"Rock Salt and Rabbit"

Though celebration in a time of chaos seems an unlikely, untruthful action, I want to pause and breathe and acknowledge a moment in my life as a writer. This week my story, "Rock Salt and Rabbit," one of eight finalists for the 2016 Nelligan Prize, was published in Colorado Review. The experience of working with Editor in Chief, Stephanie G'Schwind, and all the CR staff was amazing. To add to this honor, the story was the featured fiction on the CR website for their 2016 Fall/Winter Issue and in their November podcast. CR editor Lauren Matheny's beautiful reading of the story and CR podcast editor Kylan Rice's introductions and following interview allowed me to listen and learn even more about the characters and their world than I realized in the all the months and years of writing.

"Rock Salt and Rabbit" stands alone as a story, but is also a chapter in the novel, SYBELIA DRIVE; hence, the years of writing. It is Royal's story, set when the war in Vietnam is still going on, and when soldiers like Royal were returning home. While I have never been to war, through research and time spent writing and rewriting, I came to understand this character - his stamina, his dilemma, his honesty and generosity.

Through writing, we learn empathy. And I'd say through reading, too. I'd like to imagine that if Royal was more than a character, that if he were alive and breathing, he would be one of the thousands of veterans deploying this weekend to Standing Rock in North Dakota to "assemble as a peaceful, unarmed militia" and "defend the water protectors from assault and intimidation at the hands of the militarized police force and DAPL security."

In a time when the world spins in mad and maddening directions, I'm grateful for this moment. I encourage everyone to disengage from the madness for an hour each day, to take in something positive, like a story. Read in order to understand, then go out and make the world a better place.

Brooklyn's Jamel Brinkley

Photo Credit – Keisha Green

“Claudius Van Clyde and I both preferred girls of a certain plumpness—in part, I

think, because that’s what black guys are supposed to like, because liking it confirmed

something about us—but he had gotten to Sybil first. So for the moment I was left to

deal with the prophet of the bubble. I was fine with that. I needed a good distraction, and

a good thing about hanging with Claudius Van Clyde was that you never failed to get

noticed. He had come to Columbia from West Oakland with certain notions regarding

life in New York, that the city’s summer heat and dust, its soot-caked winter ice, were

those of the cultural comet, which he ached to witness if not ride. Because of these

notions—which were optimistic, American—he manipulated gestures, surfaces, and

disguises, seemed to push the very core of himself outward so that you could see in his

face, in the flare of his broad nostrils, the hard radiance of the soul-stuff that some people

go on and on about. Though not quite handsome, he could fool you with his pretensions

and he was gorgeously insincere. Among his implements were a collection of Eastern style

conical hats and two-, three-, and four-finger rings. His pick for that night: a fez,

which was tilted forward on his head so that we, both of us, were emboldened by the

obscene probing swing of the tassel.”

- from “No More Than a Bubble”

by Jamel Brinkley

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Jamel Brinkley and I met at the Kenyon Writers Workshop in 2012, where each day Lee K. Abbott assigned a writing prompt, and the next morning we responded with story beginnings. The prompts were more than good, and the stories we came back with were more than surprising. Out of those surprises came really great complications, enormous wads of southern-style levity, racy descriptions of girls rolling in paint, Pacific coast road trips, Flatbush house parties, and god-like archetypes. A range of work that blew us all away. 

Jamel went on to other workshops and blew away a few more writers and teachers with his windswept street writing, inclusive of junkmen, Jamaican-African-American-Dominican girls, wild dogs, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, fez tassels, and near disappointment. His hard work and words have landed him a place at the Iowa Writers Workshop. No telling what the future will bring, but thankfully, it will include more stories and eventual volumes that bear Jamel Brinkley’s name.

Photo credit – Gya Watson

Jamel, you write short stories and are working on a novel. Could you compare the experience of creating short form vs. writing long?

The first thing I should do is confess that up until about two years ago, I was deathly afraid of writing short stories. The gaps in my knowledge of short stories, which are still significant, were then enormous.  I was all about novels, and in a drawer somewhere I have a 600-page dung heap of a novel that is probably still steaming and stinking things up.  I workshopped part of that novel at the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop a few years ago, and I found much to my dismay that I had absolutely no understanding of structure.  What I had written was an incoherent mess.

The novel I’m working on now might more accurately be called a novella, or at least I envision it that way.  I’m trying to be way more modest about the scope and the pages, trying to be more mindful about structure, to exert more control so that it doesn’t turn into a “loose baggy monster” of the worst kind.  I’ve been working more on stories than the novel recently, and my sense is that both forms are difficult as hell.  Stories call for an extraordinary amount of control and efficiency, and in those miniaturized spaces, I find it particularly challenging to maintain the feeling and soul and voice I want while making things happen satisfactorily on the emotional and action plot levels.  I’ve had a hard time ramping up the tension.  I get caught up in sentences, a fact that is bad enough in a story, but imagine 600 pages of that nonsense!

The level of description and depth in your writing is phenomenal. Have you come to this from the foundation of years and years of reading and writing, or as this always been your inclination? Either way, who out in the world are your greatest influences?

Well, thank you, first of all.  I do think I’ve always been drawn to vivid writing, to details and images, the possibilities of rhythm in a sentence and a poetic line.  In high school and college, I fancied myself a poet, and I was devastated when I discovered that there was an unflattering name for what I had been writing: purple prose.  One of my challenges is to avoid layering on images, adjectives, and details in such a way that my writing becomes obscure, muddled.  So while I used to love Nabokov at his most florid, now I try to pay attention to writers who have a firm handle on what sentences can do, who know when to tighten and release the reins.  This wishful list of influences will be necessarily incomplete, but here goes:  James Baldwin (his essays and short stories), the James Joyce of Dubliners, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Gabriel García Márquez, J.D. Salinger, Marilynne Robinson (especially Housekeeping), Junot Díaz (especially Drown and Oscar Wao), Charles D’Ambrosio, Barry Hannah, Lee K. Abbott, Toni Morrison, Denis Johnson, Edward P. Jones, Amy Hempel, Nathaniel Mackey, Tobias Wolff, Gayl Jones, William Trevor, Alice Munro, John Edgar Wideman, Jhumpa Lahiri.  I’ll stop here, with guilty feelings about leaving off so many of the fiction writers I admire, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Q-Tip, Black Thought, Lauryn Hill, Mos Def, Ghostface Killah, and MF Doom as folks who inspire and perhaps influence me.  And don’t get me started on jazz!

Lions, tigers, or bears?

Lions, without question.  I spent many years as an employee, undergraduate and graduate student at Columbia, whose mascot is the lion.  I’ve also been called a lion because of my hair, here and there by friends who are adherents of Rastafari, and more significantly by former students who thought I looked like Simba from The Lion King.  There’s not much that’s lion-like about me beyond that; I’m a November baby, and I’m definitely more Scorpio than Leo.

The character, Claudius Van Clyde, in your story, “No More than a Bubble,” comes across as an archetype, a kind of jester, large and laughing, in love with life; yet through the narrator’s eyes, Claudius is truly flesh-and-blood with vulnerabilities and a demeanor that lead him and the narrator to near disgrace. Is this larger archetypal view something you intended, or a natural direction that the story took? Are there Claudius Van Clydes in your life, the kind of magnanimous personalities that beg for story?

I did intend it.  Claudius strikes me a particularly “New York” kind of character, in both the literary and life senses.  There are many versions of Claudius Van Clyde where I live, in Brooklyn.  These are folks who strike me as needing or wanting to match the grandiosity of New York City.  In a place teeming with stimuli, they make elaborate efforts to draw attention to themselves, to make things swirl around them, and I think that they often have fascinating reasons for doing so.  I’ve written about a couple of these character types.  I think they draw my attention because they are so unlike me and because I have such strong and complicated feelings about them.  I guess I’m happy to play Nick to their Gatsby.

How has teaching high school English had an effect on your writing, from managing time to influencing the subject and slant of your writing? The twist and swerve of language in your stories are completely new, utterly unique. Are you inspired by your students’ vocabulary and by the street-speak and sounds of the boroughs?

For me, teaching high school English pulls from the same well of time, energy, and mind that I need to write.  So during the school year, I get very little work done.  If I’m lucky, if there aren’t piles of student essays waiting to be read and graded, I get some work done on weekends.  Otherwise I rely on holidays and seasonal breaks.  Right now I teach in a very traditional independent school, so if anything my work with these students pulls me towards writing that is canonical.  The qualities in my language that you very kindly describe, the vocabulary and the urban rhythm and vernacular, probably come from the way my upbringing, musical influences, more “experimental” reading, and earlier teaching experiences dance with the more traditional and canonical work I’ve been immersed in over the last four to five years.

Exciting times ahead! You’ll be leaving New York, as the Iowa Writers Workshop awaits you, and you begin in the fall, yes? A quotation you gave me from Ellison’s Invisible Man seems quite fitting: “The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.” What are your expectations, goals, and dreams as you approach the next two years? And beyond?

Yes, this is the first time in my conscious existence that I’ll be living someplace other than in New York City.  I’m nervous and thrilled.  I’m thrilled to have the gift of time, which is something that Lan Samantha Chang, the director of the Iowa program, emphasized to me in her typically generous and clear-headed way.  It seems like such an obvious thing, but when you reach a certain age and have established routines, relationships, a career, realizing how enormous and precious a gift time might require someone like Sam to believe in you and your work enough to force-feed you a healthy dose of clarity and plain good sense.  I’m thrilled to have the time and the opportunity to say “yes” to everything, which was Lee K. Abbott’s advice to me: study with everyone, take poetry classes, read read read.  Despite the suspicion and criticism the Workshop sometimes engenders, it seems like it can’t possibly be a bad thing to spend two years reading and writing in a high-quality program where the very town takes you seriously as a writer.  I want to finish my short novel and build a short story collection, but my real goal is to say “yes” to everything, to throw myself fully into this two-year conversation with brilliant teachers and peers, and into what Charlie D’Ambrosio described as a conversation with yourself “in the solitary struggle of writing sentences.”  Of course, I want to be published someday—what writer doesn’t?—but I can wait for that to happen.  “I want to be an honest man and a good writer,” as Baldwin said, and I think my experience at Iowa will help with at least one of those goals.

Jamel Brinkley is a writer from Brooklyn, New York.  He has degrees from Columbia University and teaches high school English in New York City.  This fall he will begin study at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

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The Poppy: An Interview Series

Four to six questions begin as pods, then burst open with answers, bright lapis, 

black-stamened, conspicuous—ornament, remembrance, opiate.

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This interview first posted at Hothouse Magazine.

Jennifer Genest's Worlds and Words

"John wanted to believe that it was his craftsmanship alone that had made Mrs. Matthews—the owner of the Wedding Cake House—contact him, but she said she’d seen him on the news, too, after he’d rescued that little girl. Mrs. Matthews wore heavy rose perfume, and… lingered in the doorway when he arrived to begin work, inviting him to warm up with hot cocoa and coffee brandy, talking to him as he tried to get back to work. First she had him restore the rest of the wall… But then she called him for odd jobs… to keep him around: leveling out a washing machine that bucked during the spin cycle; asking him to haul a rotten old wicker porch swing to the dump, her boney hand on his knee as she rode next to him and his hand politely moving it away. He was used to women flirting with him—even women her age, older than his mother—but the part of him that could… respond had been in hibernation since [his wife] Grace died. Each day, Mrs. Matthews wore a lower-cut blouse than the day before, the skin of her cleavage like fine crepe paper. How had he known what to do to get them off the ice like that? she wanted to know.And how is that little girl doing?"

- from The Mending Wall

 – by Jennifer Genest

Jennifer Genest has a lovely, quiet grace about her. She smiles easily, her head tilted to listen, an earnest gesture. Her writing mirrors that initial impression, until one turns the page. Quickly setting and character are challenged by complication, and the story flies forward with intention and strength, as well as beauty and eloquence. Jennifer speaks here of her writing process, as well as her inspiration and influences.

Your novel, The Mending Wall, takes place in a small town in Maine. The details of place and the types of characters seem deeply rooted in the quiet and solitude, as well as the strength of community, one might find in a New England mill town. In writing the novel did you draw from your own experiences of growing up in Sanford, Maine?

Sanford gave me a lot of inspiration. I also had fun creating experiences I wished I’d had – inspired by places in or near Sanford. For example, Indian’s Last Leap (“The Leap”)—a wooded gorge—is a real place in Springvale, Maine (Sanford’s neighbor). In high school, The Leap was where the cool kids went to party. Far from being cool, I was never invited to those parties—but often imagined what it would be like. So I included it in the novel. I didn’t expect it to become such a significant place in the story.

Jennifer, her brother Matthew, and their Old English Sheepdog Dudley

I understand you are presently writing short stories. Your stories have a range of emotional depth, humor, even darkness. Could you speak about this emotional range and about the difference in the process of working on a longer project vs. a handful of shorter, unrelated pieces?

As far as range, I think that when a writer knows what a character would do in almost any situation, and truly feels with the character, then organic emotion (and, I suppose, emotional range true to that character) finds its way to the page. I am in awe of great short story writers; it’s something I work to become better at. Writing long is more comfortable for me. I feel like there’s more space, more time, less pressure (although of course, that’s really not true, since writing short can take a very long time—and vice versa). For the novel, I took months to map and figure out the characters before I wrote because there was simply more to keep track of in the story; I knew I’d get lost without a map. With short stories, my process includes more free writing as a way of finding the story.

It’s easier to workshop short stories with my writing group than it is a single chapter at a time; in that respect, I find writing short stories to be a bit less lonely. You get to come out more often with a complete story to share. It seldom means you’re done with the story—it just means you get to come out of the writing cave.

Why do you write?

As humbling as the writing process can be, it makes me happy. It’s thrilling to pretend, to be someone else on the page. Research for writing can bring new people into your life and open your heart. When you write, you have a reason to explore things you might never have otherwise.

Jennifer in Maine

Five great children’s books.

One Morning in Maine by Robert McCloskey

Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

The Black Stallion by Walter Farley

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume

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All photos permission of Jennifer Genest.

Jennifer Genest grew up riding horses and playing in the woods of Sanford, a mill town in southern Maine. In college she studied equestrian science before moving on to earn her BFA (Roger Williams University) and MFA (Antioch University Los Angeles) in Creative Writing. She is a Peter Taylor Fellow for the 2013 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Her novel, The Mending Wall, was completed in 2012, and a synopsis and a sample chapter can be read at jennifergenest.wordpress.com. She lives with her family near Los Angeles, CA.

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The Poppy: An Interview Series

Four to six questions begin as pods, then burst open with answers, bright lapis, 

black-stamened, conspicuous—ornament, remembrance, opiate.

*

This interview first posted at Hothouse Magazine.

The 2012 Waasmode Short Fiction Prize & Why I'm Even More in Love with Caitlin Horrocks

2012 Waasmode Short Fiction Prize

Caitlin Horrocks' stories have always punched me in just the right way. So that after reading "The Sleep" or "Sun City" or even "Zolaria" and especially "This Is Not Your City," I feel amazed and exhausted and alive and also a little bit in love with Caitlin Horrocks and her words. And so, when I entered a story - in the usual titled-with-no-author identification format given to most contests - in the Passages North short fiction contest, which announced CH as judge, I hoped she might find something in my words, too - if my story even made it passed the first readers.

This week I had my first phone call ever from a literary magazine. Yes, that's right. From Tim Johnston, the managing editor at Passages North. He was quite calm, and meanwhile I tried to stay calm, as he told me that my story, "We Are Here Because of a Horse," had been chosen by Caitlin Horrocks as the winner of the 2012 Waasmode Short Fiction Prize. I'm still surprised and ecstatic and occasionally mumble, "nah, that wasn't me," even though I know I should shout, "yes, that's me and that's my story!" That's my story about a girl and a boy and a horse, about drums and Tulsa and dreams. And then I can't help myself and I celebrate by jumping up and down and scaring the dog, because my stories are finally getting a chance to be read.

And that's why I'm even more in love with Caitlin Horrocks and this thing that she and I both do.  This thing called writing.

"We Are Here Because of a Horse" was published in Passages North, Issue 34, Winter 2013.

(Photo Credit: sheeshoo at Flickr - the chrome horse at the Natural History Museum in Fair Park in Dallas).

Third Coast's 2012 Jaimy Gordon Fiction Prize

Third Coast's 2012 Jaimy Gordon Fiction Prize has been announced, and I love the title of the winning story - "Abandoned Cars" by CJ Hauser. Perhaps inside her story is the old truck I've been looking for. Count me in as happy to have a story included among the Fiction Finalists.

http://www.thirdcoastmagazine.com/contests/