Guest Post: Mellanie Crouell Interviews Scott Owens

Greetings, All! Today author and poet Mellanie Crouell,  an alum of The Writer's Block, is helping me with the "heavy lifting". Get to know Mellanie by visiting her blog: blog.mhavery.blogspot.com. 

Enjoy!

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1)  What is your position/title in the North Carolina Poetry Society?

I am Vice-President of the NC Poetry Society.


2)  How long have you been a part of this organization and when was it established?

I have been a member of the Poetry Society for 4 years but an officer for only the past 3 months. The Poetry Society was founded in 1932.


3)  What are some other organizations you are associated with?

I have been Vice President of the Poetry Council of NC for 3 years. I coordinate the Oscar Arnold Young Award for NC's best book of poems. I am a Regional Representative for the NC Writers' Network. I am Founder and Coordinator of Poetry Hickory; Founder and Coordinator of The Art of Poetry at Hickory Museum of Art; Editor of Wild Goose Poetry Review; Editor of 234; and Local Coordinator for 100 Thousand Poets for Change.


4)  I enjoyed your poem "All the Meaningful Noise"; your inspiration came from a visit to my hometown of New Bern. Do you receive inspiration from nature or other parts of life?

I see/hear poems everywhere. I think most of us would if we could only keep our eyes and ears open to perceive the connections that form poetry. Nature does provide a great many of the impressions that become poems, but conversation, observation, meditation, memory, reflection, and many other sources provide just as many of the ideas, images, and words that eventually find their way into a poem.


5)  How long have you been in the writing industry?

I have been writing poetry off and on since about 4th grade (1972). My first book was published in 1993. Around that same time I served as Associate Editor of Southern Poetry Review. Then I was away from poetry for about twelve years. Since returning to it, I have been broadly and deeply involved in writing, teaching, publishing, editing, and organizing things related to poetry.


6)  What do you feel is your best piece of work that represents your personality?

That would be very difficult to say. Our dreams represent different aspects of our personality, so do our poems. I doubt that any single poem, perhaps not even a single collection of poems, could be complex enough to fully represent anyone's personality, especially since I believe our personalities change over time. I suppose if I had to choose one of my books for anyone who wanted to "know" me to read, it would be The Fractured World; and if I had to choose a single poem, it would be "Breakings."


7)  What quality makes your work stand out from others?

I hope readers can answer this question better than I can. In my own mind the one thing I think I do a bit differently than many of the other poets I read, that avoid having a singular voice or style. I don't believe in deciding that I am one kind of poet or another. I let the poems tell me what form, style, or voice they want to take, and I intentionally read a wide range of work to keep from settling into one style or another. Many of my readers have commented on the accessibility of my poems. I do like to be understood but try to be careful not to minimize the reader's opportunity to experience the full emotional-intellectual-perceptual moment of the poem.


8)  Scott, you teach at Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory. How many years how you been teaching?

I have been here for five years. I have taught for more than twenty years.


9)  What would you say to any aspiring writers who are working towards their big break?

Read more. I think that's what every published poet says, but it's the truth. Most "aspiring" poets simply don't immerse themselves in poetry enough to develop the fluency necessary to create good contemporary poetry. There is plenty of bad poetry out there that won't help at all, but an anthology like Poulin's "Contemporary American Poetry" is a great place to find a dozen poets that one can relate to. Then, reading those poets more widely will begin to develop that necessary fluency. If the poems are good, everything else will eventually take care of itself


10) What current projects are you working on?

My tenth collection, "Shadows Trail Them Home" (a collaboration with Pris Campbell), is due out from Clemson University Press in October. I'm teaching workshops at Coastal Carolina University (9/22) and Barton College (10/20), and giving readings at McIntyre's Fine Books in Pittsboro (8/26) and Callanwolde in Atlanta (11/14). I am working on my 11th book, a collection of love poems, which I think will be coming out from Main Street Rag in 2014. And I am working on another collection that examines how certain images define our lives over time. I don't have any sort of publication date on that one, but it's shaping up to be one of my favorites.


11) What are some contests that we can look forward to in 2013?

Poetry contest listings are available on the NC Writers Network website or in Poets & Writers.


About Scott

Scott Owens’s tenth collection of poetry, Shadows Trail Them Home, a novella-in-poetry collaboration with Pris Campbell, is due out from Clemson University Press this fall. His prior work has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the Next Generation-Indie Lit Awards, the NC Writers Network, the NC Poetry Society, and the Poetry Society of SC. His poems have been in Georgia Review, North American Review, Chattahoochee Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Poetry East among others. He is the founder of Poetry Hickory, editor of Wild Goose Poetry Review and 234, and vice president of the Poetry Council of NC and the NC Poetry Society. Born and raised in Greenwood, SC, he teaches at Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory, NC.

His previous books are For One Who Knows How to Own Land (Future Cycle Press, 2012); Country Roads: Travels Through Rural North Carolina (with Clayton Joe Young) (Blurb, 2012); Something Knows the Moment (Main Street Rag, 2011); The Nature of Attraction (with Pris Campbell) (Main Street Rag, 2010); Paternity (Main Street Rag, 2010); Book of Days (Dead Mule, 2009); The Fractured World (Main Street Rag, 2008); Deceptively Like a Sound (Dead Mule, 2008); and The Persistence of Faith (Sandstone, 1993)


Contact Scott

www.scottowenspoet.com
www.scottowensmusings.blogspot.com
www.poetryhickory.com
www.wildgoosepoetryreview.com
www.234journal.com
www.poetrycouncilofnc.wordpress.com

 

The Writer’s Block Interviews: Janet Heller

1) Tell us a bit about who you are, and where you live and work.

I’m a poet, college professor, literary critic, essayist, fiction writer, dramatist, and memoir writer. I have published the poetry books Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012), Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011), the scholarly book Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama (University of Missouri Press, 1990), and the award-winning children’s fiction picture book about bullying How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Sylvan Dell, 2006). I have a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. My play The Cell Phone won fourth place in a national contest and was performed twice at the Fenton Village Players One-Act Play Festival on June 24-25, 2011 in Fenton, Michigan. I have taught writing, literature, and women’s studies courses for Western Michigan University, Albion College, Michigan State University, Olivet College, Grand Valley State University, the University of Chicago, and Northern Illinois University. I’m a past president of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, and I’m currently president of the Michigan College English Association. I live in Portage, Michigan, with my husband. My hobbies are hiking, singing, and bird-watching.

2) Describe your journey to becoming an author.

My mother read me lots of good writers when I was a child, including poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Frost, and Emily Dickinson and stories by Rudyard Kipling. Mom instilled a love of literature in me: my ambition during elementary school was to read all of the books in the library. My teachers encouraged me to write. When I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I was a founding mother of the literary journal Primavera. Through Primavera, I met many wonderful writers and started a monthly writing group with some of the other editors. I began to publish my poetry and fiction in national journals and anthologies. In 1990, the University of Missouri Press published my revised dissertation, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama. In 2006, Sylvan Dell published my first book for children, How the Moon Regained Her Shape. How the Moon Regained Her Shape won a Book Sense Pick for 2006, a Children’s Choices selection for 2007, a Benjamin Franklin Award for 2007, and a Gold Medal in the Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards for 2007.


3) What kinds of books do you write? Who is your ideal reader?

I write poetry, drama, essays, literary criticism, memoir, adult fiction, and fiction and nonfiction for children. My ideal reader is someone who appreciates original images, psychological insight, and musical use of words.


4) Tell us about How the Moon Regained Her Shape. How was the concept conceived and how did you come to write it?

How the Moon Regained Her Shape is based on the bullying that I experienced as a new student in elementary school. Other children pushed me down, refused to play with me, and called me names. One girl told me every day during recess, “You’re so skinny that I can see right through you!” I suffered in silence for years. I wrote How the Moon Regained Her Shape to help other children to understand bullying and to recover from it. When I wrote the book, I was doing research on Native American legends and culture. I wrote How the Moon Regained Her Shape in the simple style of a folktale, and the book has two important Native American characters. In How the Moon Regained Her Shape, the sun bullies the moon, and the moon is so upset that she shrinks and leaves the sky. A comet friend and new friends on earth help the moon to understand how important she is to them, so she gradually regains her full size, happiness, and self-esteem. She also decides to return to the sky. How the Moon Regained Her Shape encourages children to tell other people about bullying so that relatives and friends can help them with the problem.

5) Who are your favorite authors? What is on your reading list right now?

I love books by British writers P. D. James, Seamus Heaney, S. T. Coleridge, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, W. B. Yeats; American writers Judy Blume, Edna St. Vincent Millay, T. S. Eliot, Maxine Kumin, Jim Daniels, Mong-Lan, Robert Hayden, Langston Hughes, Naomi Shihab Nye, Alberto Ríos, Gail B. Griffin, Jerry Spinelli, Adrienne Rich, Judith Minty, Gwendolyn Brooks, Marge Piercy; Israeli writers Chaim Nachman Bialik, Yehudah Amichai, Rachel Bluwstein, Chaim Guri, S. Y. Agnon; and Hispanic writers Sor Juana, Federico García Lorca, Ruben Darío, Antonio Machado, Jorge Guillén, Pedro Salinas, and Dámaso Alonso. I also love Japanese haiku, especially those by Matsuo Bashō.

My current reading list includes mockingbird by Kathryn Erkskine, The Way-Back Room: A Memoir of a Detroit Childhood by Marry Minock, and Four Plays by William Inge.


6) How do you promote your work? What methods have worked best for you?

I give readings, creative writing workshops, and talks about bullying at schools, bookstores, and libraries. I also do many conference presentations, including speaking at conferences of the International Reading Association, Michigan Reading Association, Wisconsin State Reading Association, Michigan College English Association, Illinois Reading Council, Midwest Modern Language Association, Michigan Library Association, Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, and Michigan Association for Media in Education. I go to libraries, schools, and bookstores to show them my books and to urge them to order my works. Finally, I use LinkedIn and other sites to network with other writers, interviewers, educators, librarians, and reviewers. I have a website on Red Room http://www.redroom.com/author/janet-ruth-heller and a blog at http://www.redroom.com/author/janet-ruth-heller/blog

7) What are your upcoming plans for the rest of 2012?

I will be reading poems from my book Folk Concert: Changing Times and doing a scholarly presentation at the conference of the Michigan College English Association in Grand Rapids on October 26, 2012. I will be speaking about my books at Kankakee Community College in Illinois on November 1, 2012. I’m revising my play The Cell Phone. Also, I’m trying to find publishers for ten more books for children, my memoir, and two more books of poetry.


8) What is your definition of success as an author?

To me, success means connecting with an audience and communicating clearly. That experience makes authors feel appreciated and needed. It doesn’t matter whether the audience is large or small.


9) What advice would you offer to aspiring authors?

Join a group of serious writers to get feedback on your work. Take a class about current literature at your local college or university. Also, join organizations like the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI) and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) to network with other writers. Go to writers’ conferences and show people your work. Subscribe to and read magazines like The Writer, Poets & Writers, The Writer’s Chronicle, and Writer’s Digest. Purchase guides like Writer’s Market, the International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses, and the Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market. Then send your revised manuscripts out to relevant publishers. It takes time, but good writing is worth the investment.

About the Author


I have a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. I am a past president of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, and I am currently president of the Michigan College English Association.

Finishing Line Press published Traffic Stop, my poetry chapbook, in 2011. My poetry book Folk Concert: Changing Times was published by Anaphora Literary Press (2012). I have published 170 poems in journals and anthologies. I am a founding mother of Primavera, a literary magazine. Primavera has won awards from Chicago Women in Publishing and the Illinois Arts Council and grants from CCLM and the NEA. My book of literary criticism, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama, was published in 1990 by the University of Missouri Press. My creative nonfiction essay "Returning to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin" appeared in Midwestern Miscellany in 2008. My play The Cell Phone won fourth place in a national contest and was performed twice at the Fenton Village Players One-Act Play Festival on June 24-25, 2011 in Fenton, Michigan.

My fiction picture book about bullying for children, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Sylvan Dell, 2006), won a Book Sense Pick in 2006, a Children’s Choices selection for 2007, a Benjamin Franklin Award for 2007, and a Gold Medal in the Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards for 2007. In 2009, How the Moon Regained Her Shape was one of five finalists for the Patricia Gallagher Picture Book Award given by the Oregon Reading Association.


Contact Janet

Website: http://www.redroom.com/author/janet-ruth-heller ,

Blog: http://www.redroom.com/author/janet-ruth-heller/blog

How the Moon Regained Her Shape: www.sylvandellpublishing.com/Moon.php

Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama: http://press.umsystem.edu/otherbooks/heller.htm ,

Traffic Stop is http://www.finishinglinepress.com/product_info.php?cPath=2&products_id=437

Folk Concert: Changing Times: http://www.amazon.com/Folk-Concert-Janet-Ruth-Heller/dp/1937536262/

The Writer's Block Interviews: Linda Hatton

1) Tell us a bit about yourself and where you live and work.

I grew up in Seattle, lived in New York briefly, and then moved to Southern California where I now live.

When I was very young, I had a fondness for writing. Then in high school, I focused on watercolor painting; I had my art displayed at a mall in Seattle when I was in high school.

Then I went on to study acting at New York University and to pursue a career in acting and theater, including a little producing and writing. I also had my first poem printed in a literary magazine back then and made hand-crafted jewelry, hats, and handbags that I sold around Seattle (as well as working at Seattle Art Museum after I finished my degree).

Later I became a stay-at-home mom and have been keeping myself busy with varying side projects and a constant dose of classes.

I’m working for a web design certification, but it’s slow going because I have to work around my kids’ schedules. Additionally, I take every writing class I can get my hands on that fits into my budget and schedule. I have had some outstanding teachers both at UCSD Extension online (poetry and novel writing) and College of the Canyons (creative writing and screenwriting).

Oh, and besides writing, my daughter started creating sock dolls when she was about 7 years old. Word spread about them up until last year when we finally started a Facebook page, Sock Doll Surprise, (http://www.facebook.com/SockDollSurprise) to sell her dolls. We were running monthly fundraising auctions; we had one for her school, one for the Red Cross efforts for Japan after the Tsunami, and one to support bicyclist Kirsten Salvador for her participation in the California Coast Classic to raise money for Arthritis Foundation. We’ve gotten a little side-tracked due to school activities, although we are donating one to support medical expenses for Ruby Owen’s Charity Fund. We have purchased the domain SockDollSurprise.com (http://www.sockdollsurprise.com/) and I have been building a website for it.


2) What is Mouse Tales Press? Why did you start it? How did you choose the name?

Mouse Tales Press is an online literary magazine that publishes poetry and short stories. I wanted to make a website where I could use the skills I had learned in my web design classes and challenge myself to keep my knowledge up-to-date. Inspired by my writer-daughter, I initially started it as a place where emerging writers could have a chance to display their work. Mouse was my childhood nickname given to me by my father who had died not long before I started the website, so I named it in his honor.


3) Tell us about your submission process. What kind of writers should submit?

Mouse Tales Press publishes work by both emerging and established writers. I love experimental works, those written outside traditional format. While I receive mostly free-form style poetry, I also appreciate poems written in form. However, I usually choose works that bring out an emotional response in me when I read them.

Writers should send submissions to Submissions@MouseTalesPress.com. In the subject header, write “Submissions” and indicate to which category they are submitting (poetry or short stories). Also, we appreciate the stories to be formatted as stated in our guidelines on the submissions page (http://mousetalespress.com/submissions.html).


4) What is your vision for Mouse Tales Press?

I would like to one day produce a hard copy version of the magazine. However, I envision making handmade books rather than mass-produced copies (I have pondered creating issues through Mag Cloud though). I am still learning the fine art of book-making, so it will be a while before I turn out my first set.

Adding a store to the site is another option I have thought about. It would most likely be a store of handmade books (although my wheels are always churning!), and whether or not I open it up to outside artists, has not been decided at this point. Stay tuned!



5) Who are your favorite authors? What is on your reading list right now?

I have been immersing myself in novel re-writing books over the past several months. I was once addicted to reading Ridley Pearson books. However John Steinbeck is also a favorite. Most recently, despite my apprehension at the subject matter, I am now reading Catching Fire of The Hunger Games series. I could barely put the first one down. (Catching Fire is just as good, I’m just a little busier now so it’s taking me longer to read it.)


6) When you are not writing/editing, how do you spend your time? Describe a typical day in your life.

I write, work on Mouse Tales Press, exercise, and create foods from vegetarian and raw food recipes while my kids are in school. When they are home, my schedule usually revolves around their many activities: soccer, volleyball, track meets, and horseback riding lessons. Favorite places I like to take my kids are hiking, biking, to museums, the science center, and the beach.


7) What projects do you have in the works?

I have been working on a cozy-mystery called Do Not Disturb for longer than I would like to admit. Initially I wrote it during National Novel Writing Month; it needed heavy editing and re-writes, which I am now in the final stretch of. The story is about a hotel maid who finds a hidden package in one of the rooms she is cleaning. The contents change her life forever. When one of her co-workers is found beaten, clues surrounding the package lead her to believe the sender is the attacker. Afraid of being arrested for theft and fearing for her safety, she sets out to find the culprit.

When I was 14-years-old, a teacher had me read, The Greatest Salesman in the World (by Og Mandino) and when I was 16 my dad gave me How to Win Friends and Influence People (by Dale Carnegie). Having been influenced by positive thinking type ideas from a young age, I have included bits of this philosophy in Do Not Disturb.

I tend to write stories that have a spiritual twist (currently, I am also working on a screenplay called Reincarnation Saved My Life). The subject of death seems to pop up in my writing a lot, too, though. Besides that, I have two other novels I am working on, one of which is a Young Adult novel, and various other poems, short stories, etc.



8) What advice would you offer to aspiring authors?

Always carry a journal and pen with you, or use the notepad in your phone if you have a thought and you don’t have the paper to write it on. Sometimes it’s hard to recall those fleeting thoughts hours later.

Also, set a regular time every day to write whether you feel like it or not. If you feel you have writer’s block, get outside of your head by recording what is going on around you through your senses. Write what you hear, smell, feel (the clothes touching your skin, twitches, whatever).

And find a class to take. There is nothing more important than feedback by other (experienced) writers. Also, check your local library or bookstore for writers’ groups.

About the Author

Linda Hatton has a BFA in Acting from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. She has produced, written, and acted in various theatrical productions since 1982. Most recently, her play, “A Human Being”, was produced at the West Hollywood Black Box Theatre in September, 2009. Her writing has appeared in Rainy Days, The Writing on the Wall, on VeggieMama.com, and in Cul-de-Sac literary magazine, Volume I and Volume II. Linda also runs her own online literary magazine, Mouse Tales Press.





Contact Linda

Twitter @MouseTalesPress.

Facebook Writer Page  http://www.facebook.com/linda.goleschhatton.

Mouse Tales Press Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/MouseTalesPress.

Linda's Blog the whatnot shop http://whatnotshop.blogspot.com/

Mouse Tales Press Blog http://mousetalespress.blogspot.com/