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October 17, 2015

Debra Monroe

The Write Up

By: Rebecca McInroy

Debra Monroe

Debra Monroe is an award winning author of six books and acclaimed university professor. But she was, in her own words, “ raised to be a farmer’s wife, a shopkeeper’s wife, a telephone man’s wife.”

In her most recent memoir, My Unsentimental Education, Monroe chronicles her journey from the backstreet bars and the presumed limited opportunities of her small Wisconsin hometown to a seat in the ivory tower. Along the way she battles the discouraging voices of her parents, her professors, and a series of poorly chosen lovers. With her passion for literature and her undefeatable spirit, Monroe not only reaches her goals as a writer and an academic, but also achieves a hard won confidence. The book is a beautiful and often hilarious chronicle of one woman’s battle to be exactly who she wants to be.

Whether trying LSD for the first time, unintentionally accepting a job at a pornographic movie theater, or discussing her love life with religiously conservative neighbors, Monroe manages to move her life and career forward. With a wit that helps ease the hurt, we travel with Monroe through heartbreaking relationships with every sort of wrong man. She makes her way through marriages and romances that quickly announce themselves as mistakes.

Men fear her ambitions, are intimidated by her intellect, or simply have no desire to move as she rockets forward. As Monroe finds her way, she also finds herself. Her story charts the difficult task of leaving behind one’s socially assigned identities to find the authentic self. My Unsentimental Education is a celebration of misadventures, surprises, and powering forward against all odds.

This Monroe’s second memoir. Her first, On the Outskirts of Normal, came out in 2010 and traced her experiences adopting a black child while living in a small Texas town. Monroe is also the author of two novels and two collections of short stories. Her first collection, The Source of Trouble, won the Flannery O’Conner Award for Fiction in 1990 and launched her into the national literary scene. From there she wrote a second collection of stories, A Wild, Cold State, in 1995 and the novels Newfangled in 1998 and Shambles in 2004.

 

Monroe has often been praised for her honest portrayal of the darker corners of American life. She doesn’t back away from images of poverty, crime, and abuse. Her writing is, as the Boston Globe describes it, “fine and funky, marbled with warmth and romantic confusion, but not a hint of sentimentality.” She’s known for using humor to highlight the humanity of her characters.

 

A conversation with Monroe is a true delight rich with humor and insight. On this episode of the Write Up, we talk about the different challenges of writing memoirs and novels, the rewards of teaching students in the Texas State University MFA program, and the importance of discovering who one really is.

 

 

July 30, 2015

Sarah Hepola

The Write Up

By: Rebecca McInroy

Sarah Hepola’s new memoir, Blackout: Remembering Things I Drank to Forget, chronicles her addiction to alcohol with brutal honesty and brilliant humor. The book is gaining critical acclaim from reviewers in The New York Times, The Washington Post, LA Times, and Kirkus Reviews. Entertainment Weekly observed, “It’s hard to think of another memoir that burrows inside an addict’s brain like this one does.”

Blackout was named one of Amazon.com’s Best Books of June 2015, People Magazine’s Best Books of the Summer, and won a spot on the New York Times Best Sellers List.

Hepola recently joined us on The Write Up to discuss the memoir. We also chat about her work as an editor at Salon and as a freelance writer, and the complicated ways alcohol affected her writing and life.

Hepola cut her literary teeth as a writer for the Austin Chronicle in the late nineties and early 2000s. She made a national name for herself as a cultural journalist and personal essayist with Slate, The New York Times, and The Morning News online magazine. Her brand of red-hot wit and self-deprecating honesty earned her admirers and writing jobs. But as her career slowly grew, so did her dependence on alcohol.

From the backyard parties of Austin to basement bars of New York City and the sidewalk cafes of Paris, Hepola tracks her drinking bouts and the blackouts that followed. Many mornings she woke up alone with a cloudy head, mysterious bruises, and black space where the last several hours should have been. On more terrifying occasions, Hepola woke up in bed with someone she didn’t recognize.

It wasn’t until confronted with crumbling friendships and a stalled career that Hepola took the courageous step of getting sober. Hepola’s memoir does not stop there. She describes the struggle to rebuild her mental and physical health, her return to Texas after years in New York, and her discovery that her writing voice did not depend on an open bottle.

Blackout also touches upon the bizarre and sometimes wonderful experience of online dating, the undulations of adult friendship and the pressures of being a professional woman in the once male-dominated world of journalism.

Hepola speaks of her life and writing with an unmasked candor and humor. Her research and insights also enable her to link her own story to cultural trends in dating, women’s liberation, and America’s obsession with alcohol.

On the podcast, Hepola shares the difficulty of transitioning from personal essays to a book-length memoir, the allure alcohol seems to have for so many writers, and necessity of releasing one’s inner editor while writing a first draft.

Find out more at sarahhepola.com

June 16, 2015

Kari Anne Roy

The Write Up

By: Rebecca McInroy

K.A. Holt loves middle grade novels and poetry and has a gift for both.

Her novel Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel won praise from middle grade readers all over the nation. Her poetry shines in her collection Haiku Mama: Because 17 Syllables is All You Have Time to Read, written under the name Kari Anne Roy, is a collection of haikus hilariously bemoaning the struggles and joys of parenting.

In 2010 Holt combined the two genres and started writing middle grade novels in verse. Her first, Brains for Lunch (A Zombie Novel in Haiku?!), followed the misadventures of a preteen zombie dealing with all the romantic challenges of middle school while also being one of the living dead.

Rhyme Schemer follows a middle school bully with a secret passion for poetry. In her forth coming novel in verse, House Arrest, a young boy journals about his struggles through a year of probation and his younger brother’s health crisis.

Holt’s anti-heroes pop with life (even the undead ones). She depicts the emotional and social pre-teen challenges of her young characters with pitch perfect humor and riveting authenticity. She manages to avoid ever condescending to her readers or artificially endowing her middle grade characters with adult takes on the world. She nails the wildly turbulent thoughts and feelings of a 7th grader – and does it in verse.

Holt has a knack for bringing poetry to surprising places. In 2013 Holt and fellow Austinites Jodi Egerton, Sean Petrie and David Fruchter took a love of vintage typewrites and public poetry and formed Typewriter Rodeo. The group can be found at music concerts, museum openings, and SXSW parties banging out spontaneous poems on old school typewriters.

Holt, again writing as Kari Anne Roy, is also a celebrated blogger known for fearlessly diving into difficult issues ranging from abortion legislation to CPS investigations. Her insights are supported by relentless honesty and a wry wit. More than one entry on her blog www.haikuoftheday.com has gone viral and emerged on the national scene.

It’s a true pleasure to get to sit down with Holt on The Write Up and discuss her craft and career and how she balances daily life, deadlines, and being a mother of three. Join us as we chat about the attraction of writing for a younger audience, her love for underdogs and preteen ne’er-do-wells, and the allure of poetry.

 

April 24, 2015

Scott Blackwood

The Write Up

By: Rebecca McInroy

Author Scott Blackwood talks about his new novel “See How Small,” with host Owen Egerton.

March 7, 2015

Amanda Eyre Ward

The Write Up

By: Rebecca McInroy

Amanda Eyre Ward on compassion, gratitude and “The Same Sky.”

In this episode of The Write Up, Amanda talks with host Owen Egerton about the calling of telling stories of the voiceless and powerless, the importance of looking past politics and statistics to the faces of real people, and the ways in which exploring the lives of these courageous children has impacted her own life.

We discuss the unpredictable creative process. Amanda celebrates “circling confusion” and even the unexpected blessing in abandoning a “broken book.”

We also touch on the gift of good readers, challenges of balancing writing and family, and the glory of Texas barbecue.

January 14, 2015

Doug Dorst

The Write Up

By: Rebecca McInroy

Doug Dorst is a wonder at words and worlds. He’s a master of bringing the known and unknown, the mundane and the strange, into immediate proximity to one another is such a way that the line begins to fade. Whether it’s insecure police officers encountering restless ghosts romping through northern California in his debut novel Alive in Necropolis, or the dark inner lives of surf gurus and cake sculptors in his short story collection The Surf Guru, or the wild labyrinth voices, artifacts, and nightmarish locales of S., Dorst mingles nightmares and fantastical visions with earthy, recognizable emotions.

It’s an absolute pleasure to chat books and writing with Doug Dorst on this edition of The Write Up.

In 2009, Alive in Necropolis was awarded the Emperor Norton Award, and was a runner up for the Shirley Jackson Award, the IAFA/Crawford Award, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. It made the Editor’s Choice list in The New York Times Book Review and was named one of the year’s best books by Amazon. The book was also chosen as San Francisco’s 2009 One City One Book selection.

He followed up his success with the beautiful and haunting story collection The Surf Guru, which also landed on the Editor’s Choice list in The New York Times Book Review and was a Rumpus Book Club pick.

Not long after, director and producer J.J. Abrams picked him out to pen a novel in which the story would be found in the margins. Dorst crafted S., a complex but highly accessible book filled with handwritten notes in the text, loose napkins and postcards between the pages, and mysteries that stretch beyond the final chapter. The book is a marvel – a thrill for any lover of the printed word and fan of puzzles.

Dorst is an accomplished playwright, essayist, and, believe it or not, a three-time Jeopardy champion.

In our conversation we talk through his approach to writing, including writing habits, struggles, and how he finds his way into a story. We talk about the pressure of deadlines and joy of the blank page.

Doug Dorst is a celebrated teacher of creative writing who helps run the Texas State MFA program in San Marcos. He talks enthusiastically about his students and the feel of the workshop.

It is a thrill to have Doug Dorst on The Write Up. He is a pleasure to talk with – or just to listen to. The depth of his voice is matched only by the depth of his soul. So please join us as Doug Dorst, with charming humility, shares his passion for craft, teaching, and above all, storytelling

November 26, 2014

Carrie Fountain

The Write Up

By: Rebecca McInroy

Always Remain a Beginner

Interviews on the Write Up come out more as conversations than a scripted line of questioning. The authors who are featured bring their own spirit and personality into the discussion and the conversation spins to wonderfully surprising places. Our episode with award-winning poet Carrie Fountain is a perfect example. Talking with Fountain is like grabbing a coffee with a dear friend you who leaves you feeling thrilled and more awake to the world about you.

During our talk, Fountain and I explore parenting, mysticism, craft, and her extraordinary new poetry collection Instant Winner. Whether it’s writing her next poem or facing a new parenting challenge, Fountain strives to “always remain a beginner.”

Carrie Fountain’s poems are prayers. Like prayers they carry the earthbound to heaven. Her poems are born from daily life — experiences of motherhood, marriage, traffic and trash trucks – but quickly rise up to questions of spirit and desires for divine connection.

Fountain earned her MFA at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin where she began work on what would become her debut collection Burn Lake. That book received the 2009 National Poetry Series winner and was published in 2010 by Penguin.

Her latest collection, Instant Winner, is a sly prayer book of winking meditations and wry observations. Fountain has a gift for finding the miraculous in the mundane, the tremendous in the ordinary. Capturing a fragment of life, a passing moment, Fountain highlights the endless magic moments that fill an average day. Like the best of poetry, her pieces inspire new views on a world we believe we know.

Balancing a family and a writing career can be an incredible trial. Fountain and I chat about becoming a mother and how that has impacted her life and poetry. Fountain is married to acclaimed playwright Kirk Lynn. We chat about how a household of two creatives works and how the two have inspired, supported, and challenged each other.

Fountain has taught at the university level for several years and is now the writer-in-residence at St. Edward’s University. We chat about mentoring younger poets and her love for poets who have inspired her.

Much of poetry in Instant Winner describes encounters with the spiritual. Fountain shares some her own experiences with organized religion and where she stands now on questions of faith, God, and religion. She also discusses the role writing poetry plays in her spiritual life.

We touch upon Fountain’s own process in approaching writing: When she writes, how she seeks inspiration, and the discipline needed to sculpt a career in the arts. She also gives us a peek at how she approaches a blank page. Fountain hopes her style never outshines her poem, instead she aims for what she calls an “invisible craft.”

So brew a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, and join us for a conversation on this edition of The Write Up.

October 14, 2014

Louisa Hall

The Write Up

By: Rebecca McInroy

On this edition of The Write Up, host Owen Egerton sits down with novelist Louisa Hall, author of The Carriage House. Plus we’ll hear book reviews of Cats Cradle and Stiff!

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