Candice Wuehle

How did you become a writer? 

By trying to be something else again and again. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). 

The poet Mary Szybist was my mentor in high school. She pulled me aside one day when I was seventeen to tell me I was a good writer and should think about college. My life took a new course after that. There have been many times over the years when I’ve felt pathless and have thought back to Mary. Joyelle McSweeney is also a major writing influence. I aspire to have even a little bit of her energy, style, curiosity, intelligence, and sense of the beyond.

Other writers: Edith Wharton, Ottessa Moshfegh, Jane Bowles, Tara Isabella Burton, Raven Leilani, Mona Awad, Rachel Yoder, Esi Edugyan, Clarice Lispector, Chelsey Minnis, Olivia Cronk, Kate Chopin, Lucy Ives, Virginia Woolf, Jessica Knoll, Carmen Maria Machado, Henry James, Shirley Jackson, Lauren Berlant, Gillian Flynn

When and where do you write? 

Usually my campus or home office during the late morning into early afternoon. If I’m working intensely on a project, I’ll go to the university library stacks to try to convince myself the day has reset. 

What are you working on now? 

Too many things! A prequel to MONARCH that traces MKUltra’s origins from WWII into American universities. Another novel, tentatively titled ultranatural, that’s sort of like Blonde (Joyce Carol Oates) or Rodham (Sittenfeld) in that it follows a celebrity reminiscent of Britney Spears. Finally, my partner and I are in the planning stages for a legal thriller about the opioid crisis inspired by living at the edge of Appalachia.  

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I’ve experienced writer’s rest for longer than I allowed myself to feel was acceptable. At the time, I thought it was writer’s block but now I see that it was just a dormant phase. Much of the media and literature and art I took in during that phase absorbed deeply and eventually emerged when I began to write again. I suppose I think feeling as if one is experiencing “writer’s block” is like a butterfly thinking it’s having a “creation block” because it’s in a cocoon. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? 

Probably Joan Didion’s advice in “On Keeping a Notebook”: “I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be whether we find them attractive company or not.” Of course, Didion suggests doing this through the keeping of notebooks. If I hadn’t remembered and kept space for many different versions of myself, I wouldn’t have written a lot of what I’ve written.

What’s your advice to new writers?

My practical advice is to find a job that doesn’t involve looking at a screen. Professional writing is so much more physical than I had ever imagined. My more holistic advice is simply to get curious about what you think is a mistake, to follow it to its mysterious core.

Candice Wuehle is the author of the novel MONARCH (Soft Skull, 2022) as well as the poetry collections Fidelitoria: Fixed or Fluxed (11:11, 2021); 2020 Believer Magazine Book Award finalist, Death Industrial Complex (Action Books, 2020); and BOUND (Inside the Castle Press, 2018). She holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Kansas. Candice currently teaches in the Jackson Center for Creative Writing at Hollins University.