Theodora Bishop, an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow, is a woman of many talents. In addition to being the author of a chapbook of short stories, Mother Tongues, winner of The Cupboard’s 2015 contest, she was a Best New Poets nominee and her work has appeared in such well-known journals as Glimmer Train, Prairie Schooner, Arts & Letters, and Short Fiction (England). She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program, and her latest publication, On the Rocks

MATTHEW KRAJNIAK: Your novella, On the Rocks, won a 2018 Next Generation Indie Book Award. What was that like and what’s different with you and your writing now that this book is out?

THEODORA BISHOP: My husband and I were about ten hours into our drive from Texas to Pennsylvania when I received the news. I thought it was a mistake at first — I’m fairly certain we were listening to a book on CD and mowing down licorice; I was in a whimsical headspace. I was delighted when it turned out it wasn’t a mistake, and doubly delighted that On the Rocks was recognized as a novella. I think the novella is an important narrative form, and one which I relish reading, studying, and working in.Eva (the protagonist in On the Rocks) feels like an old friend, so I’ve enjoyed working on new fiction that feature similarly-minded characters who feel like they could be pals with Eva, if the novella’s universe of Ship Bottom were to slip into theirs. A great thing about the book being out is that I don’t touch the manuscript anymore; there’s been a place cleared in the cupboard, so to speak, and I’m happily immersed in new material.

MATTHEW: One of things people often note as to why they enjoyed On the Rocks so much is the use of humor in it. Humor is often an overlooked narrative tool—what’s your attitude toward it?

THEODORA:  My favorite books (and, oftentimes, people) blend a sense of humor with the serious. One of the reasons this resonates with me is because humor seems like one strategy people use to cope. As a reader, I appreciate characters that find themselves using comedy as a means to combat less favorable circumstances. On the Rocks is about a twenty-eight-year-old woman trying to come to terms with the death of her best friend — a man she claims to have been in love with since she and he were children — while preparing to serve as Maid of Honor at her mother’s second marriage. The first part (grief) is the more serious half of the equation; the second (Maid of Honor) is, on the surface, the comical (although Eva’s role here is also painful to her — she lost her father, her mother’s first husband, five years before the novella begins). The first line of the book is intended to not only set up the stakes, but to leave the reader with both tastes: “It was springtime, a year after Sebastian died, when my mother phoned to tell me she was throwing a bridal shower for herself, and I’d sure as dickens better be there: ‘You’re the Maid of Honor, Eva. So no excuses, m’kay?’ ”

When I was working on the novella, Eva’s grief preceded her mother’s impending second marriage/request of her daughter. I love standup and am a fierce advocate for artists excavating the “unsaid.” One of the delights I get from reading an author or poet I discover a particular kinship with is in feeling less alone, or recognized, because this writer has put a finger on the pulse of something I’ve experienced but have been unable to articulate or directly acknowledge for myself.

MATTHEW: You have a slew of publications, so I’m curious as to what your writing process is like. Is it relatively straightforward, are you someone that labors intensely for long hours every day, or is it some combination of both?

THEODORA: It’s relatively straightforward in the sense that I write as often as I can. I establish a routine based on where I am — in terms of jobs, school, travel, residencies, etc. The most writing (in terms of quantity) I ever accomplished was on a fellowship year in my MFA. I wasn’t teaching and had already completed coursework, so my days were spent writing and reading and wearing my pajamas for absurd stretches of time. I treated the funded time to work on my writing as a gift, and I am not one to let gifts go to waste (read: give me a carton of Cella’s cherries, and I’ll be glad to eat them all in front of you). I’ve never had a predetermined number of hours/pages/words to complete that I sign off in blood to. The amount I generate fluctuates based on what I’m doing/what works best for my routine. This year I’m taking a full course load, I’m teaching, and serving as a genre editor for two journals. I also have a wonderful husband and a cat that I want to spend time with (the second isn’t hard to accomplish — the majority of what I’ve produced in the past five years has come to fruition with her in my lap). Things that fall outside of those responsibilities tend to go on the backburner until I get my writing in. One of the wonderful things about being a writer is you can always keep what you’re working on with you — your subconscious is always hungry. So when I feel like my life circumstances have cut into the time I’d normally spend on my work, then I remind myself to kick back, relax: your subconscious is feeding. Whatever I’m working on at the time seems omnipresent. It’s there, like the best kind of secret.

MATTHEW: You serve as Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts and also have a number of poetry publications. Do you find your poetry informs you prose and vice-versa? What’s that relationship like?

THEODORA: I’m sure that it does, but almost always in retrospect. My discoveries while working in fiction and poetry are so distinct from one another. With fiction, I feel like I’m casting a net into the dark, and crossing my fingers that whatever I pull up I’ll be able to arrange into a meaningful order that pleases and surprises me afterward. With poetry, I’m always in the woods. It sometimes feels like I’m trying to guess the number of candies in a jar — the only catch is, I was the one to originally put them in the jar. In other words, I feel like I come to some answer I buried from the start. I’m very sound and voice-driven across my work, so I tend to start from a sense of voice. Whatever waits for me at the end of the line in both genres is what compels me to write.

MATTHEW: If you had to tell us about two authors that maybe we aren’t familiar with who would they be and what about their work do you enjoy?

THEODORA: Barbara Trapido has a delicious sensibility. Her writing is exquisite for its sentences alone. Shirley Jackson I’ll mention because though many may have read “The Lottery” or are otherwise familiar with her name, I’m always encouraging others to familiarize themselves with her novels. We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House were groundbreaking for me. (Also, there is a charming character by the name of “Theodora” in The Haunting of Hill House. It’s rare for me to see my first name in print, so there’s that).

MATTHEW: Are you currently working on any big new projects? If so, can I ask what it/they might be?

THEODORA: My latest poems come from my playing around with a vision of sainthood – sainthood for the twenty-first-century girl/woman. I’m drawing from the stories of the saints, St. Lucy in particular, and mashing those ideas up with issues for young girls and women I see happening today. My current fiction projects all draw from a contemporary sense the gothic and are largely about women. I write a lot about anxiety and am interested in breaking stigmas related to mental illness. I think a good deal of that interest was rooted in my undergraduate and early graduate school years, and my experiences with, or watching friends struggle with, related issues.

MATTHEW: If you saw someone at a bookstore who was clearly indecisive about buying your book (let’s say this person is an author themselves who has never known what disposable income is), how might you intervene so that he/she might understand why they need the book in their lives?

THEODORA: First, I’d be honored. Then I’d be embarrassed — I’m often embarrassed; I’d have a good deal less to write about if that wasn’t the case. So depending on the vibes this potential book-buyer gave, I’d probably either bury myself in the stacks or creepily watch the person’s decision-making play out from a distance. I’d hope they’d buy it, if only to figure out for themselves why there is a mermaid on the cover, and why she looks so cross lounging across that rock.

The post Houston writer Theodora Bishop wins 2018 Next Generation Indie Book Award first appeared on An Open Book - The Inprint Blog.

For those of you who do not know him, in addition to his literary accomplishments, Mike is a former research physician who chaired the department of pathology at Baylor College of Medicine for many years and was also the founding director of The Houston Methodist Hospital Research Institute. He is a member of the Inprint Advisory Board and on the Board of The Jung Center of Houston. A graduate of Yale College, he received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Mike is warm and engaging and he will talk about The Women of Harvard Square and sign copies this Thursday at The Jung Center, 5200 Montrose, at 5:45 pm. The reading is open to the public.

Inprint: Tell us a little bit about The Women of Harvard Square and how it compares to your other novels.

Mike: The Women of Harvard Square (WHS) is a novel in short stories that follows seven women—three in their twenties, three in their fifties, and one in her eighties. They are scientists and writers living in and around Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA. The book captures their lives—their work lives, their relationships with one another, platonic and otherwise, and several men. It’s a brisk read with deep roots, and unlike my first novel, Never Surrender—Never Retreat (NS NR), which was carefully plotted—though characters had a way of rebelling and making their own needs known—WHS simply flowed from my unconscious. The most important thing I’ve learned in writing fiction is that the story is within you, and too much control produces wooden characters and formulaic plots. Agnes, a Harvard undergraduate, gives her eighty-seven year old grandmother Abigail a vibrator—and my unconscious wouldn’t have it any other way.

Inprint: Your work has mostly been published by small presses. Can you describe what that process has been like for you?

Mike: When I was completing my first novel, in 2010-2011, I had to make a decision, and based in part on my wife Susan’s experience and advice, I decided not to try to find an agent to place the book with a New York publisher. It has turned out to be, for me, a very good decision. The likelihood of a research physician in late middle age, whatever the merits of his fiction, finding a major house to bring out his work is vanishingly small. I am thrilled to be working with Paul Ruffin and Texas Review Press in Huntsville. They get my obsession and craziness; in fact they have gotten it since the early nineties when I won a blind-submission, juried poetry competition and they brought out my first full-length book. Which leads to the question of what my expectations are as a writer. I write because I must and to figure out how I feel. I want readers, all writers need readers, but the distraction and pain of pursuing more readers by finding a major national publisher would take me away from writing. That’s too high a price. Besides, today whether an author is published by TRP or FSG he or she has to market, market, market, so I can’t see the upside of New York.

I write because I must and to figure out how I feel. I want readers, all writers need readers, but the distraction and pain of pursuing more readers by finding a major national publisher would take me away from writing.

Inprint: It seems like your writing life is thriving right now. Have you always been interested in creative writing? Have you ever taken any formal creative writing courses?

Mike: In high school I was the poetry editor of the school literary magazine and wrote feature pieces for the school newspaper. Poetry reappeared unbeckoned in my mid-forties. When we moved to Houston, I audited an undergraduate poetry writing workshop at UH taught by Linda Gregg, and Ed Hirsch took me under his wing for a bit and directed me to the Squaw Valley poetry workshops where I worked with Galway Kinnell, Sharon Olds, Bob Hass, and Brenda Hillman. For half a dozen years I taught an Inprint poetry workshop—there is nothing like teaching to learn. And so for better or worse, I feel that I have a sense of craft. Fiction is a different story. In fact I have been dabbling in fiction for some time. In 2001 I was fortunate to win the PEN-Texas Award for Fiction, but with a demanding life in medical research, I had no time to pursue writing. Fast forward a bit. I showed an early draft of NS NR to Dan Stern, a friend and generous teacher, who went through it with me. I subsequently trashed the draft and began anew. Seeing how Dan approached fiction was a game changer. The rest I have learned on my own with the kind help of writer friends and by reading broadly and eclectically—since early December I’ve read or begun books by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Amos Oz, James Baldwin, Jincy Willet, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Adam Nicolson, Homer (Fagles and Pope), and Romain Gary. I’m also in a short story bookclub which has been great: it’s very instructive to listen to intelligent readers talk about what they find in fiction.

Inprint: What is your next project—can you give us a sneak peak?

Mike: I am working on what is undoubtedly my most ambitious project to date. The Houstiliad: An Iliad for Houston is a book length poem in which I have appropriated Homer’s characters and set them in conflict in contemporary Houston. Achilles is an MIT-trained engineer who has dropped out and cruises the streets on an old BMW motorcycle with a sidecar looking for trouble. Helen is a young River Oaks matron, and Patroclus, Achilles’ closest friend and second in The Iliad, is, in my poem, a white macaw. Hector is the scion of a wealthy Latino family, the Martillos, hence the moniker “Hector the Hammer”.  So it is not a simple retelling of Homer’s story. Although laced with humor, it is a serious look at what drives Houston. The Iliad is about the wrath of Achilles—which Homer announces in the first line. The Houstiliad examines the rage of modern men. Texas Review Press will bring it out in the fall. It is an act of commitment and faith on their part—to publish a book-legnth poem. Even good fiction writers struggle to find an audience.

The post Physician turned writer, Michael Lieberman talks about his work first appeared on An Open Book - The Inprint Blog.