Interviews

Today on the MAR blog, we’re bringing some words of wisdom (and more than a few words about cats and worms) from author and BGSU MFA alumna Tessa Mellas.

Tessa won the 2013 Iowa Short Fiction Award judged by Julie Orringer, and her debut story collection, Lungs Full of Noise, was published by the University of Iowa Press. She holds a BA from St. Lawrence University, an MFA from Bowling Green State University, and a PhD from the University of Cincinnati. In the spring of 2014, Tessa served as the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bowling Green State University. Tessa grew up in Northern New York, is a former competitive synchronized figure skater, has been a vegetarian since the age of eight and is a recent vegan convert.

1. Let’s get this out in the open right away. It’s no secret that you have worms. Discuss.

Ah yes, the worms. I have thousands of worms split between my worm inn at the house and my smaller worm domicile made of wood and recycled felt in my office at school. The worms are Red Wigglers, a European top-dwelling species that is great for vermicomposting because they are happy in just a few inches of bedding, consume half to all of their body weight in food waste per day, and produce the most fertile soil known to man. Their dung is called “Black Gold.” They’re really cool little critters. Some airports have worm facilities that process all of their food waste, diverting it from landfills. They can also neutralize toxins. It’s best not to feed them poison but they can consume poisonous substances and create a byproduct that is far less toxic. They are the lowest maintenance, lowest cost pet ever. Just feed them your vegetable and fruit scraps once a week, and they do their thing. And lest you think they’re not fun to hang out with, I spend hours rooting through their bedding (which is just paper and leaves, which they also eat). It is fascinating seeing all the different sized worms. The tiniest ones are like a tiny white hair of corncob silk that you can barely see but can find if you pick apart clods of vermicompost and look closely for movement. I love searching for their tiny brown lemon-shaped eggs, finding empty avocado peels stripped clean of meat with a fist-sized clump of pink worms burrowed inside the shell. At school, students bring my worms banana peels, apple cores, coffee grinds. The more they are fed, the more their colony grows and the more Black Gold I have for my houseplants and garden. Their compost has revived many a dying plant and produces monster plants in the garden. I could discuss worms all day, but likely we have literary things to talk about. Anyone want to talk worms? Just Facebook message me.

2. Once upon a time, you were an MFA student at BGSU and also worked on MAR. How did this time at Bowling Green influence your writing and your career today? Do you have any standout memories from your time editing MAR?

My MFA years at BGSU were such a lovely time. I was in my early twenties, and it was the first time in my life that I had a close-knit group of friends who loved books and who were engaged in the pursuit of becoming literary writers. In that regard, it felt like a homecoming or rather a finding of home. I learned volumes from my classmates’ writing and from browsing their bookshelves at house parties and chatting about writing projects at the bar. I learned so much from the MAR experience as well. Mike C. (the former editor of MAR) did an amazing job teaching us about the literary marketplace, of which I hadn’t a clue, and guiding us through the process by which manuscripts were selected. The experience of handling, critiquing, and discussing manuscripts for inclusion in the magazine seemed necessary in emboldening me to polish and submit my own work for publication. Fond memories of MAR include scavenger hunts and potluck copyediting parties. I always wanted to be the one to find a word misspelled, but I never did, only very minor comma infractions.

The MFA program at BGSU was also a game changer for me. One thing that BGSU does better than most of the other programs I’ve been acquainted with is that our professors taught us how to streamline our prose. We had a full-semester line-level workshop of only five students and our main goal was to take a finished story from each student and line-by-line make it more finished. I had never before and haven’t since had the educational experience of thinking so deeply about style at the sentence-level. Those lessons are always with me now as I write, revise, edit, and teach. I also found my sense of self as a writer. I entered the program writing realism and left a magical realist on the verge of further experimentation. I would recommend BGSU’s fiction program to anyone interested in a fully-financed MFA experience with a lot of personal attention, writing time, curricular flexibility, and a close-knit community of writers. It is a place where a budding magical realist can experiment and be supported and guided in that process.

3. How did your debut story collection, Lungs Full of Noise, come to be? How would you describe the publishing process and working with a small press?

The stories in Lungs Full of Noise were written over a ten-year period: during the MFA, in the years when I was teaching composition full-time, and during my PhD program at the University of Cincinnati. I started thinking about the stories as a collection a year or two into the PhD program when I had to write about my work to try to procure summer funding and grant money. My efforts at describing the themes and style of my work as well as the canonical tradition into which it fit didn’t result in me “winning” money with which to write, but it did help me understand and hone the project and understand it as a book.

I got lucky, I think, with my route to publication. I had certainly worked and reworked the individual stories and felt confident in their quality, but I didn’t expect the book to get picked up in its first round of submissions. I feel sheepish admitting as much. I had a list of book contests I planned to submit to. I got the book out to just two contests and got the phone call from the University of Iowa Press. When they called, I didn’t even remember having submitted the manuscript. It had been six months, I think, and I asked the editor on the phone, “Serious?” My manuscript had the good fortune of being read by the right screeners and by the judge, Julie Orringer. I lucked out. And the experience in working with the University of Iowa Press was wonderful. They asked for suggestions on cover art and my favorite cover image, a beautiful photograph by Marta Orlowska, was chosen for the design. The design of the book is beautiful. My copyeditor was thorough and taught me things about grammar I didn’t realize I didn’t know. And the publicists were so helpful and thoughtful and caring. I feel like the University of Iowa Press is a family that has welcomed me in.

4. You’ve said that readers seem to respond most to the story “Bibi from Jupiter.” For those who haven’t read it, can you offer a brief synopsis and discuss why you think this story has such an impact on people?

Yes, “Bibi from Jupiter” is by far the fan favorite. The editors at Iowa wanted me to use “Bibi from Jupiter” for the title of the book but I reasoned one space alien does not a space alien book make. The story is about a college freshman who ends up rooming with a hermaphroditic Jupiterarian who’s doing stem cell research for her home planet. It is one of my earliest stories that survived the writing process. I wrote it during the MFA. I actually started it on the day of Aimee Bender’s visit to campus. It was a fun one to write. It is voice driven and filled with absurdity. I think readers respond to it because it is a fun romp through the self-absorbed insularity of college life. It is easy to both loathe and identify with the main character, Angela, who is judgmental to the point of bigotry without really knowing as much. And the story contains a healthy dose of alien sex, so that likely seals the deal. In online reviews, readers have suggested I turn Bibi into a novel. At readings, audience members have enquired into Bibi’s current whereabouts. I am intrigued by the interest. I don’t think Bibi will ever appear again on the page, though the voice is something I’m working with in a new project.

5. Now on to something more serious. You have cats. Tell me about them. Show them to me. CATS. How are they involved in the writing process?

I have a privileged circle of friends that are into both writing and cats. It is a very special club. My cats rub their faces on the best books in the house and crawl behind the books and huddle in the sacred space between the ends of the books and the wall. Cats are certainly literary creatures of a strange type. They like rubbing their bodies on books and sitting on open books and listening to books.

We have two cats. Their given names—given to them by a Cat Adoption Team—are Bianca (because she is fully white) and Tres (because he only has three legs). Bianca / Little Bonkers has two different colored eyes—one blue, one green—and she bites my nose in the morning when she is ready for me to wake her up to feed her. She is otherwise a ferocious cuddle monster with a deep fear of bathtubs and a palate for moths. Tres, who we mostly call The Buddy Cat, is an orange tabby with handsome face stripes. Despite his three-leggedness, he is the dominant cat in the house. He has a deep love for all kinds of people food that you wouldn’t think would interest a cat—steamed broccoli, green peas, cream-of-wheat. I am vegan, and he begs me for these things and has been known to abscond with little broccoli trees.

The cats keep me warm on late writing nights. They are true lap sitters—though it was a year of working up to this while they figured out whether or not we were worthy. It is nice having nonjudgmental company during the late or early writing hours. They listen courteously—I tend to read my writing out loud as I write—and nap as needed.

6. What’s on the horizon for your writing and for your career? Rumor has it that you’ve moved across the country for a new teaching job.

So I started a novel as every fiction writer must attempt at some point, like it or not. I am excited about the novel, but I put it away because it was intimidating the shit out of me. I think I bit off a research-heavy project that I wasn’t quite ready to handle—at least not while working the academic job market and moving across the country. I will go back to it.

Meanwhile, a flash piece that I had intended to put in my first collection but didn’t has turned into a flash series that I plan to turn into a novella-type-thing. The series is futuristic and magical and takes on issues of environmentalism and food scarcity. The prose style is somewhat experimental. I am using Matt Bell’s Cataclysm Baby, Tina May Hall’s All the Day’s Sad Stories, and Megan Martin’s Nevers as models for my project, though stylistically the book is probably closest to Bell’s work. I am one of those brooding writer types. Finding my way back to the pleasure of writing has been a long haul, but this project has gotten me there, finally and fully. I can’t say that I’m writing blissfully every day (I’m not sure I will ever be that type), but this is the first time I’ve had fun writing in a very long time. I hope that translates to readers.

And yes, rumor is correct. I moved this summer from Ohio to Maine. I was in Ohio for eleven years. I never expected to fall so deeply in love with Ohio, and a return is certainly not out of the question. Ohio has such a rich literary community and literary life, especially in the cities. I miss it and its writing folk deeply. But job security called, so I hit the academic job market and was fortunate to land a position at the University of Maine at Machias, a sustainability focused liberal arts school on the coast that seems to fit me perfectly. Machias and its neighboring communities are full of charm, personality, and natural beauty. I’m getting to teach a wide range of courses in subjects that interest me. On the slate for next semester is a literature course called Fabulous Women. I’m looking forward to the slower pace of life here and the space it is carving out for my writing.

7. Finally, what is your biggest piece of advice for 1) aspiring teachers of creative writing and 2) aspiring writers?

I had an epiphany this semester with my creative writing students, many of whom have pressing work and family obligations and were struggling to fit writing time into their schedules. I too was struggling to get in my hours with a 4-4 load and four preps. So we scheduled a writing slot, 2:00-3:00 every weekday. We meet in a lounge on campus. Often it is just two or three of us who come with our laptops, talk about our plan for the hour, and write in each other’s presence. It has been as many as seven writers. Other professors on campus have asked to join in. I would suggest this for any writing teacher. Students see you writing and hear about your process. You see them writing and hear about yours. It’s win-win. I wish I had done this during my Visiting Writer semester last spring in Bowling Green. But I’m glad I thought of it with still many years to go in my career. It takes full advantage of the community of creative writers in a university setting and makes us all more supportive and productive.

It’s so hard to give “aspiring writer” advice without hitting the old clichés. But here’s something I learned the hard way. First, a caveat, I do believe that writer’s block is real—not all writing profs do. Some helpful research I read describes writer’s block as a defense mechanism. When you become abusive to yourself as a writer and your internal dialogue tells you how horrible your writing is and thus how horrible you are as a writer and person, your body starts to shut down. Your brain will try to avoid writing because it is a painful place to be. Being kind to yourself as a writer without making excuses for why you can’t write is important. And what I have found to be most helpful is what I call “finding a back way into the writing.” So here’s how the metaphor goes. Writing is a house and there’s a happening party inside, but the front door (the way you usually write, sitting down at your computer, opening up a document, typing) is locked, and you have to find a different way into the house—a back door, an unlocked window, a sewage pipe. If the front door’s locked, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a different way to access the party that’s happening inside the writing house. I often trick my way into writing by writing by hand, by sketching, mapping, listing, modeling/mimicking. Those are my back ways into writing. Sometimes you have to outwit the abused writer’s brain and do writing in a way that doesn’t feel abusive until you get on a roll and the writing starts to feel good.

Thanks, Tessa!

Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor

Abigail Cloud is Editor-in-Chief of Mid-American Review. A native of Bath, Michigan, she holds a BA in English from Michigan State University and an MFA in Creative Writing-Poetry from Bowling Green State University. Her debut poet collection, Sylph, won the 2013 Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize and was published by Louisiana State University Press in April. With a background in dance, Abigail is interested in combining choreography with poetry and the effect that forms of the body have on the written word. A longtime faculty member at Bowling Green State University and advisor for the Graduate Writers Club, she also advises Mid-American Review and Prairie Margins, the university’s undergraduate literary journal.

Abigail is here today to kick off MAR’s new blog by answering a few questions.

Quick! Describe your vision for Mid-American Review in 10 words or fewer. Extra points if your answer rhymes.

Traditional to experimental, with twists to make it temperamental.

What makes MAR special and sets it apart from other journals?

We care about writers as a community. We always talk about “Friends of MAR” and we’re serious—we establish relationships with people through the journal and events like Winter Wheat: The Mid-American Review Festival of Writing. We work with writers of all levels. Yes, we have national standing and even international distribution. Yes, we are approaching our 35^th anniversary year. Yes, we have an eye-catching journal with as much awesome work as we can cram in. But the majority of our subscribers and “lifers” are people with whom we’ve had personal contact, and we’re always widening that circle. That’s actually the reason we continue to accept postal submissions and checks in addition to our online systems; I know we have regular submitters and subscribers who need those facilities.

From a content perspective, another unique trait is our translation chapbook, wherein we print both the original language and the translation, side by side. Our translations editor, George Looney, does a brilliant job finding these and working with translators. We also have an interest in genre-bending. The Fineline Competition, which Michael Czyzniejewski and Karen Craigo started in 2001, is for flash fictions, prose poems, and anything else that blurs the genre line, in 500 words or fewer. It’s one of my favorite MAR elements.

As the full-time editor-in-chief of MAR, you have what many writers and aspiring literary editors would consider a dream job. So set the scene for us: How did you come to be the editor-in-chief of the Mid-American Review?

As a graduate student in the BGSU MFA program, I worked first as an assistant editor, then as assistant poetry editor, then as Winter Wheat coordinator, then as Associate Editor for a few years while I was teaching full time post-MFA. Karen and Mike trained me in the ways of MAR, but also on the software we use. I got a feel for the traditions as well as the editorial work, and got to use my gifts as a copyeditor.

When Karen and Mike took up positions in Missouri, the English Department created a new position, teaching editing, creative writing, and lit classes and working with MAR. Naturally I applied—there are very few other jobs on the planet that are as suited to my skills and interests as this one. I particularly enjoyed my interview, when I got to lay out a number of projects for MAR, including this blog and our upcoming art contest. I could not have been happier to be given the position. Even with all I knew coming in, I have spent a year and a half learning more and more, which is something I need as a worker. You’re quite correct: It’s a dream job.

What do you love most about this job, what do you find most challenging, and what’s your go-to snack of choice when spending all day cooped up in the MAR offices working on an issue?

I’ll start with most challenging: It’s tempting to say raising funds, but I actually like budgeting. No, it’s patience: I’m a person who likes to get things DONE once a decision has been made. There are times when I want to do something for MAR quickly and efficiently and it just isn’t possible. This is usually because it has to go through university channels outside our department; there is a trade-off there, because the university environment gives us so much, but the hurry-up-and-wait necessary is not my area of giftedness.

There are so many things I love about this job, but I have to say that the actual assembly of the issue is one of my favorites. I love accepting pieces, but I also love the nitty-gritty of setting that work, copyediting, putting the issue in order, designing the cover … Even though so much of it is on the computer, there is still a physicality there that I enjoy. The latter two bits in particular are like doing a jigsaw puzzle. I love it. I feel born to it.

Snacks: It’s widely known that I try to keep a lot of snacks in the office, though we’re running low at present. I admit to an addiction to the General Foods International powdered chai and coffees (and, by the way, an electric kettle is a must-have for an office). I also have a fondness for Nerds candy and usually keep my own box separate from the staff goodies. My [2013-2014] Managing Editor, Katrin, and I are really bad about regular meals, so we’re focusing on that this spring instead of the Oreos we ate last fall.

All right, spill it. Can you share any wacky, funny, or surprising stories from the journal’s history?

A few fun facts:

• When we were preparing our Unpublished Writers issue for the 25^th anniversary year, we got some of the best submissions we’ve ever had.
• Some of my favorite times with MAR were in June sometime in the early 2000s, when the East Hall air conditioning broke, and I hung out in the sweltering building with Karen Craigo, reading Fineline entries. Those were the days!
• Our usual printer, Bookmasters, is in Ashland, OH, (2 hours away) and we used to go pick up our many boxes of books in caravan, with a stop at Ponderosa on the way back. I only went once. It suddenly terrified me to have our entire editorial staff on the road at the same time. I’m a worrier.
• MAR actually started out as a journal called Itinerary, and was dedicated to publishing BGSU MFAs. It became Mid-American Review in 1980. I usually claim that I am a year older than MAR, but if you include Itinerary it’s six years older.
• When we’re having a rough day in the office, we spend time watching the Friends of Felines Rescue Center web cam. The center is in Defiance, OH, and I’ve been there, but the free-range center has a 24-hour web cam on their main room. If we need a break, our go-to is FFRC.

A genie sprouts out a stack of MAR issues and grants you one wish. You choose: A) a lifetime supply of free chai lattes; B) every original My Little Pony toy, in mint condition; or C) the ability to magically and instantly catch up on all MAR submission reading.

Oh, gosh, C) all the way. You got me. I would gladly pay for my chai (and I’m content … mostly … with my MLP collection) if it meant getting caught up on reading. Part of the problem is that I really do care about the stories being told or the experience being created and have a hard time skimming something, or breezing through. I also find it difficult to set aside reading time when there are so many other things to work on. It almost feels like cheating; I can’t convince myself it really is my job to read read read. I spend a lot of time in our offices, and there is always something to do there that seems more pressing than having a nice read.

True or False: Your MAR staff (which consists of students in Bowling Green State University’s MFA program, along with undergraduate interns) is the best literary journal staff around. And since we already know the answer is “true,” please feel free to elaborate below, along with anything you’d like to share about your experience of managing and guiding the staff.

Obviously that is TRUE, but more than that without this staff the journal would not exist. At the very least it wouldn’t represent the variety of the literary universe. We need a multitude of writers with different preferences and skills to pick out pieces that might be overlooked, to discuss a work’s merits, and to select the very best for each issue. We also need a multitude of eyes to copyedit, and brains to take on projects new and ongoing. And of course we need people to laugh when something ridiculous happens.

With all seriousness, our MFAs and interns here at BGSU are a tremendous benefit. We have smart, active students and they are truly engaged in the process of being better writers, which means they are better editors. Each year half of our MFA staff changes, and the new crop will bring different gifts and interests to the table, which benefits MAR as much as the MFA program. A huge component of MAR is the weekly graduate class meeting, which includes registered students but also several of our volunteers. These people read during the week and at the meeting, and then talk about submissions. When it comes time to copyedit, we spend time copyediting together. We are all active in the same space; I cannot stress enough how important that is. We are constantly talking about writing and adding to each other’s experience and knowledge.

Our in-office intern staff is no less valuable. I am working on an intern guide, actually, to make their experience a little easier. They do so much important work, not just opening and logging the mail but also taking on special projects and doing research. They participate in the MAR class, so they spend time with the graduate students, and they also learn a great deal about the inner workings of a literary journal. They get real career experience and advice, and keep the journal running smoothly.

What can you tell us about your own writing? What are you working on now, and what’s on the horizon?

My book of poems (Sylph) came out recently, and of course I have two more in the hopper. It seems they multiply. One collection is poems playing with the concept of divination. The other is a little more nebulous at the moment. I’m participating in an online writing group right now that is pushing me to write a poem (almost) every day, or at least work on poetry every day. It’s so easy to get buried in my other lives as editor and teacher and forget the writer part.

What do you enjoy doing outside of MAR and writing poetry? We’ve heard rumors about hockey games, dancing, and crafting, but we need details.

My hobby is collecting hobbies. Seriously. I do enjoy attending hockey games (which are a great place to write, by the way), I am a lifelong dancer, and I like sewing, doing puzzles, and baking, along with a whole host of other things. I do baby quilts for close friends, though I am behind by about 7 children. I also have a custom garter business, Rond by Cloud. My house is littered with projects in various states of completion. I also will be learning two methods of lacemaking in the near future, bobbin lace and hand shuttle.

I have actually brought a DIY element to MAR, making things for us to sell and give away, or to decorate our bookfair spaces. It indulges my craft fiend while producing something useful and original. Last year we sold homemade lobster-shaped crayons in boxes we made and banded ourselves. We won the unofficial best swag award, I think.

Last but not least: You’re trapped in an elevator at AWP with a crowd of writers who plan to submit to MAR. What advice do you give them?

MAR likes to see energy and quirk. We’re looking for poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction that give us experiences, through senses and thoughtful language. We’ve seen a lot of adultery stories lately. If that’s the story you need to tell, fine, but what are you bringing to it that makes it stupefyingly new or different? Bells and whistles in your poetry are fine, but what about it will arrest a reader, stay with her so much she has to read it again?

Submit submit submit, but also, please be patient for a response!

Thanks, Abby, for sharing your insight in this blog interview!

Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor