Sakinah Hofler

How did you become a writer? I’ve always loved reading and writing. When I was younger and my parents placed me on punishment (which was often…I had a smart mouth and didn’t like rules), I would stay in my room and read. When I got tired of rereading my books, I would write new endings for them. Soon I started writing my own stories. As I grew, though, I didn’t know any writers. I didn’t know how to become a writer. So I figured I’d get a “real” job and then figure out how to write later. I became a chemical engineer. On my first day at my full-time engineering job, I realized it wasn’t for me, and I gave myself five years to try something new. During those five years, I took writing, acting, improv, and French classes after I got off work. Soon writing overtook everything—I would write on the vanpool ride on my way to work, write during my lunch breaks, write after work. I would write during meetings. I limited my social events so I could write. After a while, I realized it would be better for me to have more time to write, so I applied to MFA programs. Very quickly, I was rejected, but I kept on writing and taking writing classes. Eventually I found a lovely writing group (shoutout to No M.A.P.s) where I submitted work regularly and received generous feedback. Two years after my series of rejections, I got into 6 MFA programs. I do want to add that the MFA did not make me a writer—it gave me the time and space to improve my craft. I became a writer when I made writing a priority, starting taking myself seriously as a writer, and wrote regularly.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). Where to begin?! My writing heroes that I savor and read over and over include Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Edward P. Jones, Rita Dove, Ted Chiang, Robert Frost, Haruki Murakami, Claudia Rankine, Michio Kaiku, Ursula K. Le Guin. The teachers that have been instrumental include Hasanthika Sirisena (one of my first writing teachers ever!), Bob Shacochis, Barbara Hamby, David Kirby, Leah Stewart. Ah, for the books. The Bluest Eye and Sula and Song of Solomon by Morrison, The Passage by Justin Cronin, Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston, Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Also, shoutout to my high school AP English teacher Ms. Jackson, who was a certified genius and LOVED every book she taught.

When and where do you write? Whenever and wherever I can. Prior to having a child, I had strict schedule for writing (with strictness comes freedom). After having a child, that schedule went out the window. Now, I commute by train about an hour each way for my day job and that has become my writing time—on NJ Transit at 6:53 a.m. on the way to work and on NJ Transit around 4ish/5is/6ish on my way back from work. On the weekends, I wake up before my son gets up to write and that’s usually on the sofa in my living room.

What are you working on now? I’m working on a novel that has two different titles: Starshine, Stock, Clay and The Missing. Situated in Newark, NJ, this novel follows a young African American woman, Kiana, who is a prostitute, the mother-figure maintaining order in a stable (a house where trafficked victims stay), and the mother of a young daughter. For nearly five years, Kiana has been manipulated by her pimp and child’s father, Marcus. As their daughter grows, Kiana must try to find a way out for both of them. This novel toggles between first-person, linear narration (can/will Kiana escape?) and second-person, achronological “Before” sections (how did Kiana wind up in this situation?) that converge towards the end. Most of the linear narration takes place in Newark, which is part of the New York Metropolitan area. Way back when I had given myself five years to figure out what to do, back when I was still an engineer, I volunteered for a nonprofit called Polaris Project whose mission is to eradicate modern-day slavery. The work as well as my prior ignorance about forced prostitution strongly impacted me.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? YES! I’ve never had a situation where I didn’t know what to write (I keep journals, draft emails, etc. to keep track of stories in case I sit down and I’m unsure where to start). But I am sometimes faced with an intense fear and anxiety (maybe imposter syndrome?) that I don’t know what I’m doing and that I might as well stop writing, that no one is going to read it, etc. I sometimes have to do affirmations to get myself to sit down and write. Journaling usually gets me through. I also have to write pieces that no one else is going to see.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? When I volunteered for the 2008 campaign trail, I met a published author. I shyly told her I wanted to do what she did but didn’t know how. She told me: “Concentrate on the writing. Spend a long time getting good at the writing. Take classes, send work out, try to get better and better and then worry about publishing. The business side sucks.” I’m so glad she told me that. I feel like there’s an immense pressure to publish quickly, but I spent time getting better and getting used to rejection.

What’s your advice to new writers? It’s all about tenacity. Writing is getting up, doing the work, figuring out what works, what doesn’t work, and then doing it again the next day and the next day. It’s reading. It’s rejection. Lots of rejection. A dash of success then more rejection. Working through those highs and lows builds you. Keep reading. Keep writing. Keep trying.

Sakinah Hofler is a fiction writer, poet, and playwright. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Mid-American Review, among other literary journals, and her plays have been produced by Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. She won the Yemasee Poetry Prize, the Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers in Fiction, the Manchester Fiction Prize, and the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award. Her work has received support from the Albert C. Yates Foundation, the Kingsbury Foundation, the Taft Research Center, and the P.E.O. Scholar Award. A former chemical engineer for the United States Department of Defense, she’s currently a lecturer in Princeton’s Writing Program. She’s at work on her first novel.

Mike Bond

How did you become a writer? I kind of fell into it, probably always was connected to it. My father was a professor of English lit, and my mother the best-read person I’ve ever met. I was writing poetry when I was ten, more or less things that came to me in the night. My poetry was first published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights Books, a good ten years before I started my first novel.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). Two English teachers in high school in Portland, Maine. In junior and senior year of high school we had to write short stories from time to time, then my senior English teacher got me to enter a story in a nationwide contest, and it won second place. But at the time I was far more interested in girls, sports and mountain climbing, so didn’t write another story for years. I never have tried to write like anyone else; however my earliest favorite writers were Hemingway, Jack London, Thomas Wolfe, Mark Twain, all the Russians especially Tolstoy and Gogol, the Brontë sisters, Thomas Hardy, Washington Irving, Longfellow and Poe. After I started reading French my favorites expanded to include Camus, Malraux, Romain Gary, Hugo and Balzac. Another major influence on my writing was having learned Latin, which can help to give one’s words a concise power (the number of words is always the inverse of the impact sought).

When and where do you write? Wherever I am. Having spent years as a war journalist in nasty places, I can write anywhere – in the bush, in jail, in the mountains, an airplane, etc. I do like to have a study to work in, however, when I’m at home.

What are you working on now? Since war broke out in Ukraine, I have had a very difficult time writing. Having spent a lot of time in Russia, and having been involved as a diplomat in the negotiations after the end of the cold war, I expect we’ll be in a nuclear war before the end of 2023. This makes it hard to focus on anything other than trying to stop the war.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Never, other than the aforementioned war issues.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? From Carlos Castañeda: Follow the path with heart.

What’s your advice to new writers? Living is far more important than writing. It’s better to live a full life of work, love, play and rest, to do many things, go many places. If then you write, it will be based on wider experience in the real world. I tend to write about places and things I know, which gives the writing more accuracy. When I describe a street corner or mountain or some faraway action, it’s usually because I’ve been there. And when you place the reader in an actual situation, the emotional impact of the writing is enhanced. And it is by emotion, not by words, that we learn how to navigate the joys, sorrows and mysteries of life. For more than a million years, our ancestors were telling stories around the campfire, tales of where to hunt and where the dangers were – sharing knowledge to benefit all. The goal of writing remains the same: Enrich everyone’s understanding of life, including one’s own.

Author of a dozen best-selling novels, ecologist, war and human rights journalist, award-winning poet and international energy expert, Mike Bond has lived and worked in over thirty countries on seven continents. He has been called “the master of the existential thriller” (BBC), “one of America’s best thriller writers” (Culture Buzz), “a nature writer of the caliber of Matthiessen” (WordDreams), and “one of the 21st Century’s most exciting authors” (Washington Times). He has covered wars, revolutions, terrorism, military dictatorships and death squads in the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and Africa, and environmental issues including elephant poaching, habitat loss, wilderness survival, whales, wolves and many other endangered species. His novels place the reader in intense experiences in the world’s most perilous places, in dangerous liaisons, political and corporate conspiracies, wars, and revolutions, making “readers sweat with [their] relentless pace” (Kirkus), “in that fatalistic margin where life and death are one and the existential reality leaves one caring only to survive” (Sunday Oregonian). He has climbed mountains on every continent and trekked more than 50,000 miles in the Himalayas, Mongolia, Russia, Europe, New Zealand, North and South America, and Africa.

Emma Törzs

How did you become a writer? Reading: constantly! Widely! Playing imaginative games as a weird kid with my weird friends. Growing up in a house full of books, courtesy of my mother, who reads more than anyone I know. Being read to by both my parents. Telling my sister stories late at night in our shared bedroom. Writing fan fiction in college. The truth is, I’ve been writing stories since I learned to hold a pencil, but I’m also pretty much the opposite of a self-taught writer. I minored in Creative Writing in undergrad, got an MFA in Fiction, went to the Clarion West Writers Workshop six years ago, and still take writing classes often (recently took two excellent ones via Catapult—an online seminar on experimental translation with Poupeh Missaghi, and a class with H.D. Hunter on character development in non-linear time). I love any chance to be a student, especially now that I’m a professor. I think I did not “become” a writer so much as am “becoming” one continuously. 

Name your writing influences My very biggest writing influence is, and has always been, my friends. The first stories I created were all in collaboration with childhood friends; we built worlds and populated them with characters and lived in those stories completely. Since then, the different stages of my writing life have all come with different influential friendships, and when I write, I am often writing to delight, impress, and converse with those friends. Also I travel anywhere I can, any chance I get. In terms of my first book, the two biggest creative influences were probably Maggie Stiefvater’s novel Call Down the Hawk, which taught me to plot (finally!), and Joanna Newsom’s song “Emily” from her 2006 album Ys, which I will forever be trying to write into novel form.

Other random influences: A writer whose sentences are so good I’d let her walk on me in stilettos is Patricia Lockwood. When people ask me what to read for fun, I always recommend Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. A story collection with no false notes is Tender by Sofia Samatar. Two books that crack me up are The Idiot and Either/Or by Elif Batuman. A book that recently made me sob in public is The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez. A book I wish I’d written is Piranesi by Susanna Clark. A book I read and loved twenty years ago is Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. A book I read and loved last month is Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott. An author I’d follow anywhere is Leigh Bardugo. An author probably everyone should read is Octavia Butler. A book that made me say “OMG WTF I love this” every fifteen pages is The First Bad Man by Miranda July. A childhood life-changer was Monica Furlong’s Wise Child. A true and present genius is Kelly Link. Two stories I can’t read without crying are “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu and “Wait a Minute” by Lucia Berlin. A story that works for every fiction-writing lesson plan imaginable is “Jubilee” by Kirsten Valdez Quade. A book I’d get into the ring for is Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker. A book that haunts me is Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys. A story collection that fizzes my brain is What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi. A book that lives up to nearly two centuries of hype is David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Ditto The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.

I have to stop there or I’ll be listing forever. I’m already stressed about all the things I didn’t include.

When and where do you write? I used to write exclusively in coffee shops, but during the pandemic one of our housemates moved out and I started renting their vacated room as an office, and now I do most of my work in there. It’s pine green and full of books and plants and art and cat fur, very “dark academia” meets “Wow, I see you just discovered Pinterest.” Also, I have a treadmill desk, and let me tell you, you haven’t written until you’ve written at 3.5 miles an hour. I write on days I’m not teaching, anytime before the sun goes down, after which I’m only good for a good time.

What are you working on now? I’ve just started a new novel. I’m too superstitious to give many details, and who knows, I may end up scrapping it, but for now it’s a contemporary fantasy that takes place on and around the Great Lakes. Keywords include: loon, moon, loom, broom.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? For me, “writer’s block” really means “anxiety” and/or “existential depression,” so, yes. The summer of 2020 was probably the worst writer’s block I’ve ever had. It was the early days of the pandemic and George Floyd had just been murdered blocks from my house, and it felt deeply selfish to devote my energy to fiction when there was so much in the real world that needed my attention. From May through August I wrote not one single word. Writer’s block often comes hand-in-hand with times of questioning my role in the world and in my community, because I cannot help but feel sometimes that my work is inconsequential and will help no one and my short time on this earth should be devoted elsewhere. But I always end up coming back to the page, because for better or worse, I love writing too much to ever truly give it up for a more noble cause.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? Victor LaValle: “Don’t be an asshole to your peers.” Peter Bognanni: “The best books are both funny and sad.”

What’s your advice to new writers? Don’t be an asshole to your peers—or to anyone! Unless they really deserve it. Try to write because you’re curious, not because you think you have the answer.

Emma Törzs is a writer, teacher, and occasional translator based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her fiction has been honored with an NEA fellowship in Prose,
a World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction, and an O. Henry Prize, and her debut novel, Ink Blood Sister Scribe, is out May 30th, 2023 with William Morrow in the US, and July 6th with Century/Del Rey in the UK.