (Jaded Ibis) and Beyond This Point Are Monsters (Sidebrow).
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lately i have been worried about where to start. i struggle with locating a place, a moment to begin — unsure of which entry, which thread to take. finding a conduit for these days — a method of shaping mundane experience. the head cold that lifts me, a red balloon. the landscape, a network of irregular patches, stitched by road. i value my engagement with the writing process; this is always first.
Research Notes: Shaken in the Water
Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their research for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Jessica Penner writes about Shaken In The Water, out now from Foxhead Books.
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My novel-in-stories, Shaken in the Water, takes place in a little Kansas town and spans three generations of a Mennonite farm family. I grew up in a similar town in Kansas, and am a descendant of immigrants from a similar Mennonite colony in the Ukraine, but I never wrote about Kansas until I moved to New York City, and the Mennonites in Shaken are like no Mennonites I’ve met.
Research Notes: Is That You, John Wayne?
Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their research for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Scott Garson writes about Is That You, John Wayne?, out April 30 from Queen’s Ferry Press.
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It could probably be pointed out that in most things, if I bother to have a philosophy, then it’s one that serves to justify the saving of trouble or time. I have no philosophy of fiction writing. One reason: the saving of trouble and time in fiction writing is, at best, beside the point. But with research related to fiction writing? Here I have thoughts. A writer could go with that iceberg thing. What is it, nine tenths underwater? Seven eighths? A writer could go with that, further supposing that for the huge concealed part of a story’s information — available to the writer and providing basis for the words but not written — lots of research must be done. But research takes time and is trouble. And so my philosophy: research sucks.
June 4, 2013:
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Latest Content
Interviews:
A conversation with Nate House
by
Amber Lee
Writer in Residence:
Some fragments [5]
by
Éireann Lorsung
Book Reviews:
Is That You, John Wayne?
by
Scott Garson
| Review by Curtis Smith
Writer in Residence:
Some fragments [4]
by
Éireann Lorsung
Research Notes:
Why We Never Talk About Sugar
by
Aubrey Hirsch