KELLE GRACE GADDIS

Kelle Grace Gaddis’s My Myths, a hybrid work of poetry and fiction, was published by Yellow Chair Press this past December 2016. Other recently published works appear in Rhetoric Askew, Dispatches Editions Resist Much / Obey Little, Vending Machine Presses Very Fine Writing, BlazeVOX, Knot Literary Magazine, Entropy, Dove Tales, and elsewhere. Ms. Gaddis is honored to be one of 4Culture’s “Poetry on the Buses” contest winners in 2015 and 2017. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington in 2014.

Tell us about your recently published book, My Myths. What inspired it? BTW, I’ve read great reviews of it on Goodreads.

That’s wonderful! My Myths book sales have been exceptional. It makes me really happy to know that people are enjoying my work. I was genuinely surprised how quickly it’s been selling out. I know Open Books: A Poem Emporium in Seattle, still has a few copies, and I believe Yellow Chair Press might still have a small number to sell, but other than that they’re gone. On the bright side, I will finish a short story collection and novel this year. 

I am already meandering, to the questions!

My Myths is a diverse poetry and fiction collection loosely based on my life, travels, and political leanings. The two short stories at the end are fiction. The central themes are the malleability of identity, heritage, grief, and, to some extent, self-discovery although this last theme mainly manifests in the epic poems “Be,” and “Polishing A Gem On The Surface Of The Sea.”

I was inspired to write my journey through my Native American and Irish ancestries. Essentially, my family didn’t fully relate to the identities they were handed. So, like many in the 70’s, we tried on everything we were before discarding it all and settling on an American identity. We let go of our cultural heritage to mainstream in the dominant culture. I know this isn’t popular to say or admit these days, but it was popular at the time to focus on national identity, assimilation, and upward mobility more than preserving cultural ties. I was only 10-years-old when the identity exploration began so I was, more or less, along for the ride.

Overall, I believe my family’s choices helped me realize that I could be whoever or whatever I wanted in this life so I don’t experience regret over our path as much as loss, most specifically, the loss of place and people. But, beyond loss there is acceptance of a new way of being that, in hindsight, felt like trying on clothes until something fit.

Because I prefer to focus on the present and future rather than the past; and don’t wish to be tied to a singular identity in the way many writers are today My Myths is likely the only time I’ll write about this facet of my history. In general I feel that my imagination is bigger than my personal history which is saying something since my life has been an adventure that took me all over the globe, starting in Florida and spiraling outward from one reservation to the next, before my family settled in a small town in Washington State. After that, I moved to Seattle, Ireland, England, and travelled extensively, for years, to Europe, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Cambodia, The Caribbean, New Zealand, Australia, and many destinations in Canada and South America as well as the United States.

I try to tread softly when explaining why I wrote My Myths to avoid upsetting others that have lived different experiences in spite of having a similar start. I recognize that people view heritage uniquely and understand that many cannot transition from one cultural sphere to another as seamlessly as my family has. To that end, My Myths is about my journey and it is not meant to comment on anyone else’s way of being. It definitely is not a guidebook for anything or judgment upon any whose identity is largely informed by heritage.

Here’s what I’ve concluded, my parents were young dreamers looking for a better life. They didn’t get bogged down in identity politics because, to them, it felt like a dead end. A few people have told me that they think that’s “sad” or “a betrayal of my heritage” but I don’t feel like that at all because it’s still my heritage whether I wrap myself in it or not.

I also believe in destiny and am always changing. For me, the only identities that have remained constant are my identities as a writer and spiritual being. This is why there are a few poems in My Myths about being a writer as well as spirituality, love, love lost, and personal growth after loss, specifically the death of my fiancé. Writing My Myths allowed me to revisit the people and places of my ancestry and to reflect on who I am and who I am becoming. Life inspires me to write and what I’ve lived inspires what I write.

Maybe I’ve over-answered the first question? I hope not! My Myths took all the courage I had to write because saying, “I’m happy that I assimilated” and, “There is life after tragedy” aren’t always what people, at least poets, want to hear. But it is true, and it is my story, so I’ll leave it at that.

Tell us a bit about your journey to becoming a publisher. What prompted it? How have your struggles and perks as a publisher supported or frustrated your career as a writer?

One month before I graduated from the University of Washington Bothell in 2014 I decided I wanted to create an anthology that curated the great poetic voices of our time as well as some of the newer voices from across the nation, and, although blasphemous to some in in the poetry community, I chose to include a few of my recently published works in each anthology as well. The latter almost had to happen because even though I graduated at the top of my class GPA-wise and was thriving at poetry and fiction readings, I felt that some of the people I’d encountered in my MFA wanted to cause me more harm than good in the poetry scene. It was necessary for me to reach beyond my academic sphere into the mainstream and to other academic arenas, including UW’s Seattle campus, to make my mark. I knew I wasn’t going to get the hand up that the professor’s friends were getting in my program, so, I created Brightly Press to give myself an entry point.

I became friends with established writers beyond my MFA like Tammy Robacker, Deborah Woodard, and CA Conrad. My association with Woodard and Conrad has been pivotal to the continuation of Brightly Press and the Shake The Tree anthologies. Their literary contributions have been greatly appreciated and their support will never be forgotten. One remembers those that saved you when others were trying to drown you.

Later, new friends like American Book Award winner Craig Santos Perez, Christopher P. Locke, Cynthia Atkins, and all the other amazing writers that have contributed work to Brightly Press’s Shake The Tree series also helped me grow the press just by being willing to sign on to a unique project.

There was a lot of good timing, chance encounters, and elegance that allowed my press to thrive, but there were struggles too. It’s expensive. I pay writers a decent honorarium and produce a beautiful large book that is truly a thing of beauty. These things, and hosting the literary events to launch the anthology each year, are a five-figure endeavor and no small task for one that isn’t (yet) wealthy.

The biggest obstacle, of course, is time. So much so that after I publish Shake The Tree 2017 I plan to go on hiatus for a year to finish my second collection of poetry, a collection of short stories, and my novel all of which are fairly far along but nowhere near done. Time is key. I’ll keep my web store open and begin Shake The Tree 2018 in the fall of 2018. I am, after all, a writer first and a publisher second.

A few other perks that were likely aided by Brightly Press include my being asked to read and having my work read by people whose opinions I value. Just last year, I read to a sold out house with CA Conrad, Deborah Woodard, and Anastacia Renee Tolbert at Seattle’s Jewel Box Theater. Soon after, CA Conrad, Craig Santos Perez, Christopher P. Locke and Anastacia Renee Tolbert opted to write book jacket blurbs for My Myths. Still, even with these positives, I’m not sure I’d recommend opening a press to anyone. One needs to have a high tolerance for stress, money, or the willingness to survive without a lot of money, and the time to make it work.

What’s your writer’s dream of the future? What’s your (inner) child’s dream of the future?

All writing is my passion but literary fiction is my dream. I hope to reach the top tiers of publishing in this medium. I have decades of copies of The Best American Short Stories and have literally read thousands of books, so it’s easy to understand why I’d want to be in a prestigious collection and, beyond that, who wouldn’t want to have one’s work read at Selected Shorts Symphony Space, be in The Paris Review, or win a Pulitzer?

Thank you for the second part of this question! I believe the magical aspect of my inner child still guides me. She allows me to hope, expect, and reach for my literary dreams in spite of life’s hardships. When the adult me gets worn down she is in there being eternally optimistic.

Thank you for inviting me to Readers and Writers II. It’s been a pleasure.

                                                     KELLE GRACE GADDIS

ANA CASTILLO

Ana Castillo is a Mexican-American Chicana poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, editor, playwright, and translator. She is known for her experimental style as a Latina novelist and is considered a leading voice of Chicana experience.

What is your greatest concern these days as a Mexican-American Chicana writer who has struggled to bring light to the multiple modes of oppression Chicanas experience?

My concerns at this time start with the current administration’s utter disregard for the future of humanity and the planet. There is little I believe that I can add to the outrage being expressed by millions in this country and around the globe who are in opposition to the government we’ve had this year. As a Chicana, Xicana, Mexican-American, Latina, WOC or however I may be viewed by ICE agents, Border Patrol officials, local police being given passes for harassment and violence of private citizens, usually of color, or private citizens who now feel they have been given carte blanche to cast aspersion or more on women and POC, in addition to my own outrage is an enormous sadness. Throughout my adulthood in this country, going on four decades, I’ve been outraged by the racism, gender inequality, and especially class inequality. Nothing, however, reached the depths of sheer indifference (if not to imagine it is rooted in loathing) of human beings, our earth’s resources, and every living thing. As a novelist, I couldn’t write a grimmer story and wouldn’t want to imagine it. But here we are. As an outspoken poet I urge all those concerned about the irreparable damage that the current government will provoke on humanity and nature to find whatever way they find doable for them to oppose all such action.

Does Xicanisma, or Chicana feminism, have a language, per se? If so, is it rooted in poetry? Myth?

In the mid-80s when I began serious work on a collection of essays that would be published in 1994 with the subtitle Essays on Xicanisma, women who identified as Chicanas were forming our own feminist themes in academia and in public intellectual discourse. The term Xicana, as I coined it then, felt necessary to be specific to the Mexican, Mexican American and Mexican indigenous woman’s experience. Like many Chicanas of my generation, I had started my writing life as a poet as a means to explore and declare what the Chicana experience was throughout the country, Mexico, and history. While I was conferred a doctorate in American Studies, an honorary doctorate for the book, and it was published by a university press, my book, Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma, was never financed by any institution or foundation. I worked independently and without academic supervision, save the national committee that met in Germany, where I was invited to submit the book as a formal dissertation. As a self-taught writer, I proceeded to write on what I would identify as “Xicanisma” by teaching myself the essay genre. As is true with my first novel, The MixQuiahuala, Letters, no doubt I brought my origins as a poet to the prose. The book was to be submitted to an American Studies publisher, which is why crossing disciplines was accepted. On a personal level, I brought my creative imagination and intellectual curiosity as a human being whose history and current existence has been overwhelmingly underrepresented to the process of identifying Xicanisma. In a broader sense, again, my generation of Chicana writers for the most part had our modest beginnings as writers as free verse poets. I think an immediately recognizable example is Gloria Anzaldúa in her book, Borderlands.

Your 1998 poem, “Women Don’t Riot,” describes women as passive under the wheel of constant oppression and violence, passive and unable to unite to combat it. Has this changed? Do you see more unity?

In the 90s, I wrote a long free form verse as my personal response to the non-guilty verdict of O.J. Simpson defense with regards to the brutal murder of his ex-wife, the mother of his children, and her boyfriend. Many excellent examples may be pointed out as to women’s historical participation across the board in effecting social and political change. There was a lot of heated emotion among the public at that time. Many African Americans felt it was one more example of a Black man being persecuted by the White system. Many, myself included, felt that the non-guilty verdict was the result of a wealthy and popular man’s privilege and that he, was most likely guilty. No one else has even been identified as a suspect. In no way do I believe women, or specifically Chicanas (be definition, a “Chicana” has political consciousness) have been passive in the face of misogyny, under which we continue to live in the world. Our activism, courage and perseverance have resulted in progress. Yes, I see more unity is possible, at least with women who wish to identify as Chicanas and wish to find unity with other POC.

                                                                  ANA CASTILLO

JD CURTIS

JD Curtis’s poetry and writing have been published online and in journals and her work has been anthologized. She lives, writes, and works in Cincinnati, OH.

           

In what genre(s) do you write, and why? Do certain subject matters lend themselves more to a particular genre? Did you choose your genres, or they, you?

Poetry attracted me before any other genre—children’s books and songs at first. Then came Longfellow, Coleridge, Eliot, Yeats, Browning, Millay, Sexton, Ransom, cummings, Reiss, and many more. It seemed natural to write poems.  Covering years in a matter of lines or saying something intensely personal seemed to work better in poetry than in prose. Poems served to connect me, reassure me that other poets would share sensitivities to social justice. Protesting anything works better in poetry—the short quip, the satirical turns of phrases, the snapshots of short moments. Poems can also work to tell stories, too—as in the poems I wrote to protest the ad-like calls to war in the Middle East, because sarcasm and the catchy phrase don’t often get lost in the forest of words that novels and short stories pose.   

Although stories can be full of words, they lose (in a good way) the ambiguity, word play, and intensity that is harder for most people to understand on a first reading of a poem. At a party, I read a short story that I had written. During the reading of my short story, “My Life as a Pinball” to a group of friends, the same person who told me to stop reading my poems, because she needed to “see” a poem to really understand, encouraged me to continue. Surprised by how much a story could pull in an audience, I embraced the genre of the short story. Plus, if I needed to grapple with a situation that confounded me, I’d use a story to sort of explain things to myself and to others.  It seemed to be more of an amusement for others and a tool for me to overcome and understand my own situation. I could use an appealing setting, character, or scene to pose and understand a difficult experience—usually about the opposite sex.  Love songs usually end up being popular classics, but sometimes love is too hard to cover in just a few lines, so I am working currently to write out some of my troublesome relationships in short stories that I hope to turn into a second novel.  Plus, I am working on expanding “My Life as a Pinball” into a full-fledged novel. At the moment, it is a novella, at about 26,000 words, but it needs to be twice that length to really be marketable.   

           

Has your work as a teacher in academia added or detracted from your work as a writer? Please explain.

As for my engagement in teaching, I have both lost and gained. Teaching is time-consuming—much more time-consuming than writing, because there is not only planning meaningful lectures, classroom activities, quizzes, and tests but providing careful feedback that could be helpful and positive—a chore which takes so much time for me, as the child of very impatient and blunt parents and teachers who didn’t dance around the truth the way Millennials seem to demand. For Millennials, it’s as if education should satisfy short-term needs and instantly gratify with the smallest effort--the way a correctly-made McDonald’s hamburger and fries do—without considering long-term goals. It has confounded me, but the gain is in my review of writing itself—terms like character, plot, setting, and other story elements.  

On the other hand, my writing has become more essay-like as a result of teaching and responding to College Writing for roughly a decade of my life. Hopefully, I can break free of the strangle-hold of the essay, or maybe even embrace it as yet another way to formulate understanding.  

What are you working on now? What have been your greatest challenges as a writer? Greatest rewards?

As I mentioned earlier, I am working (slowly) to finish my first novel and to begin another with a set of stories. There was a definite reward in having finished the novella version of “My Life as a Pinball,” a short story that I began in a writing class as a sophomore in college.  The reward was in realizing that readers and fellow writers have an enormous ability to empathize with my 13-year-old character.  My biggest challenge as a writer will be to find an agent, a suitable publisher—and to have the courage to release my deepest ponderings into a world that seems unforgiving, uncaring, and harsh.  

JD CURTIS