A Virtual Interview with Lesléa Newman

Thursday, May 13, 2021 7:15 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

Event registration at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bookwoman-2nd-thursday-poetry-reading-and-open-mic-with-leslea-newman-tickets-148942524099

For more information, contact bookwoman2ndthursdaypoetry@gmail.com

Background

Lesléa Newman will read from her most recent book of poetry, I Wish My Father, a memoir in verse. Newman is the author of 75 books for readers of all ages including the poetry collections Nobody’s Mother, October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard, Still Life with Buddy, and the companion memoir-in-verse to I Wish My Father,  I Carry My Mother.  She is also the author of many children’s books including Gittel’s Journey: An Ellis Island Story, Ketzel: The Cat Who Composed, Here Is The World: A Year of Jewish Holidays, and the groundbreaking Heather Has Two Mommies. Her literary awards include poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, the National Jewish Book Award, the Massachusetts Book Award, and the Association of Jewish Libraries Sydney Taylor Body-of-Work Award. From 2008 – 2010, she served as the poet laureate of Northampton, MA.

The Interview

CH: What is your earliest memory of reading and of writing?

LN: Reading: My dad used to read us Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss and then he would lie down on the floor and we would literally hop on him!

Writing: When I was 8 years old, we moved from Brooklyn to Long Island and I was miserable. I wrote very sad poems in a black and white composition notebook and somehow that made me feel better.

CH: What were your ambitions as you grew up? Did you always want to be a writer?

LN: I always wanted to be a writer; I never had any other aspirations. Everyone said I had to have a day job, but I didn’t listen to them. My role model was Barbra Streisand. I read somewhere that she never learned to type because, as she said, if she learned how to type, she’d wind up typing (and how could she type with those nails anyway?). If you have a fallback plan, you’re going to fall back on it. My plan was to be a writer and it was my job to figure out how to make that happen.

CH: When did you first begin to identify yourself as a writer?

LN: I have identified as a poet since I was a teenager, and that identify was validated in 1976 when I had several poems published in Seventeen Magazine, and even got paid well for them!

CH: You’ve had success in poetry, children’s books, novels, and have had your work adapted for the stage, publishing an astounding. seventy-five books to date. how would you describe yourself as an author?

LN: Restless! I like to move from genre to genre, though poetry was and always will be my first love.

CH: Tell us a bit about the rhythm of your working life. On how many projects do you typically work contemporaneously? What inspires you and renews you?

LN: I usually work on one project at a time. I have a hard time coming up with ideas (most people are surprised to hear that) but once I do have an idea, I become obsessed and can’t think about anything else. I am inspired by reading wonderful writing, poetry in particular. I often get ideas while driving (I don’t listen to music or news for that reason) or while gardening or in the shower. Ideas come from dreams, from observing life, from personal experience, from everywhere.

CH: Many readers I’m sure are familiar with the groundbreaking Heather Has Two Mommies. How has that book’s success impacted your career? What other books have acted as milestones for you?

LN: Some people advised me to publish Heather under a pseudonym so as not to ruin my career. I’ve certainly had the last laugh about that! Ironically, Heather, a book that my friend Tzivia Gover and I published on our own with ten dollar donations from hundreds of people because no traditional publisher would touch it, is now my claim to fame. Other books I am known for are the short story collection, A Letter to Harvey Milk, one of the first books about Jewish lesbians ever published, and my Jewish children’s books such as Gittel’s Journey: An Ellis Island Story and Welcoming Elijah: A Passover Tale With A Tail, both of which won the National Jewish Book Award.

CH: Tell us a bit about your memoirs in verse I Carry My Mother and I Wish My Father. What was similar and different in the writing of these two books? How do they converse with one another?

LN: My book about my mom consists of poems written in traditional forms: sestina, villanelle, ghazal, sonnet, etc. My grief was so enormous, I needed a container in which to pour all my messy, unwieldly feelings. Formal poetry gave my grief some structure, some elegance. The poems about my dad are constructed as narratives and they have humor woven into them. My dad appears in the book about my mom, and my mom appears in the book about my dad. They are inseparable in these two companion volumes just as they were in life. They were married for 63 years and I like to think they’d be pleased to know they are now a “boxed set.”

CH: I was fortunate to see an off-Broadway production of Letter to Harvey Milk, based on your short story. How involved were you in the process of translating the story to theater? What was it like to see the work staged?

LN: I was not involved in the adaptation at all. I did have a chance to give the creators some feedback after an early staged reading. It was very emotional to see the show, which is partly about a lesbian whose family doesn’t accept her and is obviously autobiographical. It was especially emotional when I saw it in 2012 sitting between my parents. My mother was very ill at the time and died three weeks later. It took everything she had to feel well enough to schlep into Manhattan and sit through a show. But she did it and said it was one of the best days of her life.

CH: What one piece of advice would you give someone who’s starting out as a writer, regardless of their chosen genre?

LN: I have three pieces of advice: write, write, write. Come up with a writing schedule and stick to it. Read, read, read. Read everything and if you don’t know where to begin, start with the award winners (National Book Awards, Newbery Medalists, etc.). Find or start a writers group and listen to what others say about your writing. Bonus bit of advice: be kind to yourself and other writers. We’re all in this together.

CH: Who are some of your favorite authors? What are you reading now?

LN: Favorite authors: my mentors, Allen Ginsberg and Grace Paley. My literary mothers, Patricia MacLachlan and Jane Yolen. My heroes who paved and continue to pave the way: Jacqueline Woodson, Alison Bechdel, Alex Gino, Joan Nestle, Sappho, Chrystos, so many others.

Reading: at this very moment, I am reading an interesting novel called BROOD by Jackie Polzin, which is about the art of raising chickens and what that can teach you about life. I recently finished the middle grade novel FIGHTING WORDS by Kim Brubaker Bradley and it broke my heart and healed it at the same time, something which is very hard to do. In the poetry department, I have  just read Mama Phife Represents by the amazing Cheryl Boyce Taylor. The book chronicles the life and death of her son, famed musician Phife Dawg and how she grieves that loss. And finally, I am very excited about the new picture book Two Grooms on a Cake by my good friend Rob Sanders.

A Virtual Interview with Debra L. Winegarten

Debra L. Winegarten will be the feature for the 2nd Thursday Poetry Reading and Open Mic at BookWoman (5501 N. Lamar) on Thursday, January 14, 2016  from 7:15 to 9:00 p.m.

Background

Debra L. Winegarten is a poet, biographer, and publisher, and is on the faculty of South University. A sociologist by training, Debra is a past president of the Texas Jewish Historical Society. She has written two Jewish-themed poetry books, There’s Jews in Texas?, winner of Poetica Magazine’s 2011 Chapbook Contest, and Where Jewish Grandmothers Come From.

Debra’s biographies include Oveta Culp Hobby: Colonel, Cabinet Member, Philanthropist (University of Texas Press, 2014) and Katherine Stinson: the Flying Schoolgirl (Eakin Press, 2000). Oveta Culp Hobby has received a gold medal from the Military Writers Society of America as well as the 2015 award for best Biography from the Texas Association of Authors, and was a literary award finalist for the WILLA award from Women Writing the West. Katherine Stinson was a finalist for Foreword Magazine’s “Book of the Year” award in the Biography category.

Debra is currently working on an adult biography, Zvi Yaniv: From the Mysterious Island to Nanotechnology, and a biography of two Texas women. Meeting God at Midnight by Ahuva Batya Scharff, the first poetry collection  published by Debra’s publishing company, Sociosights Press, received the 2015 Best Poetry Book award from the Texas Association of Authors. Sociosights Press will be publishing its first children’s book, Almost a Minyan, in 2016.

The Interview

CH: How did you first get interested in becoming a writer? When did you start thinking of yourself as a writer?

DW: I have always loved to write. My first published poem was in the third grade, the Temple Emanu-El synagogue monthly newsletter printed my poem, “God is Everywhere.”

I first seriously thought of myself as a writer when I received a contract from Eakin Press in 1996 for my book on Katherine Stinson.

CH: You wrote your first book, Strong Family Ties, as a co-author with your mother, Ruthe Winegarten. I knew Ruthe, and always appreciated her sparkling intellect as well as her commitment to writing women’s stories. How was it to write this book with her? How did that experience shape your growth as a writer?

DW: I had a lot of fun writing the book with Mom. We travelled to Dallas once a month on the weekend for a year and interviewed Dr. Hawkins. Mom “let” me do the brunt of the work as well as keep most of the money we made doing the book. She served more in an advisory role and really stayed in the background and just kind of made sure I was on track. Doing the book gave me confidence in my own abilities as a researcher and author and really set me on the road of my own writing career.

CH: You’ve published multiple books of poetry and biography. Do you have a primary identity as a writer? How would you describe yourself as a writer?

DW: Whenever I introduce myself, I always say, “I’m an award-winning author.” I think of myself as an author rather than a writer, somehow for me the word “author” carries more authority and doesn’t seem somehow as confining to me. I write non-fiction of all sorts, memoir, biographies, even my poetry is quite autobiographical, and when it’s not about me, it’s often based on my experiences or a snippet of something that I’ve observed in my travels.

CH: Your poetry chapbook, There’s Jews in Texas? (Poetica Magazine, 2011), won the 2011 Poetica Magazine Poetry Chapbook Contest, and you’ve followed it up with Where Jewish Grandmothers Come From (Sociosights Press, 2014). What inspired you to write these books? How widely did you distribute the manuscript for There’s Jews in Texas? before it was selected by Poetica? What influenced your decision to publish Where Jewish Grandmothers Come From with your own press?

DW: One of my best friends, Ahuva Batya Scharff, saw the call for submissions for the Poetica Publishing chapbook contest. The theme was anything having to do with “contemporary Jewish poetry.” She sent me the link, said, “You write contemporary Jewish poetry, you ought to enter.” I thought about it for about a second, decided she was right, and put together a manuscript for the contest.

I didn’t distribute this manuscript widely, I felt like it was “beginner’s luck,” it was the first chapbook I had ever put together, the only place I entered it was this particular contest, and I won the national prize!

As it turned out, people loved “There’s Jews in Texas?” and I kept hearing the complaint, well, not really a complaint, but more like a whine that it was too short and people wanted more from me. Now of course as an author, that’s the kind of “problem” one wants to have—people wanting to have more of your work. Since I had such good successes with “There’s Jews in Texas?” from a marketing viewpoint (I think the book is in its third or fourth printing now), I decided it would be smart to stay with the same genre and niche market.

Dos Gatos Press published the title poem, “Where Jewish Grandmothers Come From” in one of their annual Texas Poetry calendars, so I used that poem as the jumping-off poem for the second book in the series. I decided to publish the book through Sociosights Press because I learned from “There’s Jews in Texas?” that if I maintained control over the printing/publishing/distribution of the book, I would also make more money. It’s interesting because I don’t really do much to market “Jewish Grandmothers” the way I did with “There’s Jews in Texas?” and yet, the book sells consistently in its own quiet way and I’ve already paid for the first print run of 500 books.

CH: In addition to poetry, you’ve had a good deal of success with writing biography. Katherine Stinson: The Flying Schoolgirl (Eakin Press, 2000) was a finalist for best biography of the year from Foreword Magazine, and Oveta Culp Hobby: Colonel, Cabinet Member, Philanthropist (University of Texas Press, 2014) recently won a gold medal from the Military Writers Society of America. What excites you about the genre?

DW: I really love writing biographies of Texas women for middle school students, in particular for girls. The educational research shows that by the fifth grade, girls choose “books” or “boys.” I want them to choose “books” AND whatever. I remember the summer between fifth and sixth grades, I read the entire row of biographies in my school library, trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. And it was tough because the majority of the biographies were about men and the great things men had done, and there was almost no literature on women. So, I’ve made it my mission to follow in my mother’s footsteps and continue bringing stories of amazing Texas women into the limelight.

CH: How do you select the subjects of your biographies? Of your poetry books? What are you working on now—biography? poetry? something else?

DW: For the biographies of Texas women for middle school students, I go to the Texas Education Agency’s online curriculum to see which women are required learning for seventh grade social studies, where Texas history is taught. I try to pick women who have not only significance in Texas history, but have national prominence, as a way of expanding and broadening the people interested in reading my books.

I have two biographies in the works. The first book is set in San Antonio and is actually two biographies in one, where I’m juxtaposing the lives of two fascinating early 20^th century Texas women’s lives and the places where those lives intersect. The other book I’m working on a proposal for right now involves a famous Texas female politician who has not yet had a biography written.

In terms of poetry, I’m putting the finishing touches on the third in my Jewish poetry series; this one entitled, “Have Torah, Will Travel.”

For the past 15 months, I’ve worked together with Dr. Zvi Yaniv, an Israeli-American inventor with over 300 patents on his book, “My Life on the Mysterious Island of Nanotechnology: An Adventure through Time and Very Tiny Spaces.” We are submitting his manuscript to publishers right now.

CH: You’ve long had Sociosights Press, but you’ve recently expanded your role as publisher. How would you describe the mission of Sociosights Press? What has inspired you to turn more of your energy toward publishing? Has your training as a sociologist influenced your work as a publisher?

DW: The mission of Sociosights Press is “Transforming society, one story at a time.”

I’ve turned more of my energy towards publishing because people keep coming to me with projects they want published, and since I’ve done 6 books, I have a lot of experience I can offer to people just starting out. My training as a sociologist has influenced my work as a publisher to the degree that I’m interested in using the books I publish as a way to bring out marginalized voices whose stories have the ability to make a difference in people’s lives.

CH: Ahuva Batya Scharff’s Meeting God at Midnight (Sociosights Press, 2014) garnered the “Best Book of Poetry” award in 2014 from the Texas Author’s Association, and I know it must be gratifying to see your work as a publisher being acknowledged in this way. Does Sociosights Press have projects on the horizon that you can share with us?

DW: I’m super-excited about a book that the Press will publish either in 2016 or 2017. Lori Sales Kline has written a delightful book, Almost a Minyan, which is a coming-of-age story of a young Jewish girl. I had the good fortune of meeting a masterful children’s illustrator, Susan Simon, when I did a workshop at the Highlights Foundation several years ago. I managed to talk Susan into illustrating this book, which I’m pretty sure is going to win major Jewish children’s book awards.

I also have the honor and privilege of publishing Sacred River: Poems from India, a chapbook collection from Shubh Shiesser, an Indian-American feminist role model whose poetry shines with stories “bucking” the patriarchal world in which she was raised.

CH: What writers inspire you? Who are your strongest influences?

DW: I can quote Dr. Seuss. As a child, I read all the Newberry Medal award winners. I particularly love Madeleine L’Engle’s book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” Lately I’ve been reading a lot of memoirs, my two recent favorites have been [Joan Didion’s] “A Year of Magical Thinking” and Leah Lax’s “Uncovered.”

CH: What’s the most recent book of poetry you’ve read? What are you reading now?

DW: The most recent poetry book I’ve read is my wife and heart partner Cindy Huyser’s award-winning chapbook, Burning Number Five: Power Plant Poems. I don’t read a lot of poetry books, I am usually exposed to poetry by going to readings. I’m lucky and blessed that Austin has a terrific community of poets and wonderful venues and support for poets, from Poetry at Round Top to the Austin International Poetry Festival, to splendid weekly and monthly open mic sessions all around town.