Barb Johnson Interview

Our own Barb Johnson did a stellar interview with PopMatters.com and we wanted to share an excerpt of it here and then link to the full interview.

Barb is also on tour now with her book, “More of this World or Maybe Another” and you can find her on Facebook to see the tour cities.

Excerpt from Popmatters.com interview below:

11. The best piece of advice you actually followed?
The best advice I’ve ever been given was also the most oblique, thus it is broadly applicable. When I was learning to canoe a number of years ago, by way of instruction a friend said: “You can’t fight the river.  The river is boss. It gives you the ride. You’ve got an oar if you need to change the direction. But don’t fight the river. Work with it.”

Jeanine Cornillot – Author Interview

JEANINE CORNILLOT
Interview – new book, “Family Sentence” went on sale October 1st (Beacon Press)

1.  Name a book that changed your life?

I would have to say that Toni Morrison’s body of work had the greatest impact on my life.  When I was younger I went as far as to send an excerpt from “Jazz” to my father in prison. I knew she could far better express something I couldn’t about having a phantom parent.  I wanted to open my mouth and have Toni Morrison’s voice come out.  When I showed it to a friend — he was like do you really need so much Toni Morrison speaking on your behalf? Yeah, I do, I said.  I folded it up and sent it.  Also, two memoirs that were very meaningful in my life were Mikael Gilmore’s “Shot in the Heart” and James Ellroy’s “My Dark Places”

 2. What under appreciated writer (or book) do you most enjoy introducing to the uninitiated?

Mavis Gallant’s short stories

 3. What book, short story, or poem have you most read & reread?

Franz Wright’s poem “The Only Animal”

 4. Name your favorite short story not written by Chekov

Jim Shepard’s “Spending the Night with the Poor”

The girl narrating is so pitch-perfect, heartbreaking, deeply funny. I didn’t want her story to end – even though it ends perfectly.

 5. Name a book you’d love to read that, to the best of your knowledge,    does not exist. 

Maybe one family member in each house on a road writes a “true-life” story about their next-door neighbor. I think I’d read something along those lines.

6.  Do you have any work rituals or patterns you’ve never seen nor heard as   something another writer does?

I like to sweep the floor.

 7.  Are you best as a morning writer, an evening writer, or an intoxicated writer?

I write in the morning.

 8.  Tell us about your childhood Objectum Sexuality — the stuffed animal, little  blanket (or imaginary friend) you loved and took everywhere

Curious George often accompanied me on my flights to Miami as a child.  Sat in the hot car during the long prison visits.  He was my little man.

9.  Who has been your signature once-in-a-lifetime pet?

Zelda F, 7lb shelter survivor, Chi-mix, twittering guru.

10.  What’s the question you wish had been asked because you have the perfect answer?

What chapter title didn’t make the cut?

The Truth about Teeth

Anne Gisleson: Author Interview

Anne’s essay about The Saturn Bar from OXFORD AMERICAN was chosen for Dave Eggers BEST AMERICAN NONREQUIRED READING (Houghton Mifflin) anthology, which went on sale October 8th.

1.  What book woke you up to the pleasures of reading?
Probably Frog and Toad Are Friends by Arnold Lobel.  As a kid I liked that these quirky little stories with the amphibians in slightly groovy outfits didn’t seem to always have a clear point, except that Frog and Toad were really good friends and that friendships can be complicated.

2. What under appreciated writer (or book) do you most enjoy
    introducing to the uninitiated?
New Orleans writer Patty Friedmann.  Walker Percy wrote in his collection of essays Signposts in a Strange Land that “I make no claim to prophetic powers, yet I make bold to predict that the next Southern literary revival will be led by a Jewish mother, which is to say, a shrewd self-possessed woman with a sharp eye and a cunning retentive mind who sees the small triumphs and tragedies around her and has her own secret method of rendering it, with an art all her own and yet not unrelated to Welty, O’Connor and Porter.”  This is Patty Friedmann, exactly.

3. Name your favorite short story not written by Chekov
“No Place for You, My Love” by Eudora Welty

 4.  How did your growing up shape your writing?
I grew up in New Orleans with five sisters and two brothers (and devout Catholic parents).  We were all really different and the house was always filled with activity, with a lot burgeoning personalities working out their stuff.   But it was also very hard to focus on one thing and to find any peace and quiet.  So as an adult I appreciate solitude but have bad work habits.  Our family in New Orleans goes back eight generations and the weight and amount of material can be almost paralyzing.

5.  Tell us what writing you are working on.
I’m working on a couple of collaborative projects.  One is How to Rebuild a City: Field Guide From a Work in Progress , which spotlights the resilience and creativity of the citizens of New Orleans who have filled the civic voids left in the wake of the levee failures: who hand-painted street signs, started or re-opened businesses against all odds, who tend our parks, re-forest our diminished urban canopy, clean our streets, lobby for stronger levees, and organize campaigns to counter crime and violence, artists and cultural institutions whose work helps people stay hopeful and engaged during the long and difficult reconstruction.  The other the text for a monograph of photographs of the endangered Louisiana wetlands by the wonderful artist Michel Varisco and is as yet untitled.

6.  Are you best as a morning writer, an evening writer, or an intoxicated writer?
Definitely the morning, when I haven’t had enough time to beat myself up yet.

THE NON-BOOK QUESTIONS

1.  What’s the best present you ever received?
 A Eurail pass from my dad when I was 19.

 
2.  Name your favorite French word or phrase

Bouche.
 

 3.  What’s a question whose answer today is COMPLETELY different than it
     would have been ten years ago?

“So, do you really love him?”

Welcome To the Max & Co. Literary Social Club

Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art. (Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle)

 This site contains the Art (opinions) of our writers and those of us who attend to them.  Our intent is to maintain a Randomness to our Rants, Raves, & Original Writings. 

Occasionally, we will slip up and insert useful advice  for an aspiring writer.  And we’ll admit upfront, there will be times we will use the blog site to point out glowing reviews and glamorous awards received by our writers. 

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