THE WWPH INTERVIEWS…WITH OUR 2024 WWPH AWARD-WINNING AUTHORS
WWPH INTERVIEWS: VARUN GAURI, FOR THE BLESSINGS OF JUPITER AND VENUS
Varun Gauri was born in India and raised in the American Midwest. After studying philosophy in college and public policy in graduate school, he worked for more than two decades on global poverty and human rights, publishing academic articles and books on development economics and behavioral economics. He now teaches at Princeton University and lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland. His short fiction was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and recognized in Best American Nonrequired Reading. He was a Summer Writer-in-Residence at Washington, DC’s The Inner Loop. For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus is his first novel. More about Varun Gauri at his website here.
What inspired you to start writing creatively, and specifically, to write For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus?
My parents tried to sell me on a Hindu arranged marriage like their own. I resisted outwardly (my first wife was Jewish) but somehow relented in spirit, essentially sleepwalking, not really believing that marriage was mine to choose, shape, and make. So the seed of the book was an effort to understand what had compelled me about my parents’ arranged marriage, and how and why I fought it. Eventually, I grew fascinated by broader questions about the interplay of compatibility, passion, and acceptance in relationships.
What was the most surprising thing you learned about Avi and Meena, your main characters, as you were developing them?
Originally, I conceived Meena and Avi as opposites. Meena was supposed to be romantic, witty, worldly, and skeptical of arranged marriage while Avi was practical, simple-minded, provincial, and traditional. It took me a while to realize I was writing a novel, not a fable. What helped was recalling a commandment from Bret Anthony Johnston, one of my writing teachers: “You will not do black and white. You will not have one character who is greedy and another who is generous, one character who is strong and another who is weak. Each of your characters will be greedy and generous, strong and weak. Complexity makes them interesting.”
What surprised me was that Meena and Avi, despite their differences, share something important. Both struggle against the dead hand of the past. Meena chooses arranged marriage because her late father, whom she loved, counseled her to. Avi is traditional because his parents are in thrall to an ideologue. Identifying and living their authentic desires and values is a shared journey for Avi and Meena, and recognizing themselves in one another is what gives their relationship hope.
What is your writing process/daily writing practice?
I like to write fiction with my first cup of coffee. I leave my academic writing for the afternoons. I find that I’m more imaginative in the mornings, less burdened by to-do lists and the state of the world. Also, for me, writing novels and short stories is more cognitively taxing than writing journal articles, and I like being fresh from a night’s sleep when writing fiction. Exercise also helps. When I find myself stuck on a plot point or an issue with a character, going on a bike ride sometimes provides clarity. Physical movement seems good for the imagination.
If you could be a character in one of your favorite books, who would you be and why?
Cosimo, in Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees, is angry at his parents, so he climbs a tree and stays up there his entire life. I love trees and would love to live in one. I’m also envious of Cosimo’s determination to behave as stubbornly as he feels.
If you could be mentored by a famous author of the past, who would it be/what would you ask them?
Dear George Eliot — I love this line of yours: “But something she yearned for by which her life might be filled with action at once rational and ardent; and since the time was gone by for guiding visions and spiritual directors, since prayer heightened yearning but not instruction, what lamp was there but knowledge?” Your writing sparkles with your passionate desire for knowledge, for truth, and passionate inquiry gives your writing tremendous authority. How would you write with authority today, when we are often skeptical of knowledge, cripplingly aware of our own partiality, and unsure to which community our readers belong?
WWPH INTERVIEWS: MEGAN DONEY, author of UNARMED: AN AMERICAN EDUCATOR’S MEMOIR
Megan Doney teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at New River Community College in Virginia. Her work has appeared in Ilanot Review, Rappahannock Review, Creative Nonfiction, and other literary journals, as well as the anthologies Allegheny and If I Don’t Make It, I Love You: Survivors in the Aftermath of School Shootings. Doney was a Fulbright fellow in South Africa in 2007, and returned there in 2015 to study reconciliation and public narrative in the aftermath of violence. She earned an MFA from Lesley University. Unarmed: An American Educator’s Memoir is her first book.
What was the most challenging moment in your process of writing this memoir?
I can’t pinpoint a specific moment in the writing process itself; all of the writing was intellectually and emotionally challenging. However, I was very low after two failed connections with agents, being out on submission for more than a year, and multiple editors who basically said they thought the book was beautiful and important, but unsellable. In October 2023, I started sending the manuscript to small presses and contests and set December 31 as my final deadline; I would not submit it any further after that and I was prepared to junk it. Then, Caroline Bock from WWPH called me in January with the incredible news.
What do you hope educators like yourself will take away from this work?
I would like them to remember what brings them joy and meaning in their vocation. I believe teaching is sacred work and that learning alongside our students is a tremendous privilege. That said, I also hope that they will honor their boundaries and the limits of what they can and will do within that vocation. So much is asked of educators. It is too much to ask that they also assume mortal danger in their work.
What is your writing process/daily writing practice?
It depends on where I am in a text. I tend to think very metaphorically and associatively, and it takes me a long time to read, journal, annotate, and assemble my thoughts into something that (I think) might make sense. When actively drafting, I often use the Pomodoro method to stay focused. I’ve kept a journal my entire life, so I rely on that to work out my thoughts and have a tangible record of what I was thinking and doing at a particular moment.
What book/s are on your nightstand?
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda; The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt; Yellowface by R.F. Kuang; Once In The West by Christian Wiman; The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone.
What advice would you give to anyone writing a memoir on a difficult subject?
Do not mistake writing for therapy. See T. Kira Madden’s article on this subject. The process of creation, and turning your experience into a narrative for an audience, demands that you, the writer, become your audience and balance distance with intimacy. Madden describes it as a kind of translation. The situation, as Vivian Gornick put it, is not the story.
WWPH INTERVIEWS: CHANLEE LUU, author of THE MACHINE AUTOCORRECTS CODE TO I
CHANLEE LUU, winner of the 2024 Jean Feldman Poetry Award for THE MACHINE AUTOCORRECTS CODE TO I .
Chanlee Luu is a Vietnamese-Chinese American writer from Virginia. She received her MFA in creative writing from Hollins University, and BS in chemical engineering from UVA, where she competed in poetry slams. She writes about identity, pop culture, science, politics, and everything in between. She can be found on Twitter @ChanleeLuu, and her work in Snowflake Magazine, the gamut mag, Cutbow Quarterly, Tint Journal, Honey Lit, The Offing, and diaCRITICS, among others, all at chanleeluu.weebly.com. The Machine Autocorrects Code to I is her debut collection.
“RADIANT, WITTY, SURPRISING, FIERCELY COMMITTED & IMAGINATIVE…” –Anne Boyer, author of The Undying
From where did you draw inspiration for the title of your collection, The Machine Autocorrects Code to I?
The title comes from my Taylor Swift Golden Shovel about the process of healing, which we tend to think of as an individual process, but is actually communal. The title is open to multiple interpretations, but for me, the breakdown is: “The Machine” is late-stage American capitalism or any institution that oppresses its people; “Autocorrects” means we’re forced to go against our human nature; “I” refers to individualism. A colleague read the “I” as “one” and that works too! Overall, the book is about fighting these forces.
What was the challenge in marrying your STEM background and passion for writing and music in the pursuit of this poetry collection?
I think it was a very natural process, incorporating my multiple interests and backgrounds, which is the great thing about poetry— you’re able to seamlessly create connections between seemingly unrelated things. I think the biggest challenge was the murky area between scientific accuracy and creative liberties. For example, is coffee in our veins? No, but it is a common exaggeration for a person who drinks a lot of coffee.
What is your writing process/daily writing practice?
I don’t really have a daily writing practice right now with a full-time job and going to school, but when inspiration hits, I’ll write! I’ll usually use the structure of a form (or Excel!) to help me. I think rhyme gets a bad rap in contemporary poetry, but as Ange Mlinko says, “I let the rhyme have its way with me, because a more interesting stanza will come about that way, one I could never have planned with my rational brain. I believe in pattern, if nothing else, as an antidote to garrulousness.” I don’t write in rhyme as much as I used to, but I still think the constraints of a form force me to be more creative.
What was your favorite book as a child?
I loved Nate the Great books; I wanted to be a detective and solve mysteries and eat potato pancakes. My mom tried her best to find me a long coat that looked like his so I could dress up as him for school, and I did eventually use my detective skills to solve the case of “The Missing Homework.” No, a dog did not eat it; a classmate had erased my name and put his over it!
What literary figure, dead or alive, would you want to share a meal with?
How are we defining literary figures? There are 2 obvious answers. One is Taylor Swift, who I have been a huge fan of since 2006, and I would ask her how she Masterminds all the Easter Eggs. The other would be Ocean Vuong, who inspired me to pursue poetry further than just as a hobby. If we expand it to anyone who has ever written, I would pick my paternal grandparents, my Ông Bà Nội. I met my Bà Nội once when I went to Vietnam in the 2nd grade, and she was so full of humor and joy; I never got to meet my Ông Nội. When people tell me fond stories of their grandparents, I think “that must be nice.” So yeah, I’d like to cook with them, learn their recipes, and eat/laugh with them.
