Jen Palmares Meadows

How did you become a writer?

I’ve always written. In middle school, I kept a regular journal and wrote short essays and little slice-of-life pieces that I shared with friends. After my early start, staying a writer was a matter of consistently choosing writing for myself. I went to grad school for creative writing. I belong to a writing community, attend literary events, and read as much as I can. But mostly, I write. 

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

There are many, but I’ll name some that stand out in my mind—Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee, Sandra Cisneros’ House on Mango Street, Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. Also, Ray Bradbury, Carole Maso, Chinua Achebe, and Kahlil Gibran. I also must mention my seventh grade English teacher, Mrs. Sophia Linnell, who encouraged my writing and introduced me to so much wonderful literature by writers like Langston Hughes, Shirley Jackson, and Sophocles. 

When and where do you write?

I often do first draft work on my phone because it is easily accessible. Whether in line at the pharmacy or picking up my kids from school, if I can get in ten minutes of writing, it’s worthwhile. My more intense revision, I do on my laptop, early in the morning or late at night when I can work undisturbed.

What are you working on now?

A coming of age gambling memoir centered around my Filipino family and our frequent trips to Las Vegas when I was growing up.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I recently had a pretty good stretch of writer’s block. What helped me get back on track was joining a local writing group that met twice a week. I belong to an incredibly supportive community made up of women writers of color that provides accountability and a space to work through my writing challenges.   

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

The best writing advice is straight forward and often repeated: Read a lot. Write a lot. Put in the work. Lately, a bit of writing advice I’ve been holding on to comes from my friend, Valerie Fioravanti. Once, when I was being very critical of a draft I’d been working on, she said simply, “Don’t judge a cookie when it’s half baked.” The simple metaphor helped me set aside doubt and trust in the revision process. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Cultivate a rich inner life and let it escape on the page. Be a kind, thoughtful person and you’ll always have something meaningful to write about and say.   

Jen Palmares Meadows writes from the Sacramento Valley. Her essays have been published in Lit Hub, Fourth Genre, The Rumpus, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. She is a Millay Colony Fellow and a Sustainable Arts Foundation grant recipient. She is currently at work on a coming of age gambling memoir. You can visit her at jenpalmaresmeadows.com.

Jonathan Petropoulos

How did you become a writer?

Writing is part of the job when one is an academic (“publish or perish”), but, like most of my cohort, I write for other reasons besides survival. Writing clearly satisfies a need to express oneself and to communicate with others. It’s also a craft where one can hone skills, and I have enjoyed evolving as a writer—in my case, loosening up a bit and enjoying telling a story. While I want my books to make a contribution in terms of scholarship, I’m also interested in making my work more accessible and engaging. I have derived satisfaction from people who have said they are “enjoying” Göring’s Man. 

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

I suppose I go back to my graduate training at Harvard with Charles Maier and Simon Schama—both brilliant individuals and talented writers. Maier, my Doktorvater, asks the best questions of anyone I have ever encountered, and his voice has remained with me over the years. As I process information or tell a story, I hear his many questions about what happened and why (and why is that important)? Simon Schama is remarkably erudite and eloquent—he sets a standard that I will never match--but in particular, I admire the manner in which he makes an event or object come to life, and the way he drives home a point or offers an insight. With both his presentations and his prose, his mastery of the English language helps make him an extraordinary teacher who connects with his audience. I would add that if required, I would point to Ian McEwan as my favorite writer: the way he masters a subject and transports the reader into different worlds is brilliant and magical. 

When and where do you write?

I am a plodder and like my routine. During summers and sabbaticals, I work in my home office and write from 8 a.m. until about 2 p.m. Ideally, I’ll then go for a swim or get some other exercise, and then come back in the afternoon to do “library work” (read and prepare for the next day’s writing).

What are you working on now?

I have a new book project about the end of the Third Reich. I am writing it with my colleague and partner, Wendy Lower, who also just finished a book. We are both at Yale University on sabbatical this semester, enjoying the hunting and gathering, as well as the conceptual phase of the project.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I rarely suffer from writer’s block, and this is for two reasons. First, I don’t always write sequentially. I will jump around and work on a section that I feel prepared to write (rather like filming a movie out of sequence). So, with book projects, I can usually find something to work on. Second, I tell myself that everything is subject to revision, and this seems to have a liberating effect. I tell myself that everything is provisional and that I can come back and fix it. Just get down a first draft…

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

Good writing is about re-writing. Very few of us can craft perfect prose on the first draft.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Find a topic you love—where it doesn’t seem like a chore to pursue a project. If one is a historian, like I am, look for sources that are special. If one finds a diary, or letters, or a trove of documents, well, it’s a huge advantage to have sources that are special. With my current book on Nazi art plunderer Dr. Bruno Lohse, I interviewed him for 9 years and obtained many of his private papers upon his death. I knew that someone else could write his biography, but it wouldn’t be my story.

Jonathan Petropoulos is the John V. Croul Professor of European History at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California. Previously, he received his Ph.D. from Harvard University (1990), where he also had an appointment as a Lecturer in History & Literature. He began working on the subject of Nazi art looting and restitution in 1983, when he commenced graduate work in history and art history. He is the author of Art as Politics in the Third Reich (University of North Carolina Press, 1996); The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press, 2000); Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press, 2006); Artists Under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany (Yale University Press, 2014); and Göring’s Man in Paris: The Story of a Nazi Art Plunderer and his World” (Yale University Press, 2021), and has helped edit a number of other volumes.

From 1998 to 2000, Dr. Petropoulos served as Research Director for Art and Cultural Property on the Presidential Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States, where he helped draft the report, Restitution and Plunder: The U.S. and Holocaust Victims’ Assets (2001). He has also served as an expert witness in a number of cases where Holocaust victims have tried to recover lost artworks. This includes Austria v. Altmann, which involved six paintings by Gustav Klimt claimed by Maria Altmann and other family members (five were returned).

He is a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Kenneth R. Rosen

How did you become a writer?
Becoming -- I think I'm still becoming a writer. Each morning I force myself back to the writing desk. It's always a struggle. I think that's the key though: seat time and (occasionally) winning the ongoing battle against self-doubt and worry, external discouragement and one's insecurities. That conscious decision each morning (sometimes it's the afternoon, if I can't bring myself to face it earlier) to do something other than staying in bed has made me more of a writer than anything else. That, and delusions of wanting to write the Next Great American Novel. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).
I always default to pre- and post-war fiction. Graham Greene, Philip Roth, Annie Dillard, John Dos Passos, Thomas Wolfe. Those are my comfort reads. All the contemporary nonfiction I read feels more like research/work. Throughout the years I've also cobbled together a self-study by reaching out to professors and writers I admire to help turn me toward books and authors I haven't yet discovered. They've also been keen readers and I give my deepest thanks to John Stauffer who took me in and guided me in the writing of my recent book, “Troubled.”

When and where do you write?
My working schedule changes, though I have one outlined in my calendar. Given any month I may be working on three very different forms of journalism, alongside several other projects spread across different genres. The seat time yields something no matter what, even if I wasn't feeling particularly up to writing before committing to the project at hand. Bursts of an hour-and-a-half are ideal, and when I'm lucky that turns into three hours which seem to vanish. It's easy to lose time in the office where I write, a former woodshed I converted in the summer of 2019 into a library-writing studio-machinist shop with casual views of the Dolomites.

What are you working on now?
I'm adapting my latest book into a feature film while struggling to finish and start new longform journalism projects.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?
Never. I don't have that luxury. The block is usually external.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
Something to the effect of, "If you keep going and don't give up, others will."

What’s your advice to new writers?
See above. And find writers whose professional and personal lives you admire and respect. Then do what they do.

Kenneth R. Rosen is the author, most recently, of Troubled: The Failed Promise of America's Behavioral Treatment Programs.