Henry Hoke

How did you become a writer? As soon as I could read – Calvin and Hobbes in the newspaper – I immediately began writing my own knockoff comics strips. Throughout childhood I was always more into the idea of being a writer (my parents were voracious book people), than of publishing. I illustrated and stapled together magazines about made-up celebrities. I came up with concepts for 20 bestselling novels, designed and drew their glossy covers, but never wrote a word of them. In middle school I wrote a serial romance/comedy series starring all my friends who were coupled up, and passed it around to them. I was not coupled up. It took me a long time to imagine I could put in the work to create a book for real, not just pretend.

Name your writing influences. I’m mainly inspired by musicians who have a particular, idiosyncratic cadence. Cam’ron, Joanna Newsom, Lucinda Williams. That’s what I strive for in my work: sustained voice punctuated with unexpected turns. My two writing goddesses have been with me for most of my life: Truman Capote and Suzan-Lori Parks. They have a thousand demi-goddesses sitting below them, dipping their toes in the dark pool where I’m treading water.

When and where do you write? The meat of my creation happens in bursts and fragments, in the middle of the night, at the end of a long walk. Notes typed on my phone or scribbled in journals. I record all the solid story moments and memorable lines when they come to me. Then I commit to concentrated collaging of all these elements, so I’m never starting with a blank page. Each book has been a little different, but the actual construction takes its time. In my daily writing practice I aim for a page, and sometimes I get two, or ten. It’s never worth it to beat myself up for falling short.

What are you working on now? I’m writing two different books. One for my mom, one for my dad. The mom one’s deep southern and haunted, a monologue in cassette recordings. The dad one’s a sprawling travelogue, and I’ll probably never finish it. I keep putting it aside. I wrote Sticker and Open Throat in those asides. So that’s the dad book’s function right now, to be cheated on.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Oh, honey.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? This was actually advice I got from a writer friend about playing squash, which was “It’s slower than you think.” Don’t rush for the ball. Cultivating patience in my practice was difficult, but vital.

What’s your advice to new writers? Besides the above, I think my career trajectory has taught me to ignore every obnoxious industry/workshop pressure or adage that doesn’t serve you, that rubs you the wrong way, and follow your own heart to write the most idiosyncratic, most you thing possible. Weaponize your juvenilia. Don’t leave anything behind if you love it. And, of course, life’s too short to write long books.

Henry Hoke is an editor at The Offing and the author of five books, most recently the novel Open Throat(MCD/FSG & Picador) and the memoir Sticker (Bloomsbury).

Becca Rothfeld

How did you become a writer? Professionally? By sending email after email to editors, begging them to publish my writing, until one day, they started paying me for it. Metaphysically? By writing at every opportunity, and writing in my head when pen and paper weren't available. And of course, by reading.

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

There are too many to name. But a few that spring to mind right now: James Wood, Christian Lorentzen, William Gass, Colette, Henry James, Dwight MacDonald, Norman Rush.

When and where do you write? Ideally, I'd write in the mornings, or at least immediately after I wake up (which, I must be honest, is often in the afternoon), in a cafe. I write much better when it's light outside, and I hate writing in my apartment. In reality, I often write at all hours, often at home.

What are you working on now? I'm revising the last essay of my soon-to-be- book.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Yes, often. The best remedy, I find, is to read really good prose for an hour or so, internalize its rhythms, and get back to work.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? To be honest, I haven't received much advice. Insofar as I've learned to write--I'm skeptical that writing can be learned or taught, really--it's been by following examples, not advice.

What’s your advice to new writers?

You should only care about the opinions of writers you think are good. Everyone else doesn't matter.

Becca Rothfeld is a contributing editor at the Point and the Boston Review. Her essay collection is forthcoming from Holt.

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.