Henry B. González Convention Center | March 5, 2020
Episode 162: #AWP20 Day 2
(Anna Lena, Paulette Perhach, Courtney Maum, Norma Elia Cantú, Michaeljulius Idani, Christopher Miguel Flakus, Jeneé Darden)
Published Date: January 26, 2023
Transcription
Voiceover:
Welcome to the AWP 2020 Podcast by Blooms Day literary and effing Shakespeare, hosted by Kate Martin Williams, Phuc Luu, and Lily Wolf narrated by Michaeljulius Y. idani.
Daniel:
It definitely is and probably will get harder, right? I don't think it's an exaggeration to think that writing will become our salvation in the next few years.
Kate:
Professor Emeritus from the University of Tennessee, San Antonio.
Speaker 1:
University of Texas.
Kate:
University of... what did I say?
Speaker 1:
Tennessee.
Daniel:
We're in Tennessee.
Kate:
We're tired, we're very tired of all of Daniel's work.
Daniel:
No, I get a little-
Phuc:
We heavily edit Daniel's work.
Lily:
Yeah. There's nothing better than just highlighting a bad joke you told and you're like, delete, never happened.
Kate:
Delete. Goodbye.
Daniel:
Unsavory joke. All right.
Kate:
You guys, Daniel Pena is taking over the mics.
We have Anna Lena Phillips Bell here to start us off on day two at AWP, and I wanted to ask, how has your AWP been going?
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
It's been great. It's been an interesting one, hasn't it? I'm so well sanitized. It feels really chill, which is refreshing actually.
Kate:
It is. I agree. Yeah. Nice. And you're here with?
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Ecotone, the literary magazine that seeks to reimagine place and with our sister Imprint Lookout books and of course the Creative writing program at UNC Wilmington.
Kate:
Where you are a professor, yeah?
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
That's right. Mm-hmm.
Kate:
Very, very cool. And we have a good friend who knows you well, Cameron Dezen Hammon, a friend of the show, and a fellow Houstonian and Lookout books published her gorgeous memoir last year, right?
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
That's right.
Kate:
Last October-ish.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
That's right. We're so happy about it.
Kate:
Yeah. And Lookout does one book a year, is that right?
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Mm-hmm.
Kate:
And the next one will come out in October as well?
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Let me get back to you on that.
Kate:
Sorry for assuming.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Yeah. No, that's fine.
Kate:
These things change and shift.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Yeah, exactly.
Kate:
For sure. For sure. Tell me, we have lots of things to ask and talk about our colleague who is not here with us this weekend, the inevitable, Jessica Cole.
Daniel:
Jessica Scott Cole.
Kate:
Jessica Scott Cole. Somehow she got tagged on Instagram with a fictitious last name, which is funny.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
So we're thinking of all the things we can do with that. What can we create out of this?
Kate:
We could do something fun, yeah. She is part poet, part scientist in a former life. I believe if she had world enough in time, so she has a PhD in creative writing and then an MFA in poetry. So she does already have those two degrees, but I think she would love, love, love to go back and do some sort of science work. And it's just a travesty that she's not here to talk to you because you have a very similar bio and aesthetic in your own poetry and in the work that you edit. Can you talk to us a little bit? I guess we could start with Ecotone, do you want to start talking about that?
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Sure. Yeah. So I'm part poet and part science editor in a former life. I worked as an editor at American Scientist Magazine for about six years before coming on as editor of Ecotone. And it was so exciting to be able to bring that sensibility of really careful fact checking and thoughtful writing about the natural world and about the sciences and about environment into a literary context, which is, of course what Ecotone does among the other things it does. And Ecotone, some people think of us as just a magazine of environmental writing, but really we have a pretty broad mission. We think of place-based writing as including writing that thinks about places it relates to identity and places it relates to migration of people and other species around the globe. And so when we see something, we can usually find a way to say yes to it as relating to place, which is fun.
Kate:
Yeah. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah. So I know we talk about this a lot at Blooms Day, about peeking the right pieces and the things that fit both the mission and the aesthetic. And we were curious, how do you do that with Ecotone? How do you pick the pieces that you know are right and that create that chemistry and that really precise beauty?
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
It's an impossible task isn't it?
Kate:
Yeah, It is. It is.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Well, we're lucky at Ecotone to have a really great team. So the magazine, in addition to a mission of publishing work that re imagines place, we also have a teaching mission. We teach students in the MFA program at UNCW, how to edit and how to design for literary publications. And so what that means is that I supervise a team that includes faculty members as well as about 15 students in our MFA program. And the editorial part of that team thinks really hard about the work that goes into each issue. We have readers and then we have students who apply to these section editors. And in the section editors meetings that we have, we have lots of really great conversations about what is a fit for the magazine, what does it mean to be an ecotone story or an Ecotone poem, and how can we expand that definition to include work that we wouldn't have thought of, but that we are happy to know of. So we're always looking to be surprised. And having that outlook means that we often are, it's really fun.
Kate:
Right?
Lily:
Oh my gosh, I'd love to be in those meetings.
Kate:
I was just thinking, I want to be a student.
Lily:
I know. Wow.
Kate:
Oh look, Jessica's calling.
Lily:
Oh.
Yeah. I'll show you later, she's really cool.
Kate:
I also love this thing that just happened. I don't know, are we still recording Phuc where?
Phuc:
Yes.
Kate:
Because it just happened five minutes ago where we found out that there are ways that we know people and like people and then find out that our work overlaps. And then now you're going to school with the daughter of a colleague of our guests.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Yes. It's really cool.
Phuc:
Home pf the Day, sponsored by Melissa Crow.
Kate:
At last. We're moving up in the world in a lot of ways because at last AWP, we were trying to get Ryan Reynold's gin company to sponsor us, and now we're going a little bit in a more appropriate direction.
Lily:
In the right vein?
Kate:
Yeah. Although if Ryan Reynolds is out there and wants to sponsor us with his gin company, but that was in Portland. Is that why that was going on?
Phuc:
Yes, yes.
Kate:
That's why. So we'll get back to actually what we're here to do, which is talk about Ecotone. As I was sitting here thinking about all of the things that you get to do with your students and with your journal, I was thinking about all the hats that you wear as editors and creators, and you're a poet yourself, and you said-
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Professor.
Kate:
... and a professor, that too. And you said the thing about having your work fact checked, and that would be such a luxury to have. But then you have students who get to have that experience I imagine, which is a great lab, sort of.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Yeah. It's one of the first things that students learn to do when they start working on Ecotone, they fact check everything for the magazine, including poetry, it's important to say. And they go down all wormholes, and call people on the phone, and look things up in scientific journals and I think every writer deserves that care and attention. And so it's such fun to be able to give that to our contributors.
Kate:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I could imagine. It's something that we do on our own, in addition, without the benefit of a classroom of students. And it's not just a benefit to you, it's a marketable skill that the students can go out into the world in a very real way and use. Which is sometimes hard to come by at MFAs, or especially particularly MFAs that concentrate a ton on craft and have less to do with what you're going to do on the flip side.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
I think about that a lot, about the ways that editorial labor and primary production are valued and editors should be in the background, that's true, but it's also true that without that editorial labor, work doesn't make it into the world. And I think there is a shift happening toward valuing that work more, valuing the teaching of editing more. And I'm excited to see it because I think the literary system depends on it. And my students who want to work as editors, I'd like to be able to reassure them that they can find a way to be writer editors and have a life that is sustainable and reasonable. And sometimes I feel confident about that assurance, and other times I just don't.
Kate:
Because you're actually living it too.
Lily:
Yeah.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Yeah.
Kate:
So talk about that then, how do you balance that as a professor and a creator?
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
It's hard, but I think that there's no other setting I'd want to do it in than in a university. Being around so many people who are thinking about their craft and thinking about learning the craft of editing made it easier for me to publish my first book, just because the atmosphere encouraged it and I love that, and I love being an encouraging presence for other writers. So even though it's definitely too much, pretty much all the time, I love it.
Kate:
And it's in the ether.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Yeah.
Lily:
Yeah.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Well, and as far as we're talking about things that aren't necessarily normally focused on, are taught in MFAs or even undergrad, you've taught book arts and you have the pocketbook of forms and letter press printed it's very aesthetically pleasing, it's a handy tool for the traveling poet, it's really neat.
Kate:
I want to buy it. I want to hold it in my hands.
Lily:
We all want to just feel it. What do you think is so cool about teaching that to students because it's a really beautifully arcane art in a world that's moving very digital for literature and poetry. So what draws you to that?
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
I think the tactile quality of it is one of the main things. The feeling that I can set, type and print it, and I've had my hands on each letter and each space in the work, it's so fun and it is impractical. In fact, there's a artist labor union called Impractical Labor and Service of the Speculative Arts, which I'm part of.
Lily:
That's so cool.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
And the motto for this labor union is, "As many hours as it takes." And I really love that because it does take so much time, it takes so much time but it's so satisfying. And I think what drew me to it originally was that in my poetic practice, there were things that I couldn't do just with the words on the page, there were tools I wanted to make. That pocketbook of forms was a tool that I needed and didn't have and so letterpress allowed me to just make it. Not that it was simple or anything, but it was possible. And to make it in a way that felt really satisfying and slow and beautiful.
And I think as we move toward more digital work being in the world, there is a craving for that more physical text object type stuff. And so I feel encouraged by the great number of online magazines because I think that doing an online magazine makes it possible to occasionally release some limited edition stuff like pay more attention to the text if you're doing something smaller. At Ecotone, obviously we're a print magazine and I love that about us, but we also do have a letter press printed broadside series that I started where we publish in a broadside, a couple of poems from each year of the magazine.
Kate:
Oh my gosh. Wow.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
So it's really fun. It's satisfying and it fulfills a purpose.
Kate:
It calls to mind the slow food movement from 10, 12 years ago because it's the same mentality where everything needs to slow down and savor and be present to your food, it's like that for the literary arts.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Exactly. And when I teach, I teach a course on the handmaid book, and when I am able to teach that course, my students are so thankful, one, to not be in front of a screen all the time, to just be using their hands and their bodies to make something. And two, to be able to make something and have it out in the world without an intermediary. I think that's the attraction of self-publishing too, probably. Sure. But in the book arts and in the world of zines, it's so direct and so simple, and there's so many interesting book structures that you can use to get different ideas out in the world, so it is just a fun time all the way around.
Kate:
Can I just be, be a permanent audit in your classroom, please?
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Yeah. Come on. Come to Wilmington.
Kate:
This is Kate Martin Williams. She's going to sit in the back of the class for perpetuity. Just It's okay. It's fine. And then one sentence, love letters was a digital version of something you were talking about being nimble and able to release things limited, is that Ecotone produced?
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Yeah. Yeah. So our fall/winter 2019 issue is themed love. Our fall issues are all themed. Our spring ones are un-themed, and I was so excited when my team was up for doing a love issue. I just want to say.
Kate:
Yes.
Lily:
Yes.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
We need it right now, we always need it. And it was just a dream to work on. And so we decided to invite contributors to the issue to write a one sentence love letter, and we made those into what we're calling digital broadsides to post on Instagram-
Kate:
I saw those, I saw them come through. They were so great to have in your feed too.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Oh. Oh, good.
Kate:
Yeah.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Yeah. So then we made them into real objects, laser printed, not letter pressed, so that people can take one with them here at the conference, and they can also write their own on a blank one. And we'll take a picture and post it online. And then the print and digital world start meshing in this way, that messes with my brain a little bit, but it's really fun.
Kate:
It is really fun. Can I read the one that you so kindly gave to us?
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Of course.
Kate:
One sentence love letters. To the sound of my children practicing their ukuleles. I was raised a woodwind and so could not have dreamed there would be singing too. Love Megan. Love that.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
That's from Megan Tucker. She has a wonderful short story in the love issue.
Kate:
Oh, could you read us something from the issue?
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Yeah, absolutely. I'll read a poem from the issue. This is from Jenna Lei, and I should say that for this issue, every poem in the issue is in a 14 line form, which we wanted to do for fun. And because we were about to have our 14th anniversary when we put out the call for work, and because-
Kate:
These are so freaking clever over there.
Lily:
That's brilliant. Yes.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
I think it was my students who had that idea, and immediately I was like, yes, we have to do this. So Jenna wrote this poem. It's called, Barley's Fine Foods 24 Hours; a diner Minnesota. The aisles were carpeted in oyster gray with deep blue edging, and they sold a damn good wild rice soup. One service that they offered free of charge, they'd snap your headshot, print it on a card for you to keep inside your pocket. Then each time you came and whipped it out, they'd gift you with a cookie, chocolate chip. I'd wheedle mom to take me there on midday trips, feast on the face sized gooey sweetness while she shopped. Like Easter eggs, each tidy gray blue aisle was blipped with little plastic boxes stocked with recipes ripe for plucking. First, leave the only home you know and grope across the ocean in a holy hole. Wash up some place that's winter, half the year, but where there's banks, fine stores, good schools. Then wait, wait for your children's thanks.
Kate:
Anna Lena Phillips Bell, it is so good to know you, and I hope that our paths continue to cross in really great ways, thank you so much for being with us today.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell:
Oh, thank you for having me, it's been a delight.
Daniel:
We're here with The Blazer. I'm Daniel Pena. We're here with Paulette Perhach, author of Welcome to The Writer's Life: How to Design your Writing Craft, Writing Business, Writing Practice, Reading Practices. Who are you wearing?
Paulette Perhach:
Hi, I'm wearing sad big box jeans that don't have real pockets. And so my goal at this AWP is to become the successful writer who can afford pants with pockets. Because I think the underclasses have suffered enough.
Daniel:
Yeah. What are you about?
Paulette Perhach:
So I'm all about making a writer's life, figuring it out, enjoying it while you do it. And so I'm an author and writing coach.
Daniel:
Right on. Do you do individual consultations, do you do workshops? Or how...
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah. So I teach at our local writing center in Seattle, called Hugo House, which is amazing. And then I also do one-on-one anywhere in the world. I have three writing programs. One, we go through the book together, I read your practice answers, and we meet once a week. And then I do a 10 week program called Your Personal Editor, where I'm your personal editor, your work is due, and I critique it. And then I do something called Full-Time to Freedom to Write, which is about plotting your escape from the office so that you can be a full-time writer if you choose.
Daniel:
Right on, man.
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah.
Kate:
Dude, I want to take this.
Daniel:
I know, right?
Paulette Perhach:
Yeah. It's really starting a business, which is not, I was like, "I'm going to be a writer." And then I just stepped right off the cliff of taxes and marketing.
Kate:
Why is that the voice for everyone.
Paulette Perhach:
I said something big. I'm going to go to the moon.
Daniel:
Love your cosmonaut.
Paulette Perhach:
Because you were so innocent back then, it's like you were five years old. Now, I've aged so much.
Daniel:
Yeah. What's what's the best piece of writing you've ever read?
Paulette Perhach:
Oh, the first thing that popped into my mind was Brokeback Mountain. That was one thing that I read the short story again. And I remember halfway through I was like, "God I really have to pee." But I'm like, "I can't stop, I have to read the whole thing in one sitting." And then also, we were talking, talking about Cormac McCarthy, love him.
Daniel:
He's the greatest, yeah.
Paulette Perhach:
I love Ellen Bass. There's so much amazing writing.
Daniel:
Yeah.
Paulette Perhach:
Which I think is...
Daniel:
Who's the worst writer you've ever read?
Paulette Perhach:
Oh, myself. Draft one.
Daniel:
Oh, that's a really diplomatic answer.
Kate:
It's on point, a very politic response.
Daniel:
That's a very political answer.
Paulette Perhach:
Something funny happens here.
Daniel:
I always like the people, this is the best... those lists come out and they're like the best medical schools of 2020. And then you're like, "Wait, what's the worst?
Kate:
I want that manual. I want that manual. Where did I never apply?
Daniel:
Yeah. All right. Coronavirus question. We're here at the AWP. It's no secret, it's been out, been heavily afflicted by the fear of the coronavirus, what's, what's your favorite virus?
Paulette Perhach:
My favorite virus is the one that goes away quickly.
Daniel:
All right.
Paulette Perhach:
Which is why I'm also rocking the hand sanitizer today. But my final decider was my best friend who's an ER nurse, so I called her, I was like, "What's the deal, should I go or not?"
Daniel:
She said you should go?
Paulette Perhach:
She was like, "Go." And then she sent me this meme about how nurses are...
Daniel:
... around it all the time?
Phuc:
Yeah, they're exposed to it all the time.
Daniel:
Yeah.
Paulette Perhach:
I'm not saying, you can call it panic, but it's like, we'll see.
Daniel:
Yeah.
Paulette Perhach:
They'll be like, well, I told you so at my funeral. But...
Daniel:
Well, by then you won't care.
Paulette Perhach:
Who knows?
I think, yeah. We live wild lives anyway, but just being very careful. We're all just trying to be as responsible as possible and figure it out.
Kate:
Where do we go find your book?
Paulette Perhach:
It is on Amazon, it's anywhere books are sold, unless it's a small local bookstore and then they'll be like, "We don't have that."
Phuc:
Cool. Go order it. Go order it.
Daniel:
Sasquatch books. It's from Sasquatch books.
Kate:
That is true.
Daniel:
It's a beautiful cover too, man.
Paulette Perhach:
Thank you. Yeah.
Daniel:
Turquoise, aqua colors.
Paulette Perhach:
I got really lucky, Sasquatch was the publisher, we had a graphic designer. We have a lot of really fun illustrations, like a literary mixing board that has all the knobs and dials, or sarcasm, and mood.
Kate:
And your publisher's genius because they matched the cover of the book to the carpet.
Daniel:
Yes. I was going to say the exact same thing. You can lay the book down on the carpet.
Kate:
It's Instagram ready, you guys.
Daniel:
And it's...
Phuc:
Camouflage, yeah.
Daniel:
Yeah. So on the green carpet with Daniel Pena.
Phuc:
All right.
Daniel:
holding a green book.
Phuc:
Yeah.
Daniel:
There you go.
Phuc:
There we go.
Paulette Perhach:
We had to pay a million dollars for that. And you know what? They threw it out because it's Paulette Perhach. So it's maximum budget. That'll work for me.
Daniel:
The book is Welcome to the Writer's Life, Paulette Perhach. Thank you so much for joining us.
Paulette Perhach:
You're so welcome, thank you.
Daniel:
Woo woo woo.
Phuc:
All right, we got it.
Daniel:
Oh, that was great, man. Do the elbow bump.
Kate:
Yay. Elbow bump.
Lily:
Peace out.
Kate:
Yeah.
Lily and I were talking earlier yesterday about a particular apocalypse that we found exceedingly funny wherein... did it start because you had a James Patterson dream?
Lily:
No.
Kate:
Or a vision?
Lily:
This man walked past the table and he just had the eyes and the hair. And I had this moment-
Speaker 2:
End times.
Lily:
... growing up and having had James Patterson books around the house when it's his younger author photo, younger than he is now. And I was like, "Oh my God. It's 40 year old James Patterson."
Speaker 2:
He's trolling.
Lily:
... walking past the table. My heart stopped. I was like, "Do I ask him to be on the show?" And then he just walked away and was clearly not James Patterson.
Speaker 2:
That's a bummer. You sure? He might have had some work done or something.
Lily:
It's possible.
Kate:
But what if all of those authors started aging in reverse?
Speaker 2:
If anyone knows the secret, it's James Patterson, for sure.
Lily:
Oh, totally. So we have to go find... it'd be like James Patterson, Michael Creighton, John Grisham. And they were all...
Speaker 2:
Stephen King, I think too.
Lily:
Yeah. And then they start going backwards.
Speaker 2:
The Benjamin Buttons.
Lily:
They just go all the way back to baby.
Kate:
I don't know.
Speaker 2:
They go back to MFA.
Phuc:
The Virus by James Patterson.
Speaker 2:
Oh, you know he's here writing that right now.
Phuc:
Word by-
Speaker 2:
It'll come out on Monday. Tuesday, right, Tuesday.
Kate:
Hey, come on.
Speaker 2:
Sorry. I'm a professional these days.
Kate:
It's got to be fact checked. Oh my gosh. So we have Courtney Maum in the studio.
Daniel:
So Courtney, the first time I saw the cover of your book was when Cameron Dezen Hammon.
Courtney:
Oh, yeah.
Daniel:
... posted on her Facebook blog, whatever you call it.
Speaker 1:
What are the youth calling it?
Daniel:
Yeah.
Courtney:
The wall of Corporate death.
Daniel:
Yes.
So she posted about your book and I got two copies, and immediately my partner Kate grabs one, takes it home, doesn't ask.
Speaker 1:
What are you going to do with two? This one's clearly for me.
Daniel:
And then Lunar New Year, okay. My friend shows up,
Courtney:
Ha.
Daniel:
With a copy of your book.
Courtney:
Really?
Daniel:
To give me as a present.
Courtney:
I've sold three copies so it's amazing. To hit a list.
Kate:
I think Shakespeare podcast sent Courtney straight to the New York Times bestselling list.
Courtney:
That's right. I'm at the door.
Daniel:
That's so James Patterson.
Courtney:
Yeah. Well, thank you very much. Cameron is a love, and she's been very supportive. So it's nice to know that friends are out there supporting friends.
Kate:
Yes.
And it works well because Phuc's book came out this year, so it's actually the same, it's helping in all ways. Bringing friends together and helping to navigate the post-launch waters. So yeah, could you tell us a little bit about the book?
Courtney:
Sure. So this is my fourth book, first book of nonfiction. It's called Before and After the Book Deal: A Writer's Guide to Finishing, Publishing, Promoting and Surviving your first book. It's recently out with Catapult Independent Press. Hooray, hooray.
Kate:
Yay, Catapult.
Courtney:
And this is a really exhaustive guide to, I'd say the two years before and the two years after you finally get a book deal. So the first half, we deal with craft, time management, whether or not to MFA or low res. Of course, agent querying all the way up to when you finally do get a book deal. And then the second part is devoted evenly between the logistics of what no one tells you is coming, except I'm going to tell you what's coming. And then emotional and psychosomatic things like jealousy and competition.
Kate:
I don't believe there's anything emotional about selling a book.
Courtney:
That's fine. No, it's just a very straightforward process. And we have a giant section on money because nobody talks about it, and how you are never going to have health insurance and things like that. And although I wrote the book, I interviewed about 175 publishing professionals, not just writers, but agents, and voiceover actors, and foreign scouts and film agents, and just the entire spectrum of people that you might encounter along your journey. And we hear from them and the goal is basically, I wanted to recreate what to expect when you're expecting, but for authors.
Kate:
That's a great slug line. I will say also, because I get to say this, it's fucking funny.
Courtney:
It is fun. It's funny.
Kate:
Yeah.
Courtney:
We talk about some pretty deep stuff, depression and substance abuse and things like that. But no, it's funny and most of the contributors are sharing pretty dark secret... there are quite a lot of people and I thought, "Oh, when I show them the proofs, they're going to pull their contributions because people were so candid. But they didn't, so you get it, you get to see the dirty laundry.
Kate:
You get Roxanne Gay, Alisa Cohn, R.O. Kwan. Anthony Doerr.
Courtney:
Anthony Doerr.
Kate:
Rebecca McKay.
Courtney:
Nathan Hill.
Kate:
It's like the who's who?
Courtney:
Yeah.
Kate:
Mira Jacob.
Courtney:
Oh, yeah.
Kate:
Who was on our show last season.
Courtney:
Yeah.
Kate:
Fantastic.
Courtney:
No, there's such a great group of people and I'm so happy to have them in the book. And now they're in my life.
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:27:04]
Courtney:
I'm so happy to have them in the book, and now they're in my life too, so it's great.
Kate:
It is. It's so cool because there are guides out there, but when I was reading, I was like, oh my God, she's covering the whole thing. She's covering soup to nuts of the whole process, and that's a huge undertaking. How long was this book in the making?
Courtney:
I worked on it. It went pretty quickly, I would say a year, but that was with me.
Kate:
You did all the research and contacting all these people [inaudible 00:27:30]?
Courtney:
Yeah, no, I worked. I worked really... I mean, yeah. Yeah, because the table of contents is what I started with, and it didn't take me very long because again, this is my fourth book, so I have a pretty solid handle on my anxieties and failures and things, my regrets, and they're pretty close to the surface. I didn't have to... The research I didn't have to go.
And what I did was I sort of cross-checked my own anxieties and fears with a bunch of other people's, and they checked out. I'm not attached to an academic institution. So a lot of research was dedicated to the areas where I don't have any experience and academia was one of them. And then it was just a question of fleshing out. I would put placeholders under each sort of subsection of either the exact person I was hoping would contribute to that section or the kind of person... I remember for the section on two book deals I said... I put in the Word doc open with a anecdote from someone who had a really positive first book deal or two book deal experience, and then close with someone who had a little harder time of it. And then Catapult was the perfect partner for this because they have a writing school and online writing programs. So they were so helpful saying, oh gosh, you know who would be perfect for you to speak with?
Kate:
That's a dream.
Courtney:
Because I didn't want to fill it, obviously with just my friends, so it's not some clubby thing. But no, it went... But that was me working every single day doing hours and hours of interviews every day. I mean, this book, I'm a trained copywriter, and that came in handy with the non-fiction voice. I was able to do it in kind of a joyful and quick-
Kate:
Absolutely.
Courtney:
Manner.
Kate:
So I don't know a ton about your fiction writing process, but I'm listening to you speak about starting with the table of contents. And when I write, I'm character driven and plot sort of eludes me. Every now and then some voice in my head's like, hey, you should have some fucking plot here. Let's get-
Courtney:
Usually that's my agent's voice.
Kate:
Yeah. So there's something very satisfying to me about what it must have felt like for you to have it all there in front of you.
Courtney:
Oh, it was amazing.
Kate:
You can go here, here, here. And we're going to [inaudible 00:29:51].
Courtney:
And my inner copywriter was so happy, and I didn't have to do the search for the character stakes like, what's at stake? Are my characters changing? I mean, it was a delightful experience. Plus writing fiction especially is so solitary. And I live in a really rural area.
Kate:
Oh, where do you live?
Courtney:
I live in Northwestern, Connecticut in the woods. I don't really have a lot of writing friends around me, but with this book, instead of being alone in my room, I was on the phone every day with some of my heroes having these [inaudible 00:30:26]. It was lovely having these incredibly candid discussions. And then my relationship with my publisher Catapult for this book was quite intimate too, because they were weighing in with their own anxieties and like, oh, you haven't talked about this, or you haven't talked about that. And people were quite candid sharing what they had struggled with. Especially I had the perfect editor because Julie Bunton was my editor, and not only is she an editor and the head, she was the head of the classes program, but she's a really respected author.
So having her weigh in as both someone who has gone through these vulnerable feelings and also as an editor was... It was great. Really. It was a great team. I'm happy I did. It was a lot of work. I mean, I say I did it in a year, but that was just nonstop.
Kate:
Yeah.
Courtney:
Work.
Kate:
It feels like it. That's how it reads. It feels very dense, in a good way. There's a lot of information and it feels very well researched.
Courtney:
Thank you.
Kate:
Number one, did you know it was going to be Catapult? And number two, did you start with a book proposal?
Courtney:
It's funny because I'm starting to get asked that, and I never even thought how odd it is that I didn't start with the book proposal.
Kate:
Can I just say, every person who's ever written a non-fiction book proposal is so mad at you right now.
Courtney:
Well, don't be mad because let me tell you how it happened. It originally, I wrote after the book deal. That's what we went out on an incredibly targeted submission with.
Kate:
Oh, how cool. Okay.
Courtney:
Maybe two, three houses or something. And Catapult responded instantly, and we were pretty sure this is the perfect partner.
Kate:
You and your agent had the... Or you had the idea, took it to your agent and your agents, let's go out and just test the waters before. What was written at that point?
Courtney:
The entirety of after the book deal.
Kate:
Okay. Okay, cool.
Courtney:
Which again, I really want to give a shout out to my contributor's generosity because all the people in the after part, they spoke to me when I had no book deal. I was just telling them, I'm doing this project, and they spoke to me really happily. So after the book deal is what a couple of editors saw, and Catapult was super interested, but they said to me, we need before. We need basically another book we need in two books in one.
Kate:
To which you replied?
Courtney:
Show me the money. And they said, we can't show you any more money. And so I said, I'll do it.
Kate:
You drive the hard bargain, very hard bargain.
Speaker 3:
[inaudible 00:33:04] a good two book deal, or a bad two book deal?
Courtney:
I would say that we can call this a community effort. It's a labor of love.
Speaker 3:
Two book deal.
Courtney:
Two book in one, two book for the price of one deal. So I mean, I sat around for a while. I didn't say yes right away because not only of course was it a lot more work, but wasn't sure I agreed. I had been excited to address the people that no one was speaking to candidly, because the minute you get a book deal this hashtag grateful mentality comes in where you're not supposed to express doubt or complain because it's such a privilege. It's such an immense privilege to be published. So I did try for a while to defend my decision to only have it speak to a specific, but my agent kind of walked me through, actually-
Kate:
Hang on.
Courtney:
We could go from having [inaudible 00:33:57]. Oh.
Kate:
No, no, I'm sorry. That's what the agent would say.
Courtney:
Oh, I'm like, I'll stop talking right now. Sorry. No, no. But she helped me understand we could be going from a very niche pamphlet to an actual resource that could stay in bookstores. And I thought, oh heck, they're right. Yeah. And I was just a little nervous about the before part because I was such... I don't know, I don't have an MFA, and I was nervous about speaking about things that I didn't have personal experience at all. So again, thank goodness my incredible contributors had tons.
Kate:
You said just a moment ago, you said there were the people that nobody was talking to. Who were you talking about?
Courtney:
So all authors who have had a book come out. Nobody, your editor... I have never spoken to. And I've now spoken to so many people. No one has ever had a situation where the book deal happens, and around the time where the developmental or the editor's letter that comes in, no one from the publishing house sits the author down and says, hey, this is how many copies we hope you'll sell. This is what we think the point of your tour is if you get a tour. This is what your first print run's going to be. No one says anything. If they give you a timeline, it's about your copy edits, or you might hear when you're going to see your cover, but no one says, this is what we're hoping your cover will do. These are the things we're take-
Kate:
This is what marketing is saying if there is a marketing message.
Courtney:
All of the marketing stuff, and it's a rare person who knows to even ask these things. I work in marketing on the side, so I was a little bit more aware. But a lot of people, if they're lucky enough to get sent out on tour, they're sent out there with no sort of education about what their goals should be while on tour. So you end up assuming it's to sell a lot of books and rare is the author who has super well attended events at bookstores especially... It is incredibly hard to sell a $27 hard cover. And I really think that editors need to do a better job of telling people, this is the number we're hoping that you'll hit, and this is how we think you can best do it. This is how your time should be spent. Those conversations do not take place.
And people feel incredibly awkward asking other authors because it becomes a little bit of a minefield, even with your own author friends, because are you going to ask them what they got for an advance and then find out that they got tons more? Are you going to find out that they're getting $30,000 to tour with and you're getting 300? They can sort of blow up your own personal relationships and you get nervous and scared. And even with your agent, it depends on the kind of agent, but normally you do sort of catapult into a new relationship with your agent where the idea is that you have to be just well behaved and nobody can ruffle feathers too much and be a good little author. And that's true. I mean it's true that sometimes... You shouldn't be sending 13 emails a day. Calm down. Yeah. There's a hierarchy of knowledge.
But I wanted to inform people just base level what almost everyone can expect regardless of whether you're with a micro press, a big press, and what other people are... What's happening with other people so that you can be more informed and make decisions and understand whether your agent's doing a good job, whether your publicist is doing a good job without feeling like you need to send a nasty email to someone. I want people to not be sending nasty emails to their publicist. You know?
Kate:
Nasty emails, please. Yeah, absolutely. We talk a lot on the show about demystifying parts of that process and ask some of those questions of our authors. We had Jericho Brown on and [inaudible 00:37:59].
Courtney:
Oh wow. Amazing.
Kate:
His partnership with Copper Canyon and The Tradition, which is a poetry book that did wildly well.
Courtney:
Yeah.
Kate:
And even then in my head, I was thinking, oh, well, it's Jericho Brown and his books sold a lot, but they're still, even when the numbers are great, they're not talking about the numbers. Do you know what I mean?
Courtney:
No. Catapult told me, for example, your book's doing well, but I was too scared to ask what that means because-
Kate:
What the does that mean?
Courtney:
Because I was like 17 copies. Well, or what?
Kate:
Three people in Houston [inaudible 00:38:34].
Courtney:
Well, I know that for fact, I'm trendy.
Speaker 3:
[inaudible 00:38:39] to this guy named [inaudible 00:38:42] and Kate Martin Williams took one.
Kate:
Catapult's like those people, they need to know.
Courtney:
Yeah, no, but it's such, when people started really talking to me about this book on record, a lot of people admitted that they had been harboring hopes of hitting the New York Times bestseller list without even knowing how many books that is. And of course it's relative because it's relative to how many books are selling in a given week. But baseline, I mean, lowest amount is what, 9,000 books in a week or something. And these are people, again, they haven't had the experience yet if you're trying to sell a $27 hard cover to five women in Minneapolis at your book event and selling 9,000 copies in a week, selling 90,000 copies, there's a reason it doesn't happen to a lot of people. It's incredibly hard.
And you need the swell of influence and alignment of stars and money and resources that needs to be happening for that to occur because I mean, I have books who... I have a friend who's book Sarah Jessica Parker. She was taken in a paparazzi photograph where she's reading my friend's book and I asked my girlfriend, so that's huge. She's actually got great taste. Did your book sales go up that week? And she goes, they went down.
Speaker 3:
What happened?
Courtney:
Well, I don't know what happened. Who knows what happened. I don't know. Maybe SJP was out of favor that week, but I thought, God, you really can't. My last book was chosen for the Goop. Gwyneth freaking Paltro shows it, and it was on the Instagram and everything, and I don't think it moved the needle at all. I was like, if Gwyneth can't move the needle, who's moving? Well, [inaudible 00:40:43].
Kate:
[inaudible 00:40:43] after the Vagina Eggs.
Courtney:
It was after them. So yeah, I guess her stock went down. I don't know. Put my book in your vagina. It's small format.
Kate:
We're going to see a huge uptick. I have a feeling.
Speaker 3:
Yes.
Courtney:
Don't leave it in there too long. But you know, think of your... Yeah. Reading from the inside out people. Think about it.
Kate:
This is going to be trending.
Courtney:
On that note.
Kate:
This will be trending on Twitter. This will be trending on Twitter.
Courtney:
Trending on Twitter.
Kate:
Yeah. Good.
Speaker 3:
[inaudible 00:41:21] vagina dialogue.
Courtney:
I'm going to get in trouble. I mean, because it's really not something you should do. You'll get paper cuts. Just put it in your purse instead.
Kate:
That's awesome. Not your coin purse.
Courtney:
No. Oh, wow. We can do this all day.
Speaker 3:
Yes. Yes. Yeah. And what time is it tomorrow? [inaudible 00:41:43].
Courtney:
That's right. That's right. We try. Got to try. It's a hard time to be a woman.
Kate:
What's been your favorite thing about AWP this year?
Courtney:
My roommate. My roommate. I'm just going to give her some love, is the author Amy Brill, and she's my AWP mom. And she got us upgraded from our broke lady sharing a bed hotel room to a two bedroom suite with our own bathrooms and a stove and a kitchen. And when I arrived, she opened the door. She handed me my favorite beer, a big thing of hand sanitizer, and the table was spread with salami and cheese and chocolate. And the next day she did my laundry and I love her.
Kate:
How come [inaudible 00:42:30].
Speaker 3:
I washed the dishes this morning.
Kate:
You did? Yes. You washed like five coffee cups and seven wine glasses.
Courtney:
Oh, wine glasses are hard though. That's the equivalent of [inaudible 00:42:43].
Kate:
I take it all back. You're amazing.
Courtney:
I don't wash wine glasses. I make my husband do that. They're too hard. It's just not-
Kate:
[inaudible 00:42:50] really love corn beef. I love your roommate too. That's so nice.
Courtney:
She's the best. Bless her. She stocked it with microwave popcorn too, which is really [inaudible 00:43:01].
Kate:
There's like, there's some parallelism because [inaudible 00:43:05] bought two bags of popcorn and I bought two bags of popcorn. We are lousy in popcorn at our Airbnb.
Courtney:
So we're one down. I think we have one bag left.
Kate:
If you run out, come over to 239 [inaudible 00:43:17] Boulevard. And we'll be happy to trade some chocolate.
Courtney:
Okay.
Kate:
Chocolate for some popcorn. It's been really great to have you on the show. Thank you so much.
Courtney:
This has been very pleasant. We probably have to do a disclaimer, like the opinions of Courtney Mom are not... And the book, [inaudible 00:43:34] Vaginas are Not the opinion of-
Kate:
AWP for [inaudible 00:43:40].
Courtney:
Oh, thank you for having me.
Kate:
It's been an absolute pleasure.
Courtney:
I hope you don't regret it.
Kate:
No, we don't. Not a second. Please go out and buy the book because it's really, really great and helpful.
Speaker 3:
Buy three copies.
Courtney:
There you go. Put me on the list, please.
Kate:
I think they're only selling them three at a time.
Courtney:
That's pretty much true.
Kate:
Yeah, it's a package deal.
Courtney:
It's paperback, so it's cheaper. Yeah.
Speaker 3:
Awesome.
Kate:
You're the best. Thank you.
We are here with Norma Kantu, Professor Emeritus from the University of Texas, San Antonio. It's a pleasure to get to meet you. I've had such a lovely time delving into your work and-
Norma:
I'm currently professor at, yeah, the [inaudible 00:45:03] Frank Marcuson, professor of the Humanities at Trinity University here in San Antonio.
Speaker 3:
Oh wow.
Norma:
[inaudible 00:45:10].
Kate:
A woman who wears many hats.
Norma:
Absolutely.
Kate:
So tell me, one of the things I found among many fascinating things was your twice pilgrimage through Spain. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Norma:
Sure. It's the Camino Santiago. Some people may remember the movie with Martin Sheen called The Way. It's the same pilgrimage from Northern France in San [inaudible 00:45:36] all the way across northern Spain to the pilgrimage site of Santiago de [inaudible 00:45:42] the resting place for St. James the Apostle and I did that nine years ago, did another one about eight years ago, no, maybe six years ago, but it was shorter. The first one was 500 miles of walking every day. The second one was only a hundred kilometers, so it was much shorter. Only a week.
Kate:
How far would you guys go in a day?
Norma:
Average about 14, 15 miles a day. Some days. The longest was 26 miles in one day, and it was too long. We swore never to do that again. Usually the shortest was seven. And so somewhere in between. And we walked a lot through beautiful, beautiful countryside. It was winter, so it was snowing. And I have to tell you, it started at AWP.
Kate:
Did it?
Norma:
Yeah. It was a really interesting session. It was in Chicago, I believe, that year, what 12 years ago, maybe 11. And Sandra [inaudible 00:46:44] had a panel and she invited me to be part of it. And it was spirituality in writing. And everybody on the panel was talking about some aspect of spirituality in their work. And I thought, well, I don't know what I'll talk about. And so she and I talked about it. I said, the one thing that I do religiously, if you will, is walk and walking is a spiritual endeavor. It's like a meditation, really. So I talked about walking as meditation and about how you can focus, and the great ideas for writing that come from that. So when a year and a half later, I'm walking the Camino, I'm going, oh my God, I'm doing what I said. This is exactly what I said I was going to do with the writing and the work, walking. And so yeah, there was an origin story there.
Kate:
Yeah, that's great. Talk a little bit about how you go from concept to creation because-
Norma:
Well, a lot of times you're just led. For example, sticking with the story of the Camino, I had swore that I was not going to write because I was in it for other purposes. And it was not going to be about my head. It was going to be about my heart and my spirit. But third day into the walk, there's this mechanical pencil, bright blue against a pristine white snow drift. And I just was drawn to it like a magnet. And I sensed if I pick it up, I have to write about this.
Kate:
Oh wow.
Norma:
And I made the decision and I picked it up. But I do this all the time. I kind of negotiated with myself. I said, okay, I'm going to pick it up and I'm going to write, but I'm not going to go there every night. I'm just going to keep a log. And that's what I did. However, a year later I wrote a blog called El Camino, a year later, an immersion memoir. And what I did is I went back to that log that basically just had where we stayed, how much I paid for lunch, whatever, and just recreated the experience. And so I did write about it. It's in a blog. Eventually it'll be a book.
Kate:
That's what I wondered if it had made its way.
Norma:
Not yet.
Kate:
Because I found my way to the blog, but I didn't find my way to the book.
Norma:
Yeah. It's not there yet.
Kate:
Eager to see that in the world. It's such a great reminder as I'm sitting here listening to you, what we do on the show oftentimes is talk so much about craft and the control that we have as writers to eek out meeting or painstakingly labor at this work. And what I'm hearing you say today, which is such a good reminder, is that sometimes you have to be quiet and be led by-
Norma:
Allow it to happen. And then of course, comes the revision. [inaudible 00:49:31].
Kate:
We're never dismissed from the work, from the labor. But there has to be space.
Norma:
And the joy.
Speaker 4:
Yeah. Thank you for that. That's great. So you're a professor and you've published a lot of really powerful academic work. And so one of my questions actually comes from a class I took. It was one of my favorite undergraduate classes, and it was on Chicano literature and Chicano literature in the archive. And we actually just had a panel yesterday that our producer [inaudible 00:50:03] moderated. It was talking about sensitivity reading and diversity and publishing. And Daniel Peno was on it, and he got to talking about this idea of the shadow cannon and those books that are so critical to a community, a group of people, a culture that don't necessarily hit the mainstream and take off. And so I was wondering, in all of your teaching and time as a professor, what books do you love teaching to your students that kind of come from that shadow cannon that they didn't expect and they haven't interacted with before? What should we be reading?
Norma:
Everything.
Speaker 4:
Yes.
Norma:
But especially those writers that are not in the New York Times best seller list. Also, I mean, I teach everything I've taught children's literature, YA literature, creative writing, of course, linguistics. And within all of that, in a kind of sometimes very blatant way, I don't hide it. I will of course include African American, Native American, Asian American, and Chicano writers. I mean, that to me is a given. That's who we are as American literature. It's all of those voices. So I'm not going to not teach that.
Speaker 4:
Right.
Norma:
However, also for example, I love Whitman and we're celebrating hundredth anniversary of his birth. So why not talk in a Chicano literature class about Whitman? He has a beautiful poem to a locomotive in winter. Well, there's a train connection. And so I can talk, and I in fact did write a poem about [inaudible 00:51:38] which is the train that brings the immigrants from Central America to the border. And so there's this connection and he's writing about what he knows from his period. I'm writing about what I know on my period, but the connection is there. And so I interweave the two. So it doesn't [inaudible 00:51:57].
Kate:
If or.
Norma:
No. Uh-huh and the cannon has room for those voices. And I think it has to do with perspective as well. I don't know, I wasn't at the session, so I don't know what the discussion was about, but from my perspective, there's no reason it should be either or. I think we can be inclusive and highlight the best. And what hits us for me emotionally and spiritually, the words are what's important. And our words, my Spanish is just as valid and just as valuable as Whitman's. So that's kind of how I open it up for students.
Kate:
Speaking of Daniel Pena, he just walked by and shouted.
Speaker 4:
I know. That's why we both looked up.
Norma:
I heard a shout. I didn't know who it was.
Kate:
Yes. You conjured him out of the [inaudible 00:52:48].
Norma:
Oh yes, we did.
Speaker 4:
Amazing. Well, thank you for sharing that.
Norma:
Sure.
Speaker 4:
It's good to hear.
Norma:
Yeah.
Kate:
Are there [inaudible 00:52:56].
Norma:
Before we go on, I'm glad that Chicana literature was one of your favorite classes. So I love to hear that.
Speaker 4:
Oh, it was so beautiful. And we did a good job of looking at, you know, like you were saying, weaving the cannon in the non cannon and just the idea of the archive and what makes something valuable so powerful. And we talked about a lot about... And I think you do work on this too, is folkloric traditions.
Norma:
Yes.
Speaker 4:
And that sort of just-
Norma:
I know I'm the current president of the American Folklore Society, and right now we're deciding on our keynote speaker for next year. And so while I'm here, I'm also dealing with that. Yeah, yeah. And the folklores, I think it undergirds a lot of the literary work too. Not just mine, but everybody's, it's folk life.
Kate:
And within that, were you doing work on dance traditions as well?
Norma:
I have. I've done-
Kate:
Can you talk about that?
Norma:
Sure. I coed an anthology with a couple of other Folklorists dancing across Borders, [inaudible 00:53:53] Ramirez and Brenda Romero. And my area of expertise within that world is the folk dance called [inaudible 00:54:03]. It's a religious folk dance.
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:54:04]
Norma:
It is the folk dance called matachines. It's a religious folk dance that happens in New Mexico quite a bit, but also all over the Americas, all the way down to Chile. And my area is the border, the US-Mexican border, in Texas, so those are the ones that I've studied and worked with to produce academic writing.
Kate:
Fantastic. We did have a question about academic publishing versus your creative work, because you were [inaudible 00:54:28].
Norma:
I don't know if you noticed that I use a different name for each.
Kate:
You do?
Norma:
You didn't notice? [inaudible 00:54:34].
Kate:
No, tell me about that.
Norma:
The academic writing usually I publish with either Norma E. Cantu or Norma Cantu. But my creative work, I use Norma Elia Cantu, with my middle name. And that choice came about when I first started publishing academic and creative, because I'm the same person, but, like you were saying earlier, I wear different hats, and so I have these two different identities, if you will. And some people will know me as a folklorist, other people know me as a literary critic, other people know me as a creative writer or poet, but I'm the same person. And so I kind of differentiate that through the name, through Norma Elia, which is my full birth given name, or Norma Cantu, which is the shortcut everybody goes to.
Kate:
Just for our listeners, can you maybe highlight some of the differences between your academic publishing journey when you're trying to place an article versus finding the right home for your poetry collection?
Norma:
I guess the similar terrain is that I publish with university presses almost exclusively.
Kate:
For both?
Norma:
For both. Except a couple of things that I've done with McMillan or things like that, which are not ... well, no, they're a part of it. I have a series at Paul Graves, so that's not academic publishing in terms of university press. But the university presses that have, for example, a book series that I edit at Texas A&M Press allows for me to also include others, to bring in others. And the ones that we have published with University of Illinois, Dancing Across Borders, Chicana Traditions, Continuity and Change, those books are more anthologies of academic folklore work, and Illinois is known for that, so I would go to Illinois for that work.
Whereas the poetry collection, I really debated, and I did offer it to a couple of independent small presses. They weren't ready, because those are so overworked and they had so many titles already. And I really wanted it out sooner rather than later, although it still took two years, but it would've been longer with the other press. So I went ahead and signed the contract with Arizona. They have a really good reputation of doing Chicana and Chicano poetry, so that's why I went with them.
You consider different areas. Trinity University Press, for example, is going to be doing an anthology on Latina poets that I'm putting together.
Kate:
They have beautiful books.
Norma:
They do. And so they came to me and said, "Do you have anything?" And I said, "Yes." I had just hosted a gathering of 12 Latinx poets from across the Americas, and it was like, there it is, we're going to expand it. And now we have over 60 poets in the anthology. So it just depends, I guess, the venue, whether it's academic or creative. I hate to do that, because academic is creative as well.
Kate:
I know. It's also creative. Absolutely. It's a false dichotomy, isn't it? False binary. Because they're both creativ
