Kimberly King Parsons

How did you become a writer?

I was an early and voracious reader, and even as a very young kid I loved telling stories. I’m also a reformed shy person—for much of my life I felt I could only have an opinion on the page. Now I say what I want, but it took me a while to get here. Originally, I thought I wanted to write literary criticism, but in 2005 I applied to an MFA program with the idea that if I got in, I would change my life and start seriously writing fiction. I did, so I did. 

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

I was a lazy high school student without a lot of drive. I took AP classes and made decent grades, but it wasn’t until my freshman year in college that I felt a real sense of purpose. A professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, Dr. Robert Nelsen, taught an intro to the short story course that set my brain on fire. He had us reading Mary Gaitskill, Denis Johnson, Flannery O’Connor, Isaac Babel, Amy Hempel, Barry Hannah—writers whose sentences changed everything I thought I understood about language. At the same time, I was taking a survey course on William Faulkner and Toni Morrison and another course on absurdism and another on dark documentary films and another on poetry in translation. Suddenly, school felt not only meaningful but critical. Transcendent.  

When and where do you write? 

I have a desk in an office like a nice, normal person, but mostly I write in my bed. It’s the place where I’m most comfortable, and I find that I can do very long stretches when I’m comfortable.

What are you working on now? 

I have a novel due to my editor at Knopf soon. It’s about Texas, motherhood, and LSD.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Sometimes I should be writing and find I can’t. For me it’s like insomnia—if I can’t sleep at night, the worst thing is to stay in bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, feeling terrible about not sleeping. It’s better to get up, read a book, leave the scene of anxiety. When I can’t write, I try to do the same thing. Go to a movie, meet a friend for a day drink, take a walk in the woods. Sitting and staring at the screen only prolongs the bad feeling. The sooner I decide to “waste” the day, the quicker I can usually get back to work. 

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

After the birth of my second child, I was exhausted and feeling like I might never write again. I was complaining about this to the brilliant writer and teacher Victoria Redel when she calmly but firmly told me, “Get back to work. Or don’t.” Something about the clear binary of that decision moved me to action. Those are the two choices—pick one! Over and over and over again I choose to write.

What’s your advice to new writers?

I don’t think I can beat Redel’s advice, but something I’d tell writers about publishing is to amass rejection. Publication is a numbers game, so if you’re shooting for 100 rejections a year, you’re bound to have some acceptances in there. And seeing each rejection as a step closer to your goal of 100 reframes the whole process. 

Kimberly King Parsons is the author of the story collection Black Light, longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award, and the novel The Boiling River, forthcoming from Knopf. A recipient of fellowships from Columbia University and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, her fiction has been published in The Paris Review, Best Small Fictions 2017, Black Warrior Review, No Tokens, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She lives with her partner and sons in Portland, OR.

Kate Angus

How did you become a writer?

I hesitate to answer this question because saying “I was always a writer” sounds unbearably pretentious but, in many ways, it is true. My parents always encouraged me and my sibling to follow our artistic interests, writing included, and they also read to us, so I have felt very actively connected to books and writing for as long as I can remember. There was never a moment where I thought “I shall become a writer!”—instead, since so much of my time as a kid was spent making up stories and poems, it was just what I already was doing. 

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

The writers whose work most influence my own I think are Mary Ruefle, Richard Siken, Kelly Link, Agha Shahid Ali, Kevin Prufer, Terrance Hayes, Rainer Maria Rilke and T. S. Eliot—those, at least, are the writers I never met but whose work I’ve read so obsessively that I’m sure some of their turns of phrase and tropes echo within my own lines. I’ve also certainly been influenced by my teachers—most particularly Jack Driscoll, Matthew Zapruder, Elizabeth Alexander, David Lehman, Meghan O’Rourke, Mike Delp and Nick Bozanic. 

When and where do you write?

I primarily write at my desk (which is also our living room/dining room table) in my apartment and most consistently in the morning between 9-11 and in the early afternoon from 1-3.

What are you working on now?

I’m trying to pull together an essay collection. The unifying thread seems to be “things I’m interested in” which will probably not be a very appealing pitch to prospective agents but is a little catchier than “essays about wendigos, salt, writer’s block, Iceland, St. Anthony, Finnish coffee bread, Hecate, Sherlock Holmes, trickster gods, Odin, foxes, apples, skeleton keys, tigers who live in Harlem, sleep paralysis, and many other things.” I also must admit that I am mired in the research stage of a novel as well and am slowly slowly compiling my second poetry collection.  

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Haha. Yes. I wrote an essay about it recently. After my first book came out, I couldn’t write anything new for two years. I revised old work, and I started and abandoned many terrible drafts, but I couldn’t finish anything or produce words that didn’t feel dead. I tried everything I could to fix it to no avail, but eventually it lifted on its own. Since then, I’ve begun to look at the times when I’m not actively writing as natural and necessary. Much like how farmers will leave certain fields fallow or rotate the types of crops they produce so the soil can rest and regain depleted nutrients, I think that sometimes instead of writing, I have to spend that time reading or traveling or just living my banal daily life of paying bills and vacuuming and cooking dinner and trust that that rest period is part of my writing process.  

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

My high school writing teacher Mike Delp used tell us “This is all practice” and it made me so angry at the time because I was working so hard at my writing and I wanted to think that those poems were the real deal (whatever that means)—at the the time, “practice” sounded like a lesser thing. But the older I get, the more I think he was right. Everything I write is practice, practice for the next thing I’m writing. Regardless of whether or not any individual essay or poem gets picked up by a lit journal or if a manuscript gets published, it is still practice for the next day’s work and so on and onward. I find it very freeing to think that way now—we’re always doing the real work, but the real work is also always yet to come. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Be stubborn. That’s the only thing that really makes the most difference—more than talent, more than connections even (although those things help a lot too, of course). Write, read, take breaks to rest, mull things over, revise, but keep sending your work out. Even if the rejection letters pile up into mountains around you, try to trust that—if you keep putting yourself out there—eventually you’ll find people who want to hear your voice. 

Kate Angus is the author of So Late to the Party (Negative Capability Books, 2016) and the founding editor of Augury Books. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Atlantic Online, The Washington Post, Best New Poets 2010, Best New Poets 2014, Barrow Street, Indiana Review and the American Academy of Poets' "Poem-A-Day" feature. Born in Michigan, she currently lives in New York.

Michelle Rial

How did you become a writer?

I consider myself more of a visual communicator. I studied journalism with concentrations in graphic design and advertising. I wanted to be an art director or a "creative" but I couldn't afford this thing called Portfolio School, so I took classes at night in copywriting, editorial design, and typography. I left advertising because I couldn't transition to the creative side, and freelanced at magazines in Manhattan while teaching English at night in Flushing. I took photographs of restaurants, color-corrected fashion week photos, and created photo illustrations until I got a job as a web producer at a media company. I asked for design work on the side, then asked if I could design flowcharts and graphics for bloggers, and then started pitching my own ideas that I'd design and write. I did this until I got the attention of an editor who hired me as writer/illustrator.

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

Influences and writer/illustrator heroes include Cheryl Strayed, Wendy MacNaughton, Julia Cameron, Marian Bantjes, Debbie Millman, Christoph Niemann, Stefan Sagmeister, Adam J. Kurtz, Nathan Pyle, Randall Munroe, Mona Chalabi, Carissa Potter, Lydia Davis, Anne Lamott, Sarah Ruhl, Samantha Irby, Steven Wildish, Jessica Hagy, Jessica Hische, Jessica Saia, Kelli Anderson, Maira Kalman, Gary Shteyngart, Junot Diaz, Edward Tufte, Nicole Lavelle, Kate Bingman-Burt, Bruno Munari, Michael Bierut, Hallie Bateman, Mari Andrew, Olivia de Recat, Jason Adam Katzenstein, Roz Chast, modern art museums, stacks of The New Yorker and old issues of New York Magazine—there are so many more and I'm having anxiety over all the ones I'm not including. It's hard for me to differentiate influences and things I love.

When and where do you write?

I write/draw best early in the morning or late at night, but I do my best and most productive thinking if I know I have somewhere to be in two hours.

What are you working on now?

I just finished a few rooms-worth of conceptual illustrations for an exhibit that's yet to be announced (in partnership with NASA).

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I go through cycles of being really sick of myself creatively and then being really productive and inspired. I also deal with chronic repetitive strain injuries that can flare up badly enough to become a significant physical block. It's particularly bad right now.

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

Some of the best advice I've read is in Things Are What You Make of Them by Adam J. Kurtz.

What’s your advice to new writers?

-Health insurance

-If you feel pain, take a break

Michelle Rial was born in California to Venezuelans who really loved The Beatles' song "Michelle." You may have seen her illustrations, writing, or charts on The New Yorker, BuzzFeed, Fast Company, USA Today, Refinery29, Vox, and elsewhere on the internet. She's the author and illustrator of Am I Overthinking This?: Over-answering life's questions in 101 charts published last month by Chronicle Books.