Interview with Carolyn Nash

One of the sweetest joys of teaching is reveling in your students’ successes. So I was thrilled when I arrived home yesterday to find RAISING ABEL in my mailbox. I worked with its deeply talented author (who is publishing under the name Carolyn Nash for this project) last summer at the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. She astounded us all with the power of her story about raising two adopted sons, one of whom had suffered extreme abuse in his previous family. Here is an interview she recently conducted about adoption, writing, and life. 

Tell us about yourself.

I am the very lucky mother of two sons, 21 and 6. I say lucky because they are adopted and I swear I got the two best in the world. What are the chances? I mean one, sure, but two? Unfortunately, my older son didn’t come to me until he was almost 4, and much happened in his early years. My younger son came to me at 3 weeks and is deliciously obnoxious as 6-year-olds are supposed to be. I have never married, the reasons for which, along with the story of my older son’s life, are chronicled in Raising Abel.

When did you begin writing?

I began writing in earnest in high school. I remember getting all wrapped up in a story of two brothers on a coach in the 1800s going somewhere, always in constant danger. I wish I still had that story. It would be fun to see how my writing has changed. Through the years I’ve worked on numerous short stories, and have completed three novels in addition to Raising Abel. Besides stories published in a newspaper for which I worked many years ago, Raising Abel is the first story or book that I have published.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

That’s actually an important question for me. I am plagued by self-doubts, like many of us. Last summer I went to a writing conference on the northern coast of California. As part of the registration, I was required to submit a sample of my writing. I submitted a chapter from my unfinished memoir, Raising Abel, and thought no more about it. A few weeks later I was notified that my chapter won not only first prize in the conference writing contest, but also a fellowship that paid my

Interview with Wendy Call

The loveliest aspect of living in Iowa City is that practically every writer waltzes through at some point. This Tuesday (10/18) at 7 p.m., Prairie Lights will be hosting Wendy Call, author of myriad stories and essays as well as the just-released No Word For Welcome, a book of narrative nonfiction exploring how economic globalization intersects with village life in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico. We shared an epic meal a few nights ago, trading anecdotes about the writing biz:

Tell us about your journey toward becoming a writer.

I grew up wanting to be both a scientist and a writer. When I was seventeen, the latter seemed like a pipe dream, and the former, a rational career choice. I wrote “biology” on the “intended major” line of my college application and never reconsidered that choice. I probably should have. At the end of every semester of my college career, I received a strong urging to reconsider – in the form of a grade report that highlighted my facility in the humanities and mediocrity in the sciences. After college, I worked for three months as a marine biology field assistant. I loved the work, but realized I had no talent as a scientist. I took a job as a grassroots organizer and followed that career path for a decade. Slowly, my interest in social change organizing led me back to my childhood desire to be a writer.

Yes, you have quite a history of working with social justice organizations. Tell us about that, as well as how it impacted your writing.

I was a staff organizer for the GE Boycott in the early 1990s. Then I worked for a Central America solidarity organization that campaigned against NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. After that, I was Communications Coordinator at Grassroots

Interview with Mary Jo McConahay

Exciting news for all you Latinistas out there: journalist and documentary filmmaker Mary Jo McConahay has just released a new book about 30 years of travels across southern Mexico and northern Guatemala. Along the way, she witnessed the transformation of the Lacandon people, the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, and the onslaught of the drug war. Maya Roads: One Woman’s Journey Among the People of the Rainforest was recently named “Book of the Month” by National Geographic Traveler Magazine.

Maya Roads documents your thirty-year experience — I was going to say love affair — with the Central American rainforest.  We’re talking jungle here, right? As in, eight-foot snakes?

We are talking jungle, its beauty, magic, and violence, too, but also unforgettable people, archaeological digs, ancient towns and the crown jewel of the region’s colonial cities, San Cristobal de las Casas. Classic Maya rainforest cities such as Palenque, Tikal in Guatemala and the city of paintings, Bonampak, are reached fairly easily these days by travelers, even though they are surrounded by jungle.  Oh, and yes, poisonous snakes appear in Maya Roads, too.

How did your obsession with the Maya rainforest begin?

As a Spanish student in Mexico City, I saw a museum exhibit about the Lacandon Maya Indians, showing that they still hunted with

Interview with Michael David Lukas

Exciting news on the book front: Michael David Lukas has just released his much-anticipated novel, The Oracle of Stamboul, about an eight year-old orphan girl who becomes an advisor to the Ottoman sultan and, in the process, changes the course of history. A former Fulbright Scholar in Turkey and Rotary Scholar in Tunisia, Lukas has also written for the Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, and National Geographic Traveler. This summer, we’ll both be teaching at the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. Here’s the scoop on his new book:

Tell us about the origins of The Oracle of Stamboul.

I started writing The Oracle of Stamboul in early 2004. At the time I was living in Tunisia, studying Arabic, applying to MFA programs, and generally trying to figure out what to do with my life. The seed of the book came to me on a run through the undeveloped outskirts of Tunis. Eleonora, the protagonist of the book, was hazy in that first glimpse, a slight, precocious child playing backgammon with two older men. I didn’t know anything about her—where she lived or when, who these men were, why she was playing backgammon with them—but I knew as soon as she came to me that I had found my protagonist. Now all I had to do was….