Bonnie Tsui

How did you become a writer?

By becoming a reader first. As a kid, I read nonstop -- my mom took me to the library every week and every week I came back with a sky-high stack of books that made me so happy. I love being immersed in a world. My dad is an artist, and we grew up in his downstairs studio. It was a pretty creative environment in our house -- we were homebodies, but our imaginative life was internally expansive. 

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

In college I took two nonfiction seminars with the writer Natalie Kusz, the author of Road Song, an incredibly riveting memoir. She taught me that nonfiction writing could be just as creative as fiction, the prose as vivid and diamond-bright and powerful. That was eye-opening. It changed my life.

When and where do you write? 

When I need to write something that requires sustained thought, I get up really early. That five to six am window when everything is still and dark is so clarifying. The where matters less.

What are you working on now? 

Finishing up the back matter for my first children's book, which will be published next year. Writing an essay for an anthology on San Francisco. And neck-deep in my next book, about fallow time.  

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Not really, though this period of pandemic and protest has certainly made it difficult to get writing done, mostly because so much of my waking life is taken up with thinking and talking about these big and uncertain things, especially with my children.  

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

Get up and do the work. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Writing is a discipline, just like any other. It's not some magical thing that happens to you -- ultimately, you are the force that drives the work. Carving out a regular routine for your practice is critical. And then you can make the magic.

Bonnie Tsui is the author of WHY WE SWIM, a cultural and scientific exploration of our human relationship with water and swimming. A Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times bestseller, it was named an Editor's Choice by The New York Times Book Review. It has also received praise from NPR, The San Francisco Chronicle, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist, and was named a best book of the season by Amazon, Outside, Buzzfeed, Oprah, and more. A journalist and longtime contributor to The New York Times, Bonnie is also the author of AMERICAN CHINATOWN, winner of the Asia/Pacific American Award for Literature and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. She lives, swims, and surfs in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Katherine Hill

How did you become a writer?

As the only child of two English professors, I was lucky to see adults reading and writing from a young age. I made my first book on one of my mom’s legal pads, and from that point on I was pretty much always writing something, whether it was a play or a story or an outline for a fictional universe. The Bennington MFA program was where I developed my grown-up practice, reading other writers closely, and committing a certain number of hours each week to the work of writing and revision.

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

The list is long and always growing, but the current headliners are Virginia Woolf, Elena Ferrante, Jennifer Egan, and Lydia Davis. My brilliant Bennington teachers—Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Alice Mattison, Amy Hempel, and Martha Cooley—mentored me generously at a really critical time. 

When and where do you write?

I mostly write at home, at my desk, but I’ve also gotten great work done at coffee shops, libraries, and especially writing residencies like the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. The key is having a good chair, few interruptions, and lots and lots of time. 

What are you working on now?

A journal of my daughter’s first year of life and a new novel that’s still finding its form. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I would say there are periods when I write and periods when I don’t. This used to bother me, in a really existential way, but I’ve come to accept it as part of my process. It’s always hard to start after a period of not-writing, but I always manage to do it, mostly by reading excellent writers and letting myself write whatever comes out, knowing I can always throw it away later—and probably will.

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

The real work of writing is revising. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Read widely and deeply in your chosen genre—and also outside your genre—to figure out how other writers have done it. Seek out mentors and fellow travelers. Be patient with yourself: Failure is an inevitable and necessary part of any artistic process. Learn who to listen to, and who not to listen to, which is an answer particular to you. Remember that in the end, it’s your work, and you get to decide how to make it.

Katherine Hill is the author of two novels—The Violet Hour (2013) and A Short Move (2020), which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. With Sarah Chihaya, Merve Emre, and Jill Richards, she is also co-author of The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism (2020). She teaches creative writing and literature at Adelphi University.

Emily Temple

How did you become a writer?

I started out as a reader. My parents were big readers too, so I had the advantage of growing up in a house full of books. When I started writing, it was because I wanted to be able to recreate the magic I found in books, and maybe even find a way to give other people what the books I loved had given me. 

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

So many: W. G. Sebald, Vladimir Nabokov, Katherine Dunn, Italo Calvino, Mary Gaitskill, Donna Tartt, Anne Carson, Octavia Butler, Mary Robison, Kelly Link, Sylvia Plath, Kobo Abe, Virginia Woolf, Helen Oyeyemi, Aimee Bender, Shirley Jackson, Renatta Adler, Maggie Nelson, Donald Antrim, Steven Millhauser, Donald Barthelme, Tom McCarthy, Jenny Offill. This is the problem with reading too much. 

When and where do you write?

I write in the mornings, in bed; for me this achieves the perfect balance of mental clarity and physical comfort required to forget myself. 

What are you working on now?

A second novel, reportedly.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Technically, I suppose. But I don't really see it as writer's block—I see it as a cycle. Some days I wake up and I'm ready to work, I have tons of ideas and energy. Other days I wake up and I can only blink at the blank page. But you know what? That's okay. On the bad days, I try for a while (in case it's just sleepiness or stubbornness) and then, if it's not working, I give up and read a book, or go for a run, or have a snack. It is my policy not to give myself a hard time about this. For me at least, no good writing ever comes from forcing it. 

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

The best writing advice I've ever received directly was from one of my graduate school professors, who advised me to write a novel, and then when I said I'd try, raised an eyebrow at me and said, "Try?" That eyebrow raise was very good writing advice. That eyebrow raise said: stop waffling and self-doubting and worrying and go do it already.

What’s your advice to new writers?

In first drafts, whether stories or novels or poems, start by simply getting to the end. Even if you get there by jumping over plot holes, and writing bad sentences, and punctuating your prose with "SOMETHING ELSE HERE," just get there. Once you've written through to the end once, you can see the shape of the thing, and then you can change it. Maybe a lot. Don't worry—no one else has to see your bad draft full of SOMETHING ELSEs. Just use it as scaffolding: a temporary support system that will allow you to start building in earnest on the next go-around.

Emily Temple was raised by Buddhists in Central New York. She earned an MFA in fiction from the University of Virginia, and now lives in Brooklyn, where she is the Managing Editor at Literary Hub. Her first novel, The Lightness, was published in 2020.