Diana Khoi Nguyen

How did you become a writer? I think in some ways I’m still becoming—but it happened/is happening because I’ve made a concerted effort to write, to be a literary figure who publishes, and to be a literary citizen who engages in the literary community! As a child I wanted to write children’s books and wrote dozens of illustrated stories in my composition notebooks—then I wrote to cope with the circumstances and emotion of my life through my teen years—then began to pursue the writing of poetry with a focus on thinking about craft starting in my undergraduate time at UCLA—to my MFA at Columbia—after which I tried to unlearn what I’d been taught to figure out what was essential for me as a writer/thinker person. Through all of this, I’ve been writing and most of the time fail to capture what I thought I might encounter on the page—only to try again and again. In this way, I am constantly trying to become a writer. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). Too many to remember, but a sampling: Teachers: Cal Bedient and Lucie Brock-Broido. Writers: Susan Howe, Jenny Erpenbeck, Yoko Tawada, Clarice Lispector, Brian Dillon, Layli Long Soldier, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Arthur Sze, Carl Phillips, Myung Mi Kim, Sun Young Shin, Douglas Kearney, Tyehimba Jess, Victoria Chang, Don Mee Choi, Alex Ross.

When and where do you write? I write every summer and winter (December), in 15-day intervals. Sometimes in my home office, sometimes at residencies or while traveling (Hawaii, SE Asia). 

What are you working on now? A prose project that I won’t call fiction or nonfiction—based on the process filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung describes as his method for writing Minari: by writing out 100 memories then finding the a path through them. Which is to say: I’m working with personal and familial memories. At its heart, the project is a ghost story and about how we grieve over time.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Yes and no—I think writer’s block in that I reject what my mind wants to put to the page, but doesn’t yet know how or what wants to be uttered. The last time this happened was in the early months after my first book was published: the poems I wrote during that post-publication time felt like residual aftershocks of poems that could’ve been in the first book, which frustrated me. It turns out I just needed more time away from the published manuscript and more time just being in the world, soaking things up like a sponge. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? To never stop writing, no matter what happens in one’s life. 

What’s your advice to new writers? My advice is to avoid looking at what peers might be doing, and to focus on what is most essential and core to your work—and to create the conditions in which happy accidents might occur on the page. 

A poet and multimedia artist, Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Ghost Of (2018) which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and forthcoming collection, Root Fractures (2024). Nguyen is a Kundiman fellow, recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and winner of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, and 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Currently, she is core faculty in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Jessie Gaynor

How did you become a writer? I have a theory that writing is acting for inward-facing people (or those who have limited acting talent). I am both inward-facing and sadly limited in my acting talent, so after my high school theater career ended with a whimper, I started writing one-act plays, then poetry, then fiction.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). Two of my early professors, Timothy Donnelly and Josh Bell, are the reason I pursued writing. Both are brilliant poets, and some of the best writing teachers I’ve ever had in terms of encouraging the development of a unique voice. In terms of books and writers, I’ve always gravitated toward humor. Reading Nell Zink’s Mislaid unlocked something for me—I love how unapologetically zany she allows herself to be. Sam Lipsyte and Paul Beatty and Mark Leidner are perennial favorites, and Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell is a master class in brutal, unsparing tragicomedy. 

When and where do you write? Because my job as an editor at Lit Hub requires me to live in other people’s words all day, I have to write in the mornings. I also have two young kids, so by the end of the day, all I can do is watch terrible television. When I’m in the groove of a project, I try to wake up around 5:30 to work. (A programmable coffee pot helps with this.)

What are you working on now? I’m bouncing back and forth between a coming-of-age story about middle school girls in the ’90s and a romantic comedy. The latter is holding my attention more at the moment.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Constantly. The only thing that really helps me are deadlines and external expectations, for which I lean on my writing group.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? The best distillation of the best (and most difficult to follow) writing advice I know comes from Richard Hugo's The Triggering Town: "The hard work on the first poem is responsible for the sudden ease of the second. If you just sit around waiting for the easy ones, nothing will come. Get to work." This applies to any form of writing (and likely most other worthwhile pursuits, too). 

What’s your advice to new writers? Write what you want to read. I got my MFA in poetry, and I felt a great deal of pressure to write the kind of poetry that would win me praise from my peers, even though it wasn't terribly interesting to me. The praise was intermittent at best, and I ended up feeling deeply disconnected from my work for a long time. Now I really try to trust my own delight.

Jessie Gaynor’s work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The New Yorker, WSJ Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a senior editor at Literary Hub and she has an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Rona Jaffe fellow. She lives in Richmond, Virginia with her family. The Glow is her first novel.

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.