Category: Interviews

Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.

Do you need distance and perspective to write about an experience honestly, meaningfully? Does writing about an experience provide closure — some sense of finality to memories and ideas you’ve been wrestling with?

Many writers say yes. Brittany Ackerman says no. And her new memoir-in-essays, The Perpetual Motion Machine, has that sometimes exhilaratingly freeing, sometimes out-of-control frightening sense of life continually continuing on — with no tidy lessons or endings. Life hurtles on — will keep hurtling on — so why not write about it now?

Read on for Brittany’s thoughts on living and writing and never being over anything. And don’t miss her book launch at Book Soup on Dec. 7, 7 pm — I’ll be reading with her, as will Nicelle Davis! Hope to see you there.

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Siel: At long last, your book is (almost) out! Has the completion and publication of this book brought some sense of closure — or changed your relationship to or thoughts about your past experiences in any way?

Brittany: Rather than closure, I feel the upcoming pub date has made me rethink the past.  I just recently heard a great quote from Orson Welles, “No story has a happy ending unless you stop telling it before it’s over.”  I think a lot of readers might want more of a “happy ending” to my book, but the truth is that the issues and emotional turmoil are still happening, will probably always be happening, and I will always be trying to make sense of it in my stories and with my words.

Did you have any concerns along the lines of having enough / too much distance from your experiences to write about them as you worked on TPMM?

I started the book as my graduate school thesis project and my family dilemma was still in full swing.  I was highly encouraged and motivated by my thesis chair, Dr. Becka McKay, to write through it, not around it.  Some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten.  It was a lot of me crying at Panera and typing out things I didn’t want to admit, but I think those parts might be what people will relate to, cling to, because they’re real.  I don’t think we need to be “over” something before we write about it.  I think we need to wrestle with it on the page.  The reader is always in the middle of something, so we should be too.

How did you come to the decision to write your memoir in short essays? Is it something that just happened naturally, or was this a more conscious decision on your part?

I contemplated fictionalizing the stories, but at the end of the day all these things happened.  It’s told from my point of view, so it’s fair to say it’s my perspective on the trials and tribulations, but that’s why I tried not to implement too much opinion on my behalf.  Rather, I wanted to make a collection that where you could read any one essay at a time or all of them together.  The center of the book, the heart of it, the troubled siblings, that’s the thread.

What are your favorite memoirs and essay collections? Have they influenced your own work?

Jo Ann Beard’s The Boys of My Youth was the impetus of my writing life.  Once I read that, I thought, “Oh, this is what I want to do now.”  I tried to emulate her child-voice and her urgency in my own memoir.  Some more: Jeanette Walls “The Glass Castle,” Davy Rothbart “My Heart is an Idiot,” Nick Flynn, “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.”  Also a total fangirl for Sarah Manguso The Guardians.  I’m sort of working on something now that is an epistolary to a friend I had that passed away a few years ago, very much influenced by her.

Will there be a sequel memoir?

I’m hoping to translate TPMM into a screenplay someday.  As for the future, I’m really interested in the town where I spent a lot of time as a young adult, Delray Beach, FL, the recovery capital of the U.S.  I’ve been writing a lot about the city, the people and relationships I encountered over the years.  Hoping to get some time to workshop and continue working on my craft in 2019, building and finding strength in the writing community.

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Enter to win a copy of Brittany Ackerman’s  The Perpetual Motion Machine by signing up for my newsletter. Already joined up? Then you’re already entered. Good luck!

Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.

Liska Jacobs used to work as an archivist at The Getty. Now she writes novels — her first one, Catalina, starring a woman who works at MOMA.

Does doing one kind of beautiful work make you miss the other? I asked Liska that and other questions in this interview. Read on to hear her thoughts on the dualities of Los Angeles, the pleasures of anonymous drinking in hotels, and the value of breathing.

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Siel: Why Catalina? What is it about that place that made you decide you must title a novel after it?

Liska: I wanted the meat of the novel to take place on an island so that I could really force everything to a crisis — but Catalina specifically because it’s a perfect compact version of Los Angeles. It has the same duality where on the one side it’s an artificial playground (Hollywood/Avalon), and the other is wild landscape (Santa Monica Mountains/ Los Angeles National Forest/ Two Harbors). Elsa, my heroine, has the same struggle going on within her — actually, her whole group of friends are outwardly feigning certain personas, while inwardly seething from past wounds and insecurities.

I love how a chunk of the story happens at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel. There are so many hotels I’d like to stay in in the LA area — but I don’t because, you know, I live here. What is the hotel stay you’ve enjoyed the most, and did that stay involve writing?

Thank you! I love the anonymity of drinking in hotels. There’s just something about them, maybe it’s the people passing through, or just the pleasure of sitting in a place that’s made to evoke a certain style or time. It’s like being on a set. The Miramar always makes me think of 1920s Santa Monica, of early seaside splendor and the flapper era.

One of my favorite hotels is the Hotel De Russie in Rome. I’ll probably never be able to afford to stay there, but I can sure as hell spend an entire evening drinking in their courtyard. They have a separate cocktail list just for gin and tonics! And at night you can hear the cicadas in the Villa Borghese Gardens.

On the Otherppl podcast, you talked about your former life working as an archivist at The Getty. Elsa was an assistant at the MOMA. Do you ever miss your museum career — being surrounded every day by beautiful objects?

This is such a great question. I do miss it. Not just the vaults, which were brimming with so many interesting things—from early editions of Shakespeare, to Mapplethorpe prints, to Kirchner’s sketchbook and Matisse drawings — but the small things too. I miss having coffee with a group of people I grew to love working with. And I miss seeing the city covered in fog and feeling like we had the sky to ourselves, and the deer that came down or the hawks that nested one year on the roof of the GRI. It’s a sad sort of missing though, the kind that comes with age.

If you were to go through the entire first book process again, from acceptance to publication, is there anything you might do differently?

I’d try to breath a lot more. I know that sounds silly, but there was so much hurry up and wait—that looking back, I feel like I willed a couple years by too quickly. I was so impatient to be here that I didn’t stop to enjoy the process. Mostly because at the time it didn’t feel like one. It felt like a mad sprint and if I let up for a minute, I’d blink, and it would have all been a dream.

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Enter to win a copy of Liska Jacobs’  Catalina by signing up for my newsletter. Already joined up? Then you’re already entered. Good luck!

Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.

Give your friends pseudonyms. That’s one piece of simple, concrete, and practical advice Chloe Caldwell gives to budding personal essay writers.

It makes sense, given the intimacy and detail of Chloe’s poignant and hilarious work. I love her collection I’ll Tell You in Person — and got to pick her brain this month about essay writing, teaching, working with indie presses, and a lot more.

Read on for more great essay writing advice —

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Siel: You teach writing workshops with Catapult and other organizations. What advice do you give students who are brand new to personal essay writing?

Chloe: Take your time. Personal essays grow and evolve the longer you sit with them. The time before you publish your work is sacred—enjoy it. Give your friends pseudonyms, and always write with love and compassion, for yourself and those you write about.

Do you find that teaching writing affects your own writing in any way?

I know it affects the way I read books now—looking for things I would edit or advise on, how I would critique the piece if it were workshopped in my class. As for writing, I wish I took more of my own advice that I dish out to students, and I also wish I had the balls to attempt the (sometimes) challenging writing prompts I give my students.

Elizabeth Ellen‘s small indie press Short Flight / Long Drive Books, published your first two books — then this latest collection came out from Emily Books, an imprint of Coffee House Press — which is a bigger indie press. How were the two experiences similar and different? And is your decision to publish with indie presses a deliberate one?

Indie presses were one of my first loves when I started reading and writing nonfiction. I loved finding unique and obscure books; it was inspiring to see other women writers publishing work about their lives. SF/LD and Coffee House were both incredible to work with—I got to have say on the titles, the covers, the publicity outreach. With SF/LD, Elizabeth Ellen (the editor & publisher there), would do DIY book tours—she’d rent a van and we’d tour around with other women writers, which was an incredible experience. I’m sure I will continue to publish with indie publishers as long as I’m writing.

If you had the whole first book experience to do over again, is there anything you’d do differently?

No way! I think my life has played out exactly as it should, and if I changed one thing, I might not be where I am today, and I’m really loving my life lately.

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Enter to win a copy of Chloe Caldwell’s  I’ll Tell You in Person by signing up for my newsletter. Already joined up? Then you’re already entered. Good luck!

Photo by Anna Ty Bergman

Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.

Los Angeles lost another great writer to New York when Patty Yumi Cottrell moved back to the east coast last year. But the author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace, this month’s giveaway, got a lot of writing done while she was in the City of Angeles — so you can expect to read her hilarious-sad work in the months to come.

I got to chat with Patty about doing things differently and writing for a whiskey company and getting conflated with her novel’s protagonist. Enjoy the interview —

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Siel: If you were to go through the entire first book process again, from acceptance to publication, is there anything you might do differently?

Patty: I would meditate more often and look at social media less frequently. I would try to be more flexible and less demanding. Expect anything to happen and nothing at all. It’s all the same anyway.

Because, like your character Helen Moran, you’re a Korean adoptee and your parents live in Milwaukee, many readers have conflated — or have been tempted to conflate — your own life with that of your protagonist, Helen Moran. I too have noticed a tendency for readers do the same with my novel-in-stories although I’ve never said my fiction is autobiographical — and I feel like this is a challenge that many writers have to address about their work. Do you have any tips for dealing with it? 

The way people read my book doesn’t bother me too much. In many ways, the book doesn’t belong to me, it’s up to the reader to supply the meaning. So if a reader wants to understand the book by conflating me with my narrator, I can’t control that.

But I dislike it when journalists categorize it as an autobiographical novel, as if that’s a fact, especially during interviews. One thing I’m learning how to do is to be evasive. Don’t answer questions you don’t want to answer. In person, if this happens, I try to start talking about something else, even if it seems rude. If someone asks me an invasive question, I’ll start talking about Fiona Apple or the NBA or a book I’ve read recently or how my digestion is going.

You said in an interview that New York was, for you, “a terrible place to write a novel” and that Los Angeles gives you “more freedom” as a writer. Then you left L.A. and moved back to NYC. What is up with that? Also, how’s the writing going these days?

Yeah, I’m back in New York City. It was time for a change. My girlfriend lives here, and there are teaching opportunities, so that was that.

Right now I’m mustering up the motivation to write another novel. I like to get lost in long projects that take up a lot of mental space. My writing has felt heavier lately, not as thin and spare. This summer, I was asked to write a short story for a whiskey company (Bulleit). It’s about an Asian man with a girlfriend and he’s miserable. At the time, I thought it was the worst thing I had ever written, but now, after several months, I can see that it’s good. Everything is always changing!

What were you working on, writing-wise, while you were in L.A.? Or was your time taken up with Sorry to Disrupt the Peace stuff?

I wrote my novel, some short stories, a poem, and an essay. So that took up a little time. When I wasn’t doing that, I traveled a little, took walks, met with friends, etc. I was teaching, too.

How do you decide what to read, and what books are you looking forward to reading in 2018?

People recommend things to me. I like to read interviews of writers I admire, and read the books that they like. I can tell if I’ll be into a book by reading the first chapter, but this doesn’t always work. The last one I wanted to set down after reading the first chapter was Outline by Rachel Cusk. I was mistaken, and it turned out to be brilliant.

There are so many novels I’m looking forward to, but the best story collection to appear in 2018 is Rita Bullwinkel’s, Belly Up. I feel certain about this. Her book is so funny, weird, and intelligent. She’s incredible.

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Enter to win a copy of Patty Yumi Cottrell’s  Sorry to Disrupt the Peace by signing up for my newsletter. Already joined up? Then you’re already entered. Good luck!