RENE DENFELD

Rene is the author of the acclaimed novels The Child Finder and The Enchanted. Her essays have appeared in publications such as the New York Times. Her new literary thriller, The Child Finder, explores themes of survival, resiliency and redemption. It has received much acclaim, including a starred Library Journal review, major press, and an Indie Next pick. Landing as the #1 fiction bestseller at Powell's within its first week, The Child Finder became a top 10 bestseller in Canada and a bestseller in the U.S. 

Rene's lyrical, beautiful writing is inspired by her work with sex trafficking victims and innocents in prison. She was the Chief Investigator at a public defender’s office and has worked hundreds of cases. In addition to her advocacy work, she has been a foster adoptive parent for 20 years. Rene will be awarded the Break The Silence Award at the 24th Annual Knock Out Abuse Gala in Washington, DC, on November 2, 2017, in recognition for her advocacy and social justice work.  The child of a difficult history herself, she is an accomplished speaker who loves connecting with others. Rene lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is the happy mom of three kids adopted from foster care.  

I read your beautiful piece in “Modern Love,” about finding your foster children and am very moved by your commitment to love and success as a mother. Having read all else that you are involved with additionally, I’m also in awe of your boundless energy. Did you know you were a writer before you became a mother? How have you managed to integrate all that you do as a mother, investigator working with lost children, and worker in prisons with your writing career?

When I was young I escaped into imagination to survive severe abuse. The library was my sanctuary, and from the stories there I learned how to tell myself stories. I made up a fantasy world that I escaped into for months at a time. But I didn't think someone from a background of poverty could be a novelist. Eventually I went into journalism, but it wasn't until my 40s I started writing fiction. Once I started writing my first novel I knew that was what I was always meant to do. 

It's true I have a very full plate! I have a day job as an investigator; I have three kids I adopted from foster care—and I've fostered others; and I have written and published two novels. I'm someone who thrives on being active, and to be honest, my career inspires me. I feel so lucky to be helping others. It gives me endless juice and inspiration to keep going. I feel lucky to have adopted my kids, too. When people tell them they are lucky I interrupt to say no, I am the lucky one. Through my kids I got to experience a healthy, happy childhood. I got to take part in their journey to healing. What could be better than that? 

One of the struggles for mothers, I think, is we get messages we shouldn't prioritize our writing. We spend so much time taking care of others we forget to take care of ourselves, including our artistic and creative spirit. So I make sure to set aside time to write. I let the chores go, I don't try to keep a perfect house, and yes, the kids eat junk food. I embrace imperfection and let myself be a good-enough mom in order to write. It turned out to be the best choice for the kids. I don't have time to get all up in their business, and they have learned to be responsible and supportive. They are proud of me and I am proud of them. We're a happy clan.

Your first book, The Enchanted, is described as combining magic and evil and is set in a prison. I’m assuming it was inspired by your prison work. What specifically moved you to write it? Is it about the redemptive ways the human mind deals with terror? If so, what kinds of terrors do you feel a kinship with and why?

At the time I wrote my The Enchanted I was working a lot of death penalty cases. I have exonerated innocent people out of prison, and stopped executions. When you see the news that over 250 innocent people have been exonerated out of death rows, that's the work of investigators like me. We like to joke the attorneys take all the credit, ha. 

The inspiration for the novel came one day as I was leaving the death row prison in our state. It's an ancient stone prison built in 1846. I was leaving one day, hearing the gates slam behind me, when I heard a very soft, distinctive voice say "this is an enchanted place." I went right home and started writing that evening. 

I was moved by all the things I had witnessed and was learning working death row cases: the harms we can commit, the goodness we are capable of, the way redemption can spring from the most unlikely of soils. The Enchanted explores our strength and ability to survive even in the most horrific of circumstances. It's about the preventable causes of violence. It turned out to be a love song to the world, a song of hope. It was about finding beauty in the pain. 

Looking back, I can now see my first novel was also about me "coming out" as an abuse survivor. Until that point I had not publicly admitted my own abuse history. The Enchanted was so nakedly about my own journey I realized I had told my story to the world. It was after it came out I began being more open about my own history, including writing about the man I considered my father, a registered predatory sex offender. I began talking more about how I had taken my hardship and turned it into strength by helping others. 

Please discuss The Child Finder, your second novel. Is it a fairytale? What did you hope to accomplish with this book?

The Child Finder is being called a literary thriller. The Library Journal called it "a glittering gem of a story, part mystery, part fairy tale, and all white-knuckled, edge of your seat thriller." It's a real page turner, but also a deeply literary, thoughtful novel. It follows a young female investigator who specializes in finding missing children. The novel follows her as she looks for a missing eight-year-old girl. Her point of view is juxtaposed with that of a magical child who tells herself fairy tales to survive. 

It's an examination of trauma and how we can survive through our imaginations. It's a book about female courage, and it really pushes back against the shameful messages around sexual abuse; that we are forever damaged or destroyed, because that just doesn't have to be true. It shows how much we can do to save each other, and that the path towards healing and recovery is about embracing one another for all we have experienced—not despite our trauma, but including our trauma. One of the key phrases from the novel is "it is never too late to be found." I believe that. The longer I do my work, the more I help my kids, the more I believe we all deserve to be saved. We all have the power to save each other.

Please discuss in whatever way you wish the role of healing in the art of writing.

What a great question! Writing—and reading—can heal us. If you think about it, the act of writing is an act of courage. It is a statement of self. It says, "I have the right to create a story. I exist. I can tell my own truth." By writing our stories, memoir or fictional, we lay claim to our place in the universe. We demand to be heard, we voice our rights to be heard. Writing is a profoundly courageous, healing act. As readers, we can then bear witness to one another. So story acts as a communication, linking us, informing each other of who we really are, in purer, more honest ways.

                                                              RENE DENFELD

                                                              photo by Gary Norman

ANDRES THOMAS CONTERIS

Andrés Thomas Conteris’s family is from North and South America. His uncle, Hiber Conteris, was a political prisoner for eight years under the military dictatorship in Uruguay beginning in 1976. Andrés organized a worldwide campaign on behalf of him and worked closely with several human rights organizations.

He graduated with honors with a B.A. in Peace and Global Studies from Earlham College in 1984, focusing on Gandhian nonviolence, human rights advocacy, and intentional faith-based communities of justice and peace. He was awarded the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to pursue the topic "Theology of Resistance." He has an M.A. in religious studies from Howard University. Since initiating Democracy Now! en Español in 2005, Andrés worked to build a network of more than 500 radio stations throughout the Americas and Spain which air the headline news in Spanish of Democracy Now!´s War and Peace Report, a daily, grassroots, global, unembedded, international, independent news program.

Since 2006, Andrés has been part of the Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness program of the California Institute of Integral Studies. His passion for cosmology is something an elder traditional woman from the Oneida nation recognized when he was a child and granted him the name, “Shooting Star.” He is now working on a writing project that weaves the wisdom of the cosmos with the need for revolutionary change on planet earth.

I know you primarily as an activist. How has being an activist led or prepared you for the discipline of writing? 

For me, activism is about affirming life in the death cycle. My sense is that our planet is in a time of its history where death is prevalent. This is most visible with the mass extinction of species happening at a rate of more than 20,000 per year. It also manifests in the death of tens of thousands of children, who perish every day for reasons that could be remedied if our species had different priorities. The priorities of the U.S. government revolve around war and war preparation more than anything else, and activists need to face this head on, along with the racism that is ending DACA and the sexism that allows for a president who is a sexual predator. My writing involves many of these issues and the reality of it all further compels me to do the practice of writing.

I know you've done writing retreats. Were they helpful to you? Any drawbacks? 

Yes, the writing retreats I have done have been helpful.  I remember doing an exercise of writing blurbs for my own work, and this allowed me to get distance from the story itself and appreciate it from a different perspective.  It is a gift to be able to go on retreat and focus on the discipline itself.  Drawbacks include the fact that the length is often too short and that often there is no coaching available or helpful feedback from others at a retreat.

How important is the spiritual life to your activism?  To your writing? Please define what a spiritual life means to you.  

My spiritual life is the sine-qua-non of my dedication to being actively life affirming.  Spirituality is what nurtures my commitment to make this world a more wholesome place. This involves prayer, meditation, community, a practice of gratitude, honoring nature, seeing the divine in all and much more.  By honoring my spiritual life, I nurture my writing. The two are inseparable.

What makes good writing in your mind? What are you trying to accomplish as a writer?  

One of the qualities of good writing involves authenticity.  If something genuinely speaks to me, if I find it compelling, then the expression in written word will be all the more genius. When I write about things that I truly believe in, then the writing itself shows it.  What I am trying to accomplish as a writer is to tell a story that has been writing me for eons.  

Here is an excerpt:

A few months ago I accompanied my father at his hospital bedside on the last night of his life. My sister spent much of the last five years tending to him yet as fate would have it, I was the only family member present during his last hours.

He asked me to tell him a story.

Decades earlier, dad worked as a pastor in Oneida, Wisconsin where Melissa, a traditional elder woman from the community looked into my five-year-old eyes and in ceremony with my family bequeathed me the name “Shooting Star.” Half a lifetime later, my father gifted me a ring (which I haven’t removed for years) with shooting stars engraved all around.  While I still await to learn how to pronounce my name in the original Oneida language, a story infused with the spirit of the gift from Melissa has been writing me for eons. Although dad had heard it before, he paid close attention to the first chapter, a letter from a would-be father to his would-be daughter.

Stars' Wish

My dearest Satyya,

       I wonder how old you would have become when first you’d come across the word “sidereal.” It’s not a very common word, and truth be told, many grownups go through their whole lives never understanding what it means. Oh, but it’s such an important word since it means having to do “with the stars.”

        And what is it, my beloved daughter, why do these diamonds in the night sky invite such gentle-fierce fascination? How is it that when we first see one appear at twilight we’re compelled to make a wish?  Could these fiery furnaces that dance in the day-blind heavens be so in tune with desire itself that they can grant one’s deepest longing?

      Well, sweet one, there's another term that helps make the connection. It's something that even fewer adults ever light upon since it comes from a strange and ancient tongue called Latin. “Why strange?” you ask. It's because hardly anyone speaks it anymore even though it's the source of many words in lots of different languages. If you had grown old enough to go to college, you might have majored in this forgotten form of communication. And even though it's something few folks will ever cross paths with, this Latin term illuminates why we sometimes have the urge to wish upon these radiant stellar beings.

       And what is this other term dearheart? It's “de sidus.”  I can almost hear your sweet voice say ... “day-see-deuce.”

       What's cool, maybe even way-cool, is that “de sidus” rhymes with “deduce.” (If you had been born, I'm sure you would have been the first to teach me what makes something “way-cool!”)

So what does “de sidus” mean? How can this term from a language that isn't alive any longer have any relevance at all?  Well,  just like the word sidereal, de sidus also means, having to do “with the stars.”

       And there's something else really important, sweet one.  These two Latin words make up the root of one English word: desire.

       I'm convinced that if you were right here with me now, you would deduce that de sidus points to how the stars themselves are born of desire! And once that's figured out, you just might wonder something else, since it begs the question (can you imagine something begging a question?) For what do the stars themselves yearn for? What is it that they most want to beckon into being?

Well, my precious Satyya, if these cousin constellations in the dark sky above are such kin with longing, there's one thing for which they burn with desire more than anything …

       Stars wish to go home.

                                                                         All my love,

                                                                         Your would-be father

                                                                         TD beQuo

Dad paused a moment and then his weakened voice whispered words I will never forget. “I want to go home.” As best I could, I tried to explain that in the morning we would talk about it with his daughter. His next words left me completely dumbfounded, “I can't wait that long.” Even after he said it, I was clueless that he knew something more than anyone else. He asked me to lend him my forearm and tried to pull himself out of bed. To no avail. He felt helpless, and so did I.

In the morning I woke with a start to the alarm of the heart monitor. The nurse raced in and asked if I wanted them to do CPR to revive him. His status was DNR (do not resuscitate) and if there had been no family present, the question would not have arisen. When I said I had to call my sister, he replied “there's no time.”

I initially told the medical team to do everything possible to save dad's life, though it soon became clear that something else was at play: the stars' wish (maybe even the wish of shooting stars!). The same desire of every single one of trillions of cosmic stellar candles invited me to take a deep breath and know it was ok to let dad pass.

Since my sister was unreachable working at a different hospital, I called and spoke with my brother who overheard his father gasp for air and asked, “was that his last breath?” My first thought was “how in the world could I possibly know?” And then I looked up at the cardio monitor … the line was flat. Dad's desire to go home after a long and blessed life had come true.

It was pure gift for me to have been present at this most propitious of moments. The zeitgeist conjured by the multiple synchronicities confirmed that I had no choice but to give it my all and return the favor to the story that has been writing me for lifetimes and thus fulfill my deepest soulful desire.

  

                                          

                                   ANDRES THOMAS CONTERIS

ROB REYNOLDS

I grew up in an Air Force family, moving seven times in my first thirteen years. I attended the University of Florida (BS journalism, MA English, MEd education) and taught at Gainesville High for four years before attending a seminary near Boston. I subsequently lost my faith and began writing creatively. My stories have appeared in the Tampa Review, Mad Hatter’s Review, Eunoia Review, flashquake,.Vestal Review, and Kennesaw Review. My novel Wire Mother Monkey Baby comes out in November from outpost19, a small, independent publisher in San Francisco.

From our brief conversation I find a thread of similarity in that as a writer you want attention, but “not too much attention.” This is something I find many writers share in common. Maybe it’s related to the exhibitionist/introvert impulse, a pull both ways that creates creative tension perhaps. Can you speak to this?

Having my work recognized is attention enough for me. It’s too tempting for writers to want the limelight on themselves rather than the work. Our celebrity-oriented culture is all too willing to provide it. The ideas for my novels came to me in dreams, and much of my other work is influenced by things outside of conscious control. It would feel dishonest to take too much credit. I mostly sublimate my exhibitionist leanings into my writing, mostly through humor – though occasionally a manic side sneaks out in real life.

Do you set goals for yourself as a writer? If so, what kinds of goals?

My only goal is try to write every day. I’m not very good at keeping it. Still, I find that if

my writing time has been productive, being away from it for a few days is often productive, too. That deeper place where a story originates has had time to ruminate, and it weighs in. I end up having a better sense of where the story is going, what it’s about, or an answer to a specific problem I didn’t have before.

Is writing for you a solitary process? Again, the writers I know who are also extraverts struggle with the solitary aspect, yet are driven to write, which is by nature, solitary. Are you as comfortable in your writing space as you are reading in public? Do you feel the same person writes who also reads in public? If not, please elaborate on any persona you feel you have had to evolve as a writer.

The act of living feels like a solitary process to me. I’m an introvert, probably even more anti-social and reclusive than most. I don’t work a real job, so I struggle to find meaningful time around people. I go to cafes to write in order not to overdo the isolation. I’ve only read in public a couple of times, but that will change when my novel comes out. I’m hoping to channel my Inner Clown, my more extroverted side, and bring to life some of the humor that comes out in my writing.

Where, if anywhere, do you see the role of spirituality in your writing today? I understand you were religious at one point in your life. How has spiritual progression/transformation affected your work as a writer?

I’m attempting to convey something more spiritual in the novel I’m writing now. There’s a lot of anger in my first novel. It holds a mirror to some disconcerting trends in our society, courtesy of advanced technology and an increasingly unfettered capitalism. My new work reflects my advancing age, and distance from a disillusioning experience at an Evangelical seminary. I try to show an individual who, although flawed and suffering, manages to find purpose and meaning by tapping into something higher. It’s more hopeful.

                                                       

                                                       ROB REYNOLDS

C L BLEDSOE

CL Bledsoe is the author of sixteen books, most recently the poetry collection Trashcans in Love and the flash fiction collection Ray’s Sea World. He’s been published in hundreds of magazines, newspapers, and anthologies and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize thirteen times, Best of the Net three times, and has had two stories selected as Notable Stories of the year by Story South’s Million Writers award. Originally from rural Arkansas, he currently lives in northern Virginia with his daughter. He blogs at NotAnotherTVDad.com.

Like several of the writers I’ve interviewed you seem to revel in diversity, having written novels, flash, poetry and reviews. If you could only write in one genre, what would it be? Why?

This is a tough question. My knee-jerk reaction is to say poetry, because it’s the genre I started with way back in middle school and the one I think I do best. When I give readings, I usually read poetry unless I’m specifically selling a novel. Then, I usually do a mix. I get excited about novels, flash fiction, memoir, plays, and essays, but I’m most comfortable and most driven by poetry. Novels are my second favorite form. I’m pretty much always writing a novel. Every so often, I’ll take time off from that and focus on poetry for a month or two. I used to write a lot of reviews, but I’ve become much less interested in them lately.

What are your main concerns? What role does magic play in your work?

My father used to say that sometimes, you have to laugh to keep from crying. Humor is a tool to expose great, often difficult truths in a more palatable way. I don’t always write humorous things, but I do focus on that turn of surprise, the joie de vivre that hopefully draws us out of the doldrums of everyday problems to re-examine our lives and reactions to the world. (For me, this is magic, although I do also sometimes write about literal magic.) I use myself and my own experiences as a template for this exploration, because I am forever forgetting my way to the house of enlightenment. My work isn’t meant to lecture on ethical principles, but it is deeply ethical in its attempts to figure out how to navigate the complexities of modern American society while being a decent human being, juggling questions of race, privilege, class, and personal accountability with the idea of maintaining joie de vivre. I explore these themes through poetry, novels, short fiction, plays, and essays.

Arkansas, where you grew up, is the subject of your poetry collection, Riceland. What roles do place, tradition, and your working class origins play in your writing?

I grew up on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas. We were not well off, but considering that the Mississippi River Delta, where I’m from, is one of the poorest places in America, we did better than many. But it wasn’t an easy life. I’ve lived in a few different places and had a lot of jobs over the years. When I was younger, I hid my origins. I wouldn’t write about where I grew up. I even got rid of my accent because I didn’t want to be perceived as a hick. At the same time, I’ve maintained a healthy skepticism of people and organizations that kick down because I’ve seen something of what it is to be on the bottom.

There were many things about my childhood that I’m glad to have left behind. Racism, poverty, religious extremism. When I was about five, my mother became sick with Huntington’s disease, which attacks the nervous system and the brain. Because of this and the fallout from it, my childhood wasn’t easy. Riceland chronicles some of this. So, for me, Arkansas is tainted by these experiences.

But at the same time, there was something magical about my childhood. We lived on a ridge overlooking a big stock pond, surrounded by pasture land. My sister had a vivid imagination, and we inhabited the valleys and woods with spirits and mythology.     

As a writer, how do you view the future? Who do you write for, meaning who do you think of as your audience when you write?

It’s hard not to fear the future. Maybe it has always been like that. I’m sure that people feared the future during and after all the major wars we’ve had, during the Depression, during the Civil Rights Movement when people were being assassinated left and right. I am too pragmatic to think that the future will be very different from the past.

I haven’t written a ton of speculative “near future” fiction, but I have written some. To be honest, it’s pretty bleak, playing out scenarios I see starting today. There are a handful of flash fiction pieces in my collection Ray’s Sea World about this. Back in my hometown in Arkansas, and in many cities across the country, factory work has dried up because of technological advances and outsourcing. A person used to be able to support a family on a factory wage. Those jobs are harder to find. Many of them have been replaced with retail and customer service-type jobs, but a person can’t support themselves, much less a family, working at McDonald’s or Wal Mart. So quality of life has suffered. What’s even worse is that these jobs are also being replaced with technology. McDonald’s is putting order-taking robots in their restaurants. Wal Mart put in self-checking lanes a long time ago. Plenty of other jobs are on the chopping block in the near future. So, the future looks bleak for the poor.

I’m an educated, middle-class white guy, so I suppose I write for people like me. But I also have a deep mistrust of anything that smacks of elitism. So who does that leave? I would like to think I write for people who work too much and still don’t make enough money to get ahead, who would rather laugh than complain, who like cheesy movies and pizza.

What’s your main peeve/issue about the publishing process? 

The pay and the waiting.

                                                        CL BLEDSOE