--interview by Marcia Peterson
WOW: Congratulations on winning first place in our Q4 2024 Creative Nonfiction essay competition! What prompted you to enter the contest?
Julie: I’ve been in somewhat of a writing slump since finishing my MFA in May and this contest was the inspiration I needed to start writing and submitting my work again. I definitely did not expect to win – I was just happy I actually submitted something! While in the MFA program (at Lenoir-Rhyne University’s wonderful Thomas Wolfe Center for Narrative) I had constant input, feedback, and deadlines. Now I have to be self-motivated – no grades or professors setting due dates. WOW’s competition gave me an incentive to get back to it!
WOW: Congratulations on winning first place in our Q4 2024 Creative Nonfiction essay competition! What prompted you to enter the contest?
Julie: I’ve been in somewhat of a writing slump since finishing my MFA in May and this contest was the inspiration I needed to start writing and submitting my work again. I definitely did not expect to win – I was just happy I actually submitted something! While in the MFA program (at Lenoir-Rhyne University’s wonderful Thomas Wolfe Center for Narrative) I had constant input, feedback, and deadlines. Now I have to be self-motivated – no grades or professors setting due dates. WOW’s competition gave me an incentive to get back to it!
WOW: “A Liturgy of Lechery” is a powerful and unnerving essay, and the hermit crab format worked well here. What inspired you to write this particular piece?
Julie: This piece is part of a collection of essays about the year I left college to volunteer at a prisoners’ rights group in Jackson, Mississippi. I was a young, white, naïve, small-town girl from the Midwest and the people I met and experiences I had in Mississippi challenged everything I’d learned up to that point about race, religion, and relationships. I was very trusting of anyone involved in the church and the experience I write about in "A Liturgy of Lechery" both shocked and embarrassed me – I felt so ashamed of how gullible I’d been. I never told anyone what had happened so writing this was very liberating. I hadn’t heard of hermit crab essays and thought that writing this in the form of a church service was particularly clever! Discovering that my “invention” wasn’t new did not diminish my enthusiasm for the hermit crab form. Since then, I’ve written both poetry and nonfiction in the form of recipes, magazine ads, checklists, and report cards and try to read as many hermit crab essays as I can. (Be sure to check out “Body Wash: Instructions on Surviving Homelessness” by Dorothy Bendel in the wonderful essay collection Harp in the Stars.) The form of an essay can contribute in surprising and meaningful ways – here I think a liturgy and the religious references conveys what happened to me both more appropriately and powerfully.
WOW: Do you have any thoughts or advice for writing about difficult things?
Julie: Be patient with yourself (and your memory), take your time, and set aside the writing if and when it gets too painful. As I wrote this piece – and others about this period in my life – I had professors and classmates who encouraged me to be even more honest and willing to go where I initially didn’t have words or where embarrassment had shut me down. The first time I wrote about Mississippi all I could get down was a short, cryptic poem about one of the prisoners I worked with. I’d buried (or mentally edited) so much of what happened that year. But those stanzas led to longer essays and ultimately the memoir I’ve drafted. The more honest I was, the lighter I felt – with each essay and each rewrite, I release a little more shame and bestow a little more forgiveness upon myself. Two books in my MFA program were particularly helpful in this process – Poetic Medicine: The Healing Art of Poem-Making by John Fox and Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma by Melanie Brooks.
WOW: You mentioned that you’re working on several other writing projects, including a memoir. Anything you can share about the writing process, or how the journey of writing this book is going for you?
Julie: Initially I resisted the idea of a memoir and tried to write a fictionalized version of my time in Mississippi. The truth was too hard, and I thought if I turned it into fiction I’d have control over the story and could create the outcome I wanted. Memoir has also sometimes felt like egotistical, navel gazing to me. But then I had the privilege of interviewing writer Sonja Livingston (read her book Ghostbread!) and watching episodes of The Memoir Café on her YouTube channel. She talks about how memoirs are a profound and unique way to connect us to each other. I thought of others young women in their late teens who are trying to sort the topics I focus on in my memoir, particularly sexuality, race, and religion, and decided I had something to say that might connect. It’s difficult. Every time I think I’m done with this book, I’m pushed to go deeper, to reflect more honestly.
WOW: Thanks so much for chatting with us today, Julie. Before you go, can you share a favorite writing tip or piece of advice?
Julie: The best piece of writing advice I’ve ever read is Anne Lamott’s short and sweet “Stop not writing. Put your butt in the chair!” For years I wanted to write but felt like I had to wait for inspiration to descend upon me, or to produce a complete outline of the next great American novel. Another favorite tip of mine was from Octavia Butler who said “First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable.” Some days it’s hard to find the time and energy to write, and it’s frustrating to produce what first seems like a lousy draft – but those lumpy drafts are the clay I use to shape something lovely! I’ve also become comfortable with writing simply because I enjoy writing. Publication hasn’t been my primary goal, but it is energizing and exciting to have a piece published and I want to thank WOW for me with recognition and creative inspiration.
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