Jennifer Pashley

How did you become a writer?

I think I was born this way. I hear words and sentences in my head the way a composer hears music. I notice things. People like to tell me things. I started writing to uncover the truth without knowing that's what I was doing. I was raised in a cloud of secrets; every sentence digs a little further. When I realized I could write myself free, I kept going.

Name your writing influences.

I read a lot of novels as a kid, and wanted to write, wanted to imitate the sentences, the novel structure of writers like A.S. Byatt, or Anne Rice. But it wasn't until I read Raymond Carver stories that I realized I could do it. That's when I realized that what I knew of the world was valid, and that it could be told simply and have a huge impact. So, Carver helped me to be brave enough to tell stories, but the novel that really made me want to be a writer was Written on the Body, by Jeanette Winterson. I'd never been so moved by language before. It's so brief, and it's so heartbreakingly beautiful. I try to stay on that spectrum, somewhere between beauty and minimalism.

When and where do you write?

I write mostly at home, in a small office, at a desk I've had since I was a teenager. It's a hundred-year-old Stickley that came second hand from a music company, and it's beat up as hell. I do, however, often write on the road. I do well in a hotel room, because it's clean, and quiet, and anonymous. It's the setting equivalent of white noise. I don't write everyday, and I do beat myself up about that. When I was working full time, I wrote most of my stories, in between the office and home, or a lot of the mental work I did while driving. But for the big world of a novel, I find that I need longer stretches of time to fall in. And that's harder to come by sometimes, or maybe just harder to train yourself to do.

What are you working on now?

I'm working on a new book, a literary suspense novel.

Have you ever suffered from writer's block?

No. I'm full of ideas. But I have suffered from writer's discouragement, or frustration, or depression. There are times when I don't write, but it's not because I have writer's block. It's because I've lost my way in some other sense. I've doubted what I'm doing, or I've lost track of the magic in some way. The work is always there. But there's a lot of plate spinning involved, and sometimes, when you let one fall, they all come crashing in on you.

What's your advice to new writers?

Read everything, old, new, high literary and pulp. It's immensely important. You can learn just as much about telling a story from a romance novel as you can from reading Proust. And don't wait for permission. No program or degree is going to give you permission to write. You have to do that for yourself.

Jennifer Pashley is the author of two story collections, States, and The Conjurer, and the novel, The Scamp (Tin House Books, 2015). Her writing has appeared widely in PANK, SmokeLong Quarterly, New World Writing, Spectre Magazine, and others. She lives in Central New York with her family, and dogs.

Matt Gallagher

How did you become a writer?

Like most writers, I read a lot growing up as a means to make sense of the world. The old truth that the best way to develop as a writer is to read, read, and read some more endures for good reason. But I was a skinny Irish kid from Reno, Nevada, and had no idea how someone "became" a writer. Some years later, as an Army lieutenant in Iraq, I started a blog that inadvertently jumpstarted my writing career. At the time though, I was just writing to keep in touch with family and friends.

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

The best question and the hardest! Because someone vital is always left off. Let's see ... I grew up out west, so Joan Didion and Katherine Anne Porter and Robert Laxalt were literary fixtures in our house. Like a lot of young men of a certain type, I read too much Hemingway. I came to Marquez late but am glad I did. As for “war” stories: Herr’s Dispatches, Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant,” O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato … oh, and Tolstoy. Can’t leave out that guy.

A number of wonderful writing instructors left great impressions on my work, to include John McNally, Lauren Grodstein, Richard Ford, Benjamin Taylor and Victor LaValle. 

When and where do you write?

My usual schedule is write in my apartment for three to four hours in the morning. Then I'll take my dog to the park and grab lunch. In the afternoon I'll edit and revise at the local coffee shop for a few hours.

What are you working on now?

A second novel, centered on post-empire America. It still needs a lot of work, but I’m excited for its potential. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Of course! Any writer who says otherwise is lying through their teeth. But I've gotten to the point where I realize that the only way past writer's block is through it — writing through it, to be more exact.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Talent's great. Tenacity is better. Don't be afraid of failure, it's part of the process. And "Embrace the Suck," as we liked to say in the Army.

Matt Gallagher is a former U.S. Army captain and Iraq war veteran. His debut novel Youngblood was just published by Atria/Simon & Schuster.

Joyce Sutphen

How did you become a writer?

I’m not sure. I think it was because I was always reading when I was a child; sometimes it got me out of chores, and I loved the sound of a voice (Jane Eyre, Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield, or Scout—all of them!) and the sound of words. My father was a farmer and a rhymer in a sort of Dylanesque way; my mother was (and is) someone who dislikes embellishment and pretense. I realize now that they were a good combination for me, but I think I became a writer (if that’s what I am) because I was very shy and inarticulate, and writing was a way for me to sound the way I wanted. Then, when I realized that writing was a way to find out what I didn’t know I knew, that it often brought me along a way I didn’t plan on going, I was hooked.

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

My influences? I would say Shakespeare, Bob Dylan, Yeats, mythopoeic writers such as George MacDonald, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were especially important when I was in my twenties, but the older I get, the closer I have come to reading contemporary poetry and fiction most of the time. One thing that I’m sure had a huge effect on me was memorizing poems (mostly when I drove to and from the college where I’ve taught for over twenty years). I have memorized thirty or forty of Shakespeare’s sonnets and poems by Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Roethke, Wislawa Symborska, Rilke, James Wright, W.S. Merwin, and others—I think those poems settled in my bones and helped me in immeasurable ways.

When and where do you write? 

I write anywhere and anytime; if I’m wise, I write when I feel that lump of emotion in my throat (the one that Robert Frost says a poem begins with), and that could occur anytime—it might be while I’m reading a stack of student papers or when a bird crashes into a window on my house and I see him lying down on the patio, beautiful and absolutely still. Mostly though, I’m foolish and work too hard on other things.

What are you working on now? 

I’m always working on new poems, hoping that I’ll write something that takes the top off of someone’s head, something that “clicks” and helps me say what I don’t know. I think I’m in transition now. There’s a topic I want to write about, but I’m not sure how to approach it; it may even call for prose!

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Not really—until now. My father died a few months ago, and everything I begin falls into a tangle or a blank. He was such a good man, but the end of his life was shadowed by things that he couldn’t control and strange events that are like something out of a Thomas Hardy story. I know—as much as I ever did—that I’ll get past this if I keep working, keep trying to get it down right.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Read and read and then write and write. Find people who care about writing as much as you do; go to readings and support other writers in any way you can.

Joyce Sutphen grew up on a farm near St. Joseph, Minnesota. Her first collection of poems, Straight Out of View, won the Barnard New Women Poets Prize; Coming Back to the Body was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award, and Naming the Stars won a Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. She teaches literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter. Her latest book, Modern Love & Other Myths, was published by Red Dragonfly Press in 2015.  She is the second Minnesota Poet Laureate, succeeding Robert Bly.